Soft Target 05 - Blister

by Conrad Jones

  “I’m not happy about this voyage mate,” a signalman joined him at the rail. They stood next to each other and stared into the inky darkness. The ship swayed gently as she drifted on the ocean swell.

  “I’ve not been happy about this mission since the first time it was mentioned to me. It’s a bad one and I’ve known it since day one. When have we ever been ordered to sail in a circle on a ship with no name?” Ernie scowled as he spoke. He was known to his shipmates to be a harbinger of doom. His glass was always half empty instead of half full. This time though he had his shipmate’s ear.

  “What do you mean the ship has no name?” the signalman was confused. He had noted that the name of the ship had been painted over when they had boarded, but that was often done to confuse the enemy U-boats. The name painted out had seeped back through the paint, and the signalman recalled that it was just readable as the HMS Ely.

  “Did you see the name when we boarded?” Ernie whispered, as if Hitler himself could hear them. He was always full of gossip and conspiracy theories. If there was ever dissent amongst the able seamen then you could guarantee that Ernie had a hand in spreading the tales around the ship. Ernie was well respected by his shipmates because when he did have a theory he was usually right. He was also an exceptionally brave sailor. His superior officers would have given their brass buttons to have him in their crew.

  “Of course I did, she’s the Ely.”

  “Oh no, she isn’t,” Ernie whispered again. “The Ely was a new class frigate launched from Plymouth Hoe in forty one, and this tug is definitely not a frigate. This is a merchant ship that’s been painted to look like a warship. Look around you man she is not a frigate.” Ernie huddled closer to his shipmate. “Now you tell me why anyone would dress up a merchant vessel as a warship unless they were up to no good?”

  The signalman turned his head ninety degrees and studied the deck and its fittings. The more he looked the more convinced he became that Ernie was right again. The skeleton crew had been forbidden to venture below decks on this voyage, apart from the engineers who fired the ships powerhouse. That in itself wasn’t unheard of. Sometimes a valuable cargo or passenger was hidden from the crew by restrictions on access around the vessel, especially when a head of state was on board. The admiralty couldn’t risk the Germans finding out that they were carrying a high risk target when there were so many U-boats at sea.

  “Look at that foredeck gun turret,” Ernie gestured with a gloved hand. The signalman had been in the bridge for most of the journey and hadn’t had the opportunity to study the vessel in detail.

  “I haven’t seen a gunner like that before,” the signalman admitted with a slow shake of his head.

  “It’s a merchant ship I’m telling you, and that cannon is from the deck of a German U-boat. It must have been captured and then refitted onto this merchant ship. This is not one of her Majesty’s warships mate,” Ernie rubbed his chin and looked out to sea again. One of his pastimes on the long voyages that he had been drafted on was the study of the Royal Navy’s vessels, from aircraft carriers to the smallest launch. He knew them off by heart, and he knew where they had been in action and the details of how some of them were lost during the war years. The HMS Ely had been lost in the South Atlantic Ocean some months prior. Why the war office would go to all this trouble was beyond his comprehension, but it added fuel to the flames of rumour that the mission was to transport chemical weapons. The fact that the crew had been banned from descending below decks reinforced the point.

  “It’s a strange one sure enough,” the signalman agreed and took out his pipe. He filled the wooden bowl with fresh tobacco before lighting it. The smoke drifted toward Ernie and he welcomed the comforting smell.

  “What do you think we’re doing out here then? The ship is drifting,” Ernie asked as he filled his own pipe with his favourite blend of Condor tobacco.

  “I think this is a rendezvous point, and we’re here to meet another vessel, maybe the rumours are true and there are chemical weapons below, who knows?” the signalman speculated.

  “I’d agree with you except all the hatches are welded shut,” Ernie lit his pipe and puffed on it to make the tobacco burn.

  “The hatches are welded shut, why the bloody hell would they do that if we’re delivering something?” the signalman asked incredulously.

  “That’s my point, every hatch is welded closed. Whatever is in those holds isn’t coming out again without the help of a blowtorch.”

  “Maybe they don’t want anyone prying into the cargo.”

  “Maybe, but I’m not sure that I want to be a part of whatever it is that they’re up to,” Ernie replied.

  “Ours is not to question why, ours is but to do or die Ernie,” the signalman patted him on the back as he puffed his pipe again.

  Ernie heard a deep whooshing sound coming from the darkness. It was a sound that only a few sailors had witnessed and then lived to tell the tale. It was the sound of torpedoes approaching the drifting vessel at speed. The two shipmates stared into the blackness and they froze with fear as the white tracks of two torpedoes appeared in their range of vision. Ernie dropped his pipe and watched its red glow disappearing into the ocean below. Seconds later two huge explosions ripped the stern apart. Ernie grabbed the deck rail instinctively and held it as tight as he could. The concussion wave from the explosions hit them milliseconds after impact. Ernie felt his eardrums burst and the world went quiet instantly. He turned to his shipmate only to see that most of him was gone. His left arm was still gripping the rail but the rest of him had been blown overboard. Ernie noticed that the signalman had been wearing a wristwatch that his wife had sent to him for Christmas. It was a rare thing to see a wristwatch on anyone below the rank of captain in those days, and so it stuck in Ernie’s mind. Ernie felt the ship lurch violently and the rail he was holding buckled. His shipmate’s arm dropped off the rail into the bubbling water. He darted away from the rail and grasped a canvas sheet which covered one of the ship’s life rafts. The raft had been bolted to the deck in three places. Ernie shouted at the bridge but his cries went unheard. He knew that bolting lifeboats to the hull was only done when a ship was being scuppered. If there was no floating debris then no one would ever know where the ship had been sunk. Ernie turned and prepared to throw himself off the stricken ship into the sea when a third torpedo hit the stern and shattered the steel hull into metal confetti. Ernie was shredded by a wall of flying metal shards. The ship tipped almost vertically before slipping beneath the waves taking with her the deadly secret cargo that she carried, along with fourteen of her Majesty’s finest seamen.

  Chapter Five

  Sunnyside Rest Home, 2009

  The Sunnyside Rest Home was a modern red brick building with a black slate roof. It was two storeys high and had been built in an L shape. The reception area was similar to that of a motel, except the receptionist was wearing a crisp white nurses’ uniform. Beyond the reception desk was a small arcade of shops which serviced both the residents and their many visitors alike. Security was as tight as it could be considering that it was a busy residential home. It was a private concern which was open to the public. Each resident had their own one bedroom apartment which offered them their independence, but they were under the umbrella of a full time medical team that supplied and distributed all their required medication and care. Some of the elderly residents were bedridden while others used the facilities’ gymnasium every day. One of the fitter residents was eighty four year old Billy Wright.

  Billy had joined the Royal Navy when war broke out in nineteen thirty nine. He trained with thousands of other sailors at HMS Indefatigable. His father was an old seadog and he used his influence to convince his young son to opt for a career beneath the waves as a submariner. The logic was that Hitler’s navy would be less likely to torpedo him if he were deep beneath the surface, and the chances of him returning home to his family would be greatly increased. Today he was excited because he was to be visited by a journa
list from the Royal Navy who was coming to interview him as one of the few surviving submariners from the Atlantic fleet. He was immensely proud of his war record. Billy had been eighteen when he climbed into his first submarine as an eager junior officer. By the end of the war at the tender age of twenty four he was the navy’s youngest submarine captain. The British submarine fleet was responsible for the destruction of two million tons of enemy shipping, the sinking of fifty seven warships and thirty five German U-boat submarines. Submarine Commander Billy Wright had kept his ship’s log which documented every encounter he had ever been involved in throughout his naval career. He once had to turn over all of the sub’s paperwork to the navy’s record officials, something to do with the ‘Official Secrets Act’, but Billy always documented everything in duplicate so he’d retained his duplicate log for posterity. The log had remained Billy’s secret for decades and it had never once caused him any issues, until he began to receive letters from the son of a naval man who had been lost in the war. Billy read the first letter which disturbed him so much that he never read anymore of them. He marked them with ‘return to sender’ and never gave them a second thought.

  Billy had dressed in his Sunday best, suited and booted with his medal ribbon shining proudly on his chest. He sat and fidgeted nervously as he waited for the journalist to arrive. He was a punctual man and he was annoyed that the journalists were already half an hour late. They had probably been delayed by the snow and he would be alerted as soon as they arrived. The reception desk had a policy of checking visitor’s identification and then contacting the residents to let them know that their guests had arrived.

  His telephone rung and it startled him. He leapt to his feet and eagerly picked it up. He polished his medals with his sleeve nervously.

  “Hello Billy, your guests have arrived and they apologise for being late but they were delayed by the snow. Shall I send them down to you?” the medical receptionist sounded cheerier than usual.

  “Guests, in the plural? I was only expecting there to be a journalist,” Billy said sounding surprised.

  “Well he has photographer with him too,” she informed him curtly, reverting back to her usual grumpy personality.

  “Oh. I see, well you had better send them down here then,” he said running his hand over his thinning silver hair instinctively. The mention of the word photographer invoked a natural vanity.

  “They’ll be with you any second, enjoy,” she warbled. Billy looked at the handset as he heard her disconnect. She had either had a personality transplant or she had gotten laid, one or the other.

  A loud knock at the door disturbed his thoughts and he looked in the mirror and straightened his tie before he headed for the door. Billy approached the door and was slightly irritated when his guests knocked loudly again. Before he could reach for the handle it was turned by someone from the outside and the door was flung open.

  “Just a minute, how dare you?” the old submariner bumbled as two burly men burst into the apartment. “When I was in the navy we were taught to wait until a door was opened before we were invited into.....,” Billy didn’t finish his sentence.

  The first man into the room had long hair swept into a dark ponytail. Billy instantly knew that he was not an enlisted sailor, journalist or otherwise. The man with the ponytail hit Billy square in the face. The thunderous blow floored him and broke his nose. The man’s huge fist split his top lip and cracked two teeth and his jawbone simultaneously. Billy could taste the coppery flavour of his own blood running down the back of his throat. He wanted to cry out but he was losing consciousness and could only manage a throaty gurgle. The man with the ponytail stamped down hard on his stomach. The vicious stomp crushed the wind from his lungs and Billy felt like he was going to suffocate. The second man grabbed him by the ankles and dragged him across the carpet. Billy grabbed at the furniture as he passed trying to break free, but every time he gained purchase ponytail stamped on his fingers. Billy could feel his skin being burned by the friction on the carpet and he arched his back to escape the agony. He dug his fingernails deep into the pile but the man was too strong and Billy was too old and frail to break free. Billy felt his index fingernail being ripped off as it stuck in the carpet pile. He tried to scream again but could only manage a garbled cry. Ponytail kicked him hard in the face. The impact shattered his cheek bone beneath the left eye socket and all but put paid to his feeble resistance. Submarine Commander Billy Wright lost consciousness.

  Chapter Six

  Liverpool Bay, December 14th 1943, 2nd Officer William Wright

  Billy Wright was still a very inexperienced young submariner, but with war raging at full pelt and Hitler’s ‘Unterseeboots’, or U-boats, wreaking havoc across the oceans of the world, good officers were hard to come by. Billy and his submarine crew had sailed from Portsmouth harbour two weeks earlier on a routine hunter mission, looking for U-boats and protecting allied convoys from German destroyers. The captain had received the details of a new mission ten days into the voyage. The details of the new mission had been secured in the submarine’s safe box upon departure and were only to be opened on command. They had been sealed in a brown manila envelope, and were only to be opened on the orders of the Admiral of the Fleet. Ten days into the voyage the order had come through that the captain was to replace his existing orders with the new ones in the safe box. The captain set new coordinates and the submarine began her new mission. No one but the captain knew where they were sailing. Billy had developed a good sense of direction, even beneath the waves. By his reckoning they had sailed south toward France and Spain, before navigating a wide ‘U’ turn which had put them on a course for the Irish Sea.

  The atmosphere on board had been tense. The uncertainty of any secret missions led to rumours and the sceptics on board had a field day speculating about where they were headed and why. Billy had overheard some of the crew discussing that they were heading on a secret mission to kill Hitler himself. Who was actually going to carry out the alleged assassination was beyond his imagination, but if it kept the men occupied then so be it.

  The air inside the submarine was dank and stale, a mixture of male sweat and diesel engine oil. Conditions were cramped, unhygienic, and privacy was nonexistent. This particular voyage had been made worse by an outbreak of food poisoning which in the confined space of a submarine was nothing short of a disaster. A rogue batch of pork pies which were meant to be a treat had been riddled with staphylococcus bacteria. The bacteria are carried by most people in their nasal fluids and are spread usually by poor hand washing procedures, or in this case by people sneezing into the pork mince as they prepared the pies. The effect of an outbreak of vomiting and diarrhoea in such confined quarters was devastating. No sooner had the submariners been laid up for forty eight hours or more as the bacteria passed through them, than they were re-infected by their shipmates as they contracted the virus too. The voyage was shambolic as men soiled their pants waiting in line for the toilets to become vacant. The smell inside the submarine was dreadful. The submarine commander had requested permission from the admiralty to put into port to seek medical attention and to disinfect the vessel, but permission was refused point blank. They could not deviate from their mission.

  On December the 14th the commander was taken ill for the second time of asking. He was confined to his quarters where he was squirting bodily fluids from both ends simultaneously. He called for his junior officer to be sent to his cabin. Billy Wright was recovering from his first dose of poisoning, but he was in much better shape than his superior officer. He could hear the commander retching as he knocked on the cabin door.

  “Enter,” the commander moaned.

  “You needed to see me sir,” Billy said. He was holding his breath to avoid having to smell the sickening mixture of fresh vomit and excrement. His own stomach was still queasy from the illness.

  “Come in and close the door William,” the commander said.

  “Yes sir.”

  “I need yo
u to take command William, read through this set of orders and match the detail to the charts. Once you have plotted the new coordinates onto the charts you must destroy the old ones. There can be no record of this voyage. You will need to memorise the charts as they cannot leave this cabin, do you understand?”

  “Yes sir,” Billy answered, although he didn’t really understand anything yet.

  “The admiralty is concerned that there are leaks in the ranks and that important naval data is being fed to the Germans.....,” the commander stopped mid sentence to vomit in the bucket which he had placed strategically next to his private toilet. That way he could vomit and excrete at the same time. His eyes streamed with tears at the effort and sticky globules of saliva dangled from the corner of his mouth.

  “Forgive me. The admiralty has information that the German Navy is disguising merchant ships as British warships and using them to transport spies to the mainland under the cover of darkness.” He retched again but this time nothing came up. “They are using Ireland as cover in daylight and then sailing into the Irish Sea at night.”