Go In and Sink! by Douglas Reeman

nodded. ‘I’ll pass it on, sir.’ He looked at Marshall. ‘In about ten minutes then?’ He vanished.
    As the door closed Browning said harshly, ‘I couldn’t sit there drinking with him as if nothing had happened.’ He thrust one hand into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled signal. ‘Came just now. Frenzel’s wife and kid were killed in an air raid last night. If I told him it could do no good, and might put the whole mission in jeopardy.’ He reached for his cap. ‘But I couldn’t sit there acting like a clown, knowing all the time …’
    Marshall watched his despair. ‘He’ll understand. It
is
the only way.’
    They shook hands gravely, and Browning said, ‘When you get back. I’ll tell him then. My responsibility.’
    They walked out into the passageway and towards the brighly lit control room. Apart from the duty stokers it was deserted, and Marshall knew that, like himself, Browning was seeing it as it would be in a few more hours. The nerve centre. The place which would draw together all the fibres and the strength of the boat to one man. The captain.
    He followed Browning up to the bridge and watched him until he had disappeared aboard the depot ship.
    It was like the cutting of a wire, he thought. It was all his now.
    He looked down at the wet casing where the sentry stamped his feet noisily to keep warm, and beyond the raked bows towards the end of the loch. It was hard to find any pattern in what they were doing. Bill had died even as his wife planned to deceive him and leave him for another. A woman and her child lay buried in the rubble of their home while their man poured drinks in the wardroom for his captain, ignorant of this necessary deception. And in Iceland an anonymous German had triggered off yet another chain of events, one which would send all of them to sea and an unknown challenge.
    Strangely, Marshall found that he was no longer afraid of what lay ahead. Perhaps after all it was the land which had created his apprehension, and like the boat which stirred uneasily beneath his feet, he was glad to go, no matter what awaited him elsewhere.

3 Only the job in hand
    AFTER ALL THE tension and the brittle tempers brought about by last minute checks and frantic preparations, the actual moment of getting under way was almost a relief. The weather, perverse as ever, had worsened, and a stiff wind lashed the waters of the loch into a confusion of short, vicious whitecaps. It seemed as if every available man aboard the depot ship was lining the rails to see them off, and close by, her rakish hull rocking uncomfortably in the wind, the armed-yacht
Lima
lay hove-to to guide them clear of the anchorage and out to the open sea.
    Marshall stood high on the steel gratings in the forepart of the bridge, craning over the screen to watch the second coxswain, Petty Officer Cain, as he pushed his wire-handling parties into their various positions of readiness. Known as the Casing King, he was a good petty officer, and Marshall knew he was too experienced to let anything slip past him. Beneath his leather sea-boots he could feel the grating trembling and thudding to the powerful diesels and pictured Frenzel at his control panel, his eyes on the dials and his men nearby.
    Marshall was wearing an oilskin over several layers of clothing and had a thick towel around his neck. Even so, he was cold and could not stop his body from shaking. Nerves. He shouted, ‘Stand by!’ Below him a lookout repeated his warning into the voicepipe, and he heard a brief squeak above his head. Probably Gerrard taking a glance through the periscope. Getting his bearings. He had looked very tired when he had reported back from his short leave. He never had been much of a talker but was always a good man to be with. Reliable.
    A seaman yelled, ‘Three minutes to go, sir!’
    ‘Very well.’
    There had been no time at all to ask him about things at home. Just ‘How’s Valerie?’ ‘Fine.’ Or, ‘What did she say about your