Daylight came late over the Gulf of Finland. It was almost eight before the pale yellow ball of the winter sun rolled over the horizon. It lay there, as if exhausted and unable to go any further, casting no warmth on the bleak winter landscape below. There was snow in the air, Smith could feel it. When it came it would provide the cover they needed, for they were still terribly close to Russia and he already knew that the Soviets were no respecters of other nations’ territory. ‘Keep a weather eye peeled, Dickie,’ he commanded, as he sipped yet another cup of scalding hot tea.
‘Like the proverbial tinned tomato, Smithie, old bean,’ Dickie Bird answered in his normal chirpy manner. For now they were almost at the exit to the fjord. Soon they’d be out in the Gulf of Finland and on their way home. They’d see Russia no more and for that he was glad. As he had remarked to Smith a little before, ‘I’ve seen the new paradise – Russia – and it don’t work, whatever the parlour pinks back home say.’
‘Amen to that, Dickie,’ Smith had responded heartily. ‘Bloody amen to that.’
At eight-thirty, Smith went below, checked that Mrs Reilly and the boy, who was apparently fascinated by the first boat he had ever been on in his young life, were all right, poured Finnegan another pink gin – he had been drinking pink gins ever since they had been rescued and still he seemed as sober as a judge – and then ordered the full crew on duty. He posted double watches, went over to Ginger, huddled in a thick sheepskin behind his Lewis gun, and ensured that he had sufficient pans of ammunition at the ready – just in case – and then clattered back up to the bridge where Dickie Bird and CPO Ferguson were steering the Swordfish expertly to the narrows which led to the open sea beyond.
He watched the approach in silence for a few moments. It couldn’t have been more than five hundred yards across – an ideal place to ambush an enemy. But there wasn’t a ship in sight, enemy or otherwise. The grey-green sea was as still as a pond and totally empty. They could have been the last humans alive in the grey-yellow winter world. ‘Looks all right to me, Dickie,’ he broke the heavy, brooding silence, the only sound the steady throb of the engines. ‘What do you think?’
‘Safe as houses,’ Dickie said cheerfully.
CPO Ferguson wasn’t convinced. ‘I dinna trust yon foreigners,’ he growled in that dour Scottish fashion of his. ‘They’d stab ye in the back as soon as they’d look at ye,’ he added somewhat obscurely.
Dickie Bird laughed, still happy at the thought that they were heading for home. ‘I don’t know, Chiefie,’ he said, ‘you are a little ray of sunshine, I must—’ He stopped short. The smile vanished from his face in a flash. ‘What’s that?’ he snapped.
‘What’s what?’ Smith demanded.
‘Over there – to port.’
Smith swung up his glasses and swept the area Dickie was indicating. What looked like a black stove pipe moved silently into the circles of calibrated glass. Behind it there was a faint white wash.
Dickie Bird, who had also flung up his glasses at the same time as Smith, rapped, ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking, old bean?’
‘I am,’ Smith answered grimly. ‘A sub.’ He stepped across to the alarm and pressed the button. The klaxon burst into noisy, ear-splitting life. Sailors started to tumble out from below, running madly for their duty stations, dragging on extra clothing as they ran.
CPO Ferguson tensed at the wheel as Dickie thrust both throttles forwards. He had reacted instinctively. It was going to be highly dangerous, going through the narrows at speed – the charts had shown the bottom was uneven; they might well hit a rock just below the surface – but he was prepared to take that chance.
Behind the bridge, Ginger Kerrigan swung his Lewis gun round. He’d spotted the submarine periscope, too. He tensed, the gun butt tucked well into his right shoulder, waiting for the order to fire. But even as he did so, he knew his weapon was a mere peashooter when compared with the usual sub’s six-pounder cannon and a dozen or so torpedoes.
‘What do you think, Dickie?’ Smith asked urgently, as through the glasses he watched the periscope come nearer.
‘I might be wrong. But I wouldn’t put it past the Russkis to—’ The words froze on his lips. A flurry of exploding bubbles had surfaced to the front of the periscope.
‘Hard to starboard!’ Smith yelled.
CPO Ferguson wrenched the wheel round. In that same instant the first torpedo zipped through the water, trailing bubbles behind, missing the Swordfish’s wooden bow by feet. Moments later it slammed into the rocky far shore of the narrows and exploded with a great blinding flash of scarlet flame. Shards of rock flew everywhere.
Behind the bridge, Ginger pressed his trigger. He’d try to knock out the periscope, he told himself. It was the eye of the underwater killer. Tracer zipped through the cold air. Bullets splashed into the water all around that evil steel eye. But a desperate Ginger saw he was not hitting the target. ‘Cor ferk a duck!’ he yelled angrily at the Lewis gun, as if it were human. ‘Hit the frigging thing, won’t yer!’
At the wheel CPO Ferguson, his craggy old face suddenly ashen, tensed to make his next move with the wheel. He knew his subs. They always fired their tin fish in ‘fans’ of two or three. He prayed this particular ‘fan’ would consist only of two torpedoes. He didn’t think he could manoeuvre fast enough if the sub commander fired three.
‘There she is!’ Smith yelled, as there was another flurry of bubbles agitating the surface of the water. He bit his lip. What order should he give? Their unseen enemy was trying to outthink him, just as he was trying to do with the Russian skipper. Starboard or port? What was it going to be. Or—? The fate of the Swordfish and its crew depended upon the decision he made in the next two seconds. Suddenly he had it. ‘Full both!’ he yelled above the chatter of the Lewis gun behind him.
Dickie Bird thrust home both throttles. He knew what Smith was about. The Swordfish’s Thorneycroft engines responded, at once, beautifully. They burst into full power. The Swordfish leapt forwards, her deck tilting at a thirty-degree angle, a sudden wild white wake spurting up at her bows.
Two things happened now. Just as the deadly tin fish, containing one ton of high explosive, hissed lethally through the water behind them, with only feet to spare, Ginger’s bullets shattered the glass of the submarine’s periscope. Ginger let out a great whoop. ‘I’ve got the sod!’ he yelled exuberantly. ‘I’ve blinded the mucker… Hurrah!’ On the other side of the fjord, the second torpedo exploded into the rocks. Rock flew everywhere, peppering the sea with great lumps like bombs. Angry white founts of water erupted on both sides of the flying Swordfish.
But they were not out of danger yet. To port where they had first spotted that periscope, the still waters heaved and surged. There was a sudden burst of noise as diesel motors started up. ‘They’re surfacing!’ Ginger yelled from his perch.
A sucking, heaving noise. A sinister black shape broke the surface of the sea. The conning tower hatch was thrown back. Men started to clamber furiously down the outside conning tower ladder. Ginger was poised behind his Lewis gun once more and placed a fresh pan of ammunition on it, just as the first black figure dropped the last few dripping rungs.
A sailor flung up his arms, clawing the air as if climbing the rungs of an invisible ladder. Next moment he plunged over the side. But the rest were doubling across the slippery deck, heading for the cannon on the foredeck.
Ginger hosed the deck with his fire. But already the gun crew were protected by the cannon’s shield. Tracer howled off the shield like glowing golf balls as the gun crew swung their weapon round to bear on the fleeing torpedo boat. They were well trained, Smith could see that. Above the roar of the Thorneycrofts, he could hear the shell being rammed home. Next instant the gunlayer fired. The first shell ripped through the air with a great roar like a huge sheet of canvas being torn apart.
It burst just to the front of the Swordfish’s raised prow, erupting in a great geyser of whirling white water.
‘They’re ranging in!’ CPO Ferguson yelled.
‘Give her all you’ve got,’ Smith urged Dickie.
His face glazed with sweat in spite of the cold, Dickie pushed the throttles to their furthest extent, as the submarine’s cannon belched smoke and fire once again.
The second shell hit the sea just to their rear. Shrapnel hissed lethally through the air. The Swordfish’s rigging was shorn through. Wires came tumbling to the shell-fragment-littered deck. The little craft heeled violently as if it were going to keel over for good. Her speed started to slacken dramatically. Even without looking, Smith knew instinctively they had been hit, probably by a piece of shell, amidships.
‘She’s not responding!’ Dickie yelled frantically in the same instant that Ginger stmck lucky at last. As the crippled Swordfish, going at a snail’s pace now, veered to port, the enemy gun crew swung their cannon round to follow them and fire their last shell, which they knew would put an end to the crippled boat. For one moment they were exposed, unprotected by their shield.
Ginger didn’t wait for a second invitation. He pressed the trigger of his Lewis gun. The ugly machine gun burst into angry life. Blow after blow thudded against his right shoulder as he squinted through the sights, and a stream of glowing white tracer headed straight for the exposed enemy gun crew.
They didn’t stand a chance. That vicious burst of savage fire bowled them over like puppets in the hands of a puppetmaster suddenly gone mad. They jerked and shook, their arms flailing crazily, as they dropped writhing to the wet deck or were slammed over the side. In an instant they were all dead or dying and the gun’s barrel had drooped, smoke wisps still emerging from it like some primeval monster about to die.
Now for good measure, Ginger directed his fire at the conning tower. Slugs whined and howled off the steel. Bright silver marks appeared as if by magic. Now none of the Russians dared venture out of the tower, and thewas too shallow for the submariners to use their torpedoes. The Russians gave in. Like an ugly steel whale, the Russian sub started to submerge. She’d had enough.
The crew of the Swordfish gave a great cheer. They’d won, against all odds. Wearily Smith slumped against the bulkhead of the bridge, feeling utterly worn out, while an angry, fuming CPO Ferguson tried to bring the battered little vessel under control. For the old Scot felt that the Swordfish was almost his own property. He loved her, he feared her, he dominated her. ‘Come, ye fickle hussy!’ he snorted. ‘Come round, will ye nae, wench!’
Slowly, very slowly, the Swordfish started to answer to the wheel. Like an old, old veteran, weary from having fought too many battles, the Swordfish began to limp home.