To Risks Unknown (16 page)

Watching the big destroyer from the upper bridge gave everyone some idea of what the
Thistle
must look like. The ship showed her bilge keel, and then her upper deck as her masts and superstructure swung back and forth across the yellow-fanged waves in a sickening motion which increased as both ships left the shelter of the land and butted out into the open sea.

At the close of the second day the destroyer's signal lamp blinked across the tossing water, ‘Good luck. Give our love to Mussolini.' Then with a rising surge of power from her forty-eight thousand horsepower she headed away into the murk and was almost at once out of sight.

Painfully, waiting for the right moment, the
Thistle
altered course to the north-east, quite alone, a tossing fragment of grey steel against the wilderness of empty sea. Only the chart showed visible evidence of that other danger. Like the jaws of a great trap the islands of Sardinia and Sicily lay one hundred miles from either beam, a hostile sea, with Italy across the bows as the final barrier.

But if the weather was terrible, it was also an ally. Not once did they sight an aircraft or ship, for the enemy probably assumed that no one in his right mind would take a ship alone and unaided into these waters, especially in this sort of weather.

As Crespin lived out each day within the staggering world of his bridge he felt inclined to agree with such reasoning. No one in his right mind would have
sent
the
Thistle
in such conditions.

Slowly but surely he guided his ship around the north-west corner of Sicily. It was as if the
Thistle
was held to the coastline by an invisible thread, as a child will hold a captive model aircraft with himself as the centre of its flying circle.

Three days to the hour after slipping her moorings found them a bare twenty miles north-north-east of Cape St. Vito, a craggy prong of land which guarded the final approach to Castellammare Bay and their objective.

Just twenty miles from enemy territory, but as Crespin swung his glasses over the screen he thought it could have been a thousand. There was no sign of land and the visibility was next to nothing. It was a wild panorama of broken wavecrests and bursting spray, the latter being so continuous that it might have been tropical rain. They had a beam sea now, the most dangerous of all, and although the hands had been at action stations for several hours it was in name only. The four-inch gun on the forecastle was abandoned, the crew hiding somewhere abaft the bridge, and as the sea thundered up and over the side of the hull and sluiced greedily the full length of the deck the gun stood alone and desolate like a half-submerged rock.

Crespin readjusted the sodden towel around his neck. His skin felt raw and chafed and his body bruised from the constant pounding.

Wemyss clawed his way to his side and shouted, ‘Bang on time, sir!' He was unshaven and red-eyed, and Crespin wondered how men could stand up to this sort of thing.

He nodded. ‘As far as we can tell!' He ducked below the screen as a towering wall of spray lifted over the bridge and then smashed down jubilantly on the crouching men before gurgling through the scuppers and cascading down the ladders on either wing.

He saw Shannon wedged in the opposite corner of the bridge, his face raw from spray and wind, his lips set in a tight line as he peered towards the starboard bow. He looked worn out, but something was keeping him on his feet.

Crespin said, ‘Check with the W/T again. We might get a recall in view of all this.'

Wemyss looked at him doubtfully. ‘Too late now, sir. We'd have heard by this time if the invasion was off.'

‘Check anyway.' Crespin moved his glasses along the screen. At most other times it would be as bright as noon. But it was growing darker every minute, and the clouds if anything were thicker and faster.

Wemyss came back shaking his head. ‘Nothing, sir!'

‘Very well. Take over the con. I'm going to the chartroom.' He held up his wrist and showed Wemyss his watch. ‘There's no point in pretending that this raid is going to be called off, so we might as well get on with it.'

The small chartroom was so crowded with people that Crespin had to use his shoulder to open the door. The four marine officers and all the senior N.C.O.s had somehow managed to get inside, and the air was almost nauseous with tobacco smoke.

The senior officer was a major named Cameron. He was extremely tall and as thin as a stick, and his narrow, rather haughty face was dominated by a bushy moustache and a pair of small, penetrating eyes. His green beret was set at an exact and regulation angle on his head, and in spite of the discomforts of being a passenger he had managed to shave, as had the rest of the marines present. Up to this moment Cameron had been content to remain just one more piece of cargo. Resigned was probably a better word, Crespin thought. Now, or in two hours' time, their roles would change. Major Cameron certainly gave the impression that he was more than able to cope, no matter what was waiting for him and his men.

Crespin stared down at the chart. The bay towards which the bows were pointing was about fifteen miles across, with the cape of the nearest headland reaching out towards them like a spiked mace. It was a terrible coast. Steep cliffs and endless reefs, with neither light nor beacon to make the approach any easier.

Five miles inside the bay, hacked into the headland itself, was the objective, the tiny settlement of St. Martino. It could not be called a port or a village, for there was no real harbour or need for social habitation. In the great hills behind the inlet and connected to the rest of the island by a narrow gauge railway were several quarries. In peacetime they were mostly worked by convicts, the stone being used for buildings as far afield as France and Spain. Now the quarries were little used, for in time of war concrete had been proved more useful and less troublesome than the slow business of hewing out stone.

What made St. Martino different from the rest of this inhospitable coastline was its long pier. Coasters and schooners had used it to load their cargoes of stone, and the
Thistle
was about to use it for a more lethal business.

Major Cameron glanced swiftly around the watching eyes. ‘We go alongside the pier and disembark in three parties as arranged.' He had a clipped, impatient voice, and Crespin judged that he would be a hard man to serve. ‘First party will head north and seize the coastguard station. Second will go here,' he jabbed the chart with his finger, ‘and blow up the railway track and all the equipment adjoining it.' A massive colour-sergeant was scribbling furiously in a notebook, and one of the young lieutenants was clasping and unclasping his fingers as he stared at the chart. Cameron said, ‘Third party will cover the coast road and remain there until our Sicilian patriot friends take over.' He looked up sharply. ‘Right?'

A round-faced lieutenant asked, ‘Suppose these chaps
don't
turn up, sir?'

The major eyed him coldly. ‘Well, we'll just have to manage on our bloody own, won't we?' He turned his head. ‘Has anyone got anything sensible to say?'

No one replied, and Crespin was not surprised. Cameron looked at the bulkhead clock. ‘Get to your men and prepare to disembark.' He cleared his throat. ‘Just remember this. It is a raid we are carrying out, not a bloody suicide mission. I want plenty of noise and confusion, but no damned heroics, got it? We hit 'em and pull out.' He shot Crespin a brief smile. ‘After that it's the captain's problem to get us away.'

They struggled through the swaying door and Cameron said flatly, ‘I think they should have called
this
operation by some suitable name.' He pulled out his pistol, checked it and thrust it back into his holster. ‘Operation Bloody Miracle would be pretty apt, don't you think?'

Crespin looked at the clock. He wanted to get back to the bridge, and imagined he could feel a slight easing of the ship's motion, as if she was already moving into the lee of that headland, But Cameron's sudden change of tone, the bitter hopelessness of his words, held him there.

‘Tell me, what do you really think?'

Cameron shrugged. ‘It could work, of course. I've been on many raids with far less preparation than this one. But we're so far away from help, and when we light the fuses we'll have the whole bloody island on our ears.' He pointed towards the southern coast of the island. ‘The Americans are going to land here and here. In this weather they'll have their work cut out to reach the right beaches in one piece. Our little diversion should draw some of the Jerry armour our way and away from them. At least in theory it should.'

A handset buzzed and Crespin picked it from its hook. ‘Captain here.'

Wemyss' voice was muffled by wind and sea. ‘Ready to change course, sir.' He paused. ‘Very dark now. Barely see more than a cable.'

‘Very good, I'll come up.' He dropped the handset and looked at the marine. ‘The main Allied invasion is scheduled to start in five hours, so we'd better get going.' He held out his hand. ‘Good luck.'

The major studied him intently. ‘Thanks. Just remember that if we get bogged down you're to pull out on schedule yourself. I said no heroics. It applies to you, too.' Then he smiled. ‘Sometimes I think of Eastney barracks, the parades and the bloody colonel's inspections. How we used to wish for action and glory. I wouldn't mind being there now, I can tell you!'

A marine lieutenant poked his head round the door. ‘All ready, sir.'

The major's face froze into an impassive mask. ‘Right. Well, don't stand there gaping. What do you want, a bloody medal?' The man vanished.

The major looked around the chartroom and grinned. ‘It's better to be hated, you know. They don't miss you so much when you get your head shot off!'

Crespin watched him go and thought suddenly of Scarlett and the men like him who moved the flags on maps and decided who would live and die, and to what purpose. They never seemed to consider those who actually had to carry out their orders and translate the schemes into grim reality. Men like Cameron and his stolid colour-sergeant, and the pink-faced lieutenant who was so obviously afraid, yet more afraid of showing fear than of the unknown dangers ahead.

He sighed and wiped the lenses of his glasses before thrusting them inside his oilskin. Then he opened the door and made his way quickly to the upper bridge.

As the ship moved closer and closer inshore the wind fell away as if suddenly sealed off by a giant wall. There were no longer any leaping wave-crests to break the darkness, but a steep, undulating swell gave the ship an unpleasant corkscrew motion which made the helmsman's work all the more difficult because of the slow speed.

Crespin clutched the screen in the forepart of the bridge and swung his glasses slowly from bow to bow. They were less than a mile from the side of the headland and he could almost feel it like a physical force, but apart from the occasional splash of white foam around the pitching stem there was nothing to break the blackness or to give him some hint of his landfall. The radar was practically useless for this sort of thing, and it was madness to depend on it. The screen merely showed a wavering outline of coast distorted by a mass of back-echoes and nothing of any real value. What he took to be the small inlet was barely recognizable as such, and of the pier there was no sign at all. His brain told him that this was simply because of the towering cliffs at one side of the inlet which were enough to mask any such narrow object under these conditions, but his straining nerves kept playing tricks with his imagination so that it was even harder to concentrate on the final approach. Suppose the pier had been destroyed with just this sort of raid in mind? He could go on creeping forward until there was no room left to turn. He was still wearing the oilskin and could feel the warm sweat running down his body, yet he dared not take even a few seconds to remove it.

Around him he could hear the lookouts moving quietly at their stations, the occasional rasp of an ammunition belt on one of the bridge machine-guns as it swung against the steel plates. Everything was tense but normal, and this realization added to his sense of apprehension. They all had such faith. He gave his orders, they obeyed. If they had any doubts or uncertainties in his ability, his translation of the facts at his disposal, then they gave no sign. But his mind was so crammed with stored details and preparations for this single moment, how did he not know that he had forgotten some vital point? It was not unknown for a captain to get so keyed up, so immersed in the actual technicalities of his job, that he suffered a kind of mental blackout just when he was most needed.

And even if the first part of the plan worked, was it not just possible that the enemy was there, right now, waiting for him? In his mind he got a stark picture of the inlet, each ledge and piece of roadway ringed with waiting armour, the long guns already pointing at the uncertain, wallowing shape of the corvette.

He dashed the sweat from his eyes. It was no good getting like this. He heard the steering mechanism creaking again. Joicey was having great difficulty in holding his course.

He snapped, ‘Up two turns!' He heard Wemyss' deep voice murmuring down the voice-pipe, the answering ‘Revolutions seven-zero, sir!'

It was still dead slow, yet it felt as if the ship was heading for the hidden land with the speed of an express train.

A lookout said sharply, ‘Light on the starboard bow, sir!'

Feet scraped nervously on the gratings and Crespin trained his glasses across the pale wedge of the
Thistle'
s forecastle. Nothing. The man's nerves were playing games with him. He stiffened. There it was. Very low down on the water. Two blue flashes.

He said, ‘Starboard ten. Midships.' He saw the signal appear once more. ‘Warn the side party. They'll have to be sharp about it. I'll not be able to stop.'