“You’re hurt bad, Wallace,” Wingate told him, calling him by his first name for the first time since he had joined his force. “That was a very brave thing you did. You saved all of us.”

  “Just don’t give me no medals for it, Captain. That ain’t why I did it and I don’t want none of that horseshit after I’m gone.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about a medal,” Wingate told him soberly. “I was just trying to thank you.”

  “No need to do that, Captain,” Stearns gasped. “It’s all over for me—this whole fucking war, this life—all of it. You don’t know how glad I am to get my ass the hell out of this bullshit.” He closed his eyes and began to cough silently.

  “Captain!” It was Sweeney. He had the door open slightly and was peering out.

  Wingate straightened up. “What is it?”

  “There’s heavy fighting just outside. I can hear grenades going off in front of this exit!”

  Wingate glanced down at Stearns. “We are going to have to leave you.”

  “Go ahead,” Stearns whispered, his eyes now shut tightly as he hugged his awesome wound in a futile attempt to hold his guts together. “Your number’s out there somewhere, waiting to be called. I already got mine. Just one request, Captain.”

  “Name it.”

  “I’m gut shot. Hurts like hell, and this smoke ain’t making it any easier. Let me have that fancy automatic of yours.”

  Wingate handed Stearns his .45. “My compliments,” he said, leaving Stearns and joining the others on the landing.

  McCauley stepped away from the door. “How’s Stearns?” he asked.

  “He’s a dead man. What’s out there?”

  “Clive’s men. They’re raising hell, Captain. Let’s go join them.”

  “Just what I was thinking.”

  There was a sudden loud gunshot from below them. The men whirled, their submachine guns at the ready. But there were no Germans. Wingate had not expected there would be. Stearns had finished what that German had begun, only he had not done it very neatly. He must have taken the barrel in his mouth before pulling the trigger. The back of his head was gone and shards of his skull mixed with a bloody mush that had once been his brain were plastered to the wall behind him.

  Wingate hurried back down the stairs, retrieved his .45 and, holstering it, rejoined McCauley and the others at the door. With a quick nod to Sweeney, he indicated the corporal should open the door. As soon as Sweeney did, Wingate looked out carefully.

  What he saw was pandemonium, courtesy of Clive Smith and his British irregulars. Two buildings were blazing furiously. Alongside them a staff car and a German truck were also in flames. German bodies littered the area. Unfortunately, there were more than a few British bodies as well. The fighting was concentrated around a fortress like command building to their right. Wingate glimpsed a contingent of British troops rushing a heavily fortified gun emplacement just in front of it. They were taking heavy casualties as a result of the German superiority in firepower, primarily two machine guns of a caliber Wingate had met earlier.

  They were MG-42s, their snarling, tearing scream filling the night with hot lead and death.

  “Let’s get out there,” said Wingate, stepping through the door.

  Running in a crouch—Sweeney, McCauley and the others right behind him—Wingate reached a rough stone wall beyond which, at least two hundred yards below, he could hear the sea pounding. Following the wall, Wingate led his men around to the other side of the fortress. He sighted a rear door and headed for it. That was when a squad of Germans, coming from the other corner of the fortress, materialized out of the darkness and opened up on them.

  Wingate flung himself to the ground and grabbed for a grenade. A screaming round snicked past his cheek as he pulled the pin with his teeth and flung it toward the Germans. As soon as it detonated, he got to one knee and sent another one after the first. By this time he was on his feet, leading his men in a charge. There were two Germans on the ground, both of them writhing in pain. The others turned and fled. A burst from McCauley caught a third German in the back and the rest disappeared into the darkness behind the building.

  Wingate headed for the door and kicked it. Standing back as the door slammed open saved his life. A vicious volley of automatic fire spat from the open passageway. Sweeney flung a grenade into the doorway. A moment later there was a powerful detonation that sent two Germans staggering out. They collapsed face-down on the ground before them. The uniforms on both men were smoking and their faces were as black as coal miners’.

  “Let’s go,” said Sweeney, dashing ahead of Wingate through the doorway.

  Wingate and the others followed the corporal into the dark passageway. They had gone not more than ten yards when a door at the far end of what Wingate now realized was a converted wine cellar swung open. A uniformed German stood silhouetted for a moment in the lighted doorway. Then his hand exploded as he let loose with what sounded to Wingate like a Mauser.

  Sweeney went down immediately. Wingate flung himself to one side, struck the wall and brought up his Sten. The German officer, with incredible and foolhardy coolness, swung to face Wingate and got off another shot before the fire from Wingate’s Sten flung him backward out of the doorway. Charging into the room, Wingate found it empty, save for the dead officer. He left it and hurried back to where Sweeney was lying.

  “Where you hit, Sweeney?” McCauley was asking as he knelt beside the wounded corporal.

  “My fool leg. It’s really spouting.” In the dim light coming from the other room, Wingate could see the awesome hole the Mauser’s slug had torn in Sweeney’s thigh, just above the knee. Sweeney’s face was drawn. Tiny beads of perspiration were standing out on his pale forehead. The man was obviously in great pain.

  “Stay here with him, Lubbock,” said Wingate. “Make a tourniquet with his belt and see what you can scare up for a stretcher.” Then to Sweeney he said, “We’ve no intention of leaving you, Corporal.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Captain. Just take care of those machine guns before they wipe out the Limeys.”

  “That’s a promise, Corporal.”

  McCauley and Kowalski joined Wingate as he entered the storeroom opening off the wine cellar. There was a stairway in the far corner, and toward it Wingate led the two men. Halfway up, he felt the stairs tremble ominously under his feet. Without warning the ground and the stairwell heaved upward, nearly tossing the three of them back down the stairs. Another subterranean explosion shook the ground, and then another. Dirt sifted down from the stone walls and the ceiling overhead. The light bulb on the end of its wire over their heads swung wildly back and forth. Wingate hung on to the stairs as another and then another titanic explosion erupted beneath them.

  “What the hell?” Wingate muttered.

  “Stearns, Captain,” said Kowalski. “Sweeney told me before we left the sub base. While he was waiting for you and Sergeant McCauley to get back, Stearns searched out the torpedo storage depot and planted all the Lewis bombs he had left. He used half-hour fuses, and Sweeney was a bit worried we weren’t going to get out of that stairwell in time.”

  As if to punctuate Kowalski’s words, another even more titanic explosion rocked the building, and for a moment it felt as if the stairway would be ripped loose and come crashing down.

  “Hell! We can’t stay on these stairs,” Wingate told the two. “Let’s get the hell up there and come in behind those machine guns while the krauts are trying to save themselves.”

  As another blast rocked the stairway, Wingate led the two up into a hallway. It was a shambles. Plaster had fallen in ugly chunks from the walls and ceiling. The bodies of two German officers were partially buried under the plaster. Beyond the hall a portion of the building’s wall had simply collapsed. The ceiling sagged dangerously at that point, nearly blocking the hole entirely. Wingate could hear the cries of frenzied Germans issuing orders, and of others just calling out to each other in frustration.

  But above everything—above the thumping blasts that seemed to be coming from the very bowels of the earth, above the chatter of submachine guns, above the cries of the wounded—he heard the soul-ripping snarl of the MG-42s. Those two machine guns were still spitting out death.

  Wingate moved out of the stairwell and picked his way carefully down the hall, stepping gingerly over the plaster and the two dead Germans until he came to the hole in the wall. Peering out into the blazing night, he saw first one and then the other emplacement—and the concentration just behind the machine guns of about twenty German troops massing for a counterattack. The flames from the blazing buildings illuminated the ground in front of the gun emplacements. It was pocked with the sad mounds of dead men, many of them British. The slaughter would continue until Wingate put those murderous weapons out of action.

  “Use your grenades,” Wingate told his two men. “Then begin spraying. Don’t give those machine gunners a chance to turn those bastardly 42s around. Now!”

  Wingate jumped off the exposed foundation to the ground. Before he landed, he had hurled a grenade into the midst of the massing Germans. He landed running, his Sten tucked into his hip, cutting a deadly swath as he advanced steadily on the MG-42s. Wingate saw McCauley charging off to his left, leap a fallen German, club another one to the ground with the barrel of his Sten, then take cover behind a fountain. Kowalski was right behind him, the two of them taking a considerable toll as they tossed grenades and hosed the area with lead.

  Wingate cut to the left and took cover behind what was left of a porch railing. He had a clear shot to the nearest of the two machine gunners. Removing the pin from a grenade, he tossed it, sending it on a high arc. He lost track of it in the darkness and did not see it land, but a second later it exploded in the midst of the machine gun’s crew, knocking the MG-42 and its bipod into the thundering darkness.

  By this time, however, the crew of the second machine gun had managed to turn their weapon around. Almost at once its ripping torrent of lead was directed at Wingate. He flung himself off the porch and dug into the ground as the MG-42’s 7.92 mm rounds slammed into the posts and stonework above and behind him at a rate of 1,200 a minute. He dared not lift his arm to toss a grenade, or his head to direct a return fire from his Sten. As he hugged the ground, waiting for that round Stearns had told him had his name on it, he wondered what in hell had happened to McCauley and Kowalski. He could still hear them firing from behind the fountain, but they sure as hell weren’t having much of an effect on the machine gun trained on him.

  Finally, when his eyes began to sting from the dust and gravel raised by the machine gun’s fire and he found himself hardly able to breathe as splinters of wood and shards of rock began to bury him, he poked his head cautiously up, determined not to endure this indignity any longer. If this was his time to go, he didn’t want to take his leave while groveling in the dirt. What he saw was a lovely sight.

  With the two machine guns no longer trained on their position, the Britishers were charging across the open area in front of the building, at least twenty strong, bayonets fixed. They were shouting as they came and almost made enough noise to drown out the fearsome snarl of the remaining MG-42. Enough Germans were still functioning to cut some of them down as they charged, but most of Clive Smith’s soldiers reached the emplacement.

  Only then, as the Britishers swept into the German position, firing and stabbing like men possessed, did Wingate recognize the tallest soldier of the lot, the mad, bellowing British officer who had led the charge all the way.

  Captain Clive Smith.

  It was over a moment later as Clive and two other soldiers swept down on the MG-42’s crew and wiped them out with brutal efficiency. This took the heart out of the German resistance. As Wingate hurried to meet Clive, he heard the offers of surrender coming from Germans on all sides. The British troops were more than anxious to oblige. They hurried about disarming the Germans, while some began to see to those who were wounded.

  Clive was glad to see Wingate. He shook his hand warmly. Very warmly.

  “You didn’t expect to see me alive. Is that it, Clive?” Wingate asked mischievously.

  “Indeed, I did not, old boy—not after the way that sub pen went up. Felt like a bloody earthquake, it did—and of course, I had no way of knowing you were not still down there.”

  “How soon can we move out? I’ve got a wounded man back there.”

  “Who?”

  “Sweeney.”

  “Bad enough to send him back to the States?”

  “Afraid not. If Sweeney takes any long trips as a result of this wound, it won’t be for home.”

  To Wingate’s astonishment, Clive took a whistle from his pocket and blew two short blasts.

  “What the hell ... ?”

  Clive smiled tolerantly at Wingate. “You’ll see. I am like your Western heroes. Whenever I get into a tight spot, I like to know how I am going to get out. I sent a detachment to neutralize the garrison’s motor pool. They did famously. Sent most of the German mechanics and the officer in charge over that wall over there. And then they held off three German counterattacks. Here they come now.”

  Out of the smoke and flames that filled the right side of the compound, one, two, then three German trucks emerged. A moment later four more rumbled into view. Beside Wingate now, McCauley said, “Looks like we ride, Captain.”

  “You and Kowalski give Lubbock a hand with Sweeney. I want you to treat him gently. If you don’t, you won’t ride—either of you. I’ll make you walk.”

  “Yes, sir, Captain,” said McCauley, saluting.

  As the two men hurried off to get Sweeney, Clive looked at Wingate questioningly. “I say, don’t you American officers ever let down with your men? Must it always be so correct and formal? I thought you Americans were always informal, never paid any attention to rank.”

  “That’s a lot of bullshit, Clive. War is no time to get informal. It hurt bad enough when I lost Stearns back there in that sub pen. Right now I am worried about Sweeney—and we are barely acquainted. I’ve never seen a picture of his sweetheart, or his mother and father. I don’t even know if he has any. And I don’t want to know. Do you understand?”

  “I think I do,” Clive responded soberly.

  “Good. Now, let’s get into those trucks you so thoughtfully provided and get the hell out of here.”

  Ten

  Laloula closed the door, rested her back against it for a moment, then walked over to the table where Wingate and Alexis were waiting and sat down. A strand of her dark hair had fallen over her forehead. She brushed it wearily back. Alexis pushed a cup of ersatz coffee toward her. She drank it without enthusiasm and looked unhappily at Wingate.

  “Sweeney is bad,” she said. “Very bad. The leg below the knee is gone. It begins to smell already.”

  “Gangrene,” Wingate said.

  “Yes.”

  “It is as I thought,” Alexis said, his voice sad, resigned. “He will have to lose the leg.”

  Wingate got up from the table and walked into the small bedroom. Laloula’s mother was sitting by the bed, a black shawl over her head and shoulders, her large sad eyes watching the feverish Sweeney with enormous, but stoic concern. McCauley was standing unhappily at the foot of the bed, an angry set to his jaw. His tall, anguished presence seemed to fill the room with foreboding. And Laloula was right. Wingate could smell the corruption feeding on Sweeney’s leg.

  He bent over Sweeney and leaned close to his flushed face:

  “Sweeney!” he whispered.

  The corporal opened his eyes and smiled feebly up at Wingate. “Think I’m already dead and gone to hell, Captain,” he said, his voice faint, scratchy. “I’m sure as hell hot enough.”

  “It’s that leg of yours. We are going to have to take it off.”

  “Aw, shit, Captain Wingate. I’d rather go over with it still attached ... if it’s all the same to you.”

  “It isn’t. I don’t want you to die. Not if we can save you.”

  “You got any sawbones handy?”

  “We’ll find one right away. I promise you.”

  Sweeney closed his eyes. “Don’t be in such a hurry, sir.”

  Returning to the kitchen, Wingate approached Laloula. “Is there a doctor in the village?”

  She shook her head. “He fled with the Allies when the Germans came. He had many wounded to tend.”

  Wingate slumped back in his seat as a weary McCauley left the bedroom and joined them at the table. “Then who is going to operate?” Wingate asked the girl. “You must have someone in the village who serves as a doctor—a nurse, perhaps?”

  “No,” she said, shrugging unhappily. “We have no one. Perhaps you will have to do it, Captain.”

  Alexis nodded. “There is no one else.”

  “Clive will have someone. Perhaps one of his men had some medical training.”

  “It will take time to go that far and return,” Laloula reminded him.

  “I’ll go, Captain,” said McCauley. “Won’t take me no time at all.”

  “The operation must be performed soon,” Alexis reminded them both. “I have seen how fast gangrene kills.”

  McCauley got to his feet. “I’ll be back by tomorrow afternoon, Captain. You stay here and look after him.”

  Wingate smiled. In his concern for Sweeney, the sergeant was forgetting who was in command. “I’ll look after him, Sergeant,” Wingate said, getting to his feet also. “Just be damned careful. We’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest on this island, and those Germans are out there looking for someone to sting.”

  Laloula’s father entered the kitchen from the back door and spoke in Greek to Laloula. She glanced up at Wingate.

  “My father says there are Germans on the roads. They have bypassed the village. He says they are heading into the mountains toward Captain Smith’s stronghold. This time there are many, many tanks and trucks. And the Stukas have been overhead all afternoon.”

  “Sit down, Sergeant,” said Wingate resignedly. “You aren’t going anywhere now.”

 

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