The third missile must have struck here, for the corner of the island had disappeared to leave an open gash from which pipes, cables and wires now dangled like entrails. He could see the Sea Cat crews, waiting helplessly at their mounting for the reloads which were failing to come up from below. Those men who remained alive among the flight deck parties were frenziedly trying to cope with Sea King 833 which had been hurled against the island.
The flight deck officer was in the thick of it, goading, leading the shattered team to superhuman efforts. They had to secure the rogue cab before its ten tons crushed everything and everyone in its path as it charged across the rolling deck. Hob was suddenly conscious that the ship had taken on a list, not steep as yet, but approaching ten degrees, perhaps because she was turning at speed? He could see her wake curling away into the dusk. Then, as he tried to gather his thoughts, the main safety valves lifted. The steam roared, a shattering blast, over whelming everything, forcing the bridge personnel to shout at the top of their voices, their open mouths soundless in their faces…
Hob saw the first of the Sea Harriers streaking in across the port quarter; then two more, the pilots obviously confused by the turn of events. They could not attempt a vertical landing until the fires were extinguished … They might try to land on one of the convoy’s MAC ships — if any such remained — or on Oileus’ deck. They had come in to rearm.
The officer of the watch was beckoning him from the bridge, his words inaudible.
Hob hurried forward, leaning against the list; the safety valves suddenly closed, restoring relative peace, and the officer’s words bellowed aft: ‘Lieutenant Gamble — Captain.’
‘Sir?’
Trevellion stood in the centre of his bridge, calmly conning his ship, his battered pipe, wire-bound and chamfered around the bowl, stuck obstinately into his mouth. He removed it as he tried to telephone the engine-room again.
‘MEO?’ he asked. ‘How’s things?’
He leaned against the list, listening to his engineer officer. ‘Right, chief.
You’ll be in the engine-room: the senior’s in the damage control centre? Roger.’
As he hung up, the OOW reported:
‘NUC lights hoisted, sir.’ The two not-under-command lights were casting their red glow upon the bridge area.
‘Thanks. Sound two short blasts. Koln’s getting too close.’
Hob peered through the windows into the gathering darkness. Furious was turning out of control, her rudders jammed hard-over.
‘Stop both engines,’ Trevellion ordered. ‘I’ll ease up until the chief can give us power again on the steering engines. He’s trying to rig secondary electrical power now. He thinks the main cables have been cut somewhere in the island section, at the after end of the hangar.’
The ops room was coming through again, power restored: ‘Ops room captain. Main computer on the board again forty-plus bogies on their way.’
‘Roger. Go hard-a-starboard, Officer of the Watch.’
They watched the rudder indicators responding and then the ship began to steady up from her crazy circling. The German frigate, Koln, was also under full rudder, alive to the danger of collision. She was rearing into the cascading seas, the flying spume a ghostly veil in the darkening twilight. She was heeling heavily to the turn, canting outwards, her turtle-backed upper deck under water as she swung. In the background, the ops room was tracking another regimental attack from some thirty-five Backfires, their target evidently the convoy. Then Hob heard the alarm in the PWO’s warning:
‘Low bogey coming straight — ‘
A blinding flash lit up the carrier’s port side. A crimson sheet of flame shot upwards from amidships in the German frigate’s upper deck.
‘My God,’ the captain murmured. ‘The poor devils.’
Hob was mesmerized by the scene … Koln, like a slow-motion film, was rolling over to her beam-ends. The water boiled white, the seas spouting upwards in furious geysers, the spray drifting downwind and covering her with a shroud of fern-like tracery. The brown anti-fouling of her bottom gleamed momentarily, her two propellers scything in the cauldron as her stern kicked skywards. Then she was gone, driving at full speed into her boiling, watery grave.
‘Go below and see what’s happening, Gamble,’ Trevellion rapped. ‘Why’s no ammunition getting to the Sea Cats? CAP Two’s due back soon. Tell the Chief he’s got to get the list off her.’
Hob saluted and as he turned he heard Trevellion muttering to himself as he jammed the pipe back into his mouth: ‘What are they doing to my beautiful ship?’
As Hob slid down the ladders, the emergency lighting glinting balefully on the polished hand rails. He had so often wondered what action would be like, this blood and guts side of it, in contrast to drowning upside down in his cab. He felt strangely remote from it all, intent only on doing the job in hand, however frightful the horrors. As he reached the Burma Road, he dodged past a couple of men slithering aft against the heavy list, a terribly mutilated man slung between them.
‘Where are you taking him?’ Hob asked. ‘D’you need help?’
‘We’re okay, sir. Can we get through to the wardroom? The other side’s wrecked.’
‘I’ll come back if I can’t get through,’ Hob said, hurrying onwards. Then the lights went out. The darkness was absolute. He could hear men cursing behind him and, as he groped for the fore-and-aft bulkheads on the outboard side of the passageway, he guessed that he must have reached the for’d end of the hangar section. It was getting hot down here. At the far end of the tunnel he could see the flickering of flames…
Without warning, he fell suddenly into a void beneath his feet… He was winded when he came up all-standing, his hands torn by the jagged metal which had caught him, but which had prevented him from falling headlong to the deck below.
As he hauled himself upwards, the lights came on, flickered, went out again: another few feet and he would have been flung to the galley stoves below, where they were trying to sort out the chaos. He regained the passageway and began stumbling aft, when the lights snicked on again. At the corner of the flat, the first lieutenant and a sick berth tiffy were crouching over a man whose guts spilled upon the corticene.
‘I’ve given him too much morphia, a double dose.’ The officer’s face was white, his eyes angry. ‘Tell the PMO, Gamble. Ask him what I can do.’
Hob rushed on towards where the hatchway to the damage control headquarters should be. The heat was becoming unbearable, the plating hot beneath his shoes.
He could go no further, halted by a group of men working frenziedly in the passage. The master-at-arms was in charge, his clipped orders spurring the damage control party. He tossed a crowbar to a burly seaman.
‘Get stuck in, Roper,’ he panted.
Hob waited impatiently to shove his way past them. The ship was rolling unnaturally, jerking the men off their balance as they tried to enlarge the hole which they had ripped open in the bulkhead.
‘The main drain’s blocked in the hangar,’ the master shouted at him. ‘They’ve flooded the hangar and the water can’t get away. There’s hundreds of tons of free-flood in there.’
They took it in turns tearing, wrenching and levering at the ‘ widening gash As the mass of water slopped to starboard, jets of water spurted into the passageway ‘I can’t get the oxygen burners, sir,’ the master yelled ‘Look out when this stuff clears1’ He shoved a couple of men from the route to clear the passageway On the far side, Hob stumbled into the chief gunnery instructor ‘What’s up7’ Hob asked The man’s face was grey, dripping with sweat and he seemed all-in ‘Magazine’s about to go up,’ he gasped ‘There’s men in there, sir, and we can’t get ‘em out Impossible to supply missiles to the mountings can’t get near ‘em in this heat We’ve got to flood, sir I can’t get through to the bridge,’ he gasped ‘Communication’s gone ‘