Алистер Маклин - South by Java Head

“So! Of course!” The officer’s laugh was brief, contemptuous. “The phlegmatic Englishman! Even though his teeth chatter with fear, he must maintain his reputation – especially in front of his crew. And another of them!” Up in the bows of the lifeboat Vannier’s bent head, a cigarette clipped between his lips, was highlit by the flaring match in his hand. “By all the gods, it’s pathetic, really pathetic.” The tone of his voice changed abruptly. “But enough of this – this foolery. Aboard at once – all of you.” He jabbed his gun at Nicolson. “You first.”

Nicolson stood up, one arm propping himself against the hull of the submarine, the other pressed close by his side.

“What do you intend to do with us, damn you?” His voice was loud, almost a shout, with a nicely-induced tremor in it. “Kill us all? Torture us? Drag us to those damned prison camps in Japan?” He was shouting in earnest now, fear and anger in the voice: Vannier’s match hadn’t gone over the side, and the hissing from the bows was even louder than he had expected. “Why in the name of God don’t you shoot us all now instead of–”

With breath-taking suddenness there came a hissing roar from the bows of the lifeboat, twin streaks of sparks and smoke and flame lancing upwards into the darkening sky across the submarine’s deck and at an angle of about thirty degrees off the vertical and then two incandescent balls of flame burst into life hundreds of feet above the water as both the lifeboat’s rocket parachute flares ignited almost at the same instant. A man would have had to be far less than human to check the involuntary, quite irresistible, impulse to look at the two rockets exploding into flame far up in the skies, and the Japanese crew of the submarine were only human. To a man, like dolls in the hands of a puppet master, they twisted round to look, and to a man they died that way, their backs half-turned to the lifeboat and their necks craned back as they stared up into the sky.

The crash of automatic carbines, rifles and pistols died away, the echoes rolled off into distant silence across the glassy sea and Nicolson was shouting at everyone to lie flat in the boat. Even as he was shouting, two dead sailors rolled off the sloping deck of the submarine and crashed into the stern of the lifeboat, one of them almost pinning him against the gunwale. The other, lifeless arms and legs flailing, was heading straight for little Peter and the two nurses, but McKinnon got there first. The two heavy splashes sounded almost like one.

One second passed, two, then three. Nicolson was on his knees, staring upwards, fists clenched as he waited in tense expectation. At first he could hear the shuffle of feet and the fast, low-pitched murmur of voices behind the shield of the big gun. Another second passed, and then another. His eyes moved along the submarine deck, perhaps there was someone still alive, still seeking a glorious death for his Emperor – Nicolson had no illusions about the fanatical courage of the Japanese. But now everything was still, still as death. The officer hanging tiredly over the conning-tower, gun still locked in a dangling hand – Nicolson’s pistol had got him, and the other two had fallen inside. Four shapeless forms lay in a grotesque huddle about the foot of the conning-tower. Of the two men who had manned the light A.A. gun there was no sign: Farnholme’s automatic carbine had blasted them over the side.

The tension was becoming intolerable. The big gun, Nicolson knew, couldn’t depress far enough to reach the boat, but he had vague memories of stories told him by naval officers of the almost decapitating effects of a naval gun fired just above one’s head. Perhaps the blast of the concussion would be fatal to those directly beneath, there was no way of knowing. Suddenly, silently, he began to curse his own stupidity and turned quickly to Willoughby.

“Start the engine up, Bo’sun. Then reverse – fast as you can. The conning-tower can block off that gun if we–”

The words were lost, obliterated in the roar of the firing gun. It wasn’t a roar, really, but a flat, violent whiplash crack that stabbed savagely at the eardrums and almost stunned in its intensity. A long red tongue of flame flickered evilly out of the mouth of the barrel, reaching down almost to the boat itself. The shell smashed into the sea, throwing up a fine curtain of spray and a spout of water that reached fifty feet up into the sky, and then the sound had died, the smoke had cleared, and Nicolson, desperately shaking a dazed head, knew that they were alive, that the Japanese were frantically trying to load again, knew that the time had come.

“Right, Brigadier.” He could see Farnholme heaving himself to his feet. “Wait till I give the word.” He looked up swiftly towards the bows as a rifle boomed.

“Missed him.” Van Effen was disgusted. “An officer looked over the edge of the conning-tower just now.”

“Keep your gun lined up,” Nicolson ordered. He could hear the boy wailing with fear and knew that the blast of the big gun must have terrified him: his face twisted savagely as he shouted to Vannier. “Fourth! The signal set. A couple of red hand flares and heave them into the conning-tower. That’ll keep ’em busy.”

He was listening all the time to the movements of the gun crew. “All of you – watch the tower and the fore and aft hatches.”

Perhaps another five seconds passed and then Nicolson heard the sound he had been waiting for – the scrape of a shell in the breech and the block swinging solidly home. “Now!” he called sharply.

Farnholme didn’t even bother to raise the gun to his shoulder but fired with the stock under his arm, seemingly without taking any aim whatsoever. He didn’t need to, he was even better than he had claimed to be. He ripped off perhaps five shots, no more, deflected them all down the barrel of the big gun then dropped to the bottom of the lifeboat like a stone as the last bullet found the percussion nose of the shell and triggered off the detonation. Severe enough in sound and shock at such close range, the explosion of the bursting shell inside the breech was curiously muffled, although the effects were spectacular enough. The whole big gun lifted off its mounting and flying pieces of the shattered metal clanged viciously against the conning-tower and went whistling over the sea, ringing the submarine in an erratic circle of splashes. The gun-crew must have died unknowing: enough T.N.T. to blow up a bridge had exploded within arm’s length of their faces.

“Thank you, Brigadier.” Nicolson was on his feet again, forcing his voice to steadiness. “My apologies for all I ever said about you. Full ahead, Bo’sun.” A couple of sputtering crimson hand flares went arching through the air and landed safely inside the conning-tower, silhouetting the coaming against a fierce red glow. “Well done, Fourth. You’ve saved the day today.”

“Mr. Nicolson?”

“Sir?” Nicolson glanced down at the captain.

“Wouldn’t it be better, perhaps, if we stayed here a little longer? No one dare show his head through the hatches or over the tower. In ten or fifteen minutes it’ll be dark enough for us to reach that island there without the beggars taking pot-shots at us all the time.”

“Afraid that wouldn’t do, sir.” Nicolson was apologetic. “Right now the lads inside there are shocked and stunned, but pretty soon someone’s going to start thinking, and as soon as he does we can look for a shower of hand grenades. They can shuck them into the boat without having to show a finger – and even one would finish us.”

“Of course, of course.” Findhorn sank back wearily on his bench. “Carry on, Mr. Nicolson.”

Nicolson took the tiller, came hard round with both lifeboats through a hundred and eighty degrees, circled round the slender, fish-tail stern of the submarine while four men with guns in their hands watched the decks unblinkingly, and slowed down just abaft the submarine’s bridge to allow Farnholme to smash the A.A. gun’s delicate firing mechanism with a long, accurate burst from his automatic carbine. Captain Findhorn nodded in slow realisation.