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The Torch Bearers: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 5

Page 40

by Alexander Fullerton


  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

 

 

 


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