San Andreas Part 26

'It's unlikely.' McKinnon pointed ahead. 'Fine off the starboard now. That's Fetlar.'

'Ah!' Ulbricht consulted the chart. 'Within a mile - or two at the most - or where we ought to be. We haven't done too badly, Mr McKinnon.'

'We? You, you mean. A splendid piece of navigation, Lieutenant. The Admiralty should give you a medal for your services.'

Ulbricht smiled. 'I doubt whether Admiral Doenitz would quite approve of that. Speaking of services, you will now, I take it, be finished with mine. As a navigator, I mean.'

'My father was a fisherman, a professional. My first four years at sea I spent with him around those islands. It would be difficult for me to get lost.'

'I should imagine.' Ulbricht went out on the starboard wing, looked aft for a few seconds, then hastily returned, s.h.i.+vering and dusting snow off his coat.

'The sky - or what I can see of the sky - is getting pretty black up north. Wind's freshening a bit. Looks as if this awful weather - or, if you like, wonderful weather - is going to continue for quite some time. This never entered your calculations.'

'I'm not a magician. Nor am I a fortune-teller. Reading the future is not one of my specialities.'

'Well, just let's call it a well-timed stroke of luck.'

'Luck we could use. A little, anyway.'

Fetlar was on the starboard beam when Naseby came up to take over the wheel. McKinnon went out on the starboard wing to a.s.sess the weather. As the San Andreas was heading just a degree or two west of south and the wind was from the north it was almost directly abaft. The clouds in that direction were dark and ominous but they did not hold his attention for long: he had become aware, very faintly at first but then more positively, of something a great deal more ominous. He went back inside and looked at Ulbricht.

'Remember we were talking about luck a little while back?' Ulbricht nodded. 'Well, our little luck has just run out. We have company. There's a Condor out there.'

Ulbricht said nothing, just went outside on the wing and listened. He returned after a few moments.

'I can hear nothing.'

'Variation in wind force or direction. Something like that. I heard it all right. Up in a north-easterly direction. I'm quite sure that the pilot didn't intend that we should hear him. Some pa.s.sing freak of wind. They're being either very careful or very suspicious or maybe both. They have to consider the possibility that we might make a break for some port in the Shetlands. So the U-boat surfaces before dawn and calls up the Focke-Wulf. Pilot's doubtless been told to stay out of sight and hearing. He'll do that until he hears from the U-boat that we've suddenly changed direction. Then he'll come calling.'

'To finish us off,' Naseby said.

'They won't be dropping any rose petals, that's for sure.'

Ulbricht said: 'You no longer think that it will be torpedo-bombers or glider-bombers or Stukas that will come and do the job?'

'No. They wouldn't get here in time and they can't come earlier and hang around waiting. They haven't the range. But that big lad out there can hang around all day if need be. Of course, I'm only a.s.suming there's only one Condor put there. Could be two or three of them. Don't forget we're a very, very important target.'

'It's a gift not given to many.' Ulbricht was gloomy. 'This ability to cheer up people and lighten their hearts.'

'I second that.' Naseby didn't sound any happier than Ulbricht. 'I wish to h.e.l.l you hadn't gone out on that wing.'

'You wouldn't like me to keep the burden of my secrets alone, would you? No need to tell anyone else. Why spread gloom and despondency unnecessarily, especially when there's d.a.m.n-all we can do about it.'

'Blissful ignorance, is that it?' Naseby said. McKinnon nodded. 'I could do with some of that.'

Shortly after noon, when they were off a small and dimly seen group of islands which McKinnon called the Skerries, he and Ulbricht went below, leaving Naseby and McGuigan on the bridge. The snow, which was now really more sleet than snow, had eased but not stopped. The wind, too, had eased. The visibility, if that was the word for it, varied intermittently between two and four miles. Cloud cover was about two thousand feet and somewhere above that the unseen Condor lurked. McKinnon had not heard it again but he didn't for a moment doubt that it was still there.

The Captain and Rennet were sitting up in bed and the Bo'sun pa.s.sed the time of day with them and Margaret Morrison. Everybody was being elaborately calm but the tension and expectancy in the air were unmistakable and considerable. It would have been even more considerable, McKinnon reflected, if they had known of the Condor patrolling above the clouds.

He found Patterson and Sinclair in the mess-deck. Sinclair said: 'Singularly free from alarms and excursions this morning, aren't we, Bo'sun?'

'Long may it continue that way.' He wondered if Sinclair would consider the accompanying Condor an alarm or an excursion. 'The weather is rather on our side. Snowing, poor visibility - not fog but not good - and low cloud cover.'

'Sounds promising. May yet be that we shall touch the Happy Isles.'

'We hope. Speaking of the Happy Isles, have you made preparations for off-loading our wounded cripples when we reach the Isles?'

'Yes. No problem. Rafferty is a stretcher case. So are four of the men we picked up in Murmansk - two with leg wounds, two frostbite cases. Five in all. Easy.'

'Sounds good. Mr Patterson, those two rogues, McCrimmon and Simons or whatever his name is. We'll have to tie them up - at least tie their hands behind their backs - before we take them ash.o.r.e.'

'If we get the chance to take them ash.o.r.e. Have to leave it to the last minute - double-dyed criminals they may be but we can't have a couple of men go down in a sinking s.h.i.+p.'

'Please don't talk about such things,' Sinclair said.

'Of course, sir. Have they been fed? Not that I really care.'

'No.' It was Sinclair. 'I saw them. Simons says he's lost his appet.i.te and McCrimmon's face is too painful to let him eat. I believe him, he can hardly move his lips to speak. It looks, Bo'sun, as if you hit him with a sledgehammer.'

'No tears for either.'

McKinnon had a quick lunch and rose to go. 'Have to go to relieve Naseby.'

McKinnon said: 'Two hours or so. Perhaps earlier if I can see a convenient bank of low cloud or snow or even fog -anything we can disappear into. You or Mr Jamieson will be in the engine-room about then?'

'Both, probably.' Patterson sighed. 'We can only hope it works, Bo'sun.'

'That's all we can do, sir.'

Shortly after three o'clock in the afternoon, on the bridge with Naseby and Ulbricht, McKinnon made his decision to go. He said to Ulbricht: 'We can't see it but we're near enough opposite the south tip of Bressay?'

'I would say so. Due west of us.'

'Well, no point in putting off the inevitable.' He lifted the phone and called the engine-room. 'Mr Patterson? Now, if you please. George, hard a-starboard. Due west."

'And how am I to know where west is?'

McKinnon went to the starboard wing door and latched it open. 'Going to be a bit chilly - and damp - but if you keep the wind fair and square on your right cheek that should be it, near enough.' He went into the wrecked radio room, disconnected the transmitting bug, returned to the bridge and went out on the port wing.

The weather had changed very little. Grey skies, grey seas, moderate sleet and a patchy visibility extending to not more than two miles. He returned to the bridge again, leaving the door open so that the north wind had a clear pa.s.sage through the bridge.

'One wonders,' Ulbricht said, 'what thoughts are pa.s.sing through the mind of the U-boat captain at this moment.'

'Probably not very pleasant ones. All depends whether he was depending on the transmitting bug or the Asdic or both to keep tabs on us. //it was the bug, then he might trail us at a prudent distance so that he could have his aerial raised to pick up the transmitting signal without being seen. In that case he might have been out of Asdic listening range. And if that is the case he might well believe that the transmitter has failed. He has, after all, no reason to believe that we might have stumbled on the bug and that we know of McCrimmon's shenanigans.'

The San Andreas, silent now, was heading approximately west, still with a good turn of speed on.

'So he's in a quandary,' McKinnon said. 'Not a position I would like to be in. So what decision does he make? Does he increase speed on the same course we've been following in the hope of catching us up or does he think we might be running for shelter and go off on an interception course for Bard Head in the hope of locating us? All depends how crafty he is.'

'I just don't know,' Ulbricht said.

'I know,' Naseby said. 'We're just a.s.suming that he hasn't been tracking us on Asdic. If he's as crafty as you are, Archie, he'll set off on an interception course - and he'll ask the Condor to come down and look for us.'

'I was afraid you'd say that.'

Fifteen minutes pa.s.sed in an increasingly eerie silence, then McKinnon went out on the port wing. He didn't remain there long.

'You were right, George.' The Bo'sun sounded resigned. 'He's out there, searching for us. I can hear the Condor's engines quite clearly but he hasn't seen us yet. But he will, though, he will. He's only got to quarter the area long enough - and that won't be long - and he'll nail us. Then a signal to the U-boat, a cl.u.s.ter of bombs for us and the U-boat comes to finish us off.'

That's a very depressing thought,' Naseby said.

Ulbricht went out on to the port wing and returned almost immediately. He said nothing, just nodded his head.

McKinnon picked up the engine-room phone. 'Mr Patterson? Would you start up, please? And please don't bother working her up slowly. Quickly, if you would, and to maximum power. The Condor is down searching for us and it can only be a matter of minutes before he finds us. I'd like to make tracks out of here with all speed.'

'You're not as fast as a Condor,' Naseby said.

'I'm sadly aware of that, George. But I don't intend to remain here like a sitting duck while he comes and clobbers us. We can always try a little evasive action.'

'He can also turn and twist a d.a.m.n sight faster than we can. You'd be better off trying a few prayers.'

The Condor took another twenty minutes to find them but find them he did and wasted no time in making his presence felt as well as heard. In the cla.s.sic fas.h.i.+on he approached from astern, flying low as Naseby had predicted he would, certainly at not more than three hundred feet. Naseby gave the rudder maximum helm to port but it was a wasted effort: as Naseby had also said, the Condor could turn and twist much faster than they could. The bomb, certainly not the size of a 500-pounder, struck the deck some sixty feet for'ard of the superstructure, penetrated and exploded in a flash of flame and a large jet of oily black water.

'That was odd,' Naseby said.

The Bo'sun shook his head. 'Not odd. Greed.'

'Greed?' Ulbricht looked at him, then nodded. 'Gold.'

'They haven't given up hope yet. How far would you say it was to Bard Head?'

'Four miles?'

'About that. If they don't get us - stop us, I mean - by that point, then they're going to sink us.'

'And if they stop us?'

'They wait till the U-boat comes up and takes us over.'

'It's a sad thing,' Naseby said. 'Very sad. This love of money, I mean.'

'I think,' McKinnon said, 'that they'll be back in a minute or so to show us some more love.'

And, indeed, the Condor was executing a very tight turn and heading back to pa.s.s the San Andreas on the port side.

'Some of you Condor pilots,' McKinnon said to Ulbricht, 'have very determined and one-track minds.'

'There are times when one wishes they hadn't.'

The second attack was an exact replica of the first. The pilot - or his navigator - was evidently a precision bombardier of some note for the second bomb landed in exactly the same place with precisely the same results.

'These are not very big bombs,' McKinnon said, 'but it's for sure we can't take much more of this. Another one like that and I think we'll call it a day.'

'The white bedsheet, is that it?'

'That's it. I have it up here. I wasn't kidding. Listen! I hear an aero engine!'

'So did I,' Ulbricht said. 'All made in Germany.'

'Not this one, it's not. Different note altogether. It's a fighter plane. My G.o.d, how stupid can I be! Come to that, how stupid can you be? Or the pilot of that Condor? Of course they've got radar on the island. Place is probably botching with the stuff. Of course they've picked us up, of course they've picked the Condor up. So they've sent out someone to investigate. No. Not someone. I hear two.' McKinnon reached out and flooded the decks and side of the San Andreas with its Red Cross lights. 'We had better not be mistaken for the Tirpitz.'

'I can see them now,' Ulbricht said. His voice was without expression.

'Me, too.' McKinnon looked at Ulbricht and managed to keep the elation out of his voice. 'Do you recognize them?'

'Yes. Hurricanes.'

'I'm sorry, Lieutenant.' The regret in the Bo'sun's voice was genuine. 'But you know what this means?'

'I'm afraid I do.'

It was no contest. The Hurricanes rapidly overhauled the Condor from the rear and fired simultaneously, one from above, the other from below. The Focke-Wulf didn't blow up or disintegrate or burst into flames or anything dramatic of that nature. Trailing clouds of smoke, it crashed steeply into the sea and vanished at once below the waves. Lieutenant Ulbricht's face still remained empty of all expression.

The two fighter planes returned to the San Andreas and began to circle it, one close in, the other at the distance of about a mile. Although it was difficult to see what they could do against a submarine about to launch a torpedo except blow its periscope off, their presence was immensely comforting and rea.s.suring.

McKinnon stepped out on the port wing and waved at one of the planes, the one making a close circuit of the s.h.i.+p. The Hurricane waggled its wings.

Jamieson answered the telephone when McKinnon called. 'I think you can reduce to normal speed now, sir. The Condor's gone.'

'Gone where?' There was, as there might well have been, bafflement in Jamieson's voice. 'Under the sea. A couple of Hurricanes shot him down.'

The Hurricanes remained with them until they were within a mile of Bard Head when a lean, purposeful frigate approached out of the gathering dusk and slid effortlessly alongside. The Bo'sun was on the deck.

A man aboard the frigate - presumably the captain - used a loud-hailer.

'Are you in need of care and protection, friend?'

'Not now we're not.'

'Are you badly damaged?'

'Some. A few sh.e.l.ls and bombs. But we're a going concern. There's a nasty old U-boat hanging around.'

'Not now he won't be. He'll be all to h.e.l.l and gone. What's that you see on my p.o.o.p?'

'Ah! Depth charges.'

'Well, well.' The bearded naval Commodore shook his head in wonderment and looked at the others gathered in the small lounge of the hotel. 'The story is impossible, of course, but on the evidence of my eyes - well, I've just got to believe you. Your crew and pa.s.sengers all taken care of, Mr Patterson?'