Torpedo Run (1981) Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Douglas Reeman

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1 Recall

  2 The Other War

  3 Parthian

  4 Allies

  5 The Glory Boys

  6 The Signal

  7 Attack

  8 Near Miss

  9 Act of War?

  10 Rivals and Lovers

  11 Barker’s War

  12 No Chance Meeting

  13 The Bright Face of Death

  14 Drifter

  15 Nobody Lives For Ever

  16 Cat and Mouse

  17 Sunset

  Copyright

  About the Book

  It was in 1943. On the Black Sea, the Russians were fighting a desperate battle to regain control. But the Russians’ one real weakness was on the water: whatever they did, the Germans did it better, and the daring hit-and-run tactics of the E-boats plagued them. At last the British agreed to send them a small flotilla of motor torpedo boats under the command of John Devane.

  Devane had been in the Navy since the outbreak of war. More than a veteran, he was a survivor – and the two rarely went together in the savage war of MTBs. Given command at short notice, Devane soon learned that, even against the vast and raging background of the Eastern Front, war could still be a personal duel between individuals.

  About the Author

  Douglas Reeman joined the Navy in 1941. He did convoy duty in the Atlantic, Arctic and the North Sea, and later served in motor torpedo boats. As he says, ‘I am always asked to account for the perennial appeal of the sea story, and its enduring appeal for people of so many nationalities and cultures. It would seem that the eternal and sometimes elusive triangle of man, ship and ocean, particularly under the stress of war, produces the best qualities of courage and compassion, irrespective of the rights and wrongs of the conflict . . . The sea has no understanding of the righteous or unjust causes. It is the common enemy, respected by all who serve on it, ignored at their peril.’

  Reeman has written over thirty novels under his own name and more than twenty best-selling historical novels, featuring Richard Bolitho and his nephew Adam Bolitho, under the pseudonym Alexander Kent.

  Also by Douglas Reeman

  A Prayer for the Ship

  High Water

  Send a Gunboat

  Dive in the Sun

  The Hostile Shore

  The Last Raider

  With Blood and Iron

  H.M.S. Saracen

  The Deep Silence

  Path of the Storm

  The Pride and the Anguish

  To Risks Unknown

  The Greatest Enemy

  Rendezvous – South Atlantic

  Go In and Sink!

  The Destroyers

  Winged Escort

  Surface with Daring

  Strike from the Sea

  A Ship Must Die

  Badge of Glory

  The First to Land

  The Volunteers

  The Iron Pirate

  Against the Sea (non-fiction)

  In Danger’s Hour

  The White Guns

  Killing Ground

  The Horizon

  Sunset

  A Dawn Like Thunder

  Battlecruiser

  Dust on the Sea

  For Valour

  The Glory Boys

  Knife Edge

  Twelve Seconds to Live

  Torpedo Run

  Douglas Reeman

  For George,

  one of the Glory Boys

  1

  Recall

  Lieutenant-Commander John Devane sat on a plain wooden bench seat and regarded the opposite wall. Grey rough concrete. You could even see where the first layer had been tamped home. The brief professional interest passed just as quickly as it had emerged and he sank back again, outwardly relaxed, but his mind busy with the distant sounds, the feeling of being off balance, lost.

  The room was little more than a space curtained off from one of many such corridors beneath the Admiralty building in London. A far-off murmur was like the sea across a scattered reef, but it was traffic – red buses which still managed to make splashes of colour against the dust and rubble of wartime London, and taxis which never seemed to see you when you needed one – and people on the move: endless, restless throngs, many in the uniforms of countries occupied by ‘them’, as his mother called them. The enemy.

  Devane glanced at his watch. Again the movement was easy and without waste. It was eleven in the forenoon, a May day in 1943. But down here it could have been anywhere, any time.

  He thought briefly of his leave, the first he had had for many months. He tried to resist the feeling that he was glad it had been interrupted by this summons to the Admiralty after only four days. Perhaps that was what you needed after the blood and guts of the Mediterranean war. Any longer and maybe you were too scared to go back.

  His home was in Dorset, or had been in that other, prewar world. It was strange to go back, for, unlike London and other major towns and cities, Dorchester seemed to move more slowly, as if reluctant to accept that change would ever come. His father was still running the family business where he himself had once been employed as a fledgeling architect, although now there seemed very little to do unless it was under some government contract or other. His mother had grown older, but not so much that it caused surprise or pain on their rare meetings.

  The curtain was plucked aside and Devane saw a small Wren studying him, her hair shining in the corridor lighting behind her.

  ‘Captain Whitcombe will see you shortly, sir.’

  Devane reached for his cap and stood up, adjusting himself for this unexpected interview. He knew Whitcombe from way back, a bluff, red-faced captain who had been in retirement before the war and had been slotted into a desk job to allow someone else to take over a bridge at sea. Unlike some, Whitcombe seemed to have dropped into a niche which suited him perfectly.

  Devane fell in step beside the little Wren and wondered if she had a boy friend, if she liked her job underground, what she would say if he took her by the arm and. . . .

  She paused by a steel door which was labelled SPECIAL OPERATIONS and waited for Devane to open it. The door weighed a ton, and he guessed she always had to do that.

  Another concrete box, with clattering typewriters, harsh lighting, and engrossed Wrens bustling about with signals and files as if Devane were invisible.

  A Wren second officer looked up from her desk. ‘Wait here, please. I’ll tell Captain Whitcombe you’ve arrived.’

  He nodded and ran his fingers through his hair. It was as unruly as ever, and nearly four years of active service had not improved it. He thought about his last commission. The North African coast, sunshine and washed-out blue skies, or the fierce off-shore winds which tore your face with dust and desert sand.

  What were they going to do with him? Not back to the Med surely? Perhaps to the Channel, to the motor torpedo base at Felixstowe where it had all started?

  His mother had exclaimed angrily, ‘It’s not right to recall you so soon, John! There are plenty round here who’ve never been in uniform!’

  Whereas his father, as mild as ever, had said, ‘I expect they know what they’re doing. Our boy’s important.’

  Important. Devane smiled to himself. His father had really meant it.

  It had certainly been a long haul from those other days when he had started to work for his father. Looking back it always seemed to have been spring or summer. Every weekend down to the coast in the green sports car he owned jointly with his best friend Tony. Sailing their old sloop round Portland Bill, pints afterwards in a
pub at Weymouth. And later, more for a bet than anything, when they had both joined the peacetime Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, he should have seen what might happen. What was still happening. Now the old sloop and the sports car were gone. Tony too, for that matter, killed in a mine-sweeper within sight of the Portland Bill they had both loved so much.

  He steeled himself as he heard footsteps and muted voices. So there was someone else in that room. Probably saying, ‘You speak first, old chap, while I watch his reactions.’

  With a start he realized that the typewriters had all stopped, that several of the girls were looking at him. Naval officers, with wavy stripes or otherwise, were two a penny here. His eye fell on a carefully preserved newspaper which one of the Wrens had taken from her desk. The same one which his parents had at home.

  Was it really him? Eyes squinting at the camera, battered cap all awry; some vague, grinning faces in the background with what he knew to be part of the old Maltese battery in the far distance.

  The glaring headline still stunned him. DEVANE’S BATTLE SQUADRON STRIKES TERROR INTO THE RETREATING AFRIKA KORPS! THE LAST GERMANS FLEE FROM TUNIS! There was more, a whole lot more.

  The voice said, ‘Will you come this way, sir.’ Even the unsmiling second officer was looking at him differently.

  Devane had seen that look on the faces of newly joined officers and ratings. It asked, what was it like? How does it feel to fight the enemy at close quarters?

  Devane found himself in the other room without realizing he had moved or that the door had closed silently behind him.

  Whitcombe strode to greet him. Still the same, thank God. Good old Tubby.

  The other man was in civilian clothes but he looked like a naval officer.

  Whitcombe beamed. ‘Bloody good to see you again, John.’ He jerked his head but his eyes stayed on Devane’s grave features. ‘This is Commander Kinross of our operations staff.’

  Kinross did not shake hands but gave a stiff nod. He looked a cold fish but extremely competent. On the ball. Between them, these two men, whom most people had never heard of, planned each special operation in the Mediterranean like chess players. They probably had irons in other fires too, Devane thought. The world was waiting to see what would happen next. The Germans had been pushed out of North Africa and for the first time were on the defensive. This year the tide would have to go harder against them. Italy and Sicily were obvious beach heads, maybe Greece too. Then, with the enemy divided on several fronts at once, the real one, the invasion of northern Europe, which months, rather than years, ago had been the impossible dream.

  Whitcombe was saying, ‘Damn sorry about your leave.’ He smiled and glanced at the ribbon on Devane’s jacket. ‘Another bar to your DSC, what does it feel like to be a hero and the public’s darling?’

  Devane looked past him, at the vast wall map which was a twin of the one in an adjoining operations room. Crosses and flags, dotted convoy routes, and mine fields, sinkings and marks to show approximately where ships had simply vanished without trace.

  Feel like? Devane was twenty-seven years old and had been in the Navy since the outbreak of war. But he was a veteran, more than that, he was a survivor, and the two rarely went together in the roaring, clattering world of motor torpedo boats, the war where you saw your enemy, sometimes even his fear, as the tracer cut him down and turned his boat into an inferno.

  ‘I feel immensely old, sir.’

  Devane grinned. It made him look like a youth.

  They all sat around the littered desk, and then Commander Kinross said abruptly, ‘I know your record, of course, your rise from first lieutenant in a Vosper MTB at Felixstowe to command a flotilla in the Med.’ He gave a wintry smile. ‘That sounds a bit brief for so active a life, but it was when you came to us with your command that I really had the opportunity to study your methods.’

  By ‘us’, Kinross meant the special operations section, and more to the point, the Special Boat Squadron which had achieved the impossible. From running guns to Tito’s partisans and landing agents behind enemy lines, they had harried the German convoys and communications from the Aegean to Tobruk, from embattled Malta to the Adriatic. Devane’s handful of MTBs, nicknamed the Battle Squadron, had tied down desperately needed patrol vessels and aircraft and, as the man had written in the newspaper, had indeed struck terror into the retreating Germans.

  There were only two of his boats left, however, and they were little better than scrap. A lot of good men had gone, and some had been left in hospitals. It was the usual equation.

  Whitcombe said, ‘Fact is, John, we need you back. Otherwise. . . .’ He glanced at the urbane commander, something like rebuke in his eyes. ‘God knows you’ve earned a break, but we’re stretched to breaking point. We need experienced officers as never before, leaders and not just brave chaps who obey orders right or wrong.’ He gave a sad smile. ‘But then you know all about that.’

  Kinross sounded impatient. His war was waiting in the other room.

  ‘This year is the turning point. It has to be. However we invade, northwards through Italy or the surrounding territory, it has to be soon. It’s got to be right. One real failure now and we’ll never get back in a million years.’ He stood up and moved to the great wall map, then he pointed at the Mediterranean. ‘Everything is regrouping, we have the whole North African coast sewn up and the convoy routes covered by sea and air.’ His finger moved up still further. ‘France next year, certainly no later, and after that it will be one long slog all the way to Berlin.’ He turned and looked at Devane calmly. ‘Of course, we’ll not have it all our own way. Decisive campaigns are built on small ventures which are often never revealed until after a war. By then, who cares anyway? But who would have believed that weather was as important as fuel and ammunition?’

  Whitcombe interrupted uneasily, ‘Get on with it, William.’

  Kinross was unmoved. ‘Last winter for instance, our Russian allies thought they were on the advance, that the German armies on the Eastern Front would collapse in the snow and ice. But they didn’t. Somehow the Germans stood firm. Incredible casualties on both sides, millions probably, acts of barbarism which make Attila the Hun seem like a bloody amateur.’

  Devane felt cold, as if the battlefield had suddenly penetrated the concrete bunker.

  Fascinated, he watched Kinross’s finger on the move again. It came to rest on the Black Sea, then on the thrusting Crimean peninsula itself.

  Kinross said distantly, ‘Brings back memories, eh? Boys’ Own Paper, the Charge of the Light Brigade, Florence Nightingale, all good stuff.’ His tone sharpened. ‘Well, now it’s the hinge of the whole front. The Germans took it from the Russians, and while they remain there in strength the Russians have no chance of thrusting as far as they must into Europe. They know it, the Americans know it, and so doubtless do the Germans. If Hitler’s generals can withstand another winter the Russians will have to begin all over again. We can say goodbye to our own invasion of northern France unless the enemy is completely involved on every front. The defender always has the final advantage, remember that.’

  Devane tensed. They were going to give him a staff job. Right here beneath London, hemmed in by charts and filing cabinets. He suddenly felt sickened at the prospect.

  Whitcombe said, ‘The coastal forces flotillas, MGBs as well as your MTBs, took quite a hammering, so the regrouping and remanning is top priority.’ He smiled. ‘You have to know sooner or later, John, but the invasion of Sicily is already set for July, so we don’t have much time. A special MTB flotilla has been formed and trained, and was sent to the Med a few weeks ago. All brand-new boats, five to be exact.’

  ‘Their senior officer is Lieutenant-Commander Don Richie, right?’ Devane saw their startled exchange of glances. ‘You know the Andrew, sir, no secrets for long.’

  Kinross said coldly, ‘Well, that had better be changed, and quickly.’

  Whitcombe dragged out his cigarette case and lit one carefully.

 
‘Of course, John, you and Richie served together at the beginning. In the Channel?’

  ‘Yes. I know his wife too.’ Devane looked away. Why had he said that?

  ‘Well, Richie’s special flotilla was put aboard some fast merchant ships, ex-passenger liners, at dead of night, men, torpedoes, everything but the kitchen sink, and whisked away. Through the canal and up to Kuwait. We don’t have much trouble with Iran these days after we and the Russians “persuaded” them to get rid of their pro-German Shah.’

  Whitcombe and Kinross smiled at each other like conspirators.

  It was all getting out of hand. Nothing seemed to be making sense. Richie was the best there was. Another RNVR officer who had been a civilian before the war, he had become something of a legend in the little ships he commanded and led. So why did they need him?

  Whitcombe glanced at the wall clock. ‘Lunch soon, I think. Ask Mary to reserve us a table. She knows where.’

  As if he was still attached to the desk by an invisible wire, Kinross left the room with obvious reluctance.

  Whitcombe regarded Devane fondly. ‘I’ll come to the point, John. Those five boats were taken overland and launched into the Caspian Sea. A rendezvous is being arranged for the whole flotilla to be carried overland again.’ He looked at the map. ‘To the Black Sea. To work with the Russians against the enemy’s flank. Five boats are all we can spare, besides which, it will give the flotilla more freedom to move and act. The Russians’ one real weakness is on the water. Whatever they do, the Germans seem better at it. The Russians will never admit this, naturally, any more than we would. But they are keen for us to help, although I suspect they are hoping for more aid than we have to offer.’

  Devane saw the map through different eyes now. It must be important to attract so much secret planning. Now those five MTBs were up there on the map. In the Caspian Sea. Then about four hundred miles across country to another sea, a different war.

  ‘I want you to command the flotilla, John. It’s unfair, it’s also unfortunate, but we need someone who is as well known and as respected to these men as Richie.’