Cole cradled the microphone in his hand, switched the radio to All Boats and said: “First Division, deployment ahead. Second Division, deployment thirty degrees to starboard, into line.” He watched as the boats moved smoothly into their new formation; a long line, bows on to the enemy, or where the enemy was supposed to be. “Commander,” Cole said, satisfied with the maneuver, “do you believe in fate?”
“No.”
“Me either. But something tells me that those guys out there are your famous flying boats.”
Edland looked at him.
“They’re out of Cherbourg,” Cole continued, “like your boats, and they’re coming in hot. Of course nobody’s paying me to make guesses…”
“Signal from Firedancer, Skipper,” DeLong said. He read the tiny flashes of light. “ ‘Zero-five-three degrees, break, sixty… holy shit! Sorry, sir. Sixty knots. Thirty-five miles.”
Cole turned to Edland with a triumphant grin. “Want to see your boats again, Commander? Close up?”
Edland nodded. He was beginning to appreciate Cole. It was hard to fathom the insubordinate PT boat commander, but sandwiched between the arrogance and dislike of authority was a very capable officer. “Do you have a plan?”
Cole seemed amused. “Yeah, try to sink them without getting killed.” And then he grew serious. “They’ll try to outrun us, so we’ve got to get in as quickly as possible and break up their formation.”
“They’ve got a large gun, mounted in the bow, from what I can determine,” Edland said. “Standard armament is probably the same; twenty-millimeter and forty-millimeter guns.”
“Okay,” Cole said. “Any suggestions?”
“Firedancer again, Skipper,” Delong reported. “Same course, same speed. Thirty miles out.”
“Yes,” Edland said. “Get in as close as you can.”
“No offense, Commander,” Cole said, “but that sounds like suicide to me.”
“The boats are up on wings, stilts, or whatever you care to call them. That means their hulls are out of the water.
“Okay,” Cole said, listening.
“Same, same, and twenty-five miles, Skipper.”
“If the big guns are in the bow wells, then they fire almost parallel to the surface of the water,” Edland explained.
Cole finally realized what Edland was saying. “They can’t be depressed.”
Edland nodded. “The only guns that you have to worry about, besides small arms fire, are the aft 40mm and the 20mm amidships. Look,” he said, holding out his left hand, the palm down, the fingers slightly elevated. A make-believe E-boat. He brought his right hand alongside, slightly below the other. “Get right next to them, worry them. Force them to constantly turn away so that they can’t employ their superior speed. Once they break free of contact they can outrun us. If we force them in a constant turn, they’ll have to reduce speed. We have a chance.”
“Skipper,” DeLong said. “Fifteen miles. Our radars picked them up as well.”
Cole nodded in understanding. “Herding cats.” He was still far from comforted by the commander’s theory.
“There’s one other thing,” Edland said.
“Boy, I sure hope it’s good news,” Cole said.
“If these boats break away long enough to employ those big guns…”
“It’s Good Night, Ladies,” Cole said.
“We’ve got to stick to them like glue.”
Cole thought that Edland’s advice made sense even if the action bordered on insanity. He asked a hopeful question. “Is this a theory or fact?”
“Does it make any difference, now?”
“I guess not,” Cole said.
“Firedancer’s got them, Skipper,” Delong said. “Visual confirmation.” The Aldis lamp flashed in the darkness. “Six boats, in echelon. Sixty knots. God, that’s fast.”
“Okay,” Cole said, confirming the information. He picked up the microphone. “All boats, all boats from Cole. These are Edland’s Sea Eagles. Take it in on the step. Get in close, bulwark to bulwark. Get me? Get under their guns. Keep forcing them to turn. Don’t let them put any distance between us and them.” Cole turned to Edland. “I sure am going to be upset if you’re wrong.”
Zickelbein’s voice came through Reubold’s earphones. “Targets, sir. Just over twenty thousand meters ahead. Six MTBs, one destroyer.”
A screening force, Reubold thought. For what, the invasion? Or a patrol? Well, no matter, they were in the way. “We’ll go around them,” he told Kunkle. “I don’t want to waste my time here if the invasion is to the north. Take us around them.” Hardly the thick hide that Walters spoke of. A destroyer was always something to be concerned with, but MTBs? Then a dark thought entered Reubold’s thoughts, so logical he was surprised that he had not thought of it before. They will report you to the fleet and the hide will certainly grow thicker as more enemy ships are dispatched to meet the threat. Reubold grew irritated at the unexpected encounter with the MTBs. He was hoping to pass through the Channel unnoticed. He had lost the element of surprise.
Zickelbein spoke again. “Fregattenkapitan. I copied the boat’s transmission. They are Americans. Torpedo boats.”
Reubold was about to respond when he realized the signal flaw in his tactic. He could not go around them. The two forces would clash in minutes and if he attempted to turn away he would expose the broad beams of his boats to the Americans. And the fragile wings of his boats. Better to drive through the enemy force. But again, a flaw. He looked over the skullcap as if to confirm the obvious. The Trinities, buried deep in the gun well, could not fire over the bow and strike a target unless the enemy vessel was several thousand meters distant — which the Americans were sure to be, but only for a very short time. The relative speed of the opposing forces sent them hurtling at one another so quickly that every action had to be instantaneous. So be it; close quickly, blast through the enemy force, find and attack the invasion fleet. “Kunkle. Ignore that order, maintain course and speed.”
“Sir?” Zickelbein’s voice came over the earphones.
“Yes?”
“Targets closing rapidly, sir. Now fourteen thousand meters.”
Kunkle glanced at Reubold with a look that said everything: These Americans want to fight. Going through them will not be such an easy thing.
Reubold understood. He would have to scatter the enemy formation. He pressed the microphone to his throat. “Zickelbein, all boats that can bring guns to bear on the target. Fire at seven thousand meters and for God’s sake take aim. Who knows what we’ll run into once we’re past these fellows.” It was a chance — a random throw of the die. It would be difficult to aim the Trinities over the bow, and the targets were so small that he doubted even the doorknockers would be of much help. But then he didn’t expect to sink any of the enemy boats, just discourage them. They’d been up too long on the wings, more than Waldvogel stipulated, but he needed the speed, and he would continue to need it to outrace the enemy boats. Waldvogel. Reubold smiled at the thought of the myopic genius who hovered continually between puzzlement and concern.
“Ten thousand,” Zickelbein reported.
Americans this time. Smaller boats, swift lines but far too fragile for the English Channel. His first encounter with the Americans, at sea that is. He’d raced against them, years before the war, when seaplanes were long, lean aircraft with small cockpits that trapped a man as surely as if he lay in his coffin.
There was a crash and a flash of light as the doorknocker on S-205 opened fire, and an instant later a dull explosion as a Trinity fired, followed by a second, and third. The boat to his right fired its doorknocker, a long graceful stream of green tracers arching into the darkness, followed by a flash and low boom. The blast of the Trinity’s discharge illuminated the bow and skullcap of the E-boat for an instant, but then darkness swallowed up the boat.