Decoy

by Dudley Pope

  The four of them suddenly became conscious of Hazell’s monotonous reports.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘HE red two oh, distant but closing…red three oh…still closing…think I can pick up the Asdic…red four oh…five oh… She’s passing on a reciprocal course, slow speed, Asdic on…’

  Jemmy stood up and walked the half a dozen paces to the hydrophone room and Hazell, seeing him coming, pulled off an earpiece and proffered it.

  Just then all of them heard the faint ping…ping… ping…ping… Yon walked over to the men at the hydroplane controls, although every piece of machinery in the boat was shut down. Men no longer used the head because pumping the toilet bowl would make an easily detectable noise.

  ‘Persistent bugger,’ the Croupier whispered. ‘A headhunter. Wants to add to his score.’

  ‘That’s what he’s paid to do,’ Ned said mildly.

  ‘Fact is,’ the Croupier muttered, ‘I tend to take against anyone trying to kill me, whether he’s a friend or foe.’

  ‘I’m more against him if he’s a friend,’ Ned said. ‘I wish I knew who is commanding this destroyer: it’d be fun meeting him afterwards and telling him the mistakes he made.’

  ‘If he makes any mistakes. He seems to have the textbook open at the right page!’

  Hazell said: ‘He’s turning…approaching…’

  Ping…ping…ping…and then, as the first of the sound waves hit the hull and bounced off, ping…ping…ping…ping… ping…ping…

  ‘Take her down to four hundred feet as soon as the first charges go off,’ Jemmy said.

  Yon opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, and said: ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  ‘I know what he was going to say,’ the Croupier whispered.

  ‘So do I,’ Ned said. ‘That with the charges set to go off at different depths, we’re liable to drop into a sandwich.’

  ‘Yes, and Yon said these ’orrible tubs are designed for a maximum of three hundred feet.’

  Ned dredged his memory of the last anti-submarine course he had attended at Portland, just before Dunkirk. ‘There’s some nonsense theory that the deeper you go and the greater the water pressure, the less the effect of the depth-charge. I don’t remember the figures, but the strength of the bang is lessened by the square of the distance, or something equally improbable.’

  ‘Yes, I did that course, too. Not very convincing. They’d done trials on an old wreck. I’d have thought the greater pressure of the water increased the pressure wave from the charge…’ His voice tailed off. ‘No, of course the greater water pressure would reduce the charge –’

  He broke off as the Asdic pings bounced off the hull as though a boy was throwing pebbles.

  ‘I bet that bastard wears the grommet in his cap,’ the Croupier whispered. ‘All Leslie Howard and Noël Coward and cucumber sandwiches. If you hear a bump it’s because he’s dropped a charge on to our bridge.’

  ‘Depth-charges…two…four… Just four, sir,’ Hazell said unbelievingly. ‘No, there’s two more. I bet someone’s getting a bottle over that!’

  Depth-charge patterns were very carefully worked out. Projectors could hurl them out to port and starboard, well clear of the ship, but the two intended to burst in the ship’s wake were usually rolled off the stern on special rails. Hazell’s ‘bottle’ referred to the Navy’s slang for a reprimand, which was usually a polite word describing a string of oaths from a petty officer.

  The first pair of explosions, separated by two or three seconds and showing that the hydrostatic valves were set to detonate them at different depths, seemed to be above and below the submarine, squeezing it as though it was a horseshoe being shaped on a blacksmith’s anvil. The lights went out again, glass clattered on to the steel floor plates, there was the sound of water spurting under pressure.

  The roaring finally convinced Ned that the boat was sinking and he thought bitterly that Clare would never know he had succeeded. A moment later he realized that most of the noise was more water sluicing into the ballast and trim tanks, and the electric motors were running to spin the propellers and, with the hydroplanes, drive the boat deeper – just as Jemmy had ordered moments ago.

  The next two explosions were the most violent yet: the whole boat creaked under the double blow, there was more water spurting, and Yon called for lights, and for damage reports.

  Jemmy’s face suddenly appeared on the far side of the control room, a satanic grin on his face, which was lit by the reflection of the torch he was holding up to the depth gauge.

  ‘Going down…fourth floor, ladies’ wear; third floor, garden implements; second floor, a bloody big pair of bangs!’

  And they came: even nearer than the first two, Ned was certain. The next two would be game and set: a thunderous crash, a roar of water, and it would all be over: the crushed U-boat would be on its way down and no one on board would ever know whether it reached the bottom or stayed suspended…

  But the depth-charges continued. Eleven…twelve… Ned found himself counting and at the same time listening to the mad dance of the deck plates, the groaning and crunching of the almost circular ribs which formed the skeleton of the boat over which the hull plating was welded (and riveted, too: God, if any of those rivets started popping).

  Yon was shouting orders again, the electric motors stopped whining, the emergency lights came on and Jemmy said in a low voice: ‘We’re at 425 feet. Just twenty short of the deepest I’ve ever tried.’

  The Croupier, who had also been listening to the creaking hull – to creaks that came from the pressure of the depth, as well as from the pressure waves radiating out from the exploding charges – said languidly: ‘Jemmy, old sport, I’m sure you don’t want a couple of surface types like Ned and me being able to make the same boast as you, so as far as we are concerned, 425 feet is quite enough, old son. Too much, some might say.’

  Jemmy was still grinning. Ned was startled at just how satanic he looked, and he glanced up at the depth gauge again, as if hoping it would show another fifty. ‘Lads, three of those charges burst below us.’

  ‘Let’s go up to fifty feet and fool them,’ Ned said promptly.

  ‘You won’t fool these boys, and they’d have to turn down the volume on their Asdic to stop being deafened by the returns.’

  ‘What are these metallic cracks we keep hearing?’ Ned enquired.

  ‘Metallic what?’ demanded Jemmy.

  ‘Well, sort of sharp creaks. There! And there!’

  ‘Oh, don’t let that worry you,’ Jemmy said, as though reassuring a nervous aunt having her first ride in an Underground train. ‘That’s just the water compressing the hull. Actually at this depth our cubic displacement will be less because of it.’

  ‘It’ll stunt our growth,’ Ned protested, and looked round at Hazell, who had again put on his headset, and was turning the dial of the hydrophone, hunting for sounds and reminding Ned of an old man with an ear trumpet.

  ’No HE, sir,’ he said to Jemmy.

  Jemmy glanced at Ned. ‘Up to his old tricks, that destroyer: he’s sitting up there, a hand cupped behind his ear, just listening.’

  ‘Can he hear all this waterworks?’ Ned waved to the dozen or so streams of water criss-crossing the boat from dials and broken gauges.

  ‘No, but we’re mending ’em as fast as possible because our bilge pumps are noisy. Hello, Keeler, you look worried!’

  The Marine sergeant had just squeezed through the circular hatch and once inside the control room spotted Ned in the dim light and stood to attention. ‘Sorry to report a casualty aft, sir. Two, actually, both dead.’

  ‘No damage to the ship?’

  ‘Oh no, sir,’ Keeler said in a shocked tone. ‘No, a couple of Jerries who’d been a bit upset with that first lot of depth-charging got very agitated when they
heard the ’lectric motors start up with the second lot. Then when we started going deeper and things began creaking they started screaming and ran amok. Both were trying to open a valve, with all their mates screaming at them to stop. We didn’t know how urgent it was, sir…’

  ‘Knife?’

  ‘Only way, sir with both of ’em. We were getting a whiff of battery gas, so we didn’t want any sparks to fly – if you get my meaning, sir.’

  ‘Did it quieten down the rest of them?’

  ‘Oh yes, worked a fair treat, sir. They’d never seen commando knives before.’

  ‘Commando knifework, you mean! Very well, Keeler. Any ideas about the bodies?’

  ‘No hurry about them, sir: they don’t upset us, and they remind the rest of the Jerries to behave, or else’. Keeler grinned and continued: ‘Wish our chaps up there were not so good!’

  Ned pointed at Jemmy. ‘We’ve got a live one here, you know!’

  ‘Yes, I’ll remind our lads o’ that, sir.’ He turned to Jemmy. ‘Best o’ luck, sir. I’m a betting man meself, ’specially over the sticks.’

  Jemmy nodded in agreement. ‘This flat racing stuff is very tame. Start a book on how many depth-charges we’ll get!’

  ‘Oh, we have, we have, sir,’ Keeler assured him earnestly. ‘I picked thirty-eight. Reckon I’ve got a chance?’

  Jemmy nodded. ‘Twelve down and twenty-six to go, eh? Well, your guess is as good as mine.’

  With that a cheerful Keeler squeezed back through the hatch just as Hazell reported: ‘No HE except I can hear his pumps and generators. No direction, though: I think he’s right above us.’

  Jemmy said to Ned: ‘I was watching the sea water temperature as we came down that last hundred feet. By luck we’ve dropped into a cold layer, so his Asdic isn’t working so well. If we can stay in or under it, we should be all right. But if it slides around – they do, sometimes, nudged by currents – we may be all naked again, like the fan dancer whose ostrich feather moulted.’

  Hazell said: ‘HE effect sir, I think I heard splashes. Four – two and then two. Screws – increasing speed…’

  ‘If they sit there they’ll be blown up by their own charges,’ Yon said, a querulous note in his voice implying that by moving the destroyer’s captain was cheating.

  ‘Four,’ commented Jemmy. ‘They’re not sure.’

  The first explosion was enormous: Ned felt it slam up through his feet; it seemed to crush his chest while battering on his ear drums, and no sooner had the floor plates dropped back into position and the last piece of glass tinkled out, burst by the sudden and enormous pressure, than the second charge burst: a repetition which seemed certain to crush a boat already bruised and strained from the previous explosions.

  But there was Jemmy, inspecting gauges with his torch, and the other moving light was Yon. Both men were stepping round or ducking under spurts of water, and Ned realized that the other blobs of light were the torches of the two men who had been seated at the hydroplanes and were now busy shutting valves.

  Ned heard Sergeant Keeler calling from the circular hatch and he walked over to see what he wanted.

  ‘That German Engineer, sir,’ Keeler explained. ‘I know he was sort of collaborating with Mr Heath when we started. Now he’s all excited and keeps pointing along here and jabbering away. I think,’ Keeler said carefully, ‘that he’s offering to help. Anyways, I’ve brought him along so you can talk to him.’

  Keeler stood to one side and beckoned the figure behind him. The Croupier had materialized from somewhere and with a brief, ‘Leave him to me, Ned,’ started questioning the man, who kept on nodding.

  ‘Keeler’s right: the chap guessed we must have some leaks and is offering to help sort things out. Says he knows all the valves – yes, and where the spare glasses are for the broken sight valves and gauges.’

  ‘Very well, Keeler,’ Ned said. ‘You did perfectly right: we’ll keep him with us.’

  Keeler grinned contentedly as he returned to his prisoners. At that moment the third and fourth depth-charges exploded, but, compared with the first two, much less violently.

  ‘Two deep and two shallow settings,’ Jemmy said to Ned. ‘Hello, what’s old Helmut want?’

  The Croupier explained in English, and Jemmy gave a short laugh. ‘Can you beat it?’ he asked Ned. ‘Trying to keep any engineer away from his engines is bad enough, but keeping a German engineer away from his toys at a time like this! Yon! Your mate is back!’

  ‘Thank gawd for that. Tell him to get replacement glasses for these bloody gauges. We’re finding the shut-off valves.’

  The Croupier translated and the German happily hurried round, opening little lockers no one had noticed, and setting up the glasses like a barman expecting a rush of customers.

  Jemmy nodded his head at Ned, indicating the wardroom, and when the two were inside, Jemmy said: ‘I don’t believe in forecasting the result on the day of the race, Ned, but I think we’re nicely parked under a very thick cold layer. We’re probably about as deep as Herbert up there has ever chased anyone, and right now I doubt if he has the slightest idea where we are –’

  ‘But the first two of those last four!’ protested Ned.

  ‘He was just trying his luck: two set very deep – four hundred feet, I reckon, and that’s an absurd depth setting by normal standards – and the last two much shallower. Still deep, probably a hundred and fifty feet. Believe me, when you’re using only four charges instead of six, and at such settings, you’re groping.’

  ‘Steady on,’ Ned said cautiously. ‘Talk like that and you’ll get the bloody thing bouncing off the periscopes!’

  Jemmy shook his head cheerfully. ‘No, Herbert thinks he’s sunk us and is looking for oil and wreckage, or else he thinks this cold layer stretches for miles and knows he can’t cover the whole area to stop us sneaking away. So now we repair the bloody dials and things, tighten up the propshaft packing glands, get the cook to work providing grub – serve our chaps first – and as soon as it’s nightfall we’ll surface and begin our run for home in earnest. Sorry I let that sod catch me. In the Med the Teds didn’t have radar worth a damn. I was crazy to go up like that: the destroyer’s radar operator must have nearly died laughing when he saw our blip come up!’

  ‘That slurping of water,’ Ned said cautiously.

  ‘Just bilge water. All these gauges and dials peeing away – doesn’t amount to much, but you notice it sloshing about in the bilge. We’ll pump out in an hour or so, but we’ll give Hazell plenty of time with his hydrophone. He’s good at it, too.’

  ‘Wish we could get that bloody transmitter working.’

  ‘Don’t be crazy, Ned: like this we can choose where we go to. If their Lordships knew we had the boat, the cash register and the cookery book, they’d dream up some nonsense like making a rendezvous with a Sunderland and paddling the goodies over in a canoe, which sinks on the way. Let’s keep the ball in our court,’ Jemmy said firmly. ‘You’re the boss, but I’d sooner see you, the Croupier and me turn up at the Citadel in a taxi, the cash register in a suitcase – it’s already fitted in its own wooden box – and the cookery book in your hot little hands. No, it’s our bird; don’t let any of the other bastards claim it!’

  Ned carefully pencilled the lines on the German version of the North Atlantic chart, eastern section, used the dividers to measure off the latitude and longitude, and then wrote the figures on the chart.

  With nothing else to do, having taken three hurried star sights using the last of the horizon when an unexpected break in the clouds revealed them, he checked over his calculations. No, he had not made any silly error like adding seven and three and writing down nine.

  So now they were outside the Black Pit. Beyond it and on the British side of it, in fact. From now on their main enemy was Coastal Command – a Sunderland, a Liberator,
a tiny Hudson or even a Catalina diving on them out of a night sky using its radar. The U-boat had neither radar nor radar detector: the German Second Officer had described to Ned U-boat Command’s experiments with two different sorts of detector and how both had been given up when sinkings continued. It seemed that the British, realizing the U-boats began diving as soon as the radar detected them, had guessed that the Germans had devised some sort of detecting device, worked out what it was likely to be, and discovered it gave out some sort of oscillation. The cunning Tommies, according to the German Second Officer, then fitted their planes with a special receiver which picked up the oscillations and then flew round listening and with their radar switched off. The U-boats happily cruised along on the surface with their radar detectors switched on and, they thought, acting as some magic talisman. Suddenly they would have about a minute in which to realize that the Tommies had somehow detected them – obviously without using radar – and were dropping enough depth-charges to sink or damage them.

  Listening to the Second Officer’s story, Ned wanted to say, ‘I know the feeling,’ but thought better of it. They were in fact gradually approaching home – only it was an enemy coast! No one – ASIU, BP or the Admiralty – had anticipated that a U-boat’s wireless transmitter might not work; no one could imagine the lifeboat set being lost. It was inconceivable that Ned would have no way of warning anyone that he was approaching. For the want of a nail, the shoe was lost… And, he realized with a cold bitterness, for the want of a transmitter, Britain could lose the war: this U-boat now thundering along on the surface in the darkness of an ocean night had the key (how literally a key) to the Battle of the Atlantic, but no way of preventing her friends destroying her.

  Yet…yet…yet: he saw, like the faint glimmer of a distant fleck of phosphorescence, that there was a slight chance of passing the word without having a whole ship’s company watching and later gossiping. A slight chance and a massive risk. Would it work? He stood up from the chart table, jerked upright by the tension. The Croupier was asleep in his bunk after a tedious watch as they ran submerged, which for both Ned and the Croupier was a far greater strain than running on the surface. On the surface with the U-boat crashing along at near full speed, slamming into waves, slicing great swells in a welter of spray that flew up with the force of flying concrete, they could call on the experience of thousands of hours spent in destroyers and, in Ned’s case, MTBs in the Channel during the time immediately after Dunkirk.