Killing Ground (10 page)

The communications rating called, “Sub still on the surface, sir! We will alter course and engage to starboard!”

Bizley thought,
Well, that's bloody obvious, surely?
He snapped, “Tell the gunlayers to check their sights while there's still time!”

Fernie watched him in the gloom, his eyes raw with salt. This young officer was a hard one to know. He grinned to himself. If you
wanted
to know him. He seemed to know what he was doing, but might prove to be a real bastard when he thought he had the weight. Not like poor Mr Ayres. A nice chap, but handling seasoned hands amidst a mass of mooring wires when entering or leaving harbour was not his cup of tea. Especially with the old Gunner (T) fucking and blinding all the while.

Bizley stared at the depth-charges right aft and recalled exactly when his MGB's pattern had exploded. If he hadn't ordered the float to be paddled away they would have gone up with them. It had become much clearer with each passing day and he could sense a sort of wary respect from some of the ship's company. What would have been the point of dying? The boat had been done for. The skipper would never have made it anyway.

Even
Gladiator's
captain, a straight-ringed regular who would have seen any flaw in his personal report, seemed impressed, especially at the idea that a decoration might be considered.

He thought of his father and mother, what they would say when he next saw them. His father was a local bank manager, at the same branch where Bizley himself would have ended up but for the war. Paying out cash to people who looked down on him, who were not fit to clean his shoes.

A telephone handset buzzed in its metal box like a trapped insect and Bizley tore it out and covered his other ear with one hand.

“Quarterdeck!”

It was the first lieutenant. A man with no emotion, Bizley thought. The one person who had made him uneasy by asking, “Surely
somebody
ought to have set the depth-charges to safe when your boat bought it?” Not two officers sharing tea and a momentary break from watch-keeping. More like being in the dock, or how he imagined a court martial would be.

“The U-Boat is diving. Stand by to engage!”

Somewhere a thousand miles away a gong tinkled and instantly B-gun, which was immediately below the bridge, shot back on its springs, the jarring crash of the explosion making some of the new ratings squeak with alarm.

Fernie barked, “Easy lads, that'll be a starshell, you'll see!” He glared at Bizley's back.
He
should have told them, not leave everything to others.

The bursting starshell made the seascape starkly beautiful, with patches of drifting fog breaking around the destroyer's headlong charge, while the hard glare transformed the swell into moving banks of searing whiteness. Bizley felt the deck tilting over, and saw the sea clawing over the side as the wheel and rudder went over.

He tried to hold his glasses steady while he clung to the safety rail with his spare hand. Just for a brief moment he held it in the powerful lens, before spray dashed over him and soaked him
from head to foot.

He didn't know what he had expected. He had seen submarines alongside in Portsmouth, had even been over one when he was at school. Shining and purposeful within, and somehow placid-looking from the dockside, like basking whales.

What he had just witnessed had been something so incredibly evil he had been shocked by his sudden fear. He had even seen the tell-tale burst of spray as she had vented her tanks and begun to dive.

“Target bears Green four-oh! Range oh-one-two. Moving left to right!”

The slender guns moved in unison and then settled.

“Independent—commence!”

“Fire!”

Bizley gritted his teeth as both of the after-guns fired together, the shells tearing towards the starboard bow where he had briefly glimpsed the enemy. She would be submerged now, damaged or not.

Again the guns roared out while from the bridge and pompom mounting the arching balls of livid red tracer floated away towards the U-Boat's last position.

Bizley thought wildly that it would only take a few cannon shells to destroy the periscopes and she would come foundering to the surface. With something like a great sigh of disappointment the revolutions began to fall away as the captain conned his ship at a more manageable speed in pursuit. Radar would give over to Asdic, the searching echo beneath the sea, like the stick of a blind man in a great empty room.

Bizley heard the breech-blocks snapping shut again.

“X- and Y-guns ready, sir!”

Surely at this range the German captain could not get away? He must have imagined that the convoy's escorts had closed in to protect the other ships. He stared at his crew of depth-charge handlers. “You, get ready to fire!” It was somehow characteristic of Bizley that he never bothered to learn the names of anybody
but key ratings, or, of course, trouble makers.

He could picture the U-Boat—the thing—diving steeply, her commander using every skill to shake off his pursuer, the eerie ping of the Asdic against his hull.

Once the bridge have got a perfect position it will be left to me.
Some new methods of firing depth-charges were coming off the blue prints, but for the most part these were the only ones in service.

A pattern over the stern, rolled off like great dustbins, while two other sets were fired abeam even as another pattern was rolled over the stern. In theory and the classroom, the explosions should make one great diamond-shaped design which ought to surround the target and sink it or force it to the surface.

A sudden explosion rolled across the water. Another ship torpedoed? Or the last one blowing up?

Bizley knew each charge took its time to reach the set depth. Even now … He swung round.
“What?”

Fernie held out the handset and replied just as sharply, “Gunnery Officer, sir!”

He snatched it. “Bizley, sir.”

Over the line Finlay's Edinburgh accent was even stronger. “Keep your team on the jump, Sub. If the U-Boat comes up, I need to know wherever it is, right?”

Bizley handed the big leading hand the instrument and said, half to himself, “I'm not a bloody child!”

Fernie patted one of his men on the arm. “Could have fooled me, mate!” He gestured to the throwers. “I give it about half a minute.”

The men peered at one another, their faces and scarves covered with frozen rime.

“Done, Hookey! Gulpers at tot-time!”

The communications rating shouted,
“Continuous echo, sir!”

“Fire!”

Bizley ran to the guardrails and saw the port depth-charge flying lazily away, then it lost itself in a welter of spray. He knew without looking that a full pattern had rolled off the stern, and
found he was trying to moisten the roof of his mouth, which felt like old leather. He stared as if mesmerised as a great column of spray shot from the sea astern, and the crack of explosions seemed to shake the ship from truck to keel, as if
Gladiator
and not the enemy was being torn apart.

Fernie called hoarsely, “Come on, lads! Reload the throwers,
chop, chop!”

Bizley shouted, “Taken over, have you?”

The big leading hand seized a stanchion for support as the deck tilted steeply once more. The ship had lost contact. The Old Man was going for another search.

He took time to confront Bizley's fury and thought of the pleasure it would give to poke him right in his stupid, arrogant puss.

But he was a good leading seaman, and was hoping for a chance to rate petty officer. They at least had space to stretch their legs.

He retorted, “We're going in for another attack,
sir.
If we make a pass over the target with nothing to drop on 'em, it won't be
me
what gets a bottle from the Old Man!”

Bizley swung away. “Don't be impertinent! I'll be watching you!”

The breechworker of Y-gun whispered sarcastically, “Don't think 'e likes you, 'Ookey.”

The deck swayed upright again and men peered at one another, breathless with all the heaving at tackles and struggling with the unwieldy charges.

“Ready, sir!”

“In contact, sir!” The man in the headset crouched like an athlete and tried not to think of the target as a form of warship, which contained men, Germans, who wanted to kill all of them.

Minutes dragged by while the ship appeared to weave her own pattern through the sea, as if she and not her company was trying to sniff out her enemy.

“Continuous echo, sir!”

“Fire!”

Someone broke free from the huddled group of figures by Y-gun's open shield and ran to the guardrail.

“We must have got it!”
His voice was almost breaking. “She
can't
have got away!”

Fernie seized his arm as the great columns of water cascaded down and were soon swallowed up astern in
Gladiator
's frothing wake.

“Hold your noise, Croft!” He shook him and felt the complete lack of resistance. Just a kid; he had only been aboard since Leith. What a way to begin. He glanced at Bizley's intent shape and hissed, “Don't let
him
see you! Get back to your station!”

Bizley shouted, “Next pattern!” He peered astern until his mind throbbed. But no slime-covered hull or bursting air-bubbles appeared. He glared angrily as one of his men fell sprawling while the deck lurched over in another violent turn.

Perhaps the submarine had been sunk after all. He had seen on the charts that there were places where the depth was as much as two thousand fathoms. Even now, the enemy could be falling like a leaf in that perpetual darkness until the hull was crushed like a tin can, and their lives with it.

“Lost contact, sir.”

Bizley heard someone say wearily, “Gulpers, then?”

But all he could see was the shadow in the depths.

“Steady on zero-seven-zero, sir.”

Howard peered down at the faintly glowing compass repeater. Every bone in his body seemed to be protesting at once, and he felt that if he stared into the darkness and thinning mist much longer he would go blind. He heard the regular ping of the Asdic and thought it was louder than usual. Mocking him as he took his ship this way and that in a careful search. The area was becoming larger every time. The U-Boat could be miles away right now, or licking its wounds in readiness for another attack.

Howard realised that he had thought nothing about the
convoy since he had seen the surfaced submarine, so black and stark in the drifting flare. He had heard the machine-gunners and pom-pom crews cursing and shouting as they poured tracer at the target even as she had begun to dive.

The wildness of battle after all the frustration of convoy duty, seeing their helpless charges marked down time and time again.

Howard lowered his head and felt his neck crack. “Alter course ten degrees to starboard.”

Sweeney's muffled voice came back; a man of endless patience.

“Steady on zero-eight-zero, sir.”

He heard Treherne's clothing scrape over the chart table as he recorded this latest change of direction.

What does he think? That I'm obsessed, unable to concentrate on anything else?
It was probably what they all thought.

A shadow moved from the bank of voicepipes and he heard Ayres say, “The first lieutenant reports,
lost contact,
sir.”

“Tell him we're not giving up!”

Treherne straightened his back and hoped he had not forgotten to put some newly sharpened pencils in his coat. He had heard Ayres's careful message and Howard's abrasive retort.

He means
he
's not giving up. The thought troubled and impressed him.

Treherne started as Howard remarked, “You know, Pilot, we've been fighting bloody U-Boats for two-and-a-half years now.”

Treherne relaxed slightly. “God, is that all it is?”

Howard shrugged his shoulders more deeply into his coat. “And that was the first one I've ever laid eyes on.”

To himself he added bitterly,
And I lost it. Any moment now and we shall be recalled to the convoy. What was the point of …

It was Marrack again, using the bridge speaker to save time.

“In contact, sir! Bearing one-five-oh, moving slowly right to left!”

Howard slid from his chair. “The crafty bastard! He's crossing
our stern, making a run for it!”

“Hard a-starboard! Steady, steer one-five-oh!” He turned to Treherne even as the wheel went hard over. “Warn Bizley!”

Again they tore through the uneasy water and dropped another full pattern of charges.
Gladiator
was doubling back on her tracks as the last towering columns fell back into the sea.

“Slow ahead together!”

A boatswain's mate called, “Signal from commodore, sir.
Rejoin without delay.”

There was a far-off explosion. Yet another victim? Or the unknown ship that had blown up in the fog?

Howard swung round. “What the hell are those men doing?” They were cheering, the voices ragged and partly lost in the sounds of the sea and the great thrashing screws.

Treherne ran to the side and seized the screen with his gloved hands. “Oil, sir!” He cocked his head and sniffed like a hunting-dog.
“You got him!”

Howard stared at him blankly as his mind explored the pattern. “Perhaps—we'll probably never know. Releasing oil is an old trick of theirs.”

“No contact, sir!”

The boatswain's mate coughed nervously. “W/T office is waitin', sir!”

“Yes.” He thought about climbing into his chair but the effort was too much. “Reply.
Am rejoining convoy. One U-Boat possibly sunk.”

He heard Treherne rapping out the change of course and speed to the wheelhouse and said, “We can't claim a kill, but it will give the others some comfort.”