Then – in a scream – ‘Full ahead!’
‘Full ahead, sir!’
Nothing to stay for, nothing to be achieved or retrieved. The MTB hasn’t been spotted, anyway hasn’t come under fire. Not yet; although to starboard as she leans hard over, turning her stern to the holocaust, dawn’s already a pink flush spreading from the horizon. But – astonishingly – the gunfire ceases, abruptly and completely.
All targets destroyed, could explain it. Or the defenders aren’t wasting ammunition on retreating targets which pose no threat. They’ve ceased fire, anyway, it’s over. If you can believe it ever happened. It has happened, but – dazed, jammed for stability into a corner of the cockpit as the MTB slams across the dawn-streaked sea – Emilio’s reeling thoughts go back to his fellow ‘pig’ operators. Costa and Barla might have survived, if they’d got far enough in to have that rock headland between them and the explosions. They’d be prisoners, obviously, but they might be alive.
Costa’s his own age, and a friend…
‘There – see ’em?’
Giobbe’s pointing out over the bow towards the motor-launches, squat dark shapes with the lightening sky and seascape beyond them. But this isn’t mere failure, it’s catastrophe, the full shock of it’s only taking hold now – like waking from a nightmare and finding the reality’s even worse. Staring at Giobbe’s profile, Emilio is astonished by his composure and the calm tone in which he’s telling his coxswain, ‘Put us alongside 452. I’ll board her, you pick up the tow.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’ As his hands moved to the controls, Zocchi cocks an ear to the dark overhead, and at the same moment Constantini calls from further aft – he’s on his way back, crabbing along the side-deck on his way to rejoin them – ‘Aircraft, sir?’
‘Yes.’ Giobbe isn’t allowing it to distract him, though; he’s begun hailing 452, asking Commander Mocagatta’s permission to come alongside and board. Vittorio Mocagatta is the boss of this whole outfit, C.O. of the Light Flotilla. There’s an affirmative answer, and the launch begins to slow. Sea and sky noticeably lighter every minute; even with the naked eye you can make out individuals in the other boats – crewmen standing ready either to toss lines over or catch lines thrown to them, and looking up as the sound of aero-engines expands. Giobbe shouting to Zocchi: ‘Don’t wait, get her back in tow and—’
Poised to leap over to the launch, on that last word he’s dead. A Hurricane – blasting from the port quarter at sea level, guns flaming, Emilio down on the wooden deck deafened and also blinded – his face all blood – the MTB listing hard as she breaks away from the launch’s side, picking up speed in a tight, heeling curve, and a second fighter crashing over – over the launch, 452… Emilio’s back on his feet, actually not blinded, but half stunned and having to keep wiping blood out of his eyes – splinters have torn his scalp open. Giobbe, Constantini and Zocchi are dead, it’s Guido Forni on the wheel, Forni yelling at him: ‘Take over, sir?’ The suggestion’s puzzling until he sees that Forni’s been hit too, that it’s become more a case of the wheel holding him up than of him steering the boat. Grazzi’s there, anyway, grabbing the wheel. A Hurricane’s diving on the launch again: its afterpart’s on fire and it’s lying stopped with no visible signs of life on board.
‘Orders?’
‘That gun – you two…’
Emilio has Forni’s weight on him. He eases him down on to the deck, which is slippery with blood. But there are two live crewmen in the cockpit now and obviously the engines are still manned. He tells Grazzi: ‘Steer that way!’ Hurricanes permitting… One of the crewmen is dragging the canvas cover off the MTB’s only gun. It’s actually a twin mounting – German guns, Spandaus. The other man’s delving in a ready-use locker for ammo pans. Grazzi meanwhile bringing her round to northwest; the course for home would be due north but one’s inclination is to increase one’s distance from the island first. Work round to north later. Again, Hurricanes permitting. Which they probably won’t. But the hope has to be to overhaul and join the Diana, which does have some AA defences… There can’t be anyone alive in 452, and 451 is half a mile ahead, on fire, a Hurricane racing towards the floating bonfire: there’s a leap of flame, and the launch blows up. One minute there was a stopped and burning boat, now only a haze with the dawn’s glow in it and about an acre of sea littered with debris.
Emilio has pulled his shirt off and tied it around his head to keep the blood from running into his eyes. They haven’t got those guns into operation yet. One man’s still at it but the other’s left him, is dragging Forni back under cover. Emilio asks him: ‘How many alive back aft?’
‘Six or seven, sir. Well, six—’
‘On the engines?’
‘Yes, that’s—’
‘Hard a-starboard!’
He’s screamed it – as a Hurricane bears down on them. Grazzi’s dragging the wheel over, to spin the boat away. Emilio hearing the racket of the diving fighter but not looking at it, instead joining that man at the gun-mounting – not getting anywhere, only clutching at the only straw in sight. Grazzi meanwhile reversing the wheel, throwing her into a tight turn the other way and most likely saving their lives as the Hurricane crashes over, the boat on her beam-ends as she swings, her bow slamming into the disturbance she’s ploughed up for herself, the sea sheeting pinkish-white against sky that’s turned vivid pink.
The Hurricane’s climbing away. That one is. Those two sailors – and Grazzi – cheering, whooping… Emilio looks where they’re looking so cheerfully, and sees the Macchis. Dreaming this? Macchis – Italian fighters, from some Sicilian airfield. Maybe Diana flashed out a call for help. Armando Grazzi is centring his wheel and staring up – Emilio too – at a Hurricane slicing over on its side, wings with the British roundels on them almost vertical, one Macchi rocketing up as if about to loop the loop and another ending in a geyser of white water as it goes into the sea back on the quarter – a mile away. But – another in sight with a Hurricane on its tail – weaving in an effort to escape.
Then – within seconds – they’ve gone. Hurricanes and Macchis. One disappearing into the sun – which is poking up now, blinding bright – and the rest – nothing but the sound, distant and fading… Emilio, beside Grazzi at the wheel, gets him to bring her round to the north. Otherwise, might miss Diana altogether. She’s got to be there somewhere: and within a few minutes’ range – as long as this old tub holds together…
Six men alive back aft – according to that fellow. Six plus those two, and myself and Grazzi… Oh, and this other one – Forni. If he stays alive. Eleven. Eleven out of – how many? Reaching for binoculars. Steadier now. Wiping their lenses and blinking rapidly a few times to clear his eyes before he puts them up. Thinking: they won’t call this a failure, they’ll call it a glorious failure. How could a cock-up of such monumental proportions be seen in any other light?
By Uncle Cesare, for instance.
Still no sight or sound of aircraft.
‘There!’ Armando Grazzi – flinging out an arm, his dark eyes squinting into the rising sun… ‘See? There!’
1
Ned Mitcheson – Lieutenant-Commander, R.N. – had been at the Lazaretto base in Malta that night, with his submarine berthed alongside the stone frontage of the old quarantine building. The 10th Flotilla boats normally moored in mid-stream, but Mitcheson had brought Spartan in only that evening, every spare cubic inch of her crammed with cargo of various kinds, and off-loading wasn’t completed until after midnight so she’d remained alongside. He’d been bringing her from the 8th Flotilla at Gibraltar to join the 1st at Alexandria, en route dropping off these supplies – tinned food, medical stores, engine spares, torpedo detonators and whisky for the Lazaretto wardroom – and was then to spend a few days patrolling off Benghazi in the hope of finding a worthwhile target or two.
(Preferably deep-loaded with supplies for the Afrika Korps. Not much was being allowed to get through to them at this stage. The Malta submarines were doing a terrific j
ob – as were Fleet Air Arm Swordfish and R.A.F. Blenheims – and Intelligence had reported that Rommel was feeling the pinch, had appealed for all-out efforts to be made towards neutralizing the island as a base. Hence perhaps that lunatic attack by the Italians?)
Mitcheson himself had slept through the brief pandemonium of gunfire and explosions. He’d been dog-tired, for one thing, and for another the Lazaretto building was a couple of hundred years old and built with great slabs of the heavy local limestone, so that its thick old walls made for good soundproofing. In any case the action had taken place about two miles away. Although ‘Shrimp’ Simpson, the much loved and highly effective commander of the flotilla, had not only heard but seen at least the end of it. Coastal radar had picked up the approaching enemy force shortly before midnight, when Shrimp had been warned not to allow any of his submarines either to leave or enter harbour until further notice; he’d turned in, and at dawn had been woken by the guns and rushed up to Fort Manoel, from where there was a view of the harbour entrance. It had been daylight by then, and clearing-up operations had been in progress; the Fort St. Elmo gunners must have waited to see the whites of the Italians’ eyes, he’d realized, before blowing them out of the water.
There was a lot of speculation about it at breakfast-time in the huge, cavern-like wardroom, and during the next few hours the full story had emerged, part of it being that two Italian ‘human torpedo’ operators who’d been trying to force their way into this Marsamxett harbour had been taken prisoner – along with their infernal machine, which Mitcheson and others were able to get a close look at later in the forenoon. So that when seven weeks later in Alexandria, in the course of a briefing for Spartan’s next (third) patrol from this eastern end the flotilla’s Staff Officer (Operations) told him through a cloud of cigarette smoke: ‘To kick off with, just a recce, Mitch – looking for these so-called human torpedo things. Heard about them, I dare say?’ He was able to assure the commander that he’d not only heard of them, he’d actually sat in the pilot-seat of one that had still been wet from operational use.
The pre-patrol briefing had taken place, as always, in the depot ship’s staff office, with a chart spread on the table in front of them and Captain (S.) – commanding officer of the flotilla – cutting in now and then but by and large leaving his S.O.(O.) to make the running. Remarking at this stage that the torpedo recovered near the entrance to Marsamxett harbour wasn’t the only specimen so far captured; there’d been one found beached in Algeciras Bay, after a failed attempt at penetrating Gibraltar harbour earlier in the year. Its motor had still been running, and the Spaniards had made efforts to get to it first – it had after all been nuzzling a Spanish beach – but some particularly smart footwork by a British underwater expert by name of Buster Crabbe had forestalled them.
‘So—’ the S.O.(O.) stubbed out a cigarette – ‘we know what we’re talking about. And the point here and now is that Intelligence tell us we can expect them to have a go at us here in Alex in the near future. Targeting the battlefleet, obviously.’ He shrugged. ‘Makes sense, from their point of view, of course – if they could knock out Queen Elizabeth and/or Valiant, for God’s sake…’
Mitcheson nodded. ‘Might even risk taking their battleships to sea, then.’
‘Well – yes… But there’s also the Spanish question, you see.’
‘You mean Spain might join in – if they were certain we were knackered here?’
It wasn’t such a remote contingency. Any more than it had been until June of last year in the case of the Italians, when Mussolini had waited for the fall of France before – quoting a French diplomat – deciding the moment had come to ‘rush to the aid of the victor’. And recent W.I.Rs - War Intelligence Reports – had hinted that Franco might well be on the point of doing the same. His price for doing so, it was said, would be Morocco. There was already a Spanish division fighting alongside the Wehrmacht on the Russian front – and perhaps a debt to pay, since 70,000 Italians had supported Franco in his civil war – while a major factor now was that during this past summer the Royal Navy had suffered heavy losses, mainly in the course of efforts to lift the Army out of Greece and then Crete. Operating a long way from base and with no air cover – Admiral Cunningham had signalled Navy must not let Army down, and the Navy hadn’t; they’d brought out every man they could get off any Cretan beach – well, the Luftwaffe had made a meal of it, and as a result the Navy at this end was just about hanging on by its teeth. With Rommel knocking on the door, the Canal and the whole of the Middle East in jeopardy. Franco might well be tempted by what he might see as easy pickings: and if Spain did come in, the whole lot would go. Gibraltar would have to be evacuated, for a start.
Half a dozen men riding astride on those contraptions could precipitate all that?
The S.O.(O.) was lighting another cigarette. ‘What you may well not be aware of, Mitch, is that they did mount a human-torpedo attack on Alexandria a year ago. August of last year, to be precise. It didn’t get far enough to be noticeable, but the launching point for the attack was—’ he touched the chart with a pencil-tip – ‘here. Gulf of Bomba. The plan involved a rendezvous between some fast boat carrying the torpedoes and a submarine which we now know was one called the Iride. She was fitted with special external containers for the things, on her casing. The plan was for the torpedoes and their operators to be transferred to her there in that gulf, she’d then bring them here, and—’ the commander’s thumb jerked seaward – ‘launch them on our doorstep. What in fact happened was that an R.A.F. reconnaissance mission over Bomba saw the party gathering and whistled up a flight of Blenheims, and they sank the submarine – sitting duck, you see, couldn’t dive in the shallows where it was – and another small ship – the MAS-boat I suppose. Thus nipping that operation in the bud. But you see, if they’re having another crack at it now they might well use the same location. After all, where else is there, in anything like convenient range?’
Mitcheson nodded. ‘If they need a point of departure that close.’
‘Now that’s a good point.’ Captain (S.) joined in at this stage. ‘Myself, I can’t see why they should. Bring the damn things straight here from Italy – or Suda Bay, say. But – all right, they chose to do it from Bomba on that previous occasion, so – who knows…’
‘If they were using four torpedoes, sir—’ Mitcheson postulated – ‘eight men, on top of normal ship’s company – you wouldn’t want that sort of overcrowding if there was any other way.’
‘No. You certainly would not.’
‘Especially as the operators’d need to be in the pink of condition on arrival.’
‘I dare say you’ve put your finger on it, Mitch.’
‘But in any case’ – the S.O.(O.) added – ‘since we have to accept that an attack here is intended – and we might assume they’d have learnt their lesson, wouldn’t be stuck out in the gulf in plain view like last time—’
‘I should take a shufti close inshore.’
‘Well – they could have set up some sort of shore base. And obviously would’ve camouflaged it from the air. But there’d be some seaborne traffic to and from it, wouldn’t there – shallow-draught vessels close in, perhaps. Take you a full day – two at the most – to see whatever there is to be seen. Point is you can’t get in very close, it’s too damn shallow. Uh?’
‘Right.’
‘See how it looks, and – act according. Spending no more than two days on it, then we want you to move out to patrol a line based on this position here. Ten miles off Ras el-Hilal. You’ll be sitting on the Wops’ approach route to Derna, you see. Derna’s another place they might use – adequate harbour, and only forty miles further west than Bomba. So – here you are.’ The patrol orders, in a sealed envelope. ‘All the details, including of course the latest on minefields in the area. There’s a brand new one, you’ll see…’
* * *
Dusk was spreading across the harbour as Spartan drew away stern-first from the ‘trot’
of submarines alongside. As she backed out, quiet on her electric motors, Mitcheson in her bridge had the depot ship’s bulk in looming silhouette against the western sky, the sundown glow behind Ras-el-Tin; and the thought in his mind – unbidden, intrusive and inappropriate in present circumstances – that at just this time last evening he’d been pressing the bell beside the door of Lucia’s flat.
Lucia on my mind…
To the tune of Georgia. Over and over… He said – in what had to be another man’s voice, couldn’t – could it? – be the same voice which in the small hours of the night had murmured in her ear ‘Lucia, comme je t’adore! Out of my mind for you, my darling…’ From the same mouth, this other voice – other man, it might have been – saying crisply: ‘Stop both. Half ahead starboard. Port fifteen.’
Ludicrous.
But reality, none the less. At least – if she was real…
Barney Forbes, Spartan’s second in command, passed the order down the voicepipe. Heavy-shouldered, stocky – a rock of a man, and he was what was known in the vernacular as a ‘Rocky’ too, signifying Royal Naval Reserve, ex-Merchant Navy. Ten minutes ago when Mitcheson had come aboard over the plank reaching to Spartan’s casing from that of the submarine next-inside her, Forbes had saluted and told him ‘Ready for sea, sir.’ If he’d gone by the book there’d have been a longer spiel, a list of this and that having been tested – main motors, steering, telegraphs, and so forth – but ‘ready for sea’ summed it all up well enough. Forbes had a tendency to shortcut formalities when he could, and Mitcheson knew his man well enough to allow this. He’d only asked him, looking down quizzically from his own height of near-enough six feet at that squarish, wide-jawed face ‘How’s the trim?’
Love For An Enemy Page 2
