Killing Ground (36 page)

When Howard eventually recalled the boats, and one solitary swimmer was hauled gasping and sobbing up a scrambling net, he had to report to Vickers that only fifty survivors had been rescued between them. Spike Colvin had not been found.

As the whaler was hoisted again,
Ganymede
released a great gout of filthy bubbles and vanished. The whaler's crew had managed to save the two men from her anchor. They had been lucky.

“Increase revolutions to resume patrol, Pilot.” Howard looked at Treherne, his eyes empty of expression. “How does it feel to be winning, Number One?”

It took several hours to catch up with the convoy, and by then it was near dusk. Howard looked at the tall-sided liners and wondered if any of the troops realised what had happened, and would remember this day when their own time came to risk their lives.

He thought of their other sister-ship,
Garnet,
which was up there with Vickers's section. Her captain, Tom Woodhouse, had been at Dartmouth with him, another irrepressible joker—he and Colvin had been pretty close, too. Might he be thinking the same now?
Who's next?

He pictured the girl in Liverpool, probably watching the plot right now as the two ships were reported lost.
Next of kin have been informed.
She must not go through all that again.

Later, as he sat in his chair and watched the first stars appear, he thought about it again. Perhaps like a ship's course on the ocean, their fate was already decided.

A
NOTHER
full pattern of depth-charges exploded like distant thunder, but still close enough to shake the submarine from bow to stern. The men at their various stations stared unblinking at the curved hull, their eyes very white in the dimmed lighting.

It had been going on for an hour, even longer when you counted their failed attack on the small, fast convoy.

Standing by the periscope well, Kapitänleutnant Manfred Kleiber shifted his glance from the clock to the depth gauges. There was only one hunter up there now. That same single-screwed engine beat of a corvette, one of the convoy's escorts. Perhaps they would give up eventually and hurry away to rejoin the others. He watched some of the men nearest to him, those at the hydroplane controls, the helmsman, the navigating officer. Their hair and shoulders were speckled with the cork-filled paint which had fallen like snowflakes from the deckhead during the last onslaught of depth-charges. Their faces were grey, pallid, even in the warm glow of the control room lighting. Dirty clothes; unshaven sunken faces.
The Grey Wolves,
as one patriotic newspaper had described them.

Those bastards should be here with us, he thought bitterly.

He could guess what most of his men were thinking, that they would soon have to break off the patrol and return to base. It had to be
his
decision. They had already passed the rendezvous time for the final meeting with a supply submarine. Surely they had not lost yet another one? Kleiber knew all about the new tactics, the hunter-killer groups which searched for U-Boats like professional assassins. Three of his own wolf-pack had failed to make contact, so they must have been destroyed. He thought of the base in France. It was high summer now—green fields, sunshine, good food. No wonder his men looked so desperate. He
had addressed all of them when he had received the signal from HQ. The Tommies and their allies had made their first move since North Africa, and had succeeded in launching an invasion into Sicily. Not Greece after all, as his group commander had predicted, but they would be driven off or captured. Just like Crete.

His lip curled with contempt. What did he know? The allies were not only still there, but all resistance had ceased. Italy next—it had to be. The Italians had always been the weak link. Despite their outward belief in Fascism, they had proved to be jackals, an army that ran rather than fought to the death.

He saw the hydrophone operator's quick glance, and gave his orders: increase the depth by thirty metres, alter course ninety degrees yet again.

Kleiber was too experienced to need a headset. The thrum-thrum-thrum of the corvette's screw was like an express train. She had turned and was coming on another sweep.

Someone tip-toed through an emergency door, a rag covering his mouth and nose. Kleiber thought of the man who had died, after being hit by a piece of shell splinter on that other occasion when they had approached a convoy on the surface, working into a suitable position to attack. It had been a random shot from an escort, a ship they had not even seen. Just bad luck, for him. With the aid of a medical handbook Kleiber had amputated the man's arm himself when gangrene with its disgusting stench had pervaded the whole boat. He had died under drugs without knowing anything about it. His comrades had been sorry for him; he had been a popular crewman. Now, without exception, they had come to hate him, waiting only to rid themselves of the corpse and its constant reminder of death.

The hull shook wildly as another full pattern roared down. Several lights shattered, and a man cried out, his face cut by flying glass.

The corvette's engine faded again, but the hydrophone operator shook his head. The enemy commander was slowing down—a listening game, or perhaps pausing to await more support.

How much could the hull stand? Kleiber could feel them watching him. Looking for hope, despair, weakness.

He moved to the chart table and studied the pencilled parallelogram which showed the extent of the
milchküh
operational zone. It was no use. She must have gone down. With aircraft more and more in evidence across the once-safe area, they were prime targets, too big and too vulnerable to escape a sudden attack.

All at once, he was desperate to leave; to get back to base, to find out what was happening. Some of his fellow U-Boat commanders had been in the Mediterranean and had been employed against the supply train for the Allied invasion. He thought bitterly of the last brief letter he had received from his brother in Russia. He was a fool to write as he did; if his letter had been opened he might have been punished for defeatist talk. But in it he had described the appalling food and shortages of medical supplies, ammunition and just about everything on the Russian front. Kleiber tried not to think of what the enemy troops would be eating and drinking in Sicily. He had boarded British supply vessels before sinking them, in the rosier times, and knew well enough how well they lived. He made up his mind. He would tell his men, it would raise their spirits to head for base. A man could survive these conditions for just so long. The alternative could not even be entertained.

But first … He gave his orders without even raising his voice. He was not being callous; and if he was, it was the Atlantic's responsibility. There were two torpedoes left, and with only three hits and no definite kills throughout the whole patrol, Kleiber had felt disillusioned and frustrated by the latest setback of the supply-boat.

He heard the thud of watertight doors closing and could picture his men peering at one another as each door opened and shut on their private, sealed compartments. How would the dead man's relatives behave if they knew the last move he would make for the Fatherland?

The corvette was on the move again, her engine's thrashing beat fading as she prepared for a change of bearing, which at any time might bring her detection gear tapping at the submerged hull like a blind man's stick. A light flickered on the control panel. It was ready. The corpse was in an empty torpedo tube complete with any litter which the seamen had been able to gather. The engineer officer would supply some oil, but not much. Without the supply-boat it would be a long, painful haul back to France.

She was coming in to the attack; the loud cracks against the hull were the worst so far. She must have got a contact.

He snapped his order and saw the light flicker as the tube disgorged its contents into the sea. Kleiber could feel cold sweat beneath the rim of his soiled white cap. Like ice rime while he counted seconds and imagined the spread-eagled corpse, dressed in proper waterproof clothing, floating up to the sunshine, surrounded with odds and ends from the rubbish bins, and a quick discharge of oil. He felt his mouth tightening with the insane desire to laugh. It was to be hoped the Tommies didn't notice that their “volunteer” had only one arm! Then he controlled his thoughts with cold determination; such hysteria was dangerous, destructive.

They were staring at the hull again, listening; straining every muscle for a sign.

Very slowly and carefully Kleiber brought his command round in a wide arc, the motors so reduced they were barely audible.

Round and further still, until the hydrophone operator reported that the corvette was stopping, and then that all hydrophone effects had ceased. Kleiber frowned, gauging where the sun would be when he went to periscope depth. He could see it all as if he were there. A boat being lowered to gather the evidence of a kill. If anything went wrong now the enemy commander would have no more doubts—he would
know
there was a submarine here. He might even have called for air support.

Kleiber nodded to his first officer and bent right down almost to his knees as the air was forced into the ballast tanks, the hydroplanes moving like fins to make the boat's movements slow and stealthy. At forty metres Kleiber ordered the attack periscope to be raised again, so slowly that he could hear the mechanic's rough breathing as he controlled it.

Faint green light, then purplish-blue as the lens cut above the surface. Kleiber saw the motionless corvette framed in the crosswires, her boat probably lowered on the opposite side to retrieve the grisly evidence of their “kill.”

Kleiber did not linger long. Just enough to note the corvette's number: HMS
Malva.
Probably of all the warships in the Atlantic these stocky little vessels had been the U-Boat's greatest enemy.

The hull jerked twice and the periscope hissed down into its well as the boat gathered speed and swung away, the water roaring into her tanks again to carry her down deep.

A petty officer by the plot pressed his stop-watch and gasped as the exploding torpedoes threw the hull over, the sound sighing across and past them to be lost in the vastness of the ocean.

Moments later they heard the grinding echo of tearing steel, as the corvette began to break up on her way to the bottom.

Kleiber walked to the chart, shutting his ears to the crazed cheers and insane laughter which passed through the U-Boat like echoes from Bedlam. If the grand admiral ordered him to attack escorts as a priority, that he would do without question.

He must stop thinking of his brother and his starving comrades in Russia, and of the richly loaded food ships which he might lose because of this new instruction.

Above them, and falling further and further astern, the corvette's survivors floated in their life-jackets or struggled through the oil slick in search of a raft or some piece of wood to keep them afloat. There had been no time to make a distress signal; no time for anything; and most if not all of these men would die before anyone came to search for them.

Among the gasping, struggling survivors, the dead German
floated indifferently, unaware of what he had done, without even the satisfaction of revenge. In the Atlantic there was no such luxury.

The main operations room at Liverpool seemed even busier than usual. Second Officer Celia Lanyon shared a desk with her roommate, Evelyn Major, and together they were sorting through the latest signals which had been gathered by the SDO along another corridor in the citadel.

It was late afternoon, in the month of September, and all day the place had been buzzing with the news of the follow-up to the invasion of the Italian mainland. Wherever possible the Italians were throwing down their arms, offering their services to the allies, when earlier they had been sworn enemies. The complete collapse of Germany's strongest partner had been settled when the Italian flagship had led the main part of their fleet under the guns of Malta, that bombed and battered island which had once been one of Mussolini's hoped-for prizes.

Every day they had expected a reverse, another of the disappointments which had been their lot in the past years. But apart from the arrival of early rain in southern Italy, which had clogged down the movement of tanks and supplies, there was no sign of impending difficulty. There had been losses on the beaches when the Allied armies had first stormed ashore, while at sea the covering warships and bombardment squadron had been introduced to Germany's latest secret weapon: a glider-bomb which could be directed on to a floating target, and which had brought fresh problems to the fleet's gunnery officers. The flagship
Warspite
had been hit, and several major warships, including the US cruiser
Savannah,
had suffered heavy damage and casualties.

But down here in operations, despite the heartening news from the Mediterranean, defeat and victory remained strangely remote, like the city overhead. At this particular moment two major convoys were at sea, an eastbound and a westbound,
which should be passing overnight some ninety miles apart.

The eastbound convoy was from Halifax, and included two large troopships as well as several freighters carrying vehicles and crated aircraft. As Celia checked the columns of names against the duty operations officer's list she thought of
Gladiator,
somewhere out there with the escort group under Captain Vickers's control. She had met Howard only three times since he had taken her back to the billet from the hotel—the group had been operating for much of the time from Iceland, to make certain that the flow of troopships reached port unscathed.

She remembered so clearly the moment when she had seen the two ships marked as lost on the plot.
Mediator,
and the one commanded by his friend,
Ganymede.
Just fifty survivors between them. It had torn at her heart like claws when he had told her. Even that he had been reluctant to do. As if he wanted to shield her from the true horror of the life they were sharing.