Seconds ticking out. Down there in the black water the Germans would still be thinking they were safe. Slightly irritated by now, perhaps …
Scarr said sharply, “Thousand and fifty!”
“Fire!”
He straightened, lifting his binoculars in time to see the first “heavy” splash down from Astilbe’s stern. A second followed it, and a third. Then the throwers: from each quarter a drum-like projectile lobbing out. Another splash under that broad counter, and number seven dropped from the chute just as the pair from the throwers hit the water simultaneously on each side.
Then the first explosion. It felt as if Harbinger had hit a sandbank. Warrimer muttered, “Glad I’m not down there.” Explosions continued, breaking the ocean apart, the throwers firing again and charges still rolling from the chute. Astilbe’s stern wasn’t visible all the time as the sea behind her swelled up in round-topped swirling geysers, mounds that lifted, turning white as they broke like boiling milk and the noise rolled on like deep sub-surface drumbeats, Harbinger’s steel hull shuddering …
Graves’s voice came over TBS, Twenty-six heavies fired, sir.
The last of them were still exploding, concussing.
“Starboard ten.” He was turning her so all her guns would bear—if that thing came up, now. Warrimer warning the guns’ crews, “Stand by. Set range oh-one-oh. Fire when your sights come on.”
The surface was settling, the pattern of the swells beginning to reassert itself. Astilbe swinging to port: Graves turning her so her guns would bear.
“Midships.”
Chubb muttered, with his glasses on the place where at any moment the thing might show itself, “Come on, duckies, don’t be shy …” A lot of binoculars were focused on the smoothing surface: breaths probably were being held. Gunners’ fingers on their triggers.
Spirits faltering, as nothing happened. Thrum of ships’ engines at slow revs, sea slapping against steel and swirling by.
“Deep explosion, sir!”
Leading Seaman Garment’s face, framed in earphones, had a delighted grin on it as he rose from the little cabinet. “Sir—”
Eagle—Fox—we got him, sir. I heard it myself—explosion, long way down, deepest I ever heard.
The charges must have sent the German down, out of control, to a depth where sea pressure had crushed him. Like an egg in a closing fist. And that had been the blooding of skipper Graves.
Nick thumbed the switch. “Well done, Tony. I’ll circle you while you wait and see what comes up. Out …”
There was time, and lack of pressure from any other quarter, to hang around for evidence to take home: woodwork, clothing, even papers that might be of interest to Intelligence. If there were any bodies, for instance, blown out of that crushed hull, there could be papers in their pockets. From such a depth there’d be no live ones.
Congratulations came by TBS from the others. Including from Paeony. Nick pointed out to Guyatt that he had a share in the kill. He moved away from the binnacle: “Take over here, pilot. Keep her circling.”
“Oil on the surface, sir, port side!”
TBS from Astilbe, I’m passing through oil, sir. Floating up thick, all over the place. Out…
“Body on the surface red four-oh, sir!”
Bodies came up in pockets of air or from the buoyancy of air trapped in their clothes. They sank after they’d become waterlogged, rose again later when the gas in them expanded.
Astilbe was stopping, lowering her whaler.
“Captain, sir?”
He looked round. A lot of stuff was appearing on the surface … But this was Goodacre, CPO Telegraphist, with a sheaf of signal-pad in his hand.
“BBC news bulletin, sir. If you’ve a moment? Thought you’d want to know—Yanks’ve landed in French North Africa!”
“Have they, indeed.” A glance showed him what a thick wad of transcript Goodacre had brought up. He raised his glasses again. “Read me the main points, Chief, will you?” He was focusing on something white: it was an officer’s cap, and only the captains of U-boats were allowed to wear white ones. It wouldn’t stay white for long, if the boat didn’t get to it quickly … A souvenir for Mrs Graves, perhaps, to hang in the hallway of her little house in Liverpool? For Graves to show his children, years hence and after he’d gone back to making cornflakes? Goodacre was reading, “United States Army, Navy and Air Forces started landing operations during the hours of darkness this morning at numerous points on the shores of French North Africa … These combined operations of the United States Forces were supported by units of the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force …”
He paused, turning pages, picking what to read next. Nick seeing the whaler’s grey clinker strakes—and Astilbe’s side too—already foul with oil. He called to Scarr, “Keep us clear of that muck, pilot!” Goodacre had begun again, but through it Nick heard Jack’s voice in his ear, as sharp and clear as if he’d been standing in the bridge beside him, Jack complaining, You should have told me … He thought—startled, even glancing round at empty air as if he might have been there—Christ, I must be nearer the edge than I knew! He shook his head—to clear it, and astonished at himself: he was dirty, unshaven, tired, he knew all that, but since yesterday when things had got easier he hadn’t been conscious of it, whereas two days ago he’d felt like a walking corpse. In any case there’d be time for sleep now—fortunately … Goodacre telling him after another pause, “There’s a lot of guff ’ere from President Roosevelt to the frogs, and from this General Eisenhower—” he’d pronounced it Aysen’ower—“an’ from the government, and—well …” Nick still appalled: hallucinations, for God’s sake! In any case it had never been his secret: it had been and still was Sarah’s, Jack’s mother’s, and it would have killed her for Jack to know it … They were dragging a body over the whaler’s transom, holding it there while they turned out its pockets. There were only three others floating that he could see, so the job shouldn’t take much longer … Then with the convoy on its way again, there would be a chance to catch up on sleep, get somewhere near sane again; it should be easy from here on, because any U-boats would surely have been redeployed by now against the forces massed off the beachheads. SL 320’s surviving fragment would still need nursing, but you could reckon to get it home, all right. Partial and untimely arrival: and nothing at all to do with the armies pouring ashore at Algiers, Oran and Casablanca. Just a very small convoy crawling home, on the turning of the tide.
POSTSCRIPT
There was a convoy, SL 125, homebound from Freetown at the end of October 1942. It was weakly defended—by escorts who had not worked together before—and having passed through the centre of a patrol line formed by eight U-boats (later reinforced to ten) of the Streitaxt (“Battle-axe”) Group, was badly mauled in a running battle which lasted a week. The approaches to Gibraltar were thus cleared of U-boats a few days before the arrival of the “Torch” assault convoys. But this has only served as the idea for a novel: there is no other similarity between it and the fictional convoy SL 320. I should add that in researching the facts of the convoy operation and “Torch” itself, I came across no evidence of SL 125’s timely passage through those waters being anything but fortuitous.
Selected Historical Fiction Published by McBooks Press
BY ALEXANDER KENT
The Complete Midshipman Bolitho
Stand Into Danger
In Gallant Company
Sloop of War
To Glory We Steer
Command a King’s Ship
Passage to Mutiny
With All Despatch
Form Line of Battle!
Enemy in Sight!
The Flag Captain
Signal—Close Action!
The Inshore Squadron
A Tradition of Victory
Success to the Brave
Colours Aloft!
Honour This Day
The Only Victor
Beyond the Reef
The Darkening Sea
For My Country’s Freedom
Cross of St George
Sword of Honour
Second to None
Relentless Pursuit
Man of War
Heart of Oak
In the King’s Name
BY PHILIP MCCUTCHAN
Halfhyde at the Bight of Benin
Halfhyde’s Island
Halfhyde and the Guns of Arrest
Halfhyde to the Narrows
Halfhyde for the Queen
Halfhyde Ordered South
Halfhyde on Zanatu
BY JAN NEEDLE
A Fine Boy for Killing
The Wicked Trade
The Spithead Nymph
BY BROOS CAMPBELL
No Quarter
The War of Knives
Peter Wicked
BY C.N. PARKINSON
The Guernseyman
Devil to Pay
The Fireship
Touch and Go
So Near So Far
Dead Reckoning
BY DUDLEY POPE
Ramage
Ramage & The Drumbeat
Ramage & The Freebooters
Governor Ramage R.N.
Ramage’s Prize
Ramage & The Guillotine
Ramage’s Diamond
Ramage’s Mutiny
Ramage & The Rebels
The Ramage Touch
Ramage’s Signal
Ramage & The Renegades
Ramage’s Devil
Ramage’s Trial
Ramage’s Challenge
Ramage at Trafalgar
Ramage & The Saracens
Ramage & The Dido
BY V.A. STUART
Victors and Lords
The Sepoy Mutiny
Massacre at Cawnpore
The Cannons of Lucknow
The Heroic Garrison
The Valiant Sailors
The Brave Captains
Hazard’s Command
Hazard of Huntress
Hazard in Circassia
Victory at Sebastopol
Guns to the Far East
Escape from Hell
BY JAMES L. NELSON
The Only Life That Mattered
BY SETH HUNTER
The Time of Terror
The Tide of War
The Price of Glory
BY DOUGLAS W. JACOBSON
Night of Flames
The Katyn Order
BY JULIAN STOCKWIN
Kydd
Artemis
Seaflower
Mutiny
Quarterdeck
Tenacious
Command
The Admiral’s Daughter
The Privateer’s Revenge
Invasion Victory Conquest
BY DEWEY LAMBDIN
The French Admiral
The Gun Ketch
HMS Cockerel
A King’s Commander
Jester’s Fortune
BY JOHN BIGGINS
A Sailor of Austria
The Emperor’s Coloured Coat
The Two-Headed Eagle
Tomorrow the World
BY ALEXANDER FULLERTON
Storm Force to Narvik
Last Lift from Crete
All the Drowning Seas
A Share of Honour
The Torch Bearers
The Gatecrashers
BY DAVID DONACHIE
The Devil’s Own Luck
The Dying Trade
A Hanging Matter
An Element of Chance
The Scent of Betrayal
A Game of Bones
BY JAMES DUFFY
Sand of the Arena
The Fight for Rome
The Torch Bearers: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 5 Page 40