Killer ship, p.12
Killer Ship, page 12
“If we surfaced suddenly ... we are a small target. We could get off perhaps a dozen rounds before she opened the range. She is a much bigger target—we might hit her in the boiler-rooms.”
Kamenz stared at the compass. His bull neck on the wrestler’s shoulders was turned away from the speaker. Kranzbuhler licked his lips. He looked round the room. He saw, on every face, in every pair of longing eyes, approval.
“Five minutes, Kapitan.” he said, and his voice was pleading. “Five minutes will be enough with the hatch open, it will clear the boat…”
Kamenz had got over his shock at what he considered his deputy’s defection under stress. He was listening to the pleading voice, and he knew the rest of the control-room was listening also. But his own thoughts were not concerned as much with Kranzbuhler as they were with Murimoto. The Jap, too, was listening—hearing this spineless crawling for air from an Oberleutnant of the Reichsmarine. It would have been bad enough from a seaman, a man whose nerve had gone under the pitiless hunt they had endured; from an officer, the first lieutenant, it was intolerable.
At that moment, seeing in his mind the Jap captain watching and listening, quiet in his corner, Kamenz could have strangled his lieutenant. He felt the feeling mount through him, making his hard eyes bleak and his fingers twitch at the end of the huge arms.
It was knowledge of that feeling that restrained Kamenz, made him turn slowly and sweep his cold stare over the faces in the compartment before it came to rest on Kranzbuhler’s desperate face. If he acted against Kranzbuhler now, with his influence beginning to wane under the inexplicable survival of the enemy destroyer, the whole crew might rise against him. Kranzbuhler could wait…
“Five minutes,” he said, his voice a rasp, “five minutes is all you want on the surface. You are tired of life, Oberleutnant? The destroyer is less than a mile astern of us. In five minutes, bow-on to us, she would be upon us, ramming us to the bottom. Your shells might damage the paintwork of her bow. They would reach nowhere near her engine-rooms. Five minutes!”
His eyes were holding the lieutenant’s, but he saw the men turn slowly back to their instruments. They were convinced; Kamenz’s triumph was complete, and Kranzbuhler reduced in their eyes. Yet Kamenz felt no triumph—he felt only cold anger that be had been compelled to justify his action in diving deep. It was a long time since he had had to justify any action he made.
“Yes, Kapitan,” Kranzbuhler said in a low voice.
There was in his tone enforced respect, and no contrition. Obviously he still wanted to surface, even in the face of what Kamenz had told them would be the instant result. It was then the captain realised that his second-in-command, the officer on whom he relied most for the effective carrying out of his orders, was ready to surrender.
The knowledge had a curious effect on Kamenz. He turned his head and looked down at the chart on the table beside him. He felt anger still, deep and filling. Yet through it there now ran a thread of doubt. Not of his own capabilities, but doubt of the resilience and toughness of his crew. He forced himself to think calmly, dispassionately. Kranzbuhler was a good officer, there was no question of that, Party connections notwithstanding. If he were ready to crack, what must be the condition of the crew—the real condition, behind the exterior of disciplined subjection to his orders?
Kamenz was a tough commander, experienced and battle-wise. Because of this, he knew that he had to be very careful in his judgment of what he would do next. Earlier—perhaps only fifteen minutes earlier—his mind would have formed a wish, his voice would have made known that wish, and his desire would have been carried out at once—without thought, automatically. He sensed that things were different now; the time had passed when instinctive training and discipline would ensure the implementation of his slightest command. He had now to tread very warily. His was not the only pistol in the boat ...
These thoughts passed through his tired mind quickly. Deliberately he quelled the anger, mounting almost to hatred, which Kranzbuhler’s suggestion had sent surging through him. Later, not now ... He swung about from the chart-table and looked directly at his first-lieutenant. His face was normally hard and his voice had its usual rasp.
“The remaining acoustic torpedo is in Number Four tube?”
Kranzbuhler nodded yes. Kamenz knew this, of course—but his question was a way of getting his intention to the crew without weakening his influence further by having to explain it.
“Stand-by torpedo attack,” Kamenz ordered. His head twisted to Lemp, waiting by the order-panel. “Thirty feet. Bring her up slowly. Helmsman, stay on your present course.”
There was a stir of interest in the control-room. Kamenz felt it—he had commanded these men a long time. His face showed nothing of what he felt, certainly not the fact that he knew that by firing his last acoustic torpedo he was admitting that he was at the end of his resources. He had deliberately kept this last weapon till the end, never believing that he would have to use it. If it failed ...
His face stared, rock-like, at the slowly-swinging depth-gauge needle. Forty feet. He stood astride the periscope well, ready. Then, even through the turmoil in his brain and the steady, trained part of it which was calculating like a machine, there percolated into his realisation the fact that he was panting like a dog. Conscious of it now, he listened to his breath, coming in quick, gasping breaths through his widely-open mouth. He shut his mouth, and the next second it was open again, his physiological needs triumphing over his mental wishes. Lemp said;
“Thirty feet.”
It did not take long. They did not need accurate and detailed bearings and ranges and speeds for the acoustic torpedo. Kamenz saw that his enemy, still miraculously alive and normal, was in position about a mile astern of him, coming on slowly, patient, like a bloodhound. He mapped a few orders, heard the report, “Number Four tube bow-cap open,” clipped the periscope bars to the trunk and rapped, “Fire!”
A second, then the hull shook and they felt the pressure on their ears. The hydrophone reported the torpedo running correctly. Kamenz’s mouth was open to order, “Take her down.” Suddenly all the hate and frustration the past night had brought him swept through him in an uncontrollable surge. He would see the end of this cursed destroyer. He could not miss this time—there was no depth-charge this time to upset that beautifully-running German weapon. He would see it run, watch its wake leap for the destroyer’s screws and there explode.
His fingers snapped at the periscope operator. At once the thick tube rose. Before it stopped he had his eyes to the twin lenses. A wave washed it like a car’s windscreen in heavy rain, then the rectangle of glass was clear. The destroyer stood out clean and clear and grey in his sight, magnified four times ... and turning to port!
Kamenz’s tight lips curled back over his teeth. She had heard the torpedo on her asdics, then. It did not matter. The only thing that might save her now was if she immediately stopped her propellers. Instead, he could see the wake heaped up under her stern as she added full power to the turning effect of her rudder. Fool! his brain exulted, seeing the spinning screws drawing the explosive warhead closer in their frantic effort to swing clear.
At that moment, staring with all his eyes at the enemy ship, Kamenz felt nothing but a completely pervasive, gloating triumph. He did not think of his crew, waiting in tortured suspense about him, nor of the mission he would be completing in an hour or so; he thought of nothing but the still grey ship now showing her broadside length to him, of which was hurtling to meet her, of how she would look when her stern was blasted open to the hungry sea. It was because of the localised intensity of his thoughts that he did not see, at first, the wake of the torpedo.
It was not an electric torpedo—it did not need to be with what it carried in its nose. It did not matter if the wake were seen. Nothing, no manoeuvre no matter how violent, would save a ship from its electronic, unswervable purpose. The wake reached out plainly before his magnified eyesight, heading straight for the target, now almost at right-angles to its previous course. It covered his field of vision, a smooth track of water laid on the vividly blue face of the sea.
His sight and his mind dropped onto it and saw the straight white sword begin to curve, to bend away from the destroyer, to head towards a point a hundred yards behind its stern.
Kamenz could not believe what he saw. His straining eyes glared at the bending track of the faithless torpedo, his brain refusing to accept what it told him. He could not know that German scientific brains were being tested by British—that in the Fox trailing astern of its hound the mechanism was transmitting its own sound-impulse, much more high-pitched and emphatic of attention than the dull beat of the destroyer’s screws; that the acoustic torpedo, blindly obeying this greater demand on its mechanical brain, was homing towards this superior attraction.
Forty yards ahead of the spearpoint of the wake the ocean suddenly erupted. A wall of discoloured water leapt from the surface and towered high into the sky, dirty-brown and white against the hue. For a moment the wall hung there, and then it collapsed downwards upon itself, leaving only a misty curtain in which almost at once began to shred into invisibility under the wind’s compulsion.
Every atom of training and instinct and experience shouted in Kamenz’s brain to get down, to get down and away and out of it. The savage bewilderment he felt dulled his brain’s urging. He continued to stare at the destroyer, and he saw her bow swing round again, heeling gracefully until its knife-like stem pointed straight into his lens. That threat was definite enough. He jerked his head away and clipped the bars to the trunk and snarled;
“Take her down! One hundred feet.”
For a brief moment as he stood there, his unseeing eyes on the sliding trunk, he debated telling the crew that the explosion they had heard meant the end of the destroyer—anything to stave off letting them know that he had failed again. He realised at once the absurdity of his thought, and turned to face their bewildered faces.
“The torpedo exploded astern of the destroyer,” he growled, his voice thick with the control he put upon it. “She must have been trailing a decoy.”
Kranzbuhler heard the growls from all about him. He flipped open the holster of his Luger and stepped up in front of Kamenz.
“Our psychological warfare doesn’t seem to have worked,” Randall grunted. He was looking astern at the wide ulcer of froth on the surface which marked the torpedo’s explosion. “That bird’s still got plenty of fight left in him. He might also have some more acoustics—and we don’t run to another Fox.”
Bentley’s answer was in his next order. “Stand-by depth-charge attack,” he said curtly.
He stood behind the binnacle, hearing some of the reports his order had set in motion, knowing the rest of the routine, and ignoring it. He was thinking; Randall’s right. That German’s endurance is greater than I thought. He might still have more acoustic torpedoes, and we have nothing now to counteract them. It was time to stop stalking, and pounce. More than time, he decided, and his head came up and he looked out over the bow, his ears listening.
To the north-west and the south-east the reefs seemed to stretch away to infinity, to melt at last into sound; a distant, even thunder, never ceasing, ominous and threatening in that lovely morning.
Even without his binoculars he could see the line of leaping white where the big combers of the Coral Sea ended their run on the reef, throwing up their arms in gouts of flung white, in triumph over their ultimate destruction of this barrier, or in despair at its solidity. Almost dead centre in the leaping line showed a gap, not very wide, yet definite. Jomard Passage.
“Ready to attack,” came up to him from the asdic control-room.
They ran in carefully, asdic telling them, the coxswain steering minutely, Menotti and his crew tense and waiting on the quarter-deck. The warning buzzer sounded, the charges went over, splashing into the water, dropping, dropping, their hydrostatic valves set to an exploding depth of one hundred feet.
“Kapitan,” Kranzbuhler said, his voice quivering with the strain of what he was about to do, “we must surface. The destroyer cannot be killed. We have no more acoustic torpedoes. We have not the
power to carry out a normal attack, nor to evade the consequences. We cannot last another half-hour in this atmosphere. We must surface and engage the enemy with gunfire.”
He stood in front of Kamenz and he spoke carefully. He kept his voice at normal pitch and he kept it respectful. He had quite made up his mind what he should do if Kamenz refused his suggestion. He knew he had every man of the crew behind him, and he believed that both the circumstances, and his position in the Party back in Kiel, would justify his action.
Kamenz stood before him, his huge shoulders slightly hunched, knowing that this was the showdown. He too kept calm, for this was the ultimate crisis of his career. Mutiny. His command of the submarine threatened. He was not deceived by Kranzbuhler’s tone. He had seen the movement which had unbuttoned the holster flap. He knew Kranzbuhler would not have dared speak to him like that if his mind were not made up, hardened for action. He knew also that he could not confound what the lieutenant had said with ridicule, nor could he offer a superior suggestion which would hold them to him. He also felt, with a growing doubt which he crushed savagely into the back of his mind, that Kranzbuhler was right. But he had a job to do. He was within an hour of his prearranged mining position. He had come thousands of miles to perform that job; he had been especially selected to carry it out. Nothing, certainly not this blond sweating Nazi mongrel before him now, would stop him from carrying it out. He said, his voice normal;
“We will not surface. We will slip the destroyer. We will mine the passage. Is that clear?”
Kranzbuhler stared at him. The sweat dripped in long trickling drops from his unshaven chin. He gave him a second chance.
“You will not surface, Kapitan?”
His voice shook, and his hand moved.
Discipline now, Kamenz thought through the hate and despair in his brain, discipline will hold them.
“Oberleutnant Kranzbuhler,” he said, and though his lips moved, his teeth were shut tight. The words came through their barrier in a harsh hiss. “If you suggest once again that we surface I will place you under armed arrest!”
The ten men in the control-room stared at the two officers. Their faces were running and their breaths were panting and their minds were absolutely absorbed in this unprecedented conflict between their two gods. Nobody heard, or paid any attention to the growing sound of propellers above their heads. They saw Kranzbuhler’s hand come up with his pistol gripped in his right fist. His eyes were staring and his mouth was working. They saw the captain with his wrestler’s shoulders hunched forward and a snarl on his lips, twisting them upwards from his teeth. Kamenz’s big paw leaped out for the lieutenant’s gun-hand and thunder burst all around them.
Unprepared, they were flung all over the control room like loose-limbed rag dolls. The submarine whipped and leaped and gave voice to its agony in a high-pitched steely hum of sound. The lights blew out and the emergency lighting came on and shed a dim subdued glow over the piles of fighting limbs, and shone through the clouds of cork particles shaken loose from the deckhead. The roar of the attacker’s propellers beat overhead and thumped away to silence. A voice screamed into their consciousness from aft;
“After tube-space flooding!”
Kranzbuhler dragged himself up from near the periscope hoisting lever. His groping hand, spread out, touched the pistol. He hauled himself to his feet on the still-shaking deck and stared about him. Kamenz was three feet away, coming for him, his hands clawed, scorning his own pistol, urged on by a berserk rage, itself fed and flamed by the knowledge that the destroyer’s attack meant the end of the mission. She would soon be back, her stalking game over.
Kamenz knew, even while one part of his strained mind was dully alive to the danger they were in, that before he could attempt to retrieve the situation he had to get Kranzbuhler. Kranzbuhler was the focal point, the expressed centre of the crew’s defection. Without him, they would come to heel. Without him ...
His clawed hands reached out to Kranzbuhler, and Kranzbuhler lifted his gun and shot him in the chest. Kamenz lurched on at him. His great hands fastened round the lieutenant’s throat. Kranzbuhler was forced back against the shiny levers of the flooding-panel. His throat gagged and the involuntary movement was arrested, throttled by the fierce grip on his windpipe. With the forced calm of desperation be brought the gun up inside Kamenz’s big arms until the barrel jammed against the underside of the captain’s chin. The muzzle was pushed in so far that the shot was muffled.
As Kamenz’s body slid down to the deck his dead fingers caught on the lever which opened the vent to flood Number Four ballast tank. There was a thud as the vent linkage operated. At once, without thought, the panel operator standing beside the two officers slammed the vent shut again. That movement seemed to crystallise the crew’s backing of Kranzbuhler.
The lieutenant stepped aside, clear of the body. The silence in the compartment was so complete that the big clock’s ticking was like a shout. It was broken by Lemp’s voice—harsh, noncommittal, solely practical.
“Take over here. The tube-space is flooding.” Kranzbuhler walked quickly to the order-panel in front of the inclinometers and depth-gauge. He had no difficulty in subduing the turmoil in his mind under the pressing need of action. And the soreness round his throat offered him justification for what he had done. Now he had to get her up while the destroyer was still circling to come in for another run. Because she would be turning, she would offer them a broadside target, if they got up quickly enough. He forgot about his earlier wish to surrender. It was different now—he was in command and the responsibility sparked a desire for resistance. They could still disable the enemy, and while she was stopped they could loose a salvo of torpedoes into her.
