Without warning, and without ever – attack periscope apart – breaking the surface of the ocean. It seemed the Spanish submarine, a larger, five or six hundred ton version of the first one they had destroyed south of Bermuda, had been refuelling and taking on board perishable foodstuffs at the time she was chopped in half by the half-ton warhead of the Tiger Shark Mark XI torpedo which hit it a few feet abaft of its conning tower.
Like the first ‘kill’, this one was conducted with quiet, deadly precision. The merchant ship had broken up as she sank, the rending of hull plates and the crash of machinery breaking loose had followed her down into the depths as the Surprise had silently slipped away from the scene of the crime.
‘Do you think there were any survivors?’ Ted Forest had inquired of the submarine’s Executive Officer.
‘Probably,’ the other man had shrugged. ‘Not our problem, I’m afraid. Our rules of engagement forbid us to assist or to take on board survivors – be they enemy combatants or neutrals – other than for purposes of interrogation.’
Ted had later confided that he thought this was unnecessarily harsh, and speculated it was probably contrary to the international treaties concerning the treatment of combatants, or for that matter, non-combatants who were injured or who wanted to surrender.
Abe had thought about it.
He was still a little awed by the effortless efficiency of the submarine as a killing machine. It was like watching an execution, not a hunt.
‘Remember brave Achilles,” he had retorted grimly.
‘It just seems, well, unfair,’ Ted had countered, a little wary of his friend’s mood and perhaps, remembering – as if he was ever going to forget it – Abe’s murderous rampage on Little Inagua.
‘Not cricket?’
‘No.’
Abe had smiled sadly.
‘It is just war, Ted. Us or them. I’m sorry if that sounds cold but that’s as complicated as it is, no more or less. Kill or be killed and I, for one, vote for going on living every time.’
Ted had let it go.
Now they waited, on tenterhooks for the hatches to be sprung and to again draw cool, unfiltered sea air into their lungs. For the first time they became aware of a sense of motion under their feet. Several crewmen had warned them that the ‘boat rolls like a garbage scow’ in any sort of sea when she was on the surface. Luckily, it transpired that it was calm up above.
Ted clambered up the ladder awkwardly, one run at a time. When he reached the level of the casing strong arms lifted him through the hatch.
Abe followed, clambering out onto the hull, wondering at the discernible yielding ‘give’ underfoot as the submarine’s rubbery acoustic skin yielded to his weight.
The men of the deck party pulled the inflation lanyards of their life jackets; had they been activated inside the boat they would never have got through the pressure hatches.
It was pitch dark but a couple of members of the deck gang wore odd-looking headsets, with peaks that appeared to come down over their eyes. It was a few moments before Abe realised that they must be wearing some kind of infra-red night vision equipment. Two Royal Marines, faces blacked and garbed in black fatigues guided Ted into a rigid inflatable like the one which had lifted them off the north beach of Little Inagua. It was eased off the casing into the water. The boats engine purred and it circled, returning, pushing its rounded snout up against the Surprise.
‘Jump in, sir,” Abe was invited jocularly.
Actually, he fell into it.
Seconds later the boat was forging away from its mother ship to where, darkly emerging from the night a twin-engined Mallard seaplane bobbed silently on the extraordinarily flat, glassy seas. Abe imagined he could make out the dark hump of land to his right, and assumed these waters were sheltered by it. Nevertheless, for any part of the Atlantic Ocean to be as smooth as a millpond was positively bizarre.
The Mallard was rocking from side to side, its wing-tip floats slapping the surface of the sea. Again, Abe discovered that the best way to transfer from the ceaselessly moving inflatable was to fall into the rescue aircraft. Several strong arms grabbed, guided and generally arrested Ted Forest’s otherwise precarious entry into the passenger cabin.
The hatch shut, and was promptly dogged.
The port engine coughed into life.
Then the starboard.
The pilot ran up both motors, throttled back briefly.
By then Abe and Ted had been strapped in.
The Mallard started moving, turning, searching for the slightest of breezes to take off into, or failing that a current to kick up a wave to help bounce the machine into the air. Picking up speed the seaplane started to judder through the top of the water, her engines straining.
On and on, until suddenly the shaking stopped.
“We’re taking you two to St Augustine. We plan to present you to selected press, radio and TV reporters around noon tomorrow, after which you’ll be flown up to Norfolk. Lieutenant Lincoln, your wife will be informed of your safe return to New England shortly after we put you ashore in Florida.”
The man saying – or rather, shouting above the roar of the engines – was about Abe and Ted’s age, around his mid- to latter-twenties. In the very dim, red light of the cabin he was hanging on for dear life as the aircraft climbed, bucking and slipping through the turbulence as it tried to climb through the clouds.
Immediately, Abe was struck by the contrast between the antiseptic, futuristic modernity of HMS Surprise and the clattering, rattling old seaplane. It was as if he had stepped back into a thirty or forty-year-old technology, gone backwards in time. It also prompted another thought: If we have so effortlessly mastered the depths of the oceans; might we not have also, and as secretly, conquered the skies too?
“We’re going to need you chaps to memorise your scripts before we present you to the New England people. There will probably be stuff in there that you don’t like; that’s too bad. You follow the script. That order comes straight from Lord Collingwood.”
“You said my wife will be told I’m alive when we reach St Augustine?” Abe checked, in that moment not giving a damn what nonsense the Navy wanted him to spout tomorrow.
“Yes, the senior Naval Liaison officer supporting the relatives of the crew members of the Achilles, will be in his office overnight waiting for my call. He asked me to ascertain if he should wait until the morning to give your wife the good news. People knocking on one’s door in the middle of the night can be very worrying…”
“Kate will want to know as soon as possible,” Abe said, his voice thickening with long pent-up angst.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
Abe was exhausted, utterly spent which was strange because he had been physically inactive for most of the last few weeks, and ought to have been brimming with youthful energy. He sensed it was the same for Ted Forest.
“We believe that there were a number of other survivors from the Achilles, including Commander Cowdrey-Singh,” the two aviators were being told. “The Germans published a list of some fifty or so survivors. Your names weren’t on that list. One report is that the other survivors may be held captive on Santo Domingo under the protection of the German Minister at Guaynabo, San Juan. Frankly, we don’t know what to make of it. So, you two will be the first of the Achilles’s heroes to come home.”
In the darkness the other man could not see the anger in Abe’s and Ted’s eyes.