Boom…
When you got round the corner you’d feel the blasts, for sure. But – take it as it comes… He’d put on starboard rudder and the pig was forging clumsily in that direction – parallel to the Mole – in this awkward bow-up posture. The battery was delivering only about a quarter of the power it should have, and Grazzi was submerged. Only Emilio’s head and the pig’s snout showing above water, and even he was under the waves at times.
At the corner – he put the idea to himself – submerge?
Maybe not. Because of the depthbombs, for one thing. Second thought, third and fourth thoughts: the charges were a major factor in them all. Another point being that unless you were so unlucky as to come within spitting distance of a patrol boat you were damn near invisible anyway, in this sea-state. And you could see – roughly – where you were going. At this stage for instance he was keeping his eyes on the black skeleton of the unlit light-structure on the corner of the sea-wall. With the hydroplane aft – that was the only one, a pig didn’t have fore ’planes – at hard a-rise, as it had been all the way – for the last three and a half hours, for God’s sake. His aversion to submerging, at least until there was very good reason for it, was partly the fear that when he did he’d lose control altogether. With the trimming defect – which was already chronic – and the lack of power. Once you were inside, it wouldn’t matter much; there were fourteen or fifteen fathoms of water in there and it might make sense to bottom and then continue along the seabed to the target. The pig could be hauled along by one’s own and Grazzi’s muscle-power, if necessary. Then you’d play it off the cuff. Blow the diving-tanks – and/or pump out the trimming tanks if the pump was up to it – to float her up under the target’s bilges. Or at a pinch, detach the warhead, put a rope over one of the carrier’s propeller shafts and sweat it up there. No reason the tanks shouldn’t blow, though…
Negotiating the corner now. A charge exploded, and he felt it like a kick in the stomach: as if the twin oxygen bottles down there had slammed into his gut. In the next second, as he absorbed that – that discomfort – a light flared out – searchlight beam – scythed this way then stopped, swung back over the humped and flying sea. Spray flying in it, silver-white against jet-black. But the beam lifting, swinging upward: it was on the bows of a launch pitching across the waves – coming from the direction of the harbour entrance.
Out of the harbour? Boom therefore open? A chance to get in before they shut it?
Probably not. Not at this rate of progress. A small mercy, anyway, was that the launch wasn’t coming anywhere near the pig – not at this stage. Emilio was steering south and had her in third gear – with the notion of keeping something in reserve. They were called gears but in fact were simply four stages of speed, four settings on a rheostat to control the output of power. The pig had slumped lower in the water, he thought, during the last half-hour or so.
Christ…
He’d tightened his stomach muscles too late. The explosion had him winded, for a moment. Actually several moments. You wouldn’t want one much closer – that was for sure. Hope to God Grazzi’s OK… Coal Pier high up there on the left. Not far to go. God almighty, just get on with it, to hell with the bloody English and their depthbombs. Probably it’s that launch that’s dropping the damn things. That, or there’s more than one patrol out. Could be several. Watching out for them, through wet-filmed, salt-stained goggles. Watching primarily for the light. Might be at the entrance in – say one minute? One more blast en route, then, and the next one when you’d got there. Toss-up, how close you could be to one of those things without being knocked out, but—
Take your chances. Grin and bloody bear it. Forward movement seemed – was – practically nil, with the sea-wall against which to measure it. Half the motor’s reduced power was being expended in an upward direction holding the thing up instead of driving it forward. Try fourth gear again. Had been on the point of doing so, minutes ago – before that bad one. Probably damn-all difference anyway. Must be some… Belly muscles rigid: like getting ready for a punch below the belt. Submerged – as Grazzi was – you’d get it in the head as well… Must make some difference: when you took out any resistance at all you’d get some extra amperage.
Oh – God damn!
He’d been tensed for that one, expecting it, but – Christ… Eyes shut, bile in the throat, head swimming. Telling himself – forcing it – Nearly there. Keep going. Christ’s sake, keep on! Sick though, sickness welling up, and the searchlight’s beam hit him blindingly: he’d thought his eyes had been shut but he’d been blinded before he’d ducked his head – about as much in control of himself or of the pig as a gaffed fish, in that moment. The nausea was the worst – worse still for knowing you couldn’t afford to vomit inside the mask. The light swung on, flaring along the side of the coaling pier, travelling swiftly along it to probe into the gap at its end – the entrance – and scythe on across it, lighting rectangular rocking objects that had to be the buoys from which the net was hung. The launch was a sculptured black shape lifting away on a morass of white, its searchlight no threat now, shining the other way – away from the boom-gate – the boat steering out to round the next concrete mark, the near-end of the Detached Mole. So you knew its circuit now – at least the track it had been following since you’d seen it last.
Could be more like a minute than a half-minute between charges?
He was ready for the next one. As ready as he ever would be. Telling himself – stomach taut and jaw set, knowing it had to be coming any moment now that it would be less bad than the last one and in any case a damn sight worse for poor Grazzi.
If Grazzi was still here, even – or conscious…
If he was right about the launch’s track, he’d have about five minutes before it was back again. Submerge only if you saw the light coming back at you. Like last time – like out of nowhere. Or if the boom’s impassable on or near the surface. But if possible get inside, then submerge. Unless—
Boom…
Not so bad, that one. The one before must have been damn close. Almost at the boom now, spirits rising, and switching down to second gear. Might be very little in it, but you weren’t out to ram the boom. The rectangular buoys were about five metres apart: and it wasn’t wire linking them, from the way the whole assembly moved he could see now that it was solid iron, spiked iron bars hinged together. The spikes would rip the bottom out of any explosive motorboat that tried to charge through, he guessed. Down into first gear: if that gave enough power to hold her up, it might also hold her against the boom… Ringing clang as the pig’s snout – warhead – struck iron: then the pig was pivoting, swinging its length round against the barrier. Sea pounding and flooding over and Emilio knowing he had to work fast, before the launch came back. One hand gripping a spiked bar and the other reaching down to Grazzi – finding a rubber-covered arm, pulling at it, getting him to stand up in his stirrups, as it were. Grazzi’s head emerged – miraculously – and Emilio let go of him, shut off his own oxygen and pulled the mask off his face. Gulping cold salt air – seeing Grazzi doing the same… ‘You all right?’
‘Just.’ Mouth open in a laugh. ‘You?’
Astonishing: and enormous relief. But no time for felicitations.
‘See if the net-wires’ll give way to our cutters.’ Pointing… ‘Up here – to push through without going deep.’ Boom… Way out, that one, harmless. He yelled over the racket of wind and sea: ‘Quick – huh? Patrol boat’ll be back!’
Thumb up. Grimacing at the same time though. Then pulling his mask back on and opening his oxygen supply. He’d been on oxygen quite a while now. He’d ducked down – under, groping down along the pig’s body to get the cutters out. Taking it as it came: Armando Grazzi was a great exponent of that art. Emilio meanwhile watching for the launch’s return – one hand holding on to the boom while the pig’s warhead crashed and grated against the shifting, jolting iron – and thinking that the other teams – one or more of them – could
be in there now, inside the harbour. Standing, now – one foot on the net, to get his head above the level of the waves and see in. Might have come and left, even – if everything had gone right for them, he guessed… Except for the depthbombs, which were a bloody menace. But for all one knew there might have been a hole cut in this net already.
He caught his breath: focusing on a dark bulk in there…
His and Visintini’s target – the aircraft-carrier. In silhouette against the lights on the hill behind the harbour – a flat top if there ever was one. And the ‘island’ on that flat top as clear as anything, against the land-glow… At moorings – between buoys, probably – out in the middle as one looked in on a roughly southeastward line of sight diagonally across the harbour.
Visintini’s warhead might be slung under that keel already?
Time-fuses wouldn’t be set to explode before daylight, anyway. No fear of that. But – there it was! Get through this net, then over roughly 200 metres of seabed. That was all!
Grazzi was in view again – much sooner than he’d expected him, coming up on the net. To say it couldn’t be done? Pulling off his mask – then holding up the net-cutters, waving them triumphantly: ‘Gate’s open!’
He could have hugged him. Could have cheered.
No sign of the launch returning. And there’d been no explosions since Grazzi had submerged to cut the hole. The timing at this stage seemed almost too perfect, in fact… But then immediately, as if the thought had invited it – boom!
Nothing. Really nothing. Having had that bad one, knowing how it could be… But now the launch had to be on its way back, he guessed, so the choice was to risk the next charge exploding at killing range when you were down there manoeuvring the pig through, or to wait, risk being picked up in the searchlight, let them complete another circuit before you started through.
Wait how long, though?
With the hole already cut, getting in there wouldn’t take more than a few minutes. And in principle – just bloody well get on with it!
He pointed at Grazzi’s breathing-set, pulled his own mask on, turned on the oxygen – the cock between the breathing-bag and the bottles under it. Grazzi was following suit. Pig’s motor still running, in first gear; he wondered whether to risk stopping it, whether the cessation of water-flow over the horizontal rudder at the tail would send her down tail-first. Here again there were pros and cons – such as the advantage of more or less neutral buoyancy when you were manoeuvring the pig through. He was putting his hand to the switch – though still undecided – when light flared from seaward. Like a spark in the corner of his eye a split second before the beam sprang out; either they’d had the beam doused and just switched on, or the suddenness of it came from the launch’s speed and the sea-state. Left you no option, anyway – the answer now was wait. Crouching low, right down in the boil of sea over and around the boom.
Then he saw with dismay that Grazzi wasn’t with him – had submerged. As soon as he’d gone back on to the oxygen, probably – just gone on down, assuming Emilio’d be doing the same… The light blazed into his salt-running goggles, the launch’s engine-note flattening as it heeled away and the beam swept across the harbour entrance and a bomb came lobbing – smallish canister, turning end-over-end, clear to see initially in the first part of its flight but then lost – on its way here – in darkness as the beam flared on round.
5
He knew – brain still reeling, in the shock of the explosion – that Armando Grazzi would be dead. The pig was sinking quite rapidly against the net’s steel-wire mesh: he’d have been dead if he’d been under water ten seconds ago. In fact he’d been more on the net than on the pig, crouching in the boil of sea. All right for him – to that extent… But – fourth gear, and no power. Passing jagged ends of the wire where Grazzi had cut it: he tried to check the pig’s descent by grabbing the mesh to hold her up, but he had no anchor for his own body, would have stayed on the net while the pig went on down from under him.
Working at the gears again, and getting no results: no difference between fourth gear and stop. And breathing wasn’t easy. Getting worse: oxygen not coming through as it should have. The cocks were open and he was getting a trickle into the bag but having to fight for it, becoming dizzy in the process. There was the spare breathing-set in the tool locker, of course. All right – when I can get at it… Grazzi wouldn’t be needing it, for sure. The sickness was making itself felt again, despite efforts to ignore it – knowing it was vital to ignore it, and succeeding at least for limited periods – a few seconds at a time, while concentrating on – well, now, puzzling out what was happening – apparent end to the downward motion although there was still movement against the net. Accounted for – getting the obvious answer suddenly, brain probably at half-cock or only functioning in fits and starts – by the fact the pig had bottomed. Tail-first, levelling then as its forepart sank, while the net still had motion imparted to it by the buoys tugging at it from above.
The pig was at rest on mud. No sea movement down here, only the net’s, the pig lying parallel to its weighted foot. Emilio had moved the gear switch to fourth again, and in this comparative stillness knew for sure that the motor was shot. Not even a whine from it. Battery dead, presumably. Moving to locate Grazzi now. Guessing at a leak into the battery compartment, and that charge having finished it for good and all. Grazzi was slumped in his seat. Rubber-covered corpse, mask still in place, bag still partly inflated. Checking on this by feel, Emilio found that the second bottle was shut off; he opened it, and the bag – artificial lung, they called it – fattened at once, giving a degree of buoyancy, as well as oxygen to Grazzi’s own lungs if he’d been in any condition to—
Christ…
The corpse – one of its arms – moved. A hand closed on Emilio’s forearm, exerted pressure. Other arm shifting too: slow, sloth-like, but then – beyond belief this, could have been hallucination – he was straightening himself on his seat. Not dead. Incredibly but clearly not. So—
So bloody what?
Forcing the brain to work…
If one had been inside the net when this had happened, there’d have been some chance of dragging the pig to the target along the seabed. With or without Grazzi’s help. Now there was no such chance. Wouldn’t have been even if one’s own breathing-set had been functioning properly: which it was not. Hence this nausea, and the dizziness. In this state — no hope at all. So – as far as the pig was concerned – end of the road. Here. Now. And as for oneself and Grazzi – well…
Forget the spare breathing-set. If you were going to get out of this you’d have to do it before the boat paid its next visit to the boom. How long? How long since the last one? How the fuck do I know? Steady: hold on now. Survival – second-to-second survival – meant taking slow breaths and only as deep as the set’s defective functioning would permit. Not fighting for it or thinking too frantically about it, letting panic in, wasting strength. Moving again now. The warhead’s time-fuse was on its port side halfway along, slightly forward of the suspension ring on top, which when you were working blind did give some guidance. Right arm up on top grasping the ring, left hand’s numbed fingers turning the fuse-setting to maximum. On – running… The thought in mind – thoughts, plural – that in leaving the warhead attached to the rest of it you’d be doing the job of destroying the pig – part of one’s brief, pigs and ancillary equipment to be sunk in deep water or otherwise destroyed, not left for the enemy to find – and blowing a hole in their damn net or even, given the most tremendous luck – the thing might blow when some ship was passing in or out. An aircraft-carrier, for instance…
No need to waste time setting the pig’s own self-destruct charges, anyway. Safely leave that to the big bang. So – Grazzi, now. Hauling him up, off the pig and to the net. Grazzi’s right arm round Emilio’s neck and clamped down on his right side. Fighting nausea, waves of it rising, only really fading when he rested. Major problem: arising from using strength you didn’t hav
e. But Grazzi solved it – beginning to move under his own power again, straightening and lifting his other arm slowly to the net. Emilio relaxed his hold on him: helped him on to the mesh – and up – while his own feet were still rooted in the mud. Then, Grazzi was climbing.
Both climbing. Carefully and slowly, but climbing. Emilio below and at the side of Grazzi, steadying as much as supporting. Body immersed or partially immersed in water experiences an upthrust equal to the weight of water which it displaces. And thank God for small upthrusts… Explosion: he felt it, and Grazzi had flinched bodily, was now motionless, clinging to the net. Emilio urged him on, upward. Both half dead, he thought. Or half alive. If life could be divisible by two? The net’s movement was more noticeable as one climbed – mesh by mesh, and crabbing to the left to avoid the area where Grazzi had cut it, where there’d be no safe footholds. Promising himself: Mask off soon. Breathe air, soon… Meanwhile – another minute, say – easy does it. As long as that boat wasn’t rushing in now. Please, God… Groping for the next wire over his head, shifting another foot up, then – lift. Into rougher, thinner water.
Grazzi was still a weight on him but not all that much: and reaching up for the next handhold, what he grasped wasn’t wire but a bar of iron. Top of the net, the boom itself. Grazzi’s movements seemingly stronger – and quicker – as he found it too – or having found it, recognized it. He was in the waves then, head and shoulders out in wet streaming air and spray, waves smashing over and Emilio emerging beside him, Grazzi by that time having hooked an arm round the bar between two of its spikes and with the other hand pulling the mask off his face. Gulping air, salt water too but mostly air. Mouth wide open: like a dying fish, if he’d had gills they’d have been pumping like his heart. Emilio too – dragging his mask off. Relief overwhelming, the air like – well, life… But forcing his brain into action – trying to, the question being: What now? And – baffling, at first sight of it – a spark of light arcing towards him through the wet darkness, falling aslant on the wind – and vanishing. At the same moment, a depthbomb exploded – distant, harmless. Cigarette-end, he realized – that flying spark. Tossed down-wind by a sentry on the end of the Detached Mole, the man’s shadow momentarily visible against the background of light from the hillside. Gone, now. Gone from sight, but – still there. There’d be others too, he guessed. On this coaling pier as well.
Love For An Enemy Page 12
