Go In and Sink! (26 page)

Cowan asked quietly, ‘Couldn’t we wait until dark, Captain? If you surface you might be spotted.’

‘We’ve a whole day of sunlight, Major.’ He studied him gravely. ‘To wait until sunset would take too long. We’d be right up by the enemy’s coast. And anyway, if we tried it in the dark we would most likely get blown up.’

He turned away. ‘Up periscope.’

Another look. Empty sky, but the mine was still with them. It seemed to gleam in the sunlight like something malevolent.

He said quietly, ‘Starboard ten.’ He heard the trimming pumps thudding quietly. Gerrard was watching the boat’s
stability
all right. What had happened to him? Had he been thinking of those other boats? Of Bill Wade? He swung the periscope once more and imagined he could see their own shadow beneath the surface. ‘Steady’.

Starkie called, ‘Steady, sir.’ He leaned back slightly to watch the gyro repeater quiver to rest. Due north.

‘Down periscope.’ Marshall thrust his hands into his pockets. ‘Chief, get your men and all the gear you need. As few hands on deck as possible.’

Buck said, ‘I’ll take charge, if I may, sir.’ He forced a grin. ‘Chief knows his onions where engines are concerned. But I reckon I’ve cut up more bloody cars in my Wandsworth garage than he’s had hot dinners. This is right up my street.’

Marshall nodded. ‘That makes sense.’ He sought out Warwick. ‘Automatic-weapon crews close up on surfacing.’ He looked down at the chart table, fighting back alternative thoughts, challenges which still lay behind his hazy plan.

Tools clanked in the background, and he heard Buck say, ‘I’ll want that, and that big cutter over there.’ He sounded satisfied. ‘Ready when you are, sir.’

Cowan asked, ‘Anything I can do?’

Marshall smiled. ‘Pray.’

He looked at his watch. What a bloody thing to happen. Now of all times.

Gerrard moved close. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I should have kept my head.’

Marshall eyed him thoughtfully. ‘Not to worry.’

Men pushed past them towards the ladder. It seemed to be full of them. Deck party in lifejackets and carrying Buck’s tools. Gun crews with their ammunition belts. Warwick wiping his binoculars with a piece of tissue. They all looked very tense, but none seemed to show any
doubt
in what they were being ordered to perform.

The captain had spoken. That was it.

Marshall licked his lips and looked at Gerrard. ‘Shut off the boat once we’re on the surface. If this thing explodes, do your best to get our lads out of the escape hatches.’ He paused, seeing the doubts crowding Gerrard’s face. ‘If you get clear and we don’t, Major Cowan will tell you where to go and what to do. It’ll be up to you to get those people off.’ He gripped his arm. ‘All right, Bob?’

‘Yes.’ Gerrard nodded jerkily. ‘But watch out.’

Marshall walked to the ladder and said to Devereaux, Go forrard before you shut the watertight doors.’ He dropped his voice. ‘If the worst happens, you’ll be needed up here to sort things out.’

Devereaux glanced at the massive steel door. ‘Yes, sir.’

Marshall watched him grimly. ‘Stop any panic. You know the score. If they have to ditch, tell them to watch out for the jumping-wire and the gun barrel when they pop through the escape hatch.’ He made himself smile. ‘No sense in getting a headache for nothing!’

The lower hatch clanged open and he began to pull himself up the ladder. It was slippery, or perhaps his hands were sweating badly. He gripped the locking wheel, feeling someone taking hold of his legs.

His voice rang hollowly in the tower. ‘Surface!’

He had learned quite a lot in the last few minutes. About himself and about Gerrard. He had even discovered that Buck came from Wandsworth.

He heard Gerrard’s shrill whistle and swung the wheel over his head.

LIEUTENANT COLIN BUCK
tugged his cap down over his eyes and stared at the mine. He was standing right aft at the narrowest part of the casing, and with his back to the conning-tower he felt strangely detached, as if he was poised on the surface itself, being followed by the slime-covered sphere with its bobbing horns.

What a beautiful morning. Not a cloud in the sky, and only a hint of haze to mask the dark blue horizon. After the cramped hull, the constant comings and goings of other human beings, being made to stand aside in passageways or duck through watertight doors, it was like a dream world.

A stoker petty officer, naked but for a pair of patched shorts, crawled awkwardly along the edge of the casing-above the hydroplanes. Buck watched him, his mind unusually relaxed. Despite the dangers of being on the surface in bright sunlight, the need to rid themselves of that ruddy mine, he felt quite calm.

‘Well, Rigby, what d’you make of it?’

The petty officer sank down on the wet steel and sighed. ‘It’s a bastard sir. A real, second-to-none bastard.’

Buck grinned. ‘It’s a start anyway.’

The petty officer leaned over the edge and pointed into the U-boat’s gentle wake. ‘I did what you said, sir. Followed the wire from where it’s caught round the bandstand.’ His filthy arm moved further aft and down again. ‘The
cable
seems to go round the saddle tank and through the port hydroplane.’ He squinted up at Buck. ‘Trouble is, there’s a bloody great bight in the cable. It’s wrapped tightly round the plane, so that the drag is further aft across the rudder.’

‘I see.’ Buck seized the jumping-wire and swung out over the narrow, pointed stern. The sea was so clear he could pick out trailers of weed on the hull, the reflected glitter of sunlight from a spinning screw. ‘You’re right. It
is
a bastard.’ He turned and looked at the bridge, an uneven black shadow against the sky. He saw the restless muzzles of the Vierling and machine-guns and Marshall’s’ silhouette at the rear of the bandstand watching for some sort of progress.

Buck cupped his hands. ‘Wire’s fouled round the plane, sir! No good trying to cut it up here. It will have to be done under water.’

Rigby muttered, ‘Don’t fancy that job. Not with a bloody screw buzzing round my arse.’

Buck shouted, ‘If you stop the motors, sir, the weight of the cable will pull the mine into our stern.’

Marshall called, ‘Any ideas?’

Buck looked at Rigby and winked. ‘A few.’

Marshall waved one hand. ‘Tell me if you need any extra hands then.’ He turned away towards the forepart of the bridge, his unruly hair rippling in a small breeze.

Buck banged his palms together and looked at his small group of helpers. ‘Right lads. Four of you get ready to boom that mine clear if it comes any closer. Petty Officer Rigby will take charge on deck.’ He was already stripping off his shirt. ‘I’ll do the cutting.’

He took off his watch and handed it to a seaman. ‘Take care of it. I won it at poker.’ God, they had only been
surfaced
for ten minutes. It seemed an age since they had stumbled out into the sunlight.

He saw the men laying out the tools, the big wire-cutter, and a bowline to tie around his waist.

Rigby grimaced. ‘Watch out for the undertow, sir. There’s always a nasty tug under these boats.’

Buck nodded. He had sounded as if he cared. He fixed some goggles over his eyes and sat down gingerly on the edge of the casing. The metal was already warm, but felt slimy, repellent.

He eased himself outboard and down, holding his breath as the sea explored his loins. It was like ice. A shock after the sun’s warmth.

He thought suddenly of the publican’s wife in Scotland, the sheer wantonness of their passion together. It had gone on and on, neither of them willing to allow a climax of their need, each striving to break the other’s last defence. Once, she had lain on top of him, moving deliberately to the tuneless piano in the bar below. That time, he had given in first.

Buck held his breath and ducked under the water, peering at the wire. It was coated with rust and growth, and as jagged as some relic of the trenches. His father had often gone on about the First World War. The tingling horror of night raids, armed with clubs and sharpened shovels. Hand-to-hand, waist deep in mud. Yet he often spoke of it with a kind of nostalgia, a sense of loss. Buck had been very young when his father had died. It had been that same war which had finally killed him. Gas, which had eaten away his lungs. He could still hear him coughing in the small back bedroom. Cough, cough, cough. Day and night. But when it had stopped, the silence had been all the more terrible.

Buck dragged himself into the warm air again and pushed the goggles on to his forehead.

‘Never do it with these tools. Tell the Chief to rig a power cutter and be bloody quick about it.’

He looked up at the sky. He could push himself away from the hull and swim. Go on and on.

He heard Marshall questioning the man who had gone forward with his message. He was a good bloke. Not a bit like some of the stuck-up sods he had first encountered. He remembered when he had enlisted with the peacetime R.N.V.R. Just to get away from Wandsworth with its dirt and teeming houses. The constant bicker and shrill cries of children. The noisy arguments and worse on a Saturday night when the fathers came home drunk from the pubs, spewing in passageways or knocking their wives about. And the coppers who had come from the nick at Lavender Hill, pushing and shoving, jovial but deadly.
Come on, mate, what’s all the fuss then?
A few thumps and silence before the old police van dragged their haul off to the cells for the night.

The temporary Navy had been the only way for Buck to get away from all that. With his father dead, he had become the breadwinner, working at that stinking garage off Battersea High Street. The owner had been on the crook. Cutting up stolen cars for spare parts, or selling them whole with false plates outside London. But jobs were hard to come by, and he had three sisters as well as his mother to support.

When the war had started, Buck had been a leading torpedoman, and although his part-time training had been carried out on obsolete equipment, and given by instructors, many of whom had learned their trade in his father’s war, he had had the edge on many of his fellow recruits. He had
learned
the hard way in that crooked garage. Not only when to look the other way, and pocket a small share for doing so, but how to take a bit of wire and produce heat or power. It had lifted him well above better educated men, as it had in peacetime.

Buck was twenty-eight, but when he had been twenty he had become his own boss, manager of the garage, which if it was still spared by the bombing, would be waiting for him. A foothold. A stepping stone.

He had a thick skin, too. Even the thinly-veiled hostility from some of the regular officers when he had been granted a temporary commission, some of which amounted to contempt, had failed to shake him. Quite the contrary, he knew that on several occasions he had been deliberately revolting, just to get his own back. To see their noses go up in the air.

It all seemed a long way back now. The Navy was overwhelmingly officered by men like himself and peacetime sailors. The old hidebound types were being forced into their shells. He grinned to himself. Or promoted, like that twit Simeon.

But a few of the other sort, men like Marshall, had made it all worthwhile. Anyway, it was different in submarines. He never grew tired of them. Sometimes he wondered if he really could face going back to any garage after this.

The seaman called, ‘Cutter’s being rigged, sir,’ He shaded his eyes to look at the sky. ‘Nobody about yet.’

Rigby snapped, ‘Too bloody early, I s’pect.’

Buck ignored them, thinking of the Scottish pub. His fishing rods had never left their case. Christ, what a woman she was. She had matched him. Drained him. Left him weak but still wanting more. She had cried when he had left. Funny that. He had not thought she would cry.

He heard Warwick calling something to his gun crews. He’d never had a woman in his life. It was bloody obvious. Buck’s first conquest had been, he frowned, trying to remember. Outside the school? Or on that church outing to Brighton? He shrugged and rubbed the spray off his skin. He’d have to find one for young Warwick.
Bunny
.

Rigby said, ‘Here comes the cutter, sir.’

Two seamen were dragging the electric cable aft, the powerful cutter between them like the head of some forgotten monster.

Buck nodded and leaned out to watch the screw. One slip. Just one, and it would be his lot.

Rigby said anxioulsy, ‘Watch out for your legs, sir.’

Buck adjusted his goggles. ‘It’s my family jewels
I’m
worried about.’

Rigby grinned despite his doubts. ‘If you lose them, I’ll get the Chief to run you up something in his machine-shop. No woman’ll ever know the difference!’ But Buck had already ducked under the surface. He said, ‘Keep a tight hold on his lifeline. Check that cable, too.’

From his position on the gratings Marshall saw Buck’s head vanish below the surface, and half expected to hear the sound of the electric cutter at work. But there was nothing. The cutter was a useful piece of gear. Most U-boats carried one so that a diver could work on deck while the hull was submerged to hack through anti-submarine nets and booms across harbour entrances.

Warwick asked, ‘How long will it take, sir?’

He shrugged. ‘Half an hour. Hard to tell.’ Despite the risk, he was glad Buck had gone himself. If anyone could do it.…

He swung round as Warwick said, ‘From control room, sir. Fast-moving H.E. at one-five-zero. Closing.’

Marshall ran to the rear of the bridge and levelled his glasses. There was some more haze now. Rising with the sun’s mounting glare, marking the darker line of the horizon.

‘Keep a good lookout. Maybe it’ll go away.’

Warwick said, ‘Lieutenant Buck, sir. Shall I pass him the word?’

‘Negative. I don’t want him to get flustered. He’s enough on his plate at the moment.’ He glanced at the mine. Hating it. Fearing what it could do.

Warwick followed his gaze and said, ‘But for that thing, we’d be safely on our way, sir.’

Marshall did not answer. But for running deep to avoid those other destroyers, they would have hit the mine squarely instead of getting entangled with its cable.