Torpedo Run (1981)

by Reeman, Douglas

  He heard steps behind him and somehow knew it was Lieutenant Rodger.

  Devane said, ‘She’s sinking fast now. No need for a demolition charge.’ He turned and looked at the lieutenant. ‘Get us out of here.’ He saw the man’s gaze dart to the blackened and punctured bridge. ‘You’re in command now.’

  He followed Rodger across to the other boat and watched the two hulls, the old enemies, drift apart.

  As the MTB’s screws thrashed the sea into lively froth Devane climbed to the bridge, the unlit cheroot still in his mouth.

  Alone, in spite of the men around him, Metcalf sat on a vibrating hatch cover and stared at the E-boat as she dipped further and further, the sea flowing towards her bridge as if the water was moving uphill.

  He had been there. On that bridge and at the wheel. The captain had trusted him. Even the grumpy old coxswain.

  The MTB gathered speed and headed swiftly away from the land. Astern of her the sea was empty once again.

  Captain Barker stood in the dead centre of his office, his severe features fixed in a rare smile. The smile weakened as Devane entered the room and waited for Beresford to close the door behind them.

  Being here was almost the worst part, Devane thought. Incredibly, the passage back to Tuapse had gone without incident, and even the carefully prepared rendezvous with a force of Russian patrol boats and aircraft had worked like clockwork. The sea had remained calm, so that a quick stop to take on fuel from an adapted tanker, while the watchful fighter-bombers had snarled overhead, had been completed undisturbed.

  At any other time he would have been jubilant, the success of the operation rising to soften the hurt, the pain of those who had died in battle.

  He was so fatigued he felt like dropping to his knees, and yet he was afraid of what sleep would bring to torment him. All the way back to Tuapse he had kept busy, too busy to give time to whatever it was which awaited him. He had not even sought the solitude of the MTB’s wardroom, had not washed or shaved. The longest part of the journey had been right here in Tuapse. The walk from the jetty to this office. The other MTBs had been at their moorings, their companies waving and cheering as he walked past them like some returning warrior. Hector Buckhurst had pumped his hand, and Beresford had fallen in step beside him, as if to cushion him from the welcome.

  Nothing had made much sense until Beresford had said gravely, ‘Before you see Captain Barker, John. Parthian was out to help with the patrols. Your own boat ran into a Jerry.’

  They had both stopped dead as Devane had swung towards him.

  ‘What happened?’ Devane had gripped his arm fiercely. ‘Tell me!’

  Beresford had described the incident with brief clarity. The signal from the ditched airmen, Merlin’s search through the sea mist, and the last part when the MTB had been pounced upon by the E-boat.

  Beresford had finished with, ‘It could have been a whole lot worse, John. By rights they should all have bought it. But a Russian submarine surfaced in the vicinity, quite by accident as it turned out, she had battery trouble, and she whistled up air support. The Jerry raked Merlin from bow to stern and then made off like a bat out of hell.’

  Together they had walked to the small dock which was like the bottom half of the letter L. Buckhurst’s mechanics and artificers were working busily on the dried-out MTB, but the signs of the encounter were starkly visible. Without leaving the jetty Devane could see the splintered mahogany planking, the dark stains where men had been cut down by flying metal.

  As he had stared at the boat he had listened to Beresford’s even tones as he described the aftermath. Lieutenant David Seymour very badly wounded, a seaman named Nairn missing. The helmsman, Able Seaman Irwin, critically wounded, who had died on the way back to base.

  ‘I must see David.’ It was all he had found to say.

  Beresford had led him away from the dock. ‘Roddy Dundas has gone to the hospital with him. They can do wonders these days.’

  ‘He was going to be a writer, did you know that?’

  ‘Everyone did.’ Beresford had forced a smile but it would not hold.

  ‘No hands, you say. Poor David.’

  Now, as he stood beneath Barker’s glaring lights, he could still not accept it. He felt bitter and cheated. All he had thought about was the attack on Mandra. Yet while it had been going on David had been crippled. It would have been fairer if he had died.

  Barker said crisply ‘Good to see you back! God, the whole place is talking about it. The HQ ship destroyed and at least two warehouses of military equipment blown up as well. I wish to high heaven I had been there to see it! There are strong indications that the German commandant of the base, a rear-admiral no less, was killed in the raid!’

  Devane looked at him emptily. ‘I’m glad of that.’ He ignored Beresford’s warning glance. ‘We lost a lot of good men. Lieutenant Home was one.’ He wanted to look at the ground but did not dare in case his control broke. ‘He saved my life, did you know that?’

  Barker’s smile looked unreal. ‘How could I? But the job was done, and that’s the main thing.’ He rubbed his hands together with a dry sound. ‘We’ll drink to it later on. It’s a bit early for me just now.’

  Devane said, ‘Not for me. I think I shall probably get very drunk. After I’ve discovered what happened to Merlin, that is.’

  Barker turned and fiddled with some signals on his desk. ‘Bad business. But it happens. Two boats meeting. One always has to be the first to act. Pity it wasn’t ours.’

  ‘It was Lincke. It must have been.’

  Barker thrust his hands into his pockets and pouted. ‘Well, we can’t be certain.’

  Beresford said, ‘I think we can, sir. Russian Intelligence insist he was sighted in the area. On his own too. Unusual.’

  ‘Very.’ If only the tiredness would let go. Devane tried again. ‘We need more boats. We must have support.’

  ‘I’ve been telling Ralph here the same thing.’ Barker tried to relax. ‘A proper staff, minds working as one to –’

  They jumped as Devane slammed his hand down on the chart table. ‘I said boats, not bloody desk warriors, sir!’ He stared at his own hand, grimy with oil, with another man’s blood. The dirt of war.

  He hurried on without waiting for Barker to recover. ‘I hear the Germans have got F-lighters now, and probably more E-boats. Well, if they can get reinforcements, and God knows they’re fighting us and the Russians on two fronts as it is, surely we can get some?’

  He moved restlessly to a wall chart and stared at it unseeingly.

  ‘It was Lincke. It’s got his stamp. He’s worked it all out for himself!’

  Barker said sharply, ‘The operation at Mandra was a complete success. If indeed Lincke’s attack on Merlin was planned, it hardly makes up for the destruction of their Rumanian support base, does it?’

  ‘Lincke won’t care.’ Devane looked at Beresford. How much did he know? ‘He’s out to destroy Parthian. It’s personal to him. So we must get replacements. The medals can wait, in my opinion.’

  Barker said smoothly, ‘You’re tired. It’s been a great strain for all of us.’

  Devane smiled. ‘I apologize, sir. That was thoughtless of me. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve things to do. Letters to write, a report to be completed.’

  ‘In that case,’ Barker seemed momentarily at a loss, ‘you had better carry on. I shall draft a signal to the Admiralty immediately.’

  Devane stood in the doorway, the room swaying before his eyes.

  ‘More boats, sir. This is only a beginning. Lincke never gives up. I know him like I know myself.’ He jammed his stained cap on his head. ‘Well, I don’t give up either.’

  The door slammed and Barker stared at Beresford as if he had just heard some terrible obscenity.

  Beresford said quietly, ‘Let it drop, sir. He’s had about all he can take. You can’t go on for ever, mission after mission, and still be expected to say “sir” in the right places.’ He watched Barker’s face
set for a new argument. ‘The raid was a knockout. The end justifies the means. It must. Otherwise. . . .’

  Barker sounded ruffled and unconvinced. ‘It wouldn’t have done in my day, I can tell you.’ He smiled brightly. ‘Enough said. Get Kimber. I must word my dispatch very carefully. This’ll make them sit up and take notice.’

  Beresford walked out of the office, but paused outside the smaller one used by the flotilla’s senior officer.

  Devane sat at the table, his face flat on his forearm, his cap lying on the floor nearby. He must have been near collapse even when he had been asking about Seymour and the others. It was the first time Beresford had ever seen him give in like this and he felt strangely moved.

  He crossed to his safe and unlocked it very quietly. Then he took out a full bottle of Scotch and a glass, pausing only to ensure that the sealed letter was still there.

  He put the whisky on the opposite side of the table and said softly, ‘Best medicine in the world. Fm just sorry it’s all I can do for you, old son.’

  Then, just as carefully, he closed the door and walked away.

  14

  Drifter

  The two motor torpedo boats drifted about half a cable apart, their weapons and upperworks like burnished copper in the strange sunset. There was a late breeze, but not enough to break the regular swell into whitecaps, so that the water appeared to be breathing, lifting each boat without effort before moving on towards the shadows.

  Devane rested his elbows below the screen and stared at the horizon. Waiting and listening. Hoping for an unwary enemy. The deadly game which never ended.

  He heard the men on watch moving below the bridge, the occasional snatch of conversation, but few laughs. Ever since the raid on the Rumanian anchorage and the destruction of the enemy HQ ship Devane had shifted from one boat to the next in his small flotilla. So that he would get to know his command better, and they him. Or was he deluding himself? Perhaps he needed to stay aloof and at arm’s length, dreading the personal contact which had brought him so near to cracking when Home had died.

  This was Harrier, Lieutenant Willy Walker’s boat. But in the fading light it could have been almost any MTB anywhere. Oiled weapons, dull paintwork, faces searching the horizons, the skies, each other.

  Merlin was still in dock at Tuapse, and Devane was thankful that Dundas was with her, and away from him. It was something he felt but could not explain.

  He glanced abeam at the other boat as she lifted and dipped in a web of her own phosphorescence. Buzzard, with her scarlet number 4 painted on her spray-dappled hull. How quickly time passed, how soon the faces became blurred. Harry Rodger was in command of Buzzard. Did he still expect to see Home on his bridge, hear his step on the ladder during the night watches? Home had died nearly two months ago. It did not seem possible.

  Weeks of patrolling, boredom and the occasional carelessness which had been shattered by the nerve-stopping clatter of cannon fire or the searing glare of the enemy’s star shells.

  Along the Eastern Front the two great armies had stirred, as if each dreaded the merciless grip of ice and slush which the winter would soon bring to torture them.

  Dog-fights by day, the clouds blinking to artillery duels by night.

  But at sea the war was different. Searching for scattered convoys, rounding them up and escorting them to safety. Hunting the enemy’s light forces, exchanging rapid fire, then fading into the night even before a kill could be confirmed.

  The news of the Allied landings in Italy at Salerno had changed little here, Devane thought. They had become too involved with their own restricted war, and from their isolation had grown a fanatical and ruthless determination to seek out and destroy the enemy at every opportunity.

  Goaded by Captain Barker, Parthian had been switched from one sector to the other, so that sometimes it was hard to know which the British seamen hated more – Barker or the enemy.

  They had had successes along the way. F-lighters sunk in a fight which had been at less than twenty yards range. Two heavy transports stalked and torpedoed within a mile of a safe harbour. This boat had shot down a German bomber, Mackay’s had sunk two converted gunboats and a lighter filled with oil.

  And each move made by Parthian seemed to be matched by Lincke’s Seeadler. The Germans had become very adept at using a single E-boat to cause panic amongst a Russian convoy, then, while the escorts struggled to restore order, Lincke’s striped E-boats thundered out of the darkness and painted the sea with fire and livid explosions. A small fragment of a very big war, one which might barely warrant a mention on the world scene, but to the officers and men of Parthian it was very real indeed.

  Devane thought of Claudia, as he often did during moments of illusory peace like this. She had written twice to him, but her letters had been vague, devoid of the warmth which had filled him with hope. She was in Cairo. A friend of her dead husband had pulled strings and had got her a job at some regimental office.

  If only he could see her. He had written to her, but what was there to tell? She knew better than many what their war was about. To describe it would seem like enjoyment, but to stay silent was a lie.

  Perhaps she had found someone else? Devane felt the familiar pain as he allowed the thought to hurt him again. And why not? A moment of love in some cheap hotel was hardly an offer for a girl like Claudia.

  He heard Walker step up beside him, saw his familiar yellow scarf pale against the water abeam.

  ‘All quiet, Willy?’

  Walker sucked on an unlit pipe and nodded. ‘Might get a sniff tonight, sir. Jerry’s been pushing storeships into the Crimea. Getting jumpy about Ivan making an attempt to retake the bloody place, I expect.’

  Devane removed his cap and ran his fingers through his hair. The enemy-occupied coast was only forty miles away. Soldiers and equipment, airstrips and camouflaged field guns. All facing south and east. Waiting for it. Dreading it.

  To the north the German armies were in retreat, but contesting every foot of the way. Only here, in the Crimea, the hinge of the war, were the Germans holding fast. If the Russian army could force the strait and gain a beach head on the peninsula, the whole front would crumble. It said so in all the reports, and Barker’s little coloured flags left no room for doubt.

  But the Russian high command still seemed unwilling to use the Allied successes in Sicily and Italy for that final, necessary pivot. They spoke of next year, or waiting for the coming winter to wear down the last German resistance, their dwindling stocks of fuel and supplies.

  Even the air felt different, Devane thought. Cold at night, and it was not yet October. The boats too were feeling it – leaks, wear and tear, shortages of spare parts – and Buckhurst was full of complaints and moans which he was normally loath to express in front of Captain Barker.

  Barker’s promised expansion had made a modest beginning. A couple of lieutenants for his operations section, another engineer to assist Buckhurst’s department, and some spare ratings for the boats themselves.

  As Pellegrine had dourly commented, ‘All we want is a few Wrens an’ it’ll be just like bloody ’ome!’

  But no more boats had been earmarked for the Black Sea’s forgotten war. They were needed elsewhere. In the Med, where it was rumoured that German resistance would stiffen once the Allied advances in Italy were contained or slowed by bad weather. In the Channel too they would already be preparing for the big one. The invasion of Northern Europe.

  Walker sensed his mood and added quietly, ‘D’you think we’ll get a chance to finish here soon, sir?’ He gestured disdainfully beyond the corkscrewing bows. ‘Let the pongoes fight it out. Leave us out of it.’

  Devane smiled. ‘It will have to be soon. The Germans have not been getting naval reinforcements lately. They’re like us. Jumpy.’

  He thought suddenly of his visit to the military hospital to see David Seymour. The Russian medical staff had been gravely confident that he would recover from his wounds. Not until Devane’s visit wa
s over had a senior doctor told him that Seymour had tried to kill himself.

  In some ways that was no worse than seeing him. Shrunken, eagerly peering at his visitors as Devane and Mackay had stepped into the small, crowded ward.

  It had been difficult not to look at the bandages where his hands had once been, to search for the youthful confidence which he had always shown in the past.

  Now he was on his way home. To what?

  Devane said, ‘We’ll do a listening-watch for a while, then sweep to the nor’-west. Maybe some of their coastal craft are on the move. Might bag one if we’re lucky.’

  So casually said, but that was how it had to be. If you thought too much about the Seymours of this war you’d be ready for the chop yourself.

  After this patrol he would be returning to Merlin. Dundas was feeling Seymour’s loss very badly. Blaming himself. He had been in command. The blame always rested there, no matter how unfairly.

  Barker had promised a new officer for Merlin. Somebody from the Levant, another misfit probably. Barker never let up, ignoring their dislike, overcoming every objection. As they hardened to the unceasing patrols and close-action attacks, he seemed to thrive. One seaman had said that Barker was too scared to walk alone at night in case one of the lads did for him. Maybe they needed men like Barker, Devane conceded. You did not have to admire him.

  He pushed Barker and his command bunker from his thoughts and said, ‘Not much visibility tonight, Willy. I think we’ll move in now. We can still rendezvous with Red Mackay at the end of his sector as arranged.’

  Walker showed his teeth in a grin. He understood. Impatient to move, frightened of no decision rather than the wrong one.

  ‘I’ll pass the word.’

  Alone again, Devane wiped his night glasses with some tissue, already damp in the cloying air.

  Two torpedoes, twenty-two young men, some very young, and the power and grace of a thoroughbred. No wonder they were never short of volunteers.

  ‘Ready, sir.’

  Devane hesitated, Beresford’s quiet briefing intruding into his thoughts. ‘What was that about lighters, Willy? The intelligence report before we sailed?’