Mac wingate 2, p.3
Mac Wingate 2, page 3
“How much did it weigh?” Wingate asked eagerly. “A pound, maybe?”
“Just about, Captain. A man could carry twenty or thirty of them. And just one of them was powerful enough to blow up an entire plane.”
Wingate leaned back and looked at Holloway. “Can you give Corporal McCauley here what he needs to make me a nice batch of Lewis bombs?”
Holloway nodded decisively. “Yes, I can.”
“Now, what about those two other soldiers I am supposed to take with me? I assume you have selected them already.”
“I have.”
“What can you tell me about them?”
Holloway smiled. “One of them is a German infantryman, the other is an Italian tank commander. Until a week ago they were prisoners of war.”
“Now hold it right there, Colonel,” said Wingate. “I think you had better repeat that.”
Colonel Holloway put up his hand. “Relax, Captain. I expected that reaction. Wait until you meet them before coming to a decision. Remember, you will be moving through a countryside swarming with German and Italian soldiers. These men not only speak German and Italian, they also know Albania. Both men were taken by the Greeks when they swept into Albania in 1940. And the Italian speaks Albanian.”
“What do you know about him?”
“Cappiello was a bank teller in Tripoli before the war. When we walked into Tripoli we took his wife and son. They’re in an internment camp outside Cairo now.”
“And the kraut?”
“We checked with the immigration boys. It’s true what he told us. His father and mother emigrated from Germany five years ago. His father’s a night watchman in Buffalo.”
“I still don’t trust turncoats,” said Wingate.
Holloway shrugged. “As you wish. But at least look them over.” He glanced at Corporal McCauley. “Both of you. As I said before, they speak the language and know the country.”
“All right,” Wingate said. “But I’m not promising anything.”
The German, Bruckner, was a fair-haired, broad-shouldered fellow. He appeared quite jovial and most anxious to please. His English was passable and he insisted vehemently that he was not a Nazi, that he detested Hitler and the devastation he had brought upon Germany and Europe. The Italian, a short, powerful soldier with keen, dark eyes and black, curly hair was just as insistent that he had never been a fascist, that he hated Mussolini as much as Bruckner hated Hitler. His name was Sergio Cappiello.
The interview had taken place inside an enormous cave, one of the thousands the Maltese had carved out of the soft limestone that made up the island. As the two men were led out under guard, Wingate looked at Colonel Holloway and then at McCauley.
“What do you think, Tim?”
“It’s hard to believe that anyone could ever have taken either Hitler or Mussolini seriously. You know what I mean? They always struck me as a couple of clowns.”
Wingate nodded. Colonel Holloway remained silent, letting the other men talk.
“So maybe they’re telling the truth,” said McCauley.
“But you’re not sure?”
“No, I am not, Captain.”
“Neither am I. But we do need their help. We’ll have a lot of gear to lug around if we don’t drop right on target.”
“Yes. And, of course, they may be just what they say they are.”
“They might,” Wingate allowed. “Only I doubt it.”
Colonel Holloway decided to speak up at this point. “The Italian has already been tested, in a way. Last month we dropped him into Greece with one of our men. He performed admirably, I am told. Of course, our operative was as careful as I assume you will be.”
“We’ll be careful, all right,” said Wingate.
“Fine,” replied Holloway. “But you’ve got to take some chances. The drop into Yugoslavia is scheduled for tomorrow night. We don’t have much time.”
“No, we don’t,” said Wingate wearily. “Or much choice, either, it seems.”
“I have already requisitioned the explosives you requested,” Colonel Holloway went on. “And I’ve found a laboratory for Corporal McCauley. He can fashion those Lewis bombs to his heart’s content.”
“Fine,” said Corporal McCauley, grinning.
Colonel Holloway looked at him, a slight smile on his face. “It’s in a cave, Corporal. A very deep one, I might add.”
“Good precaution,” Wingate said. He glanced at McCauley. “Mind if I join you, Corporal? This new bomb fascinates me.”
“Delighted to have you, sir.”
“Remember,” said Colonel Holloway. “The idea is to blow up that German supply dump, not the island of Malta.”
The inside of the C-47 was lit by small red lights strung overhead. As Wingate huddled on the bench under the weight of his parachute and the rest of his gear, the roar of the plane’s engines throbbing in his ears, he recalled Holloway’s crack and realized ironically how much Holloway had oversimplified his mission.
Blowing up the German supply dump was really only one part of a much larger mission. Erikson was hoping that Wingate’s assault on the supply dump would trigger a countrywide revolt against the Axis forces occupying Albania, while Holloway was concerned primarily with the politics of the situation. What he needed from Wingate was his appraisal of Ahmad Zogu’s guerrilla band; he was obviously unwilling at this point to recommend to his superiors that Zogu was worthy of all-out Allied support, despite—or because of—the fact that he knew the guerrilla leader. And finally, there was Patton’s hope that Wingate’s mission would nourish and help sustain a solidly anti-Communist counterforce in the Balkans.
Recalling once again the bizarre, convoluted course his previous mission for Colonel Erikson had taken, Wingate felt a sudden uneasiness. He had the feeling that he might well be heading down that same road. He knew the danger of this feeling, however—especially at this stage of a mission—and decided at once that his best course would be to concentrate his energies and those of his small band on one single objective: helping Ahmad Zogu to destroy that German supply depot.
Anything else would simply be frosting on the cake ...
The copilot came walking back in a halting, staggering fashion, bracing himself against the roll of the plane. It was then that Wingate noticed that the plane appeared to be dropping. He looked up at the copilot as the man came to a halt before him, one hand braced against the bulkhead over Wingate’s head.
“We’re approaching the Albanian coast,” the lieutenant said. “Better get ready
“Like hell we will,” Wingate said. “We got a long way to go yet. You’re supposed to drop us over the mountains north of Tirana. You’ve got the map. We went over it before we left.”
“I’m afraid there’s German night fighters on the way, Captain. There’s no way we can out fly them.”
“It’s not a cloudless night, Lieutenant. And there’s no moon. Gain altitude and find cloud cover. More than likely you’ll find plenty as you continue north along the coast.”
The copilot hesitated. He did not look to be more than twenty, and as Wingate recollected, the pilot himself was not much older. This was probably their first flight over Axis territory.
“You heard me, Lieutenant. That’s an order.”
The copilot smiled thinly and mumbled something about the pilot always outranking anyone on board.
Wingate smiled at the youth. Then he patted the .45 automatic stuck in his waistband. “No more talk, Lieutenant. This .45’s all the rank I need. You’ll get my men and I safely over our drop zone or you’ll die trying. That’s not an order. That’s a statement of fact. Now you go and tell that to your captain.”
The copilot nodded unhappily, turned carefully around, and groped his way back to the cockpit. Wingate glanced at the other three. They had heard every word, despite the roar of the engines. Their faces looked drawn. Wingate felt the plane lift, and a moment later his ears began to pop and it got chillier inside the plane. He thought the plane was banking slightly, but of that he could not be certain.
He studied his men. They were all as heavily laden as he was and looked like helpless deep-sea divers beached in overinflated diving suits. Like Wingate, they were each carrying a jump knife, hunting knife, cartridge belts and bandoliers, and fragmentation grenades, all in addition to their British Sten 9 mm submachine guns, which Colonel Holloway had scrounged for them. They weighed less than eight pounds and had a mean rate of fire: 500-550 rounds per minute, and an effective range of 200 yards.
Wingate had insisted that he and his men not be encumbered with the M1; a few grains of sand were capable of jamming it. Nor were they taking any American bazookas, since they were not capable of penetrating the front plate of the German Panther, and according to Holloway, the Nazis had recently brought in plenty of those formidable tanks to the Balkans.
In the equipment drop sitting by the door, there were—in addition to the explosives—some goodies for the guerrillas and for Ahmad Zogu, in particular: two Bren .303 light machine guns with an effective range of 800 yards, and for Zogu himself, a German MP-40 machine pistol. Zogu would be able to get plenty of ammunition for the weapon from the Germans, Holloway had suggested, a steel glint in his eyes. The aim, of course, was to make Ahmad Zogu a bit more eager to tangle with the enemy.
The sudden roar of converging aircraft broke into Wingate’s thoughts. He felt the C-47 taking sudden evasive action. Then came the chatter of distant machine guns. The German interceptors had found them, it seemed. Glancing out, Wingate saw a plane climb through the blackness, its machine guns winking light, their tracers burning through the night toward them.
There were four armor-piercing bullets between each two tracers, Wingate knew. He winced slightly as he saw a line of machine gun bullets ticking a fast path across the wing. Just in time the C-47 reached the haven of a cloud bank. The wing vanished, and with it the strings of fiery tracers. The sound of machine gun fire faded, to be replaced by the welcome, but muffled, drone of the C-47’s engines. Wingate’s ears snapped as the plane continued to climb.
He glanced over at the men. They were all looking studiously down at the floor, careful not to meet each other’s eyes. Wingate understood. The palms of their hands were undoubtedly just as sweaty as his own at that moment.
About a half hour later, the copilot emerged from the cockpit and groped his way toward them. In the faint red light emitted by the ceiling lights, his face looked hectic and somewhat grim. He stopped in front of Wingate and tried to stand without holding on to anything.
“We’re approaching the drop zone,” he said. “You better get your men ready, Captain.”
“All right, Lieutenant,” Wingate replied, smiling. “Just remember what I said. This better be the correct drop zone.”
Without a word, the copilot turned and fumbled his way back to the cockpit.
Wingate looked at his men. They were crouched around the equipment drop, waiting for his orders.
“Remove the door, Corporal,” Wingate ordered.
As McCauley got the door clear, Wingate rose to his feet and hooked his static line to the anchor cable. Hanging on to it for support, he watched closely as the others hooked up also. It got very cold, very quick. The roar of the prop blast was almost deafening.
“Bruckner! Cappiello!” Wingate yelled above the blast. “Get ready to push out that equipment!”
The two men nodded and rested their hands on the bundle. McCauley clung to the open doorway beside them, looking up at the ceiling, waiting for the green light to show.
Wingate took a deep breath. All four of them had been given a hasty, somewhat primitive training session the afternoon before. In order to accustom them to the jolt of landing, Holloway had set them to jumping from the roof of a truck going thirty miles an hour. It had hurt, and hurt like hell, but fortunately none of them had broken anything that mattered.
Then a British paratrooper had drummed into them the proper method of leaving a transport. The instructions had made a great deal of sense at the time, and had a lot to do with the proper way of entering the prop blast. But Wingate was having some difficulty in recalling it accurately. He told himself not to worry about it. He would remember what he needed to remember when the time came.
It got colder. Wingate’s ears continued to snap. The plane seemed to be dropping. Through the open doorway he caught glimpses of bright stars in the midst of irregular black patches. They were breaking through the clouds. The plane roared on for a while longer. The patches of black, star-sprinkled sky grew larger.
The green light flashed on.
Wingate nodded to Bruckner and Cappiello. The two men heaved and the equipment drop vanished out the door. They followed out after it. McCauley looked at Wingate. Wingate nodded sharply. McCauley took a quick left turn and followed the others into the night. The corporal’s static lines snapped tightly against the edge of the door, vibrating with the force of the outside wind pulling on them. In one stride Wingate was in the doorway, the wind whipping at his cheeks. He made his turn and with a left pivot leaped into space. He was right: when the time came, he remembered.
He felt the rush of air and the crackle of the canopy as it began to unfurl. The suspension lines sizzled. The connector links whistled past the back of his helmet. Instinctively, the muscles of his body tensed for the opening shock. The canopy blasted open. The shock came and nearly jarred every tooth from his head. He glanced up and saw the lovely chute blossoming above him in the night sky—and hit the ground.
So unexpected was the landing that he crumpled to the hard, rocky ground and found himself being dragged over its unkind surface. Dazed, swearing furiously at the pilot for sending them on their drop at that low an altitude, Wingate dug his heels into the ground and halted himself. The chute collapsed. Reaching down to his right leg, he unsheathed his jump knife and slashed himself free of the harness. When he stood upright, he was pleased to find that—though considerably bruised and sore as hell over most of his body—nothing was broken.
He was in the midst of rugged, mountainous terrain. Immense shoulders of rock heaved up out of the ground about him. There was no moon. He felt himself trapped in a stifling cocoon of darkness. Then he caught a momentary glimpse of something white billowing below him, and at that moment realized he was standing on a ledge. What he had seen was obviously a canopy, and it was enough to give him direction. He picked his way carefully over the uneven ground and found himself moving down a steep incline. About five minutes later he was plodding along a narrow road, a rock wall beside it.
Out of the night a huge figure loomed. The gait was unmistakable; Wingate had found McCauley. “That you, Captain?” the corporal cried hoarsely.
“Yes. Where are the others?”
“Beats the shit out of me, Captain.”
“And the equipment bundle?”
“It’s up there, on the other side of this wall. I just got through cutting loose its canopy.”
The sound of boots running on the hard-packed ground of the road came clearly to them. Both men froze, then went down on one knee, facing the direction from which the sound was coming. Wingate had assembled his Sten gun before starting down the slope. He held it at the ready, while McCauley relied on his Colt Browning automatic pistol.
Out of the gloom materialized the Italian, Cappiello. He pulled up in surprise when he saw them crouched in front of him.
“The Nazi!” he cried excitedly. “He has gone!”
“The Nazi has not gone anywhere, Sergio,” said the German from the other side of the stone wall. There was more than a touch of irony in his voice. “When I see you run so hard, I think it is you who run from us!”
“All right,” said Wingate. “Over the wall, all of you. We’ve got to get to that equipment bundle and distribute the load. Looks to me like we’ve got a long way to go yet. I don’t see any welcoming committee.”
As Wingate clambered over the stone wall with McCauley and Sergio, the German remarked how low they were when the pilot flashed that green light. He was lucky, he told Wingate, that his chute opened before he struck the ground.
“I’m interested in the condition of our equipment,” said McCauley gloomily.
Wingate didn’t comment himself. But that was something that had been bothering him since the moment he landed. It would not be easy to blow up any German supply depots if all he had to work with were the few fragmentation grenades each of them carried on their person.
Battered though the bundle apparently was, nothing inside was damaged as far as Wingate could determine. The ammunition, the Bren machine guns, the explosives and, most especially, the Lewis bombs McCauley and the others had spent most of the previous night shaping were all quickly distributed among them. Wingate had the German and the Italian each carry one of the Brens. For a few anxious moments, he feared that the fuses he would need to set off the Lewis bombs had not been packed. But he soon had them.
Looking and feeling like ungainly pack animals, they set off across the field, heading deeper into the mountains in what a quick glance at the stars indicated to Wingate was a northerly direction. Ahmad Zogu’s forces were somewhere in these mountains, if that damned pilot had stayed on the proper bearing.
But that, Wingate realized, was one hell of a big if.
Three
In the early hours of the morning, the four lay down on the rough ground to sleep. It was not easy for Wingate to make himself comfortable because of all the gear strapped to him, and it was no easier for the others. He heard them cursing softly in the damp darkness around him as they curled up and took advantage of this opportunity to get needed rest. Wingate dropped off almost at once.
The crowing of a cock startlingly near awoke him. He glanced up, instantly alert, his hand reaching out and grasping his Sten gun; he lifted his head and peered over the rocky ridge just beyond. What he saw was a narrow, winding road that cut through ruggedly mountainous terrain, a stone wall bordering it, and beyond that a ragged orchard. The small village from which the cock’s crow had come was barely visible through the branches of the gnarled apple trees; in the dim, predawn light he could just make out the villagers’ small cottages, their white stuccoed walls gleaming like bones in the mist-enshrouded distance. Wingate shivered convulsively, and he had difficulty keeping his teeth from chattering. It was this chill, damp, mountain air, Wingate realized, that had made the rooster’s call sound as if it had come from just over the ridge.
