Seek Out and Destroy (Commander Cochrane Smith series)

by Alan Evans

  But they had to do something. Menzies turned on Archbold but Fred, cold pipe clamped between his teeth, forestalled him. ‘I know what you’re thinking. Mister,’ he said.

  18. Salzburg

  The sky was growing lighter and Smith could make out the loom of the shore to starboard. His head turned, seeking Salzburg, She had to be here, had to be! Gallina, the solid and dependable, was gone and all his crew. Now there were only the two boats. Seek out and destroy...

  Where was Salzburg?

  Off the starboard bow appeared what looked like a tender, low in the water and butting slowly in towards the inner harbour, on a parallel course but the MAS was rapidly overtaking her. She was a quarter mile to starboard, they were passing her.

  Smith shouted, ‘Salzburg! Starboard bow!’ He pointed. There was no mistaking her this time. For some reason Voss had shifted her even deeper inside the harbour. Had he suspected an attack? More likely she had gone into the dockyard for some minor repair. But the move had almost saved her and now she was under way and heading for the sea, going to pass close to and inshore of the tender. Smith’s head turned and he flashed the lamp once at Pagani in the boat astern, shouted at Zacco, ‘Now!’

  He blinked the lamp again and the boats heeled over together then straightened to race side by side, thirty yards between them, their lifted bows trained on Salzburg. The tender was on the starboard bow now. They were seen. Salzburg’s side erupted in flame and smoke as she opened fire. A shell fell astern and another alongside. The sea between the boats and Salzburg lifted in a long ragged line of water-spouts and the slam! of a bursting shell came from starboard. Smith spun on his heel, afraid for Pagani but his boat was still in station on the beam, bow lifted high and seen through her curtain of spray. The shell had burst on the tender, her bow had slewed towards Salzburg and flames roared high out of her waist.

  Smith faced forward as the boats lurched and leapt through the broken water left by the salvo. Salzburg’s bow lay right ahead, the long length of her filling the eye, the bridge and control top towering as she steamed to pass across the course of the boats. Voss would be up there on the bridge. Smith swallowed at the size of Salzburg as they closed her...

  A flash lit them all, boats and Salzburg, leaping up to starboard with a sullen roar. Smith ignored it, his eyes fixed on the battlecruiser. Now. ‘Fire!’ The torpedoman yanked the handle of the starboard torpedo and the gunner heaved on that to port. The connecting rods slid and clicked, the clamps opened like claws and the torpedoes dropped from them. They ploughed into the sea at the speed of the boat, instantly their engines burst into life and they were away.

  Zacco swung the stem in a tight turn to starboard and Pagani, copying the manoeuvre, was ahead of them now. Beyond him was the tender and the flash and roars were explained; she had burst open along her length and was afire from stem to stern. Whatever she carried, petrol or oil or both had been blasted out of her so that she burned in the centre of a spreading lake of flame. The boats ran into the glare, an easy target for Salzburg’s guns, and Smith knew they had to get out, and quickly. ‘Starboard!’

  Zacco nodded and held the MAS in the heeling turn through three-quarters of a circle then spun the wheel to bring it back to an even keel, heading out of the light and towards the inner harbour. Smith saw Pagani turn to follow. His boat was astern of them when the salvo howled in from Salzburg but when the spray fell she was gone.

  Smith tore his eyes away and looked for Salzburg. That was when the torpedoes hit her, two hammer-blows almost simultaneously then, seconds later, a third. He saw her heel and sag. Hoarse cheering around him rose thinly above the roaring of the engines but he did not join in it. He saw Zacco’s curious glance and said harshly, ‘Pagani was hit! Finish!’ Zacco winced, bellowed the news to his crew and the cheering stopped. Smith rubbed at his face. It felt numb and his eyes were sore. They were heading deeper into the harbour but now they had to get out. Daylight was not far off. If they tried to return the way they had come then the battleships would be ready for them this time and they would have to run a gauntlet of fire for a mile or more.

  The tender was still afloat and burning in its ring of flame, a huge ring now. Smoke billowed from it, black and oily, and drifted over the surface of the harbour towards the sea. Smith thought salvation might lie that way and pointed it out to Zacco. He turned the boat again through 180 degrees to starboard and the MAS slipped down to run between the tender and Salzburg. The battlecruiser was down by the head and listed heavily to starboard. Smoke and steam roared from her leaning funnels, her deck was awash and the sea was full of swimming men, rafts and boats. The MAS passed them by, her crew silent; they could do nothing to help the men struggling in the sea, only pray for them.

  Smith stared at Salzburg’s crazily tilted bridge: Voss would be up there, at his post to the bitter end. Only at the last would Voss leave his ship. He was finished here. He had come to lead the Austrians to victory but instead had lost the pride of their navy and that inside their base. Voss would go back to Germany and the High Seas Fleet. He would live to fight another day.

  Smith turned away from the sinking ship. His solitary MAS was leaving the circle of light cast by the blazing tender, and the smoke from its fire and Salzburg rolled down ahead of her. The smoke wisped around them, coiled, then they were into the thick of it and coughing as it got into their lungs. The machine-gunners stood ready with the Colts, one in the forward cockpit and the other close by Smith, balancing on the port side of the after cockpit at the gun on its tall mounting. Two look-outs crouched right forward in the bow. The compass said the MAS was steering parallel to the shore and heading towards the sea, but the compass might be inaccurate after the way the boat had been thrown about. She could be a quarter-mile from the shore or only a, few yards. Besides, there were many other craft in this harbour, two guard-boats ahead for certain, anchored at the shoreward end of the first boom inside the moles.

  They cruised steadily at fifteen knots through the smoke as it drifted and eddied. Once they emerged briefly and found themselves in the first light of day, the shore two hundred yards away to port in a thin veiling of mist, while twice that distance to starboard lay the long line of capital ships and off the starboard bow the old sailing ship. Beyond her, seen vaguely, was a destroyer lying still in the water and seemingly at anchor. Then Zacco spun the wheel and the MAS scurried back into the smoke.

  Smith said, ‘There’ll be guard-boats right ahead — and look out for the boom.’ Zacco called an order and the two in the bow lifted acknowledging hands. Smith thought the destroyer must be at the tail of the flotilla they had passed as they tore into the harbour, the other destroyers and the Minesweepers all anchored, ahead of her, crowded up close to the sunken tug that locked them in. The MAS would have to run past them to escape. She would need all her speed, no matter what. ‘Full ahead!’

  The note of the engines deepened, working up to twenty-five knots again as Zacco leaned forward over the wheel, coughing in the smoke, peering out of streaming eyes as he strove to pierce it. If they came on another vessel at this speed and in this visibility there would only be a seconds in which to react before the collision. The smoke was thinning, they burst into a pocket of open water, streaked across it and into the smoke again but it was dispersing on the wind. Only that saved them from disaster.

  The rowing-boat appeared dead ahead and barely a score. of yards away. Udina up in the bow yelled but Zacco had seen it, twitched the wheel to starboard and as the MAS swerved past the boat’s stern Buckley shouted: ‘Lombardo!’ Zacco spun the wheel to port and the MAS skidded around in a circle, the engine note dropping from a roar to a grumble as she straightened out and ran down again on the boat with the way coming off her.

  Smith saw Balestra and Lombardo waving, then lifted his eyes to search about him. He saw the other ship as Udina in the bow called again but now softly, urgently. She was a tug at anchor, a mere couple of hundred yards away astern but visible only intermittently t
hrough the drifting smoke. She had a gun mounted forward and it was manned. Then the smoke drifted between. They had passed her unseen in the smoke but that was thinning now. Had she seen them?

  Buckley said, ‘End o’ the boom, sir.’ So they had almost run the gauntlet. He pointed at the boat while a seaman helped Balestra and Lombardo climb aboard the MAS. They swayed, their legs almost useless, their faces grey and drawn with exhaustion. They collapsed in the cockpit, shuffled backwards on their arms into the entrance to the engine-room so as to be out of the way and sat there, eyes lowered, glad simply to be alive.

  Smith saw the boom ahead, the triple line of buoys and the connecting hawsers from which hung the nets. He waited for a ranging shot from the tug now invisible astern, but none came. They had not been seen. Then Balestra reached out to tug weakly at Smith’s leg. ‘I heard torpedoes. Did you get her?’

  Smith looked down at him and said softly, ‘We got her, Guido. And Seahorse was terrific. We saw the one you got. Congratulations.’

  Balestra sighed and leaned back, pillowed his head on Lombardo’s shoulder and closed his eyes. Lombardo was already unconscious.

  They got under way and turned towards the sea once more, passing the end of the boom and swinging to starboard now to head for the gate. They were out of the smoke and working up to full speed again. There was a thin, wisping mist that hid the gate from them still but visibility was close on half a mile. The southern mole stood clear on the port beam and there was the other guard-boat! The last of the smoke had hidden her but now they were swiftly closing her. She was another tug at anchor, her gun in the bow training around towards the MAS. They would pass at a hundred yards or less, point-blank range.

  The Colt machine-guns opened up and Smith clapped his hands to his ears as the weapon hammered beside him, spent cases raining around him and clattering down into the cockpit. He saw the windows of the tug’s wheelhouse punched away, splinters flying from her side. One of the men at her gun fell back and the others threw themselves down. Then the MAS was past, the machine-gunner shouldering Smith aside as he swung the gun around to train it over the stern and loose off long bursts at the receding guard-boat.

  The end of the mole was in sight and there, where Smith had sunk her, were the masts of the tug poking out of the sea at the centre of the gate. Clustered inside the boom were the minesweepers at anchor, and beyond them, also at anchor, was the first of the destroyers with the rest of the flotilla lined out astern of her. They had either been ordered to stop there when chaos erupted in the harbour, or had anchored on their own initiative when they found the tug sunk and the gateway to the sea blocked.

  Smith swallowed. One way or another it would all be over in a minute. It depended on how ready the leading destroyer would be, whether she was waiting for them, how her crew handled their guns. But the MAS was a small leaping target and tearing through the sea now. He croaked at Zacco, his throat raw from shouting and the smoke, ‘Steer close outside the tug!’ She marked the gap in the boom. The tall lieutenant nodded, his eyes fixed on the opening between the moles. He did not spare a glance for the minesweepers or the destroyer.

  The MAS was exposed now in the grey light of dawn. The roar of the boat’s engines signalled their presence while the spray bursting over the bow and the churned white wash astern marked their position like banners. The machine-guns had trained around, were ready. The masts of the tug were only a cable’s length away and the MAS was racing towards them and the gate. North of the masts and another two hundred yards lay the minesweepers and the first destroyer. She would mask the fire of those beyond her but… A muzzle-flash flared aboard her and the Colt machine-guns of the MAS hammered.

  A shell burst near the mole and another fell astern, far behind in their wake. Now they were close on the gate, the masts of the sunken tug flicked by on the starboard side and ahead was the sixty yard wide gap between the moles. There was a ripping in the air all about them from the destroyer’s small calibre, quick-firing guns. A hole was punched in the turtleback of the hull right forward then there was a slam! and the turtleback burst open. Zacco fell back on Smith who pushed aside his crumpling body to grab at the wheel. The boat’s head had swung towards the breakwater but he spun the wheel and the MAS skidded around, then shot through the gap between the moles and on to the open sea.

  It was gun-metal blue with a marble streaking of whitecaps, but a quiet sea, stretching out to the mist that banked a mile or so away. Then the shell burst right under the bow which slewed away from the impact and the boat seemed to falter under him. He heard shouting from forward and saw Udina and a seaman jump from the forward cockpit and scramble up to the bow to sprawl there, hanging over.

  He guessed the boat was holed forward and making water, shouted down into the engine-room, ‘Half ahead!’ He searched for the phrase, remembered: ‘Avanti mezzo!’ Charging ahead would swamp the boat.

  The note of the engines dropped and the boat’s speed fell away to around ten knots. They were clear of the moles and heading out to sea. The destroyer and the minesweepers had ceased firing, the MAS hidden now by the northern mole. For a minute they laboured seawards. The seaman had torn off his oilskins and Udina had got a line over the bow and under the hull. They were trying to rig the oilskin as a patch over the hole. It seemed they succeeded; Udina shoved up with one arm from his prone position on the deck and waved triumphantly with the other. Then the two of them scrambled back. The clank of a pump came from the engine-room and a stream of dirty water gushed over the side. So it seemed the MAS might not sink.

  Balestra and Lombardo had roused themselves and were peering about, moving stiffly as they squatted by Smith’s legs. Also crammed in the tiny cockpit was the conscious but white faced Zacco and Buckley who had cut away the sleeve of the lieutenant’s oilskin and the jacket beneath, and was now fastening a dressing round the bloody upper arm and shoulder. Zacco struggled to rise but Smith told him, ‘Be still till he’s finished!’ Zacco subsided. The machine-gunner balanced on the strip of deck one side of the engine-room and a seaman crouched on the other. There was no room for them in the cockpit.

  Another yell from the forward cockpit, but that was the instant the shell fell in the sea a hundred yards off the starboard bow. Smith spun the wheel, turning the boat’s head towards the water-spout, trying to throw the gunners off their aim. He glanced astern and saw the wink of a muzzle flash at the end of the southern mole, under Cape Compare. There was a gun or guns firing there, four-inch or smaller, possibly twelve-pounders. The heavier batteries mounted ashore had not opened up, possibly because the mist obscured their view of the target, but even twelve-pounders were quite big enough to destroy the MAS. Another shell burst far astern of them.

  Udina was still yelling in the bow and now Buckley was on his feet and bawling at Smith. ‘Look at ‘er! Ah, the bonny lass!’ Then discipline asserted itself and he reported, ‘Hercules! On the bow!’

  She was taking shape out of the mist and waddling down on them. Smith saw the flash and heard the crack as the six-pounder in her bow fired, high over his head. She was a mile away just inside the limit of visibility in this grey and misty light but the gap between was closing at the combined speeds of drifter and MAS, about twenty knots. In two or three minutes they would meet.

  Smith glanced astern again. He could still see the mole though not the shore, and the orange wink of a gun firing from under Cape Compare. And now the guns on the destroyers inside had the MAS just in sight, over the top of the mole, and were firing. He altered course again. The boat felt sluggish but she seemed little lower in the sea, the engines still growled. Pump and patch between them were holding the sea at bay. A shell fell close, and seconds later another, but the boat ran on its swerving erratic course and Hercules was almost on them, only three or four hundred yards away.

  They were hit again forward, the shock of it shaking the little craft, sending them all staggering and grabbing for handholds. Once more Udina climbed from the forward cockpit to s
prawl on the deck and peer over the side but this time the face he turned to Smith showed only despair. He had expected it, had felt the boat’s head fall away, the sudden change in her under his hands. The bow was going down; the hole there must be massive. He called, ‘Ferma la macchina!’And as the engines stopped, ‘Buckley! Get’em out!’

  Hercules was closing them. Her screw stopped, thrashed briefly astern to take the way off her, then stopped again. Smith saw Fred Archbold in the wheelhouse, Menzies on her deck with a crowd of men at her side. Hercules slid alongside the stricken MAS and lines came flying down from her.

  Udina grabbed the line forward and Smith the one aft and they hauled the boat in to slam against the timbers of Hercules. Smith bellowed, ‘Abandon her!’ The order was Unnecessary. The MAS was sinking, down by the bow, the cockpit-filling with water that washed about Smith’s feet.

  Davies and his crew were at the drifter’s up still banging away at the mole! Zacco went up, clawing one-handed with Balestra one side of him, Lombardo on the other, and Buckley’s shoulder under his rump thrusting him upward.

  Udina jumped across the gap as the bow of the boat swung away from Hercules, hung on her side spread-eagled then scrambled inboard. The engineer and stoker crawled out of the engine-room, pushed past Smith’s legs. They reeked of petrol fumes. Buckley was aboard the drifter now and leaning down with hand outstretched to Smith, shouting, ‘Come on, sir!’

  He realised he was alone aboard the sinking MAS and his arms aching from holding the line that held her stern in close to Hercules. He shifted his grip higher on the line, steadied and jumped, crashed against the side of the drifter and for a split second was in the sea up to his waist. Then Buckley and the others were hauling in on the line and they brought him up on the end of it like a hooked fish.