The Torch Bearers : Number 8 in series

It is the autumn of 1942; Captain Sir Nicholas Everard has a convoy to escort, a big, slow convoy with just one destroyer, two corvettes and a few trawlers to protect it.

U-boat pack commander Max Looff can hardly believe his luck.

His nerve is going and he knows it: but now he has a chance in a million to annihilate an entire convoy and win the Fuhrer's highest approbation.

Like trailing a lump of raw meat across shark-infested waters - that was the idea.

For while Looff's U-boats devour Nick's convoy, the 'Torch' invasion forces slip safely through the Gibraltar Strait.

But then the sacrificial convoy is joined by a limping passenger ship that might have Kate on board - his own newly-wedded wife in a doomed convoy, U-boat bait...