Go In and Sink! (23 page)

He raised his eyes from the voicepipe and saw the man in question. He was lying spreadeagled below the gun’s long muzzle. He noticed vaguely it was still smoking from the last shell. But the man should have been dead. Willard was right about that. He seemed to have lost one leg, and there was blood all round him. Everywhere. Then he saw the man’s hand move. Very slightly. As if detached from its owner.

The plane had gone again and was grinding round inside the wall of smoke. It had to be now.

‘Cease firing!’

He saw the gun crews tumbling towards the bridge, the machine-gunners already dropping their weapons through the hatch and leaping after them.

‘Clear the bridge!’

Buck swore savagely and then croaked, ‘Come back, you bloody fool!’

Marshall ran to his side and saw Willard was already halfway along the casing, his red-cross bag bounding on his hip like a schoolboy’s satchel.

He pulled Buck away and said, ‘Get below! That’s an
order
!’ When he looked again the bridge was empty.

He heard Gerrard calling to him up the voicepipe, his tone desperate. ‘What’s happening, sir?’

But Marshall was watching the stoker as he reached the man by the gun. He paused for just a few seconds and then turned to face the bridge. He opened his mouth, but the words were lost in the sound of the plane’s approach, and yet they still seemed to reach Marshall despite everything.

In the smoky sunlight he saw the brightness in his eyes; fear, tears, or just the sudden acceptance of death.

The enemy pilot had misjudged his attack, caught off guard perhaps by their alteration of course and speed. As the aircraft burst out of the smoke it was well astern, but the machine-guns were firing as before, some whipping through the German flag overhead, others whimpering away towards the pall of dense smoke above the blazing tug.

But some straddled the casing. Marshall saw the boy stagger sideways and then jerk violently through the safety rail to roll out and over the side.

Marshall shouted, ‘Take her
down
, Number One!’

When he reached the side he saw the stoker’s body being washed along the saddle tank, arms and legs moving languidly, his face still towards the bridge, until the racing screws sucked him down and out of sight.

The deck was tilting and the air full of noise. The plane’s engines, the roar of water in the tanks, the sea surging up and over the casing, carrying the other dead seaman towards the bridge in its path.

Marshall was aware of all these things but still could not move.

He knew someone had come to the bridge, and that his feet were on the ladder, the sky very clear, framed in the oval hatch above him.

Then he was in the control room, which was cloaked in brittle silence as the boat glided down as deep as she dared. He watched the depth gauges, listened to the regular reports from the echo-sounder. He knew exactly what was happening, yet felt no part of it.

They all seemed to be talking around him. As if instead of being here he was still up on the bridge, or drifting with Willard, out of reach, beyond pain.

Gerrard said, ‘Hold present depth for twenty minutes. Course zero-eight-zero.’

A deep echo rumbled against the hull. The dock coming to rest on the bottom of the channel. Marshall had heard such sounds many times. Now he did not even notice it.

Gerrard looked at him. ‘I’ve got her, sir.’

‘Thank you.’ Marshall flinched at the sound of his own voice. ‘We should be all right now for a bit.’

He could feel his stomach contracting, the clamminess of his skin. As if he was going to be sick. If he could get to his cabin for just a few moments. It might restore something. Give him strength to go on.

Petty Officer Blythe strode past, his boots crunching on glass from shattered lights and gauges. The sounds dragged Marshall back to reality. He could take no time for himself. No matter what.

‘What about damage? Are the wounded settled down?’

He gripped the coxswain’s steel chair as the hull swayed slightly in some deep cross current.

Blythe called from the bulkhead door, ‘Three wounded, sir. But I’m told they’re drugged well enough. Nothing serious.’

Marshall nodded. ‘Good.’

The yeoman’s chest and legs were soaked in spray. It
must
have been him who had come to the bridge. To look for him.

He tried again. ‘Get the broken lights replaced and start reloading the bow tubes.’ He looked at Frenzel. ‘Chief, you’d better double check your department again. We shall make for the Otranto Strait tomorrow. Don’t want any oil leaks to invite trouble.’

Gerrard crossed to his side. ‘It’s all right, sir.’ He spoke very quietly. ‘I’ve taken care of it. I’d be happier now if you’d try and rest. You’ve done enough.’

Marshall removed his cap and stared at it for several seconds. The German eagle clutching the swastika in its claws, just as the last moments were tearing at his nerves until he wanted to scream aloud.

Gerrard added, ‘Why did you do it, sir? You could have been killed.’ When Marshall remained silent he said, ‘It was Willard, wasn’t it?’

He nodded wearily, ‘Something like that. He was looking at me. Trying to show me what he could do. What it meant to him.’ He crushed the cap under his arm.

‘There was nothing you could do for him.’ Gerrard’s eyes flickered across the control room, making sure everyone was occupied. ‘You know that.’

‘I suppose so.’ Marshall recalled the boy’s face as he had stood quite alone on the casing. The link between them for those last few seconds. ‘But I had to make him understand. To know that someone cared. Even if it was too late.’

Gerrard smiled sadly. ‘I guessed as much.’

More glass crackled on the steel deck, and Warwick stepped over the coaming and leaned against the door.

Frenzel asked, ‘You okay, Sub?’

‘Yes. Thanks.’ He looked at Marshall and shivered. ‘I don’t feel anything.’ He sounded surprised. ‘Not yet.’

Marshall walked slowly up and down the control room, only partly aware he was moving. He saw Devereaux bending over his table, but noticed that his hands and instruments were still. When he got closer he saw that his eyes were tightly shut, like someone in prayer. Buck was in the passageway beyond the bulkhead door talking to some of his men. Already engrossed in the whys and wherefores of the faulty torpedo. Warwick still standing limply beside the door, dressed in his shorts and wearing the heavy pistol. No matter how he felt, he had behaved like a veteran. Marshall tried to think back, to piece the events together in some sort of order. Buck and Warwick. A garage manager and a student who had been a pacifist.

He watched Frenzel, arms folded as he waited by his panel while an E.R.A. fiddled with a screwdriver to repair some of the damage caused by the faulty torpedo. Was he thinking of Willard, he wondered? Or had he already been written off, pushed away like so much waste?

Marshall said, ‘You can fall out diving stations. As soon as you’ve got things cleared up, tell the cook to prepare a meal.’ It was just as if he had to keep talking, keep giving instructions, if only to hold his other thoughts at bay.

Gerrard walked with him to the door. ‘I’ll call you if anything happens, sir.’ He tried to smile. ‘As always. You get some rest.’

This time Marshall did not fight back. He replied quietly, ‘That was a bad one. It seems to get worse every time.’

Gerrard watched him go and then returned to his place behind the coxswain. Somehow he must get Marshall out of himself, he thought grimly. Not merely for him, but for all their sakes.

Far astern, where they had last dived, the remaining tug ad begun a cautious search of the area for survivors. Not
that
the crew had seen much beyond the fog of blazing ships and gunfire. By nightfall she had given up and had turned once more towards the land.

Marshall lay on his bunk staring up at the deckhead, picturing the scene as if he was still there. There would be no survivors. Somehow he was quite sure. U-192 had not changed in that respect. They should have known. Understood. Now it might be too late.

Outside his cabin he heard someone sweeping up broken glass, whistling in time with each thrust of the broom. He was still trying to put a name to the tune when he fell into an empty, dreamless sleep.

MARSHALL CLENCHED HIS
teeth against the chill night air and steadied his glasses across the forepart of the bridge screen. With the electric motors held down to minimum revolutions there was barely any sound but for the gentle swish of water along the saddle tanks, the occasional creak of metal as the boat swayed in an irregular offshore swell.

They had been on the surface for nearly half an hour, but everything was dripping wet and icy to the touch. After the bright sunlight they had seen during the day’s searches through the periscope, it seemed an additional strain on everyone’s nerves.

There was a loud clang below the conning-tower, followed by a stream of savage cursing from Petty Officer Cain.

Buck, who was standing beside Marshall, lowered his night-glasses and said, ‘That bloody makeshift screen got a bit buckled when the faulty torpedo nose-dived.’ He groaned as more clanks and scrapes echoed over the slow-moving submarine. They sounded deafening after the silence.

Marshall said sharply, ‘Tell them to be quick. Keep the noise down.’

He lowered his eyes to the luminous gyro repeater. They were steering due south, the bows pointing directly into the Gulf of Sirte and the coast of Libya. Buck’s angry comment
about
the faulty torpedo was a reminder that time and distance still had meaning.

It was very dark, with only a sliver of moon and some high, misty stars to throw any reflection on the black undulating surface around them. For over a week after sending the great floating dock and its escort to the bottom they had been made to endure the frustration of uncertainty, while Frenzel’s fuel levels had continued to drop, and all but the most basic of food supplies had become exhausted. It was like being forgotten by that other world to which they had listened on the busy radio waves, or discarded in the face of some new crisis elsewhere. Then at last, as they had opened their special radio watch, the signal had come. When it had been decoded, and the brief references had been marked on Devereaux’s charts, Marshall had headed towards the North African coastline without delay. Someone had at last remembered them, and with any sort of luck would have the precious fuel and supplies waiting to be loaded. And rest.

It was strange to realise that the great curving mass of land which now lay hidden somewhere to port had seen some of the most bitter fighting of the North African campaign. Benghazi and Derna, and farther to the east the battered but defiant port of Tobruk. When he had last been here in
Tristram
, prowling along these same shores in search of enemy supply ships, it had looked very different, even at night. There had always been the far off mutter of artillery, the sounds softened by the vast wastes of the desert, the occasional gleam of a drifting flare and the instant pinpoints of small-arms as patrols stumbled on one another and fought it out with rifle and bayonet beneath these quiet skies.

Buck came back rubbing his hands together. ‘It’s been
rigged
, sir. Looks a mess in this light, but I suppose from a distance it will do.’

The light metal screen which the depot ship’s mechanics had constructed in such a short time was clipped around the after part of the conning-tower, altering the submarine’s sparse outline just enough to hide her German lines from anything but a really close inspection.

Marshall replied, ‘Probably a waste of time anyway. The enemy may have marked our card by now.’

Gerrard’s voice echoed up the tube by his elbow. ‘Should have made a sighting by now, sir. We’re ten minutes overdue.’

‘Yes.’ He moved his glasses slightly to starboard again. Nothing. Nor was there a sound above their own stealthy approach. ‘Maybe something’s gone wrong.’

Buck said, ‘I was thinking. Suppose the Jerries have made a comeback? We might run smack into one of their patrols.’

Marshall smiled. ‘I’m getting so that I can’t remember which side I’m really on.’

How could he chat to Buck as if it did not matter to him? Every second dragged at his nerves, and even the placid sea appeared to be full of moving shadows and menacing outlines.

He snapped, ‘Ask the Asdic to check their gear again. They may have miscalculated because of the depth or the back-echoes from the shore.’ He gripped Buck’s wrist. ‘No. Belay that. They’ll be doing it without my badgering them.’

Buck grunted. ‘God, I bet they’d laugh like drains if they could see us back in Blighty now!’

Marshall lowered the glasses and massaged his eyes. The casual remark brought back the memory of England with sharp clarity. It was May now, with all the colours beginning to show again, despite what the bombs could do.

He remembered too that other time in the house near Southampton. Gail in his arms, their passion which had often pushed away caution. Suppose he had married her? Would things have been different?

‘Sir!’ Buck was leaning over the screen. ‘Boat! Port bow!’

Marshall pushed past him, hearing the machine-gunners training their weapons into the darkness, a man’s quick intake of breath, his own heart beating urgently.

He said harshly, ‘No wonder we couldn’t hear them. They’re drifting.’

It was little more than a darker blob against the sea’s face. Buck certainly had good eyesight.

Marshall saw the quick stab of a torch, very low on the water, and heard one of the machine-gunners give a noisy yawn of relief.

‘Reply, Yeoman.’

Marshall gripped the wet metal and waited impatiently while Blythe shuttered off their recognition code. Instantly a boat’s engine coughed into life and the dark shadow lengthened slowly before edging closer to the submarine’s hull. It was a very old boat with the high bow and stern posts of a Portuguese fisherman. But the voice which boomed through a megaphone was British enough.