Rogue Raider by Nigel Barley

Merchant vessels were too easy for him, he had to go after warships, into the lion’s den armed with nothing but a peashooter. This was not a repeat of Madras, a civilian port with its broad seafront. Lauterbach, feigning enthusiasm, had examined the chart of Penang harbour earlier that night. This was a military base built for defence. The entrance was a narrow tube from the north. The southern exit was too shallow for them so they would have to make a tight turn to escape back up it. Officially there were no modern fortifications but it still looked like a deathtrap, a narrow throat to get stuck in like a fishbone. There would be heavy warships in there with good thick armour they could not hope to hurt with their own small bore weapons. Only a torpedo would do and that could only be relied upon at close range. They would be like, like … a duck quacked from the menagerie outside, neatly providing the image Lauterbach was searching for.
    At 4.30 the men were called to attention and the speed increased to 18 knots as they ran for the inner harbour, ignoring the waiting pilot boat. Like Madras, the whole port was all lit up invitingly. The first dawn light probed the horizon. Somewhere on shore a bird sang with heart-wrenching beauty and then suddenly there was a huge target right in front of them, crisp in morning light. Von Muecke was furiously thumbing through a book of naval silhouettes, hissing excitedly through his teeth.
    â€œRussian, I think, a cruiser, light probably. Wait. One of three possibles.” He flipped pages wildy.
    â€œ Zhemteg ,” pronounced Lauterbach tiredly, eyeing the cyrillic letters swarming over the bow. “We’re close enough now to read the bloody name.” He had got hospitably drunk on her once in Vladivostock on raw vodka, danced, sung and vomited over the rail. The captain was a good egg. Now he was about to repay his hospitality.
    At three hundred, Franz Josef was at last allowed to let loose one of his pampered torpedoes. In the coffin-like bay beneath the deck the dials glowed, the electric contacts crackled and the needles danced behind their celluloid screens as the glorious word “Fire” flashed up as he had so often seen it in his dreams. He completed the contact and tore up to the deck to see the effect, fixing the trail as it shot across the gap between the two vessels and clutching the rail, trembling, like a boy finally losing his virginity.
    Von Mueller was all crisply starched authority. “Starboard guns open fire. Rapid salvoes.” The guns blazed fire and thunder as the torpedo struck the Russian aft, more or less where Lauterbach had voided his stomach, detonating mightily and somehow lifting the whole vessel. He watched with the horrified relish of fear as the great guns swivelled and bore down on them but no answering fire came from the Russian. Their own shells riddled the superstructure and raked the decks, starting fires and explosions till her sides swiftly glowed red hot. Their captain was ashore with a lady friend and many of the crew promptly abandoned ship and sought to join him, swimming, grasping their caps in their hands. In the Russian navy there was no charge for losing your entire ship but they fined you a whole month’s pay if you lost your hat. While in port, their own torpedoes had been disarmed and only a dozen rounds were available for the guns and, then, when the sleeping Russians finally got one of them working, it simply strafed the friendly merchant vessels around her. But now other shells were flying overhead. There were French warships in there with a proper watch being kept and plenty of ordinance. Now that they should be smartly running off, the Emden ’s response was to stop dead and begin to turn and manoeuvre with painfully slow engines and whirring screws. As the prow came round, the port side guns opened up and another of Franz Josef’s torpedoes swirled off towards the Russian foe. At first