Mac wingate 7, p.5
Mac Wingate 7, page 5
Wingate grabbed a handful of damp earth, kneaded it into a ball, and lobbed it toward the truck. It struck the metal siding with a dull clang. Immediately, the silence was shattered by a burst of automatic fire, and a shadowy figure moved from the cover of the car and dropped down on the grass ten yards from Wingate. This was the gunman from the car, Wingate figured. The other guy was probably still in the truck.
Manganaro had slid up to join him. He nodded when Wingate indicated the position of the gunman and began to ease his way along the ditch to his left. He impressed Wingate. Considering his size and bulk, he moved as easily and silently as a panther. In the half minute they had been lying together in the ditch they had established an understanding. Each of them knew what was required. Each knew the part he had to play. Wingate wondered how long Manganaro had been a navigator. What had the guy done before, that had given him that sixth sense, essential for close combat?
Ten seconds ticked away. Wingate pulled the knife from his boot and held it point upward beside him. There was a rustling in the grass to his left and an immediate burst of gunfire. There was a sharp bellow of pain, then silence. The gunman slid toward the ditch and stopped a couple of yards from Wingate.
Wingate waited, desperately controlling his breath. His heart thumped against the earth. Any moment the guy would spot him. He was too close not to, but not quite close enough for Wingate to grab him before he fired again.
There was no sign of Manganaro. How badly had he been hit? Wingate could picture him lying in the mud less than ten yards away, his head split open by that burst of gunfire. There was nothing he could do about it. He was on his own.
The gunman lay prone for more than twenty seconds, then very slowly he began to move. He slid forward, hesitated, then slid again. He was moving along the top of the ditch toward Manganaro. Each move took him further from Wingate, but it brought him into a position finally where his back was to Wingate.
Wingate edged along the ditch trying to keep pace with the gunman’s advance, yet not daring to breathe. If he was discovered at this range, that damned automatic would cut him in two. The man crawled to within six feet of Manganaro’s position, then stopped. The time had come, Wingate thought, sliding his knife arm forward and hooking the elbow over the edge of the ditch. The guy would have all his concentration locked on Manganaro. There would never be a better opportunity.
The distance between Wingate and the gunman was four yards. Wingate had to get out of the ditch and cover that distance before the guy could twist around and fire. It was too risky to be done in one jump. Gradually, checking every inch, he put up his left hand, dug his fingers into the soft earth, and dragged himself upward. His right elbow bit into the ground and he pulled himself onto the lip of the ditch. A moment later and he was clear.
He got to his knees and flung himself the final few feet. The gunman started to turn. He fired a premature burst from the rifle that went over Wingate’s head. But he was too late. Wingate landed on his chest, knocking the air out of his body. A second later, Wingate had thrust the whole length of the knife blade into the gunman’s throat. The man gave a wild, voiceless sob that bubbled into silence, stiffened, and finally relaxed. The gun fell out of his hands on to the damp grass.
Wingate withdrew the blade and wiped it on the guy’s overcoat. Finally, he slid off the body, picked up the automatic, and groped his way back to the ditch. There was still the guy in the truck to take care of.
He was a couple of feet from the ditch, when a voice growled, “You all right, Wingate?”
It was Hazlitt. He was somewhere in the ditch below Wingate. Wingate said, “I’m OK. But Brad’s been hit. I figure it’s bad.”
“Can it,” Manganaro whispered, voice hoarse in the night air. “Don’t you recognize great acting?”
“You bastard,” Wingate breathed.
“I fooled him,” said Manganaro, moving back along the ditch toward Hazlitt.
“You fooled me,” said Wingate, dropping down to join them.
“Cowan’s on the other side of the truck,” Hazlitt said quietly. “He’s bruised, but nothing serious. Give me the gun. I’ll pick up the other bastard.”
“He’s mine,” said Wingate. He was mad as hell at the way they had been hijacked. He was beginning to ache from the way he’d gone through the windshield.
Hazlitt said, “I’ll stick to flying, if that’s how you want it.” He turned and began to edge his way back along the ditch toward the truck.
Wingate followed. When they reached the truck, he whispered, “Give me fifteen seconds, then do what you like.”
He slid out of the ditch and worked his way along the side of the wrecked truck. He planned to reach the tailgate before the others created any diversion. He got to his knees when he had passed the cab and put his ear to the metal siding. There was no sound. He tried to figure out exactly where in the back of the truck the guy might be waiting. There was no way of telling. There was no way of telling whether he was even in the truck any longer. During the killing of the other gunman, the guy in the truck had plenty of opportunity to get clear of the vehicle. Right this minute he could be crouched in the opposite ditch waiting for Wingate to show himself.
Wingate went forward, crouched low with his knees bent and the automatic rifle pushed ahead of him in a low port position. He paused for a moment and Manganaro yelled, “Get the bastard!” and began hammering on the metal hood of the truck with the starting handle. From the far side of the truck, Cowan was hollering, “Come on, you chaps! Throw that grenade!”
The confusion inside the back of the truck must be total, Wingate was thinking. He stood up, took a couple of quick steps forward, and fired a two-second burst that swept the inside of the truck from one side to another directly through the wooden tailgate. He waited. He heard Manganaro dragging himself out of the cover of the ditch to his right, but he didn’t take his eyes from the tailgate. There was no movement and no sound from inside.
Hazlitt came up to join him, stepping cautiously, ready at the slightest sign of danger to throw himself down on the muddy grass. He reached the tailgate, nodded to Wingate, and between them they pulled out the retaining pins and let the tailgate fall open.
Wingate pushed the muzzle of the rifle forward. On the right side of the truck and halfway along its length, there was an obstruction. He jumped up onto the floor of the truck and reached down. The guy was there all right. He could feel warm flesh and clothing sodden with blood. He groped for a hand or a foot and found a shoulder. He pulled and the guy slid forward toward him.
Manganaro was over by the gunman from the car. He was playing a narrow flashlight beam on the man’s face. “Like I figured,” he called. “The guy with the glasses. The guy we saw in the bar.”
Wingate figured the guy he had by the shoulder was the other one from the dive—the one who had been absorbed in the newspaper. They’d had instructions to stop the mission. He called, “I need that flashlight, Brad. Let’s check out this one.”
Manganaro came over and shone the light on the body. The head was hanging over the edge of the truck and one of the arms dangled loose.
Wingate felt suddenly sick. “Oh, my God!” he said.
He lifted the head gently and looked at the face. It was Rita Gautier. She had been badly beaten across the forehead and down the right cheek, and the jacket that covered her little navy dress was soaked in blood.
“What the Christ was she doing mixed up with a bastard like that?” yelled Manganaro.
“A pity,” said Hazlitt, quietly. “She was one of our best insiders. We flew her in from France only a month ago. She was really on to something. The bastards must have caught on to it and got rid of her before she could talk.”
Chapter Three
Wingate sat with his back to the midsection bulkhead and his legs stretched out in front of him. Through the window on his right he could see the dim shape of the Lancasters rolling toward the end of the runway. Every thirty seconds an Aldis lamp flashed from the blacked-out control tower and another giant bomber lumbered down the runway into the night. Wingate watched and waited for their turn to come.
There were two other passengers in their plane. Wingate had given them a nod when Hazlitt had introduced them in the operations room. Now they sat to the left of him facing the Liberator’s tail, one immediately beside him, the other on the far side of the central gangway. Wingate glanced at the man beside him. In the dim light of the aircraft’s interior, nothing but the dark shape of a helmet and a flight jacket showed. According to Hazlitt, the guy was some French general on de Gaulle’s staff, traveling as far as Algiers.
The other passenger was no less of a mystery to Wingate. He knew she was a woman in her thirties because he’d seen her in the light. She had a firm handshake, fair hair showing from underneath a military cap, and direct blue eyes. She was a little on the plump side for his taste, but he hadn’t really paid much attention. The only woman on his mind right now was Rita. He could still see her body under the flashlight, lying like a dumped sack of garbage. He felt sick to the stomach with the thought that he’d been her executioner.
Manganaro came back from the nose, leaned toward each of them in turn, and yelled, “OK, brace it. Don’t smoke. I’ll tell you when you can move.”
The four massive radial engines spun faster, and chocks came out from in front of the main undercarriage. Through the window Wingate saw the portside rigger crouch and run clear from under the plane. They began to roll around the perimeter track, weaving from side to side to avoid the sandbagged parking bays that protected the planes from aerial attack. They paused for a moment on the runway approach, then turned for the takeoff. The engines blasted as Hazlitt slid all four throttle levers forward. Wingate felt the forward thrust force him away from the bulkhead. Seconds later they were airborne.
The man next to Wingate groped in his breast pocket, took out a cigarette, and lit it.
“With respect, sir,” said Wingate, voice raised over the aircraft noise. “Do you speak English?”
The man looked at him for a moment, then snapped, “Naturally.”
“I figured—sir—that you didn’t understand the navigator. He said don’t smoke.”
There was a pause. The guy sat right up against Wingate, head stiffly erect. Wingate could feel the barely controlled anger rising up in the Frenchman. He got the feeling that in this guy’s outfit nobody spoke to generals that way. He was still having trouble figuring out these Europeans. Protocol was everything. Winning the goddamn war didn’t seem to matter.
“What is your rank, soldier?” the Frenchman spat out, finally.
“Captain,” said Wingate. Then added, almost as an afterthought, “sir.”
“And do you know who I am—Captain?” his voice cut through the roar of the engines.
Wingate suppressed the first words that came into his head. At last he said, voice very controlled, “No, sir. I don’t know who you are ...”
“I am General Pierre de Lille, under the personal instructions of the French commander in chief!” He paused long enough for Wingate to be impressed and took a long, deliberate pull on the cigarette. The glow showed up his little bristling mustache and sharply etched features.
As far as Wingate was concerned, the guy was a throwback to the Middle Ages. He yelled, “So I’m impressed. But I’ve got 1,000 pounds of high explosives on this plane and there’s Christ knows how many gallons of gasoline in the tanks. Blow yourself up, if that’s how you get your kicks. But count the rest of us out ...”
“You’ll—I’ll have you court-martialed!” de Lille blustered, thrusting his face right up to Wingate’s. “For gross—insubordination!” He gave the word a strictly French pronunciation.
Wingate put out a hand and grabbed the cigarette. “Send me to Devil’s Island,” he said, crushing the tip out on the metal floor. “Just don’t send me to Kingdom Come before I get the call.”
The undercarriage locked up with a clunk that Wingate could feel through his ass. Then, as Hazlitt throttled back and the pitch of the propellers coarsened, the deafening roar of the engines eased.
“This is a great way to get started,” the woman said, abrasively. “D’you reckon we could shelve rank until we get to Malta? I can sing you a song if you’re scared of heights.”
Wingate looked at her and grinned to himself. They must look pretty dumb to her—a couple of guys nearly coming to blows a thousand feet above the English countryside. He tried to place her accent. It wasn’t American and it wasn’t English. He could feel de Lille fuming beside him, but the bastard didn’t speak.
Manganaro came back, the plug of the intercom lead from his face mask in his hand. He unhooked his oxygen mask and let it flop across to the side of his chin. He leaned toward them and said, “OK, you can stretch your legs. Just don’t get in the way.”
Wingate got to his feet. “You mind if I take a look at those explosives?” he asked. The stuff was sensitive. He hadn’t checked it aboard. The least he could do for his own peace of mind was make sure it was properly secured.
He moved down the gangway, feeling his way more than seeing it. The air outside was turbulent, lifting them suddenly, then letting them drop again. He took hold of whatever came to hand to steady himself. In the far distance he could make out the dim glimmer of instruments in the rear turret where a figure was crouching over the twin Brownings.
The explosives were stored on either side of the gangway, just forward of the waist-gun positions. Above it were large cardboard containers, stacked right up to the top of the fuselage. His eyes had acclimatized to the dim light, but most of his investigation was still by feel. He bent down and checked the anchorage of the webbing in the floor, and the tension of the webbing over the wooden boxes. It seemed OK to him. He felt easier. It would stand any normal turbulence and any average maneuvers. As long as they didn’t run into fighters, there was nothing to worry about. Everything had gone so damned well so far. Why the hell should it change now? The guy who might have informed on them was back at the base with a six-inch knife wound in his throat. Rita was the only one who still troubled him. Where the hell did she fit in?
Ed McGrady came out of the rear turret and began groping among the supplies ahead of Wingate. Wingate went toward him, curious to see the inside of the turret. He said, “You need a hand?”
McGrady’s hand dropped automatically to his waist and grabbed for the butt of the big Colt automatic that he carried there. He had the gun half out of the holster before he stopped. “Jesus Christ!” he said. “Don’t do that again.”
He was shaking, standing there in the half-light reaching him from the turret. Wingate said, “Hey, I’m sorry. How long’ve you been in this state?” The guy’s nerves had been all shot to hell.
“Forget it,” said McGrady. “I’ve got one more trip to do after this. Then I go instructing back home. I guess I’m excited.”
He was twenty-two—maybe twenty-three, but to Wingate he looked forty. His whole body had lost its shape during the course of his operational tour. He was short and heavy and his face carried too much flesh. When he picked up an ammunition box and turned with it back to his turret, he had trouble keeping his balance because of the tension he was under.
Wingate left him and moved back down the plane. He’d seen some shitty places to fight this war in. He had to admit that most of them were preferable to the goldfish bowl that McGrady spent his nights in.
The woman was checking on the boxes stacked over his explosives. When he reached her, she said, “Christ knows why they don’t drop that little frog out the bomb bays. It’s bedlam down there.” She nodded, indicating the cockpit.
“Maybe they’ll get around to it,” said Wingate.
“You been messing around with my stuff?” she asked. “I saw you come up here.”
“It’s sitting on my explosives,” said Wingate. “And why would I want to mess around with it? I don’t know what the hell’s in it.” This might turn out to be the quietest trip he’d ever been on, but it sure wasn’t going to be the pleasantest. What had he done to deserve these bastards?
Jack Cowan dropped down from the mid-upper turret just ahead of Wingate. He dragged the helmet off his head and thrust it at Wingate. “Get an earful of that!” he yelled. “How the Christ am I supposed to hear the skipper with that prick crooning in the background?”
Wingate put the helmet to his ear. Hazlitt’s voice dominated other voices. “General,” Hazlitt was saying, voice very calm and controlled. “I am in command of this aircraft ...”
“The goddamn son of a frog-gobbling bitch!” Manganaro’s voice howled out of the earpiece. “You want me to give you the treatment?”
Behind both voices, the staccato voice of General Pierre de Lille rattled, “I demand to know the precise course we are to fly, the precise height, the precise speed! Over France, I am in command! French airspace belongs to General de Gaulle. I am his representative!”
Wingate returned the helmet. “Nice guy,” he said to Cowan.
They climbed to 9,000 feet and broke through the heavy layers of cumulonimbus cloud that seemed to Wingate to be a permanent part of the English scene. Ahead and high above the thin strands of cirrus cloud that lay in feathery patterns around 30,000 feet, a pale quarter-moon lit up the sky. Through the window of the little alcove behind the midsection bulkhead, Wingate could see the dark shapes of two Lancasters butting steadily through the night. He felt a passing sympathy for the poor unsuspecting bastards who were going to be on the receiving end of their bomb loads. He’d seen fifty of them take off from that one base alone. That represented a total load of high explosives of close to half a million pounds from one base only. And God knew how many bases were involved—God and maybe Allied Air Command.
It was ten after midnight when they began to drop. It was bitterly cold now. Manganaro had come back earlier and handed out blankets. Wingate hunched against the bulkhead wrapped in a couple of them and drank steaming black coffee from a vacuum flask. He felt light-headed from oxygen deficiency, though Manganaro had assured him he’d be all right. The woman was beside him now, sitting on his right, and General de Lille was on the other side of the gangway. Nobody spoke.
