Mac wingate 2, p.5
Mac Wingate 2, page 5
Just before the German reached the boulder, fire from the Italian caught him in the side and he went down spinning. At once Wingate popped up from behind the boulder and got off a withering fire that cut a bloody swath through the advancing ranks. For a moment the SS troopers wavered in their resolve. Wingate saw four or five dive to the ground to protect themselves.
At once Wingate turned and darted out from behind the boulder and raced for the cover of the timber. He was almost to it when a slug from behind struck the heel of his right boot with such force that he was sent sprawling. Though he was not wounded, his foot was numb, and as he reached for his Sten, a heavy boot kicked it away from him. Rolling swiftly over onto his back, Wingate found himself looking up into the muzzle of a Walther automatic.
“Schweinehund! Scheisskerl!” the German cried, his face distorted with rage.
As Wingate saw the man’s fist tighten, he rolled swiftly out from under the trooper’s automatic. The German must have thought Wingate had been severely wounded when he went down; he was taken completely by surprise when Wingate rolled away. He tracked Wingate swiftly and fired, but his shot missed. By this time Wingate had his own .45 automatic out. He fired up at the German twice, catching him in the gut with each shot. It looked as if invisible fists had punched black holes in the man’s belly as he dropped his Walther, eyes wide in surprise, then collapsed with smothering force onto Wingate.
By this time the Germans were swarming into the timber. Wingate heard Sergio’s Sten go suddenly silent. He lay still under the dead soldier as the Germans poured past him, seeking out the small army they had expected to find in the timber. For a long moment there was no more gunfire, just the sound of heavy boots crunching down on underbrush, the grunts of panting men, the guttural cries as the Germans called out to each other.
And then all hell broke loose.
The rattle of gunfire was deafening. Above the sound came the shouts of the startled Germans. Their surprise was complete, it seemed, as they screamed out and fought their way back through the timber. Still lying near the fallen German with his head down and his fist enclosing his automatic, Wingate watched out of the corner of his eye as the Germans fled the timber, firing blindly back into the trees and then racing swiftly out onto the field, heading back to those stone fences they had scaled not so long before.
And right on their tails, their faces flushed with victory, a motley swarm of guerrillas swept after them, some dressed in captured German tunics, others wearing Italian uniforms, and all of them, it seemed, heavily laden with crossed bandoliers and stolen weapons of every size and description. They were all firing as they ran, a murderous force of Albanian patriots taking off after their detested German overlords. In a moment they had swept out of the woods, hard on the Germans’ tail, disregarding the German return fire as they continued their pursuit. Germans went down, but so did a few Albanians. And still the guerrillas kept after them. As Wingate watched, he saw a few of the guerrillas—those carrying bayonets—bending over as they swept past the wounded Germans, slicing the heads from their torsos with hardly a break in stride.
Wingate struggled to his feet. He would have to get a new boot somewhere. The heel was gone, and his foot was still slightly numb.
“You all right, Captain?”
Wingate spun. A grinning Corporal McCauley was emerging from the woods, his Sten resting on one shoulder, looking for all the world like a farmer returning from the fields.
“I’m fine, Corporal. You seem to have survived, I see.”
“Guess I’ll have to start believing in miracles, Captain—the way them guerrillas just swarmed out of the rocks after them Nazis. In no time at all, the hunters were the fellers being hunted.”
“And not a moment too soon, I might add,” Wingate said, shaking his head in wonderment. Then he looked over to the Italian’s position. The ground in front of the tree behind which the man had been crouched was littered with dead Germans. But the area about the pine was now ominously silent. “Sergio!” Wingate called.
There was no response.
“Damn,” said McCauley. “I was beginning to like that grinning wop.”
“Come on,” said Wingate. “He may just be wounded.” They found Sergio Cappiello flat on his back, a German draped across his midsection. Wingate rolled the Nazi off Sergio with the toe of his boot. The German had lost half of his face and was as dead as a Goering boast. Wingate knelt beside Sergio. A quick inspection showed that the man was not wounded and was still breathing faintly. His helmet had been knocked off, and as he felt the Italian’s head, Wingate uttered a surprised grunt and turned with a grin to look up at McCauley.
“He’s got a lump the size of a grapefruit on his head. It’s going to give him a headache, but I doubt if it’s any more serious than that.”
“Good,” replied McCauley, a relieved grin on his face. “We need him to carry all that equipment we got.”
Sergio stirred, opened his eyes and looked up at Wingate. At once he frowned in pain and reached back to feel the lump on his head. “This is not heaven, I see,” he muttered unhappily. “Alas! This malinconico opera must go on!”
“That’s right, Sergio,” said Wingate, getting to his feet. He smiled down at the Italian. “And this is only the end of the first act. The dismal opera has a long way to go yet.”
“But this time, Captain,” said Sergio, sitting up and reaching for his helmet, “please do not give me blanks. It has no effect on Germans.”
Wingate helped the man to his feet. “That’s a promise, Sergio.”
A shot rang out somewhere in the trees. The three men froze, then crouched, waiting. There was another shot. And then a third, this one closer. Signaling to the others to stay put and keep low, Wingate drifted into the trees in the direction from which the last shot had come. He was puzzled. The shots in each case had been single shots and sounded as if they were coming from a pistol.
He caught a movement just ahead and froze, then slipped to one side and found cover behind a tree. He waited. There was another shot. It sounded like a Luger. Wingate slipped the safety off his Sten. The movement became an upright figure moving through the woods toward him. He couldn’t be sure if it was a German or one of the guerrillas. Wingate saw the figure pause and closely study something on the ground at his feet. The fellow used his foot to roll something over, then abruptly aimed the Luger and fired down at what he had just been studying.
With a shock Wingate realized that someone was proceeding through the timber cold-bloodedly giving the coup de grace to all those he found still alive. Was he a German? It seemed unlikely, but it was best to be cautious. The figure continued on, occasionally drifting out of sight, then reappearing closer, the sunlight through the trees transforming his jacket and helmet into a bright motley. The figure pulled up suddenly and peered straight through the trees. It was almost as if he could see Wingate crouched behind the tree, watching him.
Wingate froze in astonishment.
He was watching not a man, but a long-haired, dark-eyed beauty—a guerrilla who was masculine only in the cold, dispassionate way she was killing those few Germans who had survived. But even as he discovered this, a German soldier charged at her from a tangle of brush. The girl calmly raised her Luger and fired at the onrushing German. The 9 mm slug visibly slowed the man, but did not stop him. By the time she got off her second shot, the German was upon her, his tall, powerful frame crushing her to the ground under him.
As the two struggled, Wingate yelled to his men and darted from cover, his broken heel slowing him considerably. By the time he reached the two thrashing figures, he saw that the German, despite his terrible wounds, had both hands closing relentlessly about the girl’s throat, both thumbs pressing cruelly into her windpipe. The girl’s eyes were bugging out of her sockets, her tongue visible through parted lips. With the butt of his Sten, Wingate struck the German on the side of his head and knocked him sprawling.
But it did not stop the doomed soldier. Pushing himself to his feet, he lowered his head like an enraged bull, and charged Wingate. Reluctantly, Wingate fired into the German at point-blank range, the Sten’s fire cutting him to ribbons. Without uttering a sound, the man crumpled at Wingate’s feet.
Wingate turned and looked down at the girl. She was sitting up with both hands at her throat, feeling carefully to see if anything was broken. As she looked up at Wingate, her face was chalk-white, her dark eyes questioning. By this time McCauley and Sergio had reached Wingate’s side and joined him in staring down in surprise at the girl.
“I’m Captain Mac Wingate,” Wingate told her. “Who are you?”
“You—Americanos!”
“More or less,” Wingate replied. “Now who the hell are you?”
Her voice husky, she smiled proudly. “I am Ruza. Today I kill six more Nazi pigs!”
Wingate nodded wearily. He was in no mood to argue with her. But he sure as hell hoped she wasn’t counting that poor son of a bitch he had just cut in half with his Sten.
Four
It was only a few minutes later, while they were busy gathering up their equipment, that the Stukas came over. For a while the universe went mad. The trees disintegrated, and the air became thick with dirt, pine needles and pieces of Germans.
When the Stukas turned their attention to the village beyond the ridge, Wingate led the others from the timber, and with Ruza guiding him, climbed into the mountains high above the village. They watched silently as the diligent Stukas blasted the clean, stuccoed village into a pile of rubble. Through his binoculars, Wingate watched the town’s survivors fleeing behind their pushcarts along the road with hardly a glance back at the smoking ruins.
As the planes screamed into the air and vanished beyond the mountains, Ruza said something in Albanian to Sergio. Wingate asked him what she had said.
Sergio grinned. “She say it is our fault. We kill the tank commanders, so they must ask for the Stukas to destroy the village. Too bad, she thinks the tanks would not have done such a very good job maybe.”
Wingate lowered his binoculars and looked at Ruza. “Do you understand English?”
She nodded sullenly.
“Good. Maybe you can help us.”
Ruza shrugged.
“That guerrilla band you were with. Does it belong to Ahmad Zogu’s guerrilla force?”
She shook her head emphatically. “I fight for Vaso Korabe. He is my leader! He is the only one to lead us against the Nazi butchers!”
Wingate considered her words carefully. Holloway had suggested that there were other guerrilla bands in the mountains, though he did not know the names of their leaders. Well, now Wingate knew the name of one of them. Vaso Korabe.
Glancing at Sergio, he told the Italian to interrogate the girl. What he wanted to know was what the guerrillas had been up to with that SS brigade. How had they managed to be on hand so quickly with that large a counterforce?
As Sergio turned to the girl, Wingate sat down wearily, his big arms folded across his chest and studied the sullen girl, trying to reconcile what his eyes saw with that coldly murderous woman he had watched dispatching wounded German soldiers. McCauley was also watching Ruza. Hungrily. He didn’t blame McCauley. It was always a wonder to him how feminine—desirable, really—a woman could manage to look in battle fatigues and jacket. This one had an oversized German helmet perched jauntily on her head, and it looked positively smashing. And then there was the provocative swell under the jacket and the broad fullness of the hips, the impossibly long dark eyelashes.
Ruza stopped talking with Sergio, and folding her arms, looked back at Wingate. Sergio shrugged and smiled apologetically at Wingate.
“Well, Sergio, what did she tell you?”
“She say we ruin surprise. Korabe evacuate village so no peasants get hurt. The guerrillas were waiting for the SS attack this morning. They have plan. They wait until Germans are inside village. Then they attack, circle them around, sterminare the Nazi pigs!” The Italian’s dark eyes lit with pleasure. “That was their plan, Captain.”
“Plan?” McCauley asked. “You mean these guerrillas knew the Nazis were coming?”
Sergio nodded.
“Maybe you better explain that,” said Wingate.
In a confusing, but understandable mix of English and Italian, Sergio explained that the guerrillas had an informant in the local Waffen SS. Hoping to spare the village, Korabe’s plan was to allow the SS into the village so swiftly that the tank commanders would be reluctant to shell it for fear of hitting their own men. Then the tanks would be attacked and disabled at about the same time the guerrillas opened up on the Germans in the empty village.
Wingate glanced at Ruza. “I am sorry, Ruza. We saw those German troops marching up and the tanks getting ready to fire. We wanted to warn the village, so we fired on the tanks. I guess that blew your lovely plan sky-high, really screwed it up.”
Ruza frowned. “What you say? What do this mean, screwed up?” She looked to Sergio for help.
Sergio told her, in vivid, uncompromising style.
She nodded emphatically at Wingate. “Yes, the Americanos screwed us up. The SS never reach the village for trap.”
“Ruza, you can help us. We have been sent by the Allied Command. We must find Ahmad Zogu and his guerrillas.”
“Why you need him?”
“He is going to help us blow up a large German munitions dump and supply depot. It is very important that we do this. The Allies are about to invade.”
Her eyes lit. “The Allies, they will invade Albania?”
“I can’t tell you that for sure, Ruza,” Wingate said, lying outrageously. “I don’t know for certain what the plans are. But we have been sent here to help Ahmad Zogu attack the German supply depot. We have the explosives to blast it sky-high. It will be a great blow against the Nazis and will help shorten the war. You must help us.”
“Why you need this royalist fool, Ahmad Zogu? You think he help you? Korabe is better leader. I take you to him.”
“No, Ruza, I am under orders. I must follow those orders. Do you understand?”
She frowned. “You men. That is why you do always bad things. You follow orders. Sometimes I think you follow orders into hell. It is all madness. All this war. It is from everyone following orders. Is that not so?”
Wingate found little in what she said to disagree with; he nodded solemnly.
“I will help,” she said. “You save Ruza’s life so I must help you.”
“Fine. Thank you, Ruza.”
Wingate turned then to Sergio.
“Speak with her again, Sergio. Find out where we are—and also how far it is to Ahmad Zogu’s stronghold. Another thing. We need a cart or something to help us carry all this equipment. Hauling it on our backs through these mountains will kill us before we ever reach Zogu.”
As Sergio turned back to Ruza, Wingate took out his map of Albania and spread it on the flat surface of a nearby rock. According to the plan he had studied the night before, they should have parachuted down into the mountains northeast of Albania’s capital city, Tirana. But though they were definitely in mountainous terrain, Wingate had no confidence at all that he was in the right mountains. The pilot’s flight plan had been to fly up the Albanian coastline until they were just north of the port city of Durres, then head inland until they passed over Tirana, after which Wingate and his party were to be dropped in the mountains northeast of the capital, in the mountains along the Yugoslavian border. This was supposed to be where Ahmad Zogu’s guerrilla forces were holding out.
He looked up from his map and watched as Ruza and Sergio finished their conversation. At the close of it, Ruza had gone down on one knee and scratched a crude map in the dirt with a twig. Finished, she flung away the twig and walked over to Wingate with Sergio.
“Where are we, Sergio?” Wingate asked.
“We are in the mountains north of Elbasan. I know where it is, Captain. I spent a summer here when I was a small boy.” He grinned. “The peasants here hate Italians very much. Fortunately, now they hate the Germans more.”
Wingate frowned and looked back down at his map. He found Elbasan and realized at once what had happened. Just as he had suspected, the pilot had gone inland as soon as he reached the Albanian coast instead of flying north until he reached Durres. They were almost fifty miles south of where they should be. He swore softly, bitterly, and looked up at Ruza.
“You can take us to Zogu’s stronghold? You know where it is?”
“Yes. I know where it is.” She smiled. “It is, I think, maybe too far to go with all this equipment. Yes?”
“No. Not if you can help us.”
“You want for me to carry all this?”
“Can you get us a cart?”
She flung her head back and laughed. “Yes. And a donkey, I think. You will get maybe two miles before the SS stop you. First they will laugh so hard, they will grow sick. Then they will shoot you and take your lovely explosives. I think it is best you let me take you to Korabe. It is much closer.”
“No,” said Wingate. “I have my orders. I must find Ahmad Zogu.”
She shrugged. “I will take you then. But you will have a long walk. It is best, I think, we travel by night.” She looked mischievously at him. “You think maybe we get there before invasion begins?”
“We’ll rest up now,” Wingate told her, “and do as you say, travel only by night. That will give me some time to get a pair of boots.”
Ruza shrugged and moved off with Sergio. Wingate carefully folded the map and looked up at McCauley. “Stay here with these two,” he told the corporal. “I’m going back down there to see if I can find a decent pair of boots.”
“Robbing the dead, is it, Captain?”
