“Permission to go aft, sir?”
Ruck nodded. Pool went to the watertight door and began to wrench the clips off it. Ruck called, “Tell ‘em I hope we’ll be out of this before much longer, Chief.”
“Course east, sir.”
Rising past 240 feet.
And past five-thirty, too. On what day? Paul found his mind dug its heels in, resented being asked the question. Because this was the world, not the one outside where they had days with numbers and names on them? Who bloody cared! 200 feet on the gauge. He forced an answer out of his memory: it was a Friday, and the twenty-seventh day of March, 1942. Coming up quite fast. There’d be pressure in Q tank, from having blown it, and at some point they’d have to vent it. You could vent it inboard, but the internal pressure then, on top of the torpedo-firing, would be a long way above normal. If you vented it outboard you’d send a great bubble to the surface and give away the boat’s position. If they didn’t have a good idea of it already.
Screws passing over. Gone.
That mental disturbance a minute ago: was it because the only thing that mattered was surviving this, so that a question not directly related to that end was an irritation and unacceptable?
Neurotic: better watch it. Trouble was, he realized, having no work to do; in present circumstances he didn’t have a thing to do except stand around and listen.
Still grouped down. Worried about the battery, of course. If this went on into the night there’d be good cause to worry, too. And wouldn’t it, if there were enough destroyers up there to share the work and cover all possible directions of escape?
Reports coming in from the other compartments were of only minor breakages—light bulbs, and the TSC depthgauge blown out, and a leak on the after heads, where the hull-valve had been blown off its seating. Chief ERA Pool was back. Braidmore, a leading telegraphist, was reclip-ping the watertight door behind him. Pool reported, “After ballast pump’s had it, sir. It’s the suction-rubber—”
A pattern of depthcharges exploding overhead, shallow-set but noisy … He finished as the rumbling crashes died away, “I’d say it’s the suction-rubber, sir. Pressure from outboard—”
“All right, Chief. Thank you. What about the heads?” Ruck glanced round. “Stop starboard.”
“Quinn here’ll fix that in two shakes, sir.” Pool grinned, Quinn scowled. He was constantly having to work on the blowing-gear of the heads, and it was a job he detested.
“Starboard motor stopped, sir. One-fifty feet, sir.” Wykeham reached to the order-instrument. The loss of the after trimming pump wasn’t any disaster, in normal circumstances, as long as the for’ard one didn’t stop working too. The trouble was, one defeat did so often seem to lead to another.
Propeller noise, very faint, just for an instant …
“Seems to be the second eleven batting now.” Ruck got up off his stool. “Let’s see if we can’t lose the bastards … Starboard fifteen—”
“Starboard fifteen, sir.” With that motor stopped, she’d turn fast. Creagh reported, “Fifteen of starboard wheel on, sir.”
“Steer south.”
Paul could hear asdic pings again. Perhaps they’d been audible before and he hadn’t noticed them; but they were there again now all right. He thought, Second eleven’s learning fast … He saw Ruck’s expression harden as he heard it too. So it had just started.
Screws churned over, as Ultra swung around to starboard. Right over the top and as sudden as a passing train.
“Group up, full ahead together!”
He remembered a nightmare concept he’d considered, during the last patrol—of no amount of dodging doing any good, the enemy always there and in contact no matter what tricks you tried …
Ultra vibrating, noisy under grouped-up motor-power. Precious, to-be-conserved battery-power.
“Both motors grouped up, full ahead, sir.”
“Course south, sir!”
They’d have tracked her, on that turn. The one holding her in contact would have.
“Starboard twenty.”
Depthcharges thundered on the port quarter. Then one closer, abeam: she seemed to shift bodily sideways, recoiling from the shock of the explosion. Lights had flickered, then steadied: she’d rocked back, and the sea was quiet again.
“Twenty of starboard wheel on, sir.”
“Stop starboard.”
No pings now. Not audible ones anyway. Ultra mouse-like, circling away to starboard, driven by her port screw alone. Circling as quietly as she was able, out of the churned-up water. Ship’s head on west now, and circling on: Ruck, standing behind Creagh, had his head bowed, listening. She was pointing north now, towards the Italian coast, and still swinging.
“Midships.”
“Midships, sir.”
Easing the rudder-angle off.
“Meet her, and steer northeast.”
“Meet her, sir.” It meant putting the rudder the other way, to counter the swing. “Steer northeast, sir.”
One mouse, blind and deaf and with several minor injuries, trying to steal away …
In a lousy direction, too, from the point of view of being able to surface when the dark came—for that very reason it probably wasn’t a direction in which the cats would expect any mouse in its right mind to be crawling.
“Course northeast, sir.”
Six-fifteen. In about an hour and a half it would be getting dark up there.
At six-thirty, everything was still quiet. Wykeham murmured. “Looks like you did it, sir.”
Ruck was on the asdic stool. He moved off it, to sit on the deck with his back against the ladder. “We’ll give it an hour.” He pointed upwards. “If they will. Until seven-thirty.”
Everyone sat. Some—including Paul—dozed, occasionally. He was dreaming about a girl called Sally, a very pretty little Wren he’d known in Scotland: she had a way of kissing that could go on for hours and, since kissing was all she’d do, could just about drive you mad. In the dream she’d just taken her mouth off his and whispered, “All right, I will go to bed with you,” and Wykeham, still on his feet behind the planesmen, announced, “Seven-thirty, sir.” Paul opened his eyes, acutely disappointed, and saw Ruck getting to his feet.
“Let’s have a look at the DR now, pilot.”
“Here, sir.”
Paul looked at it too, over Ruck’s shoulder. He had a crick in his neck, possibly from his activities in that dream, the kissing … If McClure’s figuring was accurate, Ultra was now six miles off shore, roughly midway between dell’Armi and Spartivento. Ruck muttered, taking measurements with the dividers, “Last night’s experience suggests we should be a good twelve miles off the coast, to surface clear of those Measures. That’s minimal. On the other hand we must get up there as soon as possible, or the battery’ll give up on us. But”—he was talking to himself, aloud—”it’d be silly to steer south from where we are now, because that’s precisely where they’re looking for us. So, making it southeast so as to skirt around them— making say four knots, with the set—right, pilot?” McClure agreed. Ruck used dividers again. “There. We’ll be twelve miles off at—2145.”
He came back into the control room. Paul was thinking about the destroyers hunting around for them farther south, and the chance of being caught again. At this stage, it would probably be fatal.
So it wouldn’t happen. Another thought in the back of his mind was that the sooner he could get back to sleep and take Sally up on that offer, the better.
“Number One—bring her round to southeast, and open up from depthcharging.” Ruck glanced at the telegraphs: the starboard motor was still stopped. “Slow ahead together. Relax to watch diving—but I want quiet. Cold supper … All things being equal, we’ll go to diving stations at 2145 and surface at 2200.”
Soon after nine-thirty, Ruck and Paul got dressed for the bridge. Red lighting had been burning in the wardroom and control room for the past hour;
so that your eyes would adapt themselves more quickly to
the dark. And it was quite enough to see by: poker dice, for instance, were perfectly legible.
Not that Paul had played, this evening. First there’d been supper to eat, then he’d been for’ard seeing to the loading of their last torpedo into number four tube.
Ruck’s intention was that when they surfaced he’d go southeastward at full speed on the diesels for the first hour, to put another dozen miles behind them; then the battery could have a standing charge from one engine until the dive at dawn. The battery was so near to being flat that Wykeham didn’t want Roffey to take readings: however bad it was, there was nothing he could have done about it.
At 2140, Ruck told Wykeham to take over from McClure and bring the boat up to forty feet. She’d been at 150 all this time. McClure, relieved as officer of the watch, paused at the chart to lay off Ultra’s return courses to Malta. The run southeast first, which would take her to a point twenty-five miles off Cape Spartivento, then the turn southwestward, and he had her surfacing tomorrow night, the twenty-eighth, just fifty miles short of Malta. He said to Paul—Ruck had gone through to the control room— “Probably enter about midnight.”
“Bloody shame. Nobody’ll see the Roger with its two new red bars.”
“Oh, fuck the Roger, let’s just get there!”
As if Malta was some kind of sanctuary … Perhaps he’d forgotten he’d been machine-gunned in the rest camp, and that they were bombing the Sliema flats now?
Or perhaps he only wanted to hear from home. From his parents, to know they were all right, recovering from the news of his brother’s death. That might well be it.
There’d be positive news about Unslaked too, by now.
Wykeham asked Ruck, “Diving stations, sir?”
The prospect of getting up there, into dark, cold air, and the diesels driving her out into open water clear of enemies was—well, fantastic. After the hours of helplessness … Ruck nodded, with a glance at his watch.
“Yes. I do believe that’s—”
He’d checked.
Looking round, Paul saw him standing quite still and looking upwards, frowning slightly, listening …
Screws came over in a rush and passed down the starboard side. Before the sound diminished and disappeared, they’d begun to slow. Nothing, now—except the soft hum of one motor running on the last vestiges of battery-power. Dim red lighting glowed on stubbled, anxious faces. Paul thought, still watching Ruck, It’s passed over: he’ll still surface, make a run for it in the dark—won’t he?
Ruck motionless, still listening. Head down, eyes half closed. Then he sighed: and Wykeham whispered, “Oh, bloody hell …”
Asdic pings. And Ruck’s expression, as he glanced up. For less than a second, Paul could read the truth in it: this surfacing had been their last hope.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Flashing.” Dixon leaned into the enclosed hutch of the E-boat’s bridge. “Fine on the bow here.”
And right on cue … Sharp, and Jack Everard, moved over and saw it too—just to the left of Campbeltown, whose dark shape Sauerkraut was tailing at eleven knots with the Chariot force now in its shape for the passage up-river. That flashing would be coming from the bridge of the submarine Sturgeon, who’d been sent on ahead to position herself as marker, marking the departure-point for the final stage, the run-in to the target.
Just after eight o’clock this evening, in the early darkness, the force had stopped and redisposed itself into the assault formation. Sauerkraut had moved up astern of Campbeltown and lain waiting, rolling gently to the swell, while the launches formed columns in line astern on either side and the MGB ran alongside Atherstone to embark the force commanders and their staffs. From there on the course had been northeast, towards the river mouth: the MGB leading, torpedo-carrying MLs flanking her, the other pair bringing up the rear of the columns and MTB 74, no longer under tow, riding hard astern.
Atherstone and Tynedale were somewhere back there in the darkness. They’d been tailing the force this far, but now they’d drop back and spend the night patrolling, and be here to cover the withdrawal in tomorrow’s dawn. Two other Hunts were being rushed to join them, too, from Plymouth, because those five Möwe-class torpedo-boats were reported to have sailed from St Nazaire and to be at sea now—somewhere or other …
“There’s Sturgeon.” Sharp passed Jack his binoculars. “Red three-oh. See her in the gaps between the MLs.”
A low, black shape: displaying no flashes now. She’d done her job. And the force navigator had done his, too, leading the ships to this point after all the southward detour and half a dozen course changes. All he had to do now—he’d be in the MGB with the force commanders—was guide them into the river and over its shallows to their target.
If Campbeltown did make it across those mud-flats …
C-in-C Plymouth’s signal about the Möwes had come just after 5 pm. Good news for Jack and the NTU, but potentially bad news for the force as a whole. The success of the operation depended on achieving total surprise, and a naval battle in the Loire wouldn’t exactly help.
But with luck, the torpedo-boats would be right out of the way, steaming off on some other errand. In which case, they’d have timed their departure very nicely.
Tynedale and Atherstone had kept that U-boat down, hunting it with depthcharges, for two hours this morning; then they’d left the area on a southwesterly course, so that if it had surfaced to send off an enemy report signal it wouldn’t have endangered the security of the operation. By 11 am, under gathering cloud—the weather was deteriorating, proving that forecast’s accuracy—the two destroyers had been back with the rest of the force, in day-cruising order. Then there’d been some French trawlers to cope with: three were boarded and their crews taken off before they were sunk. Tynedale had dealt with two, and the MGB with the other; it had been necessary because those trawlers sometimes had Germans on board with W/T equipment.
One ML had dropped out, with engine trouble, but its commandos had been transferred to one of the torpedo-carriers, who’d started with no troops on board.
Now the submarine’s dark shape had disappeared astern. Looking at it, Jack had had thoughts of young Paul, knocking around the Mediterranean in some more or less similar craft. And wondering whether Paul would have written to Nick about Fiona: not that it would make any damn difference now … He came in from the wing of the little bridge, and gave Sharp back his glasses. Roughly thirty miles to go, now …
In the bridge wing again an hour later, not long after 11 pm, he heard the drone of bombers going over. Cloud-cover was shutting out the moon they’d expected, and it might interfere with the RAF’s diversionary attack on the port. After all that high-level fuss … But in the last of the daylight this evening, clouds had also hidden this force from any reconnaissance flights the enemy might have had up.
He’d called his team together to give them the good news about the Möwes. Bowater had asked, “Then after you’ve shot off the torpedoes, sir, will you bring the boat in like you thought you might before, along where the torpedo-boats have been?”
“I don’t know, Sergeant.” He shrugged. “Depends how it works out. We may go alongside, or just abandon her and swim, or if we haven’t had to use the plastic we might have time to pack her with it and send her off on her own somewhere. But if you’re not on board with us when we shove off, you fall back to the commandos’ bridgehead. Or to cover elsewhere—depending …You’ll see for yourself what we’re doing, and you’ll just have to use your loaf—whether to stay with the commandos and withdraw with them, or join us, or get the hell out on your own.”
Dewar had promised, grinning, “We’ll be there to fish you out of the drink, I’d guess, sir.”
You couldn’t spell it out in detail. So much depended on how the take-over of the E-boat went, how much opposition there was, how long it took to get the boat off the quay and to a firing position opposite the U-boat shelter. The naval section of the NTU would have to be on board the E-boat, obviously�
�Jack and Slattery driving it, ERA Pettifer looking after its engines, and the torpedomen first casting off the securing lines and then preparing the torpedoes for firing. The Marines might end up on board too, or they might be left on the quayside—just depending what the situation was when they got there. There’d be guns directed at them from across the basin and also quite possibly from other ships tied up around its sides, and there might be Germans on the quays and in the surrounding buildings. The Marines’ job was to fend off opposition and provide protection to the naval party while they did their job, but it was impossible to say exactly what this would involve.
They all understood this; they’d discussed it dozens of times and practised it a dozen different ways. It was still natural enough, at the last minute, to go over it again, making sure that all the answerable questions had been answered. Jack added, “If we were being shot up at the south end of the basin, there’d be no point your trying to join us. You’d be better trying to give us covering fire from the commando area.”
In the northeast, at midnight, gunflashes were visible: St Nazaire’s AA defences in action against the RAF … The landing party checked their weapons and equipment. It wasn’t a pleasure-cruise any more, and there were no songs left to sing.
He was below, sorting his own gear, when Sauerkraut’s engines stopped. He rushed up to the bridge, and as he arrived the boat was getting under way again.
“What happened?”
“Campbeltown.” Sharp lowered his binoculars. “She hit the putty and just about stopped.”
It happened again a few minutes later. The ordered speed was still eleven knots, and she slowed suddenly to about half that. It wouldn’t be any joke to run aground on this high tide. If she stuck now, she’d stay stuck.
“She’s off. Half ahead, cox’n.”
Dixon said, with glasses up, “Northern shore’s in sight.” Pointing. “There, on the bow.” He had a flat way of talking that matched his phlegmatic, down-to-earth character; the steadiness was a contrast to Tubby Sharp’s more volatile temperament … But this was crazy, really: they’d come 450 miles across open sea, as strange and noticeable a collection of craft as you could imagine, and they were expecting to take an alert, intelligent enemy by surprise? And to make an assault in wooden boats with petrol storage on their decks? Take that for granted, as if it could reasonably be expected to work out as planned?
A Share of Honour: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 4 Page 27