If we can’t hide here, then where? Reubold thought. The open sea would be better, hide in plain sight under cover of darkness in the remnants of the passing storm and head for Alderney or Guernsey at dawn. He thought of Dresser’s reaction to him moving the boats without orders. The admiral would be livid. He smiled to himself as he remembered Goering’s rage when he covered the riechsmar-schal’s broad lap in vomit. Goering, immaculately dressed in his splendid tailored uniform, nails manicured, a faint layer of makeup to cover the blemishes — all destroyed by a putrid mass splashed over his large soft stomach and thick thighs.
“Assemble the officers,” Reubold ordered. “We’re going out.” He patted his breast pocket to make certain that the small, flannel-lined case with its carefully measured vials was there. He needed the morphine. It was his old friend. You don’t desert old friends in time of need.
He watched as the crews made ready to move out, the oberbootsmannmaats bellowing orders to ready the boats. One after another he heard the deep rumble of the Daimler-Benz diesel engines fill the interior of the pen so that he was certain he could feel the concrete walkway shake. The gun crews unsheathed the guns, removed tampions from muzzles, and begun testing the gun laying and training mechanisms. The squat shape of the Trinity sat forlornly in the bow, waiting for attention, and yet when he saw it, Reubold smiled in satisfaction.
“Ready, sir,” Mihsler said.
Reubold looked to see his boat commanders and executive officers, standing expectantly before him.
“We’re going to Alderney,” he said. “I want to clear the coast and stay well clear of Cap de la Hague. Thirty knots once we form in the harbor but schleichfahrt when we’re on the open sea.” Stealth speed, not up on their foils. “Get aboard your boats. Make ready. Mihsler leads off. Draheim, you follow. Column of twos.” Two by two, just like Noah’s ark. He saw a nervous Peters light a cigarette and then just as quickly discard it. “Waymann,” he said. “You command S-209.” No niceties, no explanation. He saw relief in Peters’s eyes and realized that the man thought that he was to remain behind. “Peters will go along as exec. That’s all.”
The others moved away quickly, a sense of satisfaction following them. Peters was demoted and forced to face his cowardice, all with a few, calm words.
“Fregattenkapitan, may I have a word?” Peters said quickly, pushing through the officers.
“No,” Reubold said. “There is no time.”
“But, Fregattenkapitan, surely there is a mistake.”
“No,” Reubold said again. “Get aboard, prepare to get under way.”
Peters seemed to inflate, as if to make himself appear larger, more imposing, more dangerous. “I have to protest. Strongly. You cannot do this. I request permission to remain behind to file an official report.”
Reubold looked over Peters’s shoulder. “Risse?” An oberbootsmann, one of Draheim’s, a big man with an oversized chin, appeared. “Escort this officer to Waymann’s boat. If he resists, beat him.”
Risse allowed himself a flicker of surprise followed by a barely restrained smile before he said: “Yes, sir.”
Now, Reubold told himself, let’s go find someplace safe to hide.
“The darker the night, the nearer the rain,” DeLong said.
Edland looked at him.
“An old sailor’s saw,” DeLong said. “You know, like ‘Red sky in the morning, is the sailor’s warning. A red sky at night, is the sailor’s delight.’”
“No,” Edland said.
“The commander’s not a sailor, Randy,” Cole said, lowering his binoculars. “He’s a paper-pusher. You sail a desk, don’t you, Commander?”
Edland thought of the gentle sway of his body, sitting atop a camel, or the fierce winds of Tibet howling down the mountains. “That’s right,” he said. “I live for paper.”
“Skipper,” Barney called through the speaker. “Weather report just came in. They’re saying the Beaufort’s dropping from seven to six and visibility ought to pick up.”
“How much?”
“Maybe four miles. Maybe seven. Course that’s when the sun comes up.”
“This is the Channel, Barney. We never see the sun.”
Soon the low-lying clouds had denied them any kind of light from the moon and only an occasional glimpse of stars. That had been enough to see formations of aircraft heading east.
“C-47s,” DeLong said, “I guess this is it.”
Cole cupped his hand around his watch to catch the luminescent dial. “Oh, three-twenty-two,” he said. He looked up, following Randy’s gaze. “Paratroopers.”
“Man, that’s definitely one thing that I’d never do,” DeLong said. “Jump out of an airplane.”
Cole glanced at him. “Yeah. Better to be in a small wooden boat in the English Channel in shitty weather.”
“Firedancer’s signaling,” Edland noted.
Cole read the flickering light of the Aldis lamp. “ ‘Fleet joined… thirty miles port. Instructed… reduce speed to twelve. Firedancer.” He picked up the handheld signal lamp and responded: “Received.” He turned the lamp toward the other boats and passed on the information.
“Now what?” Edland said.
“Now we wait for orders, man the radar, and hope that Firedancer picks up something on her unit before we do.”
“What do you mean?”
“Her radar range is about sixty miles, give or take. Don’t forget the unit’s mounted a hell of a lot higher off the surface than ours is. Our range is twenty miles, tops. If she spots something first, we get enough warning to react.” He motioned to the two seamen in the bow with a BAR and M-1. “To tell you the truth, Commander, the only thing that gives me the willies are mines. We hit one of those things and it’s the end of the line.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“I have. The invasion fleets have minesweepers leading the way. They’ll cut lanes through the minefields and plug those that pop to the surface. Unfortunately for us, a few might get away. Those two sharpshooters are there to plug them before we plow into them. How do those C-47s look to you now, Randy?”
“Better and better, Skipper.”
“Now we play watchdog, Commander,” Cole said, stretching stiffness out of his back. It was the dampness and cold that combined to creep into his joints and lock them in place. Old age, his grandfather complained, miserable old age. It’ll never happen to me, Cole had thought with all the certainty of youth. I’m young, invulnerable. That arrogance had been swept away by months on the pounding deck of a little wooden boat in the cold depths of early morning. He grew accustomed to the ache in his knees, and the heavy pain in his lower back, and the sharper pain that cut across his shoulder blade. Not wounds, but injuries — the kind that he was too embarrassed to mention. Pop three or four aspirin, light a cigarette when the smoking lamp was lit, and grit your teeth. The sea was picking up some. He pulled the binoculars from the ready box and swept the darkness to port.
“Anything?” Edland asked.
Cole smiled secretly at the man’s impatience. “Not a thing,” he said. “Just some night and some stars. How’s our heading, Randy?”
“Dead on, Skipper. Think we can do it?”
“Do what?”
“Sneak up on the bastards.”
“Your guess is as good as mine. The weather was a break. They probably figured that no seaman in his right mind would venture out in this shit.”