Killing Ground (7 page)

“Hello,
Gladiator!”
He had a Geordie accent you could cut with scissors. “It's a spot o' shaft trouble. I'll have to slow down some more while my chief is working on it!”

Howard said, “Signal the commodore, Guns.” He moved his glasses along the freighter's hull. The sea was lifting right up to her wash-ports one moment, then falling away to reveal her waterline. Deep-laden, like the rest. She had armoured cars on the upper deck; there were even crates of aircraft lashed across her hold covers. Not much chance if the cargo shifted, he thought. He often marvelled at how they stood it. They were, after all, civilians, but they bore the full fury of the enemy's attacks by sea and air. Howard had known merchant ships to pick up survivors only to be torpedoed themselves, then sometimes a second roar of destruction with the survivors crowding into other ships. And yet they always seemed to go back. This convoy's commodore, for instance, had been sunk twice already, and he was here again in the thick of it.

Finlay called, “From commodore, sir.
The convoy will reduce speed to ten knots.”

The yeoman lowered his lamp and said, “Fast convoy, did someone say? A bloody snail could do better!”

Howard heard him. It was unusual for Tommy Tucker to show his feelings.
Edgy.
We're all getting like that.

He said over his shoulder, “Take her round and resume position. Warn the messdecks first. She'll show her keel when we turn in this sea!”

A boatswain's mate switched on the speaker and touched his lower lip gingerly with his frozen silver call.

“D'you hear there! Stand by for a ninety degree turn to starboard!”

Ayres could picture it as he remembered the old
Sanderling.
Men seizing cups and food, others putting half-written letters away to prevent them from getting lost underfoot. It was strange, he thought. When he was in the little patrol vessel he had been desperate to leave her and go to the training establishment. Now,
he could not get her out of his mind.

His silent companion, Bizley, gripped a safety rail and braced himself. He wanted to shut it all out. Be anywhere but surrounded by others he did not know, nor want to.

He was finding it harder instead of easier to sleep whenever he was off watch. It was always there, the vivid flashes of cannon fire across the black water, sparks flying as the balls of red tracer had cracked over the hull. Men had fallen, some blinded by wood splinters from the deck, or hammered down by the E-Boat's rapid and deadly accuracy.

His commanding officer, a young lieutenant like Finlay, had fallen in the bridge, bleeding badly, one of his hands missing. In the dreams there was no fire, but he had known that the forward messdeck was ablaze when he had … He tried to accept it, to deal with it without lying to himself. There was nothing he could have done. The skipper would have died anyway. He chilled as he saw him again, reaching out with his remaining hand. Pleading with him without speaking. Two others had been trapped below when a machine-gun mounting had fallen across the hatch. They had been screaming still when Bizley had inflated his life-jacket and hurled himself outboard where two of the surviving seamen had been struggling with the Carley float. They had stared at him, their eyes white in the darkness, but they had shoved off without protest when he had yelled at them.

The motor gunboat had been carrying a full rack of depth-charges, and someone had failed to set them to safe when the hull had eventually raised its stern and dived from view. At fifty feet the charges had ignited and the sinking hull with dead and wounded still trapped inside had been blown into a thousand pieces.

That was last year. It seemed like yesterday. They had transferred him to general duties before sending him here, to
Gladiator.

It was over. Finished with. Who could know now? The only
other survivors barely remembered what had happened; they had been too busy trying to launch the float and escape.

“Stand-by!”

Howard gripped the chair again. “Starboard fifteen!”

“Fifteen of starboard wheel on, sir!”

Round and further still until they were dangling from any handhold they could find, skidding on steel and cursing, while the starboard Oerlikon gunner was heard to sing out, “Any more for the Skylark?”

Gladiator
asserted herself like the thoroughbred she was, lifting her sharp stem towards the clouds like the short sword on her crest. Water spurted from her hawsepipes as she plunged down again, surging around A-gun and bursting over the bridge in a miniature tidal wave.

They headed back to their allotted position before repeating the turn all over again.

Howard climbed on to his chair and watched the spread of ships as they appeared to slide back and forth across the salt-streaked screen.

Finlay said, “You can cut along, Sub—you too, Snotty.” He turned to Ayres. “Bring her back on course, Sub.” He saw the genuine pleasure on Ayres's face.
That one couldn't hide anything if he tried.
He heard the others clattering down the bridge ladder. The midshipman was no better or worse than he had once been himself in his first ship. But Bizley—he was something else. He wondered if the Old Man had noticed. While Ayres was like a kid let loose in a toyshop, Bizley seemed to resent any sort of advice or instruction. As a sub-lieutenant he had probably been a big noise in his MGB, maybe even the Number One. Here, he was just another green subbie.

He was surprised that Marrack had not already come down on him like a ton of bricks. They shared the same watch after all. Perhaps he was sorry for him after losing his boat in the North Sea. Finlay smiled wryly. It was hard to imagine the first lieutenant being sorry for anyone.

Treherne appeared on the bridge and grinned. There was ice rime on his beard.

“Thanks, Guns. I'll take over again.” He glanced across to the voicepipes as Ayres acknowledged the helmsman's report. “Been a good boy, has he?”

Finlay nodded. “He's got the makings, Pilot. Not too sure about—”

“Aircraft, sir! Dead astern!
Angle of sight three-five! Moving right to left!”

Howard swung his glasses over the screen even as he slid from the chair. The signalman who had called out lowered his own glasses and exclaimed, “It
was
there, sir!”

Howard continued with a slow sweep, rising and settling again with the ship. Only low cloud, with a sparse break where the aircraft had supposedly been. He looked at the signalman; just a boy, but he had already proved there was nothing wrong with his vision.

“Large or small?”

The youth, his cheeks and throat rubbed almost raw by his cold wet clothing, stared back at him, very aware that he was speaking to his captain.

“Large, sir. I'm certain it was.”

Treherne suggested, “Could have been one of the big Yank planes from Iceland.” The signalman nodded, heartened that they actually believed him. “Four engines. Flying just there through the clouds.”

The yeoman of signals said dourly, “You'd better be right, my son!”

Howard walked to the chart table. “Inform the commodore.
Aircraft sighted,
possible course and bearing.” A small voice seemed to ask,
theirs or ours?
It was the margin of life or death up here.

The yeoman reported, “From commodore, sir.
Convoy will alter course in succession to zero-three-zero. Follow father.”

Treherne chuckled, “He sounds a lively old bugger!”

Howard saw fresh tea coming to the bridge and was glad of the interruption. The commodore was right about one thing. It was pointless to fly off their one and only Hurricane. It would never find the other aircraft in this cloud, and what if it turned out to be a Yank, or an RAF long-range anti-submarine patrol? It would mean a plane wasted with possibly a dead pilot as well. But the alteration of course was not good. It would add to the overall distance, and the destroyers, which used more fuel than any other ships in the convoy, would have to take on oil from the fleet tanker
Black Watch
earlier rather than later while the weather held.

Howard took the steaming mug and said, “Warn all the lookouts. Double vigilance. It will do no harm anyway.”

He wiped the compass repeater with his sleeve and felt the ice cling to it.
The convoy will not disperse.
It was as if the man had spoken to him from Iceland. But if they had to fight, how long would it take the heavy ships of the Home Fleet to reach them?

He sipped the scalding tea and watched the ant-like figures through the glasses balanced easily in his right hand. They were working around the Hurricane. Making sure it would still fly if required.

He recalled the tough humour in the desperate days of the Battle of Britain. Join the Navy and see the world. Join the Air Force and see the next.

The watches changed, the bitter air was tinged with the smell of the galley. On the darkening sea the ships sailed on until in the deepening shadows the columns appeared to join like some gigantic Roman phalanx on the march.

A guessing game, so that Howard could picture the markers and flags on the operation boards in Iceland and the Admiralty, and presumably in Kiel, too.

When darkness had finally closed over the sea, Howard left the bridge and climbed stiffly down to his sea cabin. It had become a sort of ritual. A quick wash with warm soapy water, and a clean dry towel to wrap round his neck. PO Vallance thought
of everything. He tried not to look at the untidy bunk. If he even just sat on it he would be finished. He looked at himself in a mirror and tried to comb the salt out of his unruly hair.

The telephone on the bulkhead scattered his thoughts.

“Captain?” He wondered if the petty officer telegraphist, “Pots” Hyslop, could hear his heart beating down the line.

“From Admiralty, sir.
Immediate. There are said to be five U-Boats to the east of your position.”

Howard nodded. “I'm going up.”

The others were waiting for him and he was glad they could not see his face.

“Well, now we know, Number One. It was
not
one of ours!”

In the private, enclosed world of the chart table Howard and Treherne were leaning side by side while they stared at countless calculations, bearings and the pencilled line of their course. Behind them on the open bridge Howard could hear the other watchkeepers moving occasionally to restore circulation or to break the tension.

He picked up the brass dividers and moved them along the chart while he listened with half an ear to the ship, to the pattern of sound and movements. The dreary, repetitive ping of the Asdic, the squeak of B-gun as it was trained from bow to bow. Although every weapon was supposed to be safe from freezing, the special oil they used had been known to fail on rare occasions. Howard made a quick calculation on the pad and glanced at the misty, revolving picture in the radar-repeater. Like a faint beam of light as it passed across the invisible convoy, the unwavering shapes of the columns, the fainter blips of the corvettes' close escort on either beam.

It was unnerving, he thought. Another day with nothing untoward to report. Maybe the U-Boat warning had been misunderstood by the coding staff at the Admiralty, or perhaps they were off after some other convoy.

The sea was calmer, with a long procession of low swells
which lifted the ships with surprising ease before rolling on with nothing between them and the Norwegian coastline. Some of the destroyers had even managed to top up their bunkers from the fleet oiler, a nervous moment for any captain with his ship restricted by the hoses and lines.

He said, “The motion is easier, Pilot.”

Treherne rubbed his eyes; they felt sore from the bitter air and from peering for the sight of the nearest ships in case there was a collision. On the previous night, one freighter had lost contact with the next ahead and had increased speed to such an extent that it had almost run the other vessel down. Somebody had sounded off his siren, either to warn the rest or from sheer fury at the culprit's carelessness, and had immediately been given a bottle by the commodore. As Marrack had remarked, “The enemy don't need
his
bloody siren to find their way!”

Treherne replied, “Ice, sir. There's ice about.”

“I think you're right.” He heard someone laugh; it sounded so out of place—like a lost soul, he thought. He was surprised anyone still could crack a joke with each dragging hour tearing at the nerves.

He could picture his men, huddled and crouched around the ship. Only half the company were closed up at their stations, but Howard had cleared the lower deck so that gun crews and damage control parties, stokers and fire sections could be close to hand if the balloon went up. Marrack was going round the ship for much of the time, keeping an eye on things, making certain that the men on watch were alert. Ready.

“We'll be up to Jan Mayen Island tomorrow, Pilot. The commodore will have to alter course if he wants to avoid the ice.”

Howard felt himself start as something boomed against the hull. He said, “If we remain on this course the pieces will get bigger than that one!”

Treherne grinned, his teeth very white in the faint glow. “Lucky it wasn't a mine!”

In the privacy of the chart table, Howard seized the
opportunity to say, “Pilot, tell me about Ayres. Why did you swap him around with the other subbie?”

Marrack had already told him of the new arrangement but he wanted to hear it from the big, bearded navigator.

Treherne said, “He's learned a lot in the past few days, sir. Bizley, on the other hand, has done some close-action, and I thought he would be better off with the after-guns and depth-charges. Ayres will do more good up here with me, I think, sir—anyway, that's what I told Number One.” He gave what might have been a shrug. “So he changed the duties. I hope that was all right?”

Howard nodded. “Good thinking.” He had always approved of his officers using their own initiative in such matters. It showed they understood, that they cared.