Strike from the Sea (1978) (11 page)

He said, ‘I’ll take another look.’ He waited, trying to relax his neck and back mucles as the tube rose from the well.

He watched the high bow edge darkly into the right-hand side of his lens, pushing into the crosswires as if to cut through them.

‘Stand by.’

He heard Ridgway’s voice, a fierce whisper almost covered by the snick, snick of the ‘fruit machine’. ‘Ready, sir.’

‘Fire One!’

The hull gave a slight jerk, as if it had touched a floating tree, but nothing to betray the menace of the torpedo as it streaked from its tube.

Ainslie slammed the handles against the periscope. ‘Down periscope! Carry on firing by stop-watch! Thirty metres, shut off for depth-charging!’

One by one the little red lights glittered on Ridgway’s panel, until he said, ‘All torpedoes running, sir!’

‘Thirty metres, sir.’

‘Alter course, Pilot. Steer three-one-zero. Stand by stern tubes, in case we miss him and he comes after us.’

Ainslie gripped a voice-pipe as the hull tilted to the change of course. He could see the four torpedoes as if he were outside in the depths. Fanning out in a lethal salvo while they worked up towards fifty knots.

Ridgway looked at his stop-watch, his face set in a frown. Forster was watching him, and Quinton’s fingers were drumming on the back of a planesman’s seat as he stared at the curved side.

The explosion, followed by two more at regular intervals, was more like a sharp crack than a bang. The fourth torpedo had missed, but under the circumstances Ainslie was satisfied.

‘Periscope depth.’

He saw Ridgway reaching out to pat his assistant on the back and could imagine the sweating torpedomen in the fore-ends, already preparing to reload the empty tubes.

Walker reported, ‘HE has stopped, sir.’

When the periscope broke surface Ainslie was just in time to see the patrol vessel’s bow as it started to slide down in a great welter of boiling foam, above it the stain of the explosion hung across the sky as if it would never move.

Quinton called, ‘Well done, sir. Just like old times.’ They were all grinning like schoolboys.

A handset buzzed in its case like a trapped bee, then a messenger said, ‘From W/T, sir. Signal.’

Ainslie beckoned Quinton to take his place by the periscopes. He reached for the handset, finding time to marvel at the petty officer telegraphist who had used his radio receiver while the boat was so near to the surface. Despite the grim preparations and then the explosions he had gone on with his own job.

‘Captain.’

Vernon sounded tense. ‘It was just a garble, sir. Probably a short-range army job.’

‘Well?’

‘The
Prince of Wales
and the
Repulse,
sir. Both sunk. Just now, while we were doing our attack.’

‘Thank you.’ He replace the handset and looked at Quinton and the rest. ‘Force Z has been wiped out.’ He watched their faces freeze, their smiles disappear. Against such a disastrous loss their own small victory was pitiful.

Quinton was the first to speak. ‘They could be wrong. Some idiot getting his wires crossed.’

They looked at each other, each knowing in his heart there was no mistake.

‘Resume course and depth, Pilot. Fall out diving and action stations.’ Ainslie glanced at Halliday. ‘Your people did well, Chief. Steady as a rock.’ Just words, bloody words. Part of the game. The necessary pretence.

He moved to the centre of the control room, half watching, half listening. The news Vernon had intercepted would soon be across the whole world. In the twinkling of an eye Force Z had been destroyed. Maybe they had run into a more powerful squadron and had gone down fighting. Whatever had happened the result was the same. The whole balance of naval power had shifted in the enemy’s favour. The essential shield had been found wanting and had paid the full, awesome price.

Later as he toyed with some food in his cabin he thought of the two great ships. The
Prince of Wales
was a new one with little history to remember, other than she had been witness to the
Hood
’s destruction under the guns of the German
Bismarck
.

But the old battle cruiser
Repulse
he did know, as did almost every sailor in the fleet. She had been part of the tradition and the myth, and with her gone it was one more sign, one further threat to their very existence. He sighed and lay down on his bunk, the food congealing on its plate.

He wondered if he would see any changes when he took the submarine back to Singapore. There might still be time to act, to hold the enemy until the forces in Malaya had been reinforced.

‘Captain in the control room!’

He threw his legs to the deck, his heart beating faster.
Here we go again
.

The
Soufrière
’s wardroom was unusually quiet. Alongside the
depot ship once again, and with most of her company on local leave, she gave the impression of resting.

Lieutenant Farrant, the gunnery officer, was sitting in a corner, utterly engrossed in a month-old copy of
Lilliput.
Lieutenant Forster, who was officer of the day, was re-reading the letter which had awaited
Soufrière
’s return to Singapore. It was from Daphne. A frightening, rambling letter, made worse by the sense of distance and helplessness. She would have to tell her mother about it. And when her husband came home . . . There had been splashes on the ink. He could see her crying as she had penned the last part.
If there’s no other way, I shall kill myself
.

Forster looked up desperately. ‘God Almighty.’ He had read the letter over and over again. It got worse, not better.

Farrant looked over his magazine. ‘Trouble?’

Across the other side of the wardroom Lieutenant Christie, the RNVR pilot, glanced at the two men with interest. He could smell the tension, like an animal scenting blood.

‘It’s nothing.’

Forster dropped his eyes. Angry with himself. He had started to hate Farrant. His smugness, his cock-sure arrogance.

Like their first patrol which had ended this morning. After the attack on the Jap patrol vessel and her tow, which had since been identified as a landing craft filled with men and stores, they had not seen very much. A few fishing vessels, driven to sea out of necessity, one rusty freighter which the skipper had sunk after ordering her crew to abandon, and the big landing craft.

Forster had all but forgotten his personal troubles as he had joined Ainslie and the others in the attack. He had watched Ainslie’s face, judged every expression each time the periscope had shot down into its well, listened to the descriptions and reports, checked his plot and marked their progress on his chart. A really big landing craft, Ainslie had said. A fruitless look through a somewhat out-of-date copy of
Jane’s Fighting Ships
and a more recent collection of silhouettes suggested it might be a tank landing vessel of considerable value.

She had been moving very slowly, well loaded with vehicles, zigzagging painfully like a giant shoe box on the placid water.

Forster had seen none of it, but looking back, Ainslie had described every detail with his routine reports, so that now it was like remembering a film or a picture.

Ainslie had decided to use the submarine’s guns. For one thing it was possible that a full salvo of torpedoes might be necessary, and there was still no certainty of replacing them, the French ones being a different size from the British pattern. Also, the landing craft was very shallow draft, and the salvo might have passed harmlessly beneath her.

Forster looked quickly at Farrant. He was looking at his magazine again. The fact that his eyes were unmoving and fixed made him think he was studying a picture of a nude.

It had been Farrant’s perfect opportunity, and to do him justice he had done very well, especially as it was the first shots they had fired from the big turret. With the hull barely trimmed above the surface, the guns had been trained on the landing craft. Inside the hull everybody had been poised, like athletes waiting for the starting pistol. Especially the first lieutenant and the chief engineer. A sharp change of buoyancy, some unknown factor which might throw the submarine out of control, it all had to be watched and prevented. When the guns had fired, one at a time, it had been like nothing Forster had experienced. The crash had been long drawn out, like a great peal of thunder, and the shock of each gun hurling itself back on its springs and cylinders had shaken the hull like some gigantic earth tremor. What it could have been like for the men on the landing craft he could only guess at.

First the sight of the turret and conning tower rising slowly through the clear water, and then the twin guns swinging towards them like a pair of black, pitiless eyes.

They had heard the sounds of the enemy vessel breaking up as it sank to the bottom, its cargo of armoured vehicles adding to the destruction and speeding its end. It was just as well. She must have been carrying high octane fuel, and the agony of her crew and passengers was only saved by the sea.

Dived once more, Ainslie had sent for Farrant. Forster could see him now. Prim, and so pleased with himself it was causing him pain to hide it.

He thought too of the skipper. Ainslie was a good one to have in command. Rarely raised his voice, and was never sarcastic. But Forster felt he did not really know him. Ainslie had asked the gunnery officer to pass his thanks to the men in the turret, as well as the others in the magazine and shell hoist.

Forster glanced at the curved bulkhead at the opposite end of
the wardroom. Like the side of a lift shaft, it was the main support for the big turret above, and through which went the ammunition hoists from the magazine to the loaders at each gun. It was like the submarine’s core, a symbol of tremendous durability and strength. He turned as Christie remarked, ‘I wonder what the skipper’s doing?’

Farrant said sharply, ‘He’s with the admiral and chief of staff. They will be discussing our next patrol.’

Christie smiled lazily. ‘He told you, did he?’

Farrant frowned. ‘When you’ve been in the Service a bit longer, or
attached
to it for the duration of this war, you might understand!’

‘Oh.’

Christie sat back, enjoying himself. He had done many things in his life, and had flown some of the worst crates imaginable. Even during his naval flying he had had some strange jobs, but this one beat them all. A flyer in a submarine. On the patrol he had been a spectator as much as anything, keeping close to Forster and the navigator’s yeoman so that he could study the changing charts, the lay of the area over which he might soon get the chance to fly. At thirty-one, he was one of the oldest men aboard. That also amused him. Some, like Sub-Lieutenant Southby, a slight, pink-faced youth who was Farrant’s assistant in the turret, with the additional job of Boarding Officer, whatever that was, were so nervously unsure of everything. Others, a year or so older than Southby, had the confidence of giants but the knowledge of children.

He said, ‘The way we’re fighting this war, I don’t reckon I’ll have time to learn much more!’

Farrant stared at him as if he had uttered some terrible oath. ‘How
dare
you!’ He stood up and moved restlessly across the wardroom like a caged animal. ‘Two fine ships sunk, all those men dying bravely, and you –’

Christie’s eyes followed the gunnery officer back and forth. ‘Balls,’ he said calmly. ‘The admiral in Force Z was told that Kuantan airfield had been evacuated because everyone was running high-tailed away from the Japs. He bloody well
knew
there was no air cover for his ships!’

Farrant stood stock still in front of Christie’s seat, just to one side of his out-thrust legs,

Christie added quietly, ‘You talk about those ships and the
brave lads who went down. Why not speak of the bloody fools who put them on the bottom?’

Christie could feel his anger getting a grip. It was all coming back. The carrier he had been in at Crete, the flight deck suddenly bursting wide open in a great mushroom of solid flames. Men on fire, running in circles, aircraft rolling over the side as the old carrier started to capsize.

‘Without air cover they were written off from the start.
Before
the start! Stupid, bloody-minded idiots! It’s a race for who kills more of our chaps first, the enemy or the high command!’

Farrant had recovered slightly. ‘If I ever hear you speak like that again . . .’ He swung on his heel and marched out, almost knocking down Torpedoman Sawle who was coming to lay the table for tea.

Forster said, ‘I think you upset him, Jack.’

Christie looked at the deck, his eyes blurred. ‘Sorry, Pilot. I wasn’t getting at you, y’know. Farrant will be an admiral one day. His sort always win.’

Then he stood up and looked at his watch. ‘Think I’ll get a lift over the Causeway to the club. Have a couple of cold beers.’ He winked. ‘If they’ll let me in the place!’

Alone, Forster took the letter from his pocket and began to read it once more.

Ainslie sat back in a cane chair and drew on his pipe. He and Critchley were in the residence of Rear-Admiral Arnold Granger. He was a sturdy, rounded man, too short for his weight, and his shape was further accentuated by his immaculate white shirt and shorts. Granger was prematurely bald, with just a strip of ginger hair on either side of his head, like feathers.

He said, ‘I’ve asked you here, Commander Ainslie, because I think you’ve been badly used since you came out from the UK.’ He, too, was smoking a pipe, and waved it in the air like a black finger as he added, ‘Mind you, you’re not the easiest fellow I’ve met either.’ He smiled, changing him to an impish conspirator. ‘But we need every experienced brain we can lay hands on. The C in C has assured me that reinforcements are already on the way. But troop convoys take weeks, sometimes months to get here. We require modern fighter aircraft, experienced infantry, and above all the ability to hit at the bastards before they push down south any further.’

He walked to a wall map and let it unroll to its full extent.