“About twenty-two miles. They might be bloody long ones, though.”
Six thousand miles east-southeast, Nick reached for the telephone to the director tower. It was just on 1100. If everything had gone exactly to plan, as agreed between himself and Jim Jordan, Sloan would now be twenty-five miles away and roughly on Defiant’s beam.
He asked Greenleaf, “Still not in sight?”
“No, sir. Nothing.”
He put the phone back on its hook. Gant said, “May have found he couldn’t make his thirty knots after all, sir.”
“That could be it.”
There was no reason, he assured himself, to think the worst. Not yet. Plenty of things could have happened to cause slight delay. As Gant had suggested, Sloan’s engine repairs might not have come up to expectations. Or if there’d been Japs around—south of the Bali Strait, ships coming out of Lombok and heading west across Jordan’s track—he might have made a detour, or had to creep out slowly, or—
Or this, or that. The trouble was, if he’d been much delayed, one might conclude that he couldn’t have come out of the Bali Strait by sunrise. You couldn’t have it both ways, unfortunately. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t be coming out of it at all.
One should be able to switch one’s mind off, at times like this. Go back into what Sibbold had called a “coma.” Specialist’s word for “unconscious” …
“Bob.”
“Yes, sir?”
“We can dispense with the dummy funnel now. Lower it, and have it dismantled.”
At first light, as soon as he’d been satisfied that the sky and the sea were clear, he’d told them to strike the Japanese ensign. Petty Officer Morris had asked him eagerly, “Permission to shove it in the galley fire, sir?”
“If it’ll give you any satisfaction, yeoman.”
Hardly an approved manner of disposing of Admiralty stores … But he should have got rid of the extra funnel sooner, he realized. American submarines were likely to be operating in these waters now, and if one of them got Defiant in its periscope and mistook her for a Natori …
Sloan. It was quite possible that a ship could be hit so suddenly and devastatingly that she’d have no chance to get a signal out. A W/T operator could bungle it, or panic, not stay long enough to tap it out … A mine or a torpedo: sudden, overwhelming, and immediate destruction … In his memory he saw Jim Jordan’s shrug, and heard that laconic dismissal of all the disasters that had lain ahead and which both of them had foreseen: However …
How long ago, that conversation over a glass of Laphroaigh? Ten days? A lifetime?
Gant said, “The funnel’s coming down now, sir.”
Poor old Bob. It was rotten to like a man, have him with you, and be intending to ditch him. Bob Gant was a reliable, efficient officer, as well as a thoroughly decent character to have around. The only thing that was wrong with him—apart from his cranky spine—was this fear of responsibility, the reluctance to take command. A number two had to be equipped and ready to become number one; it was part of his raison d’être. Gant wasn’t up to it, for some reason. You couldn’t let it pass, once you knew it. If you were Nick Everard you could turn a blind eye to the burning of a flag worth a few shillings, but you could not connive at risking a ship and a ship’s company, risking their being left in the hands of someone who might let them down. To be kind to Bob Gant, you’d have to endanger others.
That back trouble of his was a liability anyway, entirely valid as a reason to recommend shore employment. Besides, he’d get used to it, and his family would be pleased. Bob had a wife and children in Hampshire somewhere.
Extraordinary that one could begin to think about this sort of thing now. Of a future, and places like Hampshire, and next month, next year …
Could Jim Jordan?
Not a thing in sight. Only an enormous circle of blinding-bright blue sea under a dome of clear blue sky …
“Captain, sir?”
He looked round: Sibbold, the PMO, told him, “You’re about due for a change of those dressings, sir. Could you possibly come down—”
“No, I could not!”
Sibbold was taken aback. Gant met his eyes and very slightly shook his head, warning him to lay off. Sibbold, with his job to do, didn’t see it. He suggested, “May we do it up here, then, if you—”
“For Christ’s sake—”
This time he saw the PMO’s startled surprise. He told himself, Steady, now … He shook his head. “Sorry, doctor. This isn’t a good moment. I’ll—contact you later. How are your other patients?”
He’d made himself ask the question. Now he made himself listen to the long and detailed answer. Thinking about Sloan, and the refugees he’d refused to take.
It was 11:20 when Sibbold left the bridge. Nick asked Chevening, “Where would she be now, precisely, if she was up to time?”
Chevening went to the chart, and worked it out. He came back and told Nick, “She’d bear two-five-five, fourteen miles, sir.”
So she’d have been in sight from this bridge, let alone the director tower.
The Caracas Moon was entirely hidden behind bomb-splashes. Jouster was alongside her now, with the Santa Eulalia still tugging doggedly ahead, Ainsty off the leash and placing herself wherever the current threat was coming from. Malta was in plain sight: low stone-coloured, stretching from north to northeast seven or eight miles distant. It was now 0800: the ships had been under attack sporadically since dawn, but it would have been a great deal worse if Spitfires hadn’t been taking a lot of the pressure out of it. Ainsty was astern now, barraging over the linked ships with Ju88s overhead, diving, bombs coming like slanting rain and the sea rising white-topped all around the tanker’s stern and starboard side. Around what had become her stern … There was a Spitfire patrol around somewhere, but these 88s had somehow avoided them. When enough approached at once, the RAF couldn’t stop them all. One last bomb-load coming now, from a bomber trailing the first five. The guns were at maximum elevation and rapid-firing, Ainsty’s and Jouster’s and the Oerlikons on the tanker. The American freighter would be part of it too, but from here all you could see was the haze of gunsmoke over her. Paul was squinting up under the rim of a borrowed tin hat, but that Junkers was hidden in shell-bursts. Then he saw it again suddenly, a glimpse just as the bombs left it. “Full ahead together! Port thirty!”
This destroyer, not the tanker, had been that last one’s target. The Hunt was heeling to full rudder and trembling to her screws’ thrust as she cracked on power. Ainsty’s silent now, no targets left. Astern the sea blossomed, lifting in dark humps that broke white-topped, the Junkers’ Parthian gifts. She was heeling right over, twisting away from danger. Paul heard “Midships!” Third bomb … fourth … The fifth went in close to starboard, where seconds ago the ship had been. He felt the explosion through his feet, and the spout was so close that her stern swung into it as it folded, drowning her afterpart in foam. Her engines had stopped. Gunfire from the other ships—from the Santa Eulalia— petered out. Ainsty was back on an even keel, losing way as quickly as if she’d had brakes and slammed them on. The brake was the sea’s pull, sucking at her. On her compass platform there was a lot of telephone and voicepipe talk going on: Ainsty wallowing, slumping in the sea as she lost all forward motion. There was already quite a distance between her and the group of ships plodding away eastward and making about six knots. But they needed her guns, the high-angle four-inch, to shelter them. They were cripples helping each other along. The American had been torpedoed, bombed, and at least once she’d been set on fire, and the Caracas Moon was more corpse than cripple. A corpse worth a lot more than any other ship, though, to that island … Ainsty and Jouster had changed places earlier because Jouster was a bigger and more powerful ship than the lightweight Hunt, better suited to the towing job. She was about twice Ainsty’s displacement, in fact. They’d swapped round after the first series of Stuka attacks, just after first light. During that Stuka raid there’d been a near-miss on the C
aracas Moon’s starboard side, and she was leaking oil, a long trail of Malta’s life-blood discolouring the sea right back to where they’d been at dawn.
A signalman had gone to the starboard ten-inch lamp. Jouster—whose captain was senior to Ainsty’s—must have been waiting for a report, because at the first dot-dash of the call-up signal she flashed a go-ahead. The message that went over to her was “Expect to get going in about thirty minutes.” Jouster acknowledged. The stern-on view of her with the blocky shape of the half-tanker beside her would have been baffling if you hadn’t known what it was, and it was further complicated by an occasional sight of the Santa Eulalia’s upperworks beyond it. A haystack leaning on a Baby Austin, against a background of telegraph poles? The whole assembly was dwindling as it hauled eastward. It had to get right round the island’s southern coast, then turn to port, northward, up towards Valletta, which was on the southeast coast.
Even that short haul, and with Spitfires helping, seemed more than one could hope to accomplish, with so much damage done already … A roar of engines overhead was sudden, startling: but they were Spitfires. Two of them, swinging to their left now to pass over the tow as well. As the racket faded, Simpson spoke beside him: “Minesweepers are on their way to meet us, and we’re told we’ll have Spits over us all the way in now. Things are looking up, sub!”
And he’d just been thinking the opposite … He asked Simpson, “How about us? The engines?”
“Not to worry. Some sort of blow-back, from that near-miss. I don’t know, but it’s fixable.” He patted Paul’s shoulder, and grinned: “You’ll soon be safe and sound in your little submarine, Everard!”
It was now 8:35. And there were—roughly—eleven miles to go. He wondered if Simpson could be right, if one should allow oneself to believe in what he’d said. If the tow could continue to make five or six knots, with Spitfires to protect it and minesweepers coming out to help—might make it in about two hours? Into Grand Harbour, in two hours?
Bewildering. He was believing it. And thinking of Beale laughing, winking at old Withinshaw, telling him, There’s some as like to look on the bright side …
He wondered what he’d do about getting new gear, uniform and other stuff. All he possessed were the clothes he’d been wearing when they’d pulled him and Willis into the whaler. They’d be dry by now, but they’d also be salt-stained and shrunk, and scorched too, some of them, and he had nothing else at all, not a razor or a toothbrush even. Presumably one would be able to get an advance of pay, and a Slops issue—“Slops” being stores you paid for, Admiralty-issue stuff. You could get a battledress uniform from Slops, and socks and things. He wondered if there was a branch of Gieves in Malta. Simpson had gone back to the for’ard part of the bridge, so he couldn’t ask him. He hadn’t asked him about Willis either.
Spitfires were busy in the distance. Several times there were patches of action, smoke-trails plunging seaward, as attacks were intercepted and broken up. At 9:20, Ainsty got under way and worked up to twelve knots, steering east to catch up on the tow. Fighters still up there, winging around at a few miles’ radius. Filfla Island—a rock, three miles off the coast—fell astern to port. Fifteen knots now: it took half an hour to overhaul the others, joining them just as they reached the position for the turn north, rounding the corner of the island. By this time the two minesweepers had arrived, and were turning in to take station ahead. Each of the stubby little ships had a three-inch AA gun and an Oerlikon.
Hour and a half now? No—surely—less than that … He checked the time: then glanced up, looking for’ard, where something was going on. Binoculars were being trained astern: and he heard the report, “Large formation, closing, sir!”
RDF report. He couldn’t see any Spitfires now. Perhaps Malta’s fighter-direction people had already vectored them out to meet this assault.
“Port fifteen!”
Ainsty’s captain was bringing her round to cut the corner and close up on Jouster and her charges. The Santa Eulalia’s and Jouster’s joint efforts had dragged the Caracas Moon around. They had only to follow the sweepers now, the local boys. Ainsty with her fifteen knots and the short cut was closing the gap very rapidly.
Cutting the corner might be taking her through mined water?
“Alarm port, red one-five-oh, angle of sight ten, Junkers 88s!”
A quieter report added, “Fighters above them. Messerschmitts, I think.”
Lacking binoculars, it was a minute or two before he saw them. Then the picture was a confusing one. Like midges in a distant haze … Well, those were the fighters: ours or theirs … He found the bombers now, and he was watching the familiar, target’s-eye view of oncoming Ju88s. He wondered if he’d seen any of this particular lot before: had seen that one, or that, overhead yesterday or this morning … Withinshaw could have named each one of them, he thought, the same string of names for each. He counted two groups of four and another of about eight, all at roughly five thousand feet. The Spitfires obviously had their hands full with escorting fighters, and the Junkers were about to get a clear run in. Ainsty had cut her speed as she came up astern of the others. Guns elevated, loaded and ready, gunners’ eyes slitted under the helmets’ rims. Tanned, tired, unshaven faces, red-rimmed eyes. Grey sky, weak sunshine filtering through high cloud, grey-green sea, dun-coloured island … The front-running party of bombers were pushing their noses down, starting into their attacking dives. Ainsty weaving across the stern of the tow, two cables’ lengths clear of it. Over the island more fighters—Spitfires—were climbing, heading south. Ainsty’s four-inch crashed: the for’ard mounting was trained to an extreme after bearing to throw the shells up over her shoulder as she slanted across the tow’s broad, swirling wake. Jouster had opened fire, and Ainsty’s pompoms joined in too, then Oerlikons and Vickers adding to the din just before the attackers pulled out of their dives. Bombs started on their way: in slow motion, tumbling, then speeding into streaks, invisible. The splashes went up to starboard and ahead: Ainsty under helm, turning back to recross the wake the other way. At this moment her stem was pointing directly at the tow but you couldn’t see it for the bomb-splashes. The entire area of sea between this ship and the bunch ahead seemed to be erupting. Ainsty’s four-inch had shifted target—to engage the second wave of the attack, another group of four: but behind that foursome, Spitfires were dropping on the larger group. The Junkers back there were shedding bomb-loads and turning away, running for it: one spiralling, trailing smoke. Gunfire at crescendo again as the next four bombers came droning over: and releasing bombs now …
Most of them went in to port. One stick fell close enough to Jouster to qualify as near-misses. Then ahead, an explosion, a gush of flame, smoke pluming vertically: like a gas-jet igniting.
Santa Eulalia.
“DCT reports tow parted, sir!”
Smoke, tinged with the colour of flame, billowed skyward. The guns had ceased fire. The tow was broken, stopped, Santa Eulalia burning. Ainsty’s captain had his bearded face at the voicepipe shouting orders that were inaudible as a Spitfire screamed overhead through dissipating shreds of shell-bursts.
By the dog watches, afternoon growing into evening, it had become certain that Sloan had gone.
One more name on that list of ships: with the difference that in this case he, Nick Everard, felt largely responsible. He should have foreseen that they’d have clamped down on the Bali Strait, when they’d known there were still two ships to get away from Surabaya and the Bali gap was the nearest exit. Even if they hadn’t been alerted to the fact that four US destroyers had already slipped away by that route; and the odds were they would have caught on to it.
From as much as one had known in Surabaya, the Madura Channel and the Bali Strait had looked like the best route. So it could be argued that this retrospection was a judgement based on factors which had emerged later. But mightn’t clearer thought, logical analysis, have pointed to this outcome?
He’d have taken Defiant out by the Bali rout
e if she’d been able to get over the Madura shallows. It had been the discovery that she couldn’t make it that had provoked that brainstorm, panic … The fact she was here now, well south and within a few hours of safety, was sheer luck. Luck, not good judgement.
Bentley asked him, “Coffee, sir?”
“Thank you.” He took the cup, put it on the ledge beside him, lit one of his last cheroots. Chevening met his glance: grimly, with no trace of the congratulatory mood in which he’d started this long day. Everyone felt the same: the failure, loss.
And only he, Nick, knew about the forty refugees who’d have been embarked in Sloan.
However …
It didn’t help. He could see Jim Jordan’s wry expression, the slight twist of a grin on that wide-jawed face. He could hear him saying, “It’ll be a great moment, making that rendezvous.”
It would have been, too.
It had been a risk—he and Jordan had both recognized it—deciding to let the American wait that extra day. He should have insisted on her sailing the night before. It had seemed like a calculated risk, one well worth taking, for the sake of those few extra knots, but the entire situation had been so fraught with risks to start with that one had had no business adding to them. Twenty-four hours earlier, the Bali Strait might still have been wide open; and the big movement south through the Lombok Strait hadn’t started.
You had to face up to it, accept your own share of blame, learn the lesson. In war, lessons tended to be expensive.
Face up to a courtmartial too, for not having engaged that Kako cruiser?
It wasn’t inconceivable. There were individuals in certain quarters, hangers-on in high places, whose main concern was to make damning judgements from their armchairs. And it had been a close, difficult decision.
The DCT telephone buzzed. Greenleaf was still up there, although Nick had relaxed the ship’s company to cruising stations a couple of hours ago. Greenleaf told him, “Ship’s foretop on green seven-oh, sir—”
“What?”
All the Drowning Seas: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 3 Page 32