Strike from the Sea (1978) (20 page)

Ainslie half fell the rest of the way to the voice-pipes, hearing the startled voices below, Quinton’s curt orders to restore control.

Ainslie said, ‘Stop engines!’

Critchley asked quietly, ‘What’s happened?’

Ainslie waited for Quinton to come to the voice-pipes. ‘We’re aground.’

‘Yes, sir. Asdic has just reported a sudden shelving. Another few yards and we’d have passed clean and away.’ Even he could not disguise his bitterness. ‘It was that fault earlier.’

‘Never mind that now. Clear the fore-ends. Get all hands aft. I’m going to try and work her free with the main engines.’

In his mind he could see it all, as if the words were painted a mile high. The falling tide. The sudden, stark reality of being aground. But errors happened all the time. Just one flaw, a small mistake, and . . .

‘Control room to captain. All spare hands aft, sir, excluding turret crews.’

‘Those, too. I’m not planning a war at the moment.’

Menzies muttered, ‘They need a few more Scots down there, sir. We canna manage it all.’

Ainslie stared at him and then said, ‘Thanks, Yeo. That was just right.’

Critchley touched the yeoman’s arm. ‘Well done.’ He had sensed Ainslie’s sudden anxiety and felt it as clearly as a change of direction.

‘Slow astern together.’

Ainslie climbed up to the starboard side and peered aft at the sudden commotion of thrashing foam. If the enemy had but one patrol boat and its commander was half blind he could not fail to detect
Soufrière
now.

‘Full astern port.’

He pictured Halliday’s taciturn face at his panel. The violent wrench of one engine against another was not the best way to treat machinery. But it was that or something much worse.

Someone gave a muffled cheer.

‘She’s coming off, sir.’

Ainslie brushed past the other vague figures as he ran to the gyro repeater. ‘Stop both engines!’ His mind was throbbing with effort. ‘Yeoman. Call up the soldiers again.’ He heard Menzies suck his teeth. ‘I must get a fix. We could be anywhere.’

He felt the submarine sliding noiselessly astern on her momentum, the water lapping and gurgling along the saddle tanks.

The clack-clack-clack of Menzies’ signal lamp sounded like guns firing in the stillness. Fortunately, the army must have been expecting trouble and they replied at once, the small light low down near the water like a faint yellow eye.

Got it
. But if there was another sand-bar. . . . Ainslie groped for the voice-pipe. ‘Slow ahead together. Steer two-seven-six.’

The hull had swung right round to the reverse thrust. Without
the signal light from the shore it would be like heading blind into a brick wall.

He waited for his breathing to steady. But his lips and throat were like dust.

‘Tell the first lieutenant to have the turret manned again. Same routine as before.’

Twenty minutes later
Soufrière
made fast to the remains of a rickety pier, having been led the last few yards by two soldiers in a rubber dinghy.

Ainslie watched the shadowy figures emerging from the deeper darkness, reaching out to receive heaving lines, or leaping bodily on to the saddle tank nearest the pier to lend a hand.

‘Ring off main engines. Open the forward hatch. Turn the hands to.’

Ainslie heard Petty Officer Voysey shouting instructions to the men on the pier, and was thankful to see some of his sailors leaping ashore to make the springs and breast ropes fast to whatever was available. A gruff voice was answering from the pier, and Ainslie thought for an instant it was Torpedoman Sawle. It was so Cockney he could have stepped straight out of Whitechapel market.

Quinton came on to the bridge. ‘All secure, sir. Chief’s checking his valves and pumps to make sure nothing got silted up when we grounded.’ He stood aside as more hurrying figures came through the hatch and scrambled down the outside of the conning tower to join those from the forward hatch.

Ridgway said, ‘Army type coming up, sir.’

It was a young captain, who seemed rather at a loss now that the submarine had actually arrived.

Ainslie shook his hand and said, ‘We’ve brought everything but the kitchen sink. Just get your lighter alongside and we’ll get started.’

The soldier stared with disbelief at the seamen, who with their petty officers looked in danger of falling from the crowded casing into the water.

He said, ‘That’s just it, sir. We were shot up yesterday by fighter-bombers. We lost most of the pier and all the available boats. My CO has had to put half our strength six miles up the coast road to reinforce the battalion there.’ He spread his hands and added apologetically, ‘I’ve got two platoons standing to, and the HQ platoon resting.’

Ainslie said quietly, ‘Do you still want these supplies?’

Just for an instant the young army officer showed the strain he was under. He took off his cap and ran his fingers through his hair as he said. ‘The battalion on our left withdrew yesterday. They’re all to hell. They were no match for this in the first place. Clerks and cooks, all the odds and sods left over from the first assault.’ He seemed to realize what Ainslie had asked and said grimly, ‘With them it’s a matter of time. Without them we might as well chuck it in right now.’

Quinton whispered, ‘We’ll never do it before daylight, sir. We need derricks, even sheer-legs would be better than nothing. And we need the men to get the stuff unloaded and hidden ashore.’

Ainslie looked past him. Quinton was right. In just a few hours it was impossible to unload such a tightly stowed cargo.

He said to the soldier, ‘Get every man you can spare.’ He turned to Quinton. ‘Tell Farrant to rig tackles on his two eight-inch guns. We’ll use the power on the turret so that it acts as a double derrick.’

He saw a red glow flicker across the sky and die almost as quickly. The war was going on somewhere.

Quinton rubbed his chin. ‘Even so, we’ll never make it on time.’

Ainslie leaned on the screen and watched the men bustling along two makeshift brows. One ingoing, one already loaded with staggering figures making their way ashore, bowed almost double with the first packs of supplies.

‘I know. We’ll just have to stay here for the day and sweat it out.’

He twisted round as a soldier ran along the pier and shouted, ‘See, Jim? I
told
you th’ bloody Navy wouldn’t let us down!’

Ainslie said quietly, ‘And nor will I.’

Ainslie made his way through the control room and saw Halliday speaking with his assistant, Sub-Lieutenant Deacon, and the Chief ERA.

He automatically straightened his back as he approached, but even that effort was like an extra pain.

‘All well, Chief?’

God, how weary they all looked. It was morning, and they had been hard at it all through the night. Only the control room retained an appearance of watchfulness and order. Throughout
the rest of the boat every area, large and small, was littered with cases and abandoned crates, torn wrapping paper and smaller items waiting to be carried bodily ashore. They were like ants. Up ladders, down ladders, pausing only to snatch another load and be sent away again by a petty officer at one end or a sergeant at the other.

Halliday watched him warily. ‘Aye, sir. Nothing we can’t manage.’

Ainslie walked on. ‘Fine. There’ll be some tea and sandwiches coming round shortly.’

‘Look, sir, don’t you think you should take a rest a while?’

Lucas took out a cigarette and shook his head. ‘He does not hear you.’

Halliday sighed. ‘I should know him by now. But he still amazes me.’

Ainslie climbed up the gleaming ladder, seeing the oval of blue sky broken at the edges by green fronds which Sub-Lieutenant Southby’s landing party had gathered ashore and fashioned into a crude camouflage.

On the bridge it was searing hot, and after the cooler darkness the sights were also brutally obvious. Great black patches where fires had raged after an air attack. Crude graves along the top of the beach, marked by steel helmets or plain wooden crosses. Like something from the Somme or Passchendaele.

Of the strongpoint there was little sign, and Ainslie guessed it was dug deeply into the jungle by the remaining coast road. He could hear the rumble of mortar and artillery fire, rising and receding, like a great beast dragging itself, complaining, through the jungle.

How thick the trees looked. In there it must be barely possbile to see the sky, he thought, even more difficult to hear an enemy’s stealthy approach.

Ridgway was standing on the gratings watching the unloading, his stubbled face streaming in the heat. He saw Ainslie and saluted.

Ainslie joined him and said, ‘I’m going ashore for a moment. Tell Number One to take over.’ He watched the sluggish wavelets lapping along the saddle tanks.
Soufrière
was considerably higher in the water after losing so much of her deadly cargo.

He climbed down to the dock and waited until he could join the shuffling line of figures going ashore.

On the pier a weary-looking corporal held out his fist. ‘’Ere mate, where’re we off to then? Bleedin’ Southend?’

Petty Officer Voysey shouted, ‘That’s our captain, you twit!’

Ainslie nodded to the corporal. He had come ashore without his cap and was in the same stained shirt he had worn since Singapore.

‘At ease, Corporal. And you were right. I
should
have carried something, too.’

He left the astonished corporal behind and strode gratefully beneath the nearest line of trees. After men and steel, diesel oil and sweat, the heavier scents of jungle and rotting undergrowth made him feel slightly unsteady.

A sentry guided him towards a sandbagged door which appeared to be cut straight through a mound of earth and rock, and seconds later he was confronting the commanding officer.

The young captain said, ‘This is the submarine’s commander, Colonel.’

The colonel shook Ainslie’s hand and gestured to a brightly coloured deck-chair. Before he sat down Ainslie noticed there was a dark stain on the back of it. Dried blood.

‘Bit early, old chap.’ The colonel waited for the other soldier to leave and then poured some whisky into two enamel mugs. He was a small man, very neat despite his torn uniform and stained boots. ‘But I reckon we both need one. Cheers.’ He sat down slowly and grimaced. ‘Getting old for this sort of caper.’

Ainslie felt the spirit in his empty stomach and all the sense of relaxation which went with it. He thought of her face as she had watched her husband drinking glass after glass at the party, and again when he had remarked so crudely about Forster looking down her dress.

The colonel said, ‘You’re a bloody godsend, I can tell you. We’re pretty strong here now that we’ve got supplies, but I’m not too happy about our left flank.’ He swallowed some more whisky. ‘Glad to see you,’ he added absently. ‘Used to go to Portsmouth as a lad to see the warships. But my father had me cut out for a soldier, so there it was.’ He became very serious. ‘I don’t know how much you’ve heard, but things are getting damn bad. The Japs control the air completely. We can’t move a thing on the roads without getting strafed and bombed. I’ve had fifty casualties in two days.’ He pushed the bottle across
the table. ‘Help yourself. The bloody Japs will have it otherwise.’

‘Bad as that?’

‘Worse, if that’s possible. Refugees are pouring down through the lines with terrible stories of atrocities. The Japs are seemingly trying to break up the people into separate factions, the Chinese against the Indians, the Malays against the rest, and so forth. I’ll wager they’ve sent saboteurs through the lines, too.’ He rubbed his eyes fiercely. ‘I tell you, Commander, if the high command at Singapore don’t get their finger out they’ll have fighting on the island by Christmas!’

A telephone hanging in a webbing case buzzed impatiently and the colonel put it to his ear, his eyes drooping with exhaustion. He listened for a full minute and then replaced it carefully.

‘The left flank has collapsed, I’m afraid. Brigade are sending reinforcements, and I’m to hold the road and about a mile to the west of here. A miracle would come in handy, too.’

He looked up as a sergeant peered in at him. ‘Yes, Roach?’

‘Message from the submarine, sir.’ His eyes moved to Ainslie. ‘Recce aircraft sighted just to the south of us. It’s bin ’ere before, sir, but it may spot your ship. I’ve told the men to get some more camouflage nets spread, sir.’ The eyes were back on the colonel. ‘Any orders, sir?’

‘No, everything’s fine, Sergeant.’ The man withdrew and he added vehemently, ‘It makes me weep to keep up this stupid pretence! My men are pure gold, and I’m expected, no,
commanded
to hold them here at all costs.’

The telephone buzzed again and the colonel smiled apologetically. ‘I’ll rustle up some food in a minute.’ He picked up the phone. ‘Colonel.’

Ainslie leaned back in the stained deck-chair. Whose had it been? A planter up country perhaps? A poor, simple soul who still believed it could not happen?

The colonel replaced the telephone and said quietly, ‘That was my MO. There has been another casualty, I’m afraid.’ He was looking at Ainslie as he added, ‘Your naval officer from intelligence. A sniper got him.’

Ainslie lurched to his feet, seeing Critchley’s face in the first light this very morning. Hearing his chat with some of the seamen as he had gone ashore.

‘Is he dead?’

The colonel nodded. ‘That sniper’s done for several of my men already. Never misses, never loses a chance. My adjutant should have taken more care to warn him.’ He looked at his hands. ‘But he’s had no sleep for days. He probably thought your man would know.’ He stood up. ‘They’re bringing him in now.’

Later, as an invisible reconnaissance plane droned somewhere to the south of the little inlet, and gunfire crashed and echoed threateningly along a hundred miles of jungle, Ainslie turned back the blanket from the stretcher while the two helmeted bearers stood like work horses, their eyes glazed with fatigue.

Critchley looked very calm, with no sign of the shock of that quick, final agony.