“Goodbye.”
It was all he said. He was shaking, panting with a shortness of breath induced by fear. They helped him into his boat: Ultra was lying low in the water so the transfer wasn’t difficult. Lovesay passed the paddle to him: “OK, sir?” He didn’t answer. They angled the canoe out, and sent it clear of the submarine’s side with a push. Half a minute later it was moving shoreward, the paddle circling rather clumsily, with too much splash, and the course erratic. Darkness swallowed it. Paul and Lovesay climbed up into the bridge, where Ruck had just passed the order for three hundred revolutions on the diesels with a running battery charge both sides.
“Well done, you two. Go on down now.”
The diesels rumbled into action. Ultra was to move east, dive off Cape Milazzo before daylight and spend a day and a half patrolling north of Messina. Then back here, to pick up the Count on the following night.
Paul said later, over a mug of tea at the wardroom table, “Wonder what our friend’s doing at this moment.”
Ruck glanced at him: after a pause he remarked, “It’s a fairly extraordinary operation, this.”
“I know.”
“What d’you know?”
“The Count told me. He’s contacting local partisan leaders to alert them for very big landing operations both sides of Palermo—and in Sardinia, near Cagliari. Whole armies, tanks, the lot. I suppose this’ll mean the beginning of the end—particularly if we’re about to roll ’em up in the desert now.”
Ruck swallowed, put his mug down.
“That what he told you?”
Paul nodded. “He warned me he wasn’t supposed to talk about it. But as it’s going to start any minute now it can’t make much odds. I suppose this is what all the flap was about in Malta, rushing everyone out on patrol?”
Ruck shook his head. “I’ll be damned.”
Wykeham asked from his bunk, “Didn’t you know this, sir?” “There’s one thing I know for sure.” He wagged his head again. “They’re pretty damn smart, our lot. My God they are.”
Jack’s right leg had done all the work while the injured one just suffered. He’d got down to the crossroads by crawling down the length of the hedge at the far side of the stubble-field: it had been dark before he’d risked moving out of the hide. Crossing the road, hobbling on his stick, had been the dangerous bit. But the bike had still been there: if it hadn’t, he didn’t know what he’d have done. There’d been no lights showing from the houses—blackout regulations, no doubt—and he’d got away without a sound except for the nerve-twisting squeak of the turning pedals. He’d turned into the lane that led north—north by west, to be accurate—using the Pole star for a leading mark.
He’d stopped now because there was a muddy track and a random-looking collection of farm buildings around it, just off this lane. In the glimmer of starlight the place looked deserted and neglected. There was a farmhouse—a cottage—and a barn with a sagging roof, and sheds that might have been old chicken-houses. No lights anywhere: but you wouldn’t have expected any.
He’d eaten the lump of hard bread while he’d been lying in his wet hole in the field. Hunger, as well as the ankle and the fact he was completely played-out, was a problem. At some periods he’d been wondering if he’d been stupid, whether if he was capable of travelling at all—which he was now proving he was—he shouldn’t have steered directly for the frontier, to get out as quickly as possible; whether this wasn’t a bit too clever … He’d covered about six or seven miles, he thought: it hadn’t been exactly fast travel, but it had been a lot faster than he’d have managed on foot. There’d been only one stop, a panic blundering into the ditch, bicycle and all, when a lorry without lights had come trundling round a bend. In the past half-hour or so nothing had moved except rabbits and scared pigeons making as much row as pheasants when they took off.
Ride on a mile or so, find a place to hide the bike, then hobble back and lie-up in one of those sheds?
Woodsmoke. He sniffed the air, and knew the farm was inhabited—which had been likely anyway, but which one could think about in two ways. For a hide pure and simple, an abandoned place might be safer … He wondered, forcing his tired brain along, Would it? Wouldn’t they tend to look twice at empty places? Well—anyway, the other aspect—there’d be food around. A farm that was being worked would surely have a few edible items: potatoes, swedes, corn—you could chew corn, blowing the chaff out …
He was probably more exhausted than he’d ever been. This was a factor one had not only to contend with but also to take into account—recognising that the urge to stop, rest, give up was part of that tiredness. One was not in a condition to arrive at major decisions: so postpone them, just hang on, and something might turn up … He told himself, as if he was addressing a subordinate, to ride on for a mile: if he didn’t come across a better place in that distance he’d hide the machine and come back here. As long as one didn’t bite off more than one could chew, allow daylight to catch one in the open: by dawn he had to be well hidden. Ditto bicycle: and not in the same place. He pushed off, began the painful one-footed pedalling again: squeak-squeak, squeak-squeak …
Astern, the sky glowed red over SL 320. A ship on fire: several torpedoes had found targets in the last quarter-hour. That blaze could be one of the two oilers.
“Port twenty!”
Harbinger had just put one U-boat down—charged it, seen it dive and then plastered it with a shallow-set pattern of depthcharges. She was turning back now because the battle had closed in around the convoy. Both corvettes were chasing RDF contacts—fresh ones, having had some before and lost them—most likely when they’d dived. The picture on the plot was a full one and fast-changing but what it amounted to was the U-boats were all around and attacking simultaneously: the chatter that Gritten had listened to during the day would have been the planning of what was happening now.
“Midships.” Warrimer saw the skipper checking ship’s head on the gyro repeater. “Steer two-one-five.”
At full revs, plunging southward. The moon was a glimmer through driven cloud: at intervals it had been giving quite a lot of light. Depthcharges burst in deep, muffled thunder—a long way off; another torpedo-hit was like a vicious answer to that sound. The blaze surely had to be an oiler, although it didn’t look quite like that sort of fire: the two of them had been right in the centre of the convoy, they and the Burbridge placed like the kernel in a nut, encased … TBS stuttering in, Bearcroft taking it, Eagle, this is Fox, U-boat surfaced after depthcharging, engaging—out.
The bastards were everywhere …
“Course two-one-five, sir!”
Explosion. A flash: like ammunition going up, or a tank of gasoline. And TBS again, Eagle—Gannet … Convoy’s slightly out of shape, sir, but Opal’s in there somewhere trying to organise them. The one on fire is the Malibar, and Stella’s standing by her. The Springburn’s gone down and so has number twenty-four—the Harvest Moon. I have a new contact on three-five-five, three miles—investigating—out …
Two sunk, one burning, but no oiler … About five minutes ago, Warrimer remembered, the skipper had asked Guyatt for a report on what was happening on that side of the convoy; this had been his answer. But the five minutes had felt more like half an hour.
“Range and bearing now, Sub?”
Wolstenholm bawled, “U-boat surfacing—red oh-five, sir!”
Against the glow from that burning ship—and close, easy to see … Warrimer was passing orders to his for’ard guns. Black, wet-gleaming hull emerging from the whitened waves: the German imagining the field was clear here, so he’d come up and cruise in undetected, draw some blood? Warrimer had his glasses on the filthy, predatory thing as A and B guns both fired and the skipper shouted, “Stand by the port thrower!”
The range was too short for anything except ramming: so he was about to lob a depthcharge—like tossing a huge grenade … Guns rapid-firing, but the ship was bucking like mad and shellspouts had gone up right, left, short, o
ver … Chubb called, “Port thrower ready, sir!”
Harbinger with the sea on her quarter, corkscrewing: there was a danger at high speed in these conditions that the screws might race in thin surface water as her bow dug in and she stood on her head like some old duck. When they’d first spotted the U-boat there’d been no-one visible in its bridge: the German captain would have become aware just about now that he wasn’t alone here. Shellspouts lifted short again: and the thing was diving … The skipper was leaning over the wheelhouse voice-pipe, judging his moment to start a turn and have her swinging as he lobbed the charge away into the patch of churned foam where the enemy was vanishing like a snake into its hole … “Starboard ten!”
Torpedo hit—distant … Harbinger responding to her rudder’s drag … “Thrower stand by … Fire!”
Looking aft, Warrimer saw the black cannister—the size of a tarbarrel but packed with 750 lbs of high-explosive—flung out on a high, curving, forward-inclined trajectory, thrown that way by the ship’s own forward and swinging motion. Chubb’s voice echoed the skipper’s as he thumbed the firing button: now he was telling Timberlake to reload the thrower, and Warrimer guessed Timberlake would be snarling at the unnecessary instruction. Harbinger plunging with her head down as she turned … “Midships—meet her, cox’n …”
Warrimer had all guns loaded and trained out on that side. If the single charge had the extraordinary luck to hit the jackpot, bring the U-boat up, X gun and the point-fives would be in it too, this time. But if the skipper had driven his ship straight at the target so as to drop a shallow pattern, at such close quarters it would have been impossible not to ram; Harbinger could have staved-in her bow, or wrecked her screws as she ran over the submarine, and an incapacitated Harbinger was too high a price to pay for one dead U-boat, at this stage of the losing game.
A white mountain rose with thunder in its base. A great cauliflower-shape of sea flinging up … Warrimer told his guns, “Set range zero, point of aim that explosion, stand by!”
It was a toss-up: but the U-boat could suddenly be there, floundering …
“Midships. Steer one-five-oh. One-eight-oh revolutions.”
Carlish called from the plot voice-pipe, “Surface contact bearing one-seven-five, four thousand one hundred yards, sir!”
Another one: two miles away. The froth was subsiding, sea boiling as it fell back into itself, wind-driven spray lashing away for several hundred yards and whipping the surface as white as if it had been painted. Guns trained and loaded, gun-layers’ fingers on the triggers, layers’ and trainers’ eyes against the rubber eye-pieces of their sighting telescopes. But no target yet.
“Stand by one full pattern with settings one-fifty and two-fifty feet.”
He was altering course again: to run over the same spot, assume the U-boat would have held on towards the convoy: he’d drop a pattern, and Harbinger would be on course either to rejoin the convoy or to chase after that new RDF contact. The Germans were like fleas on a dog’s back tonight: except their bites were lethal. “Asdics?”
“Nothing yet, sir.”
The water would still be churned-up, from the explosion of that charge: it was too lively a sea in any case, for good A/S results. If it got much worse there’d be interference to spoil the performance of the 271 RDF, too … Leading Seaman Garment yelled from the asdic cabinet, “Torpedoes approaching, port beam!”
A split second, for that to sink in … Then Nick’s shout—“Hard a-port, full ahead together!”
Looff swore. He was in the tower, on his seat at the attack periscope, and the destroyer’s racy profile had begun to shorten. She was swinging her bow into the direction of the attack, sea cascading like white fire as her engines flung her into the turn. Moonlight glittered diffusely through spray around the top lense of the periscope. There was still a chance, one of his three fish might still hit …
If in the next few moments the destroyer wasn’t blown to bits, she’d be counter-attacking with depthcharges. Within seconds, he was going to have to go deep.
“Torpedoes still running?”
“Running, sir!”
They wouldn’t have run to that range yet, though …
Looff groaned in his mind, Please—one hit?
When he’d climbed out into U 702’s streaming bridge and found he was being shot at—one shell streaking overhead and another sending a column of white up close to starboard—he’d crash-dived to fifty metres, put his helm hard a-port and taken her right round in a fast spiral with full grouped-up battery power on the starboard screw. The single explosion had rocked her: it must have been close, considering that shallow-set charges were less effective than those in deeper water. But there’d been one over-riding thought in his mind: that this was the destroyer, its captain was the escort commander, and if he could be eliminated—after all, here he was, for God’s sake, out here on his own and there was a chance!—the rest of the job of butchering the convoy would present very little difficulty. It was the kind of opportunity that revealed itself in a split second, and part of Max Looff’s success as a U-boat captain had been to recognise such openings and take instant advantage of them.
The destroyer was bow-on now: being aimed so accurately at U 702’s periscope that you could imagine the Brit could see it. Which was an impossibility in this sea … He’d known where the torpedoes had come from, that was all, he was charging down the tracks. Looff’s hands were tight on the periscope handles and there was an incipient tremble in his taut muscles: if there was going to be a hit he wanted to see it, and it could come at any second!
But you’d hear it anyway. And he ought, he knew, to be taking her down now …
Holding his breath. Mesmerised. Shaking. Lips drawn back, teeth clenched …
He’d gasped, as if something inside had snapped, and his right hand had moved without being told to, depressing the lever that sent the ’scope down. Its motor humming as it sank, shaft glistening with grease and saltwater droplets. It was as if the decision had been made for him, some voice other than his own rapping out “Flood Q, two hundred metres, full ahead both motors, starboard twenty!”
Going deep—to safe depth—and turning away from the direction of the convoy because the Brit up there—who’d be over the top and shovelling out depth bombs at any moment—would expect him to turn towards it … Climbing down into the control room as his boat angled steeply, spiralling to starboard with Q quick-dive tank flooded to drag her down all the faster, he saw questions in several pairs of eyes. He shrugged, muttered, “Can’t win ’em all.” A glance from Franz Walther, at the smile on his captain’s sweat-gleaming face: Walther had turned back again, busy with the trim, but with a faintly sardonic look as if the astute brain behind that oil-smeared, hairy countenance had recorded the phoniness of the smile, seen the quivering of nerves behind it … Screws raced overhead, churning like a meat-grinder. Looff felt a dryness in his throat: he glanced instinctively at the depth-gauge and saw the needle swinging past the hundred-metre mark. The deep-dive capability that would take them right down to two hundred metres was a lifesaver. He told Heusinger, who’d been gazing at him with that blank, really rather stupid expression he tended to assume in times of crisis, “It was worth a try.”
A nod: with surprise, at having been favoured with such an explanation. Even an apology, it might have been! There was interest in Oelricher’s covert glance as well. But it had been worth trying: if it had come off, the success would have been of major significance. It would also have been regarded as a tactical master-stroke, knocking out the one really effective escort, and escort commander, as a prelude to massacre.
Depthcharges thundered—astern, and well overhead. One all on its own, a maverick deeper than the others, burst close enough to make the lighting flicker. Looff crowed, with his head back and his hands on his hips, “We’ve heard hundreds much closer than that, my friends!” Then—“Slow ahead both motors.”
Three torpedoes had been expended. Leaving eight. Only t
wo tubes had torpedoes in them, though, one for’ard tube and the single stern tube. Depthgauge needle passing the hundred and fifty mark …Walther, working at the trim, was taking some of the angle off the boat, to slow the rate of descent, and pretty soon now U 702 would be below the effective range of British depthcharges. There’d be no point trying to get to the convoy now to join in the action: there was tomorrow night, and the one after, and a few more after that … He told Heusinger, “Prepare to reload those three tubes.” It had to be done, and it was a good reason to stay deep for a while: you couldn’t safely move heavy torpedoes around when you were being flung from beam to beam.
At 0200, by which time the U-boats seemed to have withdrawn, Harbinger’s W/T operator took in a cyphered reply to the signal she’d made earlier. It read: It is essential that you keep to the timetable. Ships unable to maintain station should be abandoned and sunk. Reinforcements will be sent to join you as soon as ships are available.
The skipper—he was on his high chair, Carlish at the binnacle now—had grunted at Bearcroft to read it out to him. He gave an impression, to Warrimer, of a man in isolation, a man with a slow fire smouldering and liable to erupt. As it had, at one point … Harbinger was two miles ahead of the convoy, zigzagging broadly across its front. The corvettes were stretching their areas to cover the bows and beams while the trawlers rounded up stragglers and chivvied others back into formation. But taking Harbinger through the middle of the herd during the worst period of its disruption, when both rescue ships—the Mount Trembling and the Archie Dukes having this duty now—had been stopped, transferring survivors, the ships as weather-breaks creating shelter in which their boats could work, by no means without danger to their crews—the eruption had come when he’d found the Burbridge also stopped, with a boat alongside and tackles and jumping-ladders rigged, hoisting a wounded man in a stretcher. He’d stormed at the Burbridge’s master, over the loud-hailer: by stopping he was putting all his passengers at extreme risk—which didn’t equate with the benefit to a few survivors—and by dropping astern he was adding to the problems of the escorts. Survivors, wounded or not, could be taken into any ship except the Burbridge: why in the name of God did he think he’d been kept in the centre of the convoy, cossetted like the oilers? The Burbridge’s master had called back, when the tirade ended, “All right, captain, keep your wool on …” Harbinger had surged on, ranged in close to the Chauncy Maples to request the commodore, in coldly formal terms, to order the Burbridge not to stop again.
The Torch Bearers: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 5 Page 25
