Free The Glory Boys by Douglas Reeman

machine-guns, foreign-looking pistols, and knives. Two of them seemed to be Italian. Collaborators.
    Ainslie had said coldly, “Traitors, from another perspective!” and had not waited to be contradicted. “My aunt used to live in the Channel Islands. Jersey. There were a few of them there, too, when Jerry marched in!”
    Spiers reached out and stretched, loosening the taut muscles, trying to exercise them. He had always been a keen sportsman, playing cricket and tennis whenever he got the chance. He listened to the hull moving and creaking beneath him. When he had not been trying to sell insurance to people who had more money than sense …
    Turnbull murmured, “Skipper’s comin’ up, sir.”
    No matter what, the ship came first.
    Kearton was on the bridge now.
    “Another hour, maybe less. We’ll reduce to ten knots, so warn all hands. It will be a coaster, a schooner of some kind, if everything goes to plan.”
    Spiers asked, “And if it doesn’t, sir?”
    “We get the hell out, and try again later.” He must have touched Turnbull’s arm. “What d’ you say?”
    “Roll on my twelve!” Turnbull said, and they both laughed.
    Spiers groped his way to the ladder. How could they make light of it? Pretend? All he could feel was anger.
    Now the motion was much worse, and spray flung aft from the stem clattered across the bridge like hail. Bad enough for the gun crews and lookouts, but in the engineroom it would be impossible to stand. Spiers would go through and along the hull, checking each man, making sure nothing had been displaced by the strain. He could be relied on, no matter what he might be thinking.
    Kearton tried to picture the different faces, as individuals and as a unit. Most of them had been in action of one kind or another, a few, like Turnbull and Spiers, many times. But together, at close quarters, never.
    Some of them must be thinking the same thing about their commanding officer.
    He sensed a movement behind him. Light-footed, untroubled by the swoops and rolls of the hull. He knew it was Jethro, if that was really his name.
    Despite the discomfort and the tension he smiled to himself, remembering the sailor’s loud remark about ‘soap and water’.
    “Soon now, Skipper,” and it was not a question. A brisk, cultured voice, at odds with his unkempt appearance. And very calm. Dangerously so. What made him, and those like him, volunteer for this type of duty? It was one thing to risk death, even to be killed in action, but to be caught and taken prisoner as a secret agent or saboteur was to invite a fate without mercy.
    Kearton felt the spray on his face, as cold as the North Sea.
    “We can only feel our way.”
    Jethro might have shrugged. “They will be there. They have no choice.”
    Ainslie had joined them, but remained unusually silent. Perhaps because of their passenger, the ‘specialist’, perhaps remembering his aunt in German-occupied Jersey.
    “Light, sir! Port bow!”
    A tiny red flash in the sky, then another: two pinpricks. But after the blackness, they seemed like thunderflashes.
    “Port ten. Midships.”
    It might still be a false alarm. Or a trap.
    Kearton heard the two-pounder swinging slightly, the machine-guns on the bridge wing already depressed toward the invisible horizon.
    He said, “Stand by.” He could not see it, but the Chief’s warning light would be flashing above the big Packard engines. Ready for full speed .
    He recalled Laidlaw’s calm assurance. “Old Growler can give you thirty knots at the ring of a bell, sir.” Then his thin smile. “With a following wind, anyway!”
    So different from his last command, forty knots flat out …
    “Stop engines!”
    The sudden silence seemed almost painful, the sea subdued as the way fell off the thrust.
    “Dead ahead, sir!”
    Kearton watched the other vessel, a shape darker than the night reaching out, then angled slightly to avoid impact.
    Ainslie murmured, “They saw us.”
    Jethro pushed past him. “