Free A Dawn Like Thunder by Douglas Reeman

how the business had started at Hong Kong where he had discovered that half of his crew were falling ill, poisoned by the harbour’s supply of drinking water for the hundreds of ships that came and left on the tide. He had bought a fresh-water concession with some smart, clean lighters and trustworthy people to handle his business affairs. The name of Villiers had become known worldwide, but few realized that it had all begun with the sale of drinking water.
    Villiers had not mentioned his parents and young sister, and Ross had not asked him. It was there in his voice, his eyes, his obvious affection for the life they had all once shared.
    He said to Tucker, ‘A nice chap. Should fit in well. But I agree with you about his being left behind. It’s a matter of collecting some last bods for our section – a couple of divers and some mechanics. I don’t know the full strength of it yet.’
    He thought, too, of the girl he had met only briefly at Haslar Hospital, Captain Sinclair’s young wife. She was the other reason for wishing Villiers had come with them aboard the minelayer. He tried to dismiss it from his mind. If he had had one reservation about Villiers joining the section it had been because of his past, the obvious hatred he felt for those who had murdered his family, his desire for revenge. Such forces often made a man behave recklessly, and with total disregard for others who relied on him. Ross could well imagine the Royal Marine being like that, the man of action and impulse rather than reason. Now that he knew Villiers a little better, he had no fears in that direction.
    But he could see his face, the girl’s, too, when they hadconfronted one another at Haslar. It would be madness for them to become involved. A brief affair? Even that could be destructive.
    We are going to a war we know very little about.
Ross had always dreaded the possibility of an operation going wrong, and ending as a prisoner of war. But he had never been afraid. He had helped to drag German survivors from the freezing water when minutes earlier they had been doing everything possible to kill one another. A blanket over the shoulders, a cigarette put between shivering lips, a tot of rum if there was one handy. After that, they didn’t seem very different from his own men.
    But the Japs . . . He had seen it in Villiers’ eyes. A young man driven so brutally by grief and horror that he had even agreed to land in Singapore on some crackpot mission or other, no doubt dreamed up by another Pryce, if there could be such a thing.
    And what about you?
It was like another voice.
What would you do in his place?
    The tannoy squeaked, and then came the trill of a boatswain’s call.
    â€˜Up spirits! Senior hands of messes muster for rum!’
    Ross shook himself mentally and tried to smile. This was reality. All that counted, until the job was over and done with.
    When he examined his thoughts again, all he could discover was envy.

4
The Real Thing
    THE ARRIVAL AND disembarkation of Captain Pryce’s Special Operations Reconnaissance Force at Trincomalee, the Fleet’s main anchorage on the eastern coast of Ceylon, was something of an anticlimax. Far from feeling like part of a completely new theatre of war, September had brought to them a strange sense of unreality, and isolation from the ‘real thing’.
    Some old Army married quarters had been converted into accommodation for the naval party while the chariots, which had travelled from England in the belly of the big minelayer, were transferred to a small depot-ship with all the necessary facilities, and a fine machine shop for the artificers and torpedomen.
    Empty blue skies, white uniform shirts and shorts: all the stark changes were matched only by the news from home. As expected, the Allies had invaded southern Italy. Not an island this time, but part of Europe itself. It had not been easy. The Germans had been prepared, and had barely