San Andreas

‘Fear not,’ Kennet said. ‘Oberleutnant Lemp has long since been gathered to his ancestors, for whom one can feel only a certain degree of sympathy. However, he may have a twin brother or some kindred souls out there. As the Captain so rightly infers, we live in troubled and uncertain times.’

Batesman looked at Bowen. ‘Is it permitted, Captain, to ask the Chief Officer to shut up?’

Kennet smiled broadly, then stopped smiling as the phone rang again. Batesman reached for the phone but Bowen forestalled him. ‘Master’s privilege, Third. The news may be too heavy for a young man like you to bear.’ He listened, cursed by way of acknowledgment and hung up. When he turned round he looked—and sounded—disgusted.

‘Bloody officers’ toilet!’

Kennet said, ‘Flannelfoot?’

‘Who do you think it was? Santa Claus?’

‘A sound choice,’ Kennet said judiciously. ‘Very sound. Where else could a man work in such peace, privacy and for an undetermined period of time, blissfully immune, one might say, from any fear of interruption? Might even have time to read a chapter of his favourite thriller, as is the habit of one young officer aboard this ship, who shall remain nameless.’

‘The Third Officer has the right of it,’ Bowen said. ‘Will you kindly shut up?’

‘Yes, sir. Was that Jamieson?’

‘Yes.’

‘We should be hearing from Ralson any time now.’

‘Jamieson has already heard from him. Seamen’s toilet this time, port side.’

For once, Kennet had no observation to make and for almost a minute there was silence on the bridge for the sufficient reason that there didn’t seem to be any comment worth making. When the silence was broken it was, inevitably, by Kennet.

‘A few more minutes and our worthy engineers might as well cease and desist. Or am I the only person who has noticed that the dawn is in the sky?’

The dawn, indeed, was in the sky. Already, to the south-east, off the port beam, the sky had changed from black, or as black as it ever becomes in northern waters, to a dark grey and was steadily lightening. The snow had completely stopped now, the wind had dropped to twenty knots and the San Andreas was pitching, not heavily, in the head seas coming up from the northwest.

Kennet said, ‘Shall I post a couple of extra lookouts, sir? One on either wing?’

‘And what can those look-outs do? Make faces at the enemy?’

‘They can’t do a great deal more, and that’s a fact. But if anyone is going to have a go at us, it’s going to be now. A high-flying Condor, for instance, you can almost see the bombs leaving the bay and there’s an even chance in evasive action.’ Kennet didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic or convinced.

‘And if it’s a submarine, dive-bomber, glider-bomber or torpedo-bomber?’

‘They can still give us warning and time for a prayer. Mind you, probably a very short prayer, but still a prayer.’

‘As you wish, Mr Kennet.’

Kennet made a call and within three minutes his look-outs arrived on the bridge, duffel-coated and scarfed to the eyebrows as Kennet had instructed. McGuigan and Jones, a Southern Irishman and a Welshman, they were boys only, neither of them a day over eighteen. Kennet issued them with binoculars and posted them on the bridge wings, Jones to port, McGuigan to starboard. Seconds only after closing the port door, Jones opened it again.

‘Ship, sir! Port quarter.’ His voice was excited, urgent. ‘Warship, I think.’

‘Relax,’ Kennet said. ‘I doubt whether it’s the Tirpitz.’ Less than half a dozen people aboard knew that the Andover had accompanied them during the night. He stepped out on to the wing and returned almost immediately. ‘The good shepherd,’ he said. ‘Three miles.’

‘It’s almost half-light now,’ Captain Bowen said. ‘We could be wrong, Mr Kennet.’

The radio room hatchway panel banged open and Spenser’s face appeared.

‘Andover, sir. Bandit, bandit, one bandit…045…ten miles…five thousand.’

‘There now,’ Kennet said. ‘I knew we weren’t wrong. Full power, sir?’ Bowen nodded and Kennet gave the necessary instructions to the engine-room.

‘Evasive action?’ Bowen was half-smiling; knowledge, however unwelcome that knowledge, always comes as a relief after uncertainty. ‘A Condor, you would guess?’

‘No guess, sir. In those waters, only the Condor flies alone.’ Kennet slid back the port wing door and gazed skywards. ‘Cloud cover’s pretty thin now. We should be able to see our friend coming up—he should be practically dead astern. Shall we go out on the wing, sir?’

‘In a minute, Mr Kennet. Two minutes. Gather flowers while we may—or, at least, keep warm as long as possible. If fate has abandoned us we shall be freezing to death all too soon. Tell me, Mr Kennet, has any profound thought occurred to you?’

‘A lot of thoughts have occurred to me but I wouldn’t say any of them are profound.’

‘How on earth do you think that Condor located us?’

‘Submarine? It could have surfaced and radioed Alta Fjord.’

‘No submarine. The Andover’s sonar would have picked him up. No plane, no surface ships, that’s a certainty.’

Kennet frowned for a few seconds, then smiled. ‘Flannel-foot,’ he said with certainty. ‘A radio.’

‘Not necessarily even that. A small electrical device, probably powered by our own mains system, that transmits a continuous homing signal.’

‘So if we survive this lot it’s out with the fine-tooth comb?’

‘Indeed. It’s out with—’

‘Andover, sir.’ It was Spenser again. ‘Four bandits, repeat four bandits…310…eight miles…three thousand.’

‘I wonder what we’ve done to deserve this?’ Kennet sounded almost mournful. ‘We were even more right than we thought, sir. Torpedo-bombers or glider-bombers, that’s for sure, attacking out of the darkness to the north-west and us silhouetted against the dawn.’

The two men moved out on the port wing. The Andover was still on the port quarter but had closed in until it was less than two miles distant. A low bank of cloud, at about the same distance, obscured the view aft.

‘Hear anything, Mr Kennet? See anything?’

‘Nothing, nothing. Damn that cloud. Yes, I do. I hear it. It’s a Condor.’

‘It’s a Condor.’ Once heard, the desynchronized clamour of a Focke-Wulf 200’s engine is not readily forgotten. ‘And I’m afraid, Mr Kennet, that you’ll have to postpone your evasive action practice for another time. This lad sounds as if he is coming in very low.’

‘Yes, he’s coming in low. And I know why.’ Most unusually for Kennet, he sounded very bitter. ‘He intends to do some pinpoint precision bombing. He’s under orders to stop us or cripple us but not sink us. I’ll bet that bastard Flannelfoot feels as safe as houses.’

‘You have it to rights, Mr Kennet. He could stop us by bombing the engine-room, but doing that is a practical guarantee that we go to the bottom. There he comes, now.’ The Focke-Wulf Condor had broken through the cloud and was heading directly for the stern of the San Andreas. Every gun on the Andover that could be brought to bear had opened up as soon as the Focke-Wulf had cleared the cloud-bank and within seconds the starboard side of the Andover was wreathed in smoke. For a frigate, its anti-aircraft fire-power was formidable: low-angle main armament, pom-poms, Oerlikons and the equally deadly Boulton-Paul Defiant turrets which loosed off a devastating 960 rounds a minute. The Focke-Wulf must have been hit many times but the big Condor’s capacity to absorb punishment was legendary. Still it came on, now no more than two hundred feet above the waves. The sound of the engines had risen from the clamorous to the thunderous.

‘This is no place for a couple of honest seamen to be, Mr Kennet.’ Captain Bowen had to shout to make himself heard. ‘But I think it’s too late now.’

‘I rather think it is, sir.’

Two bombs, just two, arced lazily down from the now smoking Condor.