Under Orders (A Donald Cameron Naval Thriller)

by Philip McCutchan

  ‘Cameron’s going, is he?’

  ‘Mister Cameron to you,’ Hanrahan said virtuously.

  ‘Sorry I’m sure, sir.’

  ‘To answer your question, yes, he’s going in charge. Can’t let that young woman out of his sight, I reckon.’ The Gunner sniffed. ‘To get back to the fuses, Tom. Just bloody look at ‘em!’ He held up a length of doubtful-looking material. ‘Talk about age, this died years ago. Still, I reckon it’ll do, just about.’

  ‘Still waterproof, is it?’

  ‘Yes, I reckon. Best test a length to be on the safe side, though. See to that, will you, Tom.’

  ‘Right. There’s what—just under a hundred feet.’ The Gunner’s Mate shut his eyes for a while in deep concentration. Then he said, ‘Fifty minutes maximum. Will that be enough?’

  ‘It’ll bloody have to be, won’t it,’ Hanrahan said, ‘seeing it’s all we’ve bloody got.’ He added, ‘Should be ample, barring accidents.’

  He made his way to the bridge to report, reflecting on the forthcoming mission. It was going to be the biggest thing he’d ever seen in his life when the Jerry base blew. It wouldn’t be just the shattering of the mountain; for Hanrahan’s money, igniting the aviation spirit was likely to blow up every bit of explosive on the site—magazines, warheads, the lot. It was going to be worth seeing.

  By now the Castle Bay was well into Skojafjord and there was something of a different sort worth seeing: the scenery. It was, in Hanrahan’s eyes at any rate, much more spectacular than Vest Hammarfj ord. The mountains were magnificent, set really close together; the fjord, or the part they were in as they headed for the south-western shore, was long and narrow. The sun was high now, and was slanting down between the snowy summits to bring an almost unbelievable beauty... the ship seemed an intrusion, even the guns seemed an irreverence as the grey barrels stared out over the still water, at the greenery that climbed the mountains. Mr Hanrahan stopped for a moment and just looked and drank it in. Like Scotland so much beauty you got sated with it after a while, it was almost too much to take. In any case, the war beckoned.

  Mr Hanrahan went on towards the bridge. As he got there, Forbes passed the order to bring the ship up. They were on station now, lying off the part of the shore where the overland track started according to the girl.

  Forbes looked round. ‘Well, Guns?’

  ‘All correct, sir. I reckon we can cope.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Have you decided on the composition of the party yet, sir?’

  Forbes said, ‘Yes. The Sub-Lieutenant in charge, with two sappers to lay the fuse, and four commandos to cover them. Plus the young woman as guide, of course. Any comments, Guns?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Can’t this be a hundred per cent Naval show, sir? The army’s done its part. What I mean is, the Gunner’s party, they’re all good hands—’

  ‘I’m sure they are, Guns, but you know as well as I do, they haven’t the experience of sappers trained in demolition. I can’t take the risk of anything going wrong due to inexperience.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I’m sorry, Guns, that’s my last word. The army was sent in to do this job, and it’s the army that’s going to do it, basically. And I’ve no doubt they’ll do it well.’

  Mr Hanrahan looked stubborn. He said, ‘In that case, sir, I’ve a personal request to make.’

  ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘I’d like to go myself if it’s all the same to you, sir. They’re my fuses, all said an’ done. Don’t want the army buggering ‘em up, sir.’

  Forbes gave a short laugh. He said, ‘You’re the only Gunner I’ve got... but you can go if that’s your wish, Guns.’ He understood well enough: the Navy’s warrant officers were always jealous for their departments and by and large they were the backbone of the Service, men who hadn’t got where they were without a bucketful of guts and knowledge. One of their drawbacks was that, very often, they didn’t trust other people to do their jobs for them, and that too was understandable when you’d been through a very hard mill. Andaman like old Hanrahan would be good stiffening if anything should go wrong.

  ***

  ‘All set, Sub?’

  ‘All set, sir.’

  Forbes looked at his watch: the time was 1600 hours. By 2000 hours the demolition party should be approaching the inward end of the entry channel back in Vest Hammarfjord. Give them another four hours to ensure full dark and swim out to the jetty, then a total of, say, five hours back again. Forbes would not have the few hours of darkness he would have liked in which to move his ship farther north towards the sea, but that couldn’t be helped and in any case they seemed safe enough currently though the future couldn’t be predicted. Forbes was far from happy about that unpredictable future: the very fact that no apparent move had been made against them after they had left Vest Hammarfjord was disturbing. Their fate might already have been taken care of somewhere along the route ahead; but that was in the lap of the gods now.

  Forbes looked at the blackened faces, at the anonymous woollen caps pulled down over the foreheads. Those men had guts; so had the girl. With her smudged face, woolly hat and camouflage she was virtually indistinguishable from the men.

  Forbes said, ‘Off you go, then. Good luck to you all. I don’t doubt you’ll bring it off.’ He was trying to sound cheerful but it was an uphill task. He shook each of them by the hand and then saluted them away as they left the bridge to embark. The fjord was gloomy now that the sun had passed across the gap between the mountains. Forbes felt the onset of an alarming depression as he watched the heavily-armed party being pulled away to the shore in the seaboat, together with the coiled fuse-line, the box of detonators, and tools for opening up the pipeline valve. As the boat reached the shore, the Petty Officer Telegraphist came to the bridge and approached the Captain.

  ‘Beg pardon, sir.’

  ‘Yes, PO?’

  ‘Admiralty’s trying to call us up, sir. I read their call sign and ours, and that’s all I did read. The reception’s just about non-existent, sir.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it! Keep trying, all the same. They’ll be repeating it.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Petty Officer Blackman saluted and went back down the ladder. Forbes was left with another worry now: what the devil was the Admiralty trying to tell him? Was it orders, was it a warning?

  There was just no way of finding out. Heavily land-locked as they were, very much more so than they had been whilst in the outer fjord, there wouldn’t be a cat in hell’s chance of receiving signals. There was just one thing to calm anxiety, and that was negative enough in all conscience: whatever it was the Admiralty had to say, there was nothing they could do about it in any case. They were committed, and the only way ahead, once Cameron was back, would be through the fjords as directed by Jakob Nordli.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  In the Admiralty’s operations room the Staff could do no more than make assessments, better perhaps called guesses. The Castle Bay’s wireless transmitter had, very properly, not opened up at all throughout, not even in acknowledgement of signals; as always, an assumption had to be made that any particular signal had been received as transmitted. What was worrying the Duty Captain, and a succession of Duty Captains before him in the watchkeeping rota, was the fact that the ship should by now have been into safe waters and at last in a position to break wireless silence and report.

  But there had been nothing from any source at all, no information whatever. Even the Resistance in the locality had not come up again, and that in itself didn’t look too good. The Norwegian loyalists could all have been wiped out, or at the very least gone well and truly to ground, not risking any transmission with the Germans on their track.

  In the meantime the Scharnhorst and the Hipper had been spotted at sea by reconnaissance aircraft, heading north. So they had left the vicinity of Vest Hammarfjord: and, again, what about the Castle Bay? Destroyed by the guns of the heavy ships, or not? In case the answer was not, a warning as to the Germans�
�� movements was sent out to the Castle Bay. And, by orders of the First Sea Lord, a signal was made to the C-in-C Home Fleet aboard the King George V, repeated to Rear-Admiral Vian and the Senior Officer of the escort guarding the homeward-bound convoy now coming in from Archangel—the outward PQ convoy having by this time passed into the safe area. This signal warned that the Scharnhorst and the Admiral Hipper had left the Norwegian coast and were steaming north. C-in-C Home Fleet was ordered to be ready to cover the Castle Bay whenever her movements might become known, if only by reason of her being brought to action by the German Fleet.

  ***

  The way over the mountains was hard going: Mr Hanrahan, no longer young, was taking it with many grumbles. He was a seaman, not a mountaineer.

  ‘You volunteered, Guns,’ Cameron said.

  ‘Yes, I did. And I must have been stark, raving, bloody mad! Never volunteer, that’s the motto I should have stuck to, Sub.’ The Gunner halted and wiped his streaming face. The evening was cool, but Mr Hanrahan was notwithstanding in a bath of sweat. Cameron took the opportunity to call a halt of the whole party; tney had plenty of time in hand since they couldn’t go into action until after full dark. No point in pushing it. They all flopped on the ground. After a few minutes it was Hanrahan who got to his feet. He moved around, checking his fuse-line and detonators and irritating the soldiers thereby. They looked as though they believed him to be something out of history, a relic of the last war, which in a way he was and proud of it too. As a seaman boy first class he had seen action at Jutland, under Beatty in the old battle-cruiser Lion; and he had been in the old Vindictive when she had crashed the mole at Zeebrugge under Captain Carpenter... he felt half inclined to tell the ruddy pongoes all that, but he refrained. Some people looked long suffering when you talked about the last war, and if the pongoes looked back at him that way he might put a bunch of fives in their faces and that wouldn’t do at all. But he smouldered, and for safety’s sake shifted his thoughts across the sea to his wife, who was doggedly sitting out the war in London’s East End, looking after her mother who refused to move out of London and never mind Hitler. Mr Hanrahan’s mother-in-law was a tiresome eighty-six with a mind and will of her own, and if she should happen to become the cause of his wife’s death from bombs Mr Hanrahan was well prepared to swing for her the very next time he went home, if you could call it home, on leave. Mr Hanrahan pitied the civilian population and reckoned his mother-in-law was only remaining alive out of spite; what was the point, at her age, of living on one egg a week, a couple of ounces of butter and a tiny square of cheese, plus a meat ration you couldn’t even see properly? That, and the bombs, and the air-raid shelters, and places familiar for a whole lifetime looking totally unrecognizable when you emerged after the all clear...

  As a line of alternative thought it was too depressing and Mr Hanrahan found he preferred to think about the pongoes after all. He checked the fuse-line again. Too much handling might damage it, and already it had been swung from the shoulder of its carrier against the rock sides too many times for Mr Hanrahan’s liking. He delivered a homily on the proper handling of slow-burning fuses. The pongoes looked bored stiff. The old seadog was as old as his perishing fuses... time the Navy brought itself up to date.

  Cameron said, ‘Press on, Guns, all right?’

  ‘You’re in charge,’ Hanrahan said sourly. They got up and pressed on, still climbing. It would be easier down the other side but there was a long way to go yet. The girl didn’t seem to tire at all. Mr Hanrahan accorded her a grudging respect: he didn’t hold with unfeminine activities, not really, but she had the guts of a man. She was efficient, too; no hesitation in picking up the track, which wasn’t easy. They certainly wouldn’t have made it without her.

  Further on, after they had passed the highest point and were beginning to twist down towards the entry channel from the outer fjord, the declining sun glinted for a moment on something bright in the distance, just clear of the close-growing trees farther down.

  ‘Watch it,’ Hanrahan said.

  ‘What is it, Guns?’

  Hanrahan pointed downwards. He said, ‘Best get in cover. Could be metal badges.’ The Gunner turned to one of the commandos. ‘What do you think, son?’

  ‘I think you could be right, sir. If we take cover, and if they come this far, we can get the buggers easily.’

  ‘Wait for the officer,’ Hanrahan said. ‘Well, Mr Cameron?’

  ‘We’ll take cover,’ Cameron answered, ‘but I don’t know about opening fire.’

  ‘But look—’

  ‘Cover first, Guns. We may have been seen already.’ Cameron looked around. There was not in fact a lot of cover; all they could do was to leave the track and flatten themselves against a rock face lying at right angles to the track. They wouldn’t be seen by anyone coming up from the direction of the entry channel—at least, not until any intruder had drawn level and was moving past. After that, it would take a miracle for them to remain unnoticed. Cameron indicated the rock face and ordered everyone off the track. Following them into cover he said, ‘If we open fire, it’s going to be heard for miles around.’

  Hanrahan jerked a thumb towards the commandos. ‘They know how to cope, Sub. Leave this to the army, right?’

  Cameron nodded. The girl was close beside him and he was aware of the rapid beat of her heart: she was scared now. One slip, and she faced a grim future. And once again Operation Forestay was in the balance. Cameron moved away and peered cautiously round the edge of the rock. The view wasn’t reassuring: the glint had come from uniform badges all right. He could see moving figures now, five men, carrying automatic weapons slung from their shoulders, steel-helmeted Germans climbing unknowingly towards an ambush that just had to be successful.

  Cameron rejoined the others and passed the word.

  ‘Leave it to us, sir,’ the commando NCO said. ‘Six of us, counting the sappers. Easy!’

  ‘And quiet?’

  ‘As death. That’s what we trained for. No worry.’ The NCO turned away and ran along the rock face, which was not particularly high and appeared from below to have a flat top running back into the higher ridges behind. He disappeared; small pieces of rock were dislodged, making what seemed to Cameron’s overstretched nerves to be a bloody great racket but the other commandos didn’t seem worried. Within three minutes the NCO was back, grinning from his blackened face like a monkey. ‘Up top, you lot—with the officer’s permission?’

  ‘What’s your proposal?’ Cameron asked.

  ‘Lie flat—we won’t be seen—then drop on the buggers individually, sir. It’s safer that way. Get ‘em all at once, see, before they know we’re there. If we wait for ‘em to come round the rock one by one we could be seen by the leaders and then we’d have to open fire. Okay, sir?’

  Cameron nodded. ‘Okay!’

  ‘Right you are, then. Come on.’ The NCO led the way and the commandos moved fast. It was a tense wait in total silence. Both Cameron and Hanrahan had been equipped with Sten guns; they were ready to shoot if it had to come to that. So was Jane, who carried an automatic rifle also provided by the army. She was as white as death now, and shaking a little but doing her best not to let it show. Cameron sent up a prayer for her in particular. She had mentioned torture, the bestiality of the Nazis; she was seeing that again in her mind’s eye.

  Minutes passed, slowly dragging.

  Sound began to come up, heavy footsteps drawing closer, and voices. Laughter in snatches... the Germans hadn’t spotted them and didn’t expect to find anybody along the track. Probably a routine security patrol, and a careless one. Surely they might expect some of the commandos from the original attack to be still somewhere in the mountains? If they had come looking for them, it would be reasonable to expect a silent advance. Cameron recalled something the Greek partisan leader had said to him when he had been in Crete, landed from the Wharfedale to pick up a man with a vital message from Stalin, the warning that Hitler was about to turn on his ally... the G
reek had said that the Nazis were stupid, with unresilient minds, unimaginative outlooks. If that was so, they might well believe that any British, perishing in the mountains, would be only too glad to surrender. For them, the war would be over; they wouldn’t be offering any resistance.

  Now the intruders were not far off. A matter of less than a minute... Cameron and Hanrahan moved instinctively as if to cover the girl, their guns ready. Their own breathing sounded as though it must give warning. But they scarcely heard the sudden drop from overhead. Just a small clatter as a boot scraped rock and some muffled gasps: that was all. The commandos knew their job. The NCO came round the rock.

  ‘All over,’ he said. Cameron moved round the side of the ridge. Five bodies lay with knives in their backs, the hafts sticking out and blood welling through their uniforms.

  ‘Better hide ‘em,’ the NCO said. His face contorted, he kicked at one of them. ‘That’s for my sister,’ he said. ‘They got her in the Coventry blitz.’

  Cameron looked at the girl. Her face, too, was filled with hate. The Nazis had poisoned human nature.

  ***

  Down at last to the entry channel, right at its inward end with Vest Hammarfjord not far off, Cameron halted the party some way from the end of the track, keeping them in deep cover and in silence until the day passed into night: a long day in the northern latitudes, and a long wait. Life seemed to be all waiting and keeping quiet. Time for the mind to rove into the future: what was the world going to be like when this war was over? How was brutality ever to be exorcised? As to the men who had been trained to kill as commandos, what would their trade be when peace returned and the killing was over? Intensive training went very deep—it had to, so that a man reacted instinctively and without revulsion. Once a seaman, always a seaman. Once a killer? It wasn’t a nice thought but it could happen. Cameron cast it from his mind: time would tell. Peace would bring good things as well and the war wouldn’t all have been in vain. There would be a massive rebuilding programme, industry would re-equip for peace and unemployment would be a thing of the past. The habit of pulling together would carry over and there would be less of the class war, perhaps fewer strikes. So much sacrifice couldn’t go for nothing; there had to be a Providence that would see to that. In low voices, Cameron and the Gunner talked about the prospects. Hanrahan’s view was a sour one. It hadn’t worked out too well after the last lot; wounded ex-servicemen had sold matches in the streets, heaving their broken bodies about on crutches. Pipers from Highland regiments had played for pennies cast by the passing crowds; and the Navy had hived off any number of regular officers and men, throwing them out before their time with nothing in prospect except the soup kitchens in many cases. Seafaring skills were hard to sell ashore. And the General Strike hadn’t been all that long after the armistice and the peace treaties, whilst in Germany the terrible inflation had helped to bring Adolf Hitler to power. ‘And look,’ Mr Hanrahan said, ‘at Russia. You’re too dewy-eyed, Sub. Nothing good ever comes of war.’