H.M.S. Ulysses Part 45

"Perhaps, Ca.s.sandra, perhaps," Vallery smiled. "We'll see... What was that, Pilot? I didn't quite..."

The Kapok Kid grinned.

"It's just occurred to me that tomorrow's going to be a big day for our junior doctor-he's convinced that no battleship ever puts out to sea except for a Spithead review in peacetime."

"That reminds me," Vallery said thoughtfully. "Didn't we promise the Sirrus------?"

"Young Nicholls is up to his neck in work," Turner cut in. "Doesn't love us-the Navy rather-overmuch, but he sure loves his job. Borrowed a fire-fighting suit, and Carrington says he's already..." He broke off, looked up sharply into the thin, driving snow. "Hallo! Charlie's getting d.a.m.ned nosy, don't you think?"

The roar of the Condor's engines was increasing every second: the sound rose to a clamouring crescendo as the bomber roared directly overhead, barely a couple of hundred feet above the broken masts, died away to a steady drone as the plane circled round the convoy.

"W.T. to escorts!" Vallery called quickly. "Let him go, don't touch him! No starsh.e.l.ls-nothing. He's trying to draw us out, to have us give away our position... It's not likely that the merchant ships...

Oh, G.o.d! The fools, the fools! Too late, too late!"

A merchantman in the port line had opened up-Oerlikons or Bofors, it was difficult to say. They were firing blind, completely blind: and in a high wind, snow and darkness, the chance of locating a plane by sound alone was impossibly remote.

The firing did not last long-ten, fifteen seconds at the outside. But long enough-and the damage was done. Charlie had pulled off, and straining apprehensive ears caught the sudden deepening of the note of the engines as the boosters were cut in for maximum climb.

"What do you make of it, sir?" Turner asked abruptly.

"Trouble." Vallery was quiet but certain. "This has never happened before-and it's not psychological warfare, as you call it, Commander: he doesn't even rob us of our sleep, not when we're this close to the North Cape. And he can't hope to trail us long: a couple of quick course alterations and, ah!" He breathed softly. "What did I tell you, Commander?"

With a suddenness that blocked thought, with a dazzling glare that struck whitely, cruelly at singeing eyeb.a.l.l.s, night was transformed into day. High above the Ulysses a flare had burst into intense life, a flare which tore apart the falling snow like filmy, transparent gauze.

Swinging wildly under its parachute with the gusting of the wind, the flare was drifting slowly seawards, towards a sea no longer invisible but suddenly black as night, towards a sea where every ship, in its glistening sheath of ice and snow, was silhouetted in dazzling whiteness against the inky backdrop of sea and sky.

"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 realise 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 desynchronised 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. Realisation struck at him with the galvanic effect of sheer physical shock. He gave a hoa.r.s.e cry, fairly flung himself at the broadcast transmitter: there was no time to await permission.

"'B' turret!" he roared. "Starsh.e.l.ls to the south. Green 90, green 90. Urgent! Urgent! Starsh.e.l.ls, green 90. Maximum elevation 10. Close settings. Fire when you are ready!" He looked quickly over his shoulder.

"Pilot! Can you "'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 sh.e.l.ls exploded in great overlapping globules of light, two miles to the south. "You are right," he said gently. "Here they come."

H.U. 225 H 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 sh.e.l.ls 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 concentrating 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 starsh.e.l.ls at minimum settings, reloaded with H.E. 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 starsh.e.l.ls 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 itself 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 pa.s.sed, 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 sh.e.l.ls 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 pa.s.sed 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 sh.e.l.ls 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 raked the bridge from point-blank 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 G.o.d 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 sh.e.l.ls. 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 realisation 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 compa.s.s platform. Bentley, quiet, un.o.btrusive 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 recognisable 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 realised 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 compa.s.s 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?