Dust On the Sea (12 page)

But the navy continued to be resourceful. Most of the troops shuttled between Bone and Algiers were carried over the weeks by just four small ships. In peacetime they had been cross-Channel steamers, hardly designed for war. Despard had remarked as much, no doubt remembering them from his days in Jersey.

Intelligence had reported that the enemy was equally cunning. But where? These were not the waters for heavy transport, no matter how well they were armed or protected by air cover. Even if they succeeded in landing their supplies, it was unlikely they would be allowed to make a return trip.

And so this hitherto unknown French admiral, Avice, had been put forward as the most likely culprit. He had refused to co-operate with the Allies; he had always staunchly supported Darlan, outwardly at least. It was not much for the Operational staff to work on, and at such short notice.
The King is dead
 . . . And Avice was known for his unswerving views.

Blackwood touched the wooden side of the cabin. Probably not all that far from here. The Gulf of Hammamet, south of Tunis and not easy to observe by
sea or from the air, was said to have suitable facilities for small craft. It was protected by a fortress which had once been a base of the French Foreign Legion. It was now Avice's headquarters.

Perhaps Darlan had been killed by his order. Patriot or terrorist, it only mattered which side you were on in the end.

He sighed and stood up, away from the bunk, to test the motion.

I'm getting as cynical as Gaillard.

He looked at his watch. Soon now, or not at all. He groped his way to the ladder and peered up towards the bridge. There were a few tiny stars, swaying from side to side. The air was foul with petrol and crowded humanity, and he could not shake that same feeling of unreality.

The small open bridge seemed crowded, and he was glad of the duffle coat he had thrown over his shoulders. The breeze across the screen was like a knife. Hard to believe it had been so warm during the day.

He knew Gaillard was hating it, and why. Because of Brigadier Naismith.

Just the job for your chaps, Major Gaillard, I'd have thought.

What about the ‘something big'? Keeping it for himself, possibly. The next step up the ladder.

Falconer pushed between them, an unlit pipe jutting from his jaw like a tusk.

‘No bloody E-Boats about, anyway. You can hear those buggers for miles!' Somebody stifled a yawn. No excitement, only routine, at least to them.

Gaillard said sharply, ‘If anything shows up, we go straight in, right? No heroics, just do the job and fast out again!' He sounded strained, on edge, and Blackwood
was reminded of her words only last week.
How is your major? Still angry with everything?

They probably had Gaillards in the Raf, too.

Where was she now? On the ship she had been expecting? Passage back to England? Would she remember how it had been, what they had done together? The word seemed to speak aloud.
Together.

He had been unable to contact her. Under orders. It was hard not to consider it, even if the smallest breach of security could put men's lives at risk.

Somebody asked hoarsely, ‘
What
, sir?' It was Balfour, the young first lieutenant. Blackwood had seen him writing a letter in the tiny wardroom, next to the W/T office with its stammer of morse. To his girl somewhere; he had had her photograph in a case lying open beside him.

He heard Falconer reply, ‘It's them. Glad we shut down, eh?' He sounded very calm, but his mind was busy. Trained for it, ready to move. The schoolmaster, like the archaeologist in his battered schooner. Individuals.

Blackwood turned his head, hearing it for the first time. A droning sound, more than one craft, moving fast.
In and out
. Or they might even lie up for a day under camouflage nets, as the little schooners did among the islands.

‘Pass the word, and tell the Chief
now.
' The other two boats must be close by. The survivors. Blackwood heard the click of a magazine, or maybe a buckle as a gunner strapped himself into the twin Oerlikon mounting.

He saw faces light up as a flare burst somewhere over the starboard bow.

Gaillard muttered, ‘Cheeky bastards! Must be sure of themselves!'

The muffled roar of engines was louder, as if they should be able to see something. But Falconer did not move, and Blackwood saw his hand tapping a slow tattoo on the flag locker.

He said, ‘Let's hope they don't have any of that fancy detection gear.'

He ducked down to peer at the compass. His first lieutenant had gone to his own station by the heavy machine guns below the bridge. The old precaution, Blackwood thought. So all the eggs weren't in one basket if the worst should happen.

Falconer had moved again, and was standing beside the coxswain at the wheel.

‘Be ready, Swain. Steer nor'west, and full speed when I give the word!'

Blackwood recognised the excitement in the voice, the madness, the acceptance of the unacceptable.

He wanted to think of her, to hold on to the sweetness of memory. But he knew he could not, must not. It could be fatal.

Falconer yelled, ‘There go the bastards!
Full ahead!
'

The rest was lost in a sudden roar of power which almost threw them off their feet.

Blackwood clung to a stanchion and turned to stare as the rising bow wave surged away from the hull to break and cascade across something solid. Land. They were that close. There was another flare, from a different bearing this time.

He heard someone shout, ‘Too bloody late, chum!'

Then tracer. He made himself watch it, like balls of liquid fire, rising with such deceptive slowness, then
passing their peak and flashing down, spitting smoke and spray as bullets or cannon shells clawed across the water.

They did not return the fire. Blackwood felt the steel fingers ease around his guts.
Weekend sailors
, they used to call them.

Now they were the true professionals.

Aboard the second of the three motor gunboats, they had already heard the fast-moving engines and seen the unexpected flare.

Lieutenant George Despard found himself wedged into one corner of the small, box-like bridge, his hip pressed painfully into some immovable fitting, his arm brushing occasionally against a rating at a mounted machine gun.

Despard had heard the boat's skipper, a young lieutenant, giving his Number One some stick just before they had gone to Action Stations. His subordinate had been more embarrassed than angry, probably because it had been in front of him. A Royal Marine, another passenger, and so a liability as far as they were concerned. He smiled grimly in the darkness. In front of a ranker. He could find some amusement in it now. It set him apart as something different, neither one thing nor the other.

They had joked about it in the sergeants' mess before Christmas. In many ways he was still one of them, but the barrier was there all the same. Some could take it for granted, like the lieutenant in the third gunboat, a willowy young man called Robyns, son of a lieutenant-general in the Corps. He was competent enough, and his men appeared to respect him, although one of the sergeants had described him as ‘a toffee-nosed, patronising prat'. Despard had felt irritation, but had decided to ignore it.

He considered Michael Blackwood, how their paths
had crossed repeatedly over the years. It must be quite a load to carry, as he had thought often enough. In the Corps you could never forget the Blackwood dynasty, even if you wanted to. At Stonehouse there was a Blackwood cup for marksmanship. He smiled again, glad of the dark.
For musketry
, it was still engraved. At Eastney there was a silver shield, an earlier Blackwood's contribution, in recognition of the best sailing team. There were a lot of Royal Marine families, father to son, it was what made them special, but for Despard there had been no such connection. His father had been a bricklayer, a good one too; many of the houses around Jersey had been his work. Perhaps because of his skills, he had avoided serving in the Great War, although he was always one of the first to show his respect for the fallen on Armistice Days. Despard had seen his own future as a bricklayer, and, like his father, dropping in at the pub on his way home at the end of a long stint, until one day a destroyer from the Home Fleet had paid a courtesy visit to St Helier, and had been open to the public. Entertaining as only the navy could, as he himself had helped to do when he had joined his first ship, a light cruiser. Roundabouts made of capstan bars, ice cream and sticky buns, kids being allowed to peer down the barrel of a gun, and see the polished rifling glinting against the sky. The Royal Navy,
the sure shield
, as it had been then. Not the splinter-ridden ships he had seen go down protecting convoys, the survivors floundering, calling out for help when there was none to offer, because the others had obeyed the signal to hold their formation.
Don't stop. And don't look back.

The destroyer had, of course, carried no marines, but somebody had given him a recruiting leaflet. And even
now, after all he had gone through, and everything he had seen and been forced to do, he knew in his heart that if he ever met up with the man who had given him the leaflet, he would still have thanked him.

He had fitted in from the beginning. Drills, drills and more drills. Bellowing N.C.O.s, impatient officers, the mysteries of tradition and ceremony; he had done it. Corporal, and then the impossible: he had been made up to sergeant. That was it, and it would do very well. He had thought that if he survived the war he might even rate colour sergeant. Instead, there had been a signal, and an interview with his adjutant. ‘Take it, Sar'nt! Join the Club!'

A good bloke, but even as he had shaken Despard's hand he must have known that the new officer would always be ‘a ranker'.

He stiffened as the skipper's duffle coat appeared beside him.

‘You know what to do? If those boats go in, and are carrying supplies for the enemy, we take them!'

Despard had learned a lot about officers, long before becoming one. It didn't matter what uniform they wore, you could always tell. Like this one, a man to whom he had barely spoken, but who had done this kind of operation in the past. In his case, too many times.
Do we know what to do?
It was an insult, or many would take it as such. This one was trying to convince himself, to be someone he was not, not any more.

Despard said, ‘They're the enemy, as far as I'm concerned.' It stuck in his throat. ‘Sir.'

‘Not your show, is it?' Then he laughed and clapped him on the arm. ‘Piece of cake, old boy!' The laugh was the worst part.

Despard reached down and poked a khaki shoulder. ‘Ready, Corporal?'

The anonymous shape nodded. ‘Both Brens, sir. Grenades too.'

‘Good lad.'

Corporal Evans. A quiet enough man when he was sober, but drunk or in a fight and he was a different person entirely. And in action, at close quarters, he would change again. Evans had never learned ‘the rules'. Despard felt the anger rising once more. Who cared what the French in North Africa thought about co-operation? They had given in to Germany, but they still wanted respect. Like their warships moored at Alex; it was said that their admiral never went ashore, and had no contact with the Royal Navy, with which he had worked before the war in these same waters. In the name of France he had refused to allow his ships to serve alongside the British and their allies, the very people who were fighting and dying every day to help free France and all the other occupied countries from a ruthless enemy. The Germans had sensibly torn up the rules long ago.

He squinted as another flare exploded, further away, drifting aimlessly to port.

And Blackwood was over there somewhere with Gaillard. The latter had a strong reputation in the Corps. A real fire-eater, they said. Maybe he and Blackwood were right for one another. His mind refused to consider it. But they seemed so different.

‘
Full ahead!
'

The bridge seemed to rear like a surfboard as the engines bellowed into full revolutions. Spray dashed over the screen, stinging Despard's face like sleet.

The boat was weaving slightly, and he wondered how
the machine gunners would manage if something unforeseen happened. He swallowed. Here was the tracer. Out of the darkness, like the displays after fleet regattas in peacetime, where he had seen his officers with pretty women, wandering beneath the taut awnings while the band had played.

He thought of ‘Sticks' Welland, remembering what he had heard about the ace drummer. Some of it was the usual bullshit, but Sticks did have a way with women.

The third boat was moving up now; Despard saw her bow wave rising in a white crest, the hull almost hidden by the churned water.

More tracer, much nearer this time, and from higher up. From the land.

He felt his Sten beneath the cover he had draped over it. A handy little weapon, and provided you stuck to single shots you were pretty safe. Give a Sten to some green recruit, and he always wanted to be James Cagney . . . .

He tried to recall the chart and the diagram which Blackwood had shown them. Shallow water to port, and not too much anywhere else, either. A fortress by the first houses of the little town. He tensed; the boat was weaving again, more violently this time, and he saw the skipper up beside the coxswain, pointing into the darkness.

Somebody gave a nervous shout as the bridge quivered to a solitary crack. But nothing happened, and he heard a sailor call out to his mate on the opposite side.

It was a small shell, had to be. And it had gone right through the boat without exploding. Despard found that he could consider it with dispassion, like a problem at the training depot. An armour-piercing shell, probably an anti-tank gun, or even a tank.

It never left you. Observation, conclusion, method,
attack!