Storm Force to Narvik: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 1

by Alexander Fullerton

  “Sounds as if he’s seen her himself.”

  “He has. This last trip he went to look, to make certain. It’s why he was late returning.”

  “Well, please tell him I’m very grateful to him.” Nick looked at Torp’s less-than-happy face. “You dislike the idea of sacrificing your ship. I understand that. I’m very sorry there’s no other way of doing it.”

  “But maybe there is. I make the attack, I turn round and come out again, we have—one hour, one and a half? Easy—I meet you here, near Flottra?”

  It was the suggestion he’d expected. He shook his head. “No, Claus. If you got away with it, I’d have to find you out there—”

  “You don’t have to. I go on—right on!”

  “But I want my torpedomen back, you see. For one thing because I need them, for another I don’t believe you’d get ten miles before you were strafed by German planes. You haven’t the speed to get away: and we have.” He suggested, “You don’t have to go along in Valkyrien, Claus. One of your younger men could do it—or I could provide an officer— Pete Chandler here, for instance—”

  “Valkyrien is my ship, damn it all to hell!”

  “It’ll be hard going, once you’re ashore. Frankly, I’d say it was a job for youngsters, but—”

  “One and a quarter sea miles. A little more than two kilometres. I am not yet falling to bits, you know!” He was red in the face and glaring. “Okay—how long does it take you to stop, take your men off from me outside?”

  “You might not get that far, you see. Once you’ve dropped those charges, they’ll be shooting at you. With only a few hundred yards to go to beach her, you should get away with it, but if you had to go two-thirds of the length of the fjord—and the way they’d expect you to be going …” He shook his head. “If you got into trouble and I had to come on round and find you, I’d be throwing my own ship away. I’m not prepared to do that. Whereas when you come overland, we’re all in one spot together, ready to start off and not stop—out, and in darkness.”

  Torp was silent. Simmering down, seeing the common sense of it. He looked at his daughter, and shrugged. “Man’s right.” She nodded: but Nick could see she wasn’t happy about the job her father was taking on. Nick asked him, “What’ll you do—put her on the rocks with her seacocks open?”

  Torp suggested, “Perhaps also some of those explosives?”

  Fitted charges, with long-enough lengths of fuse to give the five men time to get clear. Half a dozen of them in that old ship’s bilges would just about take the bottom out of her. Nick agreed: and his torpedomen could handle that end of it. What he wanted now from Lange was a sketch of the anchorage on the other side, showing exactly where the oiler was anchored and where the destroyers were.

  And after that—

  Well. One thing at a time … But hardly: he was having to think of about forty things at a time. He had had two days to work out the details of the Namsos operation, and he was setting this one up in fifty minutes.

  Three minutes past eleven. Eight minutes late, Valkyrien was letting go the ropes which had held her to Intent. Knut Lange had cast off from Valkyrien at five minutes to the hour and dropped astern so that a torpedoman on his boat’s bow could set the pistols on the depthcharges which now hung in their wire-rope slings. Then Lange had brought his boat up on Intent ‘s port side, and Trench’s boarding party were climbing down a scrambling-net into it. The Norwegians—nine of them—were already in the boat.

  Trench wasn’t with them yet. He’d be coming up here to report, before they pushed off. Nick went over to the starboard side of the bridge, looked down at the gap of water which had already opened between his ship and Valkyrien. Claus Torp was beside the open door of his wheelhouse, chatting to the man inside—a man of about twenty-five, by the name of Larsen. (“Fast runner,” Torp had explained. “Strong, too. Carry me and run like hell, I think.”) He wasn’t only talking to Larsen though, he had Kari facing him from Intent ‘s foc’sl deck, right below the place where Nick was leaning over. She was unhappy, worried for him, and he was keeping up the jokes, teasing her.

  She had some reason to be worried, Nick thought. You could hardly expect to pull off a stunt like this one without some casualties. And Torp was the most likely candidate. It wasn’t only the most odds-against bit of the operation, it was also going to be something of a marathon.

  Could he have held him back from it? Stopped him going in his own ship? Nick didn’t see how. He was a highly independent character, not a man to betray his principles.

  Torp was staring up at him. Nick shouted across the gap, “Good luck!”

  “Look after this woman for me, huh?” Pointing at Kari. Nick looked down, and at the same moment she glanced up: he saw her stiff, unhappy smile. He called to Torp, “We’ll keep her safe for you.” Rather a daft assurance, he realised: the only way to have ensured her safety would have been to have landed her at Sveodden, now. Torp had just passed an order over his shoulder to his man Larsen; Valkyrien’s single screw was going astern, sliding her away from the destroyer’s side and sending a stream of churned, bubbling water seething forward. But she was clear now, and Torp had stopped the engine. Valkyrien still slid astern, with port rudder on to turn her bow out.

  Torp’s and Kari’s gear was in Nick’s sleeping cabin aft. It was hers now, and she could use the day-cabin and his bathroom too. At sea he only used the little box just below the bridge.

  “Captain, sir?”

  Tommy Trench, in his tin hat with “1st Lt” painted on the front of it, and a webbing belt with a .45 revolver in the holster.

  “Boarding party embarked and ready to proceed, sir.”

  “Well done. You’ve worked wonders. I mean that.”

  Trench grinned down at him. “Needs must, when the devil drives, sir.”

  “What?”

  “Intended, if I may say so, as a compliment. May I tell Lange to carry on, sir?”

  “Let Valkyrien get well clear first. I’ll give you a shout. Best of luck, Tommy.”

  “Sir.” Chandler, coming from the chart table, interrupted. “Sorry … But we must make 12 knots now, sir, to be up to the schedule. Reducing to 8 when Lauvoy light’s abeam if we’re up to it.”

  “All right. Tommy, see Lange gets that and understands it, will you? Tell you what—ask Kari to translate. She’s just down here.”

  “Twelve knots, reducing to 8 at Lauvoy light if we’re on time. Aye aye, sir.” Trench saluted. “See you alongside my oiler, sir.” As he moved off, Chief Stoker Beamish clambered into the bridge. He saluted too. “Main engines ready, sir.”

  “Chief, that’s music to the ears.”

  “Reckon it is that, sir.”

  “Everything on a split yarn for the oiling?”

  “Will be by 0100, sir. Leading Stoker Evans ‘as gone with the boat party.”

  “Boyensen quite happy down there?”

  Beamish thought he was. Boyensen would move over to become chief engineer of the oiler, in a couple of hours’ time. Meanwhile he was on loan from Torp, to hold Beamish’s hand in case anything went wrong or needed adjustment.

  Nick told Chandler, “Ring on main engines.” He crossed to the starboard side again as Valkyrien, her engine chugging ahead and black coal-smoke leaking from that tall funnel, came sliding past at a distance of about thirty feet. Torp saluted breezily, and Nick returned it. He called to Randolph Lyte, “Weigh anchor.” The two torpedomen were standing at attention on Valkyrien’s stern; Nick took off his cap and waved it at them, and one hand came up in answer. The light was fading rapidly—outlines blurring, hills merging into the background of low cloud. The two depthcharges slung under the old ship’s counter looked like dangling testicles.

  He’d shown the torpedomen, Crouch and Surtees, photographs in Jane’s Fighting Ships of modern German destroyers, pointing out the position of searchlights above and abaft their bridges, fixed to the lower part of the foremast at roughly funnel-top height. The searchlight on the A
ltbotn destroyer would be an obvious menace to the Valkyrien party, and if those two could shoot it out with their Thompsons they’d about double their chances of getting away. Men at guns were also worth shooting at, as was anyone on the bridge, and the time to hit them, he’d suggested, would be immediately after the charges had been released, when they were still at close quarters. But the searchlight should be target number one.

  Weighing wouldn’t take long now. They’d shortened-in to one shackle a few minutes ago. So there were twelve-and-a-half fathoms of cable out, and as there were ten fathoms of water here it left very little slack to be gathered in.

  Clanking of the rising cable. Power on the capstan—full, main generator power. Intent was reborn …

  And Valkyrien was crossing her bow, turning to port to head for the gap into the channel which would take them through into Namsenfjord. Torp was up on his wheelhouse roof, already an indistinct figure in the fading light. Nick wondered if he’d thanked Torp enough, for all he’d done for him. Without Torp, Intent would still have been out in that open anchorage—Lovik—when the German destroyers had arrived. Helpless, easy meat … There hadn’t been time for goodbyes and none for thanks either. There should have been. The omission niggled in his mind, tinged with the fear that there might not be an opportunity to make it good.

  Lyte reported, “Cable’s up and down, sir.”

  “Very good.” He leant over the port side of the bridge, looking down at the blue boat. Lange was lounging on the canopy of its wheelhouse, and Trench was perched on it near him. Cox, near the stern, had his tin hat slung on his shoulder. Nick called down,”Cast off and carry on, please. Best of luck, all of you.” Trench said something to Lange, who gave Nick something between a wave and an offensive gesture; the gleam of his teeth showed up as he smiled. They weren’t all that white: just big … Some sailors on Intent’s iron deck, letting go the blue boat’s ropes on Trench’s orders, raised a cheer; Trench called up to Nick, “Knock ‘em for six, sir!” A faint blue radiance near the boat’s stern showed that the stern cluster had already been switched on. The boat with its low silhouette wouldn’t have been easy to follow without it, on a night as dark as this one was going to be.

  “Anchor’s aweigh, sir.”

  “Very good.” He stepped up behind the binnacle and Chandler moved over to make room for him. Checking the ship’s head on the gyro repeater. No hurry, though; he’d wait for the report of “Clear anchor” and by that time the blue boat would have put about the right distance between them. Glancing round, he saw Kari: she was pressed against the port side of the bridge at its after end, near the ten-inch light, and gazing northwards towards a smallish blur and a patch of whitened sea that was all one could see now of Valkyrien.

  “Kari?”

  She was wearing her bright-blue oilskin coat. She came towards him: dark, almost black hair, pale blue eyes with fear in them. He told her, “Don’t worry. Your father’s a tough cookie. You’ll be entertained with a lot of tall stories from him in about two-and-a-half hours’ time.”

  She smiled, and nodded. “Thank you.”

  He remembered that she’d offered him a similar reassurance, about Paul. Since then neither of them had mentioned the subject. The anxiety was in his mind but he was keeping it pushed well back, out of the way, where he didn’t have to listen to it. He was tempted to tell her that he’d instructed Crouch and Surtees to keep an eye on her father and give him a hand if he needed it. Not to the extent of throwing sound lives after a lost one, but—within reason … Lange’s boat was forging out on Intent’s bow. Moving slowly, waiting for the destroyer to show signs of following. The swirl of the boat’s wake showed up clearly, blued by the lights above it. Getting darker every second: by the time they were through Sundsråsa it would be black. Nice timing, in fact. He heard a shout down on the foc’sl, then Lyte’s quiet “Clear anchor, sir.”

  “Port ten.”

  “Port ten, sir … Ten of port wheel on, sir.”

  “Slow ahead together.”

  “Slow ahead together, sir!”

  He felt the vibrations, muted at this slow speed, and the turbines’ whisper and the soft, slow-speed sucking of the intakes. Then his ship was gathering way.

  “Half ahead together. One-two-oh revolutions.” Lange would see Intent’s bow-wave rise, and put on speed to match.

  Eleven-eighteen.

  “He’s—slicing it a bit short, sir?”

  Conning his ship round, following the blue glow, Nick didn’t answer Chandler. Lange was certainly cutting corners. They’d passed through Sundsråsa and held that same course for about a mile across the comparatively open water of Namsenfjord, and now the blue boat was leading round to starboard within a schoolboy-cricketer’s throw of the island of Ytre Gasoy. Meaning outer Gasoy, Kari had explained. Whitewashed rocks looked bright to starboard: he was bringing her round carefully, using only five degrees of wheel. There was not much wind, only a lapping on the black water, enough to take the shine off it. Knowing there were rocks off the north coast of the little island, he shared Chandler’s anxiety. All you could see was the broken water, but that was enough to make the hairs stand up on the back of a sailor’s neck—if not on a Norwegian fisherman’s.

  “Don’t worry.” Kari’s voice on his right. “Knut could be doing this with his eyes shut.”

  “I do hope he isn’t.” It occurred to him that he and Kari spent a lot of time telling each other not to worry. He bent to the voicepipe: “Midships.”

  “Midships, sir.”

  “Meet her.” Keeping her on the outer edge of the blue boat’s curving wake. “Steer oh-eight-oh.” He asked Chandler, “What’s our course to pass the next headland, the one to port now?”

  “One-oh-five, sir.”

  Kari said, “He won’t cut that corner. There is a rock a quarter-mile from the point.”

  “How very reassuring.” Nick told the helmsman, “Starboard five.” Lange was edging round again. He’d probably go right round to that one-oh-five, or something near it. “How long is the next leg, Pilot?”

  “Mile and a half, sir.” Chandler added drily, “Depending on whether he’s corner-cutting or rock-climbing.”

  Kari giggled, and Nick was glad to hear it. He said into the voice-pipe, “Midships.” Breeze on the port quarter and astern now, bringing occasional stink of funnel-fumes. Black, quiet water, darkness enshrouding like black flannel. Damp, iced black flannel. “Meet her.”

  “Meet her, sir—”

  “Steady!”

  “Steady, sir. One-oh-four—”

  “Steer that.”

  “Steer one-oh-four, sir.”

  “Meet her” meant putting the wheel the opposite way, to check a swing already imparted to the ship. As the rate of swing slowed you had either to give the helmsman a course to steer, or order “Steady” to inform him that she was at that moment on the course you wanted. A mile and a half at 12 knots would take seven and a half minutes: then there’d be the turn to port into the narrow cleft called Lokkaren, and at the point of entry to it Intent and her guide would be less than two miles from German-occupied Namsos.

  “Time?”

  “Twenty-three-fifty, sir.”

  If it hadn’t been for the news which Lange had brought two hours ago, instead of turning into Lokkaren now they’d have been steering farther south and rounding the next headland, Merraneset, to raid Namsos for its oil. Nick wondered whether that might have turned out to be more tricky or less so than the jaunt he was on now. One would never know: it would be something to speculate on in one’s old age. If one had an old age. All he did know was that the Namsos operation followed immediately by an engagement with superior forces who’d have been actually waiting for him would have been a bit over the odds. He’d have attempted it, because there’d seemed to be no alternative; but now he didn’t have to do it he could admit to himself that it had never been a very attractive proposition.

  “Steer one-oh-six.”

  “One
-oh-six, sir.”

  He saw Lyte move from the starboard to the port fore corner of the bridge. Trench had found time—heaven knew how—to run over the torpedo-control system with him, and he’d assured Nick that the sub-lieutenant was “all about” on it. Lyte wouldn’t have to cope with the telephone to the director tower: Nick had had a longer lead put on it, so it could be brought here to the binnacle. He could either talk to Brocklehurst himself, or put Chandler on it.

  Cold: shivery, bone-penetrating cold, even through a duffel-coat … The whitish smear of wake and the blue glow were dead ahead still; he spoke without taking his eyes off it. “How long to the turn, Pilot?”

  “About one minute, sir.”

  “Bosun’s mate?”

  “Yessir?”

  “Go round the ship, Marryott, make sure there’s not a speck of light showing anywhere. Including cigarettes on the gundecks. Take as long as you like, but make certain of it.”

  The ship’s company had been sent to action stations as soon as the foc’sl had been secured, which had been done by the time they’d been halfway down Sundsråsa. Everything was closed up and ready: they could be meeting Hun destroyers in this fjord—here, now. Nothing guaranteed that the Germans would remain where they’d last been seen.

  Kari said, “You can see the rock on your port bow.”

  Chandler put his glasses on it. Nick kept his eyes on the blue cluster: it was a circular arrangement of blue light-bulbs fixed in a sort of shallow box so that it could only be seen from right astern. Lange might alter course at any moment, and he didn’t want to overshoot. There was no room or time for errors and corrections or blunderings about, and 12 knots was quite fast enough for negotiating a channel as narrow as the one that was coming next.

  “Down five revolutions.”

  The light had seemed closer suddenly.

  “Down five, sir … One-three-five revolutions passed and repeated, sir.”

  Chandler reported, “Rock’s abeam, sir, about one cable.”