Free the Savage Day - Simon Vaughn 02 (v5) by Jack Higgins Page B

glimpse of the lighthouse intermittently, due to the bad visibility. From then on we were in enemy waters, so to speak, and I had both Norah Murphy and Binnie join me in the wheel-house for a final briefing.
    She seemed entirely recovered and so did he. I could not imagine for one moment that he would have told her that he had over-heard our conversation, or ever would, but in that bleak undertaker's coat of his he certainly looked his old grim self again as he leaned over the chart.
    I traced our course with a pencil. 'Here we are. Another ten minutes and we round Crag Island and start the run-in to the coast. The channel through the reef is clearly marked and good deep water.'
    'Bloody Passage,' Norah Murphy said. 'Is that it?'
    I nodded. 'Apparently one of the biggest ships in the Spanish Armada went down there. According to old documents, the bodies floated in for weeks.' I glanced at my watch. 'It's four-twenty now and we're due in at five. First light's around six-fifteen, which gives us plenty of time to get in and out. Let's hope your people are on time.'
    'They will be,' she said.
    'Once we're into the passage I'll have to kill the deck lights, so I want both you and Binnie in the prow to look for the signal. A red light at two-second intervals on the minute or three blasts on a foghorn on the minute if visibility is really bad.'
    Which it was, there was no doubt about that, as we crept in towards the shore, the engine throttled right back to the merest murmur. Not that it was particularly dangerous, even when I switched off the deck and mast-head lights, for Bloody Passage was a good hundred yards across so there was little chance of coming to harm.
    We were close now, very close and I strained my eyes into the darkness looking for that light, but it was hopeless in all that mist and rain. And then as I leaned out of the side window, a foghorn sounded three times in the distance.
    Binnie appeared at the door. 'Did you hear that, Major?'
    I nodded and replied on our own foghorn with exactly the same signal. I told Binnie to return to the prow, throttled back and coasted in gently. The foghorn sounded again, very close now which surprised me, for by my reckoning we still had a good quarter of a mile to go.
    I replied again as agreed and in the same moment some strange instinct, product, I suppose, of several years of rather hard living, told me that something was very wrong indeed. Too late, of course, for a moment later, a searchlight picked us out of the darkness, there was a rumble of engines breaking into life and an MTB cut across our bow.
    I was aware of the white ensign fluttering bravely in the dim light and then the sudden menacing chatter of a heavy machine-gun above our heads.
    As I ducked instinctively, she cut in again and an officer on the bridge called through a loud-hailer, 'I'm coming aboard. Heave to or I sink you.'
    Norah Murphy appeared in the doorway at the same moment. 'What are we going to do?' she demanded.
    'I should have thought that was obvious.'
    I cut the engines, switched on the deck lights and lit a cigarette. Binnie had moved along the deck and was standing outside the open window.
    I said, 'Remember, boy, no heroics. Nothing to be gained.'
    As the MTB came alongside, a couple of ratings jumped down to our deck, a line was thrown and quickly secured. The standard sub-machine-gun in general use by the Royal Navy is the Sterling, so it was something of a surprise when a Petty Officer appeared at the rail above holding a Thompson gun ready for action, the 1921 model with the hundred drum magazine. The officer appeared beside him, a big man in a standard reefer coat and peaked cap, a pair of night glasses slung about his neck.
    Norah Murphy sucked in her breath sharply. 'My God,' she said. 'Frank Barry.'
    It was a name I'd heard before and then I remembered. My cell on Skarthos and the Brigadier briefing me on the IRA and its various splinter groups. Fanatical fringe elements who wanted to