Someone else had finally been roused from his bed ashore. Bullets made thin, harmless-looking weaves of tracer as they probed above the mist and smoke, the tiny balls of fire so deceptively slow until they reached their apex and then lashed down on the advancing ships with the fury of bandsaws.
Further inland he heard duller thuds, grenades or mines, he did not know. Only that the Norwegian underground were doing their part, pinning down German outposts as they were awakened by the frightening roar and thunder of exploding shells.
Drummond seized Wingate’s arm. “Tell the yeoman to warn the other ships to keep clear!”
He ducked as a glass panel was shattered from the screen. He felt tiny pointers stinging his cheek, the taste of blood on his lips.
The two after guns were bearing now on the depot ship and other installations nearby. The slender barrels rocked back on their mountings, and once Rankin yelled wildly, “Look at that one go up! A hit, the bloody bastards!”
Even in all this Drummond’s mind noted that he had not known Rankin to lose his show of calm so completely. “Depth-charges ready, sir!”
He craned over the screen, seeing an Oerlikon gunner directly below him, strapped by his harness, while his gloved hand beat an urgent tattoo on the breech as his assistant hoisted a full magazine into place. Right aft he saw the crouching shapes of the depth-charge parties, bent double like athletes as they tried to stay away from bright sparks which were being struck from the metal decks by an invisible machine gun.
“Fire!”
The port charge was hurled from its thrower in a puff of smoke to fall within a few feet of the outer trot of moored submarines. A squad of soldiers suddenly came around the nearest building, rifles at the high port, their helmets bobbing up and down as they skidded to a halt at the sight of a destroyer surging past the slipways with every weapon firing.
The depth-charge exploded violently, shaking Warlock from stern to bow like a terrier mauling a rat. Men fell cursing and yelling as she swayed dizzily away from the blast, and almost before they had recovered, a pattern of charges rolled from her stern and blasted the water a hundred feet higher than the mainmast truck.
Tucker was yelling, “Signal from Ventnor, sir! More gunfire astern!”
“Captain (D) coming in to support us.” Wingate dashed some fragments of grit and flaked paint from his face. “About bloody time!”
Drummond kept his eyes on the creeping, dodging figures which were darting through the smoke towards the remaining submarines. The crews which had been berthed ashore would be trying to save their craft. As any trained sailor would. They must be stopped.
“Slow ahead both engines!” He coughed in a down-draught of greasy smoke from the funnel. “Tell Guns to shift all he’s got to that target!”
A deafening roar came at them across the water and bounded against the hull like a living thing. Through the trapped smoke and haze within the fjord he saw a spreading sheen of red and gold, spilling out until it had covered every inch of water in a fierce, throbbing glow.
“Torpedo attack completed, sir.”
Lovat would have enjoyed that. Each of his three torpedoes must have made a direct hit on the depot ship. At that range it would need an idiot to miss.
Even through the roar of gunfire, the echo of Lovat’s own salvo, they heard the groan of fracturing plates and frames, the eager thunder of inrushing water.
Wingate crouched over the compass, with Lyngstad shouting directions into his ear.
Occasionally the hull jerked to a blow from some well hidden cannon ashore, and high above the bridge the air seemed to be constantly alive with tracer and shrieking steel.
Astern, Selkirk had manoeuvred across their wake again, and was pouring a devastating fire into the jumble of midget submarines. It was impossible to tell the difference between those which had been capsized by the depth-charge attack and those which, if handled properly, might still escape. Shells were bursting everywhere. On land, in the water and dead in the middle of the low black hulls.
Figures ran amidst the bursts of smoke and fire like demented beings, others were plucked away by the machine guns’ scythe of tracer which swept back and forth with relentless efficiency. The guns cut down running men and wounded alike, picked up smoking corpses and tossed them about like bundles of bloody rags before moving on again. Several huts were ablaze, and from one came the crackle of exploding small-arms ammunition until a direct hit blew the building into pieces.
All the bridge party ducked and looked up as a twin whistle, sharp and abbreviated, ripped overhead, followed immediately by a violent bang. The hull gave a long shiver, and the water alongside danced in tiny white feathers of spray.
“Shore battery!” Lyngstad had to shout before anyone looked at him. “They must have been able to repulse our people!”
Again the shriek of shells, and an even louder detonation. The first fall of shot was clearly visible. Two great oval necklaces of salt spray where two shells had burst side by side. Like huge, melancholy eyes.
Drummond shouted, “Call up Captain (D). Tell him I require support now!”
Again the shells ripped above the vibrating mastheads and the streaming flags. Almost flat trajectory. The guns must be firing from a site on the island directly abeam.
Rankin was snapping, “Shift target! Red eight-oh! Range oh-one-five! Commence … commence … commence!”
The four guns were swinging round, their hooded crews working their wheels so fast that hands and metal were blurred into one.
“Shoot!”
Rankin again. “No! It must be behind those trees!”
More crashes, and a louder bang which rebounded into the lower hull like a club on an oil drum.
Hillier called, “Waxwing has been bracketed, sir!” He gasped. “She’s slewing round!”
Drummond ran across the bridge, his boots crunching on broken glass as he peered through the long trailers of smoke. Waxwing had received more than a straddle. He could see the deadly pattern of splinter holes at the break of her forecastle, the larger smoking puncture right below B gun. The gun was pointing at the sky, its crew strewn around it like old clothes. He saw thin lines of scarlet running down from the dead gun crew, and a single figure dragging itself towards the ladder, its legs ablaze like torches.
Several of the men on her bridge must have been killed or wounded, too. At the vital moment as she had made to turn after Ventnor. She had charged out of control to run full aground on a hard shoulder, and was even now heeling over, showing her decks, the unmanned torpedo tubes, empty and pointing abeam where they had hit the enemy depot ship.
“Shoot!”
“A hit, sir!” The lookout was yelling wildly as a whole line of dark trees burst into flame and another explosion ran down the hillside like molten fire.
‘Too late for Waxwing!” Archer, the man from intelligence, was trying to light a cigarette, but the ship and all else was shaking so badly he looked like the victim of shellshock.
Drummond saw the small Norwegian fishing boat was already churning towards the grounded destroyer, small figures waiting with heaving lines to haul the survivors clear. Poor Lovat. He loved that clapped-out old ship.
Hillier was shouting into a voice-pipe, one hand over his ear. He said dazedly, “W/T reports that Lomond is remaining outside the fjord, sir! There has been a signal from Admiralty. Moltke is out of Trondheim. Probably left yesterday and heading north.”
Wingate said, “Jesus! That’s all we need!”
A bright glare joined with a single explosion, and when Drummond looked again at Waxwing he saw that the fishing boat had been cut in half by a heavy shell, probably from another battery. She was sinking and ablaze, the fires reaching out and spreading along the stranded destroyer.