iron pirate (2 page)

Theil should have had a command of his own; they were desperate for experienced captains in larger vessels. Each promising junior was snatched up and sent into submarines to combat the mounting toll in the Atlantic. Like cutting down a forest before the trees had had time to mature, as one elderly staff officer had complained.

Theil reported, 'Five minutes to the final change of course, sir.'

it would be.
Exactly.
Hechler replied, 'Very well, Viktor. I shall come up now.'

He put down the handset and reached for his cap and binoculars.

A glance in the bulkhead mirror made him grimace as he tugged The cap tightly across his thick hair. He looked calm enough. He examined his feelings as he would a subordinate.

Nothing. It was as if all pointless doubts had been worked out of him. He studied his image in the glass and saw the strain fall away. He was young again, like the day he had stood in church with Inger, had walked beneath an archway of drawn swords of his fellow officers.

The thought made a shutter fall across his blue eyes. Hechler snapped off the light and left the cabin. He never thought that each time might be the last. That too was a waste, an unnecessary burden on his mind.

He waited a few moments more in the deep shadows, his shoulder touching the damp steel plating, his eyes adjusting, preparing for the open bridge, and the sea. For the enemy.

Fregattenkapitan Viktor Theil, the heavy cruiser's second-in-command, stood on a scrubbed grating in the forepart of the bridge. His booted feet were wide apart so that he could feel the ship rising and slithering down beneath him, tasting pellets of salt spray as they lifted occasionally over the glass screen. A new hand aboard ship took days, longer if he was allowed, to grow accustomed to objects and fittings even in pitch darkness. Theil knew them all just as he could picture the faces of the intent bridge party on either hand and behind his back. Signalmen and petty officers, the massive, oilskinned bulk of Josef Gudegast, the navigating officer. Theil had some reservations about officers who were not regulars, but like the rest of the team he had cause to be grateful that Gudegast was the navigator. In peacetime he had earned his living in the merchant service and had been for much of the time the chief petty officer of a Baltic timber ship. Gudegast knew all the niceties and the perils of these waters like his own considerable appetite.

Theil analysed the captain's voice on the telephone. Calm. Nothing to worry about. Not like the previous captain who had cracked up when the ship had been under constant air attack for three whole days. Theil felt the old hurt like a physical pain. He had taken command, had got the ship back to Kiel when others had been less fortunate. He had dared to hope he would be promoted, and be given
Prinz Luitpold.
He had deserved it. He knew it. Instead, Hechler had stepped aboard to the trill of calls and

the proud salutes. A man of excellent reputation who had since proved his worth a dozen times. But he was several years Theil's junior nonetheless.

Theil thought of the other faces, some of which were new to the ship. In the armoured superstructure above the bridge, the conning tower and fire-control stations, the officers he saw each day were waiting for the calm to shatter. Tired faces at the meal table, or flushed with drink after a trip ashore in some port or other. Faces which hid things or revealed too much. Like the youngest officer here on the bridge, Leutnant zur See Konrad Jaeger. A fresh-faced, green youngster of nineteen. He w'ould be perfect on a recruiting poster. Apart from training,
Prinz Luitpold
was his first ship. He had a pleasant manner, and the confidence of one used to authority. His father was a much-decorated captain who had been put ashore after losing an arm and one eye in the North African campaign. Jaeger's father still had influence, Theil decided. Otherwise the youngster would have been a junior watch-keeper aboard a U-boat instead of serving a thoroughbred like this ship. It was rumoured that a junior officer's life expectancy in a combat U-boat was about that of a lieutenant on the Russian Front.

Theil shivered. It was best to leave it as a rumour these days.

He heard the steel gate at the rear of the bridge open, noted the way the dark figures around him seemed to come to life as the captain entered and touched his cap casually to the bridge party at large. Theil faced him, and recalled suddenly how he had resented, hated this man.

From beside the compass platform Jaeger watched the two senior officers, the men who between them controlled the ship and his destiny. They made a complete contrast, he thought. The captain, tall, powerful, yet with a calm unruffled tone. Theil, stocky, with short fair hair, given to angry outbursts if anything slipped below his very high standards.

Hechler could feel the youngster's scrutiny just as he could sense the navigating officer's indifference. The latter knew his charts with an uncanny accuracy; he was often known to scoff at the ship's new navigational aids, the first things to break down when you needed them, he proclaimed.

Beyond his long hours of duty as the ship hurried from one sea area to another, Gudegast rarely mixed with his fellow officers.

Another surprise about him was his skill as an artist. Despite his bluff seaman's appearance and colourful language he could paint ,and sketch everyday scenes with accuracy and compassion. Now he was rising on his toes to watch some circling gulls, one of his favourite subjects, like patches of spindrift against the mist. Another sketch maybe?

Hechler ducked his head beneath the canvas hood which hid the light of the chart-table and peered searchingly at Gudegast's neat calculations, bearings and fixes. Like his artwork, each pencilled note or figure was clear and delicate. Perhaps a frustrated artist from another age lurked inside his rugged frame. In his shining oilskin he looked like a sea-creature which had unexpectedly come aboard.

Theil joined him by the chart. The shore batteries are there sir. Our main armament is alerted and will be kept informed of any change of intelligence.'

From far beyond the hood's shelter Hechler heard the scrape of steel as the aircraft catapult was manoeuvred around ready to fire off the first float-plane. Each had a crew of two, and apart from cannon and machine-guns would today be armed with two heavy bombs.

Thinking aloud Hechler said, That is the railway station. We are ordered to destroy it. Ivan will bring up reinforcements by that route. We'll give him a headache.'

He withdrew from the hood and climbed on to the forward gratings to let the salt air sting away any lurking weariness. He thought of his men, sitting and crouching through his command. Some able to see the heaving water like himself, others confined to their armoured turrets, waiting to feed the big eight-inch guns, or down in the bowels of the engine- and boiler-rooms, deafened by the din of machinery and fans, watching dials or each other. Trying not to think of a shell or torpedo changing their roaring world into a merciless inferno.

In the streets of Kiel or some occupied seaport you would not notice many of them as individuals, Hechler thought. It was a pity the people at home could not see them here, in their environment. It might give them heart and perhaps some hope.

Theil said quietly, Time, sir.'

Hechler nodded. Glad they were committed. Alter course. Full ahead, all engines.' For a second his guise fell away and he added softly, 'Another time, Viktor, but the same enemy, eh?'

Fifteen minutes later the ship surged away from the mist to greet the first weak sunlight like an enraged tiger.

As the four main turrets swivelled soundlessly on to the precribed bearing, all eight guns opened fire.

'Alter course, steer two-three-zero!' Hechler lifted his eyes from the gyro-compass repeater and tensed as the sea lifted and boiled into a solid cone of white froth some cable's length beyond the port bow.

He felt the deck tilt as the order was passed to the wheelhouse, the instant response as the raked stem bit into the glittering water. The forward turrets swung slightly to compensate for the sudden change of direction and then each pair of guns recoiled in turn, the shock-wave whipping back over the bridge, hot and acrid as the shells tore towards the land.

Hechler waited for the hull to steady and then raised his glasses once more. The land was blurred with smoke, the colour drained out of it by the hard, silver sunlight. Shell-bursts pockmarked the sky where the ship's three Arado float-planes ducked and dived over their targets, and the fall of the cruiser's shells was marked by great smokestains, solid and unmoving. They made the landscape look dirty, fouled, he thought vaguely.

Tracer lifted from the rubble of some dwellings near the waterfront, and he guessed that the army were using their fire to retake their old positions, the bitter house-to-house fighting which was an infantryman's lot.

Hechler thought briefly of his father, and the unexpected distraction disturbed him. He was unused to having his mind shifted off-course when he needed it most.

His father had been a soldier in the Great War, and had been wounded several times on the Western Front until he had been badly gassed and sent home, a coughing, broken wreck of a man. In clear moments he had described war at close quarters, and had chilled his family with tales of wiring parties in no-man's-land, raids on enemy trenches armed with sharpened spades, nailed clubs and long knives. No time to load a rifle, and a bayonet was next to useless in a hand-to-hand encounter, he had said. You could smell your enemy, feel his strength, his fear as you tried to kill him with the same methods they had used centuries earlier.

At sea you rarely saw the enemy. Gun flashes, the fall of shot, a shadow against the moonlight or fixed in a range-finder. It was better that way. Cleaner.

A great gout of fire, bright orange and tinged with red, erupted Irom the shore and Theil, who had a handset jammed beneath his cap, shouted, 'Railway station., sir!'

A seaman nudged his friend and they grinned at one another. The young officer, Leutnant Jaeger, shaded his eyes to look up at the control station with its narrow observation slits, like the visor of a massive helmet. He did not even duck as something whistled above the bridge and Hechler saw a seasoned petty officer glare at him behind his back. He probably wanted him to get down; any fool could die a hero.

'Aircraft, sir! Bearing red-one-one-oh! Angle of sight three-zero!'

The secondary armament were already swivelling round on their sponsons and in their small turrets, tracking the tiny, metallic dots which had suddenly appeared out of the smoky haze.

Hechler thought of Kroll, the gunnery officer, and was glad of his efficiency. Kroll, lean, tight-mouthed and devoid of any sense of humour, was a hard man to serve. Constant drills in every kind of exercise, switching crews around with loading numbers Irom the magazine and cursing any officer or seaman who failed to respond to his immediate satisfaction, had nevertheless made the ship a living example to many others.

The anti-aircraft guns and then the lighter automatic weapons clattered into life, the bright tracer streaking across the sea and knitting together in a vivid mesh of fire through which the approaching planes would have to fly.

One of the escorting destroyers was turning in a steep welter of foam, an oily screen of smoke trailing astern of her as she headed closer to her big consort, her own guns hammering sharply to join the din.

Prinz Luitpold's
main armament recoiled again. Hechler had lost count of the number of rounds they had fired, and he heard the abbreviated whistle of the shells as they ripped towards the target.

'Alter course. Steer due west.' Hechler let his glasses drop to his chest as Gudegast passed his orders through the brass-mouthed voice-pipe by the compass.

'Two-seven zero, sir.' The rest of his words were drowned by the throaty roar of engines, and the increasing bang and clatter of gunfire as the enemy planes flashed over the water,

Hechler did not see which one straddled the destroyer, but the explosion just abaft her squat funnel made a searing flash and flung fragments high into the air even while the ship staggered round in another turn, her deck laid bare as she tilted over. Another great explosion blasted her from between decks and fire spread along one side like lava, masking her hull in steam and surrounding her struggle with bright feathers of spray from falling debris. Distance hid the sound of her destruction but it was clear enough for anyone to see.

Two of the Russian aircraft were weaving away, their own wounds revealed by smoking trails as tracer darted after them, and the sky around them was filled with drifting shell-bursts.

Gudegast said thickly, 'She's going! God, look at her!'

Hechler watched the destroyer as she began to settle down. One boat was in the water, but was carried away from her side by the swell with just a handful of men aboard. Floats were dotted about, but the first two explosions had obviously taken a heavy toll of life. Hechler had met the destroyer's captain at several conferences. It was a moment dreaded by every commander.
Abandon ship.
Even thinking the words was like a surrender.

Two more Russian planes roared over the listing vessel, and the sea around the solitary boat was torn apart by machine-gun fire. Hechler felt his stomach muscles contract, but made himself watch as the tiny, unreal figures clawed at the air or floundered in the swell before they were cut down.

Theil hurried to his side. 'One of the Arados is finished, sir!'

They looked at each other. Theil's voice was harsh; his words were not just a report. They sounded disbelieving, like an accusation.

Hechler strode across the bridge, his boots scraping on empty cartridge cases from a machine-gun, and watched the pall of smoke beyond the waterfront. The float-plane must have been hit just as she had released her two bombs and had exploded directly above them.

'Signal from escort, sir! Request permission to pick up survivors.'

Hechler glanced at jaeger's handsome face. He had not yet learned how to conceal his emotions, Hechler thought; his eyes looked wild, full of pain for the men who were dying out there.