Mac wingate 1, p.16
Mac Wingate 1, page 16
The second rifleman had brought his rifle down to waist level and was swinging it through a short arc toward Wingate. He was too late. Jacobi already had the Erma out and he almost chopped the Arab in two across the belly.
The horseman hesitated. Finally he lifted the big horse into the air on its hind legs and spun it around to the right. Wingate would have let him go, but Jacobi fired again. The Arab threw up his arms and fell backward out of the saddle and slid to the ground over the horse’s ass, his left foot still in the stirrup. The spooked horse dragged him thirty yards across the rocky ground before coming to a stop.
Wingate nodded to Jacobi. “Thanks,” he said. “We make quite a team.”
Jacobi had turned to check the donkey line. “Oh, no,” he sighed. “I was afraid that maybe ...”
One of the animals had dropped to its knees, its chin resting on the ground. Jacobi shone a flashlight on it. The slug from the Arab’s rifle had hit it in the head.
Wingate said, “Let me get the horse. We can’t carry the stuff by ourselves.”
He walked over the road and across to where the horse still stood with the dead rider trapped in the stirrup. Wingate took hold of the bridle, then leaned under the animal’s belly and unfastened the girth buckle. The saddle simply slid to the ground.
The horse was scared. It snorted and jibbed at the restraint that Wingate was putting on the bridle. He rubbed the flat of his hand up and down its neck half a dozen times. “Easy, boy,” he said, soothingly. “Easy now.” In the end, the horse began to relax and finally it let Wingate lead him back to the road.
Jacobi had cut the dying donkey loose from the rest of the string and was unloading the boxes from its back. Wingate began reloading them onto the horse. The whole process took half an hour. When they finally got moving again, Jacobi had put the horse in the lead with the donkeys strung out behind.
The Hotel Anfa lay on its own grounds on the top of the cliffs overlooking the sea. When they got within sight of it, silhouetted black against the brilliance of the stars beyond, Jacobi stopped and pointed it out to Wingate.
“It really is a beautiful place,” he said, a certain hint of envy in his voice. “You know my feelings about Himmler and the Gestapo—but you have to admit he has taste.”
“How are they bringing him in?” asked Wingate. The area was thick with American troops. New outfits were coming into the port almost every day.
“By U-boat,” Jacobi said. “The way the Americans brought in General Mark Clark for the secret meeting with the French anti-Vichy in Algiers, back in October.”
“Jesus Christ!” Wingate muttered, looking at the stretch of starlit sea beyond the cliffs. “Are you telling me that as we stand here, Himmler is somewhere in a sub out there?”
“That is the plan,” Jacobi said. “As far as I have been able to discover.”
Wingate turned and looked at Jacobi, standing beside him under the great open dome of the sky. He looked like such a harmless little guy. How could such a small figure contain such determination—such hatred for the Nazis? He appeared to live a comfortable existence here in Casablanca. Why couldn’t he forget what was happening in Europe—just back out of the war and enjoy himself?
“That’s been interesting me,” said Wingate. “Just how is it that you discovered this scheme to bring Himmler here, when the whole of Allied Intelligence doesn’t seem to know the first goddamn thing about it?”
Jacobi looked up at Wingate and smiled wanly. “How long have the Allies been here, Mr. Legrand?” he asked. “What contacts do they have in Casablanca? How much money are they prepared to pay?”
The guy certainly had a point, thought Wingate. He knew the way the bureaucratic military machine lumbered along. One single, dedicated individual with the contacts and determination that Jacobi had could probably find out more in a single evening in the El Khalil than the head of Patton’s G-2 could discover in a year.
They moved forward another hundred yards, with Jacobi leading the horse by the bridle and the string of donkeys following. Finally they came to a little grove of palm trees standing a few yards back on the right-hand side of the road. Jacobi turned toward it.
A moment later, a figure appeared out of the palm grove and came toward Jacobi. Even in the dim light, Wingate could see the man was in uniform. When he came closer, Wingate recognized the dress and insignia of a captain in the American military police. Either they had walked into a trap or Jacobi had betrayed them. Wingate reached for the Browning. It was halfway out of his waistband when Jacobi snapped, “No! For God’s sake!” It was the first time that Wingate had heard the quality of command in Jacobi’s voice. For a second he hesitated.
After that, it was too late. Other Americans appeared around Wingate. All were MPs. He summed up the chances of survival if he made a run for it into the darkness. There simply weren’t any. Jacobi still had the submachine gun. He could chop Wingate up before he had covered ten yards. Wingate got ready to put up his hands.
It didn’t come to that. Jacobi began to step out of his jellaba and put on American fatigues. One of the other MPs handed a set to Wingate and put an MP’s helmet on his head. Gradually Wingate began to piece the thing together. These guys weren’t Americans at all. That’s what Jacobi had meant when he had talked about having the right contacts in Casablanca and being prepared to pay to use them. Jacobi had hired these men. He had gotten hold of the uniforms either through the black market or through some corrupt quartermaster back in “Stores.”
As Wingate dropped the jellaba and pulled on the fatigues, the others were already unloading the animals and beginning to carry the boxes toward the hotel.
What Wingate couldn’t figure was why American uniforms? Why not disguise these men as French or simply as porters? Then he realized that Jacobi was way ahead of him when it came to being devious. Porters could have been Arab nationalists—members of the Berber Liberation Movement. And no one could tell a Frenchman’s allegiance just by looking at him. He could be a Free French fanatic with a wife in some Nazi labor camp, prepared to sacrifice his life for a crack at Himmler. No, Jacobi was smart all right. The only guys you could trust in North Africa right now were those in American uniform.
There was a guard at the main entrance gates to the hotel. He waved them to a halt. One of Jacobi’s men stepped forward with a sheaf of official-looking papers. It was the guy in the captain’s uniform and his Ivy League accent couldn’t be faulted. A moment later, the guard stepped aside and saluted.
“Come on, you guys!” snapped the captain, leading the way up the driveway toward the hotel.
They didn’t go into the hotel. The captain led the way from the driveway around the side of the hotel and down a paved slope to the garage. The double doors were already unlocked, and Wingate’s admiration for Jacobi’s organizational ability increased with every step they took.
The captain closed the doors behind them and dropped the military pretense at once. He snapped in Arabic, then turned and ran through the back of the garage and into a maze of little passageways and cellars. The place was dimly lit by occasional uncovered electric bulbs and Wingate could make out shelves full of canned goods and racks of wine. But what interested him more was the guy immediately ahead of him. He was beginning to struggle with the weight of the box he was carrying. It was the one containing the blasting caps. Mercury fulminate had a nasty habit of exploding if it wasn’t treated kindly. The man had only to drop the box to detonate it. And one explosion like that in this confined space would sure as hell detonate all the main charges.
The captain finally stopped in a low-ceilinged square room that was used for storage. The shelves along the walls were lined with cardboard boxes. One long shelf was empty and he signaled his men to put their cases of explosives there.
No one spoke. The other men stood quietly with their arms folded or leaned against some of the shelves. They didn’t strike Wingate as being in on the thing at all. If they had known what they had been handling, they would be showing some tension and they weren’t.
The captain handed a sheet of paper to Jacobi and Jacobi came over to Wingate. It was a plan of a room with tables and chairs marked in detail. It showed the position of two windows and a couple of doors facing one another. Clipped to the sheet of paper was a photograph. It showed the same room taken with a wide-angle lens, apparently through one of the windows.
“This where they’re meeting?” Wingate asked, tapping the two documents.
Jacobi nodded, then put a finger to his lips. He went over to the captain, but he didn’t speak to him. He took a thick wad of bank notes out of his back pocket and handed it to the man.
The man nodded his thanks, then turned and led his men out of the room. His part in the process was completed. He had gotten the money he had been promised. He looked more than satisfied.
When Wingate and Jacobi were alone, Jacobi said quietly, “The fewer people who know about this, the better, Mr. Legrand.” Then going back to Wingate’s question, he added, “Yes. That’s where the meeting is to be held.”
Wingate looked at the plan. The room measured twenty feet by eighteen. Information in the margin showed that it was twelve feet high. Wingate made the necessary calculation—the capacity was 4,320 cubic feet. He had more than enough material to take a building ten times that size apart.
He asked, “What are the walls made of?” He was figuring the minimum charge that he was going to need. The construction of the walls would affect how well the explosion was going to be contained.
“Brick,” said Jacobi.
“Fine,” said Wingate. “What about the floor and the ceiling?”
“Planking over joists,” Jacobi replied. “The ceiling—lath and plaster over joists, then of course the floor above.”
The little guy had done his homework. “Where exactly is this room?” Wingate asked. He was looking at the photograph, working out the best places to lay the charges and hide the wiring.
Jacobi lifted his eyes and pointed to the ceiling over their heads.
“You mean here? Right above us?”
Jacobi nodded.
“Well, Jesus Christ!” Wingate breathed. “There’s no problem. Here I’ve been figuring out how little of the stuff we needed to carry upstairs with us. I don’t have to do that anymore. We’ll use it all—every goddamn block. We’ll place it in this room and run the wires out through the air vent. We’ll blow the whole shebang off the face of the earth!”
Jacobi had thought of everything. When it came to placing the explosives, Wingate found that half the cardboard boxes lining the shelves were fake. They were empty and the bottoms had been cut out of them. All Wingate had to do was pick one of them up, put a case of explosives on the shelf, insert the blasting cap and attach the single leading wire in series, then hide the whole thing under the cardboard box.
It took the two of them forty minutes to place the charges and connect the leading wire to Wingate’s satisfaction. He checked the circuitry with a little pocket galvanometer, then pushed the wire up through an air vent in one of the outside walls.
“I think we should be going, Mr. Legrand,” said Jacobi, at last. It was the first time during the whole procedure that he had shown any sign of nervousness.
“We’re finished,” said Wingate, anchoring the wire into the air vent with a strip of electrician’s tape so that it didn’t slip out of the vent before he got hold of it outside.
They got back into the garage and from there into the garden. The whole place was blacked out. There was no problem that anyone might see them. All they had to do was keep quiet and make sure that they didn’t run into a sentry.
Around the back of the building, Wingate got on his hands and knees and groped along the bottom of the wall until he found the leading wire. From there it was simple to run it through the thick shrubbery that surrounded the building, and over the low wall to the open ground beyond. He finally secured it with a couple of turns around the base of a palm tree. When the time came to connect the Hell Box, it would be easy enough to find.
Jacobi said, “I think we should take the cliff track back. It would be very tiring to run into another band of robbers.”
Wingate led the way, with Jacobi a few steps behind him. Ahead of them, the first pale blush of dawn rose up in the east beyond the towers and minarets of the city. Wingate let himself breathe easily. For the first time in days he began to feel relaxed. He had done everything that Patton had asked him to. It was now just a question of reporting back to Erikson. To his left, he could hear the sea breaking angrily over the rocks at the base of the cliff. How high were they, he wondered? Forty—fifty feet above the water?
They came to a little dip in the track. Jacobi gave a quick flash of the light he was carrying, and the beam showed the track dropping down ten feet to the very edge of the cliff before climbing away again.
Wingate took the track downward, steadying himself occasionally by grabbing hold of the little line of low scrub bushes to the right of him. As he reached the bottom of the drop and prepared to climb upward again, Jacobi said softly, “I shall need the blasting machine from your pocket, Mr. Wingate.”
It was the use of the name “Wingate” that brought Wingate up short, more than the reference to the Hell Box. All this time Jacobi had kept up the pretense of believing that Wingate was Legrand, yet all the time he had known the truth.
Wingate stopped and turned slowly. His position at the very edge of the narrow track was too precarious for any quick movement. In the pale morning light he saw that Jacobi was covering him with the Erma. They were four feet apart. It didn’t leave much room for evasive action.
“You called me Wingate,” said Wingate. “What happened to Legrand?”
“Oh, Legrand is all right, Mr. Wingate,” said Jacobi. “You need have no anxiety on that score. And now, please, the blasting machine.”
“Just who the fuck are you?” snapped Wingate. As he spoke, his head raced for some way of escape. There was none that he could see. There wasn’t a chance in hell of beating those 9 mm slugs, once Jacobi squeezed the trigger.
“Hauptsturmführer Heinrich Jacobi,” said Jacobi, a little smile on his face. “Waffen SS. And now—the blasting machine.”
“And you’re going to blow up Himmler?” Wingate asked, still trying to play for time.
Jacobi shrugged. “Well,” he admitted, “I had to lie to you there. It was naughty of me.”
“Then who, for Christ’s sake?” Wingate cried.
“The machine,” said Jacobi. There was a snap in his voice now. Moving closer, he jabbed Wingate in the belly with the muzzle of the gun.
Wingate put his hand reluctantly in his pocket and took out the little Hell Box. He handed it to Jacobi with his right hand. Jacobi put out his left hand to take it. As his fingers began to close around the twist grip, Wingate rammed the box against the short barrel of the Erma, throwing it momentarily off target. Jacobi fired. At the same moment, Wingate flung himself to his right. He went over the edge of the cliff and felt himself falling toward the crashing waves and rocks beneath.
Nine
Wingate continued to fall. He spread-eagled himself in the hope that somewhere down that cliff face there would be scrub that he might get entangled in, or a ledge that would break his fall. There was nothing. He fell thirty feet without touching a thing. All the time he could hear Jacobi firing short bursts from the submachine gun in his general direction. Finally, scrub caught him by the ass and plucked at his loose fatigue dress. His helmet was knocked off and clattered among the rocks below. He rolled from the impact with the scrub, struck the cliff face with his back and slid the last ten feet headfirst into the waves.
He let himself relax. There was no point in surfacing too quickly. Jacobi would want to know that he was dead before moving away. Wingate could feel his head spinning from some blow he had taken on the way down to the water, and the saltwater seared his leg. The long burn wound he had taken from the Vickers back near the Berber encampment was still giving him trouble.
He turned underwater toward the base of the cliff. He figured that he was going to be difficult to see from above amid the white water of the breaking surf. The water was like ice. He had to get out soon and he had to start moving to keep from freezing to death. But he couldn’t rush things. The first priority was to convince Jacobi that he was dead.
High above, Jacobi was shining the flashlight down the face of the cliff, examining every jutting rock and every growth of scrub. Wingate felt a temptation to pull the Browning out of his waistband and fire at the light, but he resisted it. He let himself drift under the lee of the cliff where the light couldn’t reach. There he dragged himself ashore and wrung the surplus water out of his clothes, then turned toward the city.
For some time, the cliff dropped nearly sheer into the sea so that Wingate found himself partly in the water. His head ached from the blow he had gotten during his fall, but it didn’t seriously concern him. So long as he was conscious, he couldn’t have done too much damage to himself. His left leg concerned him more. It ached badly. Either the burn scar had festered without his realizing it, or he had come up with some new injury to it during the fall.
The cliff to his right began to flatten. In another quarter-mile he was able to make his way up it and peer over the top. The sky was rose-colored and clear. Ahead, the first rays of the sun were glinting from the dome of the Sidi Allah Karouani Mosque in the old medina.
There was no sign of Jacobi. By now he must be back in the city. A string of camels was moving northwestward into Casablanca along the coast road, carrying supplies to the marketplace.
Wingate couldn’t decide whether the American fatigues he had been wearing since they had gone into the Hotel Anfa were an advantage or a hindrance. He figured they were going to be a hindrance in the long run. There were more Arabs than Americans in North Africa. The sooner he ditched his present clothes and got back into a jellaba and head cloth the better.
