Free The Eagle Has Landed by Jack Higgins Page A

out of the wheelhouse and stood on the bridge firing a Thompson sub-machine-gun with a drum magazine The ship was picking up speed now. driving through a light curtain of mist, as the blanket of fog began to settle again. Within another few moments she would have disappeared altogether. The riflemen at the rail were having difficulty in taking aim on a heaving deck at a target so low in the water and their shots were very wide of the mark. The Thompson, not too accurate at the best of times, was doing no better and making a great deal of noise about it.
     
     
Lemke reached the fifty-yard line several lengths in front of the others and kept right on going. There wasn't a thing Steiner could do about it. The riflemen started to get the range and a bullet ricocheted from the body of his torpedo in front of the cupola.
     
     
He turned and waved to Neumann 'Now!' he cried and fired his torpedo
     
     
The one upon which he was seated, released from the weight it had been carrying, sprang forward with new energy and he turned to starboard quickly following Neumann round in a great sweeping curve intended to take them away from the ship as fast as possible.
     
     
Lemke was turning away now also, no more than twenty-five yards from the Joseph Johnson, the men at the rail firing at him for all they were worth. Presumably one of them scored a hit, although Steiner could never be sure. The only certain thing was that one moment Lemke was crouched astride his torpedo, surging away from danger. The next, he wasn't there any more.
     
     
A second later one of the three torpedoes scored a direct hit close to the stern and the stern hold contained hundreds of tons of high explosive bombs destined for use by Flying Fortresses of bombardment groups of the 1st Air Division of the American 8th Air Force in Britain. As the Joseph Johnson was swallowed by the fog, she exploded, the sound re-echoing from the island again and again Steiner crouched low as the blast swept over, swerving when an enormous piece of twisted metal hurtled into the sea in front of him.
     
     
Debris cascaded down. The air was full of it and something struck Neumann a glancing blow on the head He threw up his hands with a cry and catapulted backwards into the sea, his torpedo running away from him, plunging over the next wave and disappearing.
     
     
Although unconscious, blood on his forehead from a nasty gash, he was kept afloat by his inflatable jacket. Steiner coasted in beside him, looped one end of a line under the lieutenant's jacket and kept on going, pushing towards the breakwater and Braye, already fading as the fog rolled in towards the island again.
     
     
The tide was ebbing fast. Steiner didn't have one chance in hell of reaching Braye Harbour and he knew it, as he wrestled vainly against a tide that must eventually sweep them far out into the Channel beyond any hope of return.
     
     
He suddenly realized that Ritter Neumann was conscious again and staring up at him 'Let me go/ he said faintly 'Cut me loose You'll make it on your own.'
     
     
Steiner didn't bother to reply at first, but concentrated on turning the torpedo over towards the right Burhou was somewhere out there in that impenetrable blanket of fog There was a chance the ebbing tide might push them in, a slim one perhaps, but better than nothing.
     
     
He said calmly, 'How long have we been together now, Ritter?'
     
     
'You know damn well,' Ritter said. 'The first time I clapped eyes on you was over Narvik when I was afraid to jump out of the plane.'
     
     
'I remember now,' Steiner said. 'I persuaded you otherwise.'
     
     
'That's one way of putting it,' Ritter said. 'You threw me out.'
     
     
His teeth were chattering and he was very cold and Steiner reached down to check the line. 'Yes, a snotty eighteen-year-old Berliner, fresh from the University. Always with a volume of poetry in your hip pocket. The professor's son who crawled fifty yards under fire to bring me a medical