Alarm, p.3
Alarm, page 3
“Oil tank!” Randall gasped. “Socony-Vacuum.”
Bentley did not answer. He stared at the awesome sight, watching while the initial fire of combustion, its ignition job completed, settled down to the food in its hungry maw, pouring a writhing wall of black smoke fifty feet wide up into the heated sky.
The oil tanks were on the edge of the harbour opposite the long breakwater, not far from Wind Rode’s stern. Bentley did not need his binoculars to appreciate the danger if that fire spread—the Fleet’s fuel lay in the dozen or so other squat tanks, whose steel sides must even now be feeling the heat which could raise their contents to the flash-point of explosion.
He turned his head and stared round the harbour. Most of the destroyers had got out into the open sea, and the remaining ships were fully occupied with maintaining the barrage. Wind Rode alone, with her damage rendering her inoperative, was free to help. He snapped at Randall:
“Get me twenty men—seamen and stokers! Hooky Walker too. I’m going ashore to that fire.”
Randall leapt for the ladder.
While the motorboat was a hundred yards from the oiling pier they felt the heat beating against their faces in almost physical waves. Hooky, beside Bentley in the stern-sheets, had had the foresight to order the men to bring their anti-flash helmets, which were used at action-stations to protect their faces and necks against the white-hot blast from shellfire. Now they pulled their helmets on, looking like cowled monks in the lurid light.
Bentley gave his orders crisply.
“There are sure to be fire hoses along the pier,” he told Hooky. “We haven’t a hope against the fire, but we might be able to keep the flash-point of the other tanks below the danger line.” He pointed. “That grass around the burning tank. Keep that saturated too. Better still—if we can find shovels, we can throw dirt and sand over it.”
“The pier, sir?” Hooky suggested, his eye roving for the familiar red fire-hose boxes.
“Yes. Wet it thoroughly. But the tanks are the important thing. If they go up we won’t have to worry about the pier.”
“Or half the damned town,” Hooky grunted. The boat’s bow bumped against the pier, and he shouted:
“Gellatly, take ten men to the left! Hoses in the fire boxes. Play ’em on the sides of the tanks nearest the fire. I’ll handle the right-hand side. Away you go then!”
The leading-seaman acknowledged with a wave of his hand, and jumped out on to the flight of steps that led up to the heavy wooden planking. The boat cleared quickly.
When Bentley reached the pier he looked about him. He was not surprised to see no Egyptian workmen doing anything about the fire—they would have hared off into the town as soon as the first bombs fell. He did see a group of shadowy figures moving around well to the left of the fire, but forgot them in the urgency of having the fire-hoses run out.
Hooky smashed in the glass face of a box with his hook, pulled out the wheel-spanner and heaved the nearest hydrant open. Bentley saw with relief the big hose begin to swell—pressure was okay, then.
“Run ’em across—smack it about,” he yelled above the dull roar of the flames. He saw the first two hoses dragged across the pier towards a nearby tank, then turned his attention to the men on his right. Along the pier, at intervals of about fifty yards, he could see at least eight fire-boxes. He wondered briefly why the Army hadn’t got men on the job—the anti-fire arrangements were excellent, apparently ... Then he was helping Hooky supervise the hoses.
The disciplined seamen and stokers worked fast and with precision. Within a few minutes half a dozen streams of water were playing over the adjacent tanks, and Bentley noted with trepidation that as the first streams hit, steam rose from the heated steel plates. Another five minutes might have seen the British Fleet immobilised at its buoys ...
He was interested to see, also, how efficient the antiflash helmet was. Apart from his nose and eyes, which were exposed, he hardly felt the heat at all.
The work was nicely in progress, with water streaming in cooling layers down the sides of the tanks, when Hooky came up with a bundle over his huge shoulder. He flung them down on the pier with a metallic clang, and Bentley saw he had collared half a dozen mattocks and shovels.
“That hut along there.” Hooky gestured with his steel hand. “Must keep ’em to maintain those moat things round the bases of the tanks.”
“Nice work,” Bentley nodded. “Take five men and start throwing sand over that grass. We can’t afford to take the hoses from the tanks for too long, and that heat’ll dry water off the grass in a flash anyway. I think we’ll be able ...”
A voice, bellowing above the dull thunder of burning oil, cut across his speech:
“What the hell goes on here? Who told you blokes to poke in? Eh? Who’s in charge of this party?”
Bentley swung and stared at the speaker. He saw a big man in an Army greatcoat as protection from the heat, but he could only glimpse part of his face—the stranger had his elbow up, covering it from the flames. There was no doubt, however, that he was English.
“I’m in charge of this party,” Bentley answered curtly. “It’s perfectly obvious what’s going on here. And we didn’t need anyone to tell us to poke in. Any more questions?” he ended sarcastically, and gestured to Hooky to get started on covering the grass around the burning tank.
Hooky had gone three paces when a bellow halted him.
“You there! Keep back from that tank! You want to get your stupid head blown off?”
Hooky hesitated—there was undoubted authority in the man’s voice.
“The tank won’t blow up,” Bentley’s even voice came to him. “It can’t blow up. It can only burn. All right, Hooky.”
“I said hold it!”
Bentley’s head went back at the tone and his eyes glittered down the long straight nose.
“I don’t know who you are,” he rasped, “and I don’t care a damn! These are my men and they will do as I order.”
“Wait a minute,” the other man said, his voice wondering. “Haven’t I come across you somewhere before?” He peered into the naval man’s face, but could see little for the helmet.
Bentley was about to say that if he ever had met this fellow before, he would have remembered his idiocy, but held himself in. He had no time to waste on a jack-in-office.
And then the stranger lowered his arm for a moment. Bentley stared straight into the fire-hot face of Major Pomeroy.
“Yes,” the Australian said evenly, “you have come across me before. In Greyhound’s wardroom. My name is Bentley.”
“I thought so!” Pomeroy jerked his arm up again as a wave of heat welled from the tank. “I might have known it would be blasted Australians! So you’re going to send your men in and cover that grass, eh? I don’t suppose it would ever have entered your head that the Army would have done that long ago?”
“It did, briefly,” Bentley answered. “Now I know why they didn’t.”
As soon as he had made the jibe at Pomeroy, he felt the childishness of it. His feeling of annoyance at himself was not lessened by the realisation that he had acted on the same level of juvenile pettiness which had characterised Pomeroy’s attitude since he had come along the pier.
“Bright boy,” Pomeroy said, and his teeth showed white in the glare. “Won’t be told, eh? All right, send your men in there. And I hope for their sake their stupid orders won’t get them blown to pieces.”
“I told you,” Bentley said wearily, “the tank cannot blow up. The roof’s clean off the thing.”
“No, the tank can’t blow up. But I don’t expect the same consideration from the thousand-pound bomb that’s dug in there.”
“What?” Bentley’s voice was sharp.
“So now we’ll listen, eh? Don’t you think I’d have had my men in there by this? My advice to you is to get to hell out of here—fast!”
Bentley was about to ask bitterly why this hadn’t been explained to him minutes ago. He clamped down on the thought.
“Where it that bomb?” he snapped instead.
“About ten feet from that left-hand tank there. It’s probably delayed-action.”
Bentley pointed. “You mean the one next to the burning tank?”
“I mean that one.”
“But if that bomb blows, the tank’ll go up—and the rest of them!”
“Precisely. Now perhaps you’ll get to hell out of here?”
Bentley did not answer for a moment, but his grey eyes were suddenly very cllear and hard.
“Is the bomb above the ground?” he asked at last.
“About two feet, yes. Which will make it even easier to explode the tank.”
Bentley turned his head and stared at the tank. It looked safe and quiet, with the streams of water laving it—its enormous potential power disciplined, kept cool. A thousand-pound bomb exploding close to its side would rupture it and fire the escaping fuel in a searing blast. Added to the holocaust already flaming, that would certainly send the whole depot sky-high.
The nerve ending curled under his skin. If the bomb were time-fused, the timing clock would be ticking away now ... They could still get into the boat and be well clear before she blew. That’s what Pomeroy had pressed him to do. It was the sensible action to take. Even an Australian could be excused for getting to hell out of there ...
He turned to Hooky, who was waiting for his final orders.
“Get Gellatly and two other strong hands. Then join me at the base of that left-hand tank.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Hooky answered unemotionally, and ran down the pier.
“You’re not so blasted stupid as to go in there?” Pomeroy’s bellow floated after him. “Here! Come back here! I’m in charge on this pier. Come back here ...”
Then Bentley was in close to the rearing steel wall of the tank, his eyes darting with desperate intensity to right and left.
What he was searching for was not hard to find. The shoulder of the bomb, aimed at the tank, had clipped its edge. The heavy cylinder had retained enough downward force to bury its nose and three- quarters of its body in the ground, but the tail-fins stuck out clearly. The metal reflected the glare of the nearby flames with a dull, ominous sheen.
“Right, sir!” Hooky’s voice sounded behind him. “Is that the body?”
Bentley did not answer. He bent and laid his ear against the hot metal of the bomb. But he could hear nothing over the hungry roar from the burning tank. He straightened up.
“Dig!” he said.
Gellatly and his men needed no exhortation. Bentley seized a mattock and flailed at the ground beside an able-seaman. They did not worry about cushioning their blows—if the bomb were time-fused, the firing mechanism had withstood the enormous shock of striking the ground after a fifteen thousand foot fall, and their puny digging would not shock it into action.
Their faces riven of sweat, they dug and ripped and shovelled—partly with the mechanical object of getting the bomb out, and partly to keep their minds from dwelling on what could happen if they didn’t.
Hooky, because he would have been inadequate with only one good hand, stood back and watched them. His weather-beaten face was grim, but his voice was lightened with raillery when he said:
“This I had to see! Man oughta get a movie camera. Never seen you scrubbin’ the paintwork like that, Jamieson. What’s your hurry? Maybe the bloody thing ain’t time-fused at all! How about a smokeoh? Eh? You’re gonna work right through? Strike me up a gum-tree! It’s marvellous.”
They took no notice of him, except to curse him briefly yet comprehensively. He grinned.
“You grave-diggers ain’t ever goin’ to hear the end of this if she ain’t no time-bomb. You won’t be heroes after all!”
Bentley did not send him away to safety. His jibes, and the curses they engendered in return, gave them just that minute relief from thinking which they needed to work at the maximum rate. And that, of course, was Hooky’s intention.
Then Bentley forgot his chief bosun’s mate. The nose of the bomb was in view, and he could see the arming vanes, bent right back under the force of impact. It looked as if it might be a normal direct- action bomb after all, but he couldn’t be sure with enemy weapons. The shock of hitting could have merely fired a time-clock, or a long trail of powder fuse, as in his own armour-piercing shells.
He heaved himself out of the hole and shouted above the roar of the fire:
“All right then! All hands round the tail-piece.”
Trained in matters of hauling, the sailors positioned themselves. Hooky hooked his steel hand in under one fin, glad that at last he could be of some help. Bentley stumbled backwards—the digging had been killing in that heat—and ordered:
“Stand by now! One two six—heave!”
It was the time-honoured method of coordinating massed effort. They heaved, and the bomb came out cleanly and easily.
“We can’t carry the blasted thing,” Hooky gasped.
“We’ll roll it.” Bentley decided. He had already made up his mind that if it had not gone off yet, rolling would not hasten the moment. He did not have to tell them the disposal point—the harbour, deep and dampening, waited a few yards away.
They ranged themselves along the bomb’s length and began to push. It did not roll easily, the fins kept getting caught. But that bomb had a lot of willing effort behind it. Jerking, sliding, then rumbling as they shoved it on to the wooden planks, they brought it to the water’s edge. Just above the boat.
The coxswain, left in the boat for an emergency getaway, looked up in wonder at this unusual noise above his head. Then he saw what was causing it. Hooky shouted down to him, but the coxswain had cast off his stern rope before the Buffer had half-finished. The boat woke to life with a sputtering roar and curved swiftly away from the monster above it.
“All right,” Bentley gasped. “One good blow’ll do it. Stand by ... one, two, six—heave!”
The dirt-clothed cylinder teetered on the big beam edging the pier. It toppled and plunged down.
A well-trained team, this. No orders were needed to send them racing at a rate of knots along the pier, away from where a spreading circle of white foam searched in amongst the quiet piles. They had gone fifty yards, and Bentley saw a group of men in front of them outlined in the fire’s glow, when they stopped. They turned round, panting, their helmets soaked with sweat, and stared back at the spot where it had gone over.
The harbour remained mute and untroubled; the pier stretched unbroken and unsplintered. Even the barrage had died down, and the searchlights had flicked off, leaving two lone fingers still probing the now-quiet heavens. Only the deep roar of the burning oil disturbed the after-storm calm.
“As I said,” Hooky grunted, “she was a dud.”
Bentley fished out a crumpled packet of cigarettes and lit one. The smoke caressed the hungry tissue of his lungs and sent its narcotic balm stealing gratefully along his nerves. And then a voice he was coming to dislike with a quite surprising degree of intensity spoke beside him.
“Now,” said Major Pomeroy, who had stepped forward from his group of soldiers, “we’ll clear up the little matter of who’s in charge here.”
His voice was angry; Bentley knew why well enough. Pomeroy had been proved wrong, and the Australians right. Bentley drew his cigarette bright and looked at him over the glowing end. His teeth gripped together when he smiled.
“Nothing to clear up, old chap,” he said mildly. “You obviously are in charge. This is your bit of country. We’ve interloped on it long enough. With your permission we’ll promptly get to hell out of it.”
For a long narrow-lidded moment Pomeroy glared at him. Then he spoke.
“It took you long enough to understand your position.” He paused, and while he waited Bentley found himself hoping—wishing that this touchy fellow would unbend, admit his earlier unreasonableness, so that Bentley himself could explain his attitude in the light of his ignorance of the unexploded bomb. The future relationship between the two officers hung finely in the balance.
“Now I suggest you clear out of here and let us get on with our job,” Pomeroy said.
Bentley’s eyes were narrowed between a crinkle of hard lines. He remembered the desperate digging of his men, and Hooky’s wise and calm jibing while they dug in their race with possible annihilation. Now this jerk ...
“With pleasure,” he answered evenly. “My men have made it quite safe for you. Walker, Gellatly! Muster all hands and back to the boat!”
Hooky had heard the puzzling exchange between the two officers, but he offered no comment as he walked back to the steps beside Bentley. They were almost there, with a group of soldiers on their left manning the fire-hoses, when Hooky growled:
“Dunno about you, sir, but I could go a dip. That water looks mighty cool.”
“That, chief bosun’s mate,” said Bentley, “is one of the few sensible suggestions I’ve heard tonight. Last in scrubs the boat out!”
Chapter Three
BENTLEY WAS LYING in his bunk reading—and quietly sweating in every pore of his muscled body—when Randall knocked perfunctorily on his cabin door next afternoon after lunch.
“I’ve had this, Peter,” he growled irritably, and flopped down into a large armchair. “How about seeing what the town has to offer?”
“I doubt if I could think up a worse suggestion,” Bentley answered him. “I can tell you what this cesspool has to offer—first, heat: second, stink: third, heat: fourth, filthy crowds; fifth ...”
“Yes, I know. Heat. This is a refrigerated room we’re in, of course ... But how about that beach outside Alexandria? Stanley Bay, isn’t it? If it’s anything like it used to be before the war ...”
“Robert,” Bentley said, and swung his long legs down to the deck, “you’re a blinking genius. Why the hell didn’t you think of that before?”
“All right, all right, you bronzed Bondi lifesaver.” Randall grinned. “But no shooting off with some dame like you did in Durban that time. One for all and all for one, remember?”
