He saw Chalmers staring at it with sick fascination and yelled, ‘Get down there! Take a spare hand from the Chief and put that fire out!’
A bullet smacked through the flag locker and Carroll stared at the neat hole it had left within six inches of his thigh. He exclaimed, ‘I’ll go!’
Chalmers staggered to the bridge gate. ‘No! I’m all right!’ Then he was gone, half falling into the smoke as Pellegrine put the boat into another fierce turn. More crashes shook the hull, but every gun was still in action.
‘Hard a-starboard!’ The smoke was getting worse. Devane squinted at the veering shape of the enemy vessel. ‘Depth charges!’
But Lincke was ready. As two more charges exploded, hurling up twin columns of spray, he swung away, the E-boat’s hull barely splashed as the water cascaded down again.
Pellegrine grunted with pain as a wood splinter, gouged from the bridge itself, struck him in the forehead like a barbed dart.
When Metcalf tried to help him he snarled, ‘Leave it be! I’m still alive!’
Metcalf ducked as more splinters of steel and wood shrieked above the bridge, and then heard Devane yell, ‘Help Bunts!’
Carroll had fallen awkwardly, with one leg bent double beneath him. Between clenched teeth he gasped, ‘Shot right through! Get a dressing, mate!’ Then he fainted.
As the MTB, her motors roaring and bellowing in protest, thrashed round yet again, matching burst for burst with the E-boat, throughout her small hull her company fought their individual battles.
In the blazing galley Lieutenant Chalmers and a youthful stoker used axes and extinguishers to quell the fire and to free a wounded seaman who had been carried below for safety.
The engine room, half filled with smoke and fumes, was punctured in several places, but the three motors were still holding their revolutions as Ackland, his boiler-suit soaked in water from a leaking pump and spray which had burst through the deck above, darted around them like a tortured slave. His young helper, an ERA whom Ackland had already ear-marked for promotion, rolled in the bilge waste and leaking oil, his arms outspread as if he had been crucified. A heavy bullet had hit him in the back and he had died alone, his cries unheard in the roar of motors he had served so well.
The Oerlikon gunner too was dead, and had to be dragged bodily from his harness before Torpedoman Pollard, the boy from the Newcastle slums, who cheeked the officers and all authority with supreme confidence, could take his place and reopen fire.
Lieutenant Dundas rushed to the bridge to replace Chalmers and looked at the dead seaman and at Carroll whose leg was wrapped in a heavy shell dressing.
He exclaimed, ‘We’re taking water, sir!’ He swung away, retching, as a cannon shell exploded beside the port machine-gun and threw the man’s leg into the air like a lump of meat.
Devane did not answer. The E-boat was turning again. Lincke had dropped a smoke float as an additional shield as he prepared for another attack.
The starboard machine-guns fell silent and he heard the seaman sobbing and blaspheming as he struggled to deal with the stoppage. The weapons had overheated, had fired almost every belt of ammunition.
Once again the hull gave a violent jerk, and Devane knew they had glanced off part of the sunken E-boat.
Dundas ran to the voicepipe and then repeated, ‘Chief says the starboard rudder is sheered off and the starboard outer shaft is overheating fast!’
‘Stop starboard outer, Swain.’
Devane felt it like a wound in his body. It was all for nothing. He saw the E-boat’s striped outline moving rapidly through the drifting smoke, passing over two swimmers and forcing them under the hull as she headed straight for the MTB.
‘Belay that order! I want full revs!’
Devane ignored the startled glances and ran to the opposite side. Below him he saw the dead machine-gunner dangling from the shattered guns, the blood from his severed leg joining with that of Leading Torpedoman Kirby who had been killed a few seconds earlier.
Lincke was there. Still coming. Let him come.
‘Straight for him!’
Devane ducked as bullets cracked into the bridge. One hit Carroll, killing him as he lay unconscious from his wound, so that he died quietly like the man he was. The man who had taken his horse and cart around the houses, chatting up the young wives and dreaming of the day he could join the Navy.
In his engine room Ackland watched his gauges and knew that the speed was already dropping away. Outside, in that other world of death and stark colour, he knew the moment was close. He thought of the garage where he had worked on the Great North Road, the day-trippers in the sunshine, the bad days when nobody came. Devane wanted full speed. It would destroy the motors and probably the whole bloody boat. He sighed. What the hell. They were all done for anyway.
Dundas shouted, ‘Power’s dropping!’
Devane nodded, his eyes smarting from the smoke, from the despair, as he accepted that it was almost done.
The big E-boat had turned yet again, so that she appeared to be at right angles to the port bow, her guns flashing, although her after weapons were badly damaged and firing only in spasmodic bursts.
‘Six-pounder’s jammed, sir.’ Metcalf stood looking down at the forecastle, his voice husky and unsteady.
Devane looked past him, expecting to see Beresford dead. But he was sitting with one hand on the gun, the barrel of which still pointed away from the enemy. Its power had gone. It was useless.
‘What’ll you do?’ Dundas was trying to tie a handkerchief around his wrist with his teeth.
Devane watched the slowly moving E-boat. Lincke was that confident. It was time for the kill, and he was savouring it. He could even see Lincke’s white cap on the bridge as he climbed up to watch. As Devane had done during the raid on Mandra.
He’s not even going to let me surrender. Would I have done the same for him?
Devane watched the forward guns on the E-boat’s protected deck train round until they seemed to be pointing directly at him. He felt the motors slowing down, heard the uneven rattle from the damaged shaft.
Shoot, you bastard! It’s what you wanted. A sitting duck.
The snarl of racing engines cut above the other sounds, and as Devane ran across the bridge he saw Mackay’s MTB tearing through the smoke, her guns flashing vividly as she cut through the wall of smoke like a rocket.
Devane saw it all in a split second. Lincke’s figure swing round, his hat flung from his head as the E-boat’s bridge was raked by tracer.
Lincke’s boat had been more badly damaged than he had realized. As Mackay’s MTB tore past with all her weapons firing, her forward guns, which had been pointing so confidently seconds before, lifted slowly towards the sky and stayed there.
After what seemed like an eternity, someone hoisted a scrap of white bunting over Lincke’s bridge, and a few figures emerged from below, their hands held high above their heads while they waited beside their dead and wounded.
Devane stared at Dundas for several seconds. ‘Stop engines. Report on damage.’
He removed his cap and stood on the gratings to watch the other MTB moving alongside the surrendered E-boat. Mackay’s Chief had been a good one, just as Ackland had said. Another minute, seconds even, and. . . . Devane looked along his battered command, at the survivors who were picking their way over the torn planking and broken guns. But no better than any of mine. No better.
He glanced at Metcalf, shaking now with shock and the surprise at being alive. At Pellegrine, worn out and leaning on the wheel, a splinter still bloodily implanted in his forehead. He saw Chalmers, black from head to toe, leaning against the side of the bridge, his burnt hands resting at his sides. He had beaten the fire and, with it, his fear.
Beresford climbed up beside him. ‘Red cut it a bit fine.’ He tried to light a cigarette then grimaced. ‘Sorry. This place stinks of petrol!’
Devane watched Dundas’ features as he returned.
Dundas said, ‘The Chief can
get the pumps working, sir, but he can’t manage more than ten knots.’
Devane turned as the other MTB thrashed astern from the motionless E-boat. Mackay had placed demolition charges, and the German survivors would have to manage on their rubber rafts until help arrived.
Dundas asked, ‘Didn’t you want to go over and see Lincke, sir?’
‘He’s dead.’ Devane watched the MTB turning bows on towards him. ‘It’s better not to see your enemies, Roddy. They often look too much like us.’
A light blinked across the water and Devane said, ‘Answer him, Bunts.’ It came crowding in, catching him unawares as it always did at times like these. ‘I forgot.’
Dundas triggered off the Aldis and then said, ‘From Kestrel. What orders?’
They looked at each other, and did not even turn when the demolition charges in Lincke’s E-boat exploded deep in the hull.
‘Tell Red Mackay, thank you very much for your timely help.’ He looked up at the sky, almost dark now and ready to hide the brutality of battle. ‘Orders? We’re going home. Just tell him that.’
Petty Officer Pellegrine stood back stiffly and fingered the splinter gingerly. ‘’Ere, young Metcalf. Take the wheel. Keep station on Kestrel. I’m goin’ to sit down.’ He gave a slow grin. ‘You did well, son.’
Devane gripped the screen and felt Merlin shivering to life again. So did you.
The clouds touched the horizon, and soon the two little ships were lost in darkness. Going home.
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Epub ISBN: 9781407010229
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First published by Arrow in 1982
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Copyright © Highsea Authors Ltd 1981
Douglas Reeman has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
First published in the United Kingdom in 1981 by Hutchinson
Arrow Books
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ISBN 9780099283805
Torpedo Run (1981) Page 30