Submariner (2008) (13 page)

Hardly likely to meet them at this point of intersection anyway. Might, by sheer fluke, but much more likely in a couple of
hours, or say mid-forenoon. He called down, ‘Starboard ten.’

‘Starboard ten, sir!’ Then ‘Ten of starboard wheel on.’ Smithers, gunlayer. Mike told him, ‘Steer oh-nine-eight.’

Straightening, as that order was repeated, glasses up again while the ten-degree angle of rudder hauled her round. Wind right
astern then, stink of diesel in it. Smithers reporting after a few seconds, ‘Course oh-nine-eight, sir.’

‘First Lieutenant on the voice-pipe.’

McLeod’s voice: ‘Sir?’

‘Might stay up a bit longer, Number One. How’s the box?’

‘Close to right up, sir.’

‘So stop engines, slow together grouped down, close up asdics, all-round listening watch.’

Diesels’ racket faltering, dying away. Motors weren’t audible from up here, only the tremor in her steel, butting motion as
she drove through the low black foam-flecked ridges, and the sound of the sea flooding aft along her sides and over the pressure-hull
inside the casing, thumping around the tower’s base. Glasses half up again: but aware suddenly that that broad pre-dawn flush
was already something to take notice of – acquiring colour too, enough of it already in the sky to be staining this surrounding
whiteness pink.

‘Bridge?’

He stooped to it, and McLeod told him asdics weren’t getting anything.

‘Keep listening.’

Ahead there, what had been a band of colour was now a mass of it – the overhead brightening too although there were clouds
still jet-black against it. Dramatic enough, but nothing in it of the kind one had been praying for in the past few hours.
And dazzle-effect increasing, so best not goof at it. Best in fact take her down – the enemy having their own submarines,
for which one wasn’t keen to make oneself a target, in silhouette against that fast-spreading brilliance. He called down,
‘Open one and six main vents’, shut the cock on the voice-pipe and slid into the hatch, dragging the lid shut over his head
and jamming the clips on as the sea flooded up around the tower.

Daylight now, sunrise colours faded, the sun itself no longer blinding as it climbed behind ribs of cloud. Nothing of any
greater interest visible either in the overhead or seascape, the whole circle of horizon hard-edged, unbroken – no destroyers’
or cruisers’ funnel-smoke, masts or fighting-tops. Damn-all. But OK, long day ahead … He pushed the ’scope’s handles up and
stepped back, ERA Ellery doing his customary knees-bend in depressing the lever that sent it down into its well: soft thump
as it stopped, then only the ticking of the log, the port motor’s low thrum at slow grouped down, men’s quiet movements on
the ’planes, helm, asdics. Red watch, this. McLeod OOW, currently attending to the trim, Fraser on asdics, headphones on his
yellow head, Ellery tall, bony-faced, at the panel of vents and blows, Coxswain CPO Swathely on after ’planes and AB Smithers
on the for’ard ones, Smithers as always chewing gum. Walburton, signalman, on the wheel, Torpedoman Barnet on telegraphs. Needles
in the depth-gauges at 28 feet and as steady as you’d want them, although McLeod was still fiddling at the order instrument.
At slow ahead grouped down on only one motor, speed
through the water something like two knots, you did need to have the trim about as good as you could get it. After diving
he’d blown ‘Q’then vented the trapped HP air outboard – to sea – not wanting to build up pressure in the boat, and taking
advantage of the then poor light up top – large bubbles breaking into a fairly placid surface being very much a giveaway otherwise,
if there’d been eyes up there to see it. Aircraft passing anywhere near, for instance. But since then he’d been making minor
adjustments via the trimline.

Mike said, ‘I’ll leave you to it, Jamie.’

‘Right, sir.’

Bacon frying. Unmistakable, and mouth-watering. Mike adding as McLeod moved towards the periscope and Ellery brought it shimmering
up, ‘Might well be the odd shagbat around, by the way.’

‘Aye, sir.’ Surface-brightness glittering in his eyes as he began to circle. One of the others would no doubt be relieving
him presently for his breakfast. Mike pausing at the chart, thinking that air patrols were definitely on the cards – reconnaissance
ahead of the cruiser for one thing, but also if they’d picked up
Swordsman
’s enemy report. Wouldn’t have needed to
know
anything of its content, only that a signal had been passed at that time and in that vicinity: especially if
Swordsman
had made her presence known,
had
got in an attack for instance. If they had picked it up they’d know or guess that
a
submarine had made it, with the obvious intention of alerting others.

Air-search would be their answer to it. Likely type of ‘shagbat’ being the Cant seaplane. But surface craft out of Palermo
too. Thinking about that, pencilling-in DR positions along this 098-degree track, he noted that at midday
Ursa
’d be within five miles of Shrimp’s reference position for this patrol: right on station, despite the cruiser business.

Shrimp back there in Lazaretto no doubt keenly awaiting news of a cruiser sunk.

Tonight, perhaps, the pleasure of sending him that signal?

Meanwhile though, no hurry. Hence the crawl. Conserving battery power for action that might come anywhere along this track,
any time. You’d have Cape Gallo abeam at 1900, be off the Palermo gulf when the light was fading, and still have juice in
the box. Dived attacks did tend to squander the amps, with bursts of underwater speed often necessary.

He spent another minute, on an afterthought and somewhat grudgingly, checking on where the Garibaldi might be by this time
if she’d been heading directly to Cagliari from Messina. And the answer was, at twenty-five knots, at 0530
here
– out in the middle, well over halfway, with about seventy-five miles to go. Would be in or entering Cagliari therefore –
if
that was the way they’d gone – in say three hours’ time.

Unthinkable. Distinctly possible though it was.

Danvers was at the wardroom table, glancing through a copy of
Good Morning
, a mini-newspaper /entertainment sheet produced for submarine crews by the
Daily Mirror
. Copies were numbered, not dated, and the most popular item in it was the
Jane
strip-cartoon. You took a batch with you on patrol and the coxswain distributed them each morning to the various messes.
Danvers put it aside: the table was already set for breakfast.

‘Morning, sir. Bacon and eggs again, would you believe it!’

‘Well, the fragrance does suggest it.’ A nod towards Jarvis’s recumbent form. ‘He’s not snoring. Make sure he’s breathing?’

After breakfasting he settled on his bunk, thinking to get some rest while things were quiet – in the hope of being busy later.
Thinking about the Garibaldi docking in Cagliari though: it wasn’t easy to put out of mind. Not that there was any reason
to start thinking one had made the wrong decision, only that the possibility continued to exist, would
until or unless one ran into them – or ran them to earth in Palermo. Might get a sight of the cruiser’s foretop and twin cowled
funnels over the surrounding breakwater, for instance – from somewhere near the top end of the swept channel, in high power,
with the periscope right up?

‘Captain in the control room!’

Alarm call from Danvers, and Mike virtually already there, having in transition become awake enough to realise this was now
the afternoon. He’d slept during the forenoon, lunched, read Steinbeck for a while, dozed again: while here and now Danvers
had started the periscope down, Mike’s arrival checking this so McIver had stopped it and had it shooting up again, Danvers
explaining ‘More A/S schooners, sir, a pair of ’em off Cape Gallo steering west.’
More
because there’d been some this morning – early, in Danvers’ eight-to-ten watch. He was saying, ‘As they’re going now they’ll
pass abeam, but not by far.’

‘The one right ahead of us wouldn’t, Pilot.’

Snort of surprise from Danvers – that there was a third he hadn’t seen. Mike admitting, ‘Still mostly hull-down, not all that
conspicuous.’ Changing to air-search in case there was anything up
there
that mightn’t have been in sight a minute earlier. Fast all-round search, finding nothing other than broken cloud, then a
more careful one and finally back on the three white-painted schooners – wondering why the Italians painted them like that,
making them so conspicuous. Maybe so they could recognise each other? For the benefit of shore signal stations, more likely.
In any case, better skirt around them. They weren’t exactly deadly – had guns on them, of course, certainly machine-guns,
hydrophones rather than asdics, and didn’t have the speed to have any use for depth-charges. The pair this morning had been
to the east of Cape San Vito, in the ten-mile-wide Golfo di Castellamare,
well south of
Ursa
’s track, might have come out of Castellamare itself – it was a dockyard port, ship-builders and repairers. Mike had taken
a look at the schooners, checked they didn’t have a Cant working with them, told Danvers to be sparing in his use of the periscope
and gone back to his bunk, dozed until it had been time for corned beef and pickles, chutney etc.

He sent the ’scope down, moved to the chart, decided that a course alteration of just eight degrees would do the trick. Time
now, 1510.

The schooners could be making a sweep ahead of the cruiser’s exit from Palermo. Alternatively might not have anything to do
with it. This kind of anti-submarine activity wasn’t in any way unusual; especially in an area like this one, where submarines
might be expected – the Egadi Channel, Marettimo corner, much-used route for convoys to the Western Desert – Bizerta, Tripoli,
wherever. And they could make quite a nuisance of themselves, those schooners, especially in combination with air patrols,
E-boats, whatever.

He told Danvers, ‘Bring her to oh-nine-oh. Let me know of any change. When we’re past and clear, come back oh-nine-eight.’

Past seven now, and at the chart again. Jarvis, whose watch this was, had put on a 1900 fix by land bearings, and Mike had
come through to see where they were and how things might go in the next few hours.
Ursa
’s position being seven and a half miles NNE of Cape Gallo. The precise extent of Palermo’s defensive minefields being one
consideration: Danvers had inked them on in accordance with information disseminated by Admiralty, but it had caught Mike’s
eye that for up to about five miles around that headland there was no more than two hundred feet of water; it would surely
have made sense to have mined it, at least the stretch along
its eastern seaboard above Palermo itself. Hardly believable that they hadn’t, in fact: the field as they’d declared it covered
quite a large area outside it in any case, in much deeper water.

Mines where they
had
declared them – however long ago but surely renewed /replaced since then – then the swept channel looping out northeastward,
further mine-belts to the east of that as far as a minor promontory named on the chart as Cape Zafferano.

Could be a trap there inside Gallo, he thought. Unwary Anglo seeking to nobble Wop vessel in swept channel by firing from
allegedly
un
mined inshore water that’s as likely as not stiff with the bloody things?

Pull the other one,
signore
.

Tonight in any case one had to (a) assume the cruiser
was
in the harbour, and (b) be prepared for it to come sneaking out some time around sunset in order to make its run to Cagliari
during the hours of darkness. Visualising that exit: escorting destroyers emerging first, maybe pinging around a bit as a
precaution against ambush, the Garibaldi then pounding out, destroyers taking station ahead and all under port helm, settling
on say 330 degrees for a few miles before altering to 280.

How best to cope with this? Which although speculative was realistic; if they were coming out, that was near enough how they’d
set about it. So – give them room to clear the channel and form up on something
like
330, then 280,
Ursa
biding her time in what one might call a stand-off position from which to close in for as near as possible a beam shot on
either of those courses. At first sight a little tricky, but probably achievable through knowing from the start that a 50-degree
alteration was to be expected, and near enough
when
. He’d aim to get in his attack either well before or very soon after they’d made the turn.

After. Definitely,
after
. Accepting, incidentally, that it might be too late then for a dived attack. Surface and close in fast, trimmed right down.
Alternatively, if attacking dived and the light went, fire by asdics. One did always have that option. No change of course
or speed meanwhile: another two hours like this, and at 2100 you’d be –
here
. Alter then, he thought, to – say, 045. Opening the range a bit, giving oneself more room for manoeuvre – for surfacing,
if that was how it turned out – and guessing at 2130 as the time they’d make their move. Dusk in the offing then, sure, but
recalling how last night in very similar conditions the light had seemed to be lasting almost for ever then suddenly went
to pot. Might reckon on having it until nine-forty or fifty, no later?

Two long hours later, 2100, the light was still good enough to check the boat’s position by periscope bearings of Cape Gallo’s
right-hand edge and the centre of a smoke-haze over Palermo. After sundown, might become a light-haze, he guessed. Some local
phenomenon. Not calling this a fix, anyway, only a check, but reassuring in that it matched the charted DR position. He told
Danvers, ‘Bring her to oh-four-five.’

‘Oh-four-five, sir.’ To Llewellyn on the wheel then, ‘Port ten.’

‘Port ten, sir!’

As if delighted to be doing something other than keeping her head on 098, as they’d been doing ever since the deviation around
those schooners. Mike told Knox – telegraphist, but volunteer part-time unqualified asdic operator – ‘Listen, a minute.’ Knox
wore a beard – real one, glossy brown, not just the few days’ stubble Mike and most others had to show – also had the tattoo
of a red heart with a blue letter ‘C’ in it on his forearm. About which there was some anecdote or other. Oh – that he’d genuinely
forgotten the name, what
the ‘C’ stood for. Caroline, Cynthia, Clarice, Clementine? Rival claimants presumably not discouraged – wouldn’t be more than
one at any one time? Easing the headset off one ear, and Mike telling him, ‘We’ve had Palermo on the beam, due south. Now altering
course northeast, putting it on about green 135. If our cruiser’s in there, she might break out around sunset – next hour
or so, I’m guessing. So carry on listening all round but with particular attention to that sector – green 130 to 140, right?’