The Complete Navarone (87 page)

The man’s eyes stayed glued to the grenades.

He went white as an oily rag. Then he picked up a wrench, dropped his cigarette, and came at Miller.

He was a short man, almost dwarfish, as wide as he was high. The coxswain had been out of shape because he only did whatever they did in the control room. This man was an engine room artificer, with big muscles under the white skin of his shoulders. He got both hands on his wrench, and he hefted it like a baseball bat, and he came down the aisle at Miller like an oil-stained Nibelung. Miller swung the toolbox at the man. It was an overconfident swing, inspired by too much Benzedrine and not enough judgement. It missed by a mile. The Nibelung smacked at the toolbox with his wrench. The toolbox flew out of Miller’s hand, skidding down the gratings, bursting open as it slid. Tools and grenades spilled out. Miller caught a glimpse of the grenades, unarmed, useless, skittering into the tunnel where the propeller shaft ran. Then he threw himself to one side, and the wrench whacked into the steel bulkhead where his head had been.

Miller stood there, back to the door, panting, heart hammering. The yellow lights shone in the short man’s sweat. His face was a flat mask of anger. Then Miller saw it flicker, and he knew why. There was a new note to the engine: a high-pitched whine. The deck was tilting underfoot, gently.

The whine was the disintegrator. The engine had switched from fuel – air to fuel – decomposed hydrogen peroxide.

The submarine was diving.

The squat man came at Miller again. Miller kicked him in the stomach. It was like kicking corrugated iron. The man came on regardless.

Away from the door, thought Miller. Can’t move away from the door, or he’ll take the chains off, and the rest of the crew will get in –

The spanner crashed against the metal. Miller skipped out of the way. Door or no door, he was no good with his head caved in.

Miller knew that he was losing.

But the squat man had forgotten the door even existed. He was a submarine engineer, and when people bring grenades into their engine rooms, submarine engineers lose the power of rational thought. He swung again.

Miller dodged clumsily. The wrench caught him on the shoulder, numbing his arm. He stumbled back against the engine, head between the clashing tappets, and rolled down to the grating.

He saw another wrench. Picked it up. Too heavy to swing. Better than nothing.

The Nibelung came at him again. Miller scuttled round the far side of the engine. Retreating, always retreating. This was a man who knew his patch, and what he was going to do was hound Miller into a corner, and kill him, and that would be that. A Werwolf on the loose, and all that work in vain.

It was the thought of the wasted effort that really upset Miller. Energy stormed through his veins. As the man came in again, he swung his wrench. The man jumped back. The heavy steel head whacked a pipe in the wall, just under the thread of a joint.

And suddenly the engine room smelt like a hairdresser’s salon.

The Nibelung’s face had changed, too. He was staring at that pipe that Miller had hit. And he did not look angry any more. He looked frightened out of his wits.

Miller felt the weight of the wrench in his hand. He knew he did not have many more swings left in him. One more.

The man still had half his mind on the pipe.

Miller swung the wrench at the pipe, then again, into the side of the man’s head.

There was a solid
chunk
that Miller felt rather than heard. The man’s eyes rolled back, and he went down like a bag of cement.

Dead, thought Miller. Dead.

Quick.

Peroxide was roaring out of the pipe, gurgling over the body of the engineer. As it hit the engineer’s body, it foamed.

There was another catalyst that broke down hydrogen peroxide into hydrogen and oxygen. It was called peroxidase, and it was found in human blood.

Miller ran to the aft end of the engine room. There was a sort of cupboard next to the propeller shaft gland, a steel-doored locker that bore the words
Siebe-Gorman
.

The engine room was filling with free oxygen and hydrogen.

On the deck, the Nibelung’s cigarette ceased to glow and began to burn with a hard, bright flame.

Quick
, thought Miller.

It was all feeling very slow to Mallory, as if the world had started moving through a new kind of time, viscous and syrupy. He saw the flat green mirror of the water, the red and green tracers rising from the merchant ships, slow as little balloons, queuing up to accelerate round his head and kick the water to foam. Under the rocky brow of the Cabo de la Calavera he saw the U-boats moving, hovering, arranging themselves into line ahead. Miller was on the lead boat. Then came the other boat Miller had visited. Mallory’s was last.

The rowing boat rocked in the little waves of a tide-rip. The sun was warm on his face. Something smashed into the transom of the rowing boat. He shielded his eyes from the splinters, felt the rip of flesh on his cheek, the run of liquid that must be blood. The rowing boat spun in an eddy. He saw the San Eusebio town quay, the fishing boats tied up alongside. The movement of the rowing boat in the eddy made the masts of the boats appear to be moving –

One set of masts was moving. The masts of the
Stella Maris
.

They were moving slowly, crawling against the spars of the other boats and the blank shutters of the quayside warehouses. They were accelerating, the black hull narrowing, the masts coming into line as whoever was at the wheel pointed the nose straight at Mallory. Coming to pick him up.

But not Miller.

The U-boats were moving out from the quays now, gliding slowly across the peaceful green satin of the water. The first was already in the channel, the green water rumpling over its deck, diving. Diving quickly, so as not to be seen leaving a neutral harbour. Diving with Miller on board.

Metal smashed into the rowing boat by Mallory’s feet. Suddenly there was water where there had once been planking, water pouring in through three holes the size of fists. Mallory tried to stem the water with his foot, but his foot was too small, and suddenly the rowing boat was part of the harbour, and cold water was up around Mallory’s neck.

An engine was thumping close at hand. The tar-black nose of the
Stella Maris
swept up, pushing a white moustache of foam. A head leaning over the bow said,
‘Bonjour, mon Capitaine.’
The head of Andrea.

Andrea’s hand came down. It grasped Mallory’s wrist. Mallory felt himself plucked skyward, grabbed a wooden rail, and landed face down on the
Stella
’s filthy deck.

‘Welcome aboard,’ said Andrea. ‘Where’s Miller?’

A burst of machine-gun fire smacked into the
Stella
’s stern. Mallory pointed.

The lead U-boat was halfway down the channel. All that was showing was its conning tower.

Andrea’s Byzantine eyes were without expression. Only the great stillness of the man gave a clue to his emotion. The
Stella Maris
turned, and headed down the channel. Mallory lurched aft and took the wheel from Jaime. He steered the
Stella
right up to the flank of the last U-boat. There were still heads on the U-boat’s conning tower. One of the heads was yelling, a hand waving at this dirty little fishing boat to keep clear, keep out of the way. The fire from the merchant ships was slackening now, for fear of hitting the U-boat.

And down below, thought Mallory, down in the torpedo room the hands would be manoeuvring the hoists over to the first torpedo, opening the tube, loading up, ready for an enemy waiting out there in the Bay. The hoists would be lifting, stretching the string fuse of the grenade, scratching the primer, starting the five-second delay.

Mallory stood there in the cool morning breeze, watching the two conning towers ahead, one half-submerged, the other with its base awash. Sixty yards away, the water began to creep up the deck of the last U-boat. The heads were gone from the conning tower.

There was no explosion.

They have found the grenades, thought Mallory. How can you expect to destroy a U-boat with grenades and string? He wound the wheel to port, to keep the
Stella
in the narrow strip of turquoise separating the pale green of the shallows from the ink-blue of the deep-water channel. The U-boat’s hull was under now.

It was getting away.

Mallory groped for a cigarette, put it in his mouth, and watched the channel.

The channel blew up in his face.

It blew up in a jet of searing white flame that went all the way up into the sky, taking with it millions of tons of water that climbed and climbed until it looked as if it would never stop climbing, a reverse waterfall that made a noise loud enough to make a thunderclap sound like the dropping of a pin on a Persian rug. A wall of water smashed into the
Stella Maris
, walloped her onto her beam ends and broke over her. When she lurched upright again, her mainmast was gone. But somehow her Bolander was still thumping away, and Andrea was up among the rigging with an axe, chopping at shrouds and stays, kicking the tangle overboard where it lay wallowing like a sea monster, mingling with the oil and mattresses and other less identifiable bits of flotsam emanating from the still-boiling patch of sand and water that had once been one-third of the Werwolf pack.

Must have been right down in the channel, thought Mallory. Otherwise it would have blown us up with it –

Further out to sea there was another rumble, followed by an eruption of bubbles on the surface. The bubbles were full of smoke. When they burst, they left a film of oil on the surface.

Hugues said, ‘What was that?’

‘Another U-boat,’ said Mallory. The bubbles rose for thirty seconds: a lot of bubbles, big ones. No bodies. No mattresses. A machine of steel had become air and oil.

‘Bon Dieu,’
said Hugues, appalled.

Jaime said, ‘The ships.’ He was looking backwards, over his shoulder.

The merchant ships had their anchors up. Magnified and indistinct beyond the pall of smoke and spray still descending from the first U-boat, they looked huge. From the machine guns on their decks the tracers were rising again.

‘Merde,’
said Jaime.

The ships were faster than the
Stella Maris
. They would catch her up and sink her. At best, they would sink her. Well, Dusty, thought Mallory, with a new and surprising cheerfulness. We are all in this together. Andrea had pulled the Bren out of the hold, and was lying on the
Stella
’s afterdeck, taking aim at the lead merchant ship. Flame danced at the muzzle. A Bren against ships. Not fair, thought Mallory –

From seaward there came a rumble that made the
Stella
shudder under Mallory’s feet. When he looked round, he saw a white alp of water rise offshore. And he forgot about the merchant ships, forgot about everything. For that alp, collapsing as soon as it had risen, was a watery headstone for Dusty Miller.

Three out of three. One hundred per cent success.

But Dusty Miller was dead.

Bullets from the merchant ship lashed the air beside his head, and whacked into the
Stella
’s crapulous timbers. Mallory paid them no heed. He turned the fishing boat’s nose for the open sea.

It was calm, that sea, its emerald smoothness marred only by patches of oil and debris. The old fishing boat laboured towards the northern horizon, reeking of hot metal from the engine room hatch, rolling heavily with the volume of water in her belly.

And on her heels, gaining ground, Uruguayan flags limp on their halyards, spitting a blizzard of tracer, came the merchantmen.

Hugues said, ‘What now?’

Mallory grinned, a grin that had no humour in it. His eyes were shining with a brilliance that Hugues found completely horrible.

‘We take cover,’ said Mallory. ‘They sink us, or catch us, or both.’

Bullets were slamming into the
Stella
’s deck. The air whined with splinters. ‘She will fall apart,’ said Hugues.

‘Very probably,’ said Mallory. ‘They were out of the harbour now. The leading merchant ship was entering the narrows, spewing black oil-smoke from its funnel, heading steadily down the dark-blue water of the channel. Once it was through the channel, it would speed up. And that would be the end of the
Stella Maris
.

They did not bother to take cover. They watched the bow of the merchant ship: the high bow, with the moustache of water under its nose, heading busily along the channel. Above its nose was the bridge, the thin blue smoke of the machine guns on its wings, and the heads of men, pin-sized, watching. It would be that moustache of water that would be the last movement. The
Stella Maris
would rise on it just before the merchant ship’s nose came down and rolled her under, crushed her into the cold green sea –

Suddenly, Mallory stopped breathing. Hugues was by his side, gripping his arm with fingers like steel bars.

For the moustache of white water at the stem of the merchant ship had disappeared. The steel knife-edge had risen in the water, and stopped.

The ship had run aground on the U-boat that had blown up in the channel five minutes previously.