59
Making one phone call from the pub, and within twenty-four hours, there were twelve waiting for me at the harbour in the grey opaque world. Carrying shoulder-slung machine-pistols in a dozen steadiest pairs of hands ever saw. The fog protected us from seeing eyes.
Big, quiet, purposeful-looking soldiers dressed in woollen caps. Drab-and-black camouflaged smocks, trousers and rubber boots. Their palms and faces were the colour of coal. Their eyes gleamed.
After introductions, the muffled beat of a diesel engine approaching served only to enhance the quality of ghostly silence.
"Ahoy, there," a cry from the deck of a fishing boat. The voice made me happy.
"Hello, old man," I said. "Glad you could help?"
"Pleasure, son," he declared. "Kept your side of the bargain. I got Mary back. Sometimes I wish I hadn't. I'd forgotten how much she liked to talk."
I laughed.
"Don't stand there. Get these boys on my boat. We can do this job while our friends are at home.
"Very well, old..."
He held up a hand in protest.
"Please, call me, Tom."
"Okay, but they are not coming with us." I said, "Just the Major. We will meet with the others on the spit."
Once aboard, we circled to the south of the shingle. We drifted on the flood tide, engines stopped in an east by north direction.
The mist remained thinned now. Giving maybe a hundred yards of visibility. The complex's entrance from the sea was a couple of boathouse doors, which didn't meet in the middle.
I turned to Tom in the wheel-house. "That access is fifty feet wide. There's no beacon on it. A four-knot tide running. You think a nuclear submarine can hide in there?"
"I've seen it," he said. "I'm going to smash open those doors and not pile us up on the rocks."
Pressing the starter button, the warm diesel caught fire at once, the underpass exhaust audible. Swinging the vessel around to the south on the lowest revs. Continued on this course for two cables. Westwards for the same distance. Curved to the north, pushed the throttle wide open and lit a cigar. Tom preparing for action. The match's flare quieted the face.
There was nothing to see. Just the obscurity and patches of grey mist swirling past the bows. Heading a few degrees west, making allowance for the current. At once, he could see it. Off the starboard bow to be correct for the tide. Heading for the big T-shaped light in the darkness.
I picked up a sub-machine gun. Opened and latched back to the port wheel-house exit and stood there. Hardware in left hand. Door-jamb in right. One foot on the outside deck and the other still in the wheel-house. I positioned the commando major on the sloop side. Braced. Knowing when the boat stopped, it might be abrupt.
Forty yards away, Tom eased the throttle and guided the steering a touch to port, taking the vessel even farther round on our starboard position. In line with us, the patch of dark water. To the west, the phosphorescent foaming whiteness, past the outer end of the eastern reef.
Twenty yards away, Tom pushed the throttle open again.
We were now heading straight for where the unseen western breakwater must be. We were far too over to port. Impossible that we could avoid smashing bow first into it. Then, the wheel spinning to starboard; the tide pushing him the same way.
We were through, and not an inch of paintwork removed. The engine was in neutral.
The bollards on the dockside were used to tie the submarine. Angled the vessel across the tiny harbour. Straight at the shaft of light. Spun the wheel to port, angling towards the central crack of light. Put the engine full astern.
It was no part of the plan to telescope Tom's boat against the wall of the dock and send it to the bottom.
As an entrance, it erred on the spectacular side. The doors burst open at their nebulous hasps, snapping at the hinges, and carried the lot before us with a thunderous crash.
A knot was snatched off the speed.
The aluminium foremast, with Tom's fancy telescopic aerial inside, tore the tabernacle free of the deck before it sheared.
Above the wheel-house level, the most unpleasant metallic shrieking.
The screw, winding deep in maximum revs astern, slowed it even further. Amid the crackling, splintering of wood of the doors. The screeching of the rubber tyres on our close-fendered bows, we stopped short with a jarring shock.
Crammed between the submarine and the port wall of the boathouse. Tom moved the throttle to slow ahead to keep us wedged in position, and switched on the five-inch searchlight. Less to illuminate the lit harbour than to dazzle the crew loading. I stepped out on the deck with the machine-pistol in my hands.