James Benn - Billy Boyle

An hour or so later things started to settle down. The waves were still high, but they weren’t as rough as they had been and the wind was definitely lessening. Harry began to glance up at the sky. There were some patches of faint light showing where before there had been only continuous dark clouds.

“Lookouts to your posts!” he shouted. Men with binoculars scrambled to the gun mounts.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“Can you feel that?”

“What?”

“The wind direction changed. It’s coming from the west. Pushing the low-pressure system east. It could clear up faster than we planned.”

“That’s not good, right?”

“Well,” Harry said with a grimace as he turned the wheel sharply and advanced the throttle, “the good news is that we can increase our speed now that things have calmed down a bit. We’ll try to stay with the system as it moves east.”

“You left out the bad news.”

“In order to stay with the front, we have to turn east now, instead of tomorrow. It means we’ll cut north tomorrow right through the most heavily patrolled coastal areas.”

“Those V-boats you mentioned?”

“Yes. Vorpostenboots. Lucky chap, you might get a chance to see one up close!”

I was about to tell Harry it wasn’t funny when a shaft of sunlight broke out from between two gray clouds like a bright wound opening in the heavens and lit his face. He didn’t look like he was joking.

I didn’t think I had slept at all until I awoke from a dream. It was about Daphne. She was sitting at a table quietly, while Kaz and I talked. She watched us serenely, as if she knew some sweet secret that was beyond us. Kaz and I fell silent. Then I asked her, “Aren’t you supposed to be dead?” Her face lost all expression. I felt a deep pit of sadness open up in my stomach and the dream ended abruptly.

I woke up with a start in my small, damp bunk and looked around for some clue as to where the hell I was. My heart was beating like a bass drum in a Saint Paddy’s Day parade. I took some deep breaths to calm down. Oh yeah, I’m on this boat in the middle of the ocean. Great. I dropped my head back on the pillow and tried to sleep. Something kept me from nodding off. I tried to think, but I was still half asleep, or half awake, I couldn’t tell. The boat had kept me up, with its rocking, all night long…

I realized everything was still. I could feel the boat moving and the deep thrumming of the engines, but the up and down wave-smashing motion was gone. The smell of diesel fuel and sweat was heavy in the cramped quarters. I stumbled out of the bunk and moved through the narrow passageway, instinctively but unnecessarily clutching the walls for support. I stopped myself and stood unaided for a second. I was still dizzy, but the boat was on the level, except for a slight slant to the deck, as the four Packard engines at the stern lifted the bow out of the water. I trudged forward, tired, wet, and worried.

A cold blast of air hit me as I emerged from below deck. Harry was still at the wheel, where I had left him when I hit the sack last night. His blond hair was blown back and his face was red from the wind. He looked straight ahead, only glancing down at the compass in front of him. The ocean was calm, completely flat as far as I could see. Which wasn’t far at all, since we were enveloped in fog. There was no horizon, just a white wall of mist that rose up all around us and seemed to curve just above the boat, like the white satin lining inside the lid of an expensive coffin. It seemed as if that I could reach up and touch it. The top of the radio mast vanished just a few feet above my head. We seemed to be moving fast, but nothing was changing-not the water, our direction, or the fog. Men were at their stations, their binoculars useless. They strained forward, trying to peer through the fog or perhaps to hear the muffled sound of a distant engine. Besides our engine noise and that of the hull cutting through the water, the only sound was the occasional hydraulic whine of a twin . 50 caliber machine gun mount being traversed, searching sky and sea for a threat that might be lurking just beyond the thin veil of fog. No one spoke a word.

I stood next to Harry. He acknowledged my presence with a quiet nod. I didn’t say anything. I had the odd feeling that I was in a church. This silence in the midst of roaring engines, our small, isolated cocoon moving across the wide, flat sea, seemed otherworldly.

“Tea, Captain. And you, too, sir.” A young crewman wearing a stained white apron offered up a tray with two thick white porcelain mugs of steaming tea.

“Thank you, Higgins,” Harry said, taking the tea without looking away from the few yards of water visible beyond the bow. I took mine and nodded thanks.

“Never seen you run her wide open in thick soup before, sir.” Higgins’s unspoken question to Harry hung in the air as he looked at me.

“Not to worry, Higgins. Jerry is probably sticking close to the shore. I’m more worried about hitting a bloody big log. Now finish up in the mess and get up here. We could use an extra set of eyes.”

“Aye, sir!” Higgins said, untying his apron as he turned to go below. He sounded excited.

“So this isn’t SOP?” I asked Harry in a low voice.

“There’s no such thing as standard operating procedure out here, Billy. This would be a damn silly thing to do anywhere else, but we’ve got to get to Tomma before the weather clears. And it will soon.”

“And when it does…?”

“Then we better be well out to sea, and you safely on dry ground, or else we’ll be trapped close to shore, sighted by patrol craft or Germans on land, and they’ll send out the Luftwaffe. Not a good thing, I assure you.”

“Should we wait for nightfall?”

Harry shook his head.

“Nowhere to wait. When the fog clears, the Germans will send out everything they have. They’ll want to make up for lost time. We could go a hundred miles and chances are they’d spot us. We’ve got to get you ashore now.”

“But what happens to you after you drop me off? When the weather clears?”

“We take our chances, old boy. Just like you.”

For the first time it occurred to me that my little unauthorized jaunt could cost others their lives. I didn’t want that and hadn’t planned on it. Everything was supposed to work out as Jens and I thought it would. The weather was supposed to cooperate, damn it! This was supposed to be a milk run, just another day on the job for these guys.

I thought about Uncle Ike. How many guys would he send to die, thinking he had everything figured out, only to have something uncontrollable go wrong at the last minute? I guess I wasn’t so different from the big brass. I hadn’t even considered the risk to Harry and his crew, just what I needed to get done. It didn’t feel good. The only difference was I was here, and about to go ashore in enemy territory just under the Arctic Circle. When the brass felt bad they sat back in their big leather chairs, lit up a cigar, and cursed at junior officers. It was like my dad always said: a rich guy can have the same problem we do, but he can smoke a dollar cigar in a nice big house while he worries about it.

“Just like me,” I replied. I started looking for floating logs, but gave up when I realized there wouldn’t be time to say anything before we hit. Higgins scrambled up to the bow and strained his neck forward, keeping watch as Harry had instructed.

“Good lad, Higgins,” he said, nodding toward the young crewman. “Worked on river barges on the Thames before he came to us. He’s been through the worst of the Blitz, but this is just his third mission with us. He’s a little nervous. I thought giving him something to do would help.”