Go in and Sink by Douglas Reeman

Author:Douglas Reeman [Reeman, Douglas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, War
ISBN: 9780099097600
Publisher: Arrow
Published: 1973-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

10

Urgent mission

Marshall clenched his teeth against the chill night air and steadied his glasses across the forepart of the bridge screen. With the electric motors held down to minimum revolutions there was barely any sound but for the gentle swish of water along the saddle tanks, the occasional creak of metal as the boat swayed in an irregular offshore swell.

They had been on the surface for nearly half an hour, but everything was dripping wet and icy to the touch. After the bright sunlight they had seen during the day's searches through the periscope, it seemed an additional strain on everyone s nerves.

There was a loud clang below the conning-tower, followed by a stream of savage cursing from Petty Officer, Cain.

Buck, who was standing beside Marshall, lowered his night-glasses and said, `That bloody makeshift screen got a bit buckled when the faulty torpedo nose-dived.' He groaned as more clanks and scrapes echoed over the slowmoving submarine. They sounded deafening after the silence.

Marshall said sharply, `Tell them to be quick. Keep the noise down.'

He lowered his eyes to the luminous gyro repeater. They were steering due south, the bows pointing directly into the Gulf of Sirte and the coast of Libya. Buck's angry comment about the faulty torpedo was a reminder that time and distance still had meaning.

It was very dark, with only a sliver of moon and some high, misty stars to throw any reflection on the black undulating surface around them. For over a week after sending the great floating dock and its escort to the bottom they had been made to endure the frustration of uncertainty, while Frenzel's fuel levels had continued to drop, and all but the most basic of food supplies had become exhausted. It vaas like being forgotten by that other world to which they had listened on the busy radio waves, or discarded in the face of some new crisis elsewhere. Then at last, as they had opened their special radio watch, the signal had come. When it had been decoded, and the brief references had been marked on Devereaux's charts, Marshall had headed towards the North African coastline without delay. Someone had at last remembered them, and with any sort of luck would have the precious fuel and supplies waiting to be loaded. And rest.

It was strange to realise that the great curving mass of land which now lay hidden somewhere to port had seen some of the most bitter fighting of the North African campaign. Benghazi and Derna, and farther to the east the battered but defiant port of Tobruk. When he had last been here in Tristrarn, prowling along these same shores in search of enemy supply ships, it had looked very different, even at night. There had always been the far off mutter of artillery, the sounds softened by the vast wastes of the desert, the occasional gleam of a drifting flare and the instant pinpoints of small-arms as patrols stumbled on one another and fought it out with rifle and bayonet beneath these quiet skies.

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