by Alan Evans
HM Drifter Hercules sailed at dusk. Old Fred Archbold took his place at the wheel, pipe in mouth, then caught Smith’s eye on him and tamped it with a plug of old newspaper, put it away in his pocket. He said placidly, ‘Some o’ these regular navy ways I keep forgettin’, sir. Like not smoking at the wheel.’
Smith looked ahead, straightfaced. ‘I can understand you forgetting when there’s no regular officer to remind you.’
Fred Archbold understood too; the bargain had been struck and he was content.
Hercules steamed slowly across the lagoon to the island of San Elena and there she anchored. The crews of the three MAS boats watched her and at Smith’s hail they started their engines and crept out to lie alongside her. As the engines stopped Smith heard in the silence the sound of singing. The captains came aboard in the gathering dusk and found him with Fred Archbold staring towards the big shed some two hundred yards away. Pietro Zacco saluted and said, ‘Balestra again, sir. I told you about him.’
‘The Mad Professor you called him.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
Zacco shrugged. ‘So people call him. He looks wild sometimes. He has funny ideas.’
‘What ideas?’
‘Well... he says one day aircraft will control the seas like they control the air.’ Zacco smiled apologetically.
Smith remembered a young naval pilot called Pearce who said that one day aircraft would sink capital ships. He had not done that but he had crippled a cruiser with one big bomb. But Pearce was dead, killed in the attack.
Zacco said, ‘He plays all the time with engines. He has a car, American. He keeps it on the mainland in Mestre, and they say he takes it apart and puts it together. Crazy... If Pagani here had a car he would drive it and look for girls.’
They laughed at that, Pagani included. Smith grinned but then got down to business. ‘If you’ll come below, gentlemen.’ And to Buckley standing nearby, ‘See if the cook can make us some coffee, please.’
He paused at the head of the companion and shouted, ‘Mr. Menzies!’ And as Menzies came running from aft, ‘You’d better be in on this. Come on.’
They all crowded into the tiny cabin, Smith by the desk where he unrolled the chart and spread out the intelligence information on Trieste. The three captains and Archbold sat on the bunk and Menzies stood wedged just inside the door. Smith made the introductions then Buckley arrived bearing a tray holding a collection of thick china mugs and a battered coffee pot. He filled the mugs and passed them round. Smith said drily, ‘There seems to be a spare. You might as well have it.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ Buckley filled the mug he had brought for himself and stood outside the door, looking over Menzies’s head into the cabin.
The captains sipped at the mugs. Pagani peered into his and said ‘English coffee?’
‘That’s right. ‘Smith said solemnly, ‘I bet you don’t get coffee like this in Italy.’
They looked at him and then grinned.
Smith put down his mug, serious now. ‘Tonight we reconnoitre Trieste. I want to see those boom defences, all of them.’ He took them through the planned operation step by step, using the chart and the intelligence information. Then he asked, ‘Any questions? Suggestions?’
Zacco said, ‘After I refuelled I went to the dockyard and saw the metal cutters we talked about. I saw them used on hawsers like this’— his finger tapped the intelligence sheets — ‘and they work. I asked if they could be fitted tomorrow. Was that right?’ Smith nodded and Zacco added, ‘You will have to go to the dockyard, sir. They are very busy. To get the work done will need an order of priority.’
‘We will get that.’ Smith paused, then: ‘If all goes well tonight then tomorrow night we go for Salzburg.’
There was silence for a moment. Events were moving quickly. The captains had only met Smith a few hours before and already they were embarked on one operation with another to follow in twenty-four hours. And that one to cut a way into an enemy harbour at night and attack a capital ship, in the teeth of the defences of the port, the guns of the ship herself and her escorts.
Zacco broke the tension. ‘This squadron of ours—what is its title? We have a number — a name?’
Smith shook his head. ‘Not yet. Any ideas?’ And when none were forthcoming he remembered Pickett’s phrase. ‘How about The Gatecrashers?’
Pagani said slowly, ‘It means someone who crashes at a gate. Yes?’
‘It means someone who goes to a party when he hasn’t been invited.’
Pagani roared with laughter. ‘That is good! The Gatecrashers!’
The conference broke up in a cheerful mood but as Buckley collected up the mugs he thought grimly, ‘Here we bloody go again!’
The engines of the MAS boats coughed one by one, roared, subsided to a low rumbling. They eased away from Hercules and left her at anchor as they fell into line ahead, Zacco’s boat leading. Smith was in the cockpit with Zacco, Buckley sitting behind him on the counter. Menzies, in borrowed oilskins that hung to his ankles, was with Gallina in the boat astern. Last of the line came Pagani.
Smith looked astern. It was night now. The rain had briefly stopped but there was the threat of more to come in the overcast sky. That was good, the kind of weather that would cover them. The city was a series of humped shadows in the darkness but he could still make out the long sweep of the quay of the Riva degli Schiavoni. Helen Blair was there, in the house on the Ca’di Dio. He asked Zacco, ‘You said the —’ he paused because her title, applied to this English girl, was still incongruous to him — ‘the Contessa had a sad story?’
The big lieutenant nodded. ‘I do not know the details but she was living in the south and her man, she was to marry him, he was an officer of the British Army in the Dardanelles. He was killed and so she came here. On the mainland she has a car, like Balestra, and she goes up to the line and gives chocolate and cigarettes to the soldiers. She has a yacht and sails up and down the coast on the same work. It is her duty but her own duty. You see?’
Smith said ‘A task she’s set herself.’
‘That is so.’
That was not odd, there were plenty of women doing the same thing in England and France, only here in Italy was it a rarity. Smith had already heard criticism of the Italian army for providing little or nothing in the way of comforts or recreation for their men when out of the line.
Her story was not uncommon, either. Far from it. This war made more widows every day. That did not make it commonplace, grief was no less for being shared with millions. The girl had courage and was going on living. Smith was glad that he had no ties, that no heart would break over him. He did not give a thought to the women he had met and left on the way.
Now his thoughts were on Trieste as the little flotilla of MAS boats slipped past the guardboat, and out of the harbour by the Porto di Lido.
Salzburg. Voss. Seek out and destroy.
The note of the engines changed, grew to a snarl as the boats worked up to twenty knots, their sterns dug in and bows lifted and spray came flying back at him where he stood in the cockpit.
5. Night Action
Trieste lay before them.
A dark, chill night and the sea flat calm under low-hanging clouds but a white line showed where small waves broke against the mole ahead of them. Smith stood by Zacco. He could just make out close astern the low, narrow silhouette of Gallina’s boat and further astern that of Pagani’s. The boats were running on their electric motors. As the mole was sighted Zacco reduced speed further, to a bare couple of knots. They slipped on in with the only sound the low hum of the motors, and that almost lost under the mutter of the sea as it washed the base of the mole. The boats made hardly a ripple. No lamp flashed a challenge, no gun blazed at them out of the darkness. Yet. The machine-guns in the three boats were manned and ready. One Colt machine-gun was mounted before the forward cockpit, one on the port side of the after cockpit. In the forward cockpit of Zacco’s boat, beside the gunner, wer
e the two seamen and the torpedoman. The after cockpit was no less crowded with Zacco, Smith, the machine-gunner and Buckley. All of them aboard the boats were tense. One of the seamen climbed out of the forward cockpit and crept forward over the curved deck to the bow.
This was the most southerly of the three moles, breakwaters, built across the mile and a half wide entrance to the harbour. Booms closed the openings between each of them and between them and the shore. Smith could make out the loom of Punta Ronco, the headland at the south of the harbour’s mouth. There would be a boom between it and the mole. Smith pointed and Zacco nodded, the boat’s head turned south and they crept along close to the mole, the other boats following.
The end of the mole was close, a square-cut black shape against the darkness of the night when the searchlight’s beam snapped out from somewhere on Punta Ronco, wavered, then slowly traversed across the sea between shore and mole. Smith ordered, ‘Stop engines!’ The hum of the motors ceased and the three boats rocked gently. Smith watched the long thin cone of the searchlight’s beam drift hesitantly across the sea, following the line of the boom and Smith could see the path it was taking and became uneasy. But the beam slid on, washed over the mole, leaving the boats hidden in the shadow close alongside. Moved on along the length of the mole. Went on.
All of them blinked against the sudden return of the darkness. Smith waited until he could see to the end of the mole, then ordered: ‘Slow ahead.’ The motors hummed and the boats slowly closed the boom. Zacco was watching the seaman sprawled in the bow, saw the lift of his hand and stopped the motors again. The boat slipped on with the last of the way on her, bumped gently, was still but for a gentle rolling as the sea pushed at her.
Smith climbed from the cockpit and went quickly forward along the narrow strip of deck beside the engine-room, passed between the port side torpedo resting in its clamps on the deck, and the forward cockpit. The men in there glanced at him, dark faces watching him pass, a glint of eyes. He lay down by the seaman in the bow who held on to the boom with a boat hook. He had hooked on to a link in the six-foot length of chain that, where the photographs had shown wire hawsers and buoys, joined two baulks of timber, each baulk two feet in diameter and the chain itself massive. Smith eased over the bow and down to kneel on one of the baulks of timber with the sea washing over it, running around him. He lay flat and reached down under the surface, searching with fumbling fingers, and found two more chains. So the timbers were joined by at least three of those huge chains, and there might well be a fourth deeper and out of his reach.
The log rolled gently to the push of the sea and he clung on with hooked fingers and clawing boots, involuntarily took a mouthful of seawater and spat it out as the log recovered. He rose to his knees and grabbed the bow of the boat, dragged himself aboard and clambered aft to the cockpit to stand dripping by Zacco. He said quietly, ‘Big timbers and big chains.’ Somebody had been busy since the aerial photos were taken. He saw the dismay on the lieutenant’s face but only said softly, ‘Move north.’
The motors hummed and the MAS turned and nosed back along the mole, the other two turning and following.
They stopped as the searchlight’s beam searched again but once more were hidden in the shadow of the mole, moved on when the beam was snuffed out.
Another boom. The same construction of huge baulks of timber and chains.
The three boats crept on along the central mole to its end and a third boom.
The same.
To the third mole, and on to the fourth and last boom that ran to the northern shore. Here lay the city of Trieste, in darkness, but the lift of the buildings to the medieval castle on its hill was clear. The fourth boom followed the pattern of the other three, identical in its solid strength of timber and chains.
They lay in the shadow of the mole but not for long. What they had found was bad enough, but Smith wanted to know if there was an inner boom to cut off any direct approach once the outer line was breached. So they returned to the centre mole and stopped at the southern end of it where began the shortest boom of the four and that furthest from either shore. In the pitchy blackness close under the mole Smith started to strip down to his vest and drawers. Buckley followed his example.
Smith was under no illusions as to his prowess as a swimmer. He had to go himself, see for himself, but — He whispered to Zacco, ‘I need another good swimmer.’ Zacco nodded.
‘Lombardo is the best, best of all I know.’
‘Can you spare him?’
‘The meccanico can do his job. He is not a motorista like Lombardo but good enough. I’ll call Lombardo.’
Smith said. ‘Ask him. I want a volunteer.’ And besides, Lombardo was — well, Lombardo.
He came crouching out of the engine-room at Zacco’s quiet call, straightened as he stood in the cockpit.
Smith said ‘I’m a rotten swimmer but I want to take a look at the boom. I need another good one with me. What about it?’
Lombardo looked over the side. ‘Christ! It’ll freeze the balls off —’
Smith broke in impatiently, ‘I know that! I’m freezing now! Make your bloody mind up! Do you know anybody better for the job?’
For answer Lombardo stripped off his vest, muttering obscenities under his breath, and unbuckled his belt.
Smith shivered despite himself as he whispered his orders to Zacco. ‘Time us. If we’re not back by first light, get out. And if a patrol sees you, run for it.’
Zacco nodded, whispered, ‘Have luck.’
Smith lowered himself on to the bottom and from there into the water on the inshore side, gasped as the cold of it took his breath, then struck out as the other two followed him. Together they swam slowly forward into the harbour, Smith thinking that he was a fool, he could have sent Buckley and Lombardo because their reports would be absolutely reliable. But he needed to see.
He counted to himself, trying to measure their progress. He had told Zacco to get out if they weren’t back by first light but if they did not return to the boats in half an hour they would not return at all. He knew he could not last long in this bitterly cold sea.
If a patrol chased the boats away then at best he would live out the war as a prisoner. Devereux and Pickett would laugh and shake their heads smugly.
He remembered the elegant beauty of the Contessa, and his belief that there could be the heat of passion behind that cool exterior.
Christ! It was cold!
Buckley said softly, ‘Summat ahead, sir.’ He and Lombardo were swimming easily, only Smith, the poorest swimmer, was splashing and blowing. But now he could see what Buckley spoke of, a darker shadow stretching across the water before them. They reached it and found yet another boom of timbers and chains.
Smith hauled himself on to the boom and rested there a moment with Buckley one side of him, Lombardo the other. But the wind froze him. He had to go on. There might be a third line of defence. He had to know. He groaned inside then gritted his teeth and lowered himself over the boom, shoved away from it, struck out again.
He had counted to a hundred and seventy-six on the first leg. He counted again on this one. At two hundred and fifty they had encountered nothing, only the ruffled surface of the harbour faded into the darkness. He gasped. ‘See anything?’
‘No, sir.’ That was Buckley.
Lombardo growled, ‘Not a goddam thing!’
Smith turned and led them back, to rest again on the inner boom, then swim on. He was tired and bitterly cold, certain that on his own he would have panicked now at the certainty of drowning. He cursed his weakness but blessed his foresight in bringing Buckley and Lombardo who could drag him back if he collapsed. But he would not return towed ignominiously between them. He would keep on. Keep on. Keep on...
‘Here y’are sir.’ That was Buckley’s whispered warning.
Smith blinked water from his eyes and realised they were in deeper darkness and the mole towered above them. He reached out and gripped its rough stone surface slimed wit
h weed and clung to it. All three of them hung there, heads just clear of the water. Smith peered to left and right. Was this the mole against which lay the boats? Or had some current carried them north or south and this was another mole? Should they go left or right? It was a desperately important decision for him. He could not go much further.
He thought the current might have set them to the north, took a breath and pushed away from the mole, swam southward. The searchlight’s beam fingered out from Punta Ronco to the south and they edged into the mole again, clung on. They watched the beam trace the line of the southernmost boom, the first mole, and second boom. Smith took a gasping breath. Now he could see where he and his party were, near the southern end of the correct mole and around that end the boats would be waiting.
The searchlight went out and left them in seeming deeper darkness. Smith did not wait for his night vision to return but struck out again. The square end of the mole was clear enough when they reached it. He banged his knuckles on the timber of the boom as it rose out of the sea before him, swore weakly, clambered up on to the timber. Seconds later a MAS nosed out from the shadow of the mole and its bow nudged against the timber. The seaman sprawled in the bow hooked on and Smith pushed at Lombardo and Buckley, urging them to climb aboard. He followed them, was dragged in by them, skinning his knees, and stayed on hands and knees in the bottom of the boat head hanging, gasping as the boat retreated again into the shadow of the mole.
Zacco crouched beside him and Smith could see concern on the big man’s face but told him, ‘All right. We’ll get out now.’
They had been here long enough, every second on edge as they listened and watched for a patrolling boat or a sentry on the mole, tensed for discovery at any moment, for the challenge and the hail of fire out of the night.