Astern, the sea boiled and vomited white, throwing frothy water far into the air. Immediately after there was a low boom in the darkness as the sound of the explosion reached the surface. The depth charges from the Y-throwers exploded seconds after and Baird felt the exhilaration of battle — that sharp, hot burst of power that tightens your muscles as taut as bowstrings.
Training does it — routine, step after step until it becomes as natural as breathing. Rote, don’t think, don’t consider, fall into the rhythm of action until nothing exists but the immediacy of duty. Training does it — make sure that everyone knows where to be and what to do and when to do it so that no moment, no movement is lost. Flesh-and-blood machines, Baird called them, unfeeling beasts whose shouts and commands fill the air to accompany the sounds of actual machines swinging into action.
He looked at Morrison for further orders and saw the officer hang the receiver in the cradle with a dejected look.
“We’re to stand down,” Morrison said morosely.
“Stand down?” Baird said.
Morrison exploded. “Yes, damn you!” He was turning to make his way to the Y-mounts when he stopped and looked back. “And you’ll address me as sir, Chief Torpedo Gunner’s Mate Baird! Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Baird said, “it is.” Torps Baird cocked an eyebrow at his depth charge party and pulled a packet of Churchman’s Number 1’s from his duffel.
Blessing’s eyes grew large as Torps lit the cigarette.
“That’s a captain’s table for sure. Smoking without permission.”
“Oh, and you think Johnny’s going to pick out my Churchman in the light of a burning tanker?” Baird shook his head in disgust, snuffed out the cigarette, and threw the carcass over the side. “Here? Engleman. Go track down Lord Nelson and see if he wants us to reload these racks.” After Engleman left, Baird took Blessing by the shoulders. “Boy Seaman, I’m twenty-eight years in Andrews and this is the closest that I’ve ever been to a goat fuck. Heed my words, Boy Seaman, for every word is true and certain. If we come out of anything that we go into, it won’t be because of the sawdust heads on the bridge.” He blew a breath and watched the vapor snatched up and carried over the stern. “Next time that we tie up I’ll sign aboard as a counter hand at a wet fish shop in Clacton.”
Hardy looked at Land in shock. “Cease fire?”
“Yes, sir,” Land said. “Captain D’s signal.”
Hardy pushed Land to one side and called down the voice tube, “W.T.? Read that signal.”
“W.T. Bridge. From Captain D, ‘Break off action immediately. Proceed Scapa Flow.’ End message.”
“Surely he can’t mean that. What is all this nonsense? We’ve got the bloody bastard dead-to-rights.” Hardy slapped back the cover on the voice tube. “W.T.? Bridge.”
“W.T. here, sir.”
“Make to Captain D, ‘Your last transmission garbled. Resend. Firedancer. End message.’ Understood, W.T.?”
The wireless/telegraph operator read back the message to Hardy’s satisfaction.
“Those bloody U-boats will swarm in and out of this pack of sheep all night long,” Hardy said to no one in particular. “They’ll bite a hunk out of the convoy’s body to port and one to starboard and come astern when it suits them. The whole thing will bleed to death until there’s nothing left. And now some idiot dispatches Firedancer, fully ten percent of this convoy’s protection, to Scapa Flow—”
“Bridge. W.T.”
“Yes!” Hardy shouted.
“Message from Captain D.”
“Yes, you bloody imbecile!”
Land could tell that the sailor on the other end of the voice tube was hesitant. “‘Come on, Firedancer. No one uses that old dodge anymore. Orders are orders. No matter how asinine. Now go and do your duty.’ End of message.”
Hardy walked to the windscreen in frustration. He stared across the darkness, past the flaming tanker, and was somehow lost. He turned to Land. “Acknowledge, ‘Received, Captain D. Proceeding as ordered.’”
He moved back to the windscreen and watched the little red dots bob up and down in the water. There were hundreds of them, floating about in a random pattern of death. He felt sick, standing high above them, as if in life he were given some sort of superiority over the little red dots. And secretly, he was glad that he was far removed from the lights. That only added to the guilt of course, not only that he was alive and they weren’t, and he shouldn’t have felt superior? He felt that he had somehow allowed them to die and the voice of reason that could have reassured him that of course that was nonsense went unheeded. His shame sprang from guilt, like some horrible flower from the putrid earth. If he had done his job then — if he had done his job before — men would not have died.
The ideas, the horrible pronouncements swirled around his mind like waterspouts chasing across the sea. No end to one, no beginning to another — just existence and with it the knowledge that he was responsible, somehow.
Each of those hundreds of silent, little red lights was attached to a cork life vest, and each vest held a dead man. They were men who had abandoned their burning ships and sought the false sanctuary of the frigid sea. But they had only forestalled death and not escaped it. The cold killed them in minutes so at best they had not suffered the horror of being burned alive, or the slow agony of drowning, trapped deep belowdecks of the dying ship.
These lights, to Hardy, were marks upon a tally sheet of his failures. He was responsible for saving those men — he did not, a mark against him. He should have sunk the U-boat — he had failed, another mark.
Hardy turned away from the floating lights. It was the Second Night all over again.
Cole waited impatiently, a debate raging in his mind. Ask her, hang up, you idiot! He heard the muffled sounds of the nurses’ station coming through the telephone after a nurse with a squeaky voice said, “Rebecca? Yes, she’s here. Who shall I say is calling?”
Cole suddenly panicked, not out of a sense of guilt but propriety. A married nurse receiving a telephone call from a man when her husband was missing in action might lead to gossip. The kind that would hurt Rebecca — something that Cole did not want to do. He threw together a plan that sounded weak and transparent.
“I’m a friend of Sublieutenant Moore’s,” he said. “I’m just calling to see how he is.”
“If you’ll give me just a minute I’ll be happy to check his chart—”
“Just let me talk to Nurse Blair,” Cole said, exasperated. To hell with it; let people talk. He was never good at being subtle anyway. He heard her voice in the background, speaking first to someone about a patient’s condition, and then to another nurse about doctors’ incompetence, and finally he heard the telephone being picked up.
“Rebecca Blair,” she said, the voice hesitant and a little puzzled. “You’ve a question about Sublieutenant Moore’s condition?”
Cole was relieved and excited at the same time. He realized how important it was to him to hear her voice again. “Kind of,” he said.
There was a moment of silence before Rebecca said, “I beg your pardon?”
“Rebecca?” Cole said. “This is Jordan. How are you?”
There was even a longer silence before she replied and Cole could tell that she was startled. Now he really did feel like an idiot. He’d get out of this somehow; make up some excuse, or blame it on work…
“I’m very well, Lieutenant Cole. How are you? It’s so kind of you to inquire about Sublieutenant Moore. He’s doing much better. He should be up on crutches shortly.”