H. M. S. Ulysses (38 page)

‘Get that flare!' Turner was barking into the transmitter. ‘All Oerlikons, all pom-poms, get that flare!' He replaced the transmitter. ‘Might as well throw empty beer bottles at it with the old girl rolling like this,' he muttered. ‘Lord, gives you a funny feeling this!'

‘I know,' the Kapok Kid supplied. ‘Like one of these dreams where you're walking down a busy street and you suddenly realize that all you're wearing is a wrist-watch. “Naked and defenceless,” is the accepted term, I believe. For the non-literary, “caught with the pants down”.' Absently he brushed the snow off the quilted kapok, exposing the embroidered ‘J' on the breast pocket, while his apprehensive eyes probed into the circle of darkness outside the pool of light. ‘I don't like this at all,' he complained.

‘Neither do I.' Vallery was unhappy. ‘And I don't like Charlie's sudden disappearance either.'

‘He hasn't disappeared,' Turner said grimly. ‘Listen!' They listened, ears straining intently, caught the intermittent, distant thunder of the heavy engines. ‘He's way astern of us, closing.'

Less than a minute later the Condor roared overhead again, higher this time, lost in the clouds. Again he released a flare, higher, much higher than the last, and this time squarely over the heart of the convoy.

Again the roar of the engines died to a distant murmur, again the desynchronized clamour strengthened as the Condor overtook the convoy a second time. Glimpsed only momentarily in the inverted valleys between the scudding clouds, it flew wide, this time, far out on the port hand, riding clear above the pitiless glare of the sinking flares. And, as it thundered by, flares exploded into blazing life— four of them, just below cloud level, at four-second intervals. The northern horizon was alive with light, glowing and pulsating with a fierce flame that threw every tiny detail into the starkest relief. And to the south there was only the blackness: the rim of the pool of light stopped abruptly just beyond the starboard line of ships.

It was Turner who first appreciated the significance, the implications of this. Realization struck at him with the galvanic effect of sheer physical shock. He gave a hoarse cry, fairly flung himself at the broadcast transmitter: there was no time to await permission.

‘“B” turret!' he roared. ‘Starshells to the south. Green 90, green 90. Urgent! Urgent! Starshells, green 90. Maximum elevation 10. Close settings. Fire when you are ready!' He looked quickly over his shoulder. ‘Pilot! Can you see—?'

‘“B” turret training, sir.'

‘Good, good!' He lifted the transmitter again. ‘All guns! All guns! Stand by to repel air attack from starboard. Probable bearing green 90. Hostiles probably torpedo-bombers.' Even as he spoke, he caught sight of the intermittent flashing of the fighting lights on the lower yardarm: Vallery was sending out an emergency signal to the convoy.

‘You're right, Commander,' Vallery whispered. In the gaunt pallor, in the skin taut stretched across the sharp and fleshless bones, his face, in that blinding glare, was a ghastly travesty of humanity; it was a death's-head, redeemed only by the glow of the deep-sunken eyes, the sudden flicker of bloodless lids as the whip-lash crash of ‘B' turret shattered the silence. ‘You must be,' he went on slowly. ‘Every ship silhouetted from the north—and a maximum run-in from the south under cover of darkness.' He broke off suddenly as the shells exploded in great overlapping globules of light, two miles to the south. ‘You
are
right,' he said gently. ‘Here they come.'

They came from the south, wing-tip to wing-tip, flying in three waves with four or five planes in each wave. They were coming in at about 500 feet, and even as the shells burst their noses were already dipping into the plane of the shallow attack dive of the torpedo-bomber. And as they dived, the bombers fanned out, as if in search of individual targets—or what seemed, at first sight, to be individual targets. But within seconds it became obvious that they were concenrating on two ships and two ships alone—the
Stirling
and the
Ulysses
. Even the ideal double target of the crippled merchantman and the destroyer
Sirrus
, almost stopped alongside her, was strictly ignored. They were flying under orders.

‘B' turret pumped out two more starshells at minimum settings, reloaded with HE. By this time, every gun in the convoy had opened up, the barrage was intense: the torpedo-bombers—curiously difficult to identify, but looking like Heinkels—had to fly through a concentrated lethal curtain of steel and high explosive. The element of surprise was gone: the starshells of the
Ulysses
had gained a priceless twenty seconds.

Five bombers were coming at the
Ulysses
now, fanned out to disperse fire, but arrowing in on a central point. They were levelling off, running in on firing tracks almost at wave-top height, when one of them straightened up a fraction too late, brushed lightly against a cresting wave-top, glanced harmlessly off, then catapulted crazily from wave-top to wave-top—they were flying at right angles to the set of the sea—before disappearing in a trough. Misjudgment of distance or the pilot's windscreen suddenly obscured by a flurry of snow—it was impossible to say.

A second later the leading plane in the middle disintegrated in a searing burst of flame—a direct hit on its torpedo warhead. A third plane, behind and to the west, sheered off violently to the left to avoid the hurtling debris, and the subsequent dropping of its torpedo was no more than an empty gesture. It ran half a cable length behind the
Ulysses
, spent itelf in the empty sea beyond.

Two bombers left now, pressing home their attack with suicidal courage, weaving violently from side to side to avoid destruction. Two seconds passed, three, four—and still they came on, through the falling snow and intensely heavy fire, miraculous in their immunity. Theoretically, there is no target so easy to hit as a plane approaching directly head on: in practice, it never worked out that way. In the Arctic, the Mediterranean, the Pacific, the relative immunity of the torpedo-bombers, the high percentage of successful attacks carried out in the face of almost saturation fire, never failed to confound the experts. Tension, over-anxiety, fear— these were part of the trouble, at least: there are no half measures about a torpedo-bomber—you get him or he gets you. And there is nothing more nerve-racking—always, of course, with the outstanding exception of the screaming, near-vertical power-dive of the gull-winged Stuka dive-bomber—than to see a torpedo-bomber looming hugely, terrifyingly over the open sights of your gun and know that you have just five inexorable seconds to live . . . And with the
Ulysses
, of course, the continuous rolling of the cruiser in the heavy cross-sea made accuracy impossible.

These last two bombers came in together, wing-tip to wing-tip. The plane nearer the bows dropped its torpedo less than two hundred yards away, pulled up in a maximum climbing turn to starboard, a fusillade of light cannon and machine-gun shells smashing into the upper works of the bridge: the torpedo hit the water obliquely, porpoised high into the air, then crashed back again nose first into a heavy wave, diving steeply into the sea: it passed under the
Ulysses
.

But seconds before that the last torpedo-bomber had made its attack—made its attack and failed and died. It had come roaring in less than ten feet above the waves, had come straight on without releasing its torpedo, without gaining an inch in height, until the crosses on the upper sides of the wings could be clearly seen, until it was less than a hundred yards away. Suddenly, desperately, the pilot had begun to climb: it was immediately obvious that the torpedo release mechanism had jammed, either through mechanical failure or icing in the intense cold: obviously, too, the pilot had intended to release the torpedo at the last minute, had banked on the sudden decrease of weight to lift him over the
Ulysses
.

The nose of the bomber smashed squarely into the for'ard funnel, the starboard wing shearing off like cardboard as it scythed across the after leg of the tripod mast. There was an instantaneous, blinding sheet of gasoline flame, but neither smoke nor explosion. A moment later the crumpled, shattered bomber, no longer a machine but a torn and flaming crucifix, plunged into the hissing sea a dozen yards away. The water had barely closed over it when a gigantic underwater explosion heeled the
Ulysses
far over to starboard, a vicious hammer-blow that flung men off their feet and shattered the lighting system on the port side of the cruiser.

Commander Turner hoisted himself painfully to his feet, shook his head to clear it of the cordite fumes and the dazed confusion left by cannon shells exploding almost at arm's length. The shock of the detonating torpedo hadn't thrown him to the duckboards—he'd hurled himself there five seconds previously as the flaming guns of the other bomber had wrecked the bridge from pointblank range.

His first thought was for Vallery. The Captain was lying on his side, crumpled strangely against the binnacle. Dry-mouthed, cold with a sudden chill that was not of that Polar wind, Turner bent quickly, turned him gently over.

Vallery lay still, motionless, lifeless. No sign of blood, no gaping wound—thank God for that! Turner peeled off a glove, thrust a hand below duffel coat and jacket, thought he detected a faint, a very faint beating of the heart. Gently he lifted the head off the frozen slush, then looked up quickly. The Kapok Kid was standing above him.

‘Get Brooks up here, Pilot,' he said swiftly. ‘It's urgent!'

Unsteadily, the Kapok Kid crossed over the bridge. The communication rating was leaning over the gate, telephone in his hand.

‘The Sick Bay, quickly!' the Kapok Kid ordered. ‘Tell the Surgeon Commander . . . ' He stopped suddenly, guessed that the man was still too dazed to understand. ‘Here, give me that phone!' Impatiently, he stretched out his hand and grabbed the telephone, then stiffened in horror as the man slipped gradually backwards, extended arms trailing stiffly over the top of the gate until they disappeared. Carpenter opened the gate, stared down at the dead man at his feet: there was a hole the size of his gloved fist between the shoulder-blades.

He lay alongside the Asdic cabinet, a cabinet, the Kapok Kid now saw for the first time, riddled and shattered with machine-gun bullets and shells. His first thought was the numbing appreciation that the set must be smashed beyond recovery, that their last defence against the U-boats was gone. Hard on the heels of that came the sickening realization that there had been an Asdic operator inside there . . . His eyes wandered away, caught sight of Chrysler rising to his feet by the torpedo control. He, too, was staring at the Asdic cabinet, his face drained of expression. Before the Kapok Kid could speak, Chrysler lurched forward, fists battering frantically, blindly at the jammed door of the cabinet. Like a man in a dream, the Kapok Kid heard him sobbing . . . And then he remembered. The Asdic operator—his name was Chrysler too. Sick to his heart, the Kapok Kid lifted the phone again . . .

Turner pillowed the Captain's head, moved across to the starboard corner of the compass platform. Bentley, quiet, unobtrusive as always, was sitting on the deck, his back wedged between two pipes, his head pillowed peacefully on his chest. His hand under Bentley's chin, Turner gazed down into the sightless eyes, the only recognizable feature of what had once been a human face. Turner swore in savage quiet, tried to prise the dead fingers locked round the hand-grip of the Aldis, then gave up. The barred beam shone eerily across the darkening bridge.

Methodically, Turner searched the bridge-deck for further casualties. He found three others and it was no consolation at all that they must have died unknowing. Five dead men for a three-second burst—a very fair return, he thought bitterly. Standing on the after ladder, his face stilled in unbelief as he realized that he was staring down into the heart of the shattered for'ard funnel. More he could not see: the boat deck was already blurred into featureless anonymity in the dying glare of the last of the flares. He swung on his heel, returned to the compass platform.

At least, he thought grimly, there was no difficulty in seeing the
Stirling
. What was it that he had said—said less than ten minutes ago? ‘I wish they'd have a go at the
Stirling
once in a while.' Something like that. His mouth twisted. They'd had a go, all right. The
Stirling
, a mile ahead, was slewing away to starboard, to the south-east, her for'ard superstructure enveloped in a writhing cocoon of white flame. He stared through his night glasses, tried to assess the damage; but a solid wall of flame masked the superstructure, from the fo'c'sle deck clear abaft the bridge. He could see nothing there, just nothing—but he could see, even in that heavy swell, that the
Stirling
was listing to starboard. It was learned later that the
Stirling
had been struck twice: she had been torpedoed in the for'ard boiler-room, and seconds later a bomber had crashed into the side of her bridge, her torpedo still slung beneath the belly of her fuselage: almost certainly, in the light of the similar occurrence on the
Ulysses
, severe icing had jammed the release mechanism. Death must have been instantaneous for every man on the bridge and the decks below; among the dead were Captain Jeffries, the First Lieutenant and the Navigator.

The last bomber was hardly lost in the darkness when Carrington replaced the poop phone, turned to Hartley.

‘Think you can manage now, Chief? I'm wanted on the bridge.'