The Baltic Run

by The Baltic Run (retail) (epub)

  ‘Amply,’ she answered easily.

  He touched his hand to the peak of his working man’s cap in a kind of a salute. ‘Then good hunting, Comrade Captain.’ She smiled warily. ‘Thank you for your good wishes, comrade,’ she said. ‘But we really do not need them. After all, we are the Amazons, though unlike those of the Greek myths we still possess all our bodily bits and pieces.’ She made a vague gesture in the direction of her left breast.

  Touché, he told himself. Aloud he said, ‘For that, Comrade Captain, I am sure we are both grateful. Dosvedanya.’

  ‘All power to the people,’ she replied.

  She waited till the sound of the motor starting up indicated that the strange visitor had gone – she had not liked Aronson, although he had brought a new mission; that man was too cunning by far – before she turned to her lover. ‘Elena Markova,’ she said thickly, running her tongue over her thick sensual lips so that they looked suddenly a bright scarlet against the glowing whiteness of her skin, ‘You heard – we are going to the front once more. There will be no time for pleasure. We will be fully occupied fighting for our beloved country.’ She hesitated a moment, noting that her breathing was faster with excitement. ‘Would you,’ she pressed the sergeant’s hand hard, her own hand now hot and clammy, ‘would you care for pleasure – now?’

  The other woman simpered like a young virgin being confronted by it for the first time. ‘Yes, beloved,’ she whispered. ‘Please!’

  ‘Wait a minute, Elena.’ Captain Rurik sprang from the couch, locked the door and then went into the other room. When she returned, she was completely naked, the only adornment on her long, white, slim body a monstrous contraption of leather and rubber strapped to her hairless loins. ‘Now, wench,’ she hissed in a strangled sort of a voice, in the same manner that her noble ancestors must have spoken to their female serfs when they coupled forcibly with them, ‘you’re going to take all of this,’ and, she added fiercely through gritted teeth, her eyes blazing with lust, ‘and enjoy every little bit of it, understand?’

  On the couch, her plump peasant legs already spread, the sergeant played the game they had played so many delightful times before and whispered, ‘Please, I beg you, do not hurt me too much…’

  Six

  The Black Baron took a last look at the brown smudge of Fehmarn to the south. Then he spat over the side of the conning tower in the fashion of all submariners for luck, and clattered down the dripping ladder into the warm oily fug of the U-23. ‘All right,’ he commanded, ‘clear the conning tower, prepare for diving.’

  The deck watch needed no urging. It was an icy cold day. They came sliding down the ladder, blinking a little in the yellow light but grateful for the warmth of the interior.

  The Black Baron started to rap out orders and the petty officers, all veterans like himself, repeated them to make sure they had heard them correctly. ‘Flood tanks… Prepare to flood tanks!’

  ‘Tanks ready,’ the Obermaat sang out.

  ‘Flood!’

  Behind the Black Baron, four ratings in their greasy torn overalls knelt and wrenched at the air levers. There was a sudden hissing noise. Rapidly the air started to escape from the tanks. The Black Baron had gone through this a thousand times in the past. But still his heart raced as he thought of the danger. One wrong move and they’d go straight to the bottom and never come up again.

  Gently the U-23 rocked forwards and then backwards. He flashed a glance at the trim. But then the submarine righted itself. Suddenly it was absolutely silent save for the gentle hum of the electric motors. For at this crucial moment no one of the crew made any more noise than was necessary. In the corner the ratings worked feverishly at the hydroplanes, beads of sweat in their brows, spinning the large hand wheels around, as if they were grocers grinding fresh coffee.

  ‘Herr Leutnant!’ a sudden anxious cry ran the length of the U-boat.

  The Black Baron spun round. There was a look of anger on his crippled face. Who had had the audacity to break the compulsory silence at this crucial moment? A worried sweating face was peering up at him from the torpedo hatch. ‘Sir,’ the rating cried, ‘a “fish”… one of the “tin fish” has broken loose!’

  ‘Himmel, Arsch und Wolkenbruch!’ the Black Baron cursed. ‘So was, gerade jetzt!’ He controlled himself. ‘Number One, take over. I’m going to have a look.’

  He ran the length of the submarine awkwardly, the off-duty men pressing themselves against the dripping sweating bulkhead as he did so.

  The torpedo was half hanging out of its shining steel cradle and even with the gentle movement of the U-boat proceeding underwater, now at perhaps seven knots, it was sliding even more. The Black Baron lunged forwards to help the ratings, shirts black with sweat, as they tried desperately to hold it in place. He slammed his shoulder hard against the little screw, his shoulder muscles rippling and flexing beneath the thin material of his linen tunic. He saw immediately that the U-23 needed only to move a couple of degrees and the ‘tin fish’ would hit the deck, blowing them all to perdition.

  Holding on with the rest, he cried through gritted teeth, ‘Number One… “fish” sliding backwards!’

  Peters reacted immediately. He snapped an order. The men at the hydroplanes started to whirl their big wheels furiously. The stern of the U-23 began to rise slightly. With a little metallic groan the ‘fish’ began to slide back into its cradle. Hastily one of the ratings let go of his hold and secured the lock behind the screw.

  With a grunt the Black Baron straightened up. For the next five minutes he bellowed and ranted while the ratings stood rigidly at attention, gazes fixed on some distant object, known only to themselves. Finally the Black Baron ran out of swear words and ended lamely on, ‘Don’t do it again, d’you hear.’

  The leading hand lowered his gaze and said, ‘Sorry, sir, won’t happen again, sir.’

  ‘You’re damnwell right it won’t,’ he contented himself with snapping before making his way urgently to the heads. He needed to urinate. A few moments later when he reached for the hand pump he found that his right hand was trembling violently. That business with the ‘fish’ was a bad omen, a very bad omen indeed…

  * * *

  Ten sea miles away, the Swordfish ploughed steadily through the grey-green water, followed obediently by the fishing smacks like some majestic swan trailed by its cygnets. On the deck beneath the little bridge Billy Bennett was reciting the ‘Ballad of Jack Overdue’ in his cockney whine, while Ginger Kerrigan, furling a length of hawser, listened with ill-concealed contempt.

  ‘There’s ice in the killer sea… Weather at base closes down. And the ash-blonde…’

  Ginger could stand the poem no longer. In his thick nasal Liverpudlian accent, he whined, ‘Yer can put a sock in that kind of rubbish right now.’

  ‘But it’s poetry,’ Bennett protested.

  ‘Who sez so?’ Ginger asked, wiping the dewdrop off the end of his long red nose with his gauntlet.

  ‘I sez so ’cos I got it out of a book,’ Bennett answered earnestly.

  ‘You read it in a ruddy book,’ the Liverpudlian said scornfully. ‘You and books! Why when I was at boarding school as a nipper, I read a book a year, real books.’ He jerked a thumb proudly at his skinny chest, ginger thatch waving in the keen wind. ‘Once I even read two books in a year. That was back in 1912 and I got to wear the badge of merit for it. Poems is supposed to rhyme like them in the heads. Ye know, “It’s no use standing on the seats, the crabs in this place jump six feet.” Now that’s real poetry for yer.’ He spat expertly over the rail watched by a hawk-eyed CPO Ferguson who would ‘Have the legs off’n’ anyone who spat on his deck.

  On the bridge, Smith grinned and said to Dickie, ‘They’re a good bunch, Dickie, you know. Hard as nails and as rough as they come, but a chap couldn’t ask for a better lot.’

  ‘I know, Smithie,’ Dickie agreed, drawing his white silk muffler around his throat, for it was very cold. ‘Good eggs the whole lot of them. Pity we
couldn’t get them all a better rating. Fancy doing all this for ten bob a week!’

  Smith nodded and changed the subject, his face suddenly sombre. ‘I think while we’re going through these straits, Dickie, we’ll stand a double watch. No off-duty watch. I mean that’s Hunland just over there.’ He indicated the faint smudge on the horizon to the south. ‘That’s where the trouble will come from, if it comes.’

  ‘Agreed, Smithie,’ Dickie said. ‘Every man on deck on lookout or manning the weapons – just in case. I mean this all might be unnecessary. The Huns are not supposed to have any more naval vessels, but they’re a rum lot and I don’t trust them. They might just try to work a flanker on us.’

  Smith nodded and as an afterthought, he whistled down the voice tube to attract Chris’s attention in the wardroom and said, ‘Would you come up to the bridge, please. And put on plenty of warm clothing. It’s chilly up here.’

  A few minutes later, she appeared on the bridge, her man’s suit covered by Smith’s naval warm, which was far too big for her so that it almost reached down to her ankles. She swung round, as if she were a model and said, ‘What the well-dressed girl is wearing this season. Decidedly unbecoming.’ She saw the solemn look on Smith’s face and her smile vanished. ‘Trouble?’

  ‘Not exactly. But I want you on deck – just in case.’

  ‘In case we are hit?’

  Smith nodded.

  ‘Oh, we won’t be, will we?’ she objected. Her face suddenly became very defiant and she stuck her pretty little chin out. ‘We can’t be! We need every one of those guns for the defence of the Annaberg. My country’s future depends upon them.’

  Dickie looked at her and said in admiration, ‘I say, you really are a very patriotic old thing, aren’t you? Most girls I know would be scared stiff at the thought of being involved in a battle, and you positively revel in it.’

  ‘But I am Polish, Dickie,’ she answered proudly, as if that explained everything.

  * * *

  ‘By the great whore of Buxtehude,’ the Black Baron called in delight. ‘It’s them, Peters. Come and have a look.’

  His hideous blackened face set in a gruesome parody of a smile, he stepped from the periscope so that Peters could take his place. The second-in-command pushed his cap from front to back and peered into the circle of gleaming calibrated glass. Slowly a collection of boats, led by a sleek motor torpedo boat, steamed silently into the circle, the fishing smacks trailing thick clouds of black smoke behind them. ‘Yes sir, it’s them all right. Polack fishing boats by the look of their jibs. Yes. They’re the ones all right. Here, sir.’ He relinquished his position and the Black Baron bent and peered through the instrument once more, intent on selecting his target among the fishing smacks. They would be easy meat after he had dealt with the escort. He’d deal with them with his deck gun. But he had to waste a torpedo first on one of the Polacks. But which one?

  He considered carefully, as the little convoy steamed right into the trap. It would have to be one in the line closest to the U-23 so that once he had done the job and the escort started to turn to pick up survivors, it would sail not behind the line but in front of it. That would give him the target he needed. After a few moments he decided he would pick the fishing smack at the far end of the line. That would give him a good five minutes or more while the escort steamed to its aid.

  ‘Full ahead,’ he snapped, his mind made up now. ‘Stand by three and four.’

  From the torpedo compartment the voices of the torpedo ratings sang out smartly. ‘Three ready, sir… four ready, sir.’

  He turned to the periscope again. They were closing rapidly. The little convoy couldn’t be more than two kilometres away now. He turned up the intensifier. The last boat sprang up large and stark black in the circle of gleaming glass. A small bridge, a tall stack belching coal smoke and a small red stern sail. He could see every detail quite clearly. He even thought he could see the silhouette of the helmsman at the bridge. But perhaps he was mistaken.

  He swung the periscope round its arc. There was no sign of any extra or unusual activity on the deck of the escort. It was proceeding at the same slow pace as the convoy. No one had seen the tiny white wash of the periscope. Good, he told himself and forgot the escort for a while, as he concentrated on the unsuspecting Polack fishing boat.

  ‘Down periscope,’ he snapped.

  With a hiss of escaping compressed air, the tube of gleaming steel came down as the Black Baron turned to address his veterans. ‘After this engagement is over,’ he announced, looking at their pale, hollow faces in the unnatural, glowing red light, as if trying to fix each and every one of their features in his mind’s eye for ever, ‘I have been empowered by our masters to run into Puttgarden on Fehmarn. There is plenty of money available for us all. There will undoubtedly be wine, song – and naturally, women.’

  The crew smiled at that. At most of the remote harbours they sailed into along the Baltic coast, there were few available women, save for raddled whores. German women on the island would be a refreshing change. Obermaat Petersen grabbed the front of his bulging crotch dramatically and exclaimed, ‘Himmelherrje, I’ve got so much ink in my fountain pen, I don’t know who to write to first.’

  That raised a laugh and the Black Baron raised his hand for silence. They were their usual disciplined, attentive selves in an instant.

  ‘Now in a matter of moments we shall go into action. Everything depends upon speed. First we knock out the Polack, then comes the Tommy. The rest we do at our leisure on the surface with the deck gun. It seems very easy. But we can’t afford to slip up with the Tommy. He’s got speed, torpedoes, deck weapons and possibly a handful of depth charges, I can’t quite make out. Now then, to action stations.’ Brisk and forceful, he turned back to the control platform and barked, ‘Periscope up!’

  Again the hiss of compressed air and the gleaming tube of steel shot upwards. Hastily the Black Baron pressed his eyes to the sight, swinging the periscope round as was his habit, to survey the whole area before concentrating on his target. The escort was still steaming slowly at the head of the two files of ships. There was no unnecessary activity on her deck.

  The Black Baron nodded his approval. They were well within range. Indeed at the present range, he couldn’t miss. He focused the periscope once and raised his right hand. At the entrance to the torpedo hatch, the petty officer in charge tensed.

  The Black Baron waited no longer. He brought down his right hand sharply, barking, ‘Fire Three!’

  The U-23 lurched as the two ton ‘fish’ smacked into the water. The Black Baron pressed his eyes closer to the periscope. Next to him Peters tensed at the stopwatch. It was to time the running of the ‘fish’. Now the only movement inside the U-23 was the mournful drip-drip of the condensation running down the steel walls. The men seemed frozen for all time, their faces pale and tense, the sweat gleaming on them, as if they had been greased.

  There was a hollow boom. At the periscope the Black Baron roared, ‘We’ve got her… got her!’

  The men broke that heavy silence. They cheered as one. Some slapped one another over the back, faces smiling now, all tension gone, as the Black Baron reported. ‘Broke her back. Stern sinking already… Looks as if she’s beginning to burn—’

  There was another hollow soft boom and he cried, ‘Ammunition midships going up… Absolutely crazy… Shells and incendiaries zig-zagging all over the place… Survivors jumping into the water… Now Tommy, says the spider, come and walk into my nice little web.’ The look on his hideous face at that moment was so frightening that Peters could not help but shiver.

  * * *

  ‘Cor stone the crows!’ Billy Bennett exclaimed as the sky behind him erupted in flame and explosion. For a moment the fat cockney seemed riveted to the spot on the stern where he was acting as the sole stern lookout. Then he remembered his duties and cupping his hands around his mouth, he bellowed above the noise of their own engines. ‘A ship’s been hit, sir… A HIT, SIR!�
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  Smith and Dickie swung round as one. Dickie gasped when he saw the ammunition beginning to zig-zag crazily into the air, with the little fishing smack, her back broken, already starting to sink rapidly. ‘Hell’s teeth,’ he cursed. ‘We’re under attack, Smithie!’

  ‘Of course we are!’ Smith snapped, very cool and professional now. He thrust up his glasses. He could see the stricken ship quite clearly. Dark shapes, which were fishing hands on fire, were springing frantically into the sea and thrashing the water into a white fury in their attempts to put out those killer flames. ‘Damn,’ he cursed. ‘So the Huns had got—’

  ‘A U-boat,’ Dickie beat him to it. ‘The stinkers have hung on to their subs.’

  Smith ignored the comment. The damage was done now. Swiftly he surveyed the rolling grey-green surface of the Baltic all around the little convoy. No tell-tale white wave which indicated a sub’s periscope. Nothing. He bit his bottom lip.

  Chris roused him from his moment of indecision. ‘You will save them?’ she cried.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The survivors, you will save the poor souls? They’ll drown and oh, look, how that one is burning.’ Tears of pity welled up into her eyes spontaneously. She put her hand on his arm.

  Smith let his glasses drop to his chest. ‘There’s a Hun U-boat out there somewhere. He’s our first priority.’

  ‘But—’

  He shrugged off her restraining hand and cried, ‘Dickie bring her round – quick!’

  Dickie obeyed instinctively. The Swordfish swung round in an elegant curve of flying white water.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ she cried, as he yelled, ‘Full ahead – both!’ and the engines roared into full power.

  ‘I’ve seen too many decent destroyer skippers sunk to the bottom for going to rescue casualties first. That’s just what those Hun swine want. A stationary ship making a beautiful target as she picks up the men from the water.’