Thunderbolt from Navarone. Sam Llewellyn

The MTB’s machine guns fell silent. The engine note faltered and died, and she slowed, wallowing. An ominous red glow came from her after hatches.

      Mallory’s mind was clicking like an adding machine. Options: stay on board and get blown to hell; go over the side, with at least a chance that they would get ashore and on with the mission. No contest.

      ‘Go,’ he said.

      The MTB had slewed port-side on to the tracers whipping out of the dark. They manhandled the rubber boat over the starboard rail and into the dark water. Miller climbed down, and stowed the packs and the oilcloth weapon bags as Mallory and Andrea lowered them. The orange glow was heavier now, beginning to jump and flicker, so Mallory could see Miller and Andrea working, and Carstairs, eyes flicking left and right, nervous for himself, not for anybody else. Not a team player, Carstairs. Hard to blame him, on top of a burning bladder of petrol in enemy waters –

      Whump, said something the other side of the bridge, and the shock wave blew Mallory on to the deck. Then there was another explosion, bigger, and a blast of air, dreadfully hot, that carried with it a smell of burning eyebrows and more glass. Something crashed on to the deck alongside. By the light of the flames, Mallory saw it was Wills, blown, presumably, out of the glassless windows of the bridge. Unconscious at least, thought Mallory, ears ringing. If not dead –

      Wills opened his eyes. His face was coppery with burns, his expression that of a sleepwalker. He started to crawl aft. Another explosion blew him backwards into Mallory’s legs. The flames were very bright now, the air vibrating with heat. ‘Into the dinghy,’ said Mallory.

      Carstairs went over the rail at a hard scramble, followed more sedately by Andrea. Aft of the bridge, the MTB was a sheet of flame. A man emerged, blazing, and fell back into the inferno. ‘Come,’ said Mallory to Wills. He half-saw other figures going over the rail, heard the splash of bodies.

      Wills looked at him without seeing him, and started to walk into the wall of flame. Mallory grabbed his arm. Wills turned and took a swing at him. Mallory went under the punch, grabbed him by the shirt and trousers, and heaved him overboard. The deck was swelling underfoot like a balloon. Mallory went to the rail and jumped.

      It was only when he hit the water that he realized how hot the air had been. He found himself holding the rope on the rubber flanks of the dinghy. ‘Row,’ he said. They already were rowing. There was another head beside him in the water: Wills, eyes wide and rolling. He scrambled into the dinghy and pulled Wills after him. Wills showed a tendency to struggle. He wanted to be with his ship –

      The night split in two. There was a blinding flash. A shock wave like a brick wall hurtled across the water and walloped into the dinghy. Torpedoes, thought Mallory, against the ringing in his ears. Torpedoes gone up.

      Then a thick chemical smoke rolled down on them. Under its black and reeking blanket they rowed and coughed and rowed again, squinting at the radium-lit north on Mallory’s compass, for what felt like hours. ‘Clearing,’ said Miller at last. Overhead, the sky was lightening. They sat still as the fumes thinned around them, leaving them naked and exposed on the surface of the sea. But there was no one to see them. As the last of the smoke eddied away, it was plain that under its cover they had got clear. All around them was black night, with stars. The best part of a mile to the westward, the dark shape of some sort of coastal patrol boat lay half-wrapped in smoke, moving to and fro in the water, shining lights, looking for survivors.

      And in that confusing patchwork of light and smoke, not finding any.

      To the eastwards, the sky stopped well short of the horizon, cut out by the jagged tops of mountains: the mountains of Kynthos.

      Mallory called the roll.

      ‘Carstairs.’

      ‘Here.’

      ‘Andrea.’

      ‘Here.’

      ‘Miller.’

      ‘Sure.’

      ‘Anyone else?’

      ‘Wills,’ said Wills, in a strange, faraway voice.

      ‘Nelson,’ said another. ‘And Dawkins. ‘E’s unconscious. I’ve ‘urt me arm.’

      ‘Okay,’ said Mallory, level-voiced, though inwardly he was worried. There was work to do, and not the sort of work you could do if you were carrying maimed and unconscious sailors about with you. They had hardly started Operation Thunderbolt, and already it was in serious trouble.

      Save it, he told himself. They were on the deep sea, with three extra people and a job to do. What was necessary now was to get ashore.

      ‘Row,’ he said.

      They rowed.

      After a while, a voice said, ‘I’m getting wet.’ A sailor’s voice: Nelson.

      It was true. The side of the rubber dinghy, which had been hard, was becoming flaccid. ‘Probably the air inside cooling,’ said Carstairs. ‘The water’s colder than the air, isn’t it? So it’d shrink–’

      ‘Got a leak,’ said Miller. He found the pump and plugged it into the side. There was no chance of using his feet, so he squeezed the concertina bag between his hands. After two hundred, his arms felt as if they were on fire. But the tube was not deflating any more. ‘Here,’ he said to Carstairs.

      ‘Sorry, Corporal?’ said the drawling voice in the dark.

      ‘Your go, sir,’ said Miller.

      Carstairs laughed, a light, dangerous laugh. ‘I’m sorry, Corporal,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I’m with you.’

      Miller gave a couple more squeezes to the pump. The sweat was running into his eyes. ‘Yessir,’ he said. ‘Yessir, Cap’n, sure thing.’ Carstairs was only a dark shape against the stars, but Miller was sure he was smiling a small, superior smile –

      ‘Give it to me,’ said Andrea. Miller felt it plucked from his hands, heard the steady, monotonous pant.

      ‘Carstairs,’ said Mallory. ‘You can row now.’

      Carstairs’ shadow froze. But Mallory’s voice had an edge like a hacksaw. ‘Delighted,’ said Carstairs. ‘Jolly boating weather, eh?’

      For two endless hours, the oars dipped, and the pump panted, and the black mass of Kynthos crawled slowly up the stars. At 0155, Wills, who had been sitting slumped on the side, suddenly raised his head. ‘Port twenty,’ he said, in a weird, cracked voice.

      ‘What?’ said Miller, who was rowing.

      ‘Left a bit.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘There’s a beach.’

      ‘How do you know?’ said Carstairs.

      ‘Pilot book. Recognize the horizon.’ Wills made a loose gesture of his hand at the saw-backed ridge plunging towards the sea ahead and to the right.

      Carstairs said, ‘You’re in no condition to recognize anything.’

      ‘So what do you suggest?’ said Mallory, mildly.

      ‘Straight for the shore,’ said Carstairs. ‘Up the cliffs.’

      ‘Listen,’ said Wills.

      Miller stopped rowing, and Andrea stopped pumping. They listened.

      There was the drip of the oars, and the tiny gurgle of the dinghy moving through the water, and something else: the long, low mutter of swell on stone. ‘Cliffs,’ said Wills. ‘Doesn’t feel like much out here, but there’ll be a heave. Lava rock. Like a cross-cut saw. Two foot of swell, bang goes your gear, bang goes you.’

      It was a lucid speech, and convincing. Carstairs could find no objection to it. He lapsed into a sulk.

      Mallory had seen the beaches on the map, all that time ago in the briefing room under Plymouth. There