Mac wingate 2, p.18
Mac Wingate 2, page 18
The gun crew was having difficulty with the breech, and one of the men had already mangled a finger. Mehmad was just as puzzled as they were. Wingate showed him how to punch the shell in with his fist and then demonstrated to the others how to slam and lock the breech securely.
Then he hurried on, pleased to see that most of the other teams manning the antitank weapons were causing some real havoc on the road below as the German tanks, led by the Bergepanther, tried to batter their way through the disabled tanks that still blocked the road. Nevertheless, the answering fire from the Panzers was having its effect on the partisans. More than half of their cannons were now out of service.
By this time, Wingate was slipping and sliding his way down the slope toward the spot where he had tamped in his cluster of explosives. When he reached the place, he glanced back in time to see that the Germans had sent up two more star shells. The slopes on both sides of the road were once again as bright as day. In the garish, unnatural light, Wingate saw a dark swarm of SS troopers crawling up the slopes.
With a renewed sense of urgency, he dug into the soft dirt for the safety fuse he had already attached to the main charge. Pulling it free, he took out his pocketknife. He was busy slitting the end of the fuse to expose the powder train when he heard a sound behind him. Someone was approaching from the slope above.
He turned to see a distraught Viktoria Machek. She was in terrible condition: a fearsome gash had laid open her left cheek. In the dim moonlight Wingate could see pieces of shiny white cheekbone poking through. In that instant, Wingate recalled Annie Mitchurn’s warning about her, that she was not what she seemed, that she was most likely a Communist agent.
As she stumbled down the slope toward Wingate, she reached out to him for help. He hurried to her side, and in total exhaustion she fell against him for support. Gently, he eased her to a sitting position on the ground.
“What are you doing here, Viktoria?” he asked urgently. “What happened to you?”
“That pig! Zogu! I’ve come to warn you!”
“Did he do this to you?”
“No, not him! He’s too busy kissing Italian ass! He sent his dogs after me, but I got away—to warn you!”
“Out with it, Viktoria! What are you warning me about?
“The Italian Army is going to surrender as soon as the Allies attack! Already Badoglio is sending out feelers to the Allies. They will arrest Mussolini!”
“What’s this got to do with Zogu?”
“He’s gone over—to the Italians! He’s made a deal with the Italian commander of the garrison. He’s joined the commander against the Germans—and Korabe’s partisans! He thinks he will rule Albania after the war, with the Italians’ blessing.” She paused and looked bleakly at Wingate. “Like his uncle, that fool, King Zog!”
Abruptly, there was a powerful blast from the road below. Wingate jumped to his feet and peered down the slopes. He almost danced with delight. One of the tank mines had gone off, completely disabling a Mark IV. Even as he watched, the tank blew up, sending flaming shards of burning metal in all directions. The sound of screaming Germans carried faintly to where he stood.
Behind the burning tank, the rest of the German armor came to a halt. At that moment three German star shells burst over the scene. In the sudden light Wingate was able to see for some distance along the road behind the stalled tanks. What he saw heartened him. Korabe’s partisans were counterattacking, swarming down the slopes and onto the road, attacking the German support troops in what looked like particularly fierce hand-to-hand fighting.
“Viktoria,” he said sharply, “stay where you are! I’ve got to light this fuse!”
“Light it,” she said bitterly. “For all the good it will do!” Wingate ignored her comment and hurried back to where he had left the exposed fuse. He took out his lighter and touched the flame to the exposed powder. It spluttered, then caught. He jumped back, watched it for a moment, then glanced up at the enormous rock spur leaning far out over the road. If that came down, he realized, it would take half the mountain with it, sealing off the road, trapping the Germans.
Then Korabe could finish what he and his men had just begun.
He turned back to Viktoria, and as the star shells faded abruptly in the night sky, led her hurriedly back up the slope. As soon as they reached level ground, they began to run. They were still running when the slope behind him erupted. The force of the blast sent both him and Viktoria stumbling violently forward. Unable to keep their feet, they were flung to the ground. Wingate hit so hard that his breath was momentarily knocked out of him.
And then the debris began to fall. He reached out and pulled Viktoria toward him. Barely conscious, she groaned as he covered her body with his, protecting the back of his head with both hands. Boulders bounced to earth frighteningly close, splattering them with loose dirt. He spat the grit from his mouth. Then came the smaller rocks, one of them glancing painfully off his left shoulder. He swore. He had certainly misjudged that fuse. He should have cut a much longer piece. At last, a prolonged shower of gravel and fine dirt signaled the end of their ordeal.
Wingate got to his feet and peered back at the mountain and the road below. The projecting rock face was gone, as was half the mountainside. Fresh, raw earth had spilled down across the road and halfway up the far slope—the sharp, sheer sides of the cut gleaming cleanly in the moonlight. One armored car had been buried completely under the slide, along with the hood of another. Wingate saw Germans frantically digging at the slide in an effort to free the armored car—and perhaps save their comrades trapped in the other one.
As if in celebration of Wingate’s landslide, Mehmad’s remaining antitank guns began firing on the stalled tanks below. Even though the tanks answered with their own devastating salvos, the antitank guns fought on. Then, as Wingate watched, another land mine went off under a troop carrier. The carnage was awesome.
He turned and looked down at Viktoria. She was still groggy, shaking her head to clear it. “We’d better get out of here,” Wingate said, shifting his submachine gun to his left hand and helping Viktoria to her feet. “If what you say is true, Korabe has more to worry about than those Germans down there.”
“What I say is true!” Viktoria insisted. “We must warn Korabe!”
“How long have you suspected Ahmad?” Wingate asked as the two of them hurried toward the line of trees above them.
“For some time,” she replied bitterly. “I wasn’t sure, but I felt this was why he sent for you. He needed to gain Allied support for destroying Communist partisans,” She smiled with some admiration at Wingate. “You do not please him, Captain. For soon he knew he could not count on you to join him in a betrayal of Korabe and his partisans.”
They had almost reached the tree line when out of the impenetrable shadows ahead of them two men stepped—Ahmad Zogu’s men. Viktoria gasped. These two were obviously the men she had only recently escaped. One of them was Draja, the other Wingate’s recent nemesis—Iliya Gregovitch.
Gregovitch’s eyes fairly glowed with venom as he fastened them on Wingate. His craggy face broke into a bleak smile. “We find you with this traitor bitch!” he hissed. “It is as Zogu says—you are both Communists!”
Both men were pointing their German submachine guns at Wingate.
Wingate looked at Draja. “That is not true, Draja,” he told the man. “You know me. You know I am not a Communist.”
The old guerrilla shrugged. “Burn the ticking, it is said—to rid it of lice, especially Communist lice.” As he finished this mean little speech, he glanced venomously at Viktoria.
It was clear to Wingate that during the time Viktoria sat at Zogu’s right hand and functioned as his woman, she had gained the implacable hatred of his followers. These two standing before them now were obviously relishing the task Ahmad Zogu had set for them.
“How will you explain my death to the Allies?” Wingate demanded.
Gregovitch smiled. “The Germans.”
“The machine gun,” said Draja to Wingate. “Put it down now, Captain.”
Wingate leaned forward, as if he were about to comply with Draja’s demand; but instead, he flung himself to the ground, rolled over in a direction that took him away from Viktoria. It was a desperate ploy and he had not expected to survive it, but to his astonishment, Draja and Gregovitch were crumbling even before he brought up his own weapon. Someone standing in the protective darkness of the trees had already opened fire on the two guerrillas.
But even as they went down, Gregovitch managed one short, vicious burst at Viktoria, catching her in the midsection. She uttered a tiny cry of shock and sagged grimly to her knees. By then Wingate was on his feet, spraying the two guerrillas, expending his clip with a wild and inchoate fury. At last his gun went silent with a heavy chunk as the bolt drove home on an empty chamber. For a moment he stood where he was and stared at the torn bodies and chopped earth until the fury drained out of him.
As he hurried to Viktoria’s side, he caught a glimpse of someone standing only partially in the shadows beyond the two dead guerrillas. The small figure was familiar, as was the enormous Beretta he carried in his tiny hands.
“Peter!” Wingate cried.
“I am sorry about your Italian comrade, Captain,” the boy called in his high, thin voice. “The man Sergio was a good man, was he not?”
And then Peter vanished into the trees.
Viktoria was still breathing when Wingate knelt by her side.
“Captain,” she gasped. “Guerrillas ...! They attack Korabe now ... from behind ... while the partisans attack Germans ...!”
“I’ll warn Korabe,” Wingate promised.
She closed her eyes then and died—seeming to sink into the torn, bloody ground that held her.
He got to his feet, snatched up his weapon and hurried away from the tiny battlefield, anxious to find and warn Korabe. He tried not to think too hard on the incredibly twisted dialectic that had brought a beautiful graduate of the City College of New York to a martyr’s death in these dark and bloody hills of Albania.
Fourteen
A little less than an hour later, at 0430, Vaso Korabe and his lieutenants were gathered around Wingate and the corporal, bidding goodbye to the two Americanos. They had a plane to catch.
Below them in the still reverberant darkness, Korabe’s partisans were mopping up. Even now a crack force of partisans was driving back Zogu’s thrust from the north, the one Viktoria Machek had warned Wingate about. The partisans had not wiped out the SS brigade completely, Korabe admitted; but they had sure as hell thinned their ranks. The Germans’ armored cars and what tanks were left—along with their surviving support troops—had retreated through the darkness back to their garrison. The partisans had captured great stores of weapons and ammunition, and in the process they had unmasked the treachery of a would-be king.
The war was not over. But this battle was.
Ruza stepped forward and put out her hand. She had been standing beside Mehmad, waiting for this chance. Wingate took her hand and shook it.
“The Italian,” she said. “He was good man. I am sorry he is gone. You came with him. It is too bad you do not leave with him.”
Wingate could only agree to that, but he simply nodded—and made the mental note that he was damn well not going to leave anyone else behind in this place.
Korabe stepped closer. “I will trust you to get to the airstrip alone. You know it well. I will also trust you to take good care of Annie Mitchum. She is crazy, but I love her, Poet. You understand that?”
“Of course.”
“You are a poet. Good. You understand about such things. Before you leave us, Poet, tell me one thing. Do you still think this is dark and cruel land, that its people only hate each other?”
Wingate smiled bleakly, then nodded sadly. “Perhaps it will not always be so, Vaso. But now it is, I am afraid.”
“Yes. You speak the truth. But when the war is over, we Communists will bring peace and brotherhood to this dark and cruel land. You tell that to your Allied Command. Tell them we will fight for that—and for nothing else. Give us the weapons to drive the Nazis out, and we will do it!”
“I’ll tell them.”
“Good!”
Wingate said goodbye to Mehmad, nodded to those men he had worked with in laying the mines, then moved out with Corporal McCauley. The airstrip was beyond two ridges, and he had made the distance in less than half an hour before; but he was worried. As far as he was concerned, if something could go wrong, it would.
They were approaching the ridge overlooking the airstrip when the corporal cleared his throat. It had been obvious for some time to Wingate that the man had something he wanted to get off his chest.
Wingate glanced over at him. In the darkness, all he could see with any clarity was the big man’s eyes glowing in his soot-darkened face. The man’s red hair was almost coal black. It made Wingate wonder what he must look like. His eyebrows, he knew, were gone, and the skin was now peeling off his ankles.
“What is it, Corporal?” he asked.
“It’s about Sergio, sir.”
“What about him?”
“Well, him and those damn explosives, too, I guess.”
“You’re not making much sense, Corporal.”
“I know it. Could you hold up for a minute, Captain?”
“We’ve got a plane to catch. Keep moving. What’s the matter? Can’t you chew gum and walk at the same time? Out with it! What’s on your mind?”
“Those damn time fuses, Captain. They went off about fifteen minutes before they was supposed to. It wasn’t my fault, Captain. But every single goddamn one we set went off too soon!”
“I’d figured that out all by myself, Corporal. I should have been well on my way out of that supply dump when the first Lewis bombs went off—but don’t blame yourself. It wasn’t your fault. A couple of Germans had a hand in delaying my exit, too.”
“Well, that’s just it. I know it wasn’t my fault, but I was the one who thought of bringing along them bombs in the first place. So I felt sort of responsible when it went all to hell like that.”
“And ...?”
“Well, I remembered you telling us it was every man for himself if things went haywire.”
“Precisely, Corporal.”
“Well, I met Sergio after things started to blow—and when I told him about the damn fuses, he figured you’d get trapped back there. So the two of us went to the motor pool to get a car or something to get back to you. We knew we didn’t have time to make it on foot.”
“Go on.”
“But we got in a fire fight with some Germans.”
“And while you were holding off the Germans, Sergio stole a fire truck and came back after me.”
“I didn’t want you to think that ...” His voice trailed off, but Wingate knew what he meant to say.
“You didn’t want me to think that you would have left me back there—unless you had no choice. Is that it, Corporal.”
“Yes, sir. That’s it.”
“You understand, Corporal. You are telling me that you deliberately disobeyed an order from your superior officer.”
“I know, sir.”
“And that if you and Sergio had followed that order and gotten the hell out of that fool dump when you were supposed to, Sergio Cappiello would be alive now.”
“Yes. I know that, sir.”
“Do you think my life is worth Cappiello’s, Corporal?”
“I ... don’t know, Captain.”
“I know you didn’t. But do you know what, Corporal? I am going to have to ask myself that question for one hell of a long time.”
McCauley frowned. “I ... I never thought of that, Captain.”
“No, you didn’t. Anyway, Corporal, I want you to know that your performance under fire has my unreserved admiration and respect. It would never occur to me—ever—to question either your courage or your loyalty. As far as I am concerned, Corporal, that’s a given. Am I understood?”
“Yes, Captain. Thank you, sir.”
“Now, let’s get the hell down to that airstrip. It seems to me that there must be a very nervous woman and two equally nervous partisans waiting for us.”
They had gained the flat and were approaching a small patch of timber, when a small, familiar figure materialized out of the darkness before them. By this time, Wingate was quite willing to believe that Peter Flados was indeed a disembodied spirit, a kind of guardian angel—though from a far warmer region than was usual.
“Captain!” the boy hissed. “Get down!”
“What the hell are you doing here, Peter?”
“It is Ruza. She tell me to watch for you if I can. That is why I warn you: if you walk closer to airstrip now, you walk into trap.”
“Explain.”
The boy looked up at Wingate in the darkness. “Ahmad Zogu and the Italians! The Pig and the Swine, as Ruza call them.” He pointed to a spot above the airstrip and to another, just in front of a low clump of pine, below the airstrip. “Italian machine gunners wait at both places. When plane come in, they shoot. You, they capture first, I bet.”
“Annie Mitchum. Is she all right?”
“They have her. She sits by the radio, a bandage around her mouth. And beside her are two silent partisans. Dead men. Like the woman of Korabe, they wait for you.”
Wingate looked at the corporal. “That makes sense. They’ll need me to talk that plane down. And they’ll want it down, so they can destroy it. Ahmad Zogu can’t afford to let me get back to Allied Headquarters, and he can’t afford to let anyone else return with an account of what might have happened to me.”
“What are you going to do, Captain?” McCauley asked.
“Walk into their trap.”
“Like hell you are, sir.”
“Well, maybe not right away.” Wingate glanced at his watch. The plane was not due for at least another thirty minutes. He looked at McCauley. “How many of those famous Lewis bombs you got left in that rig, Corporal?”
