Sad Wind From the Sea - Jack Higgins [67]
Hagen clapped him on the shoulder. 'We'll get there, O'Hara. Take the wheel and follow me through the shoals. Whatever happens keep her dead slow and watch me like a hawk. If we get stuck in this lot we'll be a sitting duck for Kossoff when the mist lifts.'
He threw off the blanket and smiled at Rose and then vaulted over the rail into the water. The channel he was seeking was a hundred yards back along the sandbank on which he was walking. O'Hara started the engines and reversed Hurrier off the sandbank and turned her round in a smooth curve that had her finally making a parallel course to Hagen. The sandbank dipped under the water and Hagen went cautiously forward until the water was at chest level. He waved his arms and beckoned and O'Hara brought the boat round in a tight curve and she slowly entered the channel.
Hagen swam forward into the shoals, sounding for bottom with his feet every few yards. Behind him Hurrier came steadily on, carefully following his circuitous trail. It was bitterly cold, and after twenty minutes he felt completely numb. Finally, even his brain was affected and he carried on sounding with his feet and followed the channel, using a kind of blind instinct born of desperation and necessity. Once the launch grounded on a sandbank when the channel took a particularly sudden twist, but O'Hara managed to refloat her with little difficulty.
Hagen became aware that the water was lifting into his face and suddenly he lost bottom and had to swim in earnest. His leaden limbs moved slowly and he dipped under the water and panic gripped him, and then something bumped against him and hands reached down and grabbed him by the hair. He blindly lifted an arm and his hand was seized, and then he was hauled up and over the rail and subsided on the deck.
O'Hara was grinning down at him, his lips drawn back, exposing his foul old teeth. 'You've done it, lad,' he cackled. 'You've done that bastard in the eye.'
'Christ, but I'm cold,' Hagen said and Rose wrapped a blanket around him. He scrambled to his feet and said to O'Hara: 'Full speed ahead. Give her everything she's got. Doesn't matter about the noise. Kossoff will never catch us in that tub of his.' The old man grinned and gave a mock salute and Hagen painfully went below.
There was coffee brewing on the stove, and as he pulled on dry pants and a sweater Rose poured some in a mug and added brandy. 'Here, drink this,' she said. 'I don't know how you managed to stand it.'
The whole boat shuddered and lifted suddenly as O'Hara took her forward quickly at full power. The noise of the engines deepened into a steady roar and Hagen grinned and raised his mug. 'A sailor's farewell to Comrade Kossoff,' he said, and as he placed the mug to his lips the engines missed a couple of times, spluttered, tried to pick up and then died completely.
The girl's face turned deathly white in the silence which followed, and Hagen carefully put the mug down on the table and stood up. 'If the bastard doesn't get us now,' he said, 'he doesn't deserve to.' He passed quickly out of the galley and went up on deck.
13
Hagen dropped into the engine-room and found O'Hara on his knees in the corner. There was a stench of burning oil and the old man's face was grey with fear. Hagen crouched down beside him. 'What's happened?' he said.
O'Hara wiped sweat from his forehead with an oily rag. 'The crack's lengthened,' he said. 'Engine vibration. It was only to be expected.'
Hagen cursed softly and wiped the pipe clean so that he could examine it. He nodded slowly and sat back on his heels. 'Doesn't look so good.'
'What can we do, lad?' the old man said, and there was despair in his voice.
There was a sound of movement on deck and Rose looked in through the hatch. 'Will it be all right, Mark?' she said anxiously.
He shrugged and replied: 'Can't tell yet. Any sign of action up there?'
She shook her