Twelve Seconds to Live (2002) Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Douglas Reeman

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  1. Code of Conduct

  2. No Looking Back

  3. Survival

  4. Brought Together

  5. ‘During the Night . . .’

  6. Reaching Out

  7. Two of a Kind

  8. Narrow Seas

  9. The Catch of the Season

  10. Ghosts

  11. Face to Face

  12. The Quick and the Dead

  13. Under Orders

  14. A Matter of Time

  15. Yesterday’s Heroes

  16. In All the Old Familiar Places

  17. Second Thoughts

  18. One Hand for the King

  19. A Hell of a Risk

  Copyright

  About the Book

  The mine is an impartial killer, and a lethal challenge to any volunteer in the Special Countermeasures of the Royal Navy.

  They are brave, lonely men with something to prove or nothing left to lose. Lieutenant-Commander David Masters, haunted by a split second glimpse of the mine that destroyed his first and only command, H.M. Submarine Tornado, now defuses ‘the beast’ on land and teaches the same deadly science to others who too often die in the attempt.

  About the Author

  Douglas Reeman joined the Navy in 1941. He did convoy duty in the Atlantic, the 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 interest for the 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 conflict . . . The sea has no understanding of righteous or unjust causes. It is the common enemy, respected by all who serve on it, ignored at their peril.’

  Apart from the many novels he has written under his own name, he has also written more than twenty historical novels featuring Richard Bolitho, under the pseudonym of 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

  Torpedo Run

  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

  Douglas Reeman

  For you, Kim,

  The first rose,

  With all my love

  They’re all gone now, it’s in the past

  It doesn’t fill my mind except on days like this

  And sometimes in the lonely night.

  I wonder why they went?

  They must have gone for something

  Mustn’t they?

  They can’t have gone for nowt!

  Shaw Taylor, ‘I Watched Him Go’

  Prologue

  Daylight had been slow to show itself, and even now everything seemed painted in varying shadows of grey. The sky was still heavily clouded from the overnight rain, the puddles black holes in the roadway.

  And so still. Nothing to break the sense of desolation. Abandoned. And you never got used to it.

  Only the car moved. A patch of colour at last, the shuttered headlights like slitted eyes, swinging very slowly this way and that as if feeling the way past looming buildings, nondescript in the grey glow, tall cranes or an occasional gantry, and some broken crates. A place of work. Like so many others.

  The driver, a soldier, glanced sideways as a window squeaked down and the damp, bitter air filled the interior. It was very cold, and only September.

  The passenger watched the slow-moving buildings and machinery. More clearly now, he saw the car’s reflection pass one of the puddles, its camouflage and more obviously the wings, painted bright red, a familiar enough sight so near to the sea. To danger. With the window open the car’s engine sounded incredibly loud, held in low gear, one of the driver’s hands resting loosely on the gear lever, the other almost casually coaxing the wheel.

  The passenger smiled, and felt his lips crack. Because of the cold? He knew otherwise. There was nothing casual about this work. Not unless . . .

  The driver said softly, ‘Here they are, sir.’

  It never seemed to matter where it was, he thought. Like the anonymous groups of people they had passed on their final approach. It could have been any of those other places, any of those other times. Anxious, apathetic, impatient . . . it was none of those things.

  He saw some figures near a gateway, authority marked by white belts and gaiters. The naval patrol. He felt his stomach tighten. The last contact . . . But that, again, was always the same.

  A petty officer, very calm, peered into the car and saluted.

  ‘Hundred yards, sir. I checked the marker meself.’ Untroubled. But his eyes were saying, rather you than me, mate. Always the same.

  He heard the other passenger shifting behind him. A rating to assist him, one he did not know. God knew what he was thinking. He felt his fist clench inside his pocket. Always remember the name.

  ‘All set, Derek? Won’t be long now. Should brighten up soon, by the look of it.’

  The rating said nothing, surprised perhaps that the officer should use his first name.

  His fist clenched again, and this time it remained rigid.

  Somebody else could have done it. Should have done it . . .

  He said only, ‘Take cover, P.O., but have the tea ready!’

  The petty officer grinned and saluted again, relieved. ‘Something a bit stronger than that, sir!’

  The car growled forward again. Nobody had said ‘good luck’; nobody did any more. He stared at the road. Not after four years of war.

  Only the car moved. And then, all at once, there it was. A ramshackle building with eyeless windows, a warehouse of some kind, one of hundreds which served this yard where supplies, weapons and all the materials of war came and went on the tides and in the wagons he had noticed in a railway siding near the main gates.

  There was a bit of a breeze, too; the Met officer was right, for a change. And it was brighter. But he did not look at his watch. He got out of the car and stood beside it, the others watching him, men he did not know.

  He glanced along the road, seeing the grey light moving down charred timbers, like black glass from the overnight rain: some recent hit-and-run air attack, although there were fewer of those now. But you could always smell it. Worse when it was in somebody’s home, pathetic possessions scattered all around while you worked, your min
d empty of everything but the job. The beast, they called it.

  He rubbed his hands together, a dry sound, purposeful.

  ‘You know what to do. Run out the line . . .’ He faltered and stared at the marker, a green pennant of bunting lifting occasionally in the damp air. ‘No heroics, Derek. Bolt for that shelter, just like they taught you.’ He did not look at the driver. ‘You can pull out. Thanks for the ride.’

  Surprisingly, the soldier tugged off his glove and thrust out his hand.

  ‘I’ll be waitin’, sir.’

  It was almost the worst thing he could have done.

  And just as quickly, he was alone, as if he had found his way here unaided. He touched his pockets, the little pouch he always carried, and lastly the stethoscope in his jacket. He had walked through a hospital once, and they had thought he was a doctor.

  The hospital seemed to linger in his mind. On another occasion, probably months ago, he had cut his hand on a wire on his way to an incident, as the boffins termed them, and had gone to a nurse to have it bandaged. Your hands, your fingers, were the only instruments that really counted in this so private war of man versus machine. He could still remember her curt contempt when she had looked at him and his uniform. Others are in far greater need, or something. And that same nurse, after he had defused ‘the beast’ and she had realized what he had been doing. Tears, not shame but shock.

  He turned slightly and looked back along the road. In less than an hour it would be a hive of activity, until the next time.

  He felt his pockets again. He could smell the sea despite the charred timbers, and the smells of oil and machinery. It was never far away.

  He measured the distance to the gantry he had noted earlier. The sailor named Derek should be safe enough.

  He faced the building. The rest must not matter. There was nowhere to run.

  He ducked past the green bunting and found himself looking down into a cellar. The sappers who had attended the incident, and had thoughtfully started to rig a tarpaulin canopy to keep out the rain, must have got the shock of their lives.

  It was still impossible to estimate the skills and dedication of scientists and mechanics who could design a fuse so delicate and yet so strong. As in this case: the beast had dropped from its aircraft and smashed through at least one roof and a reinforced floor into the cellar. And it had not exploded. He could see the tell-tale parachute, sodden and torn, which had dragged after it like a great tail. Now there was only silence, although he knew it would take no more effort than a man tapping his watch to restart it to set the fuse alive.

  It was a magnetic mine of the deadliest kind. Dropped into the sea, it could sink a cruiser or overloaded troopship with ease. He glanced at the dripping bricks. Or flatten sixteen streets . . .

  He was standing beside it, one shoe filling with water. He should have been properly prepared. The voice in his mind repeated, There was nobody else.

  He studied it without moving. About nine feet long, its nose was buried in broken boxes, its tail pointing at a jagged hole in the roof. He looked up. Beyond, the sky was clearer, almost blue.

  He unfolded his stethoscope and hung his cap on a piece of woodwork. Then he crouched and waited for his breathing to steady, or to stop. He had his safety callipers in his hand. The mine was undamaged as far as he could tell; he would fix them to the fuse to stop it coming alive as he was working. Unless there was another trick, some new booby-trap they had not yet discovered.

  Water pattered down from the sappers’ canopy and he stared up once more at the patch of sky.

  A breeze, then. He felt the metal again, cold and impersonal. But all he could hear was her voice.

  It’s best this way. We’re finished.

  He groped for the stethoscope but froze as something fell heavily from the floor above.

  He stared at the mine, and he knew.

  He had twelve seconds to live.

  1

  Code of Conduct

  H.M.S. Vernon, the torpedo and experimental establishment and one of Portsmouth’s many shore stations, was a navy within a navy. From the first days of creating and using this new and untrusted form of warfare, most of the work had been carried out here, in various hulks and even in an old ship of the line, which both mine and torpedo would soon turn into history.

  Vernon was a new and well laid-out establishment, with its own dry dock and jetties, a fleet of small craft, and comfortable quarters by any naval standards. It even boasted its own squash and tennis courts, the envy of the peacetime navy. But that was then.

  In the first months of war Vernon had seen and shared the worst of it, night after night of relentless bombing, hundreds of people killed or badly injured, thousands rendered homeless, and fires raging unchecked for days. The main dockyard had not escaped; a third of it was flattened, and one bomb had exploded in the very dock where Nelson’s Victory lay. But the damage was minor, and when the smoke had finally thinned she seemed to shine through it like a symbol.

  Many famous buildings were destroyed. The George Inn on the Point, where many great names had stayed before joining a ship or a fleet, where Nelson himself had paused when leaving for the last time in Victory. The cathedral, so isolated now, had escaped destruction by fire solely because of the courage of Vernon’s night watch, who had clambered onto St. Thomas’s roof at immense personal risk to extinguish the incendiaries.

  With the ever increasing demands of war Vernon, like other establishments, had been forced to spread her resources in order to increase the training and satisfy the need for more and more men. And women. These incarnations varied from a former holiday camp on the windy east coast, once used by car workers from the Midlands, to Roedean, the exclusive girls’ boarding school near Brighton. Determination and creativity worked wonders; fresh paint and the White Ensign did the rest.

  But here in Vernon it was another ordered, disciplined day. Classes being marched from one instruction to another. Some men grouped around stripped torpedoes, or sliced-open models of moored or magnetic mines. Squads in diving gear flopping down to the dock like ungainly frogs, urged on by torpedo gunners’ mates who were never short of rough encouragement.

  In the main office section which adjoined two heavily protected bunkers, one door stood apart from all the others.

  It was marked, UNDERWATER WEAPONS – PASSIVE.

  That alone had caused some blunt and lurid outbursts from trainee and instructor alike.

  There was one marked difference about this day. A flag officer was making an inspection. More to the point, it was The Admiral, as far as Vernon was concerned.

  Rear-Admiral ‘Bumper’ Fawcett was liable to appear at almost any time. At Vernon, or aboard a depot ship at some awkward moment to observe a diving exercise or demand explanations for any delay or incompetence. Fawcett had been retired from the service between the wars and living on a commander’s half-pay; he had eagerly returned to the only life he cared about. Those who knew him either admired or hated him; there were no half-measures. It went for the man, too. A goer, they called him, a character: charming when he so intended, ruthless when he did not.

  He had commanded a submarine in the Great War, one of the first ocean-going boats of around eight hundred tons. He had been lucky and successful until the ill-fated Dardanelles campaign and the eventual retreat from Gallipoli. Fawcett’s command had attempted to penetrate the Turkish defences but had gone aground. Later, when he had managed to free himself and surface in safer waters, he had received a curt signal from his admiral. Where were you?

  Just as curtly, Fawcett had responded, Bumping along the bottom!

  The signal was never recorded. The nickname, however, had stuck.

  But memories were long in the Royal Navy, and Fawcett’s career had been cut short even as the clouds of war were becoming obvious.

  The office was much like others in this administrative building. It faced Vernon Creek where smaller craft came and went daily, with a view beyond the little inlet to the
heavier places of work, the machine shops and experimental sheds. Filing cases lined one side of the room, and there was a long rack hung with clips of signals above carefully labelled lockers. By the window was a large desk with trays of more signals, already sorted, and an updated duty board, so that the great man could see at a glance anything he needed to know.

  On a clear day there was still a good view of the creek and the boats, but it had rained overnight and the window, like all the others, was almost encased in stacked and white-painted sandbags: this was Portsmouth, and the enemy was only an hour’s flying time away. The deep crack in one wall had been repaired and painted over, but it was testimony enough.

  A Wren third officer was sitting behind the desk, legs crossed, with a telephone to one ear, and another on the waiting switch. An unfinished cup of tea stood near her free hand, with a smudge of lipstick on the rim. She was tired, and had been here since dawn. She was used to it.

  She glanced at her watch as the door opened and closed, the cold air swirling briefly around her ankles. Like herself, he must have been up and about early. Lieutenant-Commander David Masters tossed his cap onto a chair.

  ‘Where is he, Sally?’

  ‘Beehive, sir.’

  Masters walked to the steampipes and held his hands over them. He had come straight from his quarters near the main gate without stopping for breakfast in the mess, although he had scrounged some coffee from one of the stewards. He could still taste the bitterness. No wonder they called it ‘U-Boat oil’.

  He tried to clear his mind, to prepare for whatever new scheme or suggestion Bumper Fawcett might have dreamed up.

  His eyes automatically scanned the clipboards and the lists of names, those on duty, those ashore. He did not see the girl watching him, as if she was trying to understand, to recognize something.

  Masters was twenty-nine years old, but had the authority and natural confidence of one much older. A keen, interesting face, with deep lines at the mouth, and a clenching of the jaw that told of that other man, the one which made the Wren officer frown as she answered the second call. The Beehive was a giant concrete bunker, which was separated from here by a long underground corridor. Brightly lit at every hour and built to withstand anything, it was the nerve centre for the most important and delicate tests and experiments.