Mac wingate 3, p.9
Mac Wingate 3, page 9
Responding in German, Wingate saluted smartly and started for the truck.
As the driver brought the truck to a halt, Wingate pulled up alongside the cab. With a sudden oath, the officer recognized Wingate’s uniform. Before he could get the barrel of his MP-40 through the side window of the cab, Wingate opened up on him. His fire sheared away the man’s face, while Clive, on the other side of the cab, took care of the driver. Wingate then followed McCauley to the rear of the truck in time to catch the few startled soldiers piling out in confusion. There were seven in all. Wingate dropped two of them, McCauley three and Clive finished off the remaining two. It was over in an instant, after which the three hurried back to the cab, pulled the two bodies out and climbed in. The smell of fresh blood filled the front seat, and McCauley had to wipe off the steering wheel before he could get the truck moving.
Soon they were roaring off the airstrip, heading toward the glow in the sky.
A German medium tank was in the middle of the road ahead of them, peppering away at some buildings further down the street. The tank was a Panzer III, fitted with a 50 mm cannon. It meant business, but reminded Wingate of an elephant trampling ants—an awful lot of muscle for such a tiny operation.
“Jesus,” said McCauley softly, his foot stomping on the brake.
“No! Keep going,” Wingate demanded. “Go around it, but when you pass it, slow down a little.”
“You sure, Captain?”
“That’s an order, Sergeant.”
McCauley speeded up. Wingate was sitting on the outside, next to the window. As the truck mounted the sidewalk to pass the tank, Wingate leaned out the window, two grenades in his hand. The massive side of the twenty ton hunk of carbon steel loomed over him. Wingate could hear the squeak of the turret a moment before the cannon let go. He glimpsed the goggle-eyed face of the tank commander in the turret, looking down at him. Pulling both pins out with his teeth, Wingate tossed the grenades into the turret behind the tank commander.
“Move, Sergeant!” Wingate cried, glancing back.
As the truck swept on past the tank, Wingate saw the tank commander leap frantically from the turret. The man hit the ground rolling, and was running flat out when the tank went up. The truck swerved from the force of the blast and the German was sent sprawling.
McCauley swerved the truck back into the narrow street, came to a corner and gunned around it. Ahead of them was the town square. It was a shambles. The sidewalks were littered with dead Germans and guerrillas. The mayor’s house, a tall brick structure, was taking fire, but was still holding out successfully. Inside was the German commandant in Iraklion, and the taking of his headquarters had been Stephanos’s main objective. But it was a formidable undertaking he had set for himself, and a great many Germans and guerrillas were paying the price.
Guerrillas were firing from the alleys and storefronts on the right side of the street; Germans were holed up on the other side. The Germans had the better of it; their machine guns and rockets were wreaking devastation wherever they aimed.
“Hey! We’re taking fire!” yelled McCauley. “The guerrillas are firing at us!”
“Of course, old boy,” said Clive. “This is a German truck you’re driving.”
Wingate heard the ping of bullets striking the side of the truck and the popping sound as they raked the canvas top.
“Over there,” said Wingate, pointing at a storefront containing a German machine gunner. “Head for that kraut!”
Shaking his head in disbelief, McCauley swerved the truck and headed for the German machine gunner. As they drove closer, Wingate glimpsed at least six German soldiers crouched in the darkness behind the gunner, apparently getting ready to rush a position on the other side of the street. The Germans all saw the truck approaching, but regarded it with undisguised pleasure. They began to wave. Reinforcements were coming.
“Bail out when I give the word,” Wingate told his companions.
The truck sheared away a lamppost.
“Now!”
McCauley slammed the gear into neutral, opened the door and disappeared. Wingate pushed open the door and vaulted out, Clive right behind him. The truck slammed into the shop, shattering what was left of the glass in the storefront, and buried the machine gunner. Wingate heard cries of dismay from the other Germans as he followed the truck into the store, hosing the shambles with his Sten. Clive and McCauley followed in after him, tossing grenades. When the detonations ceased, Wingate waited, crouching. All he heard was the groaning of dying men. He turned and led the way across the street and into the guerrilla lines.
Moving past grinning Cretan partisans, Wingate picked his way through a shattered doorway and out into an alley to the rear of a building and found himself surrounded by a small band of guerrillas, led by Costi.
“You come to join us, Captain?” Costi asked.
“Why not?”
The man flashed his brilliant grin. A bloody bandage was wrapped around his forehead. The wound did not seem to have affected him at all, however. “The German commander is still in the mayor’s house. We are going in after him. There is an entrance in the rear he may not know about. It should be very interesting.”
“Well then, let’s give it a go,” said Clive cheerfully.
“Sure,” said McCauley, a bit wearily.
“We see the planes go up,” Costi said. “Now we show you what we can do. We will capture this commander and hold him hostage for all those the Germans throw in their stinking camps.”
“Whose idea was that?” Wingate asked. He was asking because nothing of this had been discussed before the raid.
Again Costi flashed his brilliant grin. “Stephanos.”
Wingate shrugged. If the operation went off as Stephanos planned, fine. It would do much to swell the guerrilla ranks. But Stephanos had told Wingate and Clive that all he wanted on this opening attack was to deliver the bodies of Dmitri and his bodyguards to the Germans.
Costi moved out, Wingate and his band bringing up the rear of the guerrilla assault group. Each of the guerrillas was armed with a Sten, a bonus provided by the successful airdrop. In fact, Wingate was a little nervous at this point. The airdrop had been accomplished without a hitch and now the attack on the airfield had gone reasonably well, considering that a brand-new squadron of Junkers had been waiting for them. So far, so good. But this kind of luck, he knew, could not possibly last.
They snaked through narrow, stinking alleys and came out at last on the far side of the town square. A hole in a high stone wall led into a garden. It was overgrown with dank weeds. Swarms of gnats flung themselves at their eyes and nostrils. Soon they were wading through a ditch running with foul-smelling water.
“Where’s this lead?” McCauley asked.
“To the cesspool, old boy,” Clive responded. “What do you think you’re wading through? Fresh, clear spring water?”
They left the ditch and came to another wall. It was almost completely hidden by grapevines. As they moved further along the wall, the vines became a solid canopy that closed out the starlit sky. The guerrillas pulled up. Costi was waiting for Wingate.
“You see this?” he asked, tapping with the barrel of his Sten on the wall. “Solid, is it not?”
“Looks that way.”
The powerful little man turned, lowered one shoulder and pressed steadily on the wall. For a moment nothing gave; then there was the sound of dirt grating under stone, and a portion of the wall swiveled back. A fetid stench exhaled from the opening. Wingate felt his arms prickling.
“Follow me, Captain. We give the Germans one big surprise. You will see.”
The passageway led down for a considerable distance. It was as black and dank as the inside of a Nazi’s soul. Then the ground under Wingate’s feet began to lift slightly. The smell became less damp, less fetid. Abruptly, Costi pulled up, reaching back as he did so to warn Wingate. Wingate heard a bolt scraping back along a track. Then a thin, vertical shaft of light appeared in the wall before him. The door widened and Costi stepped through.
As Wingate followed, the rest crowding on his heels, he found himself in a well-stocked wine cellar. A single, unshaded bulb gleamed above them. Wingate could hear clearly the sound of the battle raging outside. Occasionally the walls of the building shook as a grenade went off in the street or the Germans defending the place fired a series of rockets.
Costi glanced at his watch. Then he turned to look back at Wingate. “Stephanos will attack in less than five minutes.” He pointed to a flight of stairs. “Those stairs will take us to the kitchen. The commandant’s office is on the second floor. Stairs leading from the kitchen will take us to him. I will go first.”
As the others continued up, Wingate planted himself in the kitchen doorway as a rear guard. For a few moments he waited alone, in a strange silence. Then he heard the stutter of a machine pistol coming from outside, followed by the sound of shattering glass. A German came down the dark hallway, both hands over his face, blood streaming from between his fingers. The German had evidently caught the hail of broken glass in his face.
The soldier was without a weapon and was moaning softly, “Mein Gott! Mein Gott! Ich bin blind! Blind.”
He was within a few feet when Wingate called out to the man softly, “Halten!”
At the sound of Wingate’s voice, the soldier reached out with his bloody hands and gazed blindly, hopefully, into Wingate’s face. Wingate saw tears mixed with the blood. Both eyes and the right side of the German’s face were streaming blood. In the socket of one eye gleamed a single shard of glass, pulsing with a ruby like glow in the dim light. Reaching out to the German, Wingate took his hand, spoke soothingly to him and led him into the kitchen, intending to take him over to the sink where he would be able to wash the blood from his eyes and face.
It was insane, Wingate realized dimly, to be concerned about a single wounded German at a time like this, but he was acting instinctively, almost without conscious volition. He felt only the need to help this fearfully wounded fellow being—as if the cold-blooded warfare leading to this moment had been wiped completely from his mind.
A shout came from the stairway leading to the second floor. Wingate turned. It was Costi, his Sten at the ready. Before Wingate could protest, Costi fired. The German spun away from Wingate like a torn rag caught in a sudden gust of wind. His head struck the sink’s porcelain top, and he sagged lifeless to the floor.
At once there came a shout from behind Wingate. Whipping about, he saw two soldiers rushing down the hallway toward the kitchen. Wingate dropped to one knee and opened up on them with his Sten. The first German was slammed back into the one behind him. Still pumping bursts into the two soldiers, Wingate dashed for the stairs, where Costi was waiting for him, a curiously cold look in his eyes.
“That German,” he said. “You knew him?”
“No.”
Below them, the kitchen was suddenly filled with Germans spraying the stairwell. Costi and Wingate darted up the stairs and out of sight. There was a door at the head of the stairs. Wingate slammed it shut behind them and a moment later the paneling disintegrated as the Germans below directed their fire at it.
Keeping low, Costi and Wingate ran down the hallway toward the sound of more gunfire. Turning a corner, they came upon the rest of their force crouched behind an ornate balustrade. They were firing into what Wingate assumed was the commandant’s office, the door of which was hanging on its hinges. Below them, the Germans were coming up the stairs.
Wingate could see into the room. A huge desk fronted a large window. The window was a shambles, its drapes hanging in tatters. Pieces of the desk had been ripped away by the murderous barrage. A German soldier’s head was in plain view, his helmet missing, his blond hair clotted with fresh blood. Most of the return fire emanating from the room came from behind the desk.
“He’s behind that desk!” Costi whispered. “Already he has been hit bad. Now he bleeds like the Nazi pig he is.” Costi fixed Wingate with his dark, penetrating eyes. “Would you like to go in after him, Captain—and help him out, perhaps?”
“Never mind that, Costi. We’ve got trouble behind us, thanks to you. Where in hell is Stephanos?”
“He’ll come. You’ll see!”
Wingate spun around and sent a short burst at the corner they had just rounded. It was just in time to halt an overeager German who had followed them up the stairs from the kitchen. Wingate winged him and the man toppled back out of sight. Swiftly, Wingate darted to the corner, poked his Sten around it and got off a couple of short bursts. He heard the sound of men crying out as they dashed for cover. Wingate stepped into the hallway and sent a withering hail of fire after the fleeing Germans.
As the last one ducked out of sight, Wingate glanced out a window and saw Stephanos’s force attacking the mayor’s house from the front. What he glimpsed amazed him.
Stephanos had commandeered four German armored personnel carriers. Every one was packed solid with guerrillas, each of whom was directing a murderous fire at the house and at the few Germans in the street still defending it. But this was not what startled Wingate.
It was what Stephanos had tied to the hoods and front fenders of the armored cars: the bodies of Dmitri and his bodyguards; their torn and bloody carcasses made excellent shields, though in some cases little shielding was left.
Wingate dropped beside Costi. ‘“Here comes Stephanos,” he said.
Costi smiled. He was busy firing into the commandant’s office. The fire coming from it was no longer very heavy, and the Germans below them on the stairs appeared to have lost a great deal of their enthusiasm as well. Wingate returned to the corner of the corridor and peeked around it in time to catch another foolhardy German sliding toward them along the wall. Wingate caught him full in the chest with his first burst. His second finished him as the tenacious German tried to fire back.
From below came the sound of a terrific explosion. Darting back to the balustrade, Wingate was in time to see the front door of the old mansion crash inward. Over its shattered panels stormed Stephanos and his men. They quickly spread through the downstairs rooms, their fire heavy. Moving back to the corner, Wingate waited. He heard someone drop beside him, turned and saw that it was McCauley.
“Where’s Clive?” Wingate asked.
“The poor son of a bitch is in that German’s office. He was one of the first ones through.”
“Is he hit?”
“I don’t know. He sure as hell makes a big enough target, Captain.”
Wingate winced. He had come to like the tall Englishman. He acted and spoke precisely the way a tall Englishman was supposed to act and speak. Wingate tried not to think any more about it.
The firing coming from the street floor below him died suddenly. Wingate heard the sound of Germans pleading to be allowed to surrender, but in each case they were answered with a few short, murderous bursts from the guerrillas’ new Stens.
“What are we sitting here for, Captain?” McCauley asked. “All the action is downstairs.”
“Just keep your shirt on, Sergeant. You’ll find out before long.”
As if in answer to McCauley’s query, there came the sound of German boots pounding down the hallway toward them: Germans from downstairs fleeing the merciless partisans below. An eager, glittering-eyed Costi joined Wingate and McCauley.
The first German almost went through the window opposite, as all three men opened up on him the moment he appeared from around the corner. The German behind him staggered into view and threw his weapon down. He could barely stand on his feet. Wingate held up, as did McCauley. But not Costi. His blood lust was in full cry. Even as the wounded German toppled forward, Costi sprayed him thoroughly with two short bursts. A second later, a third German poked his submachine gun ahead of him around the corner. As it stuttered in the confined space, Wingate and McCauley ducked back. But not Costi. He flung himself along the carpeted hallway like a frantic seal, wriggled around the corner under the German’s fire and came up blasting.
He stayed on his feet and filled the hallway with lead. The cries of the wounded Germans he caught further down the hall almost equaled the murderous stutter of Costi’s Sten. It was all over in a few seconds.
Wingate turned his attention back to the commandant’s office. There was no fire coming from it. Crawling to the balustrade, he tapped one of Costi’s guerrillas on the back and pointed to the ruined office. The guerrilla shrugged. Keeping low, Wingate moved toward the open doorway, his Sten cocked. Poking the weapon ahead of him into the room, he sneaked his head around the doorjamb and was just in time to see the German behind the desk push himself slowly into view.
There was a hole where his jaw should have been. He blinked at Wingate and seemed to contemplate him for a moment, then raised a Walther to his temple and pulled the trigger. What was still intact within the man’s skull splattered against the wall. The man’s head appeared to swivel on his shoulder as he collapsed face-down on top of his desk. As Wingate got slowly to his feet and inched into the room, the commandant slipped back out of sight behind the desk.
A grisly pile of Germans was heaped on Wingate’s right. He started toward it and saw one of the soldiers move. McCauley was beside Wingate by this time and lifted his Sten to give the mound of Germans a final hosing down. Wingate stopped him by taking the barrel of the sergeant’s Sten and pushing it down, gently. This charnel house contained enough dead already.
The German soldier that was stirring suddenly went rolling to the floor as Clive Smith shrugged his shoulders and came erect like an ungainly flower blooming out of offal. He was a mess, but he seemed none the worse for wear.
“I say,” he said, brushing off his tunic and then running his long fingers through his sandy hair, “that might have been an unseemly way to keep from getting my arse shot off, but you chaps were really pouring in the fire.”
