Strike from the Sea (1978)

by Reeman, Douglas

  He did not need to be popular, Ainslie told himself; he just had to be good.

  Aboard even the largest submarine the gunnery officer’s work was limited. He was usually required to do several other jobs as well, from watchkeeping to taking boarding parties aboard suspicious-looking merchantmen. Tigress’s deck gun, for instance, had been a small four-inch weapon. Soufrière’s massive twin turret was little different from that of a heavy cruiser where Farrant would be much more at home.

  He came on to the bridge, a pistol at his hip, his cap tilted across his eyes as if it were already broad daylight. He was thin and tall, with a narrow face which rarely smiled.

  Farrant said, ‘You wanted me, sir?’

  ‘Yes, Guns. You’ve got your people ready?’

  Farrant looked at him, his eyes hidden. ‘Yes, sir.’ It sounded like ‘of course’. ‘Two Brens, the rest with sub machine-guns.’

  More light grew and spread across the dawn sky, with tiny, fleecy clouds here and there reflecting the greater darkness of the sea. It was a damn good spot to complete some makeshift repairs, Ainslie thought. In half an hour the old Kalistra’s slow approach would have been sighted and reported.

  He said, ‘It’s possible that the French skipper may have set scuttling charges.’

  He waited for some comment from Farrant, whose life, after all, would be at the greatest risk if that happened.

  When he said nothing Ainslie added, ‘Use your own judgement, but I want no unnecessary shooting.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Farrant’s mouth opened and closed with the precision of a rifle bolt. ‘Is that all, sir?’

  ‘Yes. Go and join your men.’

  He glanced past Quinton and Forster into the wheelhouse. It was strange to see British sailors where the native hands had been. Gosling, the coxswain, was at the wheel, his belly against the brass boss as if for support. Menzies, the yeoman, on the opposite wing, a telescope trained towards the island. On the untidy foredeck, dotted along the bulwarks and behind the windlass, other kneeling and crouching figures revealed themselves in the growing light.

  The ancient tramp steamer was not what they were used to, but even in the savagery of the Atlantic many British sailors were putting up with ships long due for the scrapyard.

  Forster said, ‘There’s a village on the southern side of the anchorage, sir. But there are two marks on the chart which could mean something.’

  ‘Thank you, Pilot.’

  Ainslie listened to the screw’s thrashing motion and tried to put himself in the submarine commander’s position. If Britain and not France had fallen, and he had found himself in a damaged sub on this tiny, useless island, would he have scuttled and left his company marooned and open to possible capture?

  He shook himself angrily. It was no good thinking like that. No bloody use at all.

  The sense of isolation and unreality set against the war he had so recently left behind became even more evident in the last few miles of the approach. Past a line of submerged reefs where the water looked like that in a Japanese painting, on towards some small fishing boats with batlike sails, motionless above their own reflections.

  The sun had risen to lay bare the ship and the island, pinning the men down in its grip behind their hiding places.

  Ainslie trained his glasses on the entrance and heard Forster say, ‘Port ten. Midships. Steady.’ And Gosling’s gruff acknowledgement as he eased over the wheel.

  The opening was still difficult to make out, the dipping headlands so close to one another that it appeared as if the ship was steaming for the beach.

  There were more craft in sight now, very small, for local fishing, or whatever they did to earn an existence.

  A voice-pipe whistled, and Menzies called, ‘Masthead lookout reports there are several boats moored in the entrance, sir.’

  Quinton breathed out slowly. ‘Now we know. They’re expecting us all right, but taking no chances.’

  Ainslie walked to the engineroom voice-pipe and blew down it. At any other time it would be comical to think of Halliday down there in the ancient, single-shaft engineroom. He was more used to thousands of horsepower and all that went with it to drive a modern submarine.

  ‘Chief? This is the captain.’

  Halliday answered, ‘Aye, sir. Everything all right up there?’

  ‘May be a spot of bother in about thirty minutes. Boats moored across the entrance. I might want full speed. Fast as she’ll go. Never mind the gauges.’

  He heard Halliday give a dry chuckle as he said, ‘Full speed. Aye, sir. Eight knots at a guess, and I’ll mebbee blow the bloody boilers doing that!’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  Ainslie closed the pipe and raised his glasses again.

  ‘Put some-hands up forrard, Number One. Have them stripped off, like a lot of waterfront layabouts. I want it to look as if we are going to anchor.’

  As Quinton hurried away Ainslie said to Voysey, the second coxswain, ‘Pass the word, PO, I’ll need the starboard anchor let out ready to drop.’

  The next few minutes were alive with preparations, as steam was raised on the capstan, and with a protesting clink of cable one anchor was lowered from its hawse-pipe. Occasionally, as the ship rolled, it boomed against the hull like a giant hammer on an oil drum.

  Gosling remarked dourly, ‘One good thump and the hook’ll come right through the bloody bows!’

  Ainslie made up his mind. A quick glance at his watch and a further one towards the island.

  ‘Slow ahead. Steer straight for the entrance, Swain.’

  The telegraph clanged, and Gosling pressed his belly harder against the wheel while he peered through the glass screen towards the gap and its small barrier of boats.

  Ainslie hurried down the ladder, the sun searing his shoulders like heat from a furnace door. Across the blistered deck and then up the iron ladder which mounted the foremast to the podlike crow’s nest above the derricks.

  Leading Seaman Calver, a gunlayer, was acting as lookout. Quinton would choose him. He had been one of the best in Tigress. Even his eyes, like pieces of pale glass, gave an appearance of alert watchfulness.

  ‘Here, Calver, lend me your glasses.’

  They were big, heavy ones, Calver’s trophy from a captured Italian torpedo boat. Ainslie trained them on the ledge of the crow’s nest and studied the entrance. It looked almost up to the bows through the powerful lens. He saw the boats, tiny like the others, some people standing up in two of them to watch the approaching ship.

  Calver said, ‘Don’t look like much, sir.’

  Ainslie bit back his disappointment. Once he had never believed it would work. Now, right on the doorstep, it all seemed wasted, a great big sham. He moved the glasses carefully, knowing they would soon need him back on the bridge. Clusters of huts, Forster’s village, swam into view, a few trees, more boats tied up to a pier. There were no beached boats, a sure sign that the water was deep inside the lagoon.

  But equally there was no sign of a submarine, of anything. Perhaps they submerged the boat during daylight? He dismissed the idea at once. The chart, and the two intelligence folios, were insistent that the bottom was too rocky. A submarine’s hull was tough, but not enough for that.

  Then he held his breath. There was a long building near the pier. Like a communal dwelling you often saw in Borneo. But it seemed wrong. Out of place.

  He thrust the glasses into Calver’s hands. ‘Keep watching. Don’t hesitate to call me if you sight anything.’ He met the man’s bright stare as he climbed on to the ladder. ‘Any damned thing!’

  The sun was so hot on his head and shoulders that he could barely keep up with his racing thoughts. As he clambered down the ladder he kept thinking of the strange longhouse. Natural enough in some places, but far too large for a small outpost like this.

  They would be watching the old Kalistra’s approach, waiting to see what she would do.

  He reached the bridge, gasping for breath.

  ‘Fetch the
master! Chop, chop!’

  Kalistra’s captain was under guard in the galley, and appeared between two seamen within a minute.

  Ainslie seized his arm and pushed him to the screen. ‘See those boats?’ He could feel the man’s fear, and hated himself for adding to his despair. ‘What do they want us to do?’

  The small man said brokenly, ‘Anchor, Kapitein! They will send someone –’

  Ainslie snapped, ‘Like hell they will. Get the Chief on the voice-pipe. Now.’

  The lookout on the port screen shouted suddenly, ‘Submarine surfacing, sir! Port quarter!’ He sounded as if he disbelieved what he saw.

  Quinton raised his glasses and exclaimed, ‘The crafty bastard! He must have been outside the whole time, stalking us!’

  Ainslie walked from the wheelhouse, ignoring the glare, the sudden anxiety all around him.

  Very deliberately he trained his glasses on the low, glistening fore-casing and the first hump of a conning tower as the submarine continued to flounder to the surface.

  Forster called. ‘Chief’s on the line, sir!’

  Ainslie watched the submarine, amazed he felt so calm. ‘Tell him I want full speed. He knows what to do.’ He lowered the glasses and looked at Quinton. ‘It’s not the Soufrière. It’s a Jap sub.’ He saw the swift understanding on Quinton’s dark features.

  Gosling reported, ‘Engine full ahead, sir.’

  Even the bridge was beginning to quiver as the old shaft worked faster and faster in response to Halliday’s efforts.

  Ainslie looked once again at the submarine, fully surfaced now. Tiny, white figures were flitting down from the conning tower towards a deck gun, and the ensign with its red rising sun insignia was floating above the periscope standards.

  ‘Steer for the moored boats, Swain. Pass the word forrard. Stand by to ram.’

  He looked across at Menzies. ‘What have you got there, Yeo?’

  Menzies showed his teeth in a fierce grin. ‘Thought you might need it, sir.’ He unrolled a new white ensign and looked at Ainslie with the same expression as a good gun-dog waiting for the order to retrieve.

  Voices echoed along the foredeck, and Ainslie saw Farrant and his men scurrying to their positions, weapons at the ready.

  It was too late now for any more surprises. The Japanese submarine had put paid to that.

  In the same level voice he said, ‘Very well. Run up the colours.’

  Then he walked to the forward screen and watched the entrance which appeared to be reaching out to embrace the ship like arms. The boats were still moored there, and the occupants seemed too stricken by the change of events to move.

  Quinton looked from the newly hoisted flag to the submarine and said, ‘I’ll bet that shook the bastards!’

  Then, like a great, rusting battering-ram the Kalistra’s stem smashed through the first two boats and hurled the others aside like empty crates.

  They were through.

  3

  Two Flags

  DOWN IN THE Kalistra’s engineroom it felt as if the ship was shaking herself to pieces, plate at a time.

  On one of the quivering catwalks, worn to a treacherous smoothness by many years and countless feet, Lieutenant Auguste Lucas, once an experienced engineer officer in the French Navy, watched the scene beneath him with rapt attention. He was a slightly built Breton of twenty-six, with a mobile, humorous face which set him completely apart from the grave-featured Halliday who was leaning on the shuddering throttle wheel, or his squat assistant, Sub-Lieutenant (E) Arthur Deacon. Lucas not only was French, he looked it. He could be nothing else.

  He still could not believe all that had happened to him. The sudden, chilling disbelief at the news that France had fallen. His first instinct had been to make for his home in Nantes to be with his parents and sister when the Boche marched in. Had he been in a French anchorage at the time he might well have done so, he was still not certain. But he had been in a British port, serving in a small coastal submarine employed on the North Sea patrol. That same night he had gone ashore to a mass meeting, more like a trade union gathering than anything to do with the Navy. It had been pitiful. The married men demanding to go home, the younger ones unsure, left naked by the abrupt surrender.

  A senior British naval officer had come to address them. Needless to say, he spoke no French, and the whole laborious appeal for loyalty, for the old esprit de corps, was mostly lost through an interpreter.

  Lucas had felt his hand waving in the air with the rest. Stay and fight. Stand together and join de Gaulle’s Free French.

  From then on he had been kept very busy, shutting his ears whenever possible to tales of the British taking over French vessels by force when their crews had demanded otherwise than to fight.

  Now, he was glad of his decision, although he felt he had still learned very little about his British counterparts. They were so mixed, often so unsure of themselves. They had courage, but were embarrassed if you told them so, and were likely to deride their own efforts at almost everything. But should an outsider dare to criticize, that was different. Bloody foreigners! What do they know?

  He peered down at the bottom of the engineroom. The bare light bulbs danced above their reflections on a swilling surface of scum and bilge water. Or, as was quite likely, he thought, they had already started to sink.

  Halliday shouted, ‘Stand by to ram!’ He glared through the steamy mist. ‘That means, bloody well hang on!’

  Lucas shrugged and gestured to some native stokers to stand clear of the clattering machinery. Ram? The Soulrière perhaps? He thought of Ainslie when he had first met the Free French officers who were to assist in this crazy task. Lucas had been prepared to dislike him. Ainslie must have had a good instinct for people, he thought. He had said, ‘Relax, gentlemen, I am a Scot. The Admiralty is taking no chances with you lot!’

  Lucas forgot England with its green fields and vapour trails high overhead where the young pilots fought their daily duels, as with the shuddering force of running aground the Kalistra smashed through the barrier of boats. Stokers yelled up through the steam like souls in hell, but the great shining shaft was still in motion, and as far as Lucas could tell, they were not foundering.

  Halliday bellowed, ‘Up on deck! They want you at the double!’ He gripped his arm as he dashed past, his hand leaving a black outline on the sleeve. ‘Watch yourself! I’ll need you later on!’

  Lucas grinned. He never really knew about Halliday. If he cared for his safety, or merely for his experience.

  The sunlight which greeted him was blinding, and as he was knocked sideways by a running party of armed seamen he was astonished to see the land right alongside.

  He saw the gunnery lieutenant, Farrant, hands on hips, one foot theatrically placed on a bollard, watching the land and some bobbing pieces of timber which must once have been boats.

  Farrant he did not like. The fact he was British had nothing to do with it. There were Farrants in every navy.

  Farrant looked at him, his eyes cold. ‘About time.’

  Lucas mopped his face. ‘So?’

  More running feet, this time the first lieutenant’s. He shouted, ‘We’re going alongside, starboard side to.’ He swung Lucas round and pointed at the gaunt pier, the longhouse beyond. ‘The skipper thinks the sub’s in there.’

  There were shouts of alarm as the deck gave a violent lurch before coming upright again. An uncharted rock, a wreck, nobody knew, and it was too late anyway.

  Quinton turned to run back to the bridge. ‘By the way, fellows, there’s a Jap sub astern of us!’ Then he was gone.

  Lucas watched his companions as they gathered along the bulwark and guardrail, their faces set, and no longer cheerful. They were all looking at the land, the village and the groups of people who were stampeding away from it.

  Crudely, without warning, the war, not of their making, was amongst them.

  Farrant was saying to his petty officer, ‘Now, Osborn, I want you to take the covering party. Hav
e some grenades ready. You know the drill.’

  Somewhere through the drifting funnel smoke and above the din of fans and racing machinery came a shot.

  Farrant stared at the petty officer with astonishment. Osborn’s expression matched his, as with a gasp he dropped to his knees, a great pattern of blood spilling from his stomach and covering his webbing belt and weapons like paint.

  Lucas ran to help him, but a seaman yelled hoarsely, ‘No good, sir! ’E’s done for!’

  Lucas could scarcely believe it. A man had just died.

  He turned as Farrant said harshly, ‘From your people, I should think. Better hide your rank markings. They might not take kindly to de Gaulle’s warriors.’

  Lucas swung away, knowing that if he said anything to Farrant it would lead to far worse. He felt like killing him.

  From his vibrating viewpoint on the bridge Ainslie had seen some of it and had guessed the rest. He would make Farrant’s ears burn later, but right now . . .

  Forster shouted, ‘There she is, sir!’ He ducked as some bullets smacked into the wheelhouse or shrieked over the water like demons. ‘Look!’

  The Kalistra’s failure to anchor, and then her dramatic entrance plus the additional appearance of the Japanese submarine must have caught everyone off guard.

  As Ainslie ordered the wheel hard over, and the old ship staggered round towards the pier, he saw the giant Soufrière for the first time. Beneath a framework of matting and bamboo, her hull trimmed as high as possible, she looked even larger in the confined space.

  There was froth along one of her saddle tanks, and for an instant Ainslie imagined she was moving and began trying to plan how he would stop the freighter’s charge and turn her in time to prevent escape. But it was probably a generator or a pump, for when he saw the mooring lines to the pier he knew she was in no state to slip free.