Designated Targets

The three fans of water at the stern of the magnificent arrow-shaped vessel pivoted as she came hard a-port to avoid some unseen obstacle. Her destroyer screen, the Javelin included, had kept up for less than a minute. She was already drawing away from their protective umbrella—although it was astonishing to think that such a powerful craft needed looking after. Even as he watched, five German planes disintegrated as they pressed in on her. It was as if they had passed through some threshold that marked the point at which the Trident could no longer tolerate their existence. And so they had ceased to exist.

Mountbatten could not pick out which of the hundreds of fighters dueling above her were specifically assigned to her air screen, but he’d heard that three full squadrons attended her every move. At least they would be able to keep up, wherever she was going.

Probably to engage the Tirpitz, he thought, and instantly wished he could’ve seen that battle. Although again, from all he’d heard, she would probably strike the German capital ships from hundreds of miles away.

A hand smacked down on his shoulder, and he turned to find Lieutenant Jeffers, who yelled in his ear. “Check your loads, Phil! We’re moving into the Channel. Hunting e-boats and troop barges. You’re going to get busy.”

“Thanks, Bruce,” he called back.

As Jeffers moved on, Sub-Lieutenant Mountbatten patted each of his men on the back. “Well done, lads. Well done. No time for a lie-down yet, though. We’re getting out of this backwater and into the real fighting.”

36

THE ENGLISH CHANNEL

Untersturmführer Gelder was beginning to wish that he was still playing wet nurse to that broken-down cot case of an engineer. Brasch was quite unpleasant company at the best of times, with his mood swings and a dangerous habit of speaking his mind. But shadowing the engineer around Demidenko to ensure that he was never exposed to the attentions of the NKVD was an altogether more agreeable experience than bouncing across the English Channel in the cramped hold of a Schnellboot while all hell raged around him.

They had to be making well over forty knots. The torpedo boat’s three diesel engines howled like Valkyrie gone mad, not so much driving them through the rough swell and cross-chop as flinging the one-hundred-ton vessel from the crest of one wave to the next. Each leap ended with a terrifying boom as the hull slammed into the water, the impact compressing Gelder’s spine, and once causing him to bite down painfully on his tongue. He was wretched with seasickness and tried to climb up, out into the fresh air.

The passage of the boat was so violent, he wrenched his shoulder and nearly broke an arm just getting up the stairwell. When he finally made the wheelhouse, he cursed himself for having been so stupid. The sea was not his natural realm. Just as the führer once admitted of himself, Gelder was a lion on land, but not so much on water. The sight that greeted him as he hauled himself into the tiny enclosed bridge space was enough to rob any man of his courage.

The Channel was nearly dammed up with shipping, all of it charging about at top speed, either making for the English coast like his boat, or dashing into the body of the German invasion fleet. Like the two British destroyers he could see bearing down on them. The thunder of battle was beyond deafening. It did not just hurt his ears. It pressed in hard upon his mind with such a crushing weight that he thought his sanity might just give out under the barrage. The sea was a maelstrom, seemingly whipped into a storm-tossed frenzy not by the weather, which was only mildly gray and unsettled, but by the violent action of so many men and ships locked in bloody contention.

Not two hundred yards away, a shell or a torpedo or perhaps even a rocket struck a barge, packed with soldiers. It suddenly leapt out of the water, flying apart as the warhead detonated, sending men flying everywhere like the flaming fragments of a Chinese firecracker.

“God help us,” Gelder cried as one torn-up, smoking corpse twisted through the air and onto the deck of their boat, where the dead man—surely he must be dead—slammed into the metal vent that scooped clean air down into their lower decks. Despite the awful roar and pandemonium, Gelder distinctly heard the dull thud of impact, which all but crushed the vent. The body, which was missing a leg and most of everything else above the shoulders rolled to the deck—and then mercifully disappeared over the side as they pitched into a turn and slewed down the side of a rogue wave.

The skipper swore and smacked the helmsman on the back as two shells crashed into the wave top they had just vacated, raising evil green eruptions of seawater. Gelder’s stomach knotted, and he dry-heaved repeatedly, bracing himself into a corner of the wheelhouse.