Langarotti and Shannon took the third and last boat. They were accompanied by Bartholomew and Johnny, the latter a big, grinning fighter who had been promoted at Shannon’s insistence when they last fought together, but who had refused to take his own company, as his new rank entitled him to, preferring to stick close to Shannon and look after him.
Just before Shannon, who was the last man into the boats, descended the ladder, Captain Waldenberg appeared from the direction of the bridge and tugged at his sleeve. The German pulled the mercenary to one side and muttered quietly, “We may have a problem.”
Shannon was immobile, frozen by the thought that something had gone seriously wrong. “What is it?” he asked.
“There’s a ship. Lying off Clarence, farther out than we are.”
“How long since you saw it?”
“Some time,” said Waldenberg, “but I thought it must be cruising south down the coast, like us, or moving northward. But it’s not; it’s riding to.”
“You’re sure? There’s no doubt about it?”
“None at all. When we came down the coast we were moving so slowly that if the other had been steaming in the same direction, she’d be well away by now. If northward, she’d have passed us by now. She’s immobile.”
“Any indication of what she is, who she belongs to?”
The German shook his head. “The size of a freighter. No indication who she is, unless we contact her.”
Shannon thought for several minutes. “If she were a freighter bringing cargo to Zangaro, would she anchor till morning before entering harbor?” he asked.
Waldenberg nodded. “Quite possible. Entry by night is frequently not allowed in some of the smaller ports along this coast. She’s probably riding out until the morning before asking permission to enter port.”
“If you’ve seen her, presumably she’s seen you?” Shannon suggested.
“Bound to,” said Waldenberg. “We’re on her radar all right.”
“Could her radar pick up the dinghies?”
“Unlikely,” said the captain. “Too low in the water, most probably.”
“We go ahead,” said Shannon. “It’s too late now. We have to assume she’s just a freighter waiting out the night.”
“She’s bound to hear the firefight,” said Waldenberg.
“What can she do about it?”
The German grinned. “Not much. If you fail, and we’re not out of here before sunrise, she’ll recognize the Toscana through binoculars.”
“We mustn’t fail, then. Carry on as ordered.”
Waldenberg went back to his bridge. The middle-aged African doctor, who had watched the proceedings in silence, stepped forward.
“Good luck, Major,” he said in perfectly modulated English. “God go with you.”
Shannon felt like saying that he would have preferred a Wombat recoilless rifle, but held his tongue.
He knew these people took religion very seriously. He nodded, said, “Sure,” and went over the side.
Out in the darkness, as he looked up at the dim blob of the Toscana’s stern above him, there was complete silence but for the slap of the water against the rubberized hulls of the boats. Occasionally it gurgled behind the ship’s rudder. From the landward side there was not a sound, for they were well out of earshot of the shore, and by the time they came close enough to hear shouts and laughter it would be well past midnight and, with luck, everyone would be asleep. Not that there was much laughter in Clarence, but Shannon was aware how far a single, sharp sound can travel over water at night, and everyone in his party, in the boats and on the Toscana, was sworn to silence and no smoking.
He glanced at his watch. It was quarter to nine. He sat back to wait.
At nine the hull of the Toscana emitted a low rumble, and the water beneath her stern began to churn and bubble, the phosphorescent white wake running back to slap against the snub nose of Shannon’s assault craft. Then they were under way, and by dipping his fingers over the side he could feel the caress of the passing water. Five hours to cover twenty-eight nautical miles.
The sky was still overcast, and the air was like that inside an old greenhouse, but a hole in the cloud cover let a little dim starlight through. Astern he could make out the craft of Vlaminck and Semmler at the end of twenty feet of rope, and somewhere behind them Janni Dupree was moving along in the wake of the Toscana.
The five hours went by like a nightmare. Nothing to do but watch and listen, nothing to see but the darkness and the glitter of the sea, nothing to hear but the low thump of the Toscana’s old pistons moving inside her rusted hull. No one could sleep, despite the mesmeric rocking of the light craft, for the tensions were building up in every man in the operation.
But the hours did pass, somehow. Shannon’s watch said five past two when the noise of the Toscana’s engines died and she slowed to idle in the water. From above the after rail a low whistle came through the darkness—Waldenberg, letting him know they were in position for cast-off. Shannon turned his head to signal Semmler, but Dupree must have heard the whistle, for a few seconds later they heard his engine cough into life and begin to move away toward the shore. They never saw him go, just heard the low buzz of the engine under its muffler vanishing into the darkness.
At the helm of his assault craft big Janni checked his power setting on the twist-grip he held in his right hand, and held his left arm with the compass as steady as he could under his eyes. He knew he should have four and a half miles to cover, angling in toward the coast, trying to make landfall on the outer side of the northern arm that curved around the harbor of Clarence. At that power setting, on that course, he should make it in thirty minutes. At twenty-five minutes he would shut the engine almost off and try to make out his landfall by. eyesight. If the others gave him one hour to set up his mortars and flare-rockets, they should move past the tip of the point toward their own beach landing just about the time he was ready. But for that hour he and his two Africans would be the only ones on the shore of Zangaro. That was all the more reason why they should be completely silent as they set up their battery.
Twenty-two minutes after he left the Toscana, Dupree heard a low post from the bow of his dinghy. It was Timothy, whom he had posted as a lookout Dupree glanced up from his compass, and what he saw caused him to throttle back quickly. They were already close to a shoreline, little more than three hundred yards away, and the dim starlight from the hole in the clouds above them showed a line of deeper darkness right ahead. Dupree squinted hard, easing the craft another two hundred yards inshore. It was mangrove; he could hear the water chuckling among the roots. Far out to his right he could discern the line of vegetation ending and the single line of the horizon between sea and night sky running away to the end of vision. He had made landfall three miles along the northern coast of the peninsula.
He brought his boat about, still keeping the throttle very low and virtually silent, and headed back out to sea. He set the tiller to keep the shoreline of the peninsula in vision at half a mile until he reached the limit of the strip of land at whose end the town of Clarence stood, then again headed slowly inshore. At two hundred yards he could make out the long, low spit of gravel that he was seeking, and in the thirty-eighth minute after leaving the Toscana he cut the engine and let the assault craft drift on its own momentum toward the spit. It grounded with a soft grating of fabric on gravel.
Dupree stepped lightly down the boat, avoiding the piles of equipment, swung a leg over the prow, and dropped onto the sand. He felt for the painter and kept it in his hand to prevent the boat from drifting, away. For five minutes all three men remained immobile, listening for the slightest sound from the town they knew lay over the low hummock of gravel and scrub in front of them, and four hundred yards to the left. But there was no sound. They had arrived without causing any alarm.