Bloody Passage - Jack Higgins [50]
The others were ready and waiting in the inflatable dinghy, the outboard motor ticking over. I dropped in beside them. Angelo, who had hauled himself up from the cabin to see us off, waved from the rail.
And then we were away, moving out to sea between the Sisters and the game was finally afoot.
There was supposed to be a full moon, which had worried me in the planning stage, but the weather was on our side and it wasn't much in evidence. Low cloud, light sea mist and a fine drifting rain kept visibility down to a minimum.
We stayed about half a mile off shore, too close in to run into any tunny boats and yet because of the poor visibility, well out of sight of shore. Which meant, of course, that I had to rely on dead reckoning, making the final run-in blind.
At the last possible moment, I killed the motor and we took to the oars. Not the best of solutions, considering the conditions, but taking the noise factor into account we didn't really have any other choice.
For a few rather nasty minutes I thought we'd made a bad mistake. The dinghy, minus the power of the outboard motor, heeled, water pouring over the gunnel for a stiff offshore breeze was lifting the waves into whitecaps.
Barzini and Langley had a pair of oars each and rowed like hell which they needed to do for there was a four or five knot current running as I'd expected from the chart.
The shore was plain to see now, mainly because of the surf, white in the darkness as it pounded across the beach. And once, for a moment only, the moon showed through a rent in the clouds and I could see the fortress waiting for us up there on the cliffs.
We were moving in very fast now, caught in a current of such strength that there was nothing we could do except to try to keep floating and hang on. The sea filled the darkness with its roaring, shaking and tearing at the beach with great angry sucking noises.
We bounced off a rock, spinning round in a circle and Langley lost an oar. For a moment or so, we were quite helpless, dirty white foam boiling around us and I saw, in my mind's eye, the whole thing finished before it got started.
Nino cried out a warning and I glanced over my shoulder as a long comber rolled out of the darkness, a six footer with a white, curling head on it. I thought it was the final end of things. Instead, it was our salvation for it carried us straight in over the rocks to a great bank of shingle.
I was over the side in a moment and so were the others, pushing and hauling at the dinghy to get her up to dry land. Another wave flooded in, boiling around our knees as if determined to have us back. It retreated fast and a moment later, we were over the top of the shingle bank and moving up the beach.
We deposited the dinghy in soft white sand at the very base of the cliffs and Langley said, "Christ Almighty, I'm soaked to the bloody skin."
"We're here, aren't we?" Barzini said. "That's all that matters."
He produced a thermos of hot coffee from one of the rucksacks in the dinghy and passed it round. I looked up through the rain and darkness to the ramparts. There were a couple of lights up there, but otherwise no sign of life.
Langley said, "She was delivered at nine. It's now ten o'clock. That means she's had an hour up there. Where is she?"
"Give her time," I said. "She'll be there."
He shook his head. "You're kidding yourself, Grant. She isn't going to make it. There was never any chance that she would in the first place."
"Why don't you shut up?" Barzini told him. "She's got more in her than you have, that girl, Langley. I think maybe she's going to surprise you."
Langley turned away angrily. I sat down under an overhang of rock to get some shelter from the rain and lit a cigarette. I was damned cold and very wet, but I wasn't worried or at least that's what I told myself, and whenever I thought of what might be happening to her up there, I pushed that thought away.
So we waited and the rain drifted in and the surf pounded the beach and nothing happened--not a damned thing.