Killing Ground

BY
D
OUGLAS
R
EEMAN

Badge of Glory

The First to Land

The Horizon

Dust on the Sea

Knife Edge

Twelve Seconds to Live

Battlecruiser

The White Guns

A Prayer for the Ship

For Valour

B
Y
A
LEXANDER
K
ENT

The Complete Midshipman Bolitho

Stand into Danger

In Gallant Company

Sloop of War

To Glory We Steer

Command a King's Ship

Passage to Mutiny

With All Despatch

Form Line of Battle!

Enemy in Sight!

The Flag Captain

Signal–Close Action!

The Inshore Squadron

A Tradition of Victory

Success to the Brave

Colours Aloft!

Honour This Day

The Only Victor

Beyond the Reef

The Darkening Sea

For My Country's Freedom

Cross of St George

Sword of Honour

Second to None

Relentless Pursuit

Man of War

Heart of Oak

In the King's Name

Published by McBooks Press, Inc., 2014. Copyright © 1991 by Highseas Authors Ltd. First published in the United Kingdom in 1991 by William Heinemann.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without the written permission of the publisher. Requests for such permissions should be addressed to McBooks Press, Inc., ID Booth Building, 520 North Meadow St., Ithaca, NY 14850.

Cover painting: Geoffrey Huband

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Reeman, Douglas.

Killing ground / Douglas Reeman.

pages ; cm. -- (Modern naval fiction library)

ISBN 978-1-59013-679-9 (alk. paper)

1. World War, 1939-1945--Campaigns--Atlantic Ocean--Fiction. 2. Merchant marine--Officers--Fiction. 3. War stories. 4. Sea stories. I. Title.

PR6068.E35K55 2014

823'.914--dc23

2014001594

Visit the McBooks Press website at
www.mcbooks.com

Printed in the United States of America

987654321

For my Kim—
together we found love

D
AWN
seemed slow to appear, reluctant, even, to lay bare the great ocean, which for once lacked its usual boisterous hostility. But there had been fog overnight which had finally dispersed, and the sea, which lifted and dipped in a powerful swell, was unbroken but for an occasional feather of spray. The sky was the colour of slate and only a feeble light betrayed the presence of another morning, touching the crests with a metallic sheen, but leaving the troughs in darkness like banks of molten black glass. Deserted, an empty treacherous place; but that was a lie. For, like jungle or desert, creatures moved here to seek cover from danger, to survive the ever-present hunters.

As the light tried to feel its way through the slow-moving clouds a few birds showed themselves circling above the sea's face, or riding like broken garlands on the steep-sided troughs. To them the sea held no mystery, and they knew that the rugged coast of Ireland was barely a hundred miles away.

A deep water fisherman, had there been one, or some wretched survivor on a raft or in a drifting lifeboat might have sensed it. The slight throbbing tremor beneath the waves—a sensation rather than a sound, which could make even a dying man start with terror. But there was no one, and forty metres beneath the surface the submarine moved slowly and warily as if to follow the line on the chart where her captain leaned on the table. His pale eyes were very still, his ears taking in every sound around him while he waited; the hunter again from the instant the alarm bells had ripped through the boat and brought him from a restless sleep to instant readiness.

He could feel his men watching him, as if he had actually turned to stare at them individually. Faces he had come to know under every possible condition, once so bright and eager but
now blanched with the pallor of prison, their gestures the tired, jerky movements of old men. Like the boat, worn out with the weeks and months at sea. The stink of it: of diesel and cabbage water, of damp, dirty clothing which no longer defied the cold, of despair.

He glanced at the clock, resting his eyes in the dimmed orange glow. Two torpedoes only remained after that last attack on the convoy, which had almost ended in disaster. Some of his men would be thinking,
Why now? What does it matter? We are going home.
It was like hearing their combined voices pleading as one.

But it did matter. It had to. The hydrophone operator had reported a faint beat of engines. A large vessel, perhaps in difficulties. If it was anyone else he might have questioned it, disregarded it. But the seaman had been with him from the beginning in this command. He was never mistaken, and thousands of tons of shipping scattered the depths of the Western Ocean to vouch for his accuracy. The captain smiled but it remained hidden. The others were probably hating him for his skills now, when before they had blessed him for saving their lives.
The ears of the predator.

He signalled to his engineer officer, who waited by his panel with its dials and tiny glowing lights, and without waiting for an acknowledgement made his way to the periscope well. Every step brought an ache to his bones. He felt stiff, dirty, above all exhausted. He thrust it from his thoughts as the air began to pound into the saddle-tanks and the depth gauges came to life. What did he really feel? Perhaps nothing any more. The silent pictures in the periscope lens, explosions, burning ships and men—they no longer reached him.

To return to base was something different. There he might drink too much or forget too little.

He started as someone laughed. A young, careless sound. That was “Moses,” the nickname used in every U-Boat for the youngest member of the crew. The captain turned his eyes to the gauges as they steadied at fourteen metres. It was the boy's first voyage. Now his relief was pushing the nightmares into
the darkness. He was lucky. For some reason the captain thought of his young brother, but saw him only as the round-faced student with his cap set at a jaunty angle, enjoying life, but sometimes being too serious, too outspoken about matters he did not understand. They had put him in the army despite his glasses and poor eyesight. Now he lay with two million others on the Eastern Front.

He tried not to grit his teeth.
I must not think about it.
For here, in the Atlantic, there was always danger; it waited like an assassin for the unwary, the one who forgot the need for vigilance just for a moment. He jerked his hand again and the forward periscope slid slowly from its well, while he crouched almost on his knees to follow it to the surface—his white cap, the symbol of a U-Boat commander, stained and greasy from a hundred encounters with deckhead pipes and unyielding metal, was pushed to the back of his head, although he never recalled doing it.

Slowly, so slowly now. The lens was nearing the surface, and he saw the first hint of grey. He tightened his grip on the twin handles as he had countless times, his mind quite steady, his heart beating normally. He could sense the unemployed men watching him still. But they were and must be like the boat itself—part of the weapon, an extension to his own eye and brain.

He licked his upper lip, feeling the stubble, and watched the sea's face begin to reveal itself. He switched the periscope to full power and turned it in a full circle before returning to the given bearing.
Empty.
No ships, no prowling flying boats or bombers.

He blinked as the periscope misted over with spray, as if by doing so he would clear it. There was one patch of silver sunlight, which touched his eyes and made them the colour of the Atlantic.

And there it was. Drifting into the lens, then pausing in the crosswires as if snared in a web, while he followed the target and the details were fed into the machine behind him. The periscope dipped down again and he made himself stand upright, straddle-legged, his features impassive as he scraped his mind for any missing factor. A big merchantman, possibly a cargo liner
before the war; but why no escort? A ship that size—he glanced up as the lights blinked on to tell him that both torpedoes were ready to fire.

He almost laughed, but knew that if he did he might not be able to stop. A blind commander could not miss. What must they be thinking of?

The men closest to him saw his face and felt more at ease.
Get rid of those damned fish, then take us home.

He gestured to the periscope operator and crouched down to take a final look. Nothing had moved. The range, bearing, even the feeble light were as before.

He gave his order and felt the periscope buck in his grip as first one, then the other remaining torpedo leaped from its tube.

Then he stared with chilled disbelief as a second ship appeared from beyond the barely moving target. The other vessel must have been lying hidden on the liner's opposite side, her engines momentarily stopped. Now with a bow-wave building up from her sharp stem like a huge moustache, she appeared to pivot around her consort's bows until she was pointing directly at the periscope. He had been too long in U-Boats not to recognise those rakish lines. She was a destroyer.

There was only one explosion. The torpedo struck the destroyer somewhere forward even as she completed her turn. The second one must have missed or run deep out of control. It was not the first time that had happened. A few of his men began to cheer as the explosion boomed against the hull, but the sound ended instantly as he swung towards them and ordered a crash dive.

He turned the periscope just briefly even as the water began to thunder into the tanks, then flung one arm to his face as if to protect it. Framed in the lens were a pair of racing propellers, as the bomber made her careful dive towards the shadow beneath the surface.

The U-Boat's captain was twenty-seven years old. On this bleak dawn he and his crew had just twelve seconds to live.

But this was the Western Ocean. The killing ground.

A
NY
naval dockyard in the midst of a war was a confusing place for a stranger, and Rosyth, cringing to a blustery March wind, was no exception.

Every dock, basin and wharf seemed to be filled: ships being repaired, others so damaged by mine or bomb that they were only useful for their armament or fittings, all of which were in short supply.

Sub-Lieutenant Richard Ayres paused to stare down into one such basin at an elderly escort vessel, or what was left of it. She had once been a living ship, but now she was gutted down to and beyond the waterline. In the hard light Ayres could still see the blistered paintwork where men had once lived and hoped. From all the damage, it was a marvel anyone had still been alive to get her home.