Go In and Sink! (45 page)

A rattle of machine-gunfire pattered impersonally across the sheltered water, and Marshall saw the bullets cutting feathers of spray around the abandoned guardboat.

Somewhere in the distance a klaxon blared, and within seconds tracer ripped above the harbour, although it was obvious the garrison had been caught completely unprepared.

‘Hard aport! Stop the port engine!’

He gritted his teeth as the freighter loomed over the conning-tower.

‘Stand by on deck!’

There was no time to rig fenders. No more time for anything. A bullet smashed into the tower and whimpered away over the water.

More machine-gunfire probed into the harbour, and Warwick yelled, ‘Open fire, sir?’

‘Yes.’ He yelled, ‘Stop starboard!’

The submarine’s starboard bow shuddered and lurched
below
the freighter’s great anchor, the metal screaming in protest as both hulls ground together.

Hands grabbed and hauled on lines, and he saw Devereaux, hatless and wild-eyed, yelling at them to drag the hawser down on to the casing and the forward mooring bollards.

The air seemed to split apart as Warwick’s gun crews fired long bursts of cannon shells and tracer bullets towards the nearest pillboxes. From one came an answering volley, and someone on the casing fell thrashing wildly in a pattern of blood. Against the dull steel it looked like black paint.

‘Secured, sir!’

‘Right! Tell the boarding party to get back here on the double!’

He winced, his mind cringing as the deck gun crashed out for the first time, the shell ripping past the conning-tower.

The shell exploded beside a pillbox and the firing stopped instantly.

There was a short, abbreviated whistle and a violent explosion. For an instant he thought the enemy had brought up a mobile gun, but Devereaux was shouting, ‘Mortar! Above the bunker!’

Blythe yelled, ‘Chief reports he’s ready to tow, sir!’

The diesels had fallen still, yet in the firing Marshall had not even noticed it.

He thanked God that Frenzel, blind to danger and ignorant of what was happening above his head, had managed to remember his part.

The electric motors were purring smoothly, and Marshall shouted, ‘Slow astern together!’

He saw the hawser tauten, felt the towering hull alongside
shudder
violently as another mortar bomb exploded somewhere on the upper deck.

But she was answering. Slowly and painfully, as the U-boat pulled astern, the freighter began to swing away from her original moorings. Another bomb shrieked down and burst on the ship, hurling splinters and fragments of steel in all directions.

‘She’s started to sink!’ Warwick was waving his cap like a madman. ‘Simeon has opened her cocks!’

It was true, and with the additional damage caused by the mortar, it would not take long before she settled on the bottom of the harbour. A rope ladder had been thrown over the bulwark, and Marshall saw some of the marines clambering down and being dragged bodily on to the casing.

Further round, and still further, with gunfire blasting from every side, although there was so much smoke it was hard to tell friend from enemy.

A savage burst from the land, and Marshall ducked as bullets flayed the bridge like a steel whip. When he looked again he saw several of his men sprawled on the deck and others dragging themselves towards the conning-tower. Devereaux was clinging to the guardrail and yelling at a marine who was still dangling from the ladder. Another sharp burst cut the marine down, so that he dropped into the churned water, his weapons carrying him straight to the bottom.

A dull boom echoed and re-echoed around the hills, and Blythe yelled, ‘Captain Lambert’s charges have blown sir!’

‘That’ll get ’em out of bed!’

The lookout who had spoken clutched his chest, and with an amazed gasp toppled against the machine-gunner
at
his side. He was dead before he hit the deck.

Marshall snapped, ‘Prepare to cast off. Stop both motors.’ He could not wait another second.

Firing was heavier along the shore, and Blythe shouted, Here comes Lambert’s mob!’

The returning raiding party were scampering behind the pillboxes, and the air shook and crashed to their grenades. It must have been worse than a nightmare for the Germans in the pillboxes. The sudden awakening, and then the sight of what appeared to be reinforcements running from inland. Then the terrible realisation. The grenades, the lethal clatter of machine-pistols. Oblivion.

Cain cupped his hands and shouted at the bridge, ‘Two more to come, sir?’ He ducked as more tracer slashed overhead.

Marshall shaded his eyes and peered at the listing freighter. He knew one of them was Simeon. It had to be.

Then he saw them. Smith clambering down the ladder, with Simeon clutching his body like a drowning man.

Warwick gasped, ‘Simeon’s bought it, sir.’

Marshall looked desperately at the dead and wounded on the casing. ‘Open the fore hatch.’ To Cain he shouted, ‘Help those two across!’

He saw Buck and some more hands emerging through the fore hatch and dragging the wounded below, their faces frozen to the clatter of gunfire, the screams of their companions.

A groan went up as Smith lost his hold and fell. As he broke surface a machine-gunner found him, and lashed the water into foam all around. He threw up his arms and
vanished
, the foam turning crimson before spreading between the two hulls.

He saw Simeon being dragged towards the hatch and shouted, ‘
Cast off!
’

When he looked again the fore casing was almost empty but for a pathetic cluster of dead sailors. Devereaux was struggling with the heavy eye of the hawser, while Cain tried to help him, one arm hanging at his side, bloody and useless.

Simeon was halfway through the hatch, his shoulder shining in the frail glare where a splinter had cut him down on the freighter’s deck. He pushed someone away who was trying to help him through the hatch and lurched back on to the casing. He was shouting and cursing like a madman, most of the words lost in the metallic clatter of machine-guns. As he reached the bollard Devereaux turned and saw him, then he too was down, rolling and kicking, his screams cut short as his life splashed across the buckled plating.

Simeon pushed Cain towards the hatch and then threw himself on the heavy hawser. Once, twice, and then it was free, splashing into the harbour where Smith and others had died.

He turned and stared towards the bridge and, seemed to grin. Or perhaps it was a grimace, for even as he made to follow Cain he dropped to his knees and then toppled very slowly over the side.

Marshall said hoarsely, ‘Full astern. We’ll pick up Lambert’s party
now
.’

He was still staring at the fore casing. The hatch was shut. Only the dead remained.

It did not take long for the breathless marines to leap aboard. The submarine hardly paused as she slid sternfirst
past
the small jetty where they had first seen the waiting Italians. Lambert was with them, but he had less than half of his men intact.

Marshall’s aching mind registered all these facts, but he felt detached from them. Like a dying man who can hear those about him, yet is incapable of reaching them.

He dragged Warwick to the ladder. ‘Help those men below. Then clear the deck gun.’ He had to shake him to make him move. ‘We must finish what we came for.’

‘You all right, sir?’ Blythe was crouching beside him, his face ashen in the smoky sunlight.

‘Stay with me, Yeoman.’ He watched the stern edging out into the harbour again. ‘Stern tubes
ready
.’ He rested his forehead on the sights, watching the boom vessel swimming through the crosswires as if in a mist. ‘Fire at three second intervals.’

He winced as more metal crashed into the hull, and saw Warwick pulling a wounded marine through the hatch like a sack.

‘
Now!
’

The hull kicked very slightly. He counted the seconds, and felt the second torpedo burst from its tube They were now so near to the boom vessel that the explosions came almost together. When the spray and fragments began to fall he saw the ship toppling on to her side in a welter of smoke and flames. She would soon sink, and with her the boom.

When he staggered to the forepart of the bridge again he felt he was the last man alive. He dashed the sweat from his eyes and saw what they had come all this way to destroy. With the freighter leaning at a steep angle on
the
opposite side of the harbour, the towering wall of concrete, the black cavernous mouth of the bunker stood out as they had on Travis’s neat diagrams.

‘Standing by, One to Six, sir.’

Marshall could only whisper a reply, but Blythe shouted, ‘Bridge to control room! Coming on
now
!’

Marshall tried again. There was smoke everywhere. Like steam. He saw an armoured car racing down a cliff road. It was like a child’s toy. Even the tiny, spurting flashes from its turret were without threat or reality.

He concentrated on the pier at the entrance of the bunker. A powerful mobile derrick, and beyond some big metal cases. Bombs which would have been in the freighter tomorrow morning, en route for some German airfield.

‘Fire One!’

He heard Buck’s voice on the intercom, and imagined him with his stopwatch.

‘Carry on firing. Three second intervals.’

He turned to peer astern as the hull continued to back towards the boom. There was no sign of the boom vessel. Just a great patch of oil and bobbing flotsam.

The fourth torpedo had left the tube when the first exploded against the pier. After that it was impossible to tell one from the next, or night from day.

The torpedoes must have touched off some of the stacked bombs, and in an instant a massive explosion rocked the harbour, sending a small tidal wave creaming wildly towards the submarine as if to seek revenge.

The noise went on and on, fading and then mounting again as the piled explosives detonated far inside the bunker and into the hillside itself.

‘All torpedoes running, sir!’

He nodded dazedly. ‘Clear the bridge.’

He coughed in the funnelling smoke which had almost blotted out the harbour. The hull was rocking violently in the tossing water but, he knew he must
think
. Still act. Like a machine.

‘Stop port. Full ahead starboard. Wheel hard astar-board!’

Metal cracked into the bridge, and he found himself on the gratings, a terrible pain in his side. He wanted to cry out, but the agony was too great. He felt Blythe pulling him to the hatch, but used his body as a prop to haul himself back to the voicepipe. The bows were swinging.

‘Full ahead port. Wheel amidships.’ He moaned as the pain made his eyes fill with shadows.

Then he heard Gerrard’s voice and saw him clinging to the screen at his side.

Blythe shouted, ‘The cap’n got one in the side!’

But Gerrard was holding his arm. He said, ‘It’s all right, sir. I’ve got her now.’

Marshall stared at him. ‘Clear the boom area, Bob. Then get her down and run for it.’

Gerrard watched him sadly. ‘I can cope. You get below and have that gash cleaned.’ He watched as Blythe and a lookout half carried him to the hatch.

Then he looked at the sky. It was clearing. Just as Devereaux had predicted.

He crouched over the voicepipe and snapped, ‘Steer one-five-zero. Maximum revolutions!’

He glanced astern, but there was only smoke and the intermittent boom of underground explosions.

We made it. We made it
.

He thought of Marshall, and what he had seen him do. What he had done for all of them. The victors.

Three days later, surfaced, and with both diesels damaged almost beyond repair, U-192 was steering west for Gibraltar.

Marshall stood on the battered bridge, watching the sea, and for once content to leave his command to others.

They had done all they set out to do, and had made their homing signal in accordance with the original orders. Now there was nothing left but to reach Gibraltar before some new failure left them helpless and at the mercy of an enemy attack.

Two destroyers found them on the morning of the third day, and as they ploughed purposefully towards the crawling submarine Blythe muttered. ‘I hope they’ve been
told
, that’s all, sir.’

They had.

As the lights stammered back and forth Blythe asked thickly, ‘Their senior officer wants to know, sir, do you wish to abandon or shall he take you in tow?’

Marshall turned and looked up at the flag overhead. The proper one, for once. Then at the full length of his command. Six months he had had her, and now it was all over.

Buck was watching the destroyers as they swung round making a great creaming wash while they took station on either beam.

‘Bloody cheek!’ He looked at Warwick. ‘Typical, that is!’

Marshall touched the ache in his side. It was an answer, if he had needed it.

He said slowly, ‘Tell him neither.
His Majesty’s U-boat
192
is rejoining the Fleet
.’ He hesitated, thinking of those who had been left behind. ‘We’ve come this far. I’ll not leave her now.’