The Keys Of Hell

SIXTEEN

WHEN ORSINI GOT THE HATCH OFF the tiny engine room, they could smell escaping fuel at once. The Italian slid down the short steel ladder and Chavasse and Orsini followed him.

Carlo made a quick examination and turned. “It could be worse. A section of the fuel intake pipe is damaged. We were lucky the whole damned lot didn’t blow sky-high.”

A jagged hole in the steel hull punched by a cannon shell was mute evidence of how the damage had been caused.

“How are we off for spares?” Orsini demanded.

“No problem there, but I’ll have to cut a section to the right size and braze it.”

“How long?”

“Twenty minutes if you all get to hell out of here and leave me alone.”

Chavasse went up the ladder and joined Liri on deck. “How bad is it?” she asked.

“Bad enough to make us sitting ducks for the next half hour.”

Orsini scrambled out of the engine room and nodded grimly. “If the swine doesn’t get us now, he doesn’t deserve to. We’d better make ready, Paul.”

He broke open a box of cartridges and carefully loaded the submachine gun’s one-hundred-round circular clip, and Chavasse checked the machine gun and the half dozen magazines that went with it. Liri scrambled on top of the wheelhouse and kept watch, straining her eyes into the mist.

When he had finished loading the submachine gun, Orsini went below and came back with an old American service issue.45 automatic. He tossed it to the girl, who caught it deftly.

“Best I can do, but watch it. It has the kick of an angry mule.”

“I’ve been using guns all my life,” she said, pulling out the magazine and examining it expertly.

Orsini grinned up at her. “I wonder what you’d look like in a skirt and some decent stockings and shoes. The thought has great appeal. When we reach Matano I must do something about it.”

She laughed, her face flushing, and then the smile was wiped from her face. “Listen, I think I hear them.”

The boat lifted on the swell, waves slapping hollowly against her bows. Chavasse stood at the rail, straining his ears and, in the distance, heard the sound of an engine.

“Come down from there,” he told the girl. “Go into the wheelhouse and lie flat.”

She did as she was told. Chavasse stood over her, the barrel of the Bren gun poking through one of the windows, and Orsini crouched beside the engine room hatch.

“Perhaps they’re going away?” Liri whispered.

Chavasse shook his head. “Not on your life. They must have heard our engines stop and they cut their own and listened to see what was happening. Kapo must know that there are only two possibilities. Either we’re being picked up by another boat or our engines have packed in.”

The patrol boat came nearer and nearer, obviously beating backwards and forwards through the mist. It passed very close to them indeed, its bow-wave rippling across the water, rocking the Buona Esperanza violently. For a moment, Chavasse thought they had been missed and then the engine of the patrol boat lifted and it roared out of the mist.

It swept across their stern and the air was broken by the sound of violence. The main trouble came from the heavy machine gun mounted in the stern of the patrol boat, its crew couched behind a curved shield of armor plating. In the prow, several soldiers stood at the rail firing rifles and machine pistols, and Kapo lurked behind them, a revolver in his hand.

Chavasse started to fire, swinging the barrel of the Bren in an arc, and a couple of soldiers stumbled backwards to the deck. He saw Francesca running, head down, and swung the Bren desperately, his bullets chipping the rail beside her head. As his magazine ran out, she disappeared into the wheelhouse.

He ducked, reaching for another magazine, and glass shattered above his head and the walls splintered, rocking to the impact of tracer and cannon shell. As the patrol boat swung away, Orsini jumped to his feet and fired a long burst at the crew of the machine gun in the stern. There was a sharp cry. As the boat disappeared into the mist, one of them lurched to the rail and toppled into the sea.

The sound of the patrol boat faded and Orsini shouted to Liri, “Keep down. Next time he’s really going to mean business.”

The patrol boat circled several times, invisible in the heavy mist, and Chavasse waited impatiently. When Kapo at last made his move it was from a different quarter. As the boat roared out of the mist behind him, Chavasse frantically swung the Bren round, firing from the hip.

The heavy machine gun in the stern of the patrol boat raked them with a murderous fire, the Buona Esperanza reeling at the impact, and Chavasse ducked as he finished his last magazine and portions of the roof disintegrated above his head.

Orsini was still firing, the barrel of the submachine gun braced against the side of the wheelhouse. As the patrol boat veered in a wide arc, cutting across their bows again, Chavasse snatched a grenade from the box beside Liri, pulled the pin and ran out on deck.

For a brief moment, the patrol boat was so close he could see the expressions on the soldiers’ faces, and as it swept by he lobbed the grenade over the railing to her stern. It started to roll, one of the soldiers kicked out at it frantically, and then it exploded. When it cleared, only the tangled wreckage of the machine gun was left. The soldiers had vanished.

The patrol boat ran on into the mist and there was quiet. Liri got to her feet, blood on her face, and wiped it away with the back of her hand.

“Will they try again?”

“Certain to. They’ll be a little more careful next time, that’s all.”

Orsini was leaning over the engine room hatch and he stood up and came toward them. “Not so good. At least another fifteen minutes.”

They looked at each other without saying anything, knowing what that meant, and quite suddenly Kapo’s voice boomed out of the mist. “Why don’t you give in, Chavasse? You can’t hope to get away.”

Liri gave a startled exclamation and Orsini reassured her. “Don’t be alarmed. He’s using a loud hailer, that’s all. I wonder what the swine’s playing at?”

“Not interested,” Chavasse called.

The engines of the patrol boat roared into life and it erupted from the mist, the men at her rail raking the Buona Esperanza with small arms fire.

Chavasse shoved Liri down against the deck and Orsini crouched beside them, the submachine gun chattering angrily. He stopped firing abruptly just as the patrol boat disappeared into the mist.

He checked the magazine, then tossed the weapon into the wheelhouse. “What about the Bren?”

“Nothing left for that either.”

Orsini went and pulled the small box of grenades from under the chart table. “At least we’ve got these.”

“If they come close enough,” Chavasse said.

Kapo’s voice drifted out of the mist again. “It’s obvious that you’re incapable of moving, Chavasse, but I’ll be generous. Give yourself up without any further nonsense and I’ll let your friends go free. I give you my word. I’ll give you ten minutes to think it over. After that, we’ll come and finish you off.”

In the silence that followed, Orsini gave an audible grunt and disappeared down the salon companionway. When he returned, he carried the spare Aqua-lung.

“Help me get into this thing quickly,” he said to Liri, and turned to Chavasse. “You’ll find some more of that plastic explosive in the salon, Paul, and some chemical detonators. Get them quickly.”

“What in hell do you think you’re playing at?” Chavasse began, but Orsini gave him an angry shove.

“Don’t argue. Just do it.”

The Italian was buckled into the Aqua-lung and pulling on his rubber flippers when Chavasse came back on deck with the bandolier of explosive.

“I’m going to have a go at fixing Kapo once and for all,” Orsini said as he fastened the bandolier around his waist.

Chavasse shook his head. “You haven’t got enough time left.”

Orsini grinned. “That’s what they told me in forty-one when I took a team into Alex. But we got in and out and left two British destroyers squatting on their backsides in the mud. I know what I’m doing.”

He pulled his mask down, turned from Liri’s white face and vaulted over the rail. He had only a rough idea of the direction of the patrol boat, but he knew it couldn’t be far away. He swam very fast, kicking strongly with his webbed feet, and within a couple of minutes had penetrated the mist.

He surfaced gently and looked about him. There was no sign of the patrol boat, but Kapo’s voice boomed over him and he saw a dark outline in the mist.

“Five minutes, Chavasse, that’s all.”

Orsini went under, swam forward, and the keep of the patrol boat loomed out of the water. He worked his way along to the stern, opened the pouches of his bandolier and squeezed handfuls of the plastic explosive between the propeller and the hull. He was fast running out of time and he pushed home the detonator, snapped the end and turned away.

He drove forward, drawing upon his final reserves of strength, feet churning the water into a cauldron, and then the hull of the Buona Esperanza seemed to be moving toward him and he surfaced.

Chavasse leaned over the rail, Carlo beside him, and they hauled him up onto the deck. Somewhere, through the roaring in his ears, the engine of the patrol boat rumbled into life.

When the explosion came, it echoed through the rain and the screams of the dying mingled with it. For a long time, debris continued to fall into the water, and then there was silence.

“Holy Mother,” Carlo said in awe. “She must have gone down like a stone.”

Orsini slowly unbuckled the straps of his Aqua-lung. “How are things below?”

“All finished,” Carlo said. “We can move out whenever you’re ready.”

Liri was kneeling beside Orsini, her cigarette tin open. Chavasse dropped beside them, took one and bent his head to the match as it flared in her hands.

Orsini looked at him curiously. “You’re sorry about the girl?”

“Anything she got, she asked for.”

Chavasse turned and stood at the rail, aware of the tightness in his throat that couldn’t be logically explained, remembering a gay and lovely girl he had met a thousand years ago at an Embassy party in Rome.

His head was aching and he was tired, damned tired, and she was calling his name over and over again. He closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them again, she came swimming out of the mist.

She had never looked lovelier, dark hair spreading around her in the water, eyes large in the white face. As she drifted in, she looked up at him appealingly.

“Help me, Paul! Help me!”

He looked down at her, remembering Matt Sorley, Dumont and all the others, good friends who had gone to a hard death because of her.

Orsini said, “For God’s sake, Paul. Are we animals?”

Chavasse turned and looked at him and the Italian shrugged. “If you won’t help her, I will.”

He started forward and Chavasse shook his head. “My affair, Guilio.”

He reached down and pulled Francesca aboard and she sprawled on the deck, coughing and gasping for breath. “Thank you, Paul. You’ll never regret it, I promise you.”

As she got to her feet, her hand swung up and he was aware of the blade, shining in the harsh morning light. He tried to turn, but he was too late and it caught him in the left side, slicing through flesh, bouncing from the rib cage.

He staggered back, recoiling as much from the cold hatred in her eyes as from the force of the blow, and Orsini cried out in dismay. Chavasse was aware of the knife raised high, gleaming in a ray of early-morning sunlight, which at that moment pierced the mist, and then Liri’s voice was lifted in a savage cry.

She moved forward, the heavy automatic Orsini had given her in both hands, and one heavy slug after another hammered Francesca back over the rail into the water.

Chavasse was aware of Orsini kneeling beside him, of Liri throwing the gun far out to sea. He took a deep breath, fighting against the pain.

“I’m all right, Guilio. I’m fine. Just let’s get to hell out of here.”

Orsini called to Carlo in the wheelhouse and, a moment later, the engines started and the Buona Esperanza moved forward slowly.

They passed through a great widening circle of wreckage from the patrol boat and Liri, standing at the rail, called out sharply and pointed to the water.

Chavasse shook his head, holding his bunched shirt tightly against his side to stem the flow of blood and tried to hear what was being said. There was a roaring in his ears and gray cobwebs seemed to be drifting slowly across his field of vision. He was aware that the engines had stopped, that Carlo had joined Liri, and then Orsini went over the rail.

Chavasse leaned over, suddenly faint, fighting hard against the pain. When he straightened, Carlo was lifting the statue of Our Lady of Scutari over the side.

Orsini brought it across and laid it reverently on the deck in front of Chavasse. “Look, Paul, floating in the wreckage without a mark on her. A miracle.”

Carlo went back into the wheelhouse and started the engines and Chavasse sat there looking at the statue. He was crying, which was a strange thing and couldn’t be explained, and yet somehow the dark serene face smiling up at him seemed to ease his pain.

Above his head, a gull cried sharply, skimmed low over the sea and sped away through the misty rain like a departing spirit.