Sweat soaked his stocking cap and stung in the shaving cuts on his chin. The mines were down there, dull iron balls studded with pressure-sensitive brass horns, floating like malignant flowers on their chain tethers. He wiped his face with the back of his jacket. The lights of Bassin du Sud were coming into view; there were a few of them, mostly low down by the water. Maybe we should have staged an air raid at the same time, he thought. Get them looking up. No, the brass were right for once. It would just get them awake and ready, and a crew could swing a quick-firer from ninety degrees to horizontal a lot faster than they could get out of their racks and on line.
Something bumped against the hull forward. Bump . . . bump . . . bump . . .
His stomach lurched. Every man on board froze, except for the helm’s careful twitch at the wheel. Then the crew of MTB 109 shuddered and relaxed as the sound died astern, and the sudden annihilating blast didn’t lift their craft out of the water broken-backed. Another turn ahead. He looked behind. Barely possible to make out MTB 110. Good. This follow-the-leader put his nerves even more on edge; small errors could accumulate and throw the last boats right into the mines. Although God knew they’d practiced often enough at the mockups back at base in Karlton. The base there had never been much, but it rattled empty since the Southern Fleet was wiped out in the opening days of the war.
The ships that slaughtered four thousand Santander sailors were waiting ahead . . . and they’d carefully spent half a day shooting or running down the survivors in the water, too. His teeth showed white in his darkened face.
“All right, we’re out.” If the map was complete. “Signal to deploy.”
He brought up his binoculars and squinted. There was just enough background scatter to see the line of Land cruisers silhouetted against the diffuse glow . . . he hoped. They were a couple of thousand yards away, smoke visible from one or two stacks on each ship, keeping some steam up; a boom with antitorpedo netting out, floating low, a line across the dead calm of the harbor. And the lights of a patrol boat, low-powered searchlights looking for infiltrators or defectors trying to make it out in rubber dinghies.
The Santander torpedo boats spread out into line abreast. “Six knots,” Kneally said.
The engines burbled a little louder. How long? Eventually they were going to notice. . . .
A searchlight speared out at them and an alarm wailed.
“Goose it, Chief! Goose it!”
The helm slammed the throttles forward. Now the engines roared, a shattering noise no muffler could mute. White water peeled back from the bows in two high roostertails of spray, throwing salt across his lips. Lights flicked on along the line of Land cruisers, and starshells blossomed high above.
“Too late, you leather-sucking perverts!” Kneally yelled.
The boom was less than five hundred yards ahead. There was just time enough for the torpedo boats to reach the maximum safe speed. Kneally clamped his hands on the bracket ahead of him and braced himself The smooth strip of reinforcing steel down the torpedo boat’s keel slalomed it into the air in an arc that ended in an enormous splash that threw water twice the height of the little vessel’s stub signal mast. Then each pair was driving for a cruiser’s side, and the big ships loomed like gray steel cliffs. Cliffs speckled with fire, as the first pom-pom crews made it to their stations and began to open fire.
The MTB 109 was skipping forward like a watermelon seed squeezed between thumb and forefinger. One-pound shells pocked the water around it, and the boat’s own forward pom-pom was punching out a stream of bright fire-globes itself. They wouldn’t harm the cruiser, but they might throw off the crews of the bigger ship’s antitorpedo-boat armament. A quick-firer banged from its sponson mount, and a shell threw up a fountain of spray to their left. All the time, Kneally’s mind was estimating distances with the skill of endless practice.