As his hearing returned, Seaton heard the crackle of sparks on the other boat’s switchboard and knew it was a matter of time before she was gutted by fire and her fuel exploded. Then she would sink and join Allenby’s boat beside the charges they had brought so far.
‘Clear the casing!’ A bullet whimpered between him and Niven. Tell Number One we’re going out stern first!’
He saw something splash across the casing and knew it was the blood of the man who had dropped the grenade.
The deck trembled, and he saw the immediate surge of bubbles around the screw.
Niven released the mooring wire and paused to pick up his Sten. Then he toppled forward and clutched his stomach. He stared at Seaton, his eyes shining in the light from the inlet.
‘Oh, God.’ He swayed as the boat gathered sternway. ‘I’m hit!’
Seaton kicked the guns and magazines over the side as he ran to his aid and half carried him to the hatch.
Allenby was peering at them, and seized Niven’s feet to guide him through.
Seaton jumped down after him, seeing the shadows on the slipway hardening into running shapes, firing as they came, spraying the smoking X-craft and Driscoll’s corpse which lay beside the hatch, one arm blazing like a torch.
The control room was crammed with figures. Allenby and his E.R.A., his diver, eyes and hands bandaged, but mercifully free of pain as the morphine swept him into unconsciousness. Niven was lying beside the chart table, his eyes wide as Allenby tore open his clothing and tried to control the bleeding.
Like that other time when he had fought the German frogman.
Seaton watched as his skin appeared in the chart light, saw him grimace as Allenby thrust a great shell dressing over the wound. Not before Seaton had seen it. A gaping hole, blackened around the edges. Tracer.
Niven said between gasps, ‘The pain! Oh God, the pain!’
Jenkyn was wrestling with the wheel as metal clanged against the hull.
‘You’ll be okay! You promised to buy me a pint after this lot, remember?’
‘Not…this…time…Alec.’ His head lolled. ‘Done…for.’ His voice was fading away as the drug took over ‘Don’t…want…to…die.’
Jenkyn tore his eyes from the compass and stared at Seaton. ‘Called me Alec! An’ I thought –’
He turned back to the compass, but not before Seaton had seen the tears in his eyes.
Seaton said, ‘Bring her about!’ He gritted his teeth as more bullets clattered over the hull. It only needs one vital spot. ‘We’re going out on the surface.’
Drake said desperately, ‘They’ll pick us off! No chance!’
Allenby covered Niven with a blanket and put a lifejacket under his head.
‘Wrong, old son. Surfaced you’ve got more speed. Besides which, there’s a strong chance there might be a bright German watching. If he sees us, and knows about the two we’ve left behind, he’ll not want to hang about and wait for the bang!’ His voice hardened. ‘Bloody obvious, I’d have thought.’
A sharp explosion thudded against the lower hull, and then more heavy splinters.
Allenby said, ‘They must have a mortar ranged on us.’
Seaton nodded. ‘Start zigzagging, Alec.’
He winced as another deep-throated bang punched up from the bottom of the inlet. If the screw gets a splinter, that’s it.
He said, ‘Give her all you’ve got. Maximum revs and to hell with the gauges!’
The diesel was getting louder and vibrating to such an extent that every loose piece of equipment rattled and rolled about in chaos.
Seaton pressed the periscope switch and had just put his eye to the lens when more machine-gun bullets swept across the casing in a deafening bombardment of steel. He felt the periscope jerk violently and saw the picture of the nearest foreshore vanish completely while water spurted across his wrists.
He moved quickly to the immobile search periscope and peered through it, watching the tangle of debris which nobody had known about and which had almost done for the mission completely.
A small scout car was tearing along the cratered roadway, a Spandau firing from the rear seat. It reminded Seaton of the one he had seen in Bergen.
‘Come on, Goliath!’
He pounded his fist against the cold steel, seeing the water churning back from the blunt bows to show the little submarine’s efforts to get clear.
‘We’re over the wreck!’
He seized hold of the smashed periscope as another explosion rocked the hull, playing with it like a giant’s hand.
‘Take her down to fifteen feet. Any more and we might hit something.’
He listened to the water surging into the tanks as the diesel cut out and the clutch was broken to allow the electric motor to take over again. It was a wild, unnerving sensation. Hurrying through the inlet, unable to see, even to know what was happening.
More thumps, but they were further away, and Seaton wondered if it was possible for hope to exist after all.
Allenby said, ‘My guess is that the Jerries will run for it. If the rocket had been ready to fire they would have done it, with or without a set target. But they weren’t quite ready. Remember what they told us? They shut the gates at the moment of firing.’ He wiped some more oil from his face and neck. ‘They’ll know what we’ve done all right. It’d take a braver man than me to sit there fiddling with a rocket with all that explosive under his bum!’
His E.R.A., Petty Officer Turbett, exclaimed, ‘Martin’s stopped breathin’, Skipper.’
Allenby reached over the diver with the bandaged eyes and felt his pulse. Half to himself he said, ‘Martin set the grenades to blow the hatch. One went off almost in his face. He wanted me to leave him.’
Seaton tried to imagine it. The hatch blown off, filling the boat with splinters. The water rushing in, forcing up the pressure. Yet Allenby had taken the precious seconds to wrap a crude bandage around his diver’s head. He had been pretty brave himself.
Drake said thickly, ‘What about Richard?’
Allenby was still looking at the dead man. He could have been asleep.
‘Depends. If the rest of the operation works out, we might get him to a surgeon in time.’ He yawned, the strain lining his face like dark scars. ‘Even then…’
Drake blinked to clear his vision, trying to hold on to his self-control.
‘I wanted him to know about the letter. It was just a stupid lapse. She realised that afterwards.’
Seaton watched him. ‘It takes two to make a lapse, as you put it.’ He turned and looked at Niven’s face, the skin waxy in the chart light. ‘I wish she could have seen him back there. His father, too.’
Allenby cut in, ‘What now, David? Are we ditching? Or shall we keep going as long as we can?’ He tried to smile. ‘You’re the boss.’
Seaton stepped over Niven’s body and peered at the chart.
‘We’ll keep going. Like the man said, it’s all laid on.’ He looked at the other E.R.A. ‘Can you make tea as well as Alec?’
The man grinned. ‘Better, sir.’
Seaton added, ‘And lace it with something.’
He saw their expressions. They knew. When XE 16 surfaced again it might be for the last time. The enemy would be out for a kill, and no holds barred.
One hour after they had careered out of the U-boat pen the combination of charges and explosives thundered through the water like some nightmare monster bellowing in a cave. XE 16 had reached open water and had gone as deep as possible to avoid the effects of the massive explosion, but she was hurled off course and went into a steep dive, completely out of control.
Sparks danced across the switchboard, and a gauge shattered with the sound of a pistol shot.
The depth gauge wavered at one hundred feet, and with Drake and Jenkyn working like madmen they held her, brought her under command, and kept her so. A few more feet and they would have plunged bow-first into the sea-bed.
Shakily, they returned to a depth of thirty fe
et, and while Jenkyn checked the motor Seaton sat at the helm, feeling the boat responding, answering his touch.
It was strange, he thought. But he had not actually seen the great rocket. Now, with any sort of luck, nobody would.
When it was time to surface again Seaton said quietly, ‘Whatever happens, I’d like to thank all of you.’ He looked at the dead man by the watertight door. ‘And the others who didn’t get this far.’
He looked at Drake. ‘Ready, Geoff?’
Drake nodded jerkily. ‘As ever, Skipper.’
‘Surface!’
He crouched at the search periscope, half-blinded by a shaft of sunlight. Then he said, ‘Aircraft! Six of them!’ So they had been caught out after all.
A red flare floated down towards the sea, changing colour as it passed through the sun’s eye.
Seaton clung to the deckhead, holding his forehead against the rough metal.
At last he was able to speak without emotion. ‘Some of ours, bless ’em! Captain Venables kept his part of the deal!’
He swung round. ‘Open the hatch!’
The noise of the aircraft was deafening as they swept and circled overhead.
Seaton felt something touch his ankle, and looked down to see Niven staring up at him. For a moment more the elation of escape could wait. He knelt down and gripped Niven’s hand, watching as he stared at the open hatch, the circle of blue sky and the flashing shapes of the protective aircraft.
Niven said, ‘We did it.’ He spoke so quietly that Seaton had to put his ear almost to his face. ‘Wouldn’t have missed it. Tell Decia, will you? I’d like her to hear about it from you.’
Seaton gripped his fingers more tightly. ‘Tell her yourself.’ He glanced at Allenby, saw his quick shake of the head.
Niven murmured, ‘I’m cold.’ He moved his head to watch as another aircraft thundered above the hull. ‘I wish –’ His stare became fixed and unmoving.
Seaton gently released his hand and stood up.
Jenkyn leaned on his wheel, resting his forehead on his hands, while Drake stared at the body, unable to accept it had happened after all they had done and come through together.
The other E.R.A. said quietly, ‘They’ll be expectin’ a signal, sir.’
Seaton nodded. Then he unclipped the Aldis from its rack and climbed up until he was waist-high through the hatch.
He looked around his small scarred and chipped command. There was the line of the French coast, a towering black column of smoke rising higher and higher towards the sky.
He saw the aircraft, and another group prowling between him and the land.
Then Seaton turned and shaded his eyes, seeing the darker shapes of surface vessels, destroyers surging out of the horizon towards him.
He was barely able to read the diamond-bright signal lamp. Their faces kept misting over. Winters and his crew, Allenby’s Number One, then his diver. And now Richard Niven.
Seaton pressed the trigger and shuttered his number, then the codename, Goliath.
As the acknowledgement was flashed back towards him he made one last signal. Out of the deep we are here.
It was over. And she would be waiting.
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Epub ISBN 9781448106110
Version 1.0
Published by Arrow Books 1977
© Bolitho Maritime Productions Ltd 1976
Douglas Reeman has asserted his right right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in Great Britain in 1976 by Hutchinson
Arrow Books
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 0 09 914540 5
Surface With Daring Page 30