San Andreas

‘Wouldn’t you like to know why they bombed a hospital ship?’

‘There’s that, there’s that.’ Ferguson reached out with a boathook and brought the raft alongside.

‘Either of you speak English?’

The wounded man opened his eyes: they, too, seemed to be filled with blood. ‘I do.’

‘You look badly hurt. I want to know where before we try to bring you aboard.’

‘Left arm, left shoulder, I think, right thigh. And I believe there’s something wrong with my right foot.’ His English was completely fluent and if there was any accent at all it was a hint of southern standard English, not German.

‘You’re the Condor Captain, of course.’

‘Yes. Still want to bring me aboard?’

The Bo’sun nodded to Ferguson and the two other seamen he had along with him. The three men brought the injured pilot aboard as carefully as they could but with both lifeboat and raft rolling heavily in the beam seas it was impossible to be too careful. They laid him in the thwarts close to where the Bo’sun was sitting by the controls. The other survivor huddled miserably amidships. The Bo’sun opened the throttle and headed for the position where he estimated the Andover had gone down.

Ferguson looked down at the injured man who was lying motionless on his back, arms spread-eagled. The red stains were spreading. It could have been that he was still bleeding quite heavily: but it could have been the effect of sea-water.

‘Reckon he’s a goner, Bo’sun?’

McKinnon reached down and touched the side of the pilot’s neck and after a few seconds he located the pulse, fast, faint and erratic, but still a pulse.

‘Unconscious. Fainted. Couldn’t have been an easy passage for him.’

Ferguson regarded the pilot with a certain grudging respect. ‘He may be a bloody murderer, but he’s a bloody tough bloody murderer. Must have been in agony, but never a squawk. Shouldn’t we take him back to the ship first? Give him a chance, like?’

‘I thought of it. No. There just may be survivors from the Andover and if there are they won’t last long. Sea temperature is about freezing or just below it. A man’s usually dead inside a minute. If there’s anyone at all, a minute’s delay may be a minute too late. We owe them that chance. Besides it’s going to be a very quick trip back to the ship.’

The San Andreas, slewing to port, had come around in a full half-circle and, under reverse thrust, was slowing to a stop. Patterson had almost certainly done this so as to manoeuvre the temporarily rudderless ship as near as possible to the spot where the Andover had been torpedoed.

Only a pathetic scattering of flotsam and jetsam showed where the frigate had gone down, baulks of timber, a few drums, carley floats, lifebuoys and life jackets, all empty—and four men. Three of the men were together. One of them, a man with what appeared to be a grey stocking hat, was keeping the head of another man, either unconscious or dead, out of the water: with his other hand he waved at the approaching lifeboat. All three men were wearing life jackets and, much more importantly, all three were wearing wet suits, which was the only reason they were still alive after fifteen minutes in the ice-cold waters of an Arctic winter.

All three were hauled inboard. The young, bareheaded man who had been supported by the man with the grey stocking hat was unconscious, not dead. He had every reason, the Bo’sun thought, to be unconscious: there was a great swelling bruise still oozing blood just above the right temple. The third man—it seemed most incongruous in the circumstances—wore the peaked braided cap of a naval commander. The cap was completely saturated. The Bo’sun made to remove it, then changed his mind when he saw the blood at the back of the cap: the cap was probably stuck to his head. The commander was quite conscious, he had courteously thanked the Bo’sun for being pulled out of the sea: but his eyes were vacant, glazed and sightless. McKinnon passed a hand before his eyes, but there was no reaction: for the moment, at any rate, the commander was quite blind.

Although he knew he was wasting his time, the Bo’sun headed towards the fourth man in the water but he backed off when he was still five yards away. Although his face was deep in the water he hadn’t died from drowning but from freezing: he wasn’t wearing a wet suit. The Bo’sun turned the lifeboat back to the San Andreas and touched the commander gently on the shoulder.

‘How do you feel, Commander Warrington?’

‘What? How do I feel? How do you know I’m Commander Warrington?’

‘You’re still wearing your cap, sir.’ The Commander made as if to touch the peak of his cap but the Bo’sun restrained him. ‘Leave it, sir. You’ve cut your head and your hat’s sticking to it. We’ll have you in hospital inside fifteen minutes. Plenty of doctors and nurses there for that sort of thing, sir.’

‘Hospital.’ Warrington shook his head as if trying to clear it. ‘Ah, of course. The San Andreas. You must be from her.’

‘Yes, sir. I’m the Bo’sun.’

‘What happened, Bo’sun? The Andover, I mean.’ Warrington touched the side of his head. ‘I’m a bit foggy up here.’

‘No bloody wonder. Three torpedoes, sir, almost simultaneously. You must have been blown off the bridge, or fell off it, or most likely been washed off it when your ship went down. She was on her beam ends then, sir, and it took only just over twenty seconds.’

‘How many of us—well, how many have you found?’

‘Just three, sir. I’m sorry.’

‘God above. Just three. Are you sure, Bo’sun?’

‘I’m afraid I’m quite sure, sir.’

‘My yeoman of signals—’

‘I’m here, sir.’

‘Ah. Hedges. Thank heavens for that. Who’s the third?’

‘Navigating officer, sir. He’s taken a pretty nasty clout on the head.’

‘And the First Lieutenant?’ Hedges didn’t answer, he had his head buried in his hands and was shaking it from side to side.

‘I’m afraid Hedges is a bit upset, Commander. Was the First Lieutenant wearing a red kapok jacket?’ Warrington nodded. ‘Then we found him, sir. I’m afraid he just froze to death.’

‘He would, wouldn’t he? Freeze to death, I mean.’ Warrington smiled faintly. ‘Always used to laugh at us and our wet suits. Carried a rabbit’s foot around with him and used to say that was all the wet suit he’d ever need.’

Dr Singh was the first man to meet the Bo’sun when he stepped out of the lifeboat. Patterson was with him, as were two orderlies and two stokers. The Bo’sun looked at the stokers and wondered briefly what they were doing on deck, but only very briefly: they were almost certainly doing a seaman’s job because there were very few seamen left to do it. Ferguson and his two fellow seamen had been in the for’ard fire-control party and might well be the only three left: all the other seamen had been in the superstructure at the time of the attack.

‘Five,’ Dr Singh said. ‘Just five. From the frigate and the plane, just five.’

‘Yes, Doctor. And even they had the devil’s own luck. Three of them are pretty wobbly. Commander looks all right but I think he’s in the worst condition. He seems to have gone blind and the back of his head has been damaged. There’s a connection, isn’t there, Doctor?’

‘Oh dear. Yes, there’s a connection. We’ll do what we can.’

Patterson said: ‘A moment, Bo’sun, if you will.’ He walked to one side and McKinnon followed him. They were half way towards the twisted superstructure when Patterson stopped.

‘As bad as that is it, sir?’ the Bo’sun said. ‘No eavesdroppers. I mean, we have to trust someone.’

‘I suppose.’ Patterson looked and sounded tired. ‘But damned few. Not after what I’ve seen inside that superstructure. Not after one or two things I’ve found out. First things first. The hull is still structurally sound. No leaks. I didn’t think there would be. We’re fixing up a temporary rudder control in the engine-room: we’ll probably be able to reconnect to the bridge which is the least damaged part of the superstructure. There was a small fire in the crew’s mess, but we got that under control.’ He nodded to the sadly twisted mass of metal ahead of them. ‘Let’s pray for calm weather to come. Jamieson says the structural supports are so weakened that the whole lot is liable to go over the side if we hit heavy seas. Would you like to go inside?’

‘Like? Not like. But I have to.’ The Bo’sun hesitated, reluctant to hear the answer to the question he had to ask. ‘What’s the score so far, sir?’

‘Up to now we’ve come across thirteen dead.’ He grimaced. ‘And bits and pieces. I’ve decided to leave them where they were meantime. There may be more people left alive.’

‘More? You have found some?’

‘Five. They’re in a pretty bad way, some of them. They’re in the hospital.’ He led the way inside the twisted entrance at the after end of the superstructure. ‘There are two oxy-acetylene teams in there. It’s slow work. No fallen beams, no wreckage as such, just twisted and buckled doors. Some of them, of course—the doors, I mean—were just blown off. Like this one here.’

‘The cold room. Well, at least there would have been nobody in there. But there were three weeks’ supply of beef, all kinds of meat, fish and other perishables in there: in a couple of days’ time we’ll have to start heaving them over the side.’ They moved slowly along the passageway. ‘Cool room intact, sir, although I don’t suppose a steady diet of fruit and veg. will have much appeal. Oh God!’

The Bo’sun stared into the galley which lay across the passage from the cool room. The surfaces of the cooking stoves were at a peculiar angle, but all the cupboards and the two work tables were intact. But what had caught the Bo’sun’s horrified attention was not the furniture but the two men who lay spreadeagled on the floor. They seemed unharmed except for a little trickle of blood from the ears and noses.

‘Netley and Spicer,’ the Bo’sun whispered. ‘They don’t seem—they’re dead?’

‘Concussion. Instantaneous,’ Patterson said.

The Bo’sun shook his head and moved on.

‘Tinned food store,’ he said. ‘Intact. It would be. And the liquor store here, not a can dented or a bottle broken.’ He paused. ‘With your permission, sir, I think this is a very good time to breach the liquor store. A hefty tot of rum all round—or at least for the men working in here. Pretty grim work and it’s the custom in the Royal Navy when there’s grim work to be done.’

Patterson smiled slightly, a smile that did not touch the eyes. ‘I didn’t know you were in the Royal Navy, Bo’sun.’

‘Twelve years. For my sins.’

‘An excellent idea,’ Patterson said. ‘I’ll be your first customer.’ They made their way up a twisted but still serviceable companionway to the next deck, the Bo’sun with a bottle of rum and half a dozen mugs strung on a wire in the other. This was the crew accommodation deck and it was not a pretty sight. The passageway had a distinct S-bend to it, the deck was warped so that it formed a series of undulations. At the for’ard end of the passageway, two oxy-acetylene teams were at work, each attacking a buckled door. In the short space between the head of the companionway and where the men were working were eight doors, four of them hanging drunkenly on their hinges, four that had been cut open by torches: seven of those had been occupied, and the occupants were still there, twelve of them in all. In the eighth cabin they found Dr Sinclair, stooping over and administering a morphine injection to a prone but fully conscious patient, a consciousness that was testified to by the fact that he was addressing nobody in particular in an unprintable monologue.

The Bo’sun said: ‘How do you feel, Chips?’ Chips was Rafferty, the ship’s carpenter.

‘I’m dying.’ He caught sight of the rum bottle in the Bo’sun’s hand and his stricken expression vanished. ‘But I could make a rapid recovery—’

‘This man is not dying,’ Dr Sinclair said. ‘He has a simple fracture of the tibia, that’s all. No rum—morphine and alcohol make for bad bedfellows. Later.’ He straightened and tried to smile. ‘But I could do with a tot, if you would, Bo’sun—a generous one. I feel in need of it.’ With his strained face and pale complexion he unquestionably looked in need of it: nothing in Dr Sinclair’s brief medical experience had even remotely begun to prepare him for the experience he was undergoing. The Bo’sun poured him the requisite generous measure, did the same for Patterson and himself, then passed the bottle and mugs to the men with the torches and the two ward orderlies who were standing unhappily by, strapped stretcher at the ready: they looked in no better case than Dr Sinclair but cheered up noticeably at the sight of the rum.

The deck above held the officers’ accommodation. It too, had been heavily damaged, but not so devastatingly so as the deck below. Patterson stopped at the first cabin they came to: its door had been blown inwards and the contents of the cabin looked as if a maniac had been let loose there with a sledgehammer. The Bo’sun knew it was Chief Patterson’s cabin.

The Bo’sun said, ‘I don’t much care for being in an engine-room, sir, but there are times when it has its advantages.’ He looked at the empty and almost as badly damaged Second Engineer’s cabin opposite. ‘At least Ralson is not here. Where is he, sir?’

‘He’s dead.’

‘He’s dead,’ the Bo’sun repeated slowly.

‘When the bombs struck he was still in the sea-men’s toilet fixing that short-circuit.’

‘I’m most damnably sorry, sir.’ He knew that Ralson had been Patterson’s only close friend aboard the ship.

‘Yes,’ Patterson said vaguely. ‘He had a young wife and two kids—babies, really.’

The Bo’sun shook his head and looked into the next cabin, that belonging to the Second Officer. ‘At least Mr Rawlings is not here.’

‘No. He’s not here. He’s up on the bridge.’ The Bo’sun looked at him, then turned away and went into the Captain’s cabin which was directly opposite and which, oddly enough, seemed almost undamaged. The Bo’sun went directly to a small wooden cupboard on the bulkhead, produced his knife, opened up the marlinspike and inserted its point just below the cupboard lock.

‘Breaking and entering, Bo’sun?’ The Chief Engineer’s voice held puzzlement but no reproof: he knew McKinnon well enough to know that the Bo’sun never did anything without a sound reason.

‘Breaking and entering is for locked doors and windows, sir. Just call this vandalism.’ The door sprang open and the Bo’sun reached inside, bringing out two guns. ‘Navy Colt 45s. You know about guns, sir?’

‘I’ve never held a gun in my hand in my life. You know about guns—as well as rum?’

‘I know about guns. This little switch here—you press it so. Then the safety-catch is off. That’s really all you require to know about guns.’ He looked at the broken cupboard and then the guns and shook his head again. ‘I don’t think Captain Bowen would have minded.’

‘Won’t. Not wouldn’t. Won’t.’

The Bo’sun carefully laid the guns on the Captain’s table. ‘You’re telling me that the Captain is not dead?’

‘He’s not dead. Neither is the Chief Officer.’

The Bo’sun smiled for the first time that morning, then looked accusingly at the Chief Engineer. ‘You might have told me this, sir.’

‘I suppose. I might have told you a dozen things. You would agree, Bo’sun, that we both have a great deal on our minds. They’re both in the sick bay, both pretty savagely burnt about the face but not in any danger, not, at least, according to Dr Singh. It was being far out on the port wing of the bridge that saved them—they were away from the direct effects of the blast.’

‘How come they got so badly burnt, sir?’

‘I don’t know. They can hardly speak, their faces are completely wrapped in bandages, they look more like Egyptian mummies than anything else. I asked the Captain and he kept mumbling something like Essex, or Wessex or something like that.’

The Bo’sun nodded. ‘Wessex, sir. Rockets. Distress flares. Two lots kept on the bridge. The shock must have triggered some firing mechanism and it went off prematurely. Damnable ill luck.’

‘Damnably lucky, if you ask me, Bo’sun. Compared to practically everybody else in the superstructure.’

‘Does he—does he know yet?’

‘It hardly seemed the time to tell him. Another thing he kept repeating, as if it was urgent. “Home signal, home signal,” something like that. Over and over again. Maybe his mind was wandering, maybe I couldn’t make him out. Their mouths are the only part of their faces that aren’t covered with bandages but even their lips are pretty badly burnt. And, of course, they’re loaded with morphine. “Home signal.” Mean anything to you?’

‘At the moment, no.’

A young and rather diminutive stoker appeared in the doorway. McCrimmon, in his middle twenties, was a less than lovable person, his primary and permanent characteristics being the interminable mastication of chewing gum, truculence, a fixed scowl and a filthy tongue: at that moment, the first three were in abeyance.

‘Bloody awful, so it is, down there. Just like a bloody cemetery.’

‘Morgue, McCrimmon, morgue,’ Patterson said. ‘What do you want?’

‘Me. Nothing, sir. Jamieson sent me. He said something about the phones no’ working and you would be wanting a runner, maybe.’

‘Second Engineer to you, McCrimmon.’ Patterson looked at the Bo’sun. ‘Very thoughtful of the Second Engineer. Nothing we require in the engine-room—except to get that jury rudder fixed. Deck-side, Bo’sun?’

‘Two look-outs, although God knows what they’ll be looking out for. Two of your men, sir, the two ward orderlies below, Able Seaman Ferguson and Curran. Curran is—used to be—a sailmaker. Don’t envy him his job but I’ll give him a hand. Curran will know what to bring. I suggest, sir, we have the crew’s mess-deck cleared.’

‘Our mortuary?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You heard, McCrimmon? How many men?’

‘Eight, sir.’

‘Eight. Two look-outs. The two seamen to bring up the canvas and whatever required. The other four to clear the crew’s mess. Don’t you try to tell them, they’d probably throw you overboard. Tell the Second Engineer and he’ll tell them. When they’ve finished have them report to me, here or on the bridge. You too. Off you go.’ McCrimmon left.

The Bo’sun indicated the two Colts lying on the table. ‘I wonder what McCrimmon thought of those.’

‘Probably old hat to him. Jamieson picked the right man—McCrimmon’s tough and hasn’t much in the way of finer feelings. Irish-Scots from some Glasgow slum. Been in prison. In fact, if it wasn’t for the war that’s probably where he’d be now.’

The Bo’sun nodded and opened another small wall locker—this one had a key to it. It was a small liquor cupboard and from a padded velvet retainer McKinnon removed a rum bottle and laid it on the Captain’s bunk.

‘I don’t suppose the Captain will mind that either,’ Patterson said. ‘For the stretcher-bearers?’

‘Yes, sir.’ The Bo’sun started opening drawers in the Captain’s table and found what he was looking for in the third drawer, two leather-bound folders which he handed to Patterson. ‘Prayer book and burial service, sir. But I should think the burial service would be enough. Somebody’s got to read it.’

‘Good God. I’m not a preacher, Bo’sun.’

‘No, sir. But you’re the officer commanding.’

‘Good God,’ Patterson repeated. He placed the folders reverently on the Captain’s table. ‘I’ll look at those later.’

‘ “Home signal”,’ the Bo’sun said slowly. ‘That’s what the Captain said, wasn’t it? “Home signal”.’

‘Yes.’

‘ “Homing signal” is what he was trying to say. “Homing signal”. Should have thought of it before—but I suppose that’s why Captain Bowen is a captain and I’m not. How do you think the Condor managed to locate us in the darkness? All right, it was half dawn when he attacked but he must have been on the course when it was still night. How did he know where we were?’

‘U-boat?’

‘No U-boat. The Andover’s sonar would have picked him up.’ The Bo’sun was repeating the words that Captain Bowen had used.

‘Ah.’ Patterson nodded. ‘Homing signal. Our saboteur friend.’

‘Flannelfoot, as Mr Jamieson calls him. Not only was he busy fiddling around with our electrical circuits, he was transmitting a continuous signal. A directional signal. The Condor knew where we were to the inch. I don’t know whether the Condor was equipped to receive such signals, I know nothing about planes, but it wouldn’t have mattered, some place like Alta Fjord could have picked up the signal and transmitted our bearing to the Condor.’

‘You have it, of course, Bo’sun, you have it to rights.’ Patterson looked at the two guns. ‘One for me and one for you.’

‘If you say so, sir.’

‘Don’t be daft, who else would have it?’ Patterson picked up a gun. ‘I’ve never even held one of these things in my hand, far less fired one. But you know, Bo’sun, I don’t really think I would mind firing a shot once. Just one.’

‘Neither would I, sir.’

Second Officer Rawlings was lying beside the wheel and there was no mystery as to how he had died: what must have been a flying shard of metal had all but decapitated him.

‘Where’s the helmsman?’ the Bo’sun asked. ‘Was he a survivor, then?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know who was on. Maybe Rawlings had sent him to get something. But there were two survivors up here, apart from the Captain and Chief Officer—McGuigan and Jones.’

‘McGuigan and Jones? What were they doing up here?’

‘It seems Mr Kennet had called them up and posted them as look-outs, one on either wing. I suppose that’s why they survived, just as Captain Bowen and Mr Kennet survived. They’re in the hospital, too.’

‘Badly hurt?’

‘Unharmed, I believe. Shock, that’s all.’

The Bo’sun moved out to the port wing and Patterson followed. The wing was wholly undamaged, no signs of metal buckling anywhere. The Bo’sun indicated a once grey but now badly scorched metal box which was attached just below the wind-breaker: its top and one side had been blown off.

‘That’s where they kept the Wessex rockets,’ the Bo’sun said.

They went back inside and the Bo’sun moved towards the wireless office hatchway: the sliding wooden door was no longer there.

‘I wouldn’t look, if I were you,’ Patterson said.

‘The men have got to, haven’t they?’

Chief Radio Officer Spenser was lying on the deck but he was no longer recognizable as such. He was just an amorphous mass of bone and flesh and torn, blood-saturated clothing: had it not been for the clothing it could have been the shattered remnants of any animal lying there. When McKinnon looked away Patterson could see that some colour had drained from the deeply-tanned face.

‘The first bomb must have gone off directly beneath him,’ the Bo’sun said. ‘God, I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ll attend to him myself. Third Officer Batesman. I know he was the officer of the watch. Any idea where he is, sir?’

‘In the chart room. I don’t advise you to go there either.’

Batesman was recognizable but only just. He was still on his. chair, half-leaning, half-lying on the table, what was left of his head pillowed on a blood-stained chart. McKinnon returned to the bridge.

‘I don’t suppose it will be any comfort to their relatives to know that they died without knowing. I’ll fix him up myself, too. I couldn’t ask the men.’ He looked ahead through the totally shattered windscreens. At least, he thought, they wouldn’t be needing a Kent clear-view screen any more. ‘Wind’s backing to the east,’ he said absently. ‘Bound to bring more snow. At least it might help to hide us from the wolves—if there are any wolves around.’

‘You think, perhaps, they might come back to finish us off?’ The Chief was shivering violently but that was only because he was accustomed to the warmth of the engine-room: the temperature on the bridge was about 6°F—twenty-six degrees of frost—and the wind held steady at twenty knots.