A flat-toned ‘Good’ came from Barratt, followed by, ‘Did you see the submarine?’
‘No, sir. Still too dark in that quarter. Where the sentry was there’s a stretch with no mangroves. The water comes right up to the bank. Aba was right. It’ll be okay for launching the rig. He and McLean are in the undergrowth about eighty-five yards from the catamarans. Aba says they’re moored fairly close astern of the submarine.’
‘Right. Let’s join the others.’
The cortege moved on, making its way gingerly down the slope towards the creek. Aba Said led, Morrow behind him, then Barratt and Carmichael followed by the men carrying the rig. McGlashan the TGM, with Stanley the sickbay attendant, brought up the rear.
In his planning Barratt had allowed five minutes for getting the rig into the water and trimming down. McGlashan, the acknowledged expert, had suggested three. ‘Your tests were done in daylight, TGM,’ Barratt had told him. ‘We’ll allow a couple more to make up for darkness.’
In the event it took less than four minutes. First the buoyancy drum was lowered into the creek where Corrigan, up to his armpits in water, steadied it while the free-flooding lower compartment filled.
Next into the water was Barratt, minus the dungarees, black singlet and revolver he’d left in the undergrowth on the bank. His body, too, was blackened and nude but for bathing trunks. Both men wore belts with sheath-knives, and yellow armbands above their elbows for identification: ‘So that you trigger-happy lot don’t kill us when we come back,’ Barratt had warned at the briefing.
McGlashan pushed home the depth-charge firing pistol, priming the charge to explode at a depth of fifteen feet. The canvas gripes were placed in position and the wooden carrier lowered into the water with the depth-charge where Barratt received it. The free-flooding chamber in the depth-charge filled, submerging its drum but leaving the carrier awash. Corrigan shoved the buoyancy drum into position above the depth-charge, the gripe ends were passed round it and secured on top with a Senhouse slip. Next to it was the lever controlling the air vent in the drum’s upper compartment.
The two swimmers pushed the rig clear of the bank into deeper water. It was now submerged but for a few inches of buoyancy drum still above the surface.
The launching operation had taken place in silence but for minor sounds. With the Japanese sentry dead, and the submarine still the best part of a hundred yards away, all was well. Anything but loud sound reaching it would have been drowned by on-board noises and the slap of water against its hull.
On receiving the carry-on signal — three sharp tugs on a heaving line stretched between the rig and the men on shore — Morrow took charge of the attack party, moving his men back from the bank to re-group in the trees above the creek. There they prepared themselves, making ready weapons and adjusting loads. In a final whispered briefing he reminded them of the plan of attack. ‘We should hear the explosion in about seven to ten minutes,’ he said. ‘The submarine is lying alongside the bank about a hundred yards ahead of where we launched the rig. Don’t forget that its topsides are camouflaged with undergrowth, branches of trees, etcetera, so that’s what you’ll be looking for. Not a steel hull. Aba Said will lead us through the trees to a point opposite the boat. Keep close enough to each other to maintain contact in the dark. Once the fun begins, move quickly down towards the last lines of trees. According to Aba that’ll bring us within about thirty feet of the Jap. Then spread out and take cover behind a tree from which your can do your stuff. One man, one tree. Okay? We do not, repeat not, open fire until we hear the explosion.’ He paused. ‘Unless, of course, the Japs open fire on the swimmers before that. In that case we’ll give the bastards everything we’ve got. Finally, remember your prime targets: guns’ crews, conning-tower and gangways. We’ll move now, but for God’s sake let’s make it softly, softly.’ He turned to Aba Said, spoke to him.
The African replied. ‘I will go softly like a leopard, Bwana. Your men must follow like the children of the leopard.’ Weaponless but for his fighting knife, Aba Said went ahead, The rustling of the wind in the trees filled the silence.
While the swimmers pushed the rig slowly forward to their legs providing the propulsion, direction was maintained by keeping the wind ahead and slowing at times for Corrigan to check the distance from the bank with swift underwater dashes. With their heads more often than not immersed in water as black as the night around them, they kept at their task, wind-fanned ripples splashing over the top of the buoyancy drum, the salt water stinging their eyes.
For most of the time there were only two things in Barratt’s mind: an absolute determination to succeed, and a savage, almost sadistic satisfaction at the thought of what he was about to do to the Japanese.
They were well on the way to their target when the creek was illuminated by a sudden sheet of lightning. In that brief instant they saw the catamarans close ahead. Immediately beyond the three native craft lay the camouflaged bulk of the submarine, somehow bigger, higher and more massive than they had expected. It was no longer entirely covered with foliage. On the gun-platform abaft the tree-decked conning-tower the twin barrels of the anti-aircraft gun were trained forward to cover the creek; two men were standing by the gun, one leaning against its mounting, the other at the guardrail.
It was soon after the lightning flash that they felt the brig bump into the stern of a catamaran. Corrigan dived, came up between the catamarans, pushed two apart, making a gap through which they coaxed the rig. Progress was slow while the swimmers, fearing another lightning flash, edged the rig forward, the hull of one catamaran and the outrigger of another scraping against the submerged arms of the carrier.
When almost clear of the catamarans the rig stopped, snarled up on an obstruction on the port side. Barratt, nearest to it, dived under to come up immediately ahead of the rig. Groping under water in the darkness he found the trouble: the loose end of a fibre lashing on the outrigger’s float had fouled a carrier-arm. With some difficulty he cut the fibre free. Diving again, he swam back to Corrigan. ‘Okay,’ he gasped. ‘Push like hell. Another thirty feet, I reckon.’
As they forced the rig clear a rocket burst high above the creek and a parachute flare floated down, turning night into day. In the fraction of a second before they ducked beneath the surface they’d seen the lines of tracer bullets racing towards them. Though the two men did not know it, the 25mm shells struck the water well beyond them.
Still underwater, they continued to force the rig ahead. Coming up for air Barratt saw the parachute flare splutter into the creek as a second rocket burst and another flare began its descent. The tracers were passing overhead but he heard the unmistakable spa-aa-aang of rifle bullets splashing around him. In the moment between drawing a deep breath and submerging again, he had seen the submarine’s stern less than twenty feet away. With fierce energy he and the
American pushed against the buoyancy drum, gasping, grunting, their scything legs forcing it onward. A few seconds later Corrigan poked his mouth up for air to be greeted by what looked like a Guy Fawkes night gone mad. For good measure it included the splash of bullets within inches of his head.
On the bursting of the rocket flare, and the sound of the submarine’s twin A A guns opening fire, their tracer shells splashing into the creek astern of the submarine, Morrow and his men raced down the sloping bank and opened fire from the cover of the trees at almost point blank range. Concentrating on I-357’s gun positions they had soon killed or wounded the Japanese crews. Thereafter, but for occasional rifle shots from the conning-tower, there was no response from the submarine.