Twelve Seconds to Live (2002) (29 page)

‘I’ve been right through the boat, sir.’ He hesitated, looking over the screen at the sea, as if he loathed it. ‘It’s not a dockyard job, as far as I can estimate, but it’ll keep us in harbour for a week or two.’

Foley held the enamel mug to his mouth and swallowed the last of the thick, clinging cocoa, ‘ki’, which Shannon had organized in the engine room. With the galley in ruins, it was all they had. A good tot of rum would help, but they were not out of danger yet.

He considered what the Chief had told him, and could picture the damage for himself. And the human cost. Scott, the new telegraphist, killed by shell splinters on his first trip in 366. He had only spoken to him a couple of times and could hardly recall his face. Hutton, seaman gunner, who had lost both hands in the attack, a likeable youngster who had been in their small company for six months or more. And another seaman named Miles who had been cruelly scarred across the face by wood fragments which might have blinded him.

Foley touched his side. It felt raw, and when he moved, it hurt like hell. A close thing. But he had been lucky and he knew it.

Shannon said, ‘I’ll be getting back then, sir.’ Like so many of his calling he felt out of place on the bridge, away from his engines, which even now he was listening to, sifting each sound and vibration.

‘You did well, Chief.’

Shannon smiled. ‘We all did, I reckon, sir.’

Foley heard him retreating from the sea and sky. Did he ever think of the garage he had once managed, and the wife who had left him for somebody else? The only man aboard who never received any letters when the mail boat came alongside.

Another of the men they had taken from the sinking ML had died. That made eight, including her skipper. Almost half her complement.

He reached over and wiped the salt from the glass screen. It was still dark, but at this time in the morning watch you seemed to get a kind of second sight, the sea and full-bellied clouds acting like a warning. More ships were lost returning to base than on operations. Tired and spent, thinking of getting back to a warm bed, perhaps. Or maybe a letter from home. Allison always seemed to receive a lot of mail. It was hardly surprising. He could hear him now, speaking to some shadowy figure by the midships gun mounting. After this night nobody would try to take the mickey out of him again.

Dougie Bass returned to the wheel and took over from the helmsman who had relieved him for a well-earned break. Bass had been on the wheel almost continously since they had quit their little base with its church and solitary pub.

What was she doing now? Asleep? Or had someone
got news of the operation which had misfired? As if the enemy had known, and been waiting for them.

One minelayer sunk, and it was unlikely that anybody would have survived, and ML417 shot to pieces. Against that, they might have put paid to an E-Boat with the depth charge ruse.
Might, if, maybe.
It was hardly anything to crow about.

A voice seemed to ask,
And what about you?

Foley eased himself to his feet, and sensed that Bass had taken his eyes from the compass to watch him. And there was Harrison, the tough leading hand, one of the hard men, who had been so concerned that he had been unable to accept that his skipper had been brought down. A wood splinter,
big as a baby’s arm
, which might have ended everything.

And the other ML’s Number One, older and probably far more experienced than Allison, who had seemed suddenly lost, crushed by what had happened to his boat, and to his skipper.

Was that how it would be?

‘
Aircraft
, sir!’

Foley swung round and felt the dressing pulling at his torn skin. He cupped his hands to his ears, turning slightly to find and gauge the sound.

‘Ahead, sir! Moving left to right!’

That was Chitty, at his station again. He missed nothing.

Foley said, ‘Stand to! Warn the engine room!’

Allison was here, dragging out his binoculars, his jaw still working on a scrap of food from somewhere.

Foley watched his faint silhouette against the clouds.
A youth who had dodged extra sport and studied first aid as an excuse; he could well imagine it. The same youth who might just as quickly have been thrown into command of this boat.

Cocking levers clicked into place, and a figure lurched aft with a new magazine for an Oerlikon.

Foley licked his lips and felt the cold air probing through his torn jacket and sweater, and against his skin. Then he heard it. One aircraft, perhaps searching for some clue which would bring the whole pack down on them at first light. Louder now; he could imagine the pilot, alone in his cockpit. A different sort of war.

At any moment he might drop a flare and . . . night into day again. He felt his teeth snagging together. Shivering, but not from the cold.

Bass muttered, ‘Come on then, let’s be ’avin’ you!’

‘There, sir! Starboard bow!’

Foley saw the small flares falling slowly towards the sea, touching the troughs and serried waves with colour.

Green, green, then red over green. The recognition challenge. Foley took a long, ragged breath. Probably one of Coastal Command. Looking for them.

There was a prick of light; the signalman must have been poised with his finger on the trigger, and then a solitary white flare exploded like a bright star before fading and drifting down again with the wind.

Tony Brock had replied to the signal.

There was still a long way to go.

Foley said, ‘Go aft, Toby.’ He was thinking of the young seaman who might have lost his sight for good.
‘Find Miles for me, will you? Tell him we’re going home.’

Afterwards, he wondered how he had managed to get it out.

A near thing.

The same Operations Officer yawned hugely and scratched his side.

‘That about does it, David. Quite enough, too, for one bloody night, I’d say!’

David Masters studied the plot, and the scribbled comments and times on the wall chart. Outside it was very dark, or so it seemed away from these glaring lights. And yet he had heard Reveille sound over the tannoy system, what felt like hours ago.

It was a physical effort to think, but he went over it again. The two minelayers were on their way to Plymouth; a fresh escort should already be in company. The motor launches would enter harbour at ten o’clock. Handling parties would be mustered, ambulances standing by. It was a familiar scenario, and yet . . . He rubbed his chin, his hand rasping over the stubble; he could not remember when he had last had a good night’s sleep.

He looked at the incident log. There had been three all told. Two magnetic mines had been reported, one in Swanage, about twenty miles away, and the other on the outskirts of Poole harbour. An unidentified sighting had been made off Durlston Head, and minesweepers were waiting until daylight.

It was all in hand; there was nothing more he could do. So why should he feel such a sense of frustration?
He should be used to it. The teams were experienced. They were all volunteers. It would make no difference if he was able to be present with every one of them.

A telegraphist poked his head around the screen.

‘Call for you, sir. In your office?’

‘Who is it?’

The man grinned, despite the hours he had been on watch, the strain of listening to the reports. Ships vanishing. Men dying. Symbols on a chart.

‘Rear-Admiral Fawcett, sir.’

The Operations Officer almost choked on his cup of tea.

‘At this hour? Does he never sleep?’

The yeoman of signals muttered, ‘Not on his own anyway, lucky bugger!’

It had been a long night, so the Ops Officer chose to ignore the remark.

Masters climbed the steps into his office and shut the door. He could smell the stale pipe smoke, evidence of his last brief visit.

Bumper Fawcett came straight to the point.

‘I shall be with you at noon, or thereabouts. I’ve been following the situation, and I’m unhappy about it.’ A pause, and Masters could hear his quick breathing. His anger. ‘Are you there?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well, I want a full investigation, and tell Brock I shall expect a report from him, not in some bloody document,
what
?’

Masters rubbed his aching eyes. ‘I shall arrange it, sir.’

‘Too bloody much of this cloak-and-dagger nonsense! Find out what’s wrong, then stamp on it, that’s always been my scheme of things!’

The line went dead.

Masters glanced around the office, hating it, and thinking suddenly of his last commanding officer, before he had been given
Tornado
. After a patrol, no matter how wearing and dangerous, his skipper had always appeared on the bridge shaved and smartly turned out for entering harbour. ‘Not vanity, David. It’s my way of saying thanks to our lads. Showing them that it matters.’

He peered at his watch and strode down to the Operations Room again.

‘Can I have a car? Now?’

The Operations Officer nodded and gestured to a messenger. ‘For the Big Chief?’

‘For me.’ He heard a car starting up, and reached for the blackout curtain. ‘If anything . . .’

‘I know. I’ll call you right away.’

Masters waited for his eyes to accept the darkness and headed for the main gates. Groups of sailors were marching between the huts, and there was activity around the sick quarters: there would be wounded to attend to. Hope to offer, where there might be none. ML366 had been in action; Chris Foley had not been reported injured. But information was limited, censored.

The driver was a marine, the one he had seen talking with the Wren, Foley’s girl.

The car moved off through the gates, where two ambulances were already waiting to enter.

‘Bad luck, eh, sir?’

Masters touched the scar on his cheek. There were no secrets here.

He said, ‘I’ll be as fast as I can.’

The driver nodded. The officer had told him politely to shut up.

It only took a few minutes, but it seemed an hour. When he got out of the car he could see the house already framed against the sky, the line of trees beyond, and was suddenly angry with himself. What was he trying to prove? Every day men were being killed, by accident or by booby-trap, or by some device not even fully understood. He had met every one of them and sometimes had watched them go, on what had proved to be their last mission.

He groped for the door but it had opened. He stared at her, taken completely aback, and unable to conceal it.

‘Elaine! I had no idea . . .’

She touched his arm. ‘Come in and shut the door. I’ll put on some lights.’

For a moment they stood looking at one another, then she said quietly, ‘I knew you were coming. I don’t know why.’ She waved towards the stairs. ‘I have a fresh shirt for you. Coker showed me.’ She faced him again, the same defiance in her voice. ‘I called the base. They told me you’d just left.’

Masters took her hands. ‘What a way to begin the day. You look lovely.’

She was fully dressed, in the uniform-style tunic and trousers he remembered. Her hair was tied back to the nape of her neck, and inside the tunic she was wearing the diamond brooch.

‘You look done in, David. You never give yourself a chance.’ She tried to pull her hands away. ‘Have a shower. I made sure that it’s working.’

He released her hands.

‘What about Captain Wykes?’

She shrugged. ‘He left earlier. A phone call. I could have gone, too.’

‘But you stayed.’

She walked to a table and moved a telephone book, perhaps without knowing it.

‘I wanted to stay.’ She looked at him directly. ‘I’m coming with you.’

A door banged open and shut and Petty Officer Coker hurried into the light, hastily buttoning his jacket and staring at both of them.

‘I – I’m sorry, sir, I was in the galley. I only just heard that you were back.’

Masters started to climb the stairs. ‘It’s all right, I’m being taken care of.’

‘I’ll make some tea.’ He looked at the girl, tall in her sombre clothing. A real woman any man would kill for.

Or die for.

The lights dimmed suddenly, and then returned to their full strength. She had one hand to her throat.

‘Was that a bomb?’

Coker shook his head. ‘No, miss. That was a mine. A big ’un, I’d say.’

She looked up the stairs. ‘He might be in the shower.’

Coker said, ‘But he’ll know, miss. You can bank on it.’

At that moment the telephone started to ring.

Sub-Lieutenant Michael Lincoln pushed open the door of the Ready Room, and after a slight hesitation entered and shut it behind him. It was empty, as he had hoped it would be. The room was not unlike the ones at local fighter stations, where pilots lounged about, hiding their doubts and anxieties while they waited for the order to scramble. Battered and roughly used armchairs, racks of magazines and newspapers, and a few tables where you could write a letter if you felt like it. A place of lively conversation or edgy silence.

Lincoln glanced at the newspapers, but they were yesterday’s. A working party would arrive soon to clean up the place, empty the ashtrays, and prepare it for another emergency.

Outside it was cold but bright, the sky an empty, washed-out blue. How quickly the weather seemed to change along the Dorset coast, he thought. Fresh and clear, but the puddles of overnight rain were still evident.
Normally he enjoyed his breakfast, the best meal of the day, even if it was spam and powdered eggs. That had not been the case today. The wardroom had been heavy with gloom, some doubtless the aftermath of too much gin and Trafalgar Night, but mostly, he suspected, because of the reported casualties.

For Lincoln it was made more unsettling by the occasional touch on the shoulder, a murmured, ‘Good show, old chap!’ Few of them knew him by name as yet. He should have gone straight to Masters, Captain Chavasse if necessary, to bang it on the head there and then. But he had not. As far as the wardroom was aware, and anyone else who was interested, Lincoln was up for an award of some kind. A gong, or perhaps a Mention, but it was something, especially for a comparative newcomer in their midst.