Battlecruiser (1997) by Douglas Reeman Page B

succession.’ He thought of Stagg’s obvious pleasure at the missing boat. ‘And signal
Montagu
’s C.O. to report on board when we reach harbour.’
    Rhodes was already busy, and on either side of the bridge the signal lamps clattered in unison, each destroyer acknowledging instantly, the lights like bright chips of diamond.
    Sherbrooke recalled the words of the elderly operations officer.
They would. In that ship.
    He touched the chair again. So be it.
    The smart launch with the rear-admiral’s flag painted on either bow dashed across the water, the roar of her engines echoing from the sides of the fjord. Fragments of ice tinkled and broke from the stem like glass, and when Sherbrooke stood up in the cockpit he felt the breezecutting his face, and wondered how people managed to live normal lives in Iceland.
    He heard Stagg’s angry voice from the small cabin. His flag lieutenant, Howe, was getting the rough edge of the admiral’s tongue again. Stagg could not be an easy man to serve.
    Everything had gone wrong, from the moment
Reliant
had dropped anchor. Their consort-to-be, the escort carrier
Seeker
, was not ready for sea. While making her final approach, she had been in collision with a local fishing trawler; it was not much, but enough to cause some damage to
Seeker
’s lower hull. Repairs had already begun at Reykjavik, but how long they would take was anybody’s guess. Stagg had been furious, especially when the admiral in charge had told him that the Icelandic authorities were considering taking action against the Royal Navy for severely damaging one of their fishing fleet.
    Stagg had been unable to hide his fury, even from the officers of the local headquarters.
    ‘Bloody Icelanders, they hate our guts anyway! Would have preferred the Germans to get here before us! By God, I’ll lay odds that Admiral Donitz would have taught them a sharp lesson!’
    They had gone aboard
Seeker
and met her captain. It had been a tense visit.
    Seeker
, a
Smiter
Class escort carrier, was neither beautiful nor as grand as the big fleet carriers. A product of the Anglo-American lease-lend agreement, and converted from merchant-ship hulls, with wooden flight decks, they were unstable in any kind of bad weather, and would not last five minutes in the embattled seas of the Mediterranean, or with the Americans in the Pacific. But
Seeker
and her growing number of consorts, graceless and uncomfortable though they might be, were achievingsomething which, eighteen months ago, people would have believed impossible. In the vital Battle of the Atlantic, with the mounting toll of losses of ships and their desperately needed cargoes, there had always been a vast spread of ocean where air cover could not reach. Whether the convoys originated in the U.S.A. and Canada, or from Britain and the base here in Iceland, there had always been that gap,
the killing ground
, as the old Atlantic hands called it. U-Boats had been able to surface with impunity, and use their superior speed to pursue convoys and charge their batteries at the same time. Then, at night, they would close with the slow-moving lines of merchantmen and attack. Losses rose higher and higher, outpacing the shipyards’ ability to build vessels to replace those sunk.
    The little escort carrier had changed that. U-Boat crews were suddenly confronted with fast fighters and bombers hundreds of miles from any kind of base, and the lesson had been learned. Now the enemy was forced to spend more and more time submerged, and at reduced speed, their ability to track and torpedo the plodding merchantmen seriously impaired. The monthly list of kills had, at last, diminished, in the Allies’ favour.
    Sherbrooke wiped his face with his gloved hand and saw
Reliant
lying directly ahead. Against the bleak side of the fjord, she looked completely white, and seemed to shimmer in the hard glare, her powerful hull, high bridges and funnels covered with a sheen of ice, and so still that she could