iron pirate

by Unknown Author

  Hechler heard him, but let it pass. Gudegast was releasing the tension in his usual way.

  'Ready to fly off aircraft, sir!'

  'Slow ahead all engines.'

  Hechler walked from his chair and leaned over the screen, the damp wind pressing into his face.

  He saw the camera team down aft, some sailors freshly changed into their best uniforms, outwardly chatting to their admiral. Hechler looked at the vibrating Arado on the catapult, trained outboard ready to be fired off.

  He saw the girl's helmeted head lowered to speak with one of the deck crew before she closed the cockpit cover and waved a gloved hand.

  He felt his stomach contract and was stunned by the sudden concern. There was nothing that they could do or share. What was t he matter with him? Was it Inger's fury or his own loneliness?

  He tensed as the shining Arado roared from the catapult and without hesitation climbed up and away from the slow-moving cruiser.

  Leitner returned to the bridge, his eyes squinting as he watched the little plane weaving and circling over the water.

  He said,'I hope she flies nearer than that. It's a camera down aft, not a bloody-gunsight!'

  Hechler lifted his binoculars and watched the weak sunlight lance through the clouds to pick out the plane's thin silhouette.

  'Five minutes, sir!'

  Gudegast's voice made him pull his thoughts together.

  Leitner remarked, 'Now we shall see, eh?'

  It was more like a shoal of fish than a surfacing submarine. Long flurries of spray and frothing bubbles, so that when the hull eventually appeared some half-mile distant it rose with a kind of tired majesty.

  Jaeger exclaimed, 'God, she's big'

  Leitner heard him and turned to look. Another idea with vision and inventive skill!'

  The huge submarine surfaced and lay on the heaving water like a gigantic whale. Unlike an ordinary combat U-boat she lacked both menace and dignity. Even as they watched, men were swarming from her squat conning-tower, while from her casing, untidy-looking derricks and hoses were already rising from hidden compartments like disturbed sea-monsters.

  The tannoy blared below the bridge, and men ran to the prepared tackles and winches, ready to haul the fuel lines to the bunkers. Hechler saw the men waving to each other across the water. It must be a heartening sight to see such a big warship at large in enemy waters, he thought.

  There would be no news from home as yet, but his own men could send their letters across while the two vessels lay together. It might be many weeks before those letters were read by wives, mothers and girlfriends. He wished now he had a letter written for his own parents. But they would understand. Without effort he could see the photographs of himself and his dead brother in the neat, old-fashioned house where he had been born. His mother preparing the evening meal early, in case there was an air raid, although they had been mercifully spared most of those where they lived. Hisfather, reading the newspaper and coughing quietly at painful intervals.

  A telephone buzzed and Jaeger called, 'Chief engineer reports hoses connected, sir.'

  'Very good. Warn the wheelhouse to hold her steady.' It was probably unnecessary to warn anybody. Severed hoses might take hours to replace, and every minute exposed like this was too much.

  Hechler watched the oily hoses jerking busily as the fuel was pumped across the gap of heaving water. What a strange war it was becoming. He glanced down at the deck below as an armed seaman walked past beside the captured English officer. The latter was downcast, and did not appear to be looking in any direction as men scurried to tackles to release the strain or to take up the slack.

  A victim and a survivor.

  Theil said, 'I think it unwise to let him walk about like that.'

  Hechler smiled. 'He is hardly a threat, Viktor.'

  He looked up to seek out the Arado, but the sky seemed empty. She would be feeling free right now, he thought. Unlike the sadfaced prisoner who walked alone despite all the seamen around him.

  But the young officer who wore another man's uniform jacket was anything but despairing. On his way to the upper deck, with his guard sauntering beside him, a machine-pistol dangling from one shoulder, he had heard the one sound which was so familiar that it pulled at his reserve like claws.

  The urgent stammer of morse and waves of hissing static. The radio-room with at least three headphoned operators at their bench was like a laboratory compared with anything he had been used to. But the idea had formed in his mind even as they had passed the open door.

  It was his one chance. His life would be forfeit, but he found it surprisingly easy to accept that. He had died back there in the open boat with his gaunt, eyeless companions.

  When the time was right. It would take just one signal to bring the navy down on this bloody German like a force of avenging angels. He looked up and thought he saw the captain framed against the low clouds.

  it would all be worth it then, even if he was dead when the first great salvoes came roaring down on the raider.

  The armed guard saw him give a wild grin and sighed.

  It could be no joke to be adrift in this ocean, he thought.

  The girl named Erika Franke adjusted the clips of her safety harness and peered to starboard as she eased the Arado into a shallow dive. She had flown several of these flat-planes when she had worked for a while as a delivery pilot, before she had been asked to serve with the special section of the Luftwaffe.

  She watched the grey wastes of the Atlantic tilt to one side as if it was part of a vast sloping desert, the occasional white horses where the wind had broken the swell into crests.

  The cruiser had already fallen far away, and it was hard to picture her as she had first seen the ship. Huge, invulnerable, and somehow frightening. But once aboard it had seemed so much smaller, the great hull broken up into small intimate worlds,, faces which you sometimes saw only once before they were swallowed up again. She watched the ship in the distance, her outline strangely broken and unreal in its striped dazzle paint. Beyond her was the austere shape of the great supply submarine which Leitner had described to the ship's company.

  She saw the perspex screen mist over very slightly and adjusted her compass accordingly. They were too high for spray. The looming clouds said rain.

  She bit her lip. If the visibility fell away she must return to the ship immediately.

  She touched the microphone across her mouth. 'Rain soon.' She heard the observer, Westphal, acknowledge her comment with a grunt. A thickset, bovine man, he obviously resented being in the hands of a woman. She ignored him. It was nothing new in her life.

  She deliberately altered course away from the ship and the motionless submarine. If only she could fly and fly, leave it all behind, until - she checked herself as Hechler's grave features intruded into her thoughts.

  A withdrawn man, who must have been badly hurt and not just by the war. She remembered his voice, his steady blue eyes when he had visited her after the encounter with the enemy convoy. His presence had calmed her, like that moment when you fly out of a storm into bright sunlight.

  During the bombardment she had felt no fear. There had been no point in being afraid. Her father had taught her that, when he had first taken her flying, had given her a taste for it. If you could do nothing, fear had no meaning, he had often told her.

  But the feeling of utter helplessness had been there. The ship, powerful though she was, had shaken like a mad thing, with every plate and rivet threatening to tear apart, or so it had felt. Then Hechler, his voice and his quiet confidence had covered her like a blanket.

  The Arado swayed jerkily and she quickly increased throttle until the blurred propeller settled again into a misty circle. The plane was unarmed, or at least it carried no ammunition. Just as well, she thought. That was one kind of flying she had not tried.

  She thought of the two survivors who had been brought to the ship by the young officer, Jaeger. He was a nice young man, she thought, and she had seen
him looking at her when she had joined the others in the wardroom for meals. It made her smile within the privacy of her flying-helmet. She was twenty-eight, but far older in other ways than Jaeger would ever dream. Why' did they have to be so predictable? Those who saw her only as an easy victory, a romp in bed. Others who saw her reserve as a coldness, like something masculine.

  When she glanced down at the endless, heaving water, she recalled another face with sharper clarity. Claus had loved her, and she him. He had been married, but the war had brought them together in Italy.

  Had they ever really decided to take a step beyond the endless anxiety of being lovers? He had promised; she could almost hear his voice in her hair as he had held her, had pressed down to that delicious torment when he had entered her.

  She had learned of his death through a friend. After all, she had no rights to him.

  His ship had been torpedoed, lost with all hands. It was over.

  She came back with a start as Westphal's surly voice intruded into her memories.

  Time to turn. Visibility's down.'

  they would fly back now, she thought, and the camera crew would film her landing near the ship, and again as she stepped aboard to be greeted by Andreas Leitner. Strange how people of his kind always professed to be such men of the world, with an eye for every pretty girl.

  She had met plenty like Leitner. It was surprising that the war machine attracted so many who might have been happier as women. She considered Hechler again. Dominated by his wife? I lardly. What was it then with women like Inger Hechler? She had seen her occasionally at those staid parties in Berlin which so often had changed into something wild, repellent.

  She moved the controls sharply so that the plane tilted over to port. She could feel the puli of her harness, the pain in her breast as the Arado went over even further until it appeared as if the wingtip was cutting the water like a fin.

  The changing light, the endless procession of unbroken waves, or was it a shadow?

  Dead ahead!' She eased the throttle with great care. 'Do you see it?'

  Westphal had been deep in thought, watching her hair beneath the leather helmet, imagining how she would fight him, claw at him, when he took her.

  He exclaimed, startled, 'What? Where?'

  She found that she could watch the submarine quite calmly, for that was what it was. It looked dark, blue-grey, like a shark, with a lot of froth streaming from aft, and a faint plume of vapour above the conning-tower.

  Westphal had recovered himself, his voice harsh as he snapped, 'Enemy boat! Charging batteries and using her schnorchel

  He reached forward to prod her shoulder. 'Back to the ship, fast'

  The girl eased the controls over to port . Westphal had seen what he had expected to see, but had missed something vital. The submarine was trimmed too high - most of them would be almost at full periscope depth to charge batteries, and in their own waters it was unlikely they would submerge at all.

  The submarine must be damaged, unable to dive.

  Thoughts raced through her mind, and in her imagination she could hear Hechler's voice, then see the cruiser and the supply submarine lying somewhere back there, totally unaware of this unexpected threat.

  Damaged she might be, but her commander would not hesitate when Prinz Luitpold’s silhouette swam into his crosswires.

  Erika Franke had learned quite a lot about the navy, and one of the things which stood out in her mind was something which Kroll the gunnery officer had said about his new radar. That a submarine on the surface nearby could interfere with accuracy, and that was exactly what was happening right now.

  She thrust the controls forward and tilted the Arado into a steep dive. She felt the plane quivering, the rush of wind rising above the roar of the BMW engine.

  Westphal shouted wildly, 'What the hell are you doing? They'll see us!'

  Sure enough there were tiny ant-like figures on the submarine's deck. They might have picked up the supply boat's engines on their sonar, or even the heavier revolutions of the Prinz Luitpold, but the sight of a brightly painted aircraft must have caught them on the hop.

  She laughed. 'Scared, are you?' The Arado's shadow swooped over the water like an uneven crucifix, and then tumbled away as she brought the nose up towards the clouds.

  It was responding well; she could even smell the newness in the fuselage and fittings.

  She shouted, By the time wTe made contact with the ship it would all be over!'

  Then she winced as several balls of livid green tracer floated past the port wing, and the plane danced wildly to shell-bursts. The clouds enfolded the aircraft and she peered at the compass, her brain working coolly but urgently as she pictured the other vessels, the enemy submarine's bearing and line of approach. She was probably American, one of their big ocean-going boats, which she had studied in the recognition books. She held her breath and pushed the stick forward, and felt the floats quiver as they burst out of the clouds into a great span of watery sunlight.

  Just right for the camera team, she thought vaguely. Then more shell-bursts erupted on either side, and lazy balls of tracer tanned beneath her, so that she instinctively drew her legs together.

  The plane jerked, and she heard metal rip past her body. But the engine was behaving well. It was time to turn back. They must have heard the shooting. There was still time.

  She twisted round in her seat to yell at Westphal, but choked on a scream as she saw his bared teeth, his fists bunched in agony at the moment of impact. His goggles were completely filled with blood, like a creature from a nightmare.

  The plane rocked again, and she almost lost control as more bursts exploded nearby. She felt as if all the breath had been punched from her body, and when she looked down she saw a tendril of blood seeping through the flying suit and over her belt.

  Then the pain hit her like a hot iron,, and she heard herself whimpering and calling while she tried to find the compass and bring the plane on to the right bearing.

  She felt the pain searing her body, so that her eyes misted over. She dared not turn her head where her hideous companion peered at her, his teeth set in a terrible grin.

  Nor could she call up the ship. Dared not. The submarine would know instantly what he probably only suspected.

  Oh, dear God!' The words were torn from her. 'Help me!'

  But the engine's roar drowned her cries and every vibration made her swoon in agony.

  There were no more explosions, and for a brief moment she imagined she had lost consciousness, was dying like the men in the lifeboat. Clouds leapt towards her and then writhed aside again to bathe the cockpit in bright sunlight.

  She cried out, then thrust one hand against her side as blood

  ran over her thigh and down into her flying boot.

  There was the ship, the supply submarine almost alongside, with tiny lines and pipes linking them like a delicate web.

  She saw the ship begin to turn anti-clockwise across the windshield, revolving faster and faster, blotting out everything until it seemed she wras plunging straight for the bridge.

  Her mind recorded several things at the same time. The lines between the two vessels were being cast off, and a great frothing wash was surging from beneath Prinz Luitpold's bows as she increased to maximum speed.

  The girl fought to control the spin, to bring the aircraft's nose up and level off.

  All she could think of was that she had warned him. She would never know if she was in time.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Truth Can Wait

  Hechler joined Gudegast at the compass platform. It was going well, but any sudden cross-wind might bring the unmatched vessels too close together.

  Alter course to two-two-zero degrees. Signal the submarine's commander yourself.' He touched the big man's arm. 'Don't want oil spilled all over the ocean.'

  He walked back to the gratings and imagined he could feel the fuel coming through those long, pulsating hoses.

  His ship was the
best of her class for performance, and with the additional bunkers she had been given last year could cruise over 7,000 miles unless she was called to offer full speed for long periods.

  He thought of the girl in her brightly painted plane. It worried him more than he cared to admit to have her aboard. At the same time he knew he would miss her when she was ordered to leave. Maybe she did not have a genuine mission? Perhaps after all she was only a piece of Leitner's public relations puzzle.

  Theil lowered his glasses. 'The Arado's a long time, sir.' He eyed him worriedly. 'Completely lost sight of it.'

  Hechler peered over the rear of the bridge wing. One of the regular float-planes in its dappled camouflage was already standing on the catapult, the handling party lounging around with nothing to do.

  Hechler contained his sudden impatience. One thing at a time. It was the only way. The collection of charts with their plotted rendezvous marks were all in the future. Nobody could say how much future they still had.

  Leitner strode on to the bridge, his mouth set in a tight line. 'Where the bloody hell is that woman?' He moved this way and that, almost blindly, so that men on watch had to jump out of his path.

  Theil suggested, 'Perhaps we should send up another aircraft,

  sir?' his legs braced behind him as if he was taking the whole weight of the ship.

  'Aircraft in sight again, sir. Closing. Shift bearing to Red six-oh!'

  Hechler gripped the rail as the deck seemed to rise and then surge forward beneath him.

  'Line's parted, sir!'

  ‘Open fire!'

  The three twin turrets along the port side opened up instantly, their sharper explosions making men grope for ear-plugs, others crouch down away from their savage back-blast.