“Bring her round a point to port, please.”
In the strange light he looked like the statue of an old Norseman. Tall and gaunt, with a ragged beard thrusting above his fisherman’s jersey.
“Course one-four-zero, sir.”
The Norwegian said calmly, “My friend’s boat will be appearing any minute now, I think.”
Drummond did not say anything. He felt it might break the spell and leave them all helpless. He hoped to God that the other ships astern were still on station. For with shallowing water to starboard, and the end of the minefield to port, any deviation could be final.
Lyngstad added, “Be clearing soon, too. But the work will be-“
He swung round as a lookout snapped, “Ship, sir! Fine on port bow!”
“Half speed! ” Lyngstad waved his arms wildly as the grubby little trawler loomed out of the mist. “I knew he would be here!”
The trawler was already gathering way, her hull pirouetting round as she swerved to take over the lead. If her skipper had been shocked to see the destroyer dashing straight for hi n, he gave no hint as he handled the little boat with apparent panache.
Archer was standing on the port gratings. “The enemy’s R.D.F. station is over there, high up on Vannoy Island. Our friends ashore must have done their work all right. We’d have had all hell down on us otherwise, fog or no bloody fog!”
“Ten fathoms, sir.”
“Good.” Lyngstad looked at Drummond. “Tell your helmsman to keep as close to the fishing boat as he can.”
Wingate stooped over the voice-pipe as a messenger called, “X gun report they can see Ventnor following astern, sir.” He grinned with sudden relief.
Wingate looked up. “Did you think we were all alone? Tch, tch!”
Drummond felt the movement of cold, misty air against his face. Lyngstad was probably right about the fog clearing. He made a sudden decision.
“Hoist battle ensigns, Yeoman!”
Lyngstad drew his gaze from the small patch of clear water ahead of the bows and said simply, “I have a flag, Captain, I was hoping …” He did not finish it, but pulled the rolled flag from under his reefer.
Drummond said, “Yeoman. Run up this one beside ours.”
He watched the white ensigns breaking out on the masts, the other, smaller flag, red with its blue cross, rising firmly to the upper yard. He saw the Norwegian’s face and guessed what this small gesture meant to him.
Lyngstad said, “Now I know we will succeed today! Thank you.”
The Norwegian flag licked out abeam, and it was like a signal.
Very slowly at first, and then with gathering haste, like a first curtain, the mist started to edge clear, laying bare the tall green side of an island, a strip of glittering channel and a solitary, anchored patrol boat.
Lyngstad said harshly, “She is yours now, Captain!” Drummond gripped the rail. “Open fire!”
12
In Deadly Earnest
It seemed to take an eternity before the two forward guns responded to the tinny fire gong. They recoiled on their springs almost together, the double explosion echoing and smashing back from the nearest land as if they, and not the anchored patrol boat, were under attack.
Drummond held his glasses jammed against his eyes, feeling the deck buck, his ears taking in Rankin’s voice across his intercom, the startled cry from a lookout as the explosions shook the bridge.
“Range oh-one-oh! Shoot!”
Again the guns spat out their tongues of flame, and Drummond saw a tall waterspout rise directly alongside the little vessel, another burst skyward far beyond.
“Down one hundred! Shoot!”
The next pair of shells smashed into the vessel together. She must have been built entirely of wood. Timber and jagged fragments were hurled into the air, and the oily water of the fjord pockmarked with scattered debris. There was fire, too, long plumes of it licking from abaft her small, boxlike bridge, where a few frantic figures were emerging like frightened insects.
Drummond shouted, “Secondary armament! Fire when ready!”
Immediately, as if anticipating the order, the bridge Oerlikons rattled into life. Drummond saw their lazy lines of scarlet tracer lifting away ahead of Warlock’s bows, before criss-crossing and intermingling like hammers of hell across the stricken patrol boat. The twenty-millimetre shells completed what the heavier ones had begun. Sparks and flames enveloped her from step to stern, and while here and there a forlorn swimmer was trying to splash away from the listing hull, others were being forced into the inferno between decks under a fusilade of tracer and metal.
“Port ten!” Drummond moved his glasses slightly. “Midships. Steady as you go!”
He heard Rankin yell, “Cease firing! Shift target Green four-five! Range double-oh-eight!”
From somewhere astern he heard the jarring crash of gunfire as the other destroyers followed through the narrow entrance to the fjord. Shells were exploding everywhere, the results mostly hidden in the retreating mist.
He saw Rankin’s new target even as the first gunlayer shouted, “Layer on!”
It was a high-sided freighter of some five thousand tons. From what he could see in the drifting mist and gunsmoke, he guessed she was the depot ship. There were small derricks lining her main deck, and alongside he could just make out the outline of a moored pontoon.
Lyngstad shouted, “The submarine tender! Many of the crews under training live in her! ” He was wildly oblivious to the crashing detonations, to the harsh rattle of automatic weapons which made thought a painful effort.
“Shoot!”
The four-inch shells made bright red eyes in the ship’s side, and then, as they exploded deep within the hull, deck fittings and whole sections of steel were hurled high into the air.
Someone was firing back from her high bridge with a machine gun. Drummond’s mind recorded its impartial rattle, the almost gentle sound of a Spandau. Then he felt the impact of bullets below the bridge, the banshee whine of ricochets, before another shell slammed into the depot ship and ignited either a paint store or a locker full of signal flares.
Warlock lurched drunkenly and then picked up speed again, and as he glanced over the screen Drummond watched the bow section of the smashed patrol boat bouncing away in a welter of spray and tiny splintered fragments. A man who had been clinging to a broken hatch-cover was plucked away and down into Warlock’s churning screws, his mouth wide in a silent scream as he vanished into the white froth.
He snapped to Tucker, “Make a signal to Waxwing. Attack with torpedoes!”
“Sir!” Hillier was staggering across the swaying gratings. “Midget submarines on the port bow!” His face was like chalk. “Must be a hundred of them!”
Drummond swung round, his eyes and mind recording everything in the same second. Tucker’s lamp shuttering his signal to Lovat’s ship which was careering across Ventnor’s stern. The strange, sharp-edged slipways of raw concrete which had been built for the sole purpose of launching and training the German crews. Up, partly hidden by camouflaged nets and low trees, he saw the long huts, workshops and stores which had made an idea into a reality which would soon have been used against the Allies. He recalled in the same instant the dead crewman in the Falmouth mortuary. His slitted eyes. The girl who had leaned against his slab without even a flicker of interest.
He yelled, “Depth-charge attack! Minimum setting!”
Wingate shouted into the handset and then added, “Shallow there, sir! No more than twenty fathoms!”