Audacity (Commander Cochrane Smith series)

by Alan Evans

  He muttered to Buckley, ‘Stop now! Lay us alongside abaft the minesweeper’s wheelhouse!’ He could see it, dim lit, the helmsman a silhouette at the wheel and another figure, bulky, beside him.

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Buckley put the tiller over. Danby and Tompkins stood ready with boathooks. Two men, moving black shadows, waited unsuspectingly at the side of the sweeper to take the lines when thrown. The motor-boat’s engine was now silent as she slid in, the way coming off her, towards the minesweeper rolling sluggishly in the swell. The boat rubbed against her side, soared on a lifting wave and for a second the sweeper’s deck hung level with Smith’s eyes. Danby and Tompkins reached out with the boathooks, hooked on. They were alongside. And still the minesweeper’s suspicions had not been aroused.

  Smith shouted, ‘Board!’ He leapt for the deck, threw himself at it, got arms and shoulders there, held on and swung up his legs. From the corner of his eye he saw the roof of the boat’s cabin being lifted and tossed aside, the men rising to follow him. He got to his own feet running, like a sprinter from the start. There was a man ahead of him, the one who had been waiting to take a line from Danby. An open mouth yelling, a hand lifting, then Smith ran into him and knocked him aside, stumbled on.

  The wheelhouse. He swung up the steps, one hand fumbling for the pistol, dragging it from the holster as he shoved in at the door. The helmsman was at the wheel, his face turned, gaping. Another man stood beyond him on the starboard side and two more at the back of the wheelhouse, one with a rifle, loading it.

  Smith shouted, voice cracking, ‘Stand still!’ The man with the rifle carried on and worked the bolt. Smith thumbed off the safety-catch and fired over their heads. The muzzle-flash blinded them all for a second and the report in that confined, crowded space deafened them but it brought stillness. So Buckley entered into a frozen tableau: Smith pale and glaring, pistol trained at arm’s length, four men motionless before him, one with a rifle pointed at the deck.

  Buckley grabbed that gun first and tore it away, his own pistol thrust into the man’s bearded face for emphasis. But emphasis was not needed. That one shot had had a paralysing effect on men taken completely by surprise. There was yelling and trampling overhead as Buckley herded the helmsman to the back of the wheelhouse with the others, lined them all up with their hands above their heads. The trampling overhead had ceased and now two seamen appeared at the door, their white armbands plain. They brandished pistols, breathless, on edge, and shoved another prisoner before them, a man bulky in sou’-wester, oilskins and sea-boots. One of them panted, ‘The feller working the searchlight, sir.’

  Armstrong, the petty officer, showed behind them, pushing in yet another prisoner. ‘The Sparks, sir. Never tapped his key. He shoved his head out of the door as we got to it, wondering what the row was about, I suppose.’ The German wireless officer was young, pale and shivering, yanked from his snug office into the night’s bitter cold.

  Smith told the seamen, ‘Put the pair of them with the others. Keep ‘em here for now.’ And to Armstrong: ‘Carry on.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ He pulled back from the door and headed down the ladder and forward. Smith staggered as a bigger wave rolled the sweeper, leaned out of the open door and saw the motor-boat below, crashing against the ship’s side while Danby and Tompkins strove to hold her there against the pounding, sucking sea. The girl sat in the open shell of the now roofless ‘cabin’, clinging to the side of it. He told one of the seamen, ‘Get a line to that boat and the people off it, then lead it aft for towing.’

  The man staggered away along the deck. There was an unconscious body sprawled where Smith had come aboard, and he thought Buckley must have been responsible for that. The flash and crack of a pistol came from forward. And again! His boarders? Or were the minesweeper’s crew armed? He threw at the seaman left on the bridge, ‘Cover them now! Shoot if they move! Buckley!’

  He jumped down from the wheelhouse and started forward, trying to run, the lift and slide of the deck under his feet setting him on a weaving trot. From the corner of his eye he saw Buckley at his side. A dark figure appeared before him but there were the white streaks on the arms.

  Smith shouted the password: ‘Audacity! Captain here! Who’s that?’

  ‘Williams, sir! Armstrong sent me to tell you all secure forrard!’

  ‘What was that firing?’

  ‘Some of the ferries jumped one of our blokes, sir, and tried to get the gun off him. It went off while they were fighting and one of them got hit in the leg. His mates are looking after him.’

  ‘Very good. Tell Armstrong to put a guard on them then carry on searching the ship. Reports to me in the wheelhouse. And for God’s sake watch you don’t shoot any of our own people.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  Smith turned and started aft again, Buckley looming at his shoulder. Shooting a friend by mistake was always a possibility in a night action of this kind. White armbands or not, after the incident forward the men would be wary of anybody appearing close, ready to shoot first rather than be jumped on, hence Smith’s warning.

  He saw the boat was now empty of the girl and the men. They were aboard the sweeper and Tompkins and the other seaman were manoeuvring the pitching boat along the ship’s side, hauling it aft with the lines, fending it off with boathooks.

  The wheelhouse and a man at the door: but again the white slashes identifying him. His voice came: ‘Captain, sir?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘All under guard aft and a couple o’ the lads are going through to see if anybody’s skulking in a corner.’

  ‘Very good.’ Then Smith pushed past him into the wheelhouse as a whistle came from the voice-pipe in there. He answered, ‘Bridge.’

  ‘Engine room. I’ve got one engineer and one stoker sitting on the plates down here. Is that you, sir?’ It was the quick, high Welsh voice of Price, the second engineer.

  ‘Yes. Can you give me half ahead?’

  ‘Half ahead, sir.’

  Smith told Buckley, ‘Take the wheel.’ And to the seaman guarding the prisoners: ‘I’ll watch them. You go aloft and work that light. You remember the signal I told you in the briefing before we left Audacity?’

  ‘Up at the sky then dip it. Six times, sir.’ He staggered out of the door as the sweeper rolled.

  Smith grabbed one-handed at the door-frame to steady himself, the other levelling his pistol at the prisoners. ‘Mrs. Ramsay, please! Mr. Danby!’

  The girl came in answer to his shout, Danby at her back, both of them shifting from handhold to handhold like climbers as they strove to keep their feet against the rolling and pitching of the ship. As they entered the wheelhouse the deck began to tremble beneath their feet with a steady vibration. The minesweeper was under way again. Outside Smith saw the beam of the searchlight slide down the night to touch the sea then rise again.

  Buckley reported, ‘She’s answering the helm, sir.’

  A tactful reminder to Smith that a course was needed. He answered, ‘Steer sou-sou-west!’ He had laid off that course on the chart in Audacity. Aboard her now they would see that distant finger of light, rising and falling; Audacity also would be getting under way.

  ‘Mr. Danby! Make your way through the ship from bow to stern. I want a report on exactly how many prisoners we’ve got, where they are, the condition of any man injured and if he can be moved. Every time you meet someone identify yourself by the password—loudly. Be ready to shoot anyone without armbands. Understood?’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  Danby, small but capable, swung out of the wheelhouse and Smith glanced at Elizabeth Ramsay. ‘Are you all right?’

  She was not. She felt sick and was still frightened from the boarding, the ugliness, the violence. His voice, harsh and urgent as always at times like this, and the cold glare from his pale blue eyes, unsettled her still further. But she answered, ‘I’m fine.’

  He said, ‘Ask who is their captain. Tell him he and his men are prisoners. They will be trea
ted correctly if they behave correctly. If they do not—they will be shot.’ He heard the catch of her breath at that. She believed him.

  She spoke to the prisoners in German and one of them, bearded, older than the others, acknowledged that he was the captain. Their eyes moved from the girl to Smith as she went on. They saw no more feeling in his eyes than in the barrel of the pistol he aimed at them. She finished and there was silence. Then the captain muttered something.

  The girl said, ‘He has agreed. He says you must remember the Geneva Convention.’

  ‘Tell him I am aware of the Geneva Convention, and that there’s nothing for him to agree to. I’ve told him the alternatives.’

  Elizabeth Ramsay spoke again in German, briefly, copying Smith’s curt tone. She waited as the German captain looked from her to Smith and the pistol again. Then he answered, grudgingly, and the girl translated: ‘He understands. He will see that his men understand.’

  Smith said grimly, ‘He’d better.’

  Danby appeared, Armstrong and two men behind him. ‘All secure, sir.’ He jerked his head at the P.O. ‘Armstrong’s got ‘em all in the fo’c’sle under guard. Eighteen all told and that includes the two from the engine room. Only one injured, shot in the leg and he’s got a dressing on it for now.’

  There was cause for relief. ‘Armstrong, put these forrard with the others.’ Smith pointed: ‘But he is the captain so lock him up somewhere on his own. With a guard.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Armstrong and his two men hustled the prisoners away.

  Smith conned the minesweeper out of the entrance of the Kalmarsund into deeper water and there he stopped her, dropping two anchors and lying head to wind and sea, lifting and falling to it. He took a succession of bearings to the lights he could see ashore and confirmed that the anchors were holding. So far, so good. The searchlight’s beam was dipped down to the sea astern, a mark for Audacity—and now there she was. Not steaming up the cone of light but skirting the edge of it. Ross brought her up and stopped her to lie a cable’s length away, waiting for Smith’s signal.

  She was not alone. Danby’s voice lifted above the wind, ‘Boat coming up astern, sir! Looks like the Swede!’

  Smith thought it would be. Johanssen had made it clear he would escort Audacity and he had done so. She had left him some way behind, Audacity having the edge in speed, but now he was coming up as fast as he could in this sea. He would certainly have betrayed Audacity’s presence if she’d been trying to slip out unseen. But by now he would have a rough idea of what had happened and Smith could guess at his state of mind.

  The Swedish patrol-boat came pitching up astern of the sweeper, seeking what little lee was there. As the boat ran in through the dipped beam of the searchlight Smith saw Johanssen standing in the well, both hands clamped on the coaming of the cabin to keep his balance. He was too far away for his expression to be seen and when the boat closed the minesweeper’s side it was out of the beam of the light and in near darkness. But he could not fail to notice Audacity’s motor-boat pitching astern of the sweeper, still with its disguise, its improvised but now roofless cabin. There was no need to see the lieutenant’s face; his anger vibrated in his voice as he bawled, ‘I’m coming aboard!’

  Smith answered, ‘I’m ready to take your lines!’ Buckley and a little party waited on the port quarter, watching the boat as it swept in towards them. Smith told them, seeing their startled faces, ‘Have your pistols ready. As soon as she’s secured alongside—’

  He stopped, then made a funnel of his hands to bellow at the approaching boat: ‘Hold off!’ He was too late. The Swede, anger blunting the edge of his concentration, was making his approach too quickly. Luck and the rope fenders hung over the sweeper’s side might have saved him even then, but a big sea was sweeping in. Smith heard the lieutenant shout some order but his boat was already driving in broadside to the minesweeper and lifting to the sea that almost swept the Swedish boat inboard. It struck with a force that shook the squat, solid ship under Smith’s feet, its timbers smashing as the impact stove in its side. He saw it holed for a quarter of its length as it fell away again and he shouted, ‘Get lines to her! Get those men off her!’

  Already lines were flying out to the wreck of the Swedish boat. As it wallowed close alongside, Smith saw the men aboard it clinging on. The lieutenant was shouting again and two more men came stumbling from the boat’s cabin, hauled out by him. They snatched at lines, roped them around their chests under the arms and plunged into the sea as the lieutenant urged them, pointing the way with one hand, shoving them with the other. Then as the last of them went over the side Johanssen lost his balance and fell backwards, smashed against the cabin’s coaming and bounced off to be thrown into the sea.

  Buckley pulled off his boots and dived in. He disappeared from sight, then his head came up and he struck out for the boat. Smith shot a glance at the rest of his party, dragging aboard the men from the boat. He shouted, ‘One good swimmer on a line!’

  Then he saw Danby knotting a rope across his chest, a broad seaman coiling the slack. Danby dived, disappeared like Buckley and then was swimming strongly. He reached Buckley who had turned on his back and clutched the Swedish lieutenant. The two of them laboured back to the ship with the unconscious man, Smith toiling at the line with the seamen to heave them in. Buckley and Danby clung to the fenders and between them got a line around the lieutenant. Smith and the others pulled him aboard, then his rescuers.

  Smith shouted, ‘Get them into the waist then rig all the fenders you can find. Audacity will be coming alongside, port side to!’

  He retraced his steps along the pitching deck to the wheelhouse, found the signalling lamp there and flashed a short and a long, saw it acknowledged from Audacity’s bridge. She crept down on them, her side festooned with fenders, and Ross brought her alongside as gingerly as if there were eggs between the two ships. They still ground as they worked together under the pressure of the sea. Lines flew across and were secured, boarding nets were unrolled down Audacity’s side, the whole scene lit now by the lowered beam of the searchlight.

  Smith made out Ross at the door of the wheelhouse, McLeod and Gallagher on the deck with the men lining the side. He used the sweeper’s megaphone to bellow up at McLeod, ‘I want those last two scuttling charges! And there are twenty-three prisoners coming across, one of ‘em with a gunshot wound! Tell the S.B.A.!’

  McLeod’s arm lifted in acknowledgment; any shouted answer without a megaphone would have been lost on the wind. Smith turned forward. There the prisoners were being herded out of the fo’c’sle. ‘Get ‘em aboard!’ He lowered the megaphone and told Danby, ‘You and Buckley get Johanssen and the crew of that Swedish boat across. You’d better see that every one of them goes up on a line. Their dip in the sea will have taken it out of them.’

  Danby took the megaphone Smith pushed at him. He hesitated when he saw only Gallagher on the rail above him; McLeod had gone for the charges. But then he lifted the megaphone and called up for lines for the Swedish crew.

  Smith glanced at Elizabeth Ramsay, holding on to the side of the wheelhouse as the sweeper rose and fell. ‘I think you’d better have a line, too.’

  Her gaze went to the net hanging down Audacity’s side, bellying out as the ships rolled, smacking back against the rust-streaked steel as they recovered. She agreed: ‘Yes.’

  He saw her climb with the others, on a line but struggling like them with the net’s swaying and sagging, and like them she boarded Audacity safely. Smith was last to leave the minesweeper, immediately after McLeod who had come over and set the charges below. They made the climb in darkness with the wind howling about them; the searchlight had been extinguished.

  An hour later Audacity was running south west by south at ten knots, a darkened ship. The minesweeper lay far astern, sunk in nearly twenty fathoms.

  Ross came on to the bridge and Smith asked him, ‘Got ‘em all stowed away?’ He meant the prisoners.

  Ross said ruefully, �
�All secure, sir, but they’re getting to be more than a nuisance.’

  ‘A bit crowded.’

  ‘We’re bulging at the seams, sir.’

  Audacity was designed to carry a crew of seventy-four, in conditions bearable but not palatial. She had sailed without the bomb-throwers’ crews but now, besides the twenty airmen, she had fifty-one prisoners—and the seven Swedes—crammed into her. Smith thought he had an answer to that but would not commit himself. ‘I’ll bear it in mind. How is that Swedish lieutenant?’

  ‘Dried out, fully conscious, and hopping mad, sir. He asked to see you. I told him he’d have to wait and to shut his row.’

  ‘Bring him to my cabin. And tell Wilberforce I want three large whiskies.’

  Smith was leaning against his desk when Ross tapped at the open door, stepped into the cabin and said, ‘Lieutenant Johanssen, sir.’

  The Swede entered scowling, tight-lipped. Smith said quietly, ‘Please be seated.’ He pointed to the leather-covered bench: ‘You too, Mr. Ross.’ He wanted a witness at this interview. ‘The sun isn’t up, yet alone over the yard-arm, but I thought in the circumstances we deserved a drink.’

  Wilberforce knocked and entered, handed out the three whiskies from his tray, and left.

  Smith raised his glass to Johanssen. ‘Your health. I’m glad my seaman was able to save you.’ He was determined to nail that down. Buckley had risked his life for Johanssen and Smith would not have that discounted.

  Johanssen had to swallow his temper for the moment.

  He muttered, ‘I am grateful for that. I might have died.’ He responded to the toast with a sip of the whisky.

  Now Smith smiled and gave him his opening: ‘You asked to see me. I would have invited you before but my duties prevented me. You will understand that, of course.’

  ‘I understand.’ Johanssen was a fellow naval officer, but then he said, ‘I must protest. Your actions tonight were a flagrant breach of neutrality. You used Swedish waters as a base for your operations.’