Submariner (2008) (18 page)

Those eleven seconds gone, all right. Damn sight
more
than –

Hit
. Burst of drowned thunder with a metallic
clang
in it, reverberations echoing away. Relief – well,
joy
– as the reality of it grips. A quiet cheer or two: despite wanting more than
one
hit, which though better than missing altogether was not anything like necessarily a kill.

‘Eighty feet, sir.’

‘
Half
ahead both.’

Danvers with the watch in his hand and torpedo running-time at 45 knots as the basis of his reckoning has embarked on a muttered
count-down: ‘Five, four, three, two, one –’

Second
hit. It’s not a surprise exactly, but there’s cheering, laughing. General happiness. Jarvis challenging, ‘Any advance on two?’

Mike thinking, maybe not. If those two hits have stopped her – not all that improbable – then number four –

Third
hit! And an almost startled renewal of applause … Own thoughts however – well, main body of thought, probably – centring
on the inevitability of now getting it in the neck.

‘In contact, sir …’ Fraser – sadly, as the provider of bad news – all the worse for coming after a longish run of the other
kind. There’d been more than an hour now – hour and a half, in fact,
Ursa
creeping west then southwest, Mike and the rest of them in her control room having in mind throughout that time how suddenly
this kind of situation could change, fall flat on its face.

As it had now. All hearing it, with no need of headphones. High-pitched squeaks – asdic pings, changed in character by distance
– Italian-type asdics fingering
Ursa
’s hull.
Ursa
on course 230 and one motor slow grouped down; watertight doors between compartments shut and clipped, auxiliary machinery
stopped and some personnel dispersed. Chief McIver aft to his own domain, for instance, young Jarvis for’ard with his torpedomen.
Time – five forty-eight. Had fired the last of that salvo at four-eighteen, and since then enjoyed – without really counting
on its continuance – ninety minutes’ grace. In the latter stages, to be honest, even beginning to feel one
might
get clean away with it.

Could happen –
had
happened, on occasion, but hardly
to be expected when your target’s escort was numerous enough to take care of picking up survivors
and
seek reprisals in the form of your destruction. Mike shrugging and getting to his feet: like others who didn’t have fixed
positions for their diving stations – asdics, helm, hydroplanes – he’d spent the past hour squatting on the corticene-covered
deck.

Shrug, rueful smile: similar reactions from those around him; expressions that said ‘Here we go, then’ or ‘Too good to last,
weren’t it.’ Fraser amplifying his report with ‘On red eight-oh, sir, closing. Others is on red one-one-oh and red – one-five-five.
Moving left to right –’

‘All right.’ At the chart, Danvers beside him, Wop transmissions still sporadically audible on the pressure-hull. When they
missed a few squeaks it didn’t mean the operator had lost her, only that he was working it to and fro across her, some impulses
pinging on to fade away in the depths, having encountered nothing to reflect them back.
Ursa
’s position by soft-pencilled DR roughly midway between Cape San Vito and the island of Ustica, three destroyers all to the
east of her – between northeast and southeast, that sector generally. They’d concentrated their search initially – predictably
– on the side you’d attacked from – assuming that having let fly you’d have gone about and legged it back eastward. Also predictably,
only three of them at it – as duly confirmed by Fraser – the other one busying itself with survivors, manoeuvring and from
time to time stopping engines, around the area of the sinking. That the tanker had sunk was as good as certain: for one thing,
three hits, meaning three devastating explosions deep inside her; for another, only the one escort standing by her – no question
of taking her in tow as there might otherwise have been – and as conclusive as anything else Fraser’s report of breaking-up
noises – bulkheads splitting, etc. – which in fact had started shortly after the third hit –
Ursa
by then on due west and at eighty feet – as she
still was now, but on 230 degrees – paddling away in the hope of not attracting anyone’s attention.

After a while the destroyer that would probably have had a few survivors on board had left at about thirty knots on a straight
course for – he guessed – Trapani. Wouldn’t be all that many survivors.

‘Still in contact?’

A nod: creasing of anxiety around the eyes. ‘All three’s closing, sir.’

As one might have expected – once one of them had found you. He’d sketched it rapidly and roughly on a blank area of the plotting
diagram: the three Italians, this one in contact and on a course converging with
Ursa
’s, in contact but not necessarily aware you knew it. Had to know you
might
be, but his primary concern would be to hold the contact while bringing his chums into it now by voice radio, light or flags
– standard tactic then being for one or more of them to hold on to you while others took turns at running over and dropping
bloody charges. It wasn’t possible to maintain asdic contact while actually attacking.

He pushed himself off from the chart table, nodded to McLeod. ‘Time to make a move, Jamie.’

‘Sure you’re right, sir.’

‘Here we go, then.’ Another couple of seconds’ thought: seeing it as it had suddenly become – and touch wood the solution.
Quietly: ‘Stop starboard. Group up, full ahead both motors.’ And to Smithers: ‘Wheel hard a-starboard.’

Orders to the motor room by telephone, telegraphs being shut off as part of silent running. Smithers acknowledging the helm
order: ‘Hard a-starboard, sir.’ Brass wheel spinning, spokes glinting in the compartment’s dimly yellowish light. ‘Thirty
o’ starboard wheel on, sir.’
Ursa
’s hull and frames trembling with the sudden onsurge of battery and propeller power – power from batteries already seriously
depleted, but that
was something else, to be coped with later; here and now the object was to kick up a barrier of turbulence to deflect the
asdic probe, leave the Wop confused, with any luck assuming his target had turned sharply away – away from
him
– which it
had
– to dodge away westward behind this burst of speed.

Didn’t always work. Had done on occasion. Not in precisely similar circumstances, but the present ones lent themselves to
it, Mike thought. Hoped. Close behind the helmsman’s stool, watching over Smithers’ shoulder the start and then increasing
rate of turn, ship’s head by gyro threading through on the glowing metal ribbon – 240 – 270 – faster then through 290, 310,
340 – due north – and 010, 030 –

‘Midships.’

‘Midships, sir.’

Spinning the wheel back the other way while the turn continued, under cover of the confusion now surrounding her. Mike telling
McLeod: ‘Stop both. Group down. Slow ahead port.’

Still on the swing and with way on but quiet now –
quietening
– emerging from the disturbance that would fizz there for some while. Had been motoring southwestward, caught on to their
having established contact and winced away in this abrupt, fast turn to starboard – in
their
view running west now, surely.

‘Still transmitting, sir!’

‘In contact?’

‘No, sir –
no
…’

Asdics would get echoes from that turbulence. Not very sharp or clear ones maybe, but still echoes. Which would fade, of course
– leading to a report of ‘Lost contact’.
Ursa
meanwhile running
under
the bastards, more or less. Effectively, running under them. Steel no longer thrumming, that one screw scarcely audible.
Ten to one and please God
they’d be frantically trying to regain contact in a westerly direction.

Quietly to Smithers, ‘Steer oh-eight-oh.’

‘Oh-eight-oh, sir –’

Fingers crossed …

Twenty miles on this course would put one somewhere between Gallo and San Vito, maybe a dozen miles offshore. If the sods
gave up the search now. Time, 1840. Making only a knot and a half, but that was perfectly all right, when it was taking you
east and the opposition were heading west or southwest at – what, ten or fifteen? Rate of progress – from
Ursa
’s point of view, rate of
separation
, hard to guess if they were still conducting an A/S search – wide spread, co-ordinated alterations of course, etc. The important
thing was that the range was opening and continued to do so. Even if as one suspected these weren’t exactly top-notchers,
they’d hardly turn back in this direction – purposeless or at least systemless, in their desperation poking around like men
with white sticks.

Give it another hour in any case. Up for a look then, and while the light held get bearings of Gallo Head and San Vito. Night
patrol then, restful or otherwise but getting the box up as the number-one priority. Northward or northwestward, where the
targets seemed to come from.

Immediately though, might be more sense in making real use of this next hour or two. In other words stay deep, or go a bit
deeper, and reload tubes.

Having empty tubes wasn’t a good feeling. Could meet a battle squadron in the dawn and not be able to do more than keep out
of its way. While the argument against reloading tubes right away and in a hurry – well, if the Wops did realise they’d made
a bollocks of it and reversed the direction of their search, catching you with your pants down – torpedoes and gear all over
the place, tubes’ rear doors open, trim all to hell …

Wasn’t likely they’d be back.
Could
happen, but –

Reload now, finish by eight-thirty or latest nine, surface at about ten – clean air, and battery – all tonight’s dark hours
for that, after the day’s extravagance. Not
enough
hours, in fact, but could manage on it. Diving then at first light somewhere off Gallo Head, and follow one’s nose northwestward
again – feeling a lot better for having fish already in the tubes.

He shifted around, elbows on the edge of the chart table behind him, asked Fraser, ‘Anything at all?’

Headshake and slow blink. ‘Nothing, sir.’

Checking the time again: six-fifty, almost. McLeod leaning with a shoulder against the ladder, glancing round, waiting for
– whatever … Mike nodded. ‘Slow ahead both, Jamie. Hundred feet and reload tubes.’

From Sub-Lieutenant Tom Jarvis’s illicit diary notes that evening:

Approx 1900 opened up from d/charging, went to 100 feet and cleared fore ends for reloading of tubes. Clearing all the junk
out of the compartment an awful bloody sweat, as always. Skipper sent for the T.I., Coltart, while preparations were in progress,
and congratulated him on this afternoon’s fish having run straight – ‘As always, T.I.’ The two of them in the wardroom gangway
at this stage, standing just about eye to eye – neither of them exactly midgets – and Coltart who usually doesn’t have much
to say but I suppose wanted to return the compliment about torpedo-maintenance with one of his own, said ‘Left that shower
looking bloody gormless, didn’t we?’

Reloading the four tubes – with Mark IVs, unfortunately – was finished by eight-thirty: which took an hour and a half out
of what would have been Jarvis’s watch, McLeod
consequently standing in for him in the control room – with plenty to do, at that, trimming problems caused by the shifting
to and fro of heavy weights – not only torpedoes weighing two tons apiece but the special loading gear that had to be set
up, and before that the TSC’s entire contents cleared out and stacked in the gangway opposite the for’ard messes. In fact
transferring four torpedoes from the racks into the tubes in less than an hour wasn’t bad going: the TI and his gang knew
their business all right, Jarvis’s contribution being mainly to spot blunders before they were committed – like a steel-wire
rope led the wrong side of a stanchion, which could set the whole operation back half an hour if it
wasn’t
spotted in time – or even a propeller-clamp left on a torpedo’s twin concentric screws before that tube’s rear door was shut
and the inevitable disaster lost to sight.
That
as an outright cock-up being about the worst imaginable. Wasting time was one thing, ensuring that a torpedo couldn’t run
when it was fired very much another. Plain fact being however that with a dozen hands working flat-out in close confines,
such things
could
occur.

Hadn’t this time, anyway. And the men who lived, ate and slept in there weren’t averse to having some extra space now. Jarvis
returned to the wardroom looking pleased with himself, after waiting for the gangway to be partially unplugged, then crawling
over the rest of it and coming on aft to report ‘Four tubes reloaded, sir.’ Mike glancing at the clock, nodding approval;
Danvers by this time had taken over from McLeod, who’d got his head down. Jarvis adding, somewhat diffidently, ‘Lovely job,
that tanker, sir.’

‘Could’ve done worse, couldn’t we. Oh, here – Lazenby’ll be bunging
this
out, soon as we’re up.’

Pushing a signal-log across the table and flipping it open: Top item in the clip being the plain-language version of a
signal addressed to S.10, repeated to Vice-Admiral, Malta, C-in-C Mediterranean and Admiralty, reporting the sinking with
torpedoes of a southbound tanker believed to be the
Alessandria
, 14,000 tons, in position 38 degrees 31 North, 12 degrees 34 East, at 1630 – zone time and date – destroyer escort last heard
searching west of Cape San Vito. The concluding words,
Continuing patrol
, were an assurance to Shrimp that one was still on the billet and had torpedoes remaining.

‘Already ciphered, sir?’

‘Yes. Get your head down, if I were you.’

Mike liked that signal. Liked his vision of Shrimp scanning it, the gleam of approval in those grey eyes reflecting one’s
own satisfaction at the thought of such an immense quantity of oil and/or petrol
not
reaching bloody Rommel.