“Something’s up,” I said to Kaz. “Harding wants us in Brixham, at the hards.”
“The what?” Kaz said.
“The hards,” I said. “It’s what they call the paved roads that lead straight to the embarkation points. Hard, paved surfaces and concrete ramps built by the engineers. They’re made for tanks and trucks, so they can drive right onto the transports. They’re everywhere along the coast.”
“Of course,” Kaz said. “I’ve seen them. I should have known Americans would create a short name for them. Did the colonel give any clue as to what has happened?”
“No, other than to meet him by LST 289. He said it would be hard to miss.” Sitting in Sir Rupert’s chair, I idly scanned his desk, out of habit-or nosiness. Papers were strewn across the top, as if someone had dumped files out and gone through them. I opened a drawer and saw much the same: papers jammed back into cardboard files, a rushed and sloppy search job.
“Billy, we should go,” Kaz said. “I will see if Mrs. Dudley is up and will provide a thermos of coffee.
“Good idea, Kaz,” I said, getting up and switching off the lamp. Part of me wanted to stay and figure out what the desk search had been all about. Especially the part of me that couldn’t face the notion of more early morning hours in the jeep.
“You’ll have to excuse Mr. Williams,” Mrs. Dudley said in the kitchen a little later, pouring coffee into a thermos and wrapping two ham sandwiches for us. “He has little time to himself and holds his sleep very dear. The telephone woke him early.”
“Is that coffee?” said Crawford, coming in the back door and sniffing the air.
“Have a cup with me,” Mrs. Dudley said. “These gentlemen have got to fly off to Brixham for some reason. Don’t know why anyone would want to go there, especially at dawn. What’s the bother, Captain?”
“Something about ships in Lyme Bay,” I said, shoving my arms into my trench coat.
“I should call my cousin in Salcombe,” Crawford said. “He’s with a shore battery crew on the heights above the harbor. They’ve got a clear view across the bay. I’ll not want to go out on the tide this morning if Jerry’s still prowling about.”
“They probably won’t be out in daylight,” I said. “But you never know.”
“Sounds like real trouble,” Crawford said as we made our way out.
“Colonels don’t call for much else,” I said as we left.
Kaz drove, and I checked the map in between bites of smoked ham on brown bread. We took the bridge over the River Dart, invisible as the early morning fog rose off it like white clouds between low, rolling hills. We got on the Brixham road and took it to the coast, finishing the last of our coffee as we wended our way through the town, down the heights to the harbor below. It looked like a decent little seaside town, and I wondered what Mrs. Dudley had against it.
A small inlet marked the beginning of the harbor area, with small craft and fishing boats moored close in. Beyond them were destroyers, patrol boats, and transports of all sizes. The breakwater was farther out, and we followed the newly widened road as it curved alongside the docks. Harding had been right. LST 289 was tough to miss. The ambulances parked close to the ship, and the frenetic activity all around her would have been signal enough. But as we drove down the hard, the damage was plain to see. The entire stern had been blown off, barely enough of the structure left intact to keep the Channel waters from pouring in and swamping the ship. An open gun mount hung precariously over the gaping hole, wisps of smoke escaping into the clear morning air.
The bow ramp was down, and tanks, half-tracks, and jeeps were driving off, passing us as we pulled over. The men on the vehicles looked straight ahead, silent and grim.
“I can’t believe it’s still afloat,” Kaz said, in a half whisper. Ambulances followed the vehicles, none of them in a hurry. No sirens for the dead. As we got out and walked closer, two MPs quickly came toward us, palms out, ordering us to halt. They tried to give us the bum’s rush until I mentioned Harding’s name, and then one of them escorted us aboard.
The deck was covered in hoses and shell casings. The LST had put up a fight with its light twenty- and forty-millimeter armament. The damage-control party had had a hot fire to deal with as well, judging by the blackened and blistered paint. Inside, we descended metal steps and found Harding at a table in a small room that smelled of oil and smoke. Opposite him was a naval officer, and between them were clipboards and stacks of paperwork. The walls were steel bulkheads with one grimy porthole.
“Captain Boyle and Lieutenant Kazimierz reporting as ordered, sir,” I said, almost at attention. I figured Harding would appreciate some military discipline in front of a navy guy.
“Lieutenant Mettler, Captain of the 289,” Harding said, nodding to the officer, who rose and shook our hands. He was short and dark haired, and had soot streaked across his forehead. He looked frantic and exhausted at the same time.
“Good luck, Colonel,” Mettler said as he left the room. “I’ll let you know if we find the body.”
“What body?” I said as he cleared the door. Or hatch, I think they call them in the navy.
“A very special body,” Harding said. “I can’t say any more right now.”
“Is there anything you can tell us, Colonel?” Kaz asked.
“LST 289 was part of Operation Tiger, the invasion exercise that began this morning,” Harding said. “German E-boats hit the convoy in the night, as it was steaming through Lyme Bay. The 289 was torpedoed. They got off easy. Two other LSTs were sunk.” He threw the pencil he was holding onto the stack of papers in front of him.
“Fully loaded?” I asked. Harding nodded.
“How many men?” Kaz asked, looking at the list of names in front of Harding.
“Hundreds,” he said. “Too many. Only a few from this ship. They managed to get the Higgins boats into the water and used them to push her into port. Smart move, probably saved most of the men on board. There’s probably a thousand soldiers and sailors on each LST. Some have been picked up, but not all.”
“You mean there are still men floating in the Channel?” I asked.
“The attack was at zero two hundred this morning,” Harding said. “The temperature in the Channel waters is forty-four degrees. Unless they’re on a raft, no one’s alive in the water.”
“Colonel, this is terrible, but I still don’t know what we can do to help.”
“They found him, Colonel,” Mettler said, his head popping in from the companionway.
“Come with me,” Harding told us, grabbing a clipboard and following Mettler. We descended farther into the bowels of the ship, boots echoing off steep metal steps, our way lit by jury-rigged lights on electric cables. The companionway ended in a sheer drop where the explosion had blasted clean through the steel and left a gaping hole. Below us was a tangle of wires, twisted girders, and smashed vehicles. Arc welders were glowing points of blinding light in the cavernous opening, and we all instinctively shielded our eyes as we took a ladder down into the hold, where the air smelled of gasoline. If there was a body down here, it was dead ten different ways.
Sky appeared above us through a jagged section of bulkhead, caved in by the force of the torpedo blast. Crewmen leaned in to their pry bars, muscling aside a slab of shorn metal as seawater sloshed against our ankles. Beneath the slab was a pool of oil and blood, the form of a body barely discernible in the gloom. Two bodies, I realized, trapped by the explosion and the section of steel bulkhead that had crushed them.
“You sure?” Harding asked.
“Yeah, that’s him,” Mettler said, pointing at an arm pinned under the corpse of a seaman, his dungarees soaked with blood. “He cut his hand, and I recognize the bandage.” There was a wide, dirty bandage at the base of a thumb, which was the best bet for identifying the body. He was dressed in army fatigues with an uninflated life belt clinched around his waist. I could see he was wearing a pack, but his cracked skull distracted me from any further investigation. Suffice it to say, a combat helmet is no protection against an exploding steel wall falling on top of you.