Balance of Fear Page 10

  The others stared at him. Then the chief engineer slapped his thigh.

  “That’s it,” he said with heavy sarcasm. “Now why didn’t I think of that? We could write the word ‘Boo’ in big black letters on a white sheet and fly it from the mast. That ought to scare her off. If it doesn’t, we can always give her a few bursts of Sten-gun fire to show we really mean business.”

  Dingle grinned good humouredly.

  “This is a supply ship for the United States Army, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, aren’t you carrying any weapons we could use? Field guns, heavy artillery — or even tanks?”

  The second officer answered.

  “I’m afraid not, sir. We do have some ammunition aboard for tanks — both high explosive and armour-piercing shells. But we don’t have the guns to fire them. The greater part of the cargo is made up of missiles.”

  “That’s right,” confirmed one of the scientists, Green. “That’s why we are here,” — he indicated his colleague — “to help to install them in Germany.”

  “All right, then,” said Dingle. “Let’s fire a couple of your missiles at the Skori.”

  Rossi and Green looked at each other in amazement. Then Rossi laughed.

  “It just can’t be done. It’s a ground-to-air missile, designed as part of an ABM defence system.”

  “But I’m afraid it will have to be done,” said Dingle with quiet emphasis. “If we don’t find some means of shaking off that destroyer, then you, this ship and your missiles will end up either in Russia or at the bottom of the Baltic.”

  Green shrugged helplessly.

  “There are too many problems, Mr. Dingle. Even if we got the thing rigged up, the homing system wouldn’t work against a ship. Anyway, the range is too short and there wouldn’t be time. The missile would still be using the first booster motor, and it would be too risky trying to control it.”

  “Unless … ” Rossi started to speak, then paused uncertainly.

  “Unless what?” asked Dingle.

  “Well, I was wondering if we could fly the missile as a shell.”

  Green frowned, then said thoughtfully: “Rockets were fired as shells in World War Two — but then, when there was no direct control from the ship, a homing apparatus was integral with the rocket. Is that what you were thinking about, Alex?”

  “Something like that, yes.”

  “Hmm … it’s an idea. And I guess it might be possible at that — even without a control or a homing device. But the question is, how?”

  The scientists were silent for a few moments and Dingle didn’t interrupt their thoughts.

  “How long do we have to set this up?” asked Green.

  “I’d say you’ve eight or nine hours,” replied the Englishman.

  Rossi gaped. “For Pete’s sake, man! Do you know how long it normally takes to prepare a GM for flight?”

  “I’m not interested in what it normally takes,” said Dingle evenly. “All I’m interested in is stopping that destroyer before it’s too late. So can you do it or not?”

  “It’ll be a very rough-and-ready effort,” answered Rossi. “I dare say we can try it — but we can’t guarantee absolute accuracy.”

  Dingle smiled. “Just do your best and that will be good enough for me.”

  Green said: “There will be a lot of work to do. We shall need help.”

  “You can have all the help available,” Dingle promised. “What do you want to do first?”

  “Well there are all sorts of problems to be ironed out, assuming we can get a missile fixed on the deck. You see … ”

  There was a knock and the door burst open. It was the third officer, who had the bridge watch.

  “The destroyer, sir,” he panted. “She’s coming alongside.”

  Dingle jumped up.

  “Come on, Glyn,” he snapped. “And you, Brook. The rest of you stay here and work out exactly what you want done.”

  Dingle arrived on the bridge followed closely by Jones, who picked up Gorki’s uniform cap from the chart table and clapped it on his head. He had confiscated the cap when the Russian was taken below.

  Now that the sea was more calm, the Skori had come in much closer than before. She was no more than seventy-five yards away to port — and her captain was already calling the Vologda on the loud-hailer.

  “Is everything all right with you?” The voice echoed, metallic and eerie, across the water.

  Jones hurried out on to the port wing and waved his arms. He turned to the lookout. “Go and fetch the megaphone. Give it to Mr. Dingle and ask him to bring it out here.”

  The voice boomed out again.

  “Can you hear me? Are you all right?”

  Jones waved his arms once more; and then Dingle was at his side with the megaphone. The Welshman raised the trumpet-shaped instrument to his mouth.

  “Yes, thank you. We had a spot of bother, but it’s settled now.”

  “What sort of bother?”

  “That man Jones tried to jump overboard. We had to shoot him. But we’ve still got Dingle. We’ve doubled the guards.”

  “I see. Everything all right otherwise?”

  Jones covered up the mouthpiece and whispered urgently to Dingle.

  “He wants to know if everything’s okay. Do you want me to spin him any yarns?”

  The Englishman thought rapidly. “Yes. Tell him our cargo shifted in the storm and we’ll need to use the derricks to re-stow it.”

  Jones relayed the message, and the Skori’s captain called back.

  “Do you want any help? Shall we put some men aboard you?”

  “No, thank you. We can manage.”

  Jones translated the conversation for Dingle’s benefit, and listened carefully to the Englishman’s whispered instructions. Then he called the destroyer.

  “It would help us a lot, Captain, if you would do the navigating for us, so that we can concentrate on the work in the holds. If you were to go, say, four thousand yards ahead of us we could track you on radar.”

  “You want us to guide you?”

  “Yes.”

  “For how long?”

  “Say nine hours — there’s a lot of work to be done below.”

  The destroyer’s captain considered for a moment.

  “Very well. We’ll do that; we’ll guide you until nine o’clock in the morning. After that you can do your own dirty work.”

  A weird, ghostly laugh floated over the sea, ending in a high-pitched whistle followed by a huffing and puffing noise, like a slow goods train locomotive. Jones was reminded of a temperamental microphone at a church garden fête — going wrong just as the vicar cracked a joke. Then, abruptly, the Russian captain’s voice boomed out again, even louder than before.

  “Good night to you.”

  There was a final screech, followed by a crackling sound, and then the loud-hailer was switched off.

  “Good night,” replied Jones. “And thank you.”

  He heard the faint tinkle of the telegraph aboard the Skori; then the destroyer seemed to rear up, like a lively colt, as she sped forward to take up her new station.

  *

  The two scientists looked up when Dingle returned to the cabin with Jones and Brook.

  “What was all that about?” asked Green.

  “Just the Skori's skipper wanting to know if we were all right,” Dingle replied with a chuckle. “We’ve persuaded him to guide us until nine in the morning.

  At least that will keep them out of the way, so they won’t see what we’re doing; and incidentally, it might help you. The Skori is steaming four thousand yards ahead of us. Will it make it easier for you to know the range before you set up the missile?”

  “It could,” said Rossi. “It will certainly be better if the computation can all be done beforehand. But there are other problems to consider first.”

  “Which are?”

  “This type o
f missile has a short rail launcher, so we should be able to use that. The snag is that we shall have to find some way of lashing it very securely to the deck. The launcher must not be allowed to move,” said Rossi.

  Green, who had been making rapid calculations on a scrap of paper, said: “One degree error over the range of four thousand yards that you’ve given us would put the missile about seventy yards off target.”

  Rossi nodded agreement, and continued: “So, you see, it’s vital that the launcher must not move. And the strain on the lashings will be considerable. The igniter motor itself is pretty powerful and could cause it to shift if it isn’t really secure. Even after the igniter fires the rocket motor, the missile is held down on the launcher by shear pins until the thrust reaches a certain level … ”

  “Okay, okay, I get the picture,” said Dingle. He turned to Grubeck.

  “What are the deck beams like, Chief?”

  “Six- by three-inch angled steel,” replied the engineer. “The three-inch side is fixed to the deck and the six-inch side comes down at right-angles.”

  “Could we drill through the beam and the deck?”

  “I don’t see why not. We carry a three-quarter drill.”

  “You have long bolts and nuts to fit, I suppose?”

  “Yes. If we haven’t we can make ’em in the workshop.”

  “Will that do?” the Englishman asked the scientists. “Can we drill holes in the bottom of the launcher and bolt it to the deck?”

  They nodded. “That’s fine,” said Green.

  “So what’s the next problem?” asked Dingle.

  “Well, there’s the problem of orientation,” said Green. “We can’t swing the missile round to aim it; any manoeuvring of that kind will have to be done by the ship itself.”

  Dingle glanced at Brook.

  “You tell me where you want the ship,” said the British pilot, “and I’ll get her there.”

  “For obvious reasons, we’ll have to fire at right-angles across the deck,” said Green. “So if we fix the missile to fire over the port side, we’ll have to turn sharply to starboard to bring it to bear on the target. And that’s not going to be so good. The Skori will still be going away from us, hull down, and she’ll present a mighty small target. I doubt if we’d hit her.”

  “You mean you’d prefer to fire at the Skori when she’s broadside on to us?” said Brook.

  “Yes. We’d be in with a chance then.”

  The pilot was excited. “Well, that’s all right then. If we turn to starboard without warning, the Skori is bound to follow suit. It will be a natural reaction; they’ll have to turn the same way to get back to us to find out what the hell we’re up to.”

  Green looked thoughtful.

  “Yes, you’re right, I guess. How long do you think it will take the people on the destroyer’s bridge to realize we’ve altered course?”

  “They’ll see it on radar. Say about thirty seconds — if they’re really on the ball.”

  “What’s our speed?”

  “Fifteen knots.”

  Green did some more calculations. “So that means they’ll travel about three hundred yards farther on; then they’ll have to react to the situation and change course.”

  “We’d better up the range to four thousand four hundred,” said Rossi.

  “Fair enough,” agreed Green.

  Dingle broke in: “It’s beginning to look possible — so we’d better get some work under way. Time’s getting on. Where are these missiles stowed?”

  “Some in the for’ard hatches, some aft,” said Miller. The young second officer had been feeling out of it; now he sensed that he was going to be able to help with some practical work.

  “Where do you want to fire from, for’ard or aft?” Dingle asked the scientists.

  Rossi shrugged. “Why not both? We might as well fire two missiles. If we get them fixed up in good time we might even set up a third one at a slight angle on the poop deck — in case we don’t stop the Skori with the first two and she starts chasing us.”

  “Good idea,” said Dingle. “I suggest that Miller and Brook start supervising the unloading now; and Grubeck can arrange to get those holes drilled.”

  “Right,” said Grubeck. “While I’m in the engine room I’ll throw the master switches for the derricks.”

  “Good. It’s safe to use them while we’re moving, I hope?”

  “Yes. But I hope we don’t ship any green seas while the hatches are open,” replied the chief engineer.

  Brook laughed. “I don’t think we shall. The weather’s eased off a lot now, and it’s still moderating.” The three men left the cabin.

  “Anything else you’ve got to sort out?” Dingle asked the scientists.

  “A hell of a lot,” said Green. “There’s the question of the motion of the ship — although we might be able to turn that to our advantage to get the correct angle of launch. We could have someone checking the range on radar and someone else to calculate the roll angle all the time. We could set up a pendulum and scale for the roll angle, if there isn’t a clinometer on the bridge.” “Relaying all that information would take too long,” argued Rossi. “Don’t forget the missile will have a flight time of only two-and-a-half seconds.”

  “Is that all?” Dingle whistled softly. “How fast will this rocket be travelling?”

  The scientist frowned at the interruption. “It will have a terminal velocity of something like six thousand miles an hour — but that’s not the point. With such a short flight time, we’ll have to think up a simpler idea; something cheap and nasty. Ideally we should fix it so that one man can sight and fire the goddamned thing.”

  Green thought for a moment.

  “Okay then, how about this? Set a telescope in line with the missile’s axis. Raise the missile a bit to allow for the drop caused by gravity over the distance to the target.” He made a rough calculation. “Say about a degree to allow for a drop of a hundred feet; I’ll work it out exactly in a minute. Once it was zeroed in — and we already know the range — the telescope would, in fact, become a gunsight.”

  “It’s an idea,” said Rossi. “But we’ll have to find a way of fixing the telescope in line with the missile’s axis first. We can’t have it too near the missile or the man using the telescope and pressing the tit is going to find himself in a hot spot when … ”

  Dingle interrupted. “Jones and I will leave you to thrash it out. We’d better go and lend a hand with the other work. Let me know when you decide what to do.”

  “Yes, sure,” replied Rossi. “Don’t worry; we’ll come up with the answers.”

  Dingle smiled. “Thanks.”

  But the two scientists didn’t hear him. They were too engrossed in the problem, and they were deeply involved in a technical discussion before the two British agents had even reached the door.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  It was almost one o’clock. The ship had cleared Falsterbo Point, and the quartermaster was bringing her head round to steer east, keeping well clear of the southern coast of Sweden. In a few hours she would swing round even further, east-north-east, on a course to take her between Sweden and the Danish island of Bornholm.

  Brook was on the bridge, watching the radar, watching the compass, and watching the navigation lights of the destroyer. He was ensuring that the Vologda’s movements exactly matched those of the Russian warship. He and the quartermaster were alone on the bridge; every other available crew member had been detailed to help with the work on the missiles.

  The British pilot looked for’ard, at the bustle of activity on deck. A section of the hatch cover was open. Men were working the electrically driven derricks, ready to bring up the first large wooden crate. Engineers had just finished drilling holes in the deck and were preparing to move off to repeat the operation on the after deck. Deep down in the hold, he knew, the really hard work was going on. Teams of men would be struggling and sweating, getting the crat
es clear, ready for lifting; and fighting to keep the rest of the cargo secure.

  Dingle and Jones were down in that hold.

  *

  Wooden crates of varying sizes were piled thirty-five feet high. The missiles were in the larger cases — and they were stowed at the bottom of the hold. Smaller boxes of high-explosive shells and small arms ammunition were stacked on top.

  “We haven’t time to shift all the stuff on top,” said Miller. “It would take us hours.”

  “We’ll just have to try the direct approach and slide one of those missiles out from the bottom,” replied Dingle.

  “Sounds bloody dangerous to me,” said Jones.

  Miller looked worried. “It will be dangerous. Once you slide a crate out from the bottom, all the other stuff will come crashing down. Everyone working here could be crushed to death.”

  “We’ll do it,” said a deep, confident voice. It was Power. The big black man explained his plan, and infected all the others with his confidence.

  The heat was stifling as the men toiled under the powerful searchlights. Small ammunition boxes were lowered by the derricks and laid ready on the floor of the hold. Props were brought down from the carpenter’s shop, together with sledge hammers and crowbars.

  Inch by inch, one of the missile crates was eased out, some men straining on levers, others heaving on the rope handles at the side of the crate. A second team wedged long props horizontally, ten feet up, between the pile of crates and those stowed on the opposite side of the hold. The object was to brace the weakened mass of cargo, to prevent it from toppling on to the men working below.

  It took an hour to drag all but six inches of crate clear. Power, who was stripped to the waist, demonstrated his tremendous strength on several occasions — sometimes succeeding in moving it single-handed where three men, working together, had failed.

  The long case was swung round so that only one corner was supporting the great weight above it.

  Power stooped to peer into the gap left by the case. Then he turned to an American A.B., the smallest member of the crew.

  “In you get, boy!”

  The man hesitated a moment, then he nodded and crawled into the space.