A Share of Honour: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 4

by Alexander Fullerton

Just as play started, Ruck came down from the bridge. Ultra had reached the inshore end of her beat, and he’d gone up to see McClure bring her round on to the northeasterly course, 035. The wind was about force four now and Ruck looked as if he’d had his head in a shower, from the spray up there as they’d turned into it.

  Seager, who came from Derby, muttered, “Don’t like to count me chickens, Ginger, but we’re liable to bloody walk this one.” Maskell grinned as he shook the dice-pot.

  Paul said to Wykeham, “You can’t blame ‘em for trying to put a brave face on it. They know when they’re up against real champs.”

  Seager had given himself a coughing fit, from laughing …

  “Captain, sir?”

  Ruck, among the spectators, turned to see Parker, petty officer telegraphist, trying to get through to him.

  “Signal from S10, sir.” He made a long arm, passing it over two stokers’ heads. “Lot of stuff on the air tonight, sir. Something’s going on somewhere, I reckon.”

  Vian’s sortie, probably. Or the enemy’s response to it. Convoys picking up their skirts and running? If the Italian fleet made any move southward they’d have three or four 10th Flotilla submarines to get past, up around Taranto: and there’d be prayers rising from those boats that they would come out. Why wouldn’t they, when British naval strength in the Eastern Mediterranean consisted now of that handful of light cruisers and destroyers, and the Italians had twice as many heavy ones, and battleships?

  They enjoyed having them. So they kept them tucked up in their harbours.

  Uckers was temporarily suspended. On the Forces’ Favourites programme Pat Kirkwood was singing “The Only One Who’s Difficult Is You.” Maskell wagging his head and listening to her with his eyes half-shut, all other eyes on Ruck as he read the signal, which would have been received in cipher and decoded in the wireless office. He raised his voice, to be heard in the control room: “Tell the officer of the watch I want him to come round to two-seven-oh.” He told Wykeham, “Supposed to be an ammunition ship aground, some way west of us.” He turned to the chart table, to put the position on and lay off a course to it.

  Seager returned to the business of uckers. “My go, was it?”

  “Might as well be,” Paul suggested, “unless you want to throw the towel in?” Ultra rolled harder as she turned, swinging her bow across the direction of wind and sea.

  Pitch-black night: weather on the bow, sea slamming against the casing and geysering around the gun and bridge, Ultra demonstrating her favourite corkscrew motion as she drove westward—a little north of west, a course of 290 degrees—with the Libyan coast twelve to fifteen miles to port and about thirty-five miles to cover in the next four hours. With only a running charge now, and making nine knots, Ruck expected to dive her at 0500 not far from the position of the allegedly beached freighter.

  About 0100 now. Tuesday morning … He thought it was Tuesday. In this two hours on, four hours off routine, one twenty-four-hour period was so much like another that putting a name to it was a largely academic exercise. You kept track of dates, because they appeared on signals with the time of origin, but the day of the week only mattered when you were leaving the base or returning to it.

  He had a towel around his neck inside the Ursula jacket, but several streams of cold water had already found ways past it. The wind was rising force five, he guessed.

  The stokers had wiped the board with them, of course. McClure, when he’d come off watch, had stated that they wouldn’t have if he’d been playing. You could see him making his effort, and the others seeing it and liking him for it. Training his glasses right now, across the bow— feet straddled for balance, and his back against the for’ard periscope standard—Paul recognized that it wouldn’t be at all easy for him. You could admire the tetchy little bastard … Binoculars getting wet twice a minute: if anything did turn up it would be bloody hard to see it …

  He’d stopped, about fifteen degrees on the bow.

  Imagination?

  Swinging slightly right: intending to sweep back across what he thought he’d seen … But—it had a twin!

  Two destroyers, in line abreast? A screen ahead of something?

  Well out on the bow. If he dived her now, Ruck wouldn’t see a thing. Not with the sea this high, and no moon. There was time, anyway, to let him make his own decision.

  “Captain on the bridge!”Then—”Starboard ten. Steer three-oh-five!” Straightening, with his glasses on those shapes again: dark, low, appearing and disappearing, white flashes of bow-wave catching your eye when they showed … Christ, three of them!

  “What is it?”

  Ruck bawling the question as he arrived like a missile in the front of the bridge and a flying half-ton of sea drenched over to welcome him. Paul yelled, “Three destroyers—ahead and fine on the starboard bow— I’ve turned to three-oh-five. Looks like a screen—”

  “Look-outs down!”

  Diving?

  But he had his glasses up: motionless, so far as that was possible— like being motionless on a bucking horse. Paul swept the darkness to his left, down the port side. Ruck shouted, “Stay at the voicepipe, Sub—diving stations, stand by all tubes! Three-six-oh revs!”

  Paul called the orders down the pipe. Ruck howled, “ Four destroyers. And something bigger astern of them, going like a dingo … Steer”— he checked the dimly lit gyro repeater, his wet face ghostly in its faint radiance right on top of it—”three-two-oh!”

  “One, two, three and four tubes ready, sir!”

  Less than half a minute had passed since he’d made the sighting. Instinct as much as reason had induced him to stay up instead of doing the safe thing, diving. He’d found reasons, but only because some inclination had made him look for them. But now, the fact they were still up here made it seem that his decision had Ruck’s endorsement. Paul was at the voicepipe but he was now using his glasses too, sweeping all round— except for the blanked-off sector astern, behind the swaying periscope standards—while Ruck concentrated on his target, dark shapes racing eastward, four destroyers and “something bigger” behind them …

  “Damn, he’s seen us!”Then correcting himself: “No … Zigzag, that’s all. All turning towards … Down, Sub! Klaxon on your way!”

  Paul leaped for the hatch, straight into it, thumbed the button twice en passant: the jarring double roar of the klaxon alarm echoed through the boat’s interior. Ruck’s boots were coming down on top of him so he let go of the ladder, grabbing at it a couple of times to slow his descent but still cracking one knee painfully on the rim of the lower hatch and landing sprawling backwards on the control room’s wet corticene. Ruck, landing on his feet, just managed to avoid adding further injury.

  “Forty feet … We’re ten degrees on the target’s bow and it’s doing maybe twenty knots. Fruit machine—Sub, for Christ’s sake—”

  “Sorry, sir.” He’d got to it now. “Enemy course one-two-oh, sir!”

  “Blow Q.”

  “Blow Q, sir …”

  “I’d say its course was about oh-nine-oh before it zigged. So the mean might be one-oh-five. Pilot, how would that look for a course to Benghazi?”

  McClure was checking it on the chart. Q quick-diving tank was blown and the boat was at forty feet. Ruck said to Wykeham, “It’s not big, God knows what it might be. Six or seven thousand tons, something

  like—”

  “That course would be about right, sir.”

  Newton squawked, “Destroyer HE—ahead—closing—”

  “Forget it. I want the target, not the escorts. Motor vessel, bearing—

  roughly—three-two-oh.” He told the helmsman, “Starboard ten. Steer north.”

  “Ten of starboard wheel on, sir …”

  “Large vessel, reciprocating engines—one-eight-oh revs, sir!” “That’s him.”

  “Destroyers passing over, sir.”

  “Target bearing?”

  Creagh reported, “Course three-six-oh, sir.” “Bearing is re
d one-six, sir.”

  “Thirty feet.” Ruck looked over at Paul. “Set enemy speed eighteen knots, range—let’s say two thousand yards—and give me a ninety track. What’s the DA?” Then, abruptly, he changed his mind. “No. Forget it.” He glanced round at Wykeham. “Stand by to surface.”

  He’d have no idea, of course, when the next zigzag might come. The periscope would have shown him nothing except blackness and a lot of angry sea close up. He’d be surfacing to make sure of it; or rather, to be less unsure …

  “DA seventeen, sir.”

  Even if he didn’t need it. It was all hypothetical anyway. He’d guessed the range, from the memory of what he’d seen in the dark: and he certainly couldn’t be sure of getting into a position where he’d have a ninety-degree approach track for his torpedoes. It depended on that zigzag.

  “Target bearing now, Newton?”

  He got it, and adjusted the course by ten degrees. Wykeham reported ready to surface.

  “Surface!”

  It would seem like pandemonium or black magic, to an outsider. But there was method in it. Ultra had dived under the screening destroyers— who were moving too fast to use asdics effectively, and even if they’d slowed couldn’t have made much of it in this weather—and now she was coming up again, a fox inside the henrun. Tibbits had reopened the lower hatch. Ruck told him,”Won’t need you up there.” He shouted to Wykeham over the racket of air rushing to the bow and stern tanks, “Stay on main motors grouped up … Sub, I want you behind me.” He’d gone fast up the ladder; Paul climbed with his chest against the heels of Ruck’s seaboots, leaning back from the ladder to save his face from getting kicked.

  “Fifteen feet! Twelve! Ten! Nine feet—”

  The hatch slammed up and Ruck was out, in the bridge, which was only about as dry as a half-tide rock in those first seconds. A bathful of cold sea slopped into the tower as Paul climbed out of it and pulled the voicepipe cock open. Ruck was at the gyro repeater; then he’d shifted over to the torpedo night-sight, to set it to enemy course and speed. Paul yelled down, “Stand by all tubes!”

  It was a gamble. A degree this way or that would make all the difference, and Ultra was swinging several degrees each way as Creagh fought to steady her. Ruck was using his binoculars lined up over the top of the night-sight, shifting his head up and down, eyes slitted into the darkness and the sheets of spray.

  “Fire one!”

  It would be about as chancy, Paul thought, as shooting snipe from the hip. Salt water blinded him: seas were crashing against the tower and the boat was still only at half-buoyancy, low to the waves, lurching and hammering through them …

  “Fire two!”

  He screamed it into the voicepipe, beating the noise of wind and sea. “Fire three!”

  Solid water flying up, dumping itself right over them, sluicing away aft … “Fire four!” Ruck’s eyes were at his soaking wet binoculars. “Down you go, Sub!” Jumping into the hatch, Paul heard him order, “Open main vents” before he shut the voicepipe and followed. Climbing down at a more reasonable speed than last time, Paul was thinking, Two thousand yards at forty knots: torpedo running time—ninety seconds …

  If the range had been 2000 yards. Not 1800 or 2500. And if the target hadn’t zigzagged again in the last few seconds.

  “All torpedoes running, sir.”

  “Forty feet. Group down, half ahead together. Port fifteen.” Ruck asked McClure, “How long since I fired the first one?”

  “Forty-nine—fifty seconds, sir.”

  Forty seconds to go, then.

  “Fifteen of port wheel on, sir.”

  “Steer two-nine-oh.”

  Thirty seconds. Expressions tending to be deliberately blank. As if it mightn’t be too wise to look hopeful.

  Twenty.

  Ruck murmured, “Never know your luck.” He looked relaxed now, as if it didn’t much matter either way. Ten seconds to go. Wykeham making his routine gesture: right hand up with two of its fingers crossed. If it annoyed you, you didn’t have to notice.

  “Forty feet, sir.”

  Time, now. Paul leaned against the glass front of the fruit machine, and shut his eyes. At least one torpedo had already missed, was trundling on into empty sea. He’d forgotten about the freezing water inside his shirt.

  Explosion: on the starboard quarter …

  And total surprise—on all faces except Ruck’s. He was staring at the deckhead, probably counting the seconds as they passed. Or just thinking … One hit would be enough to have stopped that ship, whatever it was. With four destroyers there’d be at least an attempt at a counter-attack, but the state of the sea wouldn’t make asdic conditions very easy for them.

  Second hit!

  Wykeham glanced round, grinning. Paul was staring at McClure— who still looked half asleep … Silence now, for several drawn-out seconds … Waiting for a third hit? Ruck murmured, “God knows what it was. Except it was middling large, two-funnelled and fast, and rated an escort of four destroyers all to itself. Something, all right …” He was looking over at the helmsman. “Creagh! With all that yawing around you were encouraging her to do—five degrees each way—you had her swinging. Hell, you did it for us!”

  In fact—Paul realized he’d fired on each yaw, using the swing to spread his fish across the target.

  “Target stopped, and there’s breaking-up noises, sir.”

  CPO Logan growled, “That’ll learn ‘em.”

  It wouldn’t be a comfortable sinking. In the dark, and with the sea high enough to make rescue operations tricky.

  “Destroyer HE closing, sir!”

  “Slow ahead together. Silent routine …”

  Paul took over his morning watch an hour late, at a quarter past seven. They’d dived at 0500 and gone to forty feet, and he’d been occupied since then up for’ard, reloading the tubes. It was done now: he’d reported it to Ruck—who’d grunted and gone back to sleep—and now he was in the control room to relieve Wykeham.

  After sinking that unidentified ship last night Ultra had surfaced again at about two-thirty. There’d been no depthcharges dropped and no A/S contact made by the destroyers, but the hunt had still been in progress, at some fair distance. The enemy would have left a couple of the escorts to search for them, probably, while the others took survivors into Tripoli. They’d have had no clue as to where the attack came from, though, and in these conditions not much hope of finding her. While from Ultra’s point of view, with an hour and a half lost and the battery distinctly in need of charging, it was going to take a bit longer now to reach the position of the beached ship.

  Wykeham said, handing over the watch to Paul, “There’s a complication—or may be, if that position’s anything like accurate. Skipper only caught on to it after we dived just now. Our wreck’s supposed to be near the Zera Spit. Here.” He tapped the chart with a pencil. “See the point?”

  “Shallow approach, you mean?”

  “I mean the Libya-Tunisia border, chum.”

  The Zera Spit—shallows and little bits of island, extending about ten miles off the coast—was on the wrong side of that border, in Vichy French territory. If there was a German or Italian ship stranded there, its crew ought to be interned and its cargo impounded. In fact, of course, a lot of the Vichy people weren’t all that neutral, and the cargo of ammunition might well find its way onward to its destination. You weren’t supposed to mess around with the French, all the same.

  He got Ras Zera, a very small islet, in the high-power periscope about ten minutes after taking over. At 0830, by which time he was eating breakfast and McClure had the watch, it was a mile and a half abeam to port. Ruck was in the control room, spending a lot of time at the periscope, with the boat up at twenty-six feet for better visibility.

  Since dawn, the wind had been moderating a little.

  Wykeham said, “May well not be any ship here now. They could have pulled it off yesterday. Could even have been the one we sank last night.” He rolled sideways off
the bench seat and on to his bunk. “Wake me early, mother dear, for I’m to be Queen of the May.”

  Shaw, collecting breakfast plates, nodded. “Wouldn’t want to miss that.”

  Ruck’s voice from the periscope: “There she is!”

  Silence. You could hear the log ticking, and the slight movements as the planesmen held her at the ordered depth. Soft hum of the motors. Warmth … And Ruck’s voice again: “Port ten.”

  Turning inshore …

  “Ten of port wheel on, sir.”

  “Steer—two-four-five … I’ll be damned …” More heavy silence. Wykeham murmured from his bunk,”We’re twenty miles inside the Frogs’ border.”

  Also, Ultra was moving into some very shallow water. Or at least, rather shallow water with very shallow patches in it.

  He straightened up, dropping the dividers on the chart, and McClure went back into the control room. Ruck pulled back the wardroom chair, and sat down.

  “I’d guess she’s four or five thousand tons. Flying an Eyetie flag. She’s hull-down, from here, behind one of the islands, tucked right in. So we’ve got to get in there too, somehow.”

  Paul nodded. Wykeham got up on one elbow. “We’re well inside Vichy territory, sir.”

  Ruck stared at him. “How do I know where the frontier is?”

  “Marked on the chart, sir.”

  “On Chart 446?”

  “I don’t know which—”

  “There’s no frontier marked on the chart I’m using, Number One. Anyway, if you ignore those islands, which are only pissy little sandbanks, she’s more than three miles offshore.” He looked up at the clock. “One hour on this course, if the water stays deep enough. Then diving stations and stand by gun action.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  On the Tuesday, after a run of about ten miles in company with a body of commandos under Trolley, they stopped for a turnip shoot on a hillside some miles inland from the port. Men higher up bowled the turnips downhill: they came flying and bouncing, and as they passed the waiting marksmen Colt automatics and Thompson and Lanchester sub-machine guns shattered the still, spring-like air.