Tucker said, “From Ventnor, sir. Am taking off survivors.”
The deck shook-as Rankin’s guns fired again and yet again. The hillside was covered in smoke and blazing trees, but to seek out and destroy a well-sited shore battery was almost impossible.
He said, “Half ahead. Take her to the end of the fjord.”
His mind was cringing, rebelling against the panorama of shellbursts and crackling trees, of bobbing flotsam which parted across Warlock’s stem. All he could understand was that Beaumont had decided to stay out of the fight with the bulk of the flotilla. Because Moltke might be even now steaming round the next headland. And what if she did? Did he think the flotilla could survive against her for more than minutes?
Lyngstad was shouting, “Just another mile, Captain! You’ll see the fuel dump at the foot of the hillside!”
Drummond snatched up a handset. “Guns, This is the captain. In a moment you will sight the main target. Keep shooting at it, no matter what.”
“Understood.”
Drummond raised his glasses and studied Ventnor as she altered course diagonally above the hidden bar which had caught Lovat’s ship. There was smoke everywhere, but he could see figures floundering against Selkirk’s scrambling nets, others swimming independently amongst corpses in lifejackets and the telltale spurts of machine-gun bullets.
A great glowing eye glittered in Ventnor’s side and expanded to a longer array of splinter gashes. But every one of her guns was angled towards the land, and she was maintaining rapid fire, despite her inner hurt. More shells exploded near her, hurling up tall waterspouts which seemed to take an age to fall. Each time she was still there, the work going on as before. But there were more splinter holes. Fewer men helping to haul aboard Waxwing’s survivors.
“Target in sight! Red oh-five. Range oh-two-five.”
“Shoot!”
Drummond clung to the screen as flaked paint and rust flew up from the detonations. He could not see the target at all, even with his glasses.
“Ventnor’s under way again, sir!” A signalman was pointing vaguely into the fog of gunsmoke. “She’s following us!”
Drummond nodded, his throat raw with shouting and coughing smoke. A stronger eddy of wind cleared a narrow road which ran almost parallel with Warlock’s course, and he saw two trucks and a car blazing fiercely, some uniformed corpses close by, and the bright glitter of automatic fire higher up the hillside.
Lyngstad seemed satisfied. “Our people are hitting them hard, too!”
Wingate pushed against him. “Time to alter course, sir.”
“Yes.” Lyngstad had to drag his eyes from the ambushed patrol. “You steer east now, towards Arnoy Island, there you will alter course once more to the north-west channel, and open water.”
A tank had appeared on the end of the road and was training its turret towards the hidden Resistance men, when its commander must have sighted the destroyers in the fjord below him. Before he could come to a decision Ventnor’s forward guns opened up on him, hurling the turret one way and the rest of the tank down and down into the deep water below.
Archer said breathlessly, “Probably the only duel between tank and ship!”
Drummond felt the Norwegian’s hand gripping his arm like steel. He needed no words, for as Rankin’s second salvo ploughed into the prescribed piece of land the whole bank of green and brown seemed to fall apart in a torrent of blazing fuel.
Drummond kept his eyes on the spreading wall of fire, but said harshly, “Ask Ventnor if she can maintain full speed.”
He was thinking of the next part. The dash through the wider fjord and out into open water again.
“From Ventnor, sir. Just say the word. ” The lights were blinking again like cats’ eyes through the funnelling smoke. “Have recovered eighty survivors. Lovat killed.”
“Acknowledge.”
He looked at Wingate, seeing the deep lines of strain around his eyes and mouth.
“Now. Take her round.”
“Port fifteen. Steady. Steer zero-nine-zero.”
Warlock swayed upright again and headed towards the next blur of land. Hundreds of eyes must have been watching, but apart from a few hurrying soldiers on the nearest spur of headland, there was not a living soul in sight.
“Steady on zero-nine-zero, sir.”
Drummond nodded. The stored fuel was still flooding into the calmer water at the head of the fjord. Fuel for Tirpitz and Scharnhorst, for Hitler’s tanks and lorries. The very stuff of the whole war machine.
Hillier yelled, “Those soldiers, sir! I think there’s a mobile gun-“
Drummond snatched up the handset. “Guns! Shift target! Mobile gun at Red four-five!”
Then the world seemed to come apart, like a picture being ripped into meaningless fragments. No noise, and little feeling beyond a great, blanketing pressure.
Wingate was the first to recover, and tried to drag himself to the voice-pipe. He was speaking aloud, but could hear nothing at all.
“Bridge- Wheelhouse!” The smoke was getting thicker. Blotting out everything. He could not even breathe. “Send help. Direct hit!”
Then he rolled over and fell against Archer. He had just time to record that Archer still retained the unlit cigarette in his mouth, even though most of his body below the waist was like pulp. Only then did he fall unconscious.
Keyes clung to the plot table with all his strength as the bridge rang and trembled to the crash of gunfire. Although he had heard guns before, he had never dreamed it could go on like this.
No sort of obvious control or objective, just an unending stream of intermingled sounds and voices. From above and below, from pipes and microphones. It was like the worst part of a nightmare, except that here there was no escape, no reprieve.
The navigator’s yeoman blinked at him through a film of falling paint flakes from the deckhead, his face set in a wild grin.
“Not like they tell you it’s goin’ to be, is it, sir?” He ooked slightly mad. Desperate.
Keyes shook his head as the plot table gave a violent shiver and the glass top cracked into several pieces. He groped for the voice-pipe.
“I’ll tell the bridge it’s out of action.”
He saw Rigge’s hand on his wrist and heard him say hoarsely, “Leave it, sir! They’ve got enough trouble up top by the sound of it!”
The heavy canvas curtain which separated the rest of the wheelhouse from the plot table bucked and heaved as if alive and in torment. Keyes could hear the familiar creak of the spokes going this way and that, the occasional jingle of telegraphs as speed was increased or reduced to order. The wheelhouse party said little, and only cursed and gasped as splinters cracked against the sides, or an extra loud explosion burst nearby and seemed to suck every bit of air from their confined, deafening world.
Keyes tried to think of Georgina, imagined her close against him, her eyes welcoming and a little in awe as he took her in his arms. But it was hard to keep her in his mind, harder to hold on to his wits.
The coxswain was shouting, “By God, I’ve ‘ad a bloody jugful of this lot!”
Then came the bang. It seemed to come from right beside the canvas curtain, blasting away reason, overwhelming in its intensity. The whole bridge rocked over as if tearing adrift, and when Keyes opened his eyes he could see nothing, could barely draw breath in the volume of choking smoke.
He had gone blind! Terror, despair, the need to find help, all swept through him as he rolled over, clawing with his hands until he realised that the blindness was caused by the big curtain. The blast, or whatever it was, had wrapped it round him and Rigge, bundling them in the wheelhouse corner like packages in a shop.
As he fought it away and staggered to his feet, he could barely stop himself from screaming.