Marine H SBS

by Ian Blake

  Using single paddles, the two teams had cautiously circled the edge of the harbour in the pouring rain until they had come to the narrow entrance with its rough-built stone piers on either side. There had been no sign of any guards on land or of any harbour patrol. All the canoeists’ targets were anchored in the middle of the harbour, huddled together as if for protection. Only one light now showed, from a boat in the middle.

  Their targets had seemed a long way away, hopelessly out of reach, and Tiller had thought then, with a flash of insight, that it was not only the Japanese who committed suicide: they just made a ritual out of it. And why not?

  Then, as they had crossed the harbour mouth, he had seen an indistinct blur to their left, a small island perhaps, between themselves and the Japanese. As they had approached it the rain had ceased as quickly as it had come and he could see it was a bombed-out hull of a small merchant ship. Under his breath he had thanked the RAF with all his heart, for the wreck had meant the canoeists had at least an outside chance of reaching their targets.

  They had sheltered behind the half-sunk ship as long as they dared, hoping against hope that another veil of rain would sweep across the harbour to protect them. But the sky, although partially covered, so that the moonlight was intermittent, remained obstinately clear of rain clouds, and eventually Tiller had indicated it was time to start. He had decided to attack the three boats huddled together to their left, plus a smaller one anchored apart which he suspected was the headquarters ship, and Dopey should attack the other four. Each canoe would act independently. There was no question of one helping the other in an emergency if it meant abandoning the operation. That was how they had been trained. They all knew the rules and must now follow them without question.

  Just as they had left the security of the wreck the moon had gone behind a bank of cloud and Tiller had thought that perhaps after all they stood a chance. But then the Japanese officer, or whoever he was, had started shouting . . .

  Now the torch switched to another ship, sweeping along its decks in search of a sentry.

  ‘Dareka Okiteru?’ the Japanese repeated. He sounded almost plaintive.

  There was no answer. He called out again. This time a long stream of what could only have been abuse echoed across the water in reply. The torch wavered uncertainly before it was snapped off, and Tiller could just make out its holder going below.

  Tiller waited a moment before straightening up. He listened intently but he heard only the gentle slap of the water on the edge of the cockle and Sandy breathing heavily behind him. Ahead he could see the tops of the masts of the Japanese ships moving in gentle arcs across a clear patch of night sky. Satisfied, he took a deep gulp of humid monsoon air and dug his paddle carefully into the water.

  Suddenly the moon, which was now beginning to wane, bathed the harbour with the brightness of a searchlight. Tiller hesitated in mid-stroke and Sandy urged in his ear: ‘Keep going. Head for the mergui on the extreme left. We know there’s no sentry on deck.’

  Banzai, Tiller shouted to himself. Banzai, Tiger.

  He dug in quickly now, and felt the pain of his shoulder jar through his arm. The phosphorescence on the water danced and glittered, but he calculated that the quicker they got there the better – and by moving fast they had less chance of being hit if they were seen.

  It was further than he had thought, but then they were suddenly in the shadow of the eighty-foot native schooner thrown by the moon on the water, and Tiller had to slow the canoe down with his blade. Gently, slowly, they drifted alongside, and then rested.

  The tide was beginning to ebb so that it thrust the canoe against the side of the mergui, making it easy for Sandy to steady the canoe while Tiller prepared one of the Pin-Up Girls.

  Tiller squeezed the soft copper tubing of the time pencils to crush their inner capsules. He then replaced them in their slots, silently approving the American precaution of using two delay mechanisms. Too often in the past he had laid explosives which had failed to explode because the temperamental time pencils had not functioned.

  He wondered if he had allowed the correct amount of time – the warm water would speed up the ammonium chloride eating through the fine wire that retained the spring-loaded firing pin – and decided that he had. At the best of times pencil fuses were rather hit-or-miss devices, but on this occasion timing was not crucial.

  The next part of the operation was crucial. He did not know if all the crew were asleep in the mergui’s crude deck house, situated near the stern, but it seemed logical that they would all be there to keep out of the worst of the monsoon weather. It therefore made sense, to avoid alerting the crew, to fix the Pin-Up as far from them as possible, and he indicated to Sandy that he wanted to move the canoe up to the bows. Sandy nodded his agreement and moved the canoe slowly down the length of the vessel.

  Silently, Tiller withdrew the pieces of the placing rod from their position in the bows of the canoe and connected them together. He attached the Pin-Up to the end of the rod and waited for the canoe to drift to a halt near the bows. He remembered the Texan telling him it was exactly the same principle as placing a limpet and he slowly lowered the Pin-Up on the end of the placing rod into the water.

  The canoe tipped alarmingly, but Sandy managed to shift his weight sufficiently to compensate without losing his fingertip grip on the roughly hewn edges of the mergui’s planking. If it had been a steel hull, Tiller thought, Sandy would have had a magnetic holdfast to keep a grip on the ship’s side. The Yanks might be clever, but they had failed to think of that, and he wondered, as he made his first attempt to disconnect the placing rod, if they had ever used their clever device operationally.

  At first the placing rod refused to disconnect itself and he had to lever it upwards again with more force. This time it came away from the Pin-Up and simultaneously there was a distinct vibration as the bolt was driven into the wooden hull. Tiller heard Sandy’s sharp involuntary intake of breath as the boat trembled momentarily under his hand.

  Tiller tensed, waiting for the inevitable shout of alarm from the deck of the mergui, for he was sure that the thud of the bolt into the planks must have been heard or felt by at least one of its crew. If they were discovered it would be no use trying to fight. The only chance then would be to dive under the vessel and try to get to the shore unseen.

  The seconds ticked by. Tiller glanced back at Sandy, who shrugged and grimaced. It looked as if they had got away with it.

  Tiller withdrew the placing rod from the water and slid it along the canoe’s deck. One down, Tiller thought – just three to go.

  The two boats next to the mergui were much bigger and would need two Pin-Up Girls to be sure of sinking them.

  ‘Tavoys,’ Sandy whispered in Tiller’s ear as they moved cautiously towards the schooners.

  The moon, low in the sky, was behind another bank of cloud now and Tiller, elated by their success so far, felt further encouraged by the darkness that now engulfed them. He knew that on a dark night SBS canoes, when their crew took the prone position, were indistinguishable from floating logs.

  The thickness of the planking of the first schooner – which, Tiller judged, was well over a hundred feet long – muffled the sound and dampened the vibration of the first Pin-Up’s bolt as it was driven home just near where they judged the engine was positioned, and then they placed another near the rudder.

  The second schooner lay near the first one. It was slightly longer than the first, and although a tough ocean-going vessel it looked in poor condition. From a gash in its side Tiller deduced it must have recently been in a collision.

  This time they placed the first charge near the bows. Then they moved aft, looking for the exhaust pipe, which would indicate the position of the engine. When they found the pipe Sandy steadied the canoe while Tiller prepared the placing rod and attached a Pin-Up Girl to it. Then, just as he was leaning over to lower the device into the water, Sandy’s grasp slipped.

  Instinctively, Sandy grabbed
at the tavoy’s side but in the split second it took for him to restore the canoe’s stability the canoe tipped. It caught Tiller off balance and he felt the Pin-Up Girl slide off the placing rod, and into the water.

  Tiller cursed silently. He had one device remaining and he had to use that on the final target, as it was almost certainly the headquarters ship. One Pin-Up Girl wouldn’t sink the tavoy and he wished now he’d placed the first one by the engine, where it would have done the maximum damage. Too late now.

  He looked down into the water as if half hoping the device would be floating on the surface, and saw something he had not noticed before. He tapped Sandy on the shoulder. Sandy leant back and Tiller whispered: ‘Oil.’

  Now that he had spotted it, the large, black, greasy puddle, stretching out beyond the schooner’s stern, was easy to discern. The collision must have ruptured its fuel tank. Tiller thought of using the City Slicker but then dismissed the idea. It would have prevented them sinking the headquarters ship and would probably have scuppered any chance of Dopey finishing his tasks and escaping. They turned the canoe round and sheltered under the tavoy’s raked bows while they studied their final target.

  They could see now that it was another mergui, smaller than the first, easily identifiable by its high poop and not unlike an Elizabethan man-of-war. A light glowed from its cabin and there was movement on its deck. Tiller looked across the stretch of open water and considered their options while Sandy held the canoe steady under the schooner’s bow.

  The tide was flowing out of the harbour more swiftly now, but to allow the canoe to drift with it towards the mergui was too risky and too slow. But it was a help that at least they had the tide with them and would not have to paddle against it.

  Looking across at the mergui, which was anchored by the stern as well as the bow, it seemed highly unlikely to Tiller that the hammer blow of the bolt being driven into the planking would go unnoticed on such a small craft, especially as some of its occupants were still awake. So they would have to work on the assumption they might be discovered. He indicated that Sandy should bend forward and he then whispered his plan in his ear.

  Sandy knew the odds but nodded his agreement. He let go the schooner’s bobstay, and they began to paddle across the open water towards the mergui.

  At that point, as Tiller said afterwards, God intervened in such a decisive way that he felt there was, after all, a kindly man in heaven with a long, white beard. For the monsoon rains returned with a vengeance. They came abruptly, out of nowhere it seemed, a rushing, roaring downpour that churned up the water around them and cut visibility to a few yards. Thunder rumbled overhead. Tiller hastily extracted his pocket compass and during a vivid flicker of lightning managed to take a bearing of the mergui before it vanished behind a veil of torrential tropical rain.

  Looking at it from the tavoy, the mergui had seemed almost on the horizon, but as the rain continued to hammer down, its outline suddenly appeared ahead of them. Now Tiller had to practically shout to be heard above the roar of the rain and the claps of thunder.

  ‘Forget the plan,’ he said to Sandy. ‘We’ll make it.’

  ‘Thank Christ for that,’ Sandy replied. ‘I didn’t fancy our chances of swimming ashore.’

  The storm had driven below whoever had been on the mergui’s deck but the light in the cabin continued to flicker and blink intermittently as the rain lightened and then came down with renewed ferocity.

  They came alongside right under the high stern that made a mergui so easily distinguishable from the other types of native craft, and let the canoe drift with the tide towards the bow.

  Unlike the fore-and-aft-rigged tavoy, the mergui was rigged with Chinese lugsails, so it did not have a bowsprit. But its bows were raked to such an extreme that Sandy had no difficulty in keeping a firm grip on them while Tiller planted the last Pin-Up Girl. He lowered the device on the placing rod and then waited until another gust of wind and rain swept across the vessel before lifting the placing rod to disengage it. But however hard he tried he could not get it to disconnect and trigger the bolt.

  Quite suddenly the rain stopped, the wind dropped to a stiff breeze, and the sky cleared around the last remnants of the moon.

  Then behind them, from one of Dopey’s targets, Tiller heard a Japanese shout a challenge. There was a single shot, then a burst from what he knew was a M2 carbine, and a longer burst from a Japanese Type 100 sub-machine-gun.

  Above them the crew of the mergui erupted on deck, shouting instructions at one another.

  Sandy said urgently in his ear: ‘Do we swim for it?’

  ‘No point now,’ whispered Tiller, consigning the placing rod and the Pin-Up Girl to the bottom of the harbour. ‘Let’s take this fucking junk instead.’

  He pulled his carbine from its place and then tossed a 36 grenade on to the deck of the mergui. Stealth and evasion was the hallmark of the SBS but on occasion direct action was necessary. Now was such a time.

  Sandy whooped his delight and threw two more grenades in quick succession. They went off with a thump that shook the mergui from stem to stern.

  While debris was still clattering on to the deck and into the water the two SBS men swung themselves on board, deliberately tipping over the canoe as they did so. It sank instantly.

  When the SBS men appeared over the bows the two Japanese who had survived the grenades panicked and jumped or fell into the water. Tiller shot one with his carbine; the other went under and did not come up again. With his carbine Sandy covered the three Japanese lying on the deck, but as he edged closer to them he could see that they were dead.

  The firing and shouting behind the two SBS men continued sporadically but the moon was now too low in the night sky to shed any proper light on what was happening. Lights and shouts of command or alarm seemed to be coming from all corners of the harbour. A machine-gun from one of the ships opened fire on the shore, its tracer bullets arcing prettily over the water. Another began firing into the sky as if the gunner thought the attack had come from that direction.

  ‘Search the deck house,’ Tiller ordered. Sandy lifted his hand and moved aft while Tiller searched the dead Japanese before rolling them into the water.

  Sandy came out of the cabin.

  ‘That’s the lot,’ he said. ‘It must have been the HQ ship. There are charts all over the place and a wireless set.’

  ‘Has it got an engine?’

  ‘You must be joking.’

  ‘Then we’ll sail it ashore. I don’t fancy swimming.’

  ‘Too right,’ said Sandy. ‘You’ll fancy it even less if you look over the stern.’

  Tiller went aft and saw, directly under the counter, the dismembered remains of what had once been a human body being tossed about amid a churning, frothing mass of water.

  ‘What the fuck . . . ?’

  ‘Hammerheads,’ said Sandy. ‘Not a pretty sight, is it? I didn’t like to tell you they’d be around when you were planning to swim for it.’

  Tiller turned away in disgust. ‘Get ready to sever the bow-anchor warp while I hoist one of the lugsails. When it starts filling, cut the stern one. There’s quite a wind blowing, so you’re going to have to be quick or we might tear the stern out of her.’

  ‘I’ll be quick all right, Sarge,’ Sandy replied laconically. ‘We’re about to have visitors.’

  He pointed to an open boat which had emerged from the shadows of the first tavoy. It was still too far away from them to make out any details except that it was being rowed.

  ‘What armament has this floating sieve got, I wonder?’ Tiller asked, glancing round him.

  ‘Fuck all that I can see,’ Sandy replied.

  ‘Well, we’ll just run the buggers down.’

  ‘What about Dopey?’

  ‘What about him?’ Tiller snarled. ‘You know the rules. Anyway, he’s upwind of us, and without an engine there’s nothing we can do.’

  Sandy saw the sense in that. He unsheathed his parang knife and moved forw
ard. Tiller tugged on the rope halyard of the mainmast and found that the square sail, crudely made of bamboo matting strengthened by battens, could be easily hoisted on its yard. He pulled it up quickly, made the halyard fast, and ran aft to find the rope that controlled the sail. When he found it he held it with one hand and the tiller with the other. He felt the strain on the rope as the sail filled and shouted for Sandy to cut the warp that held the bow anchor.

  ‘All gone for’ard, Tiger!’ Sandy shouted, and Tiller smiled at his delight at being in such a scrap. Good for Sandy – the Aussie was all right.

  For a moment the mergui hovered as the tide kept it head to wind, but then it bore away quickly and the single sail, filled with wind, made the mast creak and groan under the stress.

  Sandy scrambled aft as the mergui swung round and, as Tiller struggled to control the vessel, sliced through the aft anchor warp with one powerful stroke of his parang.

  ‘All gone aft!’

  Now that the mergui was free it gathered speed quickly and Tiller sailed it straight at the oncoming boat. He could see now that it was being rowed by six men and that there was a Japanese crouched in the bows with some type of light machine-gun. In the stern stood another wearing a forage cap and a long sword.

  The two craft converged quickly. The Japanese in the stern shouted something and the boat altered course in an effort to avoid a collision. The soldier in the bows opened up with his machine-gun. Chips of wood flew off the mergui but the angle was not right for the machine-gunner to be able to fire at the two SBS men crouched by its helm.

  Tiller pushed the helm towards him and followed the boat, pointing the bows of the mergui straight at its middle. Even in the darkness he fancied he saw the mouth of the officer open in astonishment just before the mergui hit.

  There was a crunch and a jolt, shouting, then silence as the mergui careered on into the darkness.

  ‘More fucking shark fodder,’ Sandy said with satisfaction.

  ‘The trouble with you Aussies,’ said Tiller, who was beginning to enjoy himself, ‘is that you’re crude and foul-mouthed, and without any sympathy for those less fortunate than yourselves.’