Mac wingate 3, p.4
Mac Wingate 3, page 4
“Would Cairo do?” asked Holloway.
“Nicely.”
“Well, then,” Holloway said, “you can consider it done—a two-week leave in Cairo for you and your men, just as soon as you finish this other little job we have for you.”
Wingate chuckled softly. He knew that request for a leave would flush them out. “Little job?”
“Let me tell him,” said Erikson. “This is a Twenty Committee assignment. If he accepts it, he is no longer under your jurisdiction, Holloway.”
Holloway shrugged. “All right. You tell him.”
Erikson smiled somewhat bleakly at Wingate. “Wingate,” he began, “you mentioned earlier something about invading Greece.”
Wingate tipped his head and studied Erikson’s face carefully. “You mean, that’s what you had in mind? An attack on Greece?”
“Relax, Captain. It wasn’t Greece we had in mind.”
“It wasn’t?”
“No. It was Crete.”
“Oh, well, of course. That’s a different matter entirely. Nothing to that.”
For just a moment Wingate caught a glint of amusement in the Norwegian’s eyes. “What we need is an operation ambitious enough to convince the Germans that a thrust through the Aegean Sea to Greece is still a very good possibility.”
“I might need more men,” said Wingate. “At least a couple.”
Wingate’s sarcasm was not lost on the intent Erikson, but he chose to ignore it. “I am getting to that, Wingate. There is a large force of British soldiers still hiding in the mountains of Crete. We were unable to evacuate them when the Germans invaded the island. An airdrop will arm them and give you all the supplies you need to attack the airfield at Iraklion.”
“I see. Is that all?”
“No. That is not all, Captain. It is essential you destroy as many enemy aircraft as possible; but even more important are the new Nazi U-boat pens under construction at Kastelli. They must be taken out as well. I suggest you plan this while the pens are servicing as many German U-boats as possible.”
“Sure thing, Colonel. No trick to that. Will there be anything else?”
“Just one more thing. The climax of your mission will be to attack the naval base at Suda Bay. You must destroy as much of it as possible. Then one of our ships will bombard the base from sea, to finish off the job. But to assure the safety of our ship, you must also take out the nearby air base at Rethymnon.” The colonel paused, then added, “I think that’s it. Unless you have something else you’d like to try.”
Resignedly, Wingate shook his head. “No, Colonel. What you’ve outlined is quite enough this trip.”
“I take it you have accepted the assignment, Captain?”
“It’s a damn tall order, Colonel,” said Wingate, serious now.
“We know that, Wingate. That was why Commander Montagu asked for you specifically. The stakes are high, but I can’t think of a man to whom I would rather entrust this mission.”
A moment before, Erikson had mentioned the Twenty Committee, and now he spoke of Commander Montagu. Wingate could not help but be impressed. Montagu was high in British Naval Intelligence, and the Twenty Committee, though part of M.I.5., had the final word over all the British Intelligence branches, including the Foreign Office and GHQ.
“Thank you, sir,” said Wingate.
“Not at all. Will you take the mission?”
“Has it got a code name?”
“Minotaur.”
Wingate smiled wryly. “Appropriate enough, I guess. I’ll take the mission, Colonel. But I won’t speak for my men. As I said, they’ve been through a tough one already.”
“Of course. We’ll see what they say.”
“When’s the briefing?”
“Tomorrow. But we brought you out here to meet the two men who will accompany your team.”
“Where are they?”
Colonel Gray was the one who turned, took out a small pocket flashlight and signaled to someone in the ruins. In a moment two men, one considerably smaller than the other, came toward them out of the shadows.
“The smaller one,” said Colonel Gray softly to Wingate, “calls himself Costi. He is a tough one, born and bred on Crete. He speaks Greek and English fluently. Just as important, he knows the island. You should find him quite useful.”
“And the other one?”
“Alexis Ladas. Educated in London, he is loyal to Greek’s King, George II. Alexis will serve as liaison between you and those Cretans friendly to our interests.”
“You mean those Cretans who are not loyal to the Communists, but to their king, instead.”
“Precisely, Wingate,” said Holloway. “I see you learned your lesson well in Albania.”
“Yes, Colonel. The little fellow is more than likely a Communist. You don’t entirely trust him, but you feel he may prove useful as a liaison with those Communist guerrillas on Crete who are antiroyalist.”
The three men smiled cautiously at Wingate and nodded.
“I don’t like it. I’d prefer this to be a simple military expedition, with as little politics as possible.”
Holloway smiled, almost sadly. “Now, Wingate. You know better than that. It would be lovely if we could delouse war in that fashion. But I am afraid we cannot separate politics and war. Certainly not in this case.”
Wingate could not argue the truth of that. He sighed and waited with the others as the two men advanced through the night toward them. When they got close enough for Wingate to make out their faces in the moonlight, he saw that the one called Costi was a dark, squat, tough-looking fellow, his fierce eyes gleaming as he pulled to a halt almost defiantly in front of them. Standing there, he looked as stolid and inflexible as a railroad spike set in concrete.
His companion, Alexis Ladas, was quite a contrast. Tall, fair-skinned, with light hair and eyes that were afire with excitement at the moment, he stood before them with a slight, almost eager smile on his well-tanned face. He was wearing a tan short-sleeved shirt and khaki shorts. On his feet were tan sneakers. He had not been long from the Cairo tennis courts, Wingate realized, and he was not impressed.
“Gentlemen,” said Holloway, “meet Captain Wingate. He will be in charge of this expedition, and you, of course, will take orders from him.”
Neither man saluted, though it was obvious both of them were somewhat confused as to whether or not they should. Instead they nodded quickly. Alexis smiled, his teeth flashing in the darkness. Wingate found it disarming, despite himself. Costi did not smile, but a measure of his iron belligerence seemed to melt under Wingate’s steady appraisal.
Colonel Gray waved to someone in the darkness. A small Humber pulled out of the shadows and stopped alongside the two men. They got in. Colonel Gray climbed in beside the driver and waved goodbye to Wingate, a smile on his owlish face. The car disappeared among the pines below. As it did, the black Chrysler pulled up alongside Wingate and the others; a moment later they left the pines and swung onto the narrow coastal highway and were soon hurtling toward Izmir.
Holloway was sitting beside Wingate in the back seat. “Don’t sell Alexis Ladas short, Wingate,” the colonel told him. “He looks like a playboy, but he’s tough.”
“I find that hard to believe, Colonel.”
“You’ll see.”
Wingate shrugged and glanced away from Holloway and out the side window at the curved expanse of the Mediterranean—a black, vacant eyeball staring up at the moonlit sky, oblivious to puny man’s foolishness.
Four
This time the submarine left them within sight of the correct cove, the one they had settled on at the briefing.
As the men paddled the two life rafts through the building surf, the island of Crete shouldered into the black sky with all the intimidating solidity of a continent. Glancing about him, Wingate recognized the contours of the rocky headlands looming around them. Costi had selected this particular cove, and his description of it had been accurate enough to give not only Wingate, but the sub’s skipper as well, a clear picture of the coastline where they were to be put ashore. So far, then, Costi had worked out well.
Wingate looked behind him at the second life raft. Sweeney and the three privates were in this one. Like Wingate and the three men in his boat, all four were laden with explosives, carried in boxes strapped to their backs. Yet they paddled steadily, without fatigue, and they were keeping close, as Wingate had directed.
Paddling beside Wingate was Sergeant McCauley, and behind them sat Costi and the royalist, Alexis. Both men were dressed—like Wingate and the others—in full battle uniform. All of the men carried Stens and were encumbered with bandoliers bulging with extra clips looped over their shoulders.
But Wingate was hoping he would not have to expend any clips this evening. He wanted a quiet landing and a quiet march through the protective darkness to the village of Richea, where he hoped to discover the exact location of that British guerrilla force.
The surf began to swell under their raft. Wingate shipped his oar and leaped into the water. Costi joined him. Ladas stepped into the water after them with McCauley, and all four dragged the raft through the surf toward the beach. Behind them, the other raft had not yet reached the surf.
Their sodden boots were just digging into the hard-packed sand when Costi swore and ducked low. The rest followed Costi’s example.
“What the hell’s wrong?” growled McCauley. The swells were breaking over his big shoulders and he looked very unhappy.
“In the rocks,” Costi replied. “Someone is there. Maybe two, maybe three. I don’t know for sure.”
“Germans?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then keep going,” said Wingate sharply, “until we find out.” Wingate straightened up and they resumed dragging the life raft onto the beach.
Soon they were in under the high ridge that encircled the beach. Wingate turned and waved Sweeney and his men closer. They leaped from their life raft and began to drag it through the surf toward them.
As Sweeney and his men got closer, Wingate said, “Give them a hand, Sergeant.”
But before McCauley could move, Costi’s sharp cry alerted him. The men all turned and saw Costi pointing to the rocks further in under the bluff. Four men were standing on the beach close to the rocks, watching them. Each one carried a weapon, but from their dress it was obvious they were not Germans. Costi waved to them, and at once the four men broke eagerly toward them.
“Fishermen,” Costi said, relieved.
“Well-armed fishermen,” Alexis noted cautiously.
Costi stepped forward to greet them personally in Greek, Alexis at his side. McCauley waited beside Wingate, fingering his Sten nervously.
Costi and Alexis left the fishermen and returned to Wingate. “They say we are first soldiers they see from unoccupied world. They ask if we have coffee. They have not tasted any since the war began.”
“They call us liberators,” said Alexis ironically. “All eight of us.”
“Did you set them straight?” Wingate asked. “We don’t have any coffee and we’re not liberators. Not quite.”
“Costi set them straight,” Alexis acknowledged, a slight smile on his handsome face.
“They will take us to Richea,” Costi said.
Alexis turned to face Costi. “Are they ELAS, do you think?”
Costi shrugged. “How do I know? They fight Germans. I do not ask their politics.”
“The ELAS are Communists,” Alexis said, looking at Wingate. “If these men are ELAS, I would not trust them.”
“What do you say, Costi?”
“I say we trust them.” His white teeth gleamed brilliantly in the darkness. “We trust them very carefully.”
By that time, without McCauley’s help, Sweeney and his men had negotiated the surf and were now dragging their life raft across the beach toward them. With a cry the four fishermen burst past Wingate and the others, and with flashing smiles, took the life raft from Sweeney and his men. Lifting it easily among them, they trotted with it into a narrow draw further in among the rocks. Wingate and McCauley dragged their own raft in after them. As soon as both boats were well hidden, one of the fishermen darted down the beach and returned soon after with a handful of fish nets, which he and the others dropped over the rafts. It was a rough but effective job of camouflage.
With the four fishermen in the lead, Wingate and the rest of his party clambered up the rocks to a narrow, well-beaten path. Costi had assured Wingate earlier that they would find such a path above the cove. Its appearance now served to impress upon Wingate once again Costi’s reliability. Hell, this operation might just go according to plan, he told himself, if they could establish contact with that British force without too much delay. It was led by a Captain Clive Smith, and since they had a radio, Smith had been informed by Cairo’s Middle East Headquarters that Wingate and his small force was on its way. Evidently these four Cretan fishermen had been sent by Smith to meet them.
He could not be certain of that, however.
“Costi,” Wingate called softly, “did these fishermen tell you why they were waiting for us?”
“They say the ELAS tell them.”
Wingate nodded. That was possible. Clive Smith was undoubtedly in touch with the ELAS guerilla leader.
Sweeney’s voice broke into Wingate’s thoughts.
“Looks like we’re doin’ fine, Captain,” he said.
“So far,” agreed Wingate. “But I sure as hell don’t want to hear you tell me it’s going to be another piece of cake.”
The corporal winced. “No fear of that, Captain.”
“Costi,” Wingate called, “I think we better stop up ahead. I want to talk to these men, find out for sure how much they know and how they came to know it.”
“An excellent idea,” said Alexis.
“I’ll tell them,” said Costi.
But Costi never got the chance to tell them anything. The moment he began to trot ahead to overtake the leader, all four fishermen leaped from the path and began to flee across a rock-strewn pasture.
“Take cover!” cried Wingate, as he ducked down behind a rock wall. Cursing bitterly to himself, Wingate watched the Cretan fishermen run across the dark pasture.
Abruptly, the ripping snarl of a German machine gun shattered the silence of the night. The German fire was coming from an outcropping of rocks just ahead of them, and as Wingate and the others watched, the fleeing fishermen were cut down to a man. One of them tried to crawl to cover behind a large boulder, but a second burst riddled him. The man’s torn body leaped for a moment, then vanished in the darkness.
“Those sons of bitches, Captain,” said McCauley. “They set us up, and now the krauts are paying them off.”
“It’s my fault,” said Wingate. “I should have been more curious when I saw them waiting for us on the beach.”
Sweeney dropped hastily beside Wingate. “Captain, Costi and that other fellow are gone!”
Before Wingate could absorb this, the machine gun directed its fire down upon the wall. The slugs raked back and forth along its length. The Germans knew Wingate and his men had taken cover behind the wall, but were uncertain as to just where they might be. The night exploded with the whine of ricocheting bullets. Clods of dirt and rock shards filled the air. For a full five minutes, Wingate estimated, the machine gun’s deadly hail swept the wall, searching them out.
Then, above the awesome clamor, Wingate heard one of Sweeney’s men swear vehemently. He had been hit. Sweeney crawled back along the wall to check him out.
The machine gun let up. There was a moment of eerie silence, broken when a German voice shouted, “Amerikaner! Aufgeben!”
“What the hell’s he want, Captain?” asked McCauley.
“For us to give up.”
McCauley lifted his head above the wall. “Suck on this, you lousy kraut!”
“Damn it, Sergeant,” snapped Wingate. “Now they know exactly where we are!”
Just as Wingate spoke, the machine gun resumed its murderous clamor. German small arms fire joined the deadly assault. As the rounds splashed against the wall in front of them, Wingate glanced behind him. He saw nothing but a path through an open field. One step in that direction and they would be cut to mincemeat. The bluff was on his right; there was an open field on his left. Wingate glanced back at the uneven outline of the bluff and made his decision.
“Sergeant,” he said, “tell Sweeney to keep his and his men’s butts down. Then I want you to follow me.”
A moment later McCauley tapped the captain on his shoulder. “Ready, Captain.”
Wingate crawled back to the path, took a deep breath and, with his belly hugging the ground, inched his way out from behind the wall and across the path. He kept going until he reached the bluff, then took cover in the uneven ground along its edge. McCauley had stayed with him and so far they had escaped detection. The German machine gunner was still ripping at the wall.
“Let’s go, Sergeant. Right for those rocks. And keep your butt down, too.”
Wingate kept to the edge of the bluff, occasionally using the rocks along its edge for cover. The relentless hammering of the machine gun grew louder until it seemed they were almost directly under the German position.
Wingate lifted his head cautiously, then stopped crawling. They had reached the foot of the rock outcropping.
“Which way now, Captain?”
“Straight up. But first it might be a good idea to drop a few grenades on them.”
Wingate got to his feet and flattened himself against one of the rocks. He glanced up. Muzzle flashes played upon the black rocks above him like heat lightning, and the roar of the gunfire was deafening. He slipped a fragmentation grenade from his belt.
At that moment the machine gun’s clatter went silent. The accompanying stutter of machine pistols also ceased. Wingate frowned. Had the krauts given up on them? Or had they decided to leave their cover and try a flanking operation of their own?
This last seemed more likely; and as if to confirm his hunch, Wingate heard the faint click of boots on stone coming from above them.
