Free Killing Ground by Douglas Reeman

Belle.”
    â€œAcknowledge.” Howard rubbed his chin, feeling the bristles.“Too many damned signals.” He watched the flames intently. “I’ve a feeling about this one, Pilot. Pass the word to damage control. Number One can rig scrambling nets as soon as he likes.” The flames were blazing higher than the freighter’s derricks. Something really powerful must have been set alight by the explosion.
    â€œSea-boat, sir?” Treherne’s eyes were glowing like coals in the reflected inferno. He felt it badly. Most of the ex-merchant service officers were like that. Seeing a ship dying. Not a man-of-war, going down with guns blazing or trying to ram an enemy cruiser like the poor little
Glowworm,
but ships that worked for a living, in the Depression and in times of peace. Without them England would not, could not, survive. Howard felt the pain jar up his arm as he banged his fist on the unyielding steel.
And we are not protecting them. Not because we don’t try, but because the enemy are better at it.
    He saw a shaded torch on the main deck, men already moving to free the scrambling nets.
    Treherne repeated dully, “No sea-boat then, sir?”
    Howard raised his glasses and watched the other ship. Her shape had lengthened so she must have lost power on her engines and was drifting beam-on in the swell.
    â€œNegative.” He realised how sharply it had come out. “I’ll not risk men more than necessary.”
    â€œEscort commander reports no contacts, sir!”
    Howard thought of the pencilled lines on the grubby chart where so many had leaned on it in the night watches.
    â€œFrom Admiralty, sir.
Immediate. There are now six U-Boats in your vicinity.”
    The boatswain’s mate muttered, “Roll on death, let’s ’ave a good rest!”
    Howard watched narrowly as sparks burst up from the helpless freighter, and her funnel seemed to crumple like paper before pitching overboard in a great splash.
    They were trying to lower a boat while the tug stood by, her screws beating up the water as she manoeuvred astern to keepstation on the
Mersey Belle.
A ragged sheet of flame seemed to burst straight up through the deck where the tiny figures were trying to free the lifeboat’s falls of ice. They were like dried leaves caught suddenly in a wind and tossed into the fire. Not men any more, who had loved and hated with the rest of them, but little burning flakes; nothing.
    The yeoman said, “From
Bruiser,
sir.
Mersey Belle has aircraft fuel on board.”
    Howard heard the brief click of his lamp and watched the tug’s screws beat the sea into a mounting froth as she swung heavily away from the flames. So that was it. He felt his fingers gripping the binoculars so tightly that his fingers became numb even through his thick gloves. There had been no mention of that in the convoy report. A last minute decision perhaps, just to fill another space.
    He felt his mouth go dry as a vivid red eye opened suddenly in the other ship’s side to spread across the undulating water and set the sea itself ablaze.
    â€œPort ten.” He did not recall moving to the voicepipes. He was just there. Where he belonged.
No matter what.
Those words again.
    â€œMidships.” He heard the coxswain’s thick voice, pictured the tense faces in the shuttered wheelhouse. The telegraphsmen, Treherne’s yeoman with the plot table and its moving lights, Midshipman Esmonde who was in charge of it and the charts it might need. Faces like carved masks, picked out by reflected flames through the steel shutters.
    â€œSteady.”
    â€œSteady, sir. Course three-five-zero.” Howard lifted the glasses from his chest and said, “Very easy, Cox’n. Like the last time, remember?”
    He heard him sigh. “Not likely to forget, sir.”
    Howard strode to the side of the bridge and sought out Marrack’s oilskinned figure by the