A Dawn Like Thunder

by Douglas Reeman

  Nor did Sinclair improve on acquaintance. He had been in the mess one evening when somebody was reading an item in the newspaper aloud: some old dear being interviewed about war-time marriages. Sinclair had interrupted coldly, ‘What the hell does a happy marriage have to do with it? These sentimental fools make me want to puke. A marriage is either suitable or it is not. Everything else is a tedious obstacle.’

  A newcomer to the mess had asked jovially, ‘Doesn’t a woman have any point of view in this, Major?’

  Sinclair had stared through him. ‘If you think like that, any woman would walk right over you! You really are pathetic!’ Then he had stalked out of the mess. Ross had been glad that Villiers had not been present. It would have confirmed his worst fears.

  Villiers said with a quiet intensity, ‘If he lays a hand on her, I’ll kill him.’

  Ross touched his arm as the towering shadow of the depot-ship shut out the sunlight. ‘Take it easy. We’ll talk about it later, if you like.’

  Villiers said tightly, ‘Yes. I would like.’

  The launch’s wash surged against the outboard submarine’s saddle-tank and Ross found himself thinking of Turquoise. What it must have been like for Mike Tucker and the chariot’s crew. Perhaps Brigadier Davis was right to dismiss so casually the conventional standards of war. Why should they matter? What was the difference between bombing a town or city from the sky, regardless of the innocent who suffered, and torturing a man to death to obtain vital information for the survival of your country?

  But he was not convinced. There were always standards, no matter which side you were on. Man must have the last word. Only the bomb and the torpedo were impartial, indifferent.

  It was a different sort of war in the jungles of Burma: no wonder the famous Fourteenth Army was bitterly called ‘the Forgotten Army’ by the troops who fought each day against an enemy so ruthless that they had themselves become equally hard. No prisoners, no quarter, no mercy. Their war was more like a savage struggle to stamp out a terrible disease than an effort to defeat human beings.

  Have we come to that?

  They crossed the two submarines and ran lightly up the long accommodation-ladder where the O.O.D. was waiting to receive them. Ross imagined he could feel their eyes watching them. Where to this time? What are the odds on getting away with it?

  He thought of the girl’s nearness in the car, the break in her voice when she had opened the little case and realized it contained his Victoria Cross.

  Of course it mattered. Lives mattered; faith mattered; hope and decency mattered. Davis was wrong if he believed otherwise.

  At the top of the ladder they exchanged salutes, and Ross found himself glancing at the nearest troopship, its rigging adorned with khaki clothing hung out to dry.

  Was there someone aboard her, or the next one beyond, who had a Wren officer’s hat-badge hidden away, a souvenir, or ‘trophy’ as Guest had put it, to remind him of assault and murder? Could you ever live with it? Perhaps even take pleasure in a girl’s dying appeals?

  He touched his pocket, wishing he had something Victoria had held or used. Like Mike Tucker with his photograph.

  The O.O.D. said, ‘The Commodore, Submarines will see you now, sir.’ Ross stared up at the sky. Clouding over. All the better for what they must do.

  If Tucker had been here, he would have said, ‘One more time, eh? The old firm!’

  He turned and clapped Villiers on the shoulder, unaware that two seamen with brooms had stopped to watch them. ‘Here we go, Charles. We’ll be back. Remember, we’ve both got a lot to live for.’

  At the end of the day, as the sunset ran deep red down the horizon, a submarine, low and dark like a shark, slipped her moorings and headed away from the crowded anchorage with barely a ripple to mark her departure.

  On the coast road above the bay a solitary car was parked without lights, the windows open so that the girl had an unhindered view. She stared at the small dark sliver until it became confused with the wakes of fussy launches and the slow, even swell of the ocean beyond.

  It was like losing part of herself. Something she had found was already slipping away out there in the shadows. She could almost hear his voice, so close that he could have been beside her. It’s what I’m trained for. What I am.

  She wound up the windows and said aloud, ‘I will not cry.’ And in a smaller voice, ‘I love him. I cannot help myself.’

  She wiped her face and switched on the ignition. But any passer-by would have noticed that it was quite a long time before the car drove away. Then there was only darkness.

  Charles Villiers licked the flap of the envelope and sealed it down on the wardroom table with his fist. It was like some sort of private statement or pledge.

  Ross said, ‘One for the skipper’s safe, Charles?’

  ‘Just in case.’ He looked up at the curved deckhead, his mind only partly adjusted to the sound of the submarine’s discreet machinery. ‘I wish to God we could get started!’

  Ross glanced again at his folio of secret orders and instructions. During their four days at sea after leaving Trincomalee he must have studied them a hundred times, seeking flaws, or some misinterpretation of local information. It was totally unlike all those other times. Then he had had all possible resources at his disposal. On this mission, mercifully unnamed, they were listed as passengers. In many ways, it was true. Once off the submarine, they would have little more than trust in people they did not know, and only the clothes they stood up in, to sustain them.

  It was strange to realize that he was even more of a passenger than Villiers. He was the key to the whole operation, the only one who knew their contact, the man who had worked for his father and the once-powerful company.

  Often, in the privacy of his bunk with the curtains drawn, he had thought of Victoria. If they ever got back from this hare-brained scheme . . . He tightened his jaw. When they got back, she would still be there.

  The general information from Naval Intelligence was surprisingly good, up to a point. But there were still a lot of ifs and maybes that might cause the operation to be cancelled. To face up to the worst option, someone down the line might already have betrayed them.

  The wardroom curtain was pushed aside and Tybalt’s commanding officer, in crumpled shirt and shorts, entered and sat down beside them. Lieutenant John Tarrant was not new to submarines, and he knew the hazards in these restricted waters probably as well as his dead friend Bob Jessop.

  Ross had noticed that he was short on humour, both with his officers and his ratings, something fairly unusual in this élite branch of the service. It was Tarrant’s first command, so maybe that was the reason for his somewhat rigid approach to almost everything. Perhaps he was also very conscious that he was outranked by at least one of the ‘passengers’. Whatever it was, he seemed unable to unbend.

  He said, ‘It looks like a go, sir. No signals to the contrary.’ He stared at the quivering curtain and seemed to see the whole chart laid out in his mind. ‘I shall surface tomorrow night as arranged, twenty miles south-west of Penang Island. If signals are satisfactory, I will transfer you to the other vessel.’

  Ross nodded. Most submariners would have said about twenty miles, to be on the safe side, but not this one.

  Villiers looked up, aware of the vague tension between them. ‘The vessel is the tug Success, a big sea-going job. Worth her weight in gold in the lighterage business.’

  Tarrant eyed him calmly. ‘Is that a fact?’

  Ross ignored it. ‘What would she be doing in Penang, Charles? D’you have any idea?’

  Villiers shrugged. ‘Georgetown used to be quite a busy port until the Japs invaded Malaya. Our people dismantled some of the docks before the pull-out, but lighters might still be needed there. A well-known tug, presumably in the employ of the Japanese, would be the obvious choice for us.’

  Tarrant said to Ross, in the same detached tone, ‘The Malacca Strait is less than a hundred and fifty miles wide at that point, with a ma
ximum of forty fathoms to play with. It should be all right, but one sign of a trap and I’ll blow the thing out of the water!’ He stood up. ‘Please excuse me, sir. I have to tell my people what we’re doing.’ He hesitated by the entrance. ‘Once you are aboard that vessel, there’s nothing I can do.’

  Ross sighed as the curtain fell back into place. ‘A real little ray of sunshine!’

  Villiers laughed. ‘I’m glad you decided to come along, Jamie.’

  Ross smiled. Jamie. Tarrant would address him as sir until orders directed otherwise.

  It was always a difficult command to hold. Some failed because they needed to be popular, others because they could find no common ground with their officers and men. One thing about Tarrant, like him or otherwise: he would never crack, even at the gates of hell. He could imagine Pryce being much the same when he had commanded a submarine.

  Villiers said suddenly, ‘If Richard Tsao says we can slip into Singapore, then I trust him.’

  Ross looked at the sealed letter. It was about four hundred miles to Singapore from the pick-up point off Penang. They would need a little more than trust.

  True to Tarrant’s promise, the submarine flooded tanks and dived well before dawn. The watches settled down, and the boat was soon filled with the smells of greasy tinned sausages and a welcome and unexpected issue of bacon.

  The other officers were friendly enough, but Ross could sense their eagerness to get the mission, or their part of it, over and done with. Above on the surface, in that other world where men fought and died, or hunted one another like animals in the jungle, the hourly problems were entirely different.

  Here, war showed its face in many devious ways. The first lieutenant raised his mug of tea and exclaimed suddenly, ‘Happy Christmas, gents!’ They stared at one another with surprise and disbelief until the sub-lieutenant, the youngest member of the wardroom, lowered his head and sobbed quietly over his plate.

  The first lieutenant watched him push away from the table, but said nothing. Ross remembered that someone had told him the subbie’s family had been wiped out in an air-raid on Portsmouth. The mention of Christmas had broken him.

  The first lieutenant met his eye and lifted his shoulders with a slight shrug. There was nothing anyone could say. No words. Not any more.

  ‘All set?’ Ross gripped Villiers’ arm. ‘I’m depending on you.’ In the restricted lighting of the control-room he saw the white, reassuring grin.

  ‘I hope you don’t regret it, sir!’

  Tarrant was waiting by the periscope, and said impatiently, ‘She’s there, right enough. Starboard bow.’ Over his shoulder he snapped, ‘Stand by to surface.’

  Everything else was prepared: gun crew at the foot of the ladder with the lookouts, the deck party up forward ready to open the main hatch and launch the small dinghy.

  As an afterthought Tarrant asked, ‘Care for a look, sir?’

  Ross crouched over as the smaller attack-periscope hissed out of its well. Then he saw it: the irregular blink of a light, something which could if necessary be explained or excused as an unfastened deadlight swinging open across a scuttle with each roll of the hull.

  He said, ‘Let’s go.’ To Tarrant he added, ‘Thanks for the ride.’

  They walked from the control-room, feeling the silent stares from the men they were leaving behind. Tarrant called after them, ‘Good luck!’ The rest was lost in the roar of compressed air, while the deck tilted to the angle of surfacing.

  Villiers was tense, but managed to retort, ‘Actually, sir, we rely on skill!’ It was unlikely that anyone heard him.

  The damp air rushed to greet them through the open hatch. Men in oilskins were already tilting the dinghy over the edge of the casing. There was low cloud, and one bright star to break the darkness.

  Ross heard the sharp click of the deck gun’s breech-block and could picture the slender barrel training round towards the tug, as clearly as if he were up there with them. If the tug intended to ram them it would do little good, he thought. Like stopping a charging elephant with a boat-hook.

  Then they were in the pitching dinghy, water slopping over them, surprisingly icy after the heat of the day. It seemed no time at all before they were bouncing alongside the tug’s overhanging quarter, where a ladder was already in position. Ross seized it, conscious of the pressure of his revolver against his hip.

  Somebody in the dinghy reached up to touch his shoulder. The last contact. Like all those times. A voice called, ‘What a bleedin’ way to spend Christmas!’

  He reached the deck, with Villiers pitching over the bulwark beside him.

  A quick glance at the heaving black water. But they were alone.

  Mike Tucker gritted his teeth against the pain and tried to steady himself beside a pile of sacks filled with rice. Apart from the other beatings he had received from his captors, he had been punched in the face by the Japanese sergeant, Ochi, when they had been bundled into the truck for their journey to Rangoon. His face was badly bruised and his eye was still swelling, so that he could barely see out of it.

  The road was very narrow and deeply rutted, and branches and fronds occasionally scraped the sides of the truck like claws. It was an old three-ton Bedford, abandoned by or captured from the British Army, its original camouflage paintwork crudely daubed with vivid Japanese characters. From the way it was lurching and rattling, it seemed likely that it had not been serviced since it had changed ownership. There were two armed soldiers with them at the rear of the truck, smoking cigarettes, and making threatening gestures with their rifles whenever a local cart or wagon had appeared to be blocking their progress. A big wagon drawn by two yoked oxen had almost toppled over the edge of the track when they had fired their rifles in the air to frighten them and their owner out of the way. The soldiers had laughed delightedly, like the two Tucker had shot after finding Mango’s mutilated corpse. It was hard to think clearly: there was too much pain, and an increasing desperation, which left him unable even to guess how long it had been since they had first stumbled ashore from the scuttled chariot.

  His hands were cruelly tied behind his back; his arms throbbed, as if all circulation had stopped. Napier lay with his head against Tucker’s outstretched leg, unconscious or uncaring it was hard to tell. They had not bothered to tie his arms, either because they saw that he was helpless or because their code required them to respect his rank as an officer. It was just another part of the madness.

  Occasionally Tucker could hear the Japanese sergeant’s voice; he was in front with the driver. Making sure, Tucker thought, that he wouldn’t miss the opportunity of seeing them handed over to the military police for further questioning.

  Tucker clenched his fists and bit back a groan as the pain lanced through his wrists. To get his hands round that pig’s neck, for only a few seconds. It would be something. He felt Napier move his head and heard him mutter, ‘Thirsty. Where are we?’ He was trying to roll over in order to see him. ‘Where’s Rice?’

  Tucker answered patiently, ‘He’s dead, sir. They done for him, remember?’

  ‘Yes.’ He gripped his wounded shoulder. ‘What happened to the Jap officer, Nishida?’

  Tucker sighed. Napier’s memory was coming back. Perhaps it would be better if it did not. He said, ‘Gone ahead in style, in a posh car. Enjoying his little self!’

  Napier said in a small voice, ‘He stole my flask. My father gave me that.’ His words trailed away and for a moment Tucker imagined he had fainted. But he continued eventually, ‘They were so pleased when I told them I was with James Ross, David’s friend.’ His own words seemed to hit him like a physical blow. ‘Oh God, what will they think when they hear what’s happened? First David, now me!’

  Tucker watched the two soldiers; he could just see their caps above the pile of rice sacks. This was madness too, of course. Like a chum of his, who’d caught a dose off some torn in Chatham. He had been married, and so shocked and disgusted by what had happened that he had hanged himself in an
air-raid shelter at the barracks. Madness. But maybe it had seemed that there was no other way out.

  He was surprised to hear himself sound so calm, but he had to make Napier understand. Understand. ‘My hands are tied.’ He watched the two heads beyond the sacks. ‘Are you listening?’

  A long pause. ‘Yes. I – I’m sorry . . .’

  Tucker said, ‘Listen. If I roll over, do you think you could untie them?’ He closed his eyes, and felt the injured one throb with pain. What was the use?

  At first he thought Napier was confused. ‘Get away, you mean? Escape?’ Then it sounded more like sudden fear, the thought of being alone.

  Tucker said, ‘Together, remember? Good or bloody useless, we keep together.’

  ‘I don’t know. My mother once said . . .’ He fell silent again, and Tucker gasped as one of the wheels crashed into a deep rut. The whole vehicle felt as if it were falling apart.

  One of the soldiers was on his feet, swaying about like a dockside drunk as he tried to keep his balance while he urinated over the tailboard.

  If my hands were free . . . He stared at the muzzle of the soldier’s rifle where it rested on the sacks. It would not be there for long. The bloody place would be alive with the bastards if they escaped. But to have a go, even kill a couple before they finished them, as they had finished Nick Rice. The soldier said something and his companion chuckled, then he slumped down again and the rifle moved out of reach.

  For an instant more Tucker believed he had imagined it. There was so little feeling in his arms. But he leaned over, his eyes still on the two heads while Napier’s fingers found and then fumbled with the tightly knotted cords behind him.

  ‘That’s it, my son.’ Poor little sod. He could hear Napier’s sharp, painful breathing; every movement must be agony for his wounded shoulder, as if the bloody truck wasn’t bad enough.

  If Sergeant Ochi chose to stop the old Bedford for any reason, or came round to inspect his charges, it might at least spare them the horrors of the military police.