From the corner, he saw the E-boat. Right there in front of him, and armed as Sauerkraut had been before they made the changes to her: a one-pounder AA gun aft, and a 20-millimetre for’ard of the bridge, between the torpedo tubes. There was an officer or petty officer in the outer wing of the bridge on this side, and a sailor in silhouette at the 20-millimetre. No other sign of life, and he could have shot both those men from where he was standing now, flat against the end wall.
He would, too. In a minute.
Beyond the E-boat to the right the quayside was empty for a hundred yards. Then a cluster of small ships right at the end, filling that corner. He could make out three tugs, and another of those harbour-protection launches. There was a giant explosion beyond them, a vertical shoot of flame as some dock installation disintegrated; then it was one blur of sound again, one constant roar of guns, grenades, mortars and explosive charges. From the corner of the shed he saw tracer arcing both ways across the basin at its other end; so No. 5 Troop was at the bridge now. He edged back into cover and told Bowater, “I’ll stay. Send the naval party to me. Soon as they’re set we’ll go for the E-boat, and you cover us by attacking the sweepers from the other end. We’ll have a go at the sweepers’ for’ard guns on our way to the E-boat, too. You can board them if you need to, or do it from the quayside. When we’re away, you’re on your own. OK?”
Bowater took off.
Jack guessed, Three minutes …
Ultra, barely alive, settled slowly towards the seabed. Without anyone having any clear idea where the seabed was.
One torpedo tube was still loaded with containers of oil, and wreckage and personal effects, letters, some copies of Good Morning. The reason the tube hadn’t been fired was that it seemed—seemed—the Italians had lost contact, about an hour ago. They seemed not to have regained it even when Ruck had taken the risk of venting the for’ard ballast tank, which he’d had to do eventually.
You used that word seemed in your thoughts because there’d been so many moments of disappointment since yesterday afternoon, and nobody was counting on anything now. Only a raving lunatic could have. Even if the Italians had lost her—which wasn’t certain, or could be just temporary, more a matter of mislaying than losing—there remained the facts that she’d exhausted her one battery section that wasn’t smashed, had several minor items of damage and—most important of all—that this thinning, carbon-monoxide-loaded air was all her thirty-two officers and men had to breathe.
For how long? He told himself, needing to face the truth, For longer than it can possibly keep us all alive.
Hundred and ten feet.
Wykeham ordered in his quiet, rather lazy tone, “Open and shut the flood again.”
The flood-valve on the trimline for’ard he was working with, admitting a few gallons at a time into the midships trimming-tank. Passing the order by word of mouth because the order-instrument needed electrical power which they didn’t have to spare. Although she’d get heavier as she sank, he was having to take in ballast now because he’d deliberately been keeping her light; when she got heavier he wasn’t at all sure there’d be enough power to run the ballast-pump to get the weight out of her again. It was about as vicious a circle as anyone could have dreamed up.
There were no cracked containers in the after battery tank. Only in number one, the for’ard tank. This was lucky, because if there’d been loose acid in the tank under the control room there’d have been salt water in it too, from the leak on the periscope gland, and that would have ended the whole thing long ago, by chlorine gassing. Ruck had mentioned it, adding something about counting their blessings.
Watertight doors were open now between compartments. A very few emergency lights provided faint radiance between areas of darkness. When those lights died there’d be a few hand-torches.
“Flood opened and now shut, sir.”
Hundred and twenty feet. She was lowering herself very slowly still: you might think—if you were imaginative to that extent—unwillingly … If Ruck and McClure were right about the position, she might touch bottom at any moment. If they were wrong by more than a mile or two, which wouldn’t be difficult, she wouldn’t find anything but water under her. In view of the lack of power, Ruck probably wouldn’t let her go too deep in this search for a resting place, because without the use of her motors he’d have only the bottled reserves of high-pressure air to rely on for getting her up again, and if you had to do it more than once you’d be using up that air. When it was gone, you’d have nothing. With the last of it, the best he’d be able to do would be to blow her to the surface, order “abandon ship” and probably—he himself—activate the explosive self-destruction charge. It was at the after end of the control room: he’d have to set its time-fuse going, then open main vents. It was possible he’d have time to get up the ladder himself before she dipped under.
If the Italians did regain contact now, they’d win. If they hadn’t won already. They’d have a target which they’d already clawed so badly that she’d only be able to wallow around and take further punishment until it finally split her open.
Hundred and twenty-five feet.
According to the chart she could have been in less than a hundred feet of water. If she was out near the edge of the coastal shallow patch, it might be more like a hundred and fifty or two hundred. Beyond that, she wouldn’t touch any bottom before three thousand.
Ruck motionless, feet spread, his hands on his hips, watching the luminous depthgauge dial. Wykeham’s taller figure drooping slightly as he shifted his weight to one side. The planesmen sat squarely on their stools, their hands resting on brass control wheels that were useless now because of the lack of steerage-way.
A soft, almost imperceptible bump from for’ard. A small shiver that ran through the fabric of the boat …
Wykeham looked round at Ruck. One hundred and thirty-six feet. Ruck nodded. “Put a few pints in for’ard, to hold her.”
“Shut O, open H suction and inboard vent.”
A little more weight in that for’ard trimming tank would anchor her forefoot to the bottom.
“Cox’n.” CPO Logan glanced round. Ruck told him, “Get the trays out, will you? Protosol. And don’t be mean with it.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Logan got off his stool. Protosol, lithium hydroxide, was a chemical that was supposed to absorb carbon monoxide and make the air last longer.
“All hands turn in now, and keep still and quiet. We’ve got to stick this out until it’s dark enough to surface. No unnecessary movement, no talking, no damn all … Long as we don’t take any breaths we don’t need, we’ll make it.”
“Shut H suction and inboard vent.” Wykeham asked Ruck, “Fall out diving stations, then, sir?”
Ruck nodded. “No need for watchkeepers.”
Lying still, you used less air. And if the enemy came back there’d be nothing anyone could do about it. Except fire that tube full of muck: and the destroyers would still drop a few more charges right on the spot, just to make sure …
Ruck went for’ard, to have a word with the torpedomen. CPO Logan and his assistants were already setting out protosol trays and pouring the white crystals into them.
The E-boat’s for’ard gunner was dead before they’d moved from cover. PO Slattery’s shot, that had been, as an opener to the assault. Two E-boat officers in the wing of the bridge were cut down within seconds of the gunner’s death, probably before they’d realized they were under attack; there was no possibility of hearing individual shots or bursts in the surrounding roar of action. By that time Jack, Slattery, Pettifer and Lloyd were halfway across the open stretch of quayside, while Rayner and Merrit stayed back to spray the minesweepers’ foc’sls and bridges with Lanchester fire. The sweepers’ gunners would be under simultaneous attack by the Marines—who now had it all to themselves: Jack and Slattery were in the E-boat’s bridge, Pettifer in its engineroom, Lloyd was getting the lines ready for casting off, Rayner checking the torpedoes’ pistols and other det
ail, and Merrit was searching the boat for more Germans. There’d been several shots from below, so he must have found some. “Both fish are armed and ready, sir!”
Rayner yelled it from the bridge window on the starboard side. Jack had given Pettifer enough time: he pressed the starters and the engines fired. He shouted, “Let go fore and aft!” He couldn’t hear his own voice, but Rayner knew what was wanted; he was on the boat’s bow and Lloyd was on the jetty casting off. All gone for’ard—Lloyd had given the hand signal and now he was running to the stern. Merrit came up into the bridge and shouted in Jack’s ear, “No problems, sir.” This was the feeling he had too: that it was all so easy and smooth-running, going just as they’d practised it so often; and they weren’t even going to need the plastic explosive … Glancing round to check on how Lloyd was doing he saw him stumble and then pitch forward across the bollard. Merrit rushed out. Rayner was on the quayside, first casting off and then, kneeling more or less on Lloyd’s body, firing in short bursts at the inside minesweeper: and twisting away, doubling over his gun, dropping it and falling sideways. Merrit yelled into the window, “All gone aft!” and Slattery came pushing in from the wing of the bridge. Jack put the port engine ahead and the wheel to starboard, so she’d nose in and swing her stern out; then he centred the wheel and put both engines full astern. Slattery was putting new clips into his Lanchester and Jack’s, and Merrit, outside, had settled himself down at the 20-millimetre. Opening fire to starboard, sending a solid stream of tracer at the minesweepers’ bridges as the E-boat shot stern-first away from them. It must have been from the sweepers that the two torpedomen had been shot; what had been going on with Bowater and his squad was anyone’s guess, but they obviously hadn’t knocked out those guns. Merrit had ceased fire. Jack stopped the starboard screw and put the port one half ahead, and wound on a lot of starboard rudder. The guns on the far side of the basin, beyond the U-boat shelter, were still in action, firing steadily across the water. The sky was alive and flickering with fires and gunflashes: there were several fires burning between the St Nazaire Basin and the river. “Both engines ahead now!” he yelled at
Slattery. “Tell Pettifer to come up!” The outside minesweeper was shooting at them, tracer flashing over high, then lowering but curving away astern as the E-boat picked up speed. Merrit came crashing in from that port side: “No more bastard ammo!” He dumped his pack of plastic. Jack had had ideas of using all that stuff to convert the boat into a small bomb-ship, a miniature Campbeltown, after he’d fired its torpedoes—which, in about thirty or forty seconds—
Pettifer was beside him. He’d wanted him to be up here where he could get away with the rest of them, after they’d fired; the engines were all right, and there was nothing more for him to do down there. Jack looked over at Slattery, who was at the torpedo-firing panel, identical to the gear in Sauerkraut. He shouted at him to stand by, and the PO raised a thumb signifying “ready” … One of the guns on the far side was shooting at them now, tracer sending up a long, fast line of splashes across black, reflective water, firing at them across the front of the U-boat pens. How they’d know, those gunners, that this E-boat was manned by their enemies—well, of course, if they’d seen the action with the minesweepers … But more guns were joining in now—from that far end of the basin—from some ship berthed where the Möwes had been during the past week. A searchlight stabbed across the water, blinding him: before it had come on he’d realized that the ship was under way and that it was almost certainly another minesweeper—coming at them down the length of the basin, or heading to cross the E-boat’s bows? It had something like a Bofors, 40-millimetre, pumping shells at them, fireballs in a flat trajectory, muscling in on the tracer from that blockhouse roof. He’d only just have time and room, he saw suddenly as he realized how fast that ship was coming, to get this boat round and fire: and even then that bloody thing would ram or—
Didn’t matter: long as you got the fish away first. He spun the wheel, hard a-starboard. With an even chance of getting a clear shot, with seconds to spare, into the front of the completed part of the U-boat shelter. Just about make it, if—
Shells hitting, all along the port side as he swung her to the firing course. The E-boat jolting and shuddering—and flames behind him,
smashing timber, and a hit right in front of the bridge, a huge circular expanding thrust of flame. That side was all flame and Slattery was in it— he’d have been killed outright in the shell’s explosion but now he was just part of the blazing wreckage. Merrit recoiling, after an attempt to get to the torpedo control panel: roar of flames as well as gunfire and Pettifer was trying to get over there too, covering his face with his forearms and forcing himself into the flames. All in those few seconds: the wheel was centred and the boat was on her firing course. He flung himself over to the burning starboard side—Pettifer reeling back from the furnace where the torpedo control panel was: the swelling fireball engulfed him too, and the minesweeper struck aft, rolling the E-boat over and swinging her around to port, the blazing forepart lifting, lighting the entire basin as she began to fill through her shattered stern.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Mid-morning in Perth, Western Australia, time-zone minus eight …
The white-haired man in the dark suit said, glancing up at them both and smiling, “I hereby pronounce you man and wife.”
Foot of the rainbow … Even if it was actually a parquet floor in Perth’s Town Hall. And there was no time to waste now thinking about the letter he’d only just managed to get written and posted to Fiona: explaining—or trying to—and apologizing … It was time now for nothing but letting his heart and soul rest in the sight and feel of Kate beside him, Kate’s slim figure in pale blue, and a floppy blue hat on her backswept light brown hair. He’d thought when he’d first set eyes on her, on the bridge of his destroyer Tuareg in the Aegean a year ago, that she looked very much like Ingrid Bergman; but he’d been wrong. Out of the army nurse’s uniform, and not having just been dragged off a Cretan beachhead that was under attack by German paratroops, she made Ingrid Bergman look like anybody …
“Hello, there.”
“Hello, Nick.”
You were supposed to kiss: but the hell with that, they’d done it a thousand times—remember Cairo, last September?—and they’d be doing it a million more. Now, he wanted just to look at her, photograph her and this moment in his mind: her wide-set grey eyes, rather wide, curvy mouth, the small indentation that appeared on one side of it and not the other when she smiled … He was fifteen years older than she was and he had a scar, still fresh-looking, that ran from his left eye to the corner of his mouth. He’d collected it in the Java Sea, a month ago. Beside her he felt old—and damaged, like his ship that was in pieces in a dock a few miles away. Kate looked—well, the stock word for brides was “radiant,” and he couldn’t have found a better one … Behind them her mother, Mary Farquharson, said quite loudly, “You’re supposed to kiss each other now.”
He heard Ted Farquharson’s rumbling laugh; and on his left, Jim Jordan’s chuckle. Jordan had acted as best man, but last night’s stag evening had been held on board Defiant, because Jordan’s destroyer, the USS Sloan, was dry, like every other US Navy ship.
He murmured, still looking at her, “I suppose we’d better.”
“I can stand it, if you can.”
They kissed lightly, formally. By mid-afternoon they’d be alone, and that would be the time for kissing: in the Esplanade Hotel, where he’d reserved a suite with an outlook across the Swan River. In case anyone wanted to look out. Tomorrow they’d be taking the train to Tambellup— 240 miles southeast—where Kate’s father would meet them and drive them out to his farm. He raised wheat and sheep, and it was a farm, he insisted, not a sheep-station, which was what you found up north and farther east. But it was a farm, Nick gathered, about the size of the West Riding of Yorkshire. You looked south from the house and garden, Kate had told him, to the Stirling Range, a crescent of blue mountains h
alfway between Tambellup and Albany on the south coast.
Jim Jordan shook his hand. “Congratulations, Nick … Somewhat changed circumstances from a month ago, huh?”
A month ago both their ships had taken part in the battle of the Java Sea, and both had been lucky enough to survive it. Then, pushing their luck a bit farther, they’d got away, under the noses of encircling Jap squadrons, Sloan through the Bali Strait and Defiant through the Alas Strait. Four other American destroyers had escaped via the Bali passage ahead of Sloan, but that made up the full tally of survivors. Just one month ago … Java had fallen, and within ten days the Japs had poured 200,000 troops in.
Jordan kissed the bride. Nick kissed Mary Farquharson. Bob Gant, Defiant’s second in command, shook Nick’s hand … “Every happiness, sir. But I’d guess that’s pretty well assured.” Then Gant was leaving, beckoning to the other Defiant officers who’d be forming a guard of honour now on the steps outside. Representatives of the ship’s company were also filtering out. There were forms to be filled in and witnessed, for the registrar. Ted Farquharson, who was a big man with a broad face and iron-grey hair, embraced his daughter. Nick heard him growl, “There’ll be no arguing with you now, I suppose, now you’re Lady Everard …” She was laughing and hugging him and he was muttering, “I don’t know what I’ll do …”
Kate would be staying here in Australia—permanently, he hoped. There’d be plenty of work for nurses in Aussie hospitals, with the Japanese swarming all over the southwest Pacific and the Allies preparing for the long, tough process of driving them back where they’d come from. In recent weeks there’d been a scare over the possibility of an invasion of Australia, but informed opinion seemed to regard that danger as having passed now. The Jap carried-launched air attack on Darwin in late February had caused enormous damage—the element of surprise had been as total as it had been at Pearl Harbor—but it looked as if that was about as far as they’d be allowed to come. The first huge convoys from the States were already pouring men, weapons and warplanes into the Australian ports, and more convoys were on their way; it was the start of the great build-up, and there was a theory that the Japs might already have overreached themselves, might logistically have bitten off more than they’d be able to digest. General Douglas MacArthur, who’d fought a tremendous though doomed rearguard action in the Philippines, had just arrived in Australia to take over as Supreme Commander SW Pacific.
A Share of Honour: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 4 Page 30