The 'Dragon'
The Royal Naval Reserve Lieutenant stared unbelievingly at the orders he had just been given. To take an unreliable, 20-year-old rust bucket of a submarine into the northern Bay of Biscay to retrieve an Allied special forces unit.
The 'S' class had been designed in 1918 for operation in US coastal waters. They had done their job well and, with no wars on the horizon, they had been kept operational. When America joined the war, the need was for faster boats, capable of operating in the depths of the Pacific over long distances. The 'S' class were finally not fit for purpose. Some limped on for a while, on Atlantic convoy escort. A few were 'donated' to foreign governments.
The Royal Navy were one of the recipients of these outdated vessels. Mostly, they were relegated to training roles. One boat, in particular, failed even at this. She spent more time being repaired than she ever did at sea. Her crew nicknamed her the Reluctant Dragon.
Who had decided that this elderly, unreliable boat was suited to this particular mission? The Lieutenant shook his head, before setting out to track down his crew. Rather than a few hours of gentle exercises off the southern coast of Ireland, pretending to be a 'U' boat so that the Royal Navy could practice finding them, they had a real job to do.
It took 72 hours for Dragon to reach the rendezvous. That was good going for the old boat. Provisioning in Portsmouth had gone like clockwork, and none of the crew had been hard to track down. They'd all been expecting the anti-submarine mission, so leaving a few hours early for a different destination was only of real interest to the captain and the navigator.
The only glitch came shortly before Dragon arrived at the rendezvous.
Murdoch, the engineer, ran his captain to earth in the mess room, where Rutherford was trying to make sense of the charts. It was not an area he was familiar with, the tides were complex and the waters shallow. Still, he would not be unprepared.
"She's done it again, the old Cailleach."
Rutherford looked quizzically at his engineer.
"The port battery isna charging."
"Anything you can do?" The Lieutenant's accent contrasted markedly with that of his Scottish officer, but the two knew each other well. There was no class differential here and mutual respect.
Murdoch shook his head. The issue with the battery had been identified some weeks ago and there was a plan for it to be changed after the Irish exercise. It was typical that it would finally fail now.
"Better hope we don't need to run submerged then." The Lieutenant made light of the news. It was too late to return to port. Besides, he already knew that there was no alternative. Either Dragon made the pickup, or the men were on their own.
GGG
"I'd say this is as close as I can get us." Navigation officer Spencer had struggled to interpret the directions he'd been provided with. Instead of a Lat and Long, he'd been given a likely speed and a star-based heading with which to work out where they would intercept the target. It was as accurate as pissing in the wind, he thought, as he tried to factor in drift from wind and tide.
The chances of finding an 18 foot boat, even on a moonlit night were second to none.
Rutherford tended to agree, even though he hadn't directly heard Spencer's opinion. He ordered engines stopped and brought the elderly boat up the final few feet so that her hatches were clear of the water.
All seemed quiet. Two ratings, carrying powerful flashlights, began to sweep the sea. Nothing. How long should he continue the search before admitting defeat and heading home? Maybe fifteen minutes, the Lieutenant decided.
His reverie was broken by a cry from one of the lookouts. "Target 40 degrees port bow. 100 yards."
Rutherford looked in the direction indicated. The searchlight was picking out a small clinker-built boat, of similar profile to a lifeboat. Two men were at the oars, rowing steadily in the direction of the submarine. Two other men were bent over, looking intently at something in the bilge of the dinghy.
The rowers pulled their oars inboard and two boathooks were thrust out by of the sub crew, who pulled the fishing boat firmly alongside. Murdoch appeared on the deck below and asked something, but from his place on the conning tower, Rutherford couldn't hear what was being said. Nevertheless, it was clear that something was amiss as one of his ratings disappeared momentarily, then reappeared carrying a stretcher which was passed across to the small boat.
In the dinghy, Casino and Actor carefully lifted the still unconscious Dalgliesh onto the litter then, helped by a couple of Rutherford's men, passed him carefully across to the bigger boat. With the difference in height between the two vessels, it was not easy, but eventually the manoeuvre was complete, the other four were helped aboard and the dinghy cast free.
Rutherford rang the engine telegraph to instruct for half speed, then made his way down the length of the boat to intercept the boarding party.
A tall, dark-haired man was leading the way. "Have you a corpsman on board?" he demanded, forgetting his manners.
Fortunately, Rutherford wasn't one to stick on ceremony. Clearly one of the men was seriously damaged. The niceties could wait. "Our sub-lieutenant is a Medical Assistant with First Aid experience, but we don't carry a surgeon. What's the problem?"
"So far as we can tell, he's taken two bullets. One to the chest, one to the hip. Plus, he hit is head when he fell and collapsed in the water, so he may have inhaled saltwater too." Actor took a breath and looked around him. "Is there a sick bay?"
Rutherford looked round as his MA appeared at his shoulder. "Matthews, take him to the wardroom. The table in there's big enough to take him and the lighting's not too bad." He stood back to let the stretcher party past.
The other three new arrivals stayed in the passageway, dripping a mix of blood and seawater onto the deck.
Casino saw the captain look him up and down, then glanced down at himself. "Nah, not a scratch on me. This all belongs to the Commander."
"I'll see if we can find you some towels and something warm to eat." It might have been a pleasant night, but the men were sopping wet and shivering.
GGG
In the wardroom, Actor and sub-lieutenant Matthews looked at each other across the body of the Commander.
"I'm afraid this will require a little more than First Aid." Actor looked doubtful. The blond sub-lieutenant looked little more than a child.
Matthews smiled. He knew what the big man with the Italian accent was thinking.
A rating thrust his head into the wardroom. He thrust a bundle of medical supplies into Actor's hands. "There's dressings, sutures, morphine and sulfa. Anything else?"
"Get the galley to sterilise my pyjamas... and see if you can find something equivalent for my friend here." The MA turned back to Actor as the rating disappeared. "British submarines don't carry surgical scrubs, nor do they carry much in the way of surgical instruments, however I do have a scalpel and some retractors, which is more than Lipes had when he took out that man's appendix in the middle of the South China Sea."
He held out his hand to Actor. "I'm sub-lieutenant James Matthews and I was in my second year at medical college when I joined the RNVR."
Actor accepted the proffered palm. "Victor Borelli, but they call me Actor. This," he nodded towards the body on the gurney, "is Commander Iain Dalgliesh of his majesty's navy." He looked back at Matthews. "I have had some experience of patching up bullet wounds, but this is beyond anything that has been asked of me before."
"In that case, we will learn together." Matthews paused. "The washroom is this way. We might as well clean ourselves as best we can."
GGG
An hour later, and the two men had done all they could. The hip wound had been cleaned and stitched. The chest wound, in the end, they left mostly alone, simply dressing the wound and inserting a chest drain. The bullet was still embedded in the chest cavity and the two men decided to leave it in situ, for fear of doing more harm than good.
Dalgliesh had not regained consciousness, which worried both men.
"He lost a lot of blood." Actor looked down at the pale skin of the Scottish man. "Do you carry a transfusion kit?"
Matthews nodded. "Yes. Do you know his blood group?" The man hadn't been wearing tags.
"No, but I believe an O negative donor is all you require?"
"Yes."
Casino, Goniff and Chief had found a space in the second wardroom. In the warmth of the submarine, their clothes were drying quickly, and a hot meal had gone a long way to improving their frames of mind.
All three looked up as Actor, still clad in a pair of bloodstained, inside-out pyjamas appeared in the wardroom entrance. He looked at Casino and inclined his head in a small 'come outside' gesture. Curious, the safecracker, followed him out into the corridor.
Actor looked at the dried-on blood on the New Yorker's clothes. "Based on what I can see, our Raven must have almost bled dry before we stopped the leaks. I don't think it will be possible to reuse what you have absorbed, but perhaps you could help in another way?"
Casino's face lit up with the slow smile that was particularly his. "Seems fair." He knew he was the 'universal donor' blood group. It wouldn't be the first, or last, time he'd give blood on the battleground. Chief was O positive, Goniff A positive. He didn't know what Actor was. The conman had been reticent on the matter, and it hadn't been something he'd had any interest in. He put out his hand and arm in a 'lead on' gesture.
Actor did just that.
A pint from Casino and a pint from one of the ratings made a big difference to the stricken commander. By dawn he was semi-conscious.
'Dragon' slogged relentlessly onwards. She was managing a steady 12 knots in the calm water, impressive given her age and condition. Ordinarily, come dawn, she would have dived and proceeded slowly out of sight, but given her battery issues and the need to reach English shores as quickly as possible, Rutherford pressed on.
The attack came from nowhere. It was mid-morning on the 8th April, 32 hours after they had left the rendezvous point off Pornichet. The sun had burned off the mist, leaving behind a glassy-calm, glittering sea. The Lieutenant had begun to relax. They were over halfway through their return journey and were now almost in home waters.
The Fockewulf 190 was heading back to its base near Bordeaux. Two nights earlier she had been involved in a night raid against London. A mechanical fault had forced her to make an emergency landing near Cherbourg without having fired a shot. The pilot had enjoyed a pleasant rest and in some ways was reluctant to return to operational duties. It was a glorious morning with perfect flying conditions, although being April it was unlikely to last much longer. Making his decision, the pilot headed due west. He need not take the shortest route home.
Glancing down at the ocean, he spotted a dark dot on the surface. Too large for a fishing boat, it was unlikely to be a lone merchant vessel. Curious, he flew lower to investigate. It soon became clear it was a submarine, and not one of their U-boats. His heart began to beat faster. The boat was running on the surface and clearly at speed. She had to have a problem that was preventing her from submerging to be taking this sort of risk. Arming his guns, he lined up for an attack.
The blast of canon shells raked through the conning tower and bridge.
A fog bank had been creeping north-east all morning on a slowly strengthening breeze. It was carrying warm, moist air from Spain and, where the air hit the cold ocean, the sea fret formed.
On board the submarine, the lookout had seen what was approaching with some relief. Five minutes time and they would be hidden, and none too soon. The roar of an aircraft engine took him by surprise. He looked up to see the fighter-bomber approaching at high speed, then the flash as she fired her underwing cannons. It was the last thing he saw.
The Fockwulf pilot pulled out of his dive and up above the approaching fog. He turned back, but the submarine already had disappeared. Reluctantly, he turned south, feeling frustrated. He wouldn't even be able to report his 'kill' without revealing that he'd been disobeying orders.
GGG
On board Dragon, everything was chaos. Rutherford and his first officer, Eddie Taylor had both been killed at the same time as the lookout. Taylor had been on the bridge, about to go off watch. The hatch from the control room had been open and Rutherford had been about to climb the ladder when he was hit by shrapnel.
Matthews had been lucky. He'd been heading for the wardroom to check on Dalgliesh. He immediately about-turned and made for the conning tower, where he took in the devastation. Spencer was bleeding profusely from where a piece of metal had sliced through his scalp. He was trying to stem it by pressing a not-very clean handkerchief against the injury.
The sub-lieutenant took in the carnage surrounding him, and it gradually dawned on him that he might well be the senior officer left alive. He took a deep breath.
Murdoch, down in the lower Control Room was unscathed. He too made his way to the conning tower where he found the shocked MA still staring down at Rutherford. Matthews looked up. "What do we do?"
"Keep doing what we were doing. I'll get us to Plymouth as fast as we can. Get this place cleaned up and patch up Spencer. We'll need him. After that, start praying." The dour, bearded Scot turned on his heel and headed back to the lower Control Room. He'd not show any emotion in front of the young officer. Any grieving would be done later, in private.
The passengers had been luckier, but even they had not escaped unscathed. Casino had been reaching across to check Dalgliesh's drip when they were hit. Off balance, he had pitched headfirst into the bulkhead, knocking himself out. Strapped to the gurney, Dalgliesh had survived better – until the full weight of Casino's body had landed on his injured leg. Goniff had been curled in a quiet corner trying to keep his nausea at bay. Wedged as he was, he avoided injury, but lost the battle with his stomach.
Actor should have been the least affected. Unfortunately, as the boat lurched, he slipped on the damp flooring. Putting out a hand to recover, his full body weight fell through his left elbow - which dislocated. He knew immediately what had happened. Suppressing a soft grunt of pain, he gathered the damaged arm against his body and held it there.
Casino came to, struggling to make sense of what was happening. Instinct forced him to his feet, unknowingly inflicting more damage on Dalgliesh who, heavily sedated with morphine as he was, was mostly unaware of what had happened. The safecracker wiped a hand across his eyes, trying to stop the blood from the freely bleeding cut on his forehead from blinding him.
Chief had been in the corridor when the shells hit, returning from a trip to the heads. He'd been thrown heavily against some exposed pipework and valves. There would be a sizeable bruise come the morning, but that wasn't on his mind as he picked himself up and ran back to where the others waited.
"Siddown before you fall down." Chief grabbed a roll of bandages and thrust them into the safecracker's hands as he pushed him roughly to the deck. "Anyone else hurt?" He looked around at the other men, but apart from a groaning Cockney and the acidic smell of vomit conflicting with antiseptic and the sweet smell of the morphine there was nothing.
He tried to think what had happened. Had they hit a mine? Was it an aircraft? They were running on the surface, so it couldn't have been a depth charge. They had to have sustained damage, but it couldn't have been too serious as the boat was still moving, albeit sluggishly.
If it was an aircraft, would it come back and administer the coup de grace? Slowly, the seconds ticked by, and it began to cross the Indian's mind that maybe, just maybe, they'd escaped.