“Got it. What’s this about a French flag?”

“Just do it.”

“Aye-aye, sir,” John Craig said, then exchanged smiles with Andrea as he hobbled out the door.

* * *

When Canidy entered the S-boat’s bridge, the man in the Kriegsmarine uniform at the helm startled him. But when he turned and looked at Canidy, he suddenly looked familiar.

“Welcome aboard. Oberleutnant zur See Ludwig Fahr at your service,” Ernst Beck said, making a motion that somewhat resembled a salute.

“No shit,” Canidy said. “Where did you get the uniform?”

Beck smiled and pointed up toward the Hotel Michelangelo.

“Right now, or very shortly,” he said, “there is a rather embarrassed—and buck naked—Kriegsmarine leutnant asking a hooker if she has perhaps seen his uniform.”

Canidy smiled, then looked aft. He saw that Tubes Fuller was in one of two bunks on the back wall of the bridge. He was out cold.

“Where’s Kappler?” Canidy said.

“Down below, staying out of sight until we’re under way.”

Beck made what looked to Canidy like the practiced survey of a professional seaman. Beck then made a final full inspection of the vessel’s perimeter, and unceremoniously said, “All lines free, let’s get out of here.”

There were two groups of three levers each on the console. The forward three had black knobs, the rear group red knobs. He reached for the far left of the black knobs and pushed it forward, engaging the port engine transmission. The S-boat immediately began moving forward and away from the pier.

Beck glanced around the perimeter of the ship, said, “Well, we didn’t bring any of the dock with us. That’s always a good sign.”

They were thirty meters under way when Beck reached forward and pushed the other two black knobs fully forward. Canidy could feel the S-boat respond almost immediately. Its bow rose and the stern settled in a little as it moved forward faster.

Canidy watched Beck, scanning the harbor as he made gentle turns for the mouth, then wrap his fist in an extended fashion over the group of levers with the red knobs. As soon as Beck saw ahead was nothing but open sea, he pushed the three red knobs to about three-quarter throttle.

The triple two-thousand-horsepower Daimler-Benz diesels roared, producing a massive black exhaust cloud behind the boat.

The noise level at the helm was considerably louder, and when Beck turned to Canidy and gestured at the console, he had to almost shout to be heard: “Any idea which of these levers works the brakes?”

* * *

The S-boat banged through somewhat choppy seas for two hours. Kappler had come up to the bridge and with Canidy watched Beck’s almost casual running of the vessel, working its radar and monitoring its radio. While Canidy had been duly impressed—he knew that anything that looked simple usually was exactly anything but that—Kappler became bored and crashed in the empty bunk above Tubes.

Beck, with his face dimly lit in the green glow of the control panel lights, looked at Canidy and raised his voice to be heard above the engine noise: “Should be about another hour.”

Canidy nodded.

Then, ten minutes later, he saw Beck’s expression change in the green glow as he rapidly tapped the screen of the radar.

“Shit!” he said. “We’ve got company.”

Then the radio squawked, an urgent German voice repeating an order.

“What’s he saying?” Canidy said.

“For us to identify ourselves.”

Which if we do, Canidy thought, we may get blown out of the water for having stolen the boat.

And if we don’t, we’ll damn sure get shot at.

Tags: W.E.B. Griffin Men at War Thriller
Source: readsnovelonline.net