Turn Left for Gibraltar

by David Black

  They were almost there, and without any major hitch, not since they’d loaded everybody and all their gear at Lazaretto, and Nicobar had cast off. Eight had been a lot of pongoes to carry on a cloak-and-dagger op, but it had turned out a remarkably easy trip from Malta to here on the Calabrian coast. Of course there had been a lot of initial jitters among the soldiers: not about their op, but about being on a sub. But Grot McGilveray had cured all that with his dirty jokes and dirty songs. Carey even remarked on it – how maintaining a generally high level of filth in the forward torpedo room usually worked wonders for curing the sub jitters. That and the food. It was a tradition the Navy fed its submariners like fighting cocks, but as soldiers, even special ones like this lot, they wouldn’t have seen a plate of bacon and eggs for at least two years before they boarded Nicobar. By the time they were due to get off, they’d had them served up twice. The gratitude was touching and every one of the crew were agreed, the pongoes were a great bunch of blokes. Even though they did often get in the way with all their press-ups and push-ups, and the scary way they were always cleaning and polishing and generally caressing their weapons, and sharpening their knives.

  No, all they had to do was get the folbots and the inflatable in the water, and they were away.

  Nicobar began gently, and more importantly, quietly, to settle. There was lots of waving from the bridge and back again, everything going swimmingly, until Verney started cursing.

  ‘What’s wrong, Olly?’ Carey called down to him.

  ‘I’m up to my bally bollocks in water!’ Verney hissed back. ‘The bloody boat’s arse has fallen out!’

  Harry’s plan: no need to worry about loading the folbots and the inflatable while they bounced around alongside, with the risk of kit falling into the water; load them on deck and just let Nicobar sink beneath them until they float free. Except it hadn’t occurred to him that the weight of someone sitting in a folbot while it rested on a steel hull, with all the jaggy lumps of steel that stick out of it, might tear the canvas. Bugger! Bugger!

  ‘Any other folbots leaking?’ whispered Harry, now at the CO’s side. A series of ‘No!’s. Which they could see for themselves now, as the other folbots and the inflatable began floating off, bobbing up and down on the waves. Verney’s folbot, however, was now all but swamped, and just sliding and tearing itself more across Nicobar’s submerged deck. Verney stood up, and stepped out of the wreckage, wading several paces forward, calling and gesturing to the two in the inflatable. They threw him its painter, he caught it first grasp and began pulling the ungainly craft towards him.

  The pongo left in Verney’s folbot hadn’t needed telling what to do: he was up and out of it and climbing up on to the bridge. He hadn’t been promoted Corporal without being able to do his sums. With one folbot gone and Verney in the inflatable, the landing party was already one person too many for the trip back, and the Corporal had taken the decision not to make it two too many, especially if the one of them to be left behind was going to be him.

  ‘Slight change of plan!’ Verney called back. ‘But we’ll still see you tomorrow night, even if I have to swim. Cheerio, now!’

  Carey didn’t say anything. The Corporal was up on the bridge, standing beside him, shivering too much to speak, drenched up to his chest and dripping everywhere. Harry, as he looked into his blackened face, could see he was royally pissed off. ‘Go below, and get someone to give you a dry pair of overalls and a mug of Ky,’ he said.

  Behind him, Carey was speaking into the bridge mic. ‘Put a puff of air into one and six main ballast tanks. Group down, slow astern, together.’

  When Harry looked over the bridge towards the shore, the black lumps of their little flotilla had already merged into the darkness. They were already reverting to full buoyancy again and now it was time to find that half-sunk folbot before they pushed off. They couldn’t leave it to get washed up somewhere – might as well send a telegram saying, ‘Hello! We’re here!’

  ‘Multiple HE, bearing red-fifteen,’ came the disembodied voice from the ASDIC cubby. ‘Low revs . . . target drawing left.’

  Carey said absently, ‘Uh-huh’, as he contemplated his next move; he was playing chess with Yeo in the wardroom. Nicobar was as quiet as a Sunday, and he could hear the ASDIC operator’s every word all the way from the other side of the control room.

  It was mid-afternoon the next day, and this was the umpteenth surface contact of the watch, and the second substantial convoy. They were at Watch, Dived, hanging in the deep pellucid blue at eighty feet, and Napier was Officer of the Watch. Harry was reading a book in French, Stendhal’s The Charterhouse of Parma – another of the volumes he’d picked up from Louis, the old bookseller in Valletta – the one he passed coffee, cigarettes and rum to.

  Napier said, ‘Do you wish to take any action, Sir?’

  ‘Nooo,’ said Carey, coming to a decision and moving a pawn. ‘When’s dinner, that’s the only action I really want to know about.’

  ‘Don’t know, Sir,’ said Napier. ‘Empney’s in the forward torpedo room – Grot’s telling dirty jokes.’ Said in a voice so that you could tell Napier wished he was up there listening too, instead of watching an endless daisy chain of potential targets pass unmolested. With all the pongoes gone, Jack was obviously celebrating getting the space back. The forward torpedo room had been where they’d stowed all the landing party and their gear for the trip. And they’d taken up so much room, there’d been no space for Nicobar’s seamen ratings and her torpedo reloads, so Nicobar had sailed with just the torpedoes in her four forward tubes. The two stern tubes didn’t have the luxury of a reload space. Not that it mattered how many torpedoes they carried right now. Common sense dictated they not stir up the coast while their landing party was still ashore. They wouldn’t be firing anything until they had them all back safe on board. Then they could run amok.

  Which hopefully wouldn’t be too long. They just had to get dinner out of the way, then run inshore and wait for the fireworks display on the coast that would tell them that Verney and his cutthroats had done the job. They’d have their fish-goggled Signalman on the bridge to pick up Verney’s infrared flash message confirming they were putting off, and fish-goggles would use his flasher to guide them back to Mama. Mission accomplished.

  ‘He’s a nice bloke, your pal Olly,’ said Carey, scowling as he lost a rook. ‘Although how anyone could ever see you as a role model for the life heroic beats me, mate.’

  Carey was talking about Captain Verney’s story. His long reminiscence with Harry had of course been overheard and had been all around the boat in ten minutes.

  ‘He’s not my pal,’ said Harry, mildly exasperated, and not for the first time. He’d been ribbed before. ‘I hardly know him.’

  Yeo, sitting opposite, had looked confused. ‘I haven’t heard about this one,’ he said.

  And Napier, who had heard all the stories about the Bucket and what had happened to her, for they were many, said, ‘Don’t worry about it, I’ll tell you when you’re older.’

  ‘Ah!’ Yeo had said, because he always listened to his new pal.

  The waiting continued. They had dinner. Napier said, ‘Mmmn. Mince ’n’ tatties!’ And those were the only words spoken while they cleaned their plates.

  They cleared the boat for action after that, then went up to periscope depth and ran down the coast until they spotted the marker points they’d selected to fix the bay. After taking bearings to make sure of exactly where they should be, they went deep again to wait until after sunset.

  That had happened just after 5pm, twenty-five minutes ago, and now they were on the surface again, and running in, both diesels charging the batteries with the spare amps that weren’t being used to turn the main motors driving them at a steady nine knots through another cold, pitch-black night, with only Harry’s translated Italian pilots’ notes to help him and Yeo, the Navigator, work out how off their position the various currents and drifts might have left them. At least it was all but fla
t calm.

  From quite far out it was obvious something was wrong. Very wrong. Carey quickly shut down the diesels and they crept on under motors. The sky above where they had calculated the bay to be was suffused with an eerie glow, and as Nicobar eased up the coast, not daring to press further towards the shore, the glow settled into a definite light reflecting off the low dense cloud, and back off the scrubby black shadow of the hillside. Carey, Harry, the two lookouts and the Leading Signalman – Dexter was his name, with his IR goggles around his neck – were all on the bridge. Harry warned the lookouts to keep their eyes firmly seaward, in case anything was coming up behind them, not that anyone was going to see too much on a thick night like this.

  It started to drizzle. Carey ordered Nicobar trimmed down to decks awash, to lessen her profile even more.

  Then out of the darkness, from inshore, the bang of a diesel engine bursting into life. The noise was so loud in the deadening rain, it sounded as if it had happened right next door. But it hadn’t. The starboard lookout pointed to a shape off their bow as it began to move, a small curve of white water curling from under its stern – a MAS-boat, its propellers beginning to churn the water, getting under way and then heading away from them, down the coast. It had been lying hove to a mere mile away, but no one had seen it against the shadow of the land.

  No one spoke. Carey watched it until the pale wake faded to black. They heard its engines rumble on, and then they too abruptly stopped. It was difficult to work out the direction on open water, but it looked like the MAS-boat had stopped quite a bit to seaward of them now, and about two, maybe a bit more miles down towards Bagnara: as if it were standing a sea watch on the eastern approaches to their bay, the direction in which a British submarine might approach.

  Carey ordered slow ahead, together, and they edged further inshore.

  As they closed, the noises of men at work drifted out to them.

  Carey crouched down to steady his binoculars, and he studied the tableau unfolding before him. Harry, even with his crap night vision, put his binoculars to his face, deciding to see what he could anyway. What he saw looked like fairground lights; a serried rank of them, all badly masked the same way travelling folk would tantalisingly surround a circus ring with sheets, making you pay at the gate if you wanted to see the full effect inside.

  Every now and again there would be the blue arc of a welding torch flashing above the background glow, and voices, and the chug of a donkey engine pulling something heavy.

  ‘They’re fixing the overhead electric line,’ said Carey, with the glasses still stuck to his face. ‘It’s a full maintenance crew. There’s some huge track vehicle, like a long railway carriage with a work platform on top, and a diesel loco there to pull it all, I suppose. The carriage has got winches and adjustable ramp things all along the platform. But it’s all partially hidden . . . all I’m seeing is through gaps in these huge canvas awnings they’ve got hoisted up . . . the full length of the carriage, all along it, to mask their work to seaward, I suppose . . . and there’s all these floodlights they’ve got strung out. A whole gang of workmen. Too many to count . . . at least thirty. And they’re all over the bloody power lines. Jesus H. Christ. Haven’t they got any buxom, bella bambolas to bang at night? You’d think there was a fucking war on!’

  Harry said, ‘What do we do now, Sir?’

  And again, without taking his eyes off his glasses, Carey said, ‘Well, seeing as you’re the boat’s resident smart alec, Mr Gilmour, I was hoping you’d tell me.’

  Harry smarted at that, and when he turned, he was aware of both lookouts and Leading Signalman Dexter shaking with laughter in the darkness beside him. He turned on the dim white shape of the nearest lookout’s face, sticking out of the hood of his Ursula suit, and hissed at him, ‘This is no laughing matter, Willoughby!’

  ‘Aw, hell, Mr Gilmour,’ said Carey behind him, rising from his now futile survey, with a resigned look on his face, plain to see even in the darkness, ‘of course it’s a bloody laughing matter. Unless you want to see a grown man cry?’

  What were they going to do now? Carey’s first plan was to wait. So they did, remaining trimmed down, with only Nicobar’s conning tower sticking up out of the waves where they wallowed, hove to about seven hundred yards off the beach. Carey had Dexter don his goggles and keep a lookout for any messages from shore, first up the coast from the bay, and then down. One lookout kept his eyes in the direction of the MAS-boat, and the other scanned to seaward. Carey kept the boat at Diving Stations – he wanted to move fast if he had to, even if, right now, he couldn’t imagine why. Empney brought them all up steaming hot mugs of Ky. The night dragged on.

  In their brief chats, he and Harry wondered at the Eyeties’ lack of blackout, but then Malta was the only base the British could launch air raids from, to hit this far up the Italian mainland, and Malta was getting bombed all to hell. As for the sub threat, well, the Eyeties probably thought they’d soon know if there were any British submarines about, because ships would be getting sunk. So, since there weren’t, the Eyeties obviously thought they were safe.

  But what about Verney and his men? Where the hell were they? There certainly didn’t seem to be any evidence of an earlier fight around the tunnels. Maybe they had all just stood up and surrendered when the work train pulled up – unlikely, but was it possible? No, it wasn’t. There would be signs: signs of a fight, signs of a surrender too. And there wasn’t. No Italian soldiery running about all over the countryside looking for anyone who might have sneaked away; aircraft overhead, ditto; no soldiers guarding the work train. And up and down the coast, no noise of stable doors being slammed shut or any of the usual hue and cry generated by a military caught napping.

  With just twenty minutes to go before first light, Nicobar’s conning tower silently slipped under the waves and she turned on to a ninety-degree track from the shore, slipping back out to sea. Nothing had been seen or heard from Verney’s team the entire night.

  The next night they were back. The only difference this time: the weather was worse.

  Out of badness, Harry ordered the same two lookouts back up on the bridge for another cold night as punishment for laughing. The old Harry wouldn’t have been so petty, but the new Harry was a Jimmy now, and he was buggered if he was going to let the crew think that they were all on some kind of ‘All aboard the Skylark!’ day out. The odd giggle was good for morale, but Jesus Christ – there were limits!

  The same Leading Signalman, Dexter, with the IR goggles was there too. Carey also had the pongo Corporal up, to see if he could spot something they hadn’t. During the day, Carey had him in to the wardroom several times, talking over all likely scenarios, then they went through the impossible ones. The Corporal’s best bet was that Verney had seen the maintenance train coming in plenty of time and scattered the team to lie low in the rough scrub until they went away.

  ‘The Eyeties must be pretty dim not to spot that mob,’ Harry had said.

  ‘It’s amazin’ what you don’t see when you’re not looking for it,’ the Corporal had replied, and Harry, on reflection, believed him.

  So there they were, approaching the bay again, except tonight there was no light reflecting off the low cloud and no maintenance train, all lit up, between the tunnel entrances. It was just dark and drizzly, with a gusty onshore wind coming from the nor’-nor’-east, making the rain sting Harry’s left cheek every time it put in another surge of effort. The only thing that told them there was a shoreline ahead was the thin ribbon of phosphorescence where the surf hit the beach.

  Then, suddenly, out of the inky black backdrop of the night: pouf! pouf! Two sets of floodlights came on, one after the other, and in the sudden splash of their sickly brightness, from Nicobar’s bridge the entire gap between the two tunnels was theatrically revealed. They could see the tracks and the power cable pylons, and the scrubby hill rising behind them, and in the immediate halo of each set of lights, each one above the two tunnel mouths, were working part
ies, moving methodically about their business. The track between was empty however. The maintenance train had gone; so the men on the tunnel roofs must be stay-behinds, thought Harry: there to finish off the job. Although why they hadn’t done it in daylight was anybody’s guess. Maybe the overtime was better for nightshifts. Harry noticed Carey’s back stiffen, and when he looked up along the line of his binoculars, he could see why – the MAS-boat from last night was there again, seen now only because her navigation lights had suddenly been turned on: one at the masthead, and her port red running light. She was about two miles away, close inshore in the lee of the top curve of the bay, hiding again in the shadows. Otherwise she seemed completely asleep, riding at anchor, sheltering from the prevailing wind. A squall could just be made out passing beyond her; it must have helped shroud her up until now.

  Harry wondered why Carey didn’t dive the boat immediately; there was enough water under them. Or even order a turn away back to sea. But when he took time to lay out the tactical map in his head, he could see Nicobar probably wasn’t visible from the MAS-boat either, or the shore. Riding decks awash, her conning tower would be lost against the thick, black, shitty wall of weather. Harry wondered, what on earth was Carey up to now?

  That was when Dexter sang out, ‘Signal from shore, Sir! Bearing green-one-five . . . correct identification code . . . being repeated. The correct landing party ident being sent, Sir.’

  There was no point in anyone else looking for the spot the lanky rating was pointing to with his free arm, somewhere ashore, off the starboard bow, because the signal was being sent in infrared, and only Dexter with his silly big IR goggles on could see it.