Killing Ground Read online

  Fiction by Douglas Reeman Published by McBooks Press

  BY DOUGLAS REEMAN

  Badge of Glory

  The First to Land

  The Horizon

  Dust on the Sea

  Knife Edge

  Twelve Seconds to Live

  Battlecruiser

  The White Guns

  A Prayer for the Ship

  For Valour

  BY ALEXANDER KENT

  The Complete Midshipman Bolitho

  Stand into Danger

  In Gallant Company

  Sloop of War

  To Glory We Steer

  Command a King’s Ship

  Passage to Mutiny

  With All Despatch

  Form Line of Battle!

  Enemy in Sight!

  The Flag Captain

  Signal–Close Action!

  The Inshore Squadron

  A Tradition of Victory

  Success to the Brave

  Colours Aloft!

  Honour This Day

  The Only Victor

  Beyond the Reef

  The Darkening Sea

  For My Country’s Freedom

  Cross of St George

  Sword of Honour

  Second to None

  Relentless Pursuit

  Man of War

  Heart of Oak

  In the King’s Name

  Published by McBooks Press, Inc., 2014. Copyright © 1991 by Highseas Authors Ltd. First published in the United Kingdom in 1991 by William Heinemann.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without the written permission of the publisher. Requests for such permissions should be addressed to McBooks Press, Inc., ID Booth Building, 520 North Meadow St., Ithaca, NY 14850.

  Cover painting: Geoffrey Huband

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Reeman, Douglas.

  Killing ground / Douglas Reeman.

  pages ; cm. -- (Modern naval fiction library)

  ISBN 978-1-59013-679-9 (alk. paper)

  1. World War, 1939-1945--Campaigns--Atlantic Ocean--Fiction. 2. Merchant marine--Officers--Fiction. 3. War stories. 4. Sea stories. I. Title.

  PR6068.E35K55 2014

  823’.914--dc23

  2014001594

  Visit the McBooks Press website at www.mcbooks.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  987654321

  For my Kim—

  together we found love

  Prologue

  DAWN seemed slow to appear, reluctant, even, to lay bare the great ocean, which for once lacked its usual boisterous hostility. But there had been fog overnight which had finally dispersed, and the sea, which lifted and dipped in a powerful swell, was unbroken but for an occasional feather of spray. The sky was the colour of slate and only a feeble light betrayed the presence of another morning, touching the crests with a metallic sheen, but leaving the troughs in darkness like banks of molten black glass. Deserted, an empty treacherous place; but that was a lie. For, like jungle or desert, creatures moved here to seek cover from danger, to survive the ever-present hunters.

  As the light tried to feel its way through the slow-moving clouds a few birds showed themselves circling above the sea’s face, or riding like broken garlands on the steep-sided troughs. To them the sea held no mystery, and they knew that the rugged coast of Ireland was barely a hundred miles away.

  A deep water fisherman, had there been one, or some wretched survivor on a raft or in a drifting lifeboat might have sensed it. The slight throbbing tremor beneath the waves—a sensation rather than a sound, which could make even a dying man start with terror. But there was no one, and forty metres beneath the surface the submarine moved slowly and warily as if to follow the line on the chart where her captain leaned on the table. His pale eyes were very still, his ears taking in every sound around him while he waited; the hunter again from the instant the alarm bells had ripped through the boat and brought him from a restless sleep to instant readiness.

  He could feel his men watching him, as if he had actually turned to stare at them individually. Faces he had come to know under every possible condition, once so bright and eager but now blanched with the pallor of prison, their gestures the tired, jerky movements of old men. Like the boat, worn out with the weeks and months at sea. The stink of it: of diesel and cabbage water, of damp, dirty clothing which no longer defied the cold, of despair.

  He glanced at the clock, resting his eyes in the dimmed orange glow. Two torpedoes only remained after that last attack on the convoy, which had almost ended in disaster. Some of his men would be thinking, Why now? What does it matter? We are going home. It was like hearing their combined voices pleading as one.

  But it did matter. It had to. The hydrophone operator had reported a faint beat of engines. A large vessel, perhaps in difficulties. If it was anyone else he might have questioned it, disregarded it. But the seaman had been with him from the beginning in this command. He was never mistaken, and thousands of tons of shipping scattered the depths of the Western Ocean to vouch for his accuracy. The captain smiled but it remained hidden. The others were probably hating him for his skills now, when before they had blessed him for saving their lives. The ears of the predator.

  He signalled to his engineer officer, who waited by his panel with its dials and tiny glowing lights, and without waiting for an acknowledgement made his way to the periscope well. Every step brought an ache to his bones. He felt stiff, dirty, above all exhausted. He thrust it from his thoughts as the air began to pound into the saddle-tanks and the depth gauges came to life. What did he really feel? Perhaps nothing any more. The silent pictures in the periscope lens, explosions, burning ships and men—they no longer reached him.

  To return to base was something different. There he might drink too much or forget too little.

  He started as someone laughed. A young, careless sound. That was “Moses,” the nickname used in every U-Boat for the youngest member of the crew. The captain turned his eyes to the gauges as they steadied at fourteen metres. It was the boy’s first voyage. Now his relief was pushing the nightmares into the darkness. He was lucky. For some reason the captain thought of his young brother, but saw him only as the round-faced student with his cap set at a jaunty angle, enjoying life, but sometimes being too serious, too outspoken about matters he did not understand. They had put him in the army despite his glasses and poor eyesight. Now he lay with two million others on the Eastern Front.

  He tried not to grit his teeth. I must not think about it. For here, in the Atlantic, there was always danger; it waited like an assassin for the unwary, the one who forgot the need for vigilance just for a moment. He jerked his hand again and the forward periscope slid slowly from its well, while he crouched almost on his knees to follow it to the surface—his white cap, the symbol of a U-Boat commander, stained and greasy from a hundred encounters with deckhead pipes and unyielding metal, was pushed to the back of his head, although he never recalled doing it.

  Slowly, so slowly now. The lens was nearing the surface, and he saw the first hint of grey. He tightened his grip on the twin handles as he had countless times, his mind quite steady, his heart beating normally. He could sense the unemployed men watching him still. But they were and must be like the boat itself—part of the weapon, an extension to his own eye and brain.

  He licked his upper lip, feeling the stubble, and watched the sea’s face begin to reveal itself. He switched the periscope to full power and turned it in a full circle before returning to the given bearing. Empty. No ships, no prowling flying boats or bombers.

  He blinked as the periscope misted over with sp
ray, as if by doing so he would clear it. There was one patch of silver sunlight, which touched his eyes and made them the colour of the Atlantic.

  And there it was. Drifting into the lens, then pausing in the crosswires as if snared in a web, while he followed the target and the details were fed into the machine behind him. The periscope dipped down again and he made himself stand upright, straddle-legged, his features impassive as he scraped his mind for any missing factor. A big merchantman, possibly a cargo liner before the war; but why no escort? A ship that size—he glanced up as the lights blinked on to tell him that both torpedoes were ready to fire.

  He almost laughed, but knew that if he did he might not be able to stop. A blind commander could not miss. What must they be thinking of?

  The men closest to him saw his face and felt more at ease. Get rid of those damned fish, then take us home.

  He gestured to the periscope operator and crouched down to take a final look. Nothing had moved. The range, bearing, even the feeble light were as before.

  He gave his order and felt the periscope buck in his grip as first one, then the other remaining torpedo leaped from its tube.

  Then he stared with chilled disbelief as a second ship appeared from beyond the barely moving target. The other vessel must have been lying hidden on the liner’s opposite side, her engines momentarily stopped. Now with a bow-wave building up from her sharp stem like a huge moustache, she appeared to pivot around her consort’s bows until she was pointing directly at the periscope. He had been too long in U-Boats not to recognise those rakish lines. She was a destroyer.

  There was only one explosion. The torpedo struck the destroyer somewhere forward even as she completed her turn. The second one must have missed or run deep out of control. It was not the first time that had happened. A few of his men began to cheer as the explosion boomed against the hull, but the sound ended instantly as he swung towards them and ordered a crash dive.

  He turned the periscope just briefly even as the water began to thunder into the tanks, then flung one arm to his face as if to protect it. Framed in the lens were a pair of racing propellers, as the bomber made her careful dive towards the shadow beneath the surface.

  The U-Boat’s captain was twenty-seven years old. On this bleak dawn he and his crew had just twelve seconds to live.

  But this was the Western Ocean. The killing ground.

  Part One—1942

  1 | No Reprieve

  ANY naval dockyard in the midst of a war was a confusing place for a stranger, and Rosyth, cringing to a blustery March wind, was no exception.

  Every dock, basin and wharf seemed to be filled: ships being repaired, others so damaged by mine or bomb that they were only useful for their armament or fittings, all of which were in short supply.

  Sub-Lieutenant Richard Ayres paused to stare down into one such basin at an elderly escort vessel, or what was left of it. She had once been a living ship, but now she was gutted down to and beyond the waterline. In the hard light Ayres could still see the blistered paintwork where men had once lived and hoped. From all the damage, it was a marvel anyone had still been alive to get her home.

  Black shadows swayed and dipped over the battered hulk as gaunt cranes lifted pieces to be saved, and dropped the rest in rusty piles on the dockside. It was as if they were doing the destroying, he thought, like untidy prehistoric monsters with an abandoned carcass.

  He turned up the collar of his blue raincoat and shivered in the biting wind, which came down from the northwest to change the face of the Forth into a miniature sea of white horses.

  A dismal place to many perhaps, but to Sub-Lieutenant Ayres, who was nineteen years old and about to join his first ship, as an officer anyway, it was like the culmination of a dream he had once not dared to hope for.

  His only time at sea had been spent in a tired, over-worked patrol vessel named Sanderling, for the compulsory three months all officer candidates had to complete before being handed over to HMS King Alfred. There, youthful hopefuls were expected to be turned into officers in a further crammed three months, before being dropped right into it and packed off to war. Except that the poor little Sanderling, with her solitary four-inch gun and a few anti-aircraft weapons, had been worked so hard she had spent much of Ayres’s allotted time either having a boiler-clean or lying at a buoy, while harassed dockyard men tried to find what had broken down this time.

  Ayres shivered again. He had been two days getting here from the south of England. Trains that never arrived, another held up for hours in an air raid—none of it helped.

  He turned his back on the old ship and looked at the others looming from their moorings or peeping over the edge of a dock or wharf. Every kind, from powerful cruisers to the minesweeping trawlers which had once fished in these waters for herring and cod.

  A coat of grey or dazzle-paint changed anything into a man-of-war; just as a building which had once been a swimming bath and pleasure centre in Hove had become a training depot where officers were manufactured overnight.

  Boots grated on stone and he saw a tall chief petty officer in belt and gaiters pausing to stare at him as if unsure whether or not he should bother.

  “Can I ’elp?” He cleared his throat and in those few seconds he took in all that there was to see. A brand-new cap and raincoat, the neat little suitcase; most of all, Ayres’s pleasant open features. He added, “Sir?”

  Ayres produced his piece of paper. You never moved in the Navy without that. It had been almost the first lesson he had learned while he had been groping his way towards his goal.

  “I’m joining the Gladiator, Chief.” He too was studying the other man. Old; probably retired when the war had erupted across Europe and their world had changed out of all recognition.

  Gladiator. Just the name seemed to roll off his tongue like something familiar. Special.

  The chief petty officer glanced at him again. “You’re Mr Ayres, then. They was expectin’ you yesterday.” It sounded like an accusation.

  Ayres flushed, something he still did far too easily. “Yes, but—she was supposed to be at Leith, and when I got there—”

  The other man nodded. “Leith is full. They moved your ship here as soon as ’er overhaul was done.” He made up his mind. “I’ll call ’er up and get a boat sent over. She’s out there with another of ’er class.” He looked away. “‘Bout the only two of ’em left now, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  As he walked towards a little hut Ayres had not noticed before, he relented and stood facing the new officer, his white webbing gaiters squeaking on his boots. Why should it matter to this young subbie anyway? Nice as pie at the moment. But a little bit of gold on the sleeve, even a wavy stripe, could change a man; and not for the better. He said, “My son served in one, the Glowworm, durin’ the Norwegian foul-up. They’re fine ships—never mind me.”

  Ayres stared at him. It was like feeling a cold hand on the shoulder. Everyone had heard of the Glowworm. She had gone down with her guns blazing, and even then she had managed to ram the German heavy cruiser Hipper. It was like one of the stories he had read as a boy. Destroyers, greyhounds of the ocean, “eyes of the fleet” as they had always been romantically described.

  He heard himself ask, “Did he—I mean, your son—”

  The chief petty officer glared at the sparking rivet gun which spluttered from the nearby cruiser like a maniac signal. “No. He’s down there with ’er.” Then he was gone.

  Ayres picked up his case and walked over to stand by his other belongings, thinking about his new ship. A destroyer. He had been more afraid of getting sent to a big ship, or of going to a clapped-out veteran like Sanderling. All her officers had been regulars, and like the chief petty officer had probably been on the beach until they were needed to fill the growing gaps in men and ships. When he thought of Glowworm and her fate he was surprised and relieved that he still felt the same excitement.

  It was almost noon by the time the destroyer’s motor boat coughed alongside
the jetty and her coxswain, a massive Scot in a shining oilskin, dashed up the stone stairs and began to gather up Ayres’s luggage with a few quick comments.

  “Mr Ayres?” He did not wait for an answer. “They were expecting you forenoon yesterday, sir.”

  “I know. I was sent to the wrong place.”

  The boat’s coxswain did not hear. “The Cap’n don’t like to be kept waitin’, sir.” He waited for him to clamber down into the cockpit and yelled, “Shove off, Nobby! I’m ready for ma tot!”

  The bowman grinned and vanished beyond the canopy with the bowline and in seconds they were scudding across the lively white crests. Ayres looked astern and saw the elderly chief petty officer in his belt and gaiters watching him from the door of his little hut. Over the widening gap of frothing water he suddenly touched his cap in salute, and for some reason which Ayres was too young to understand, he was deeply moved. Ayres returned the salute and realised that it was the first mark of respect the old CPO had offered him.

  That was something else you had to get used to. The sailors who went out of their way to throw up a salute, especially if you had your hands or arms full of things, and the others who would enter a shop if necessary to avoid it.

  The coxswain studied him warily. “First time in destroyers, sir?”

  Ayres shaded his eyes to stare at the impressive spread of the Forth Bridge which dwarfed all the ships which lay near it, or passed beneath the great span of angled iron which linked up with Queensferry in the south. If ever a single achievement proclaimed how man had tamed this part of Scotland, this bridge must be it.

  The Germans had tried to destroy it, without success; in fact it was the first target on the British mainland to be bombed by the unstoppable Luftwaffe. There had been indignation and anger at the ease with which it had been done. Ayres doubted if anyone would even comment if it happened today. Too many battles lost, too many men and ships gone forever.

  He started as he realised what the coxswain had asked. “In destroyers, yes.”

  The coxswain nodded, and when Ayres looked away he winked to his bowman. Green as grass. Just like all the others.