Read On the Edge of Darkness (Special Force Orca Book 1) for Free Online Page B

would need over the next few days. He could just see the lights that were to be used to mark the Inlet entrance for ‘Nishga’ when she returned from her planned night raids. In the other bundles were the means to defend the inlet along with their food, tents and other personal kit. Every item was vital to the task ahead; the loss of any one thing could mean failure or worse.
    Bushel looked up; he still had a way to go before he reached the top of the sheer face. He wedged himself deeper into the fault in the rock and blew onto his cold hands. He smiled at his unspoken pun, time for a blow. He gazed out across the inlet, six maybe seven hundred feet across the still waters of the Inlet, the ‘Nishga’ lay snug under the overhang, her icy reflection mirror-clear beneath her camouflaged hull. Her decks swarmed with duffel-coated seamen doubling up on her mooring wires and laying out the massive camouflage netting.
    He looked at his watch; within the hour he and his men would have to be up there, above the ship, ready to hoist the netting into place. He needed to get a move on; he shifted the coil of rope on his shoulder until it sat more comfortably and resumed the climb.
     
    *     *     *
     
    Captain Barr sat at his desk, his pen poised at the end of his signature staring at a photograph on his desk, it was of his wife and eight- year old son, taken on his last long leave that had been before the start of the war.
    W hen he pictured them in his mind’s eye, as he often did during the long night watches, it was always this photograph that he saw. Sometimes it seemed as if they were frozen in time, somehow preserved in the frame to await his homecoming. A knock on his cabin door brought Barr back to the present with a jolt. He looked up to see his steward standing in the doorway.
    “ Chief Petty Officer Graves to see you, sir.”
    “Very good Jenkins, show him in please.”
    Chief Petty Officer ‘Spooky’ Graves entered, his battered cap under one arm, his new Chief’s buttons shinning in splendid contrast. “You wanted to see me, sir.”
    “ Yes, Chief, I want to discuss some arrangements I have in mind for camouflaging the entrance to the inlet, take a seat,” he indicated a padded chair next to his desk.
    The Chief sat uncomfortably on the edge, holding his cap in both hands as he looked about him.
    “Cigarette?” asked Barr offering Graves one from a box on the desk.
    “ Thank you kindly, sir, I don’t mind if I do.”
    Barr lit both their cigarettes with a table lighter and settled back in his chair. “We need to disguise the entrance to this Inlet and at the same time discourage enemy patrol boats from entering.”
    Graves scratched at his bald head with the hand that held his cap, “I can see why, sir…”but I can’t, for the life of me, see as how you can do that.”
    “ I’ve been thinking about it for some time. I’ve an idea, but it’s only an idea, I’m hoping you can tell me if it is possible or not, put some meat on the bone, as it were. We could construct a raft to block the entrance.” He reached into the back of the desk and pulled out a notebook. “Here’s a rough sketch of the inlet. “I thought to place the raft here, where the entrance narrows.”
    The Chippy dragged hard on the cigarette cupped in the hollow of a horny and nicotine stained fist. “But I don’t understand, sir, if we put it there it’ll be seen by the very patrol boats we want to discourage. At the very least it’s going to make them curious surely, sir?”
    “ Not if we make it look like part of the landscape, a landslide to be precise. “Barr turned the page of his notebook and revealed a sketch of a raft. “We pile it up with rocks, like this, there’s enough of them around, God knows. This step under the raft’s waterline carries more rocks, hiding the wooden beams of the raft. It will have to be loaded carefully to keep it stable. To look right the rocks will have to slope down from the