Death trap, p.12
Death Trap, page 12
‘No heroics, Sergeant!’ Smith warned and reached into his little pack for the two grenades.
‘Not Mrs Burrows’ handsome son,’ the RAF NCO replied. ‘I want to live to collect my pension.’ He came forward to collect the bombs, saying, ‘Get this little lot to go through them trees at three o’clock. Don’t ask why, I’ll tell yer later. I think the buggers are pretty close now. Leave it to yours truly.’
Smith, who had been just about to ask that question, closed his mouth firmly and started to plod forward through the deep snow towards the trees to their right, which Burrows had indicated.
Burrows followed, but when they were half through, he paused and taking out the grenades, treating them very gingerly for he knew of old the terrible effect they could have, he balanced them by the pullout rings from twigs at about what he judged to be the waist-height of someone riding a horse, saying to himself maliciously, ‘Hope this gives you a friggin’ headache – that is if yer’ve got a friggin’ head to have one with, mate!’ He laughed. Then he was hurrying after the rest of the fugitives as they emerged into the open once more.
Five minutes passed… ten… Now they could hear the horsemen quite clearly. In the stillness that had followed the snowstorm, noises carried some distance. Smith told himself that their pursuers were gaining upon them. Damn, he cursed, it was one bloody thing after another. It was almost as if this mission had been doomed from the start. Right from the beginning things had started to go wrong. Now, on the last lap of the rescue, they were up against it. What did the matelots say – up the shit creek, without a bloody paddle!
Suddenly he started. Behind them there was a sudden crump of explosive, followed by a shrill scream of absolute agony. Burrows laughed out and called, ‘They walked right into it, sir, the silly sods!’
‘Into what, Sergeant?’
‘The booby traps, sir.’ Even before Burrows had finished explaining, there was another explosion and another scream. ‘That’s feckled ’em,’ he added chuckling. ‘Serves ’em right for buggering us about like this.’
Smith gave a little sigh of relief. He guessed Burrows was right. The booby traps had perhaps given them a slight breathing spell. Now if they could get into the cover of the vines below they would have a chance. ‘Come on, lads,’ he said, his voice filled with new hope, ‘let’s get the digit out of the orifice.’
Then Bully came to life inside the warmth of Billy Bennett’s jacket. The little dog barked happily, as if it, too, were encouraged by the change in their fortune. They pushed on…
Book Three
Flight from Terror
One
Dawn.
Dickie Bird had had the night watch, but he knew he wouldn’t sleep if he went below. Instead he lounged on the bridge of the Swordfish, together with CPO Ferguson, who was on duty now, idly sipping tea and chatting.
Outside, the estuary was bare of traffic, which was fortunate and over on the landside the plain seemed empty, though in the far distance Dickie could just see a thin column of grey smoke rising into the grey morning sky.
The old petty officer looked worried. Time and time again he glanced over to the land until finally Dickie said, with an attempt at being his usual cheerful, careless self, ‘Penny for them, Chiefie. You’re looking like a wet weekend in Winga, if I may be allowed to say so.’
‘Ay, and I feel like it as weel, sir,’ Ferguson replied grimly. ‘All the time yon bluidy song keeps going round and round in mae head, ye ken?’
‘No, I don’t ken. What song?’
In his cracked old voice, Ferguson sang, ‘There’s nae luck about the huis… there’s nae luck at all!’
‘You’re a real ray of sunshine this morning,’ Dickie said.
‘Well, this mission has been a stumer right from the start. I only hope that Mr Smith and yon cheeky Kerrigan and that fat pal of his get back safely.’
‘They will, Chiefie. Don’t worry so much. Common Smith VC hasn’t had his head blown off yet, old bean.’ He took a sip of his tea.
‘Ay, weel, there’s allus a first time,’ Ferguson hinted darkly, in no way appeased. ‘I’m a-thinkin’ this is a bad country. I canna say otherwise. I feel it in ma auld bones.’
‘Can’t say I’ve exactly fallen in love with it. I’ll agree with you there.’ He drained the last of his tea and put the chipped mug on the little chart table. ‘I’ll do the rounds. You stay up here, Chiefie, and keep the watch.’
The two of them, Ferguson and Bird, had agreed to mount only half a watch, so there were only six or seven ratings on deck, going about their routine maintenance duties. Dickie Bird stopped here and there to chat to the men, who all asked a little anxiously, ‘Anything from Mr Smith’s party yet?’ Once again, Dickie realised what a tight-knit group the crew of the Swordfish were. Over the years the bonds between them, ratings, petty officers, and officers, had grown even stronger. For a moment or two he wondered about Petty Officer Thirk. He had been the only rotten apple they had ever had aboard the Swordfish, he told himself.
It was half an hour later, when the greyness of the dawn had begun to clear to reveal a cold blue sky and Dickie Bird had begun to tell himself that he ought to go below and have a snooze on the battered, old, horsehair sofa of the wardroom, that they heard the first laboured groaning of a vehicle crossing the plain in low gear.
Instantly everyone was on the alert. On the bridge, Ferguson flung up his glasses with surprising speed for such an old man. He focused them. Two armoured cars, their turrets swinging from left to right routinely, were crawling across the plain and Ferguson didn’t need a crystal ball to know that they were up to no good. They were looking for the Swordfish. Speedily he leaned out of the bridgehouse and said, ‘Sir – trouble!’
By now Dickie Bird had seen the two vehicles as well. He let his glasses drop to his chest and snapped, ‘Chiefie, size up the gun crew, quick! I don’t want trouble, with Mr Smith not yet back, but I think we’ve got it.’ He swung round to the ratings on the deck. ‘All right, lads, at the double. Get the quick-firer uncrated!’
The men needed no urging. Hurriedly they grabbed their tools and started wrenching at the nails on the wooden boards that had been put around the gun to hide it.
In the same instant, the gun crew started pelting across the deck, pulling on their gear and helmets as they did so. Suddenly all was organised chaos.
As the men toiled feverishly below, CPO Ferguson watched grimly through his glasses as the two armoured cars, both with two heavy machine guns mounted in their turrets, crept closer and closer. To his way of thinking, there was purpose about their search, as if they knew what they were looking for – and where. ‘That devil Thirk,’ he cursed to himself, ‘he’s shopped us. I ken it in ma old bones.’
Down the deck, Dickie Bird urged the men to greater efforts. Already the gun crew were piling up their shells, ready for what might come; the quick-firer started to emerge from its casing and Dickie Bird was glad because soon he knew he would have to stop them. The noise they made with their claw hammers would soon attract the attention of the men in the armoured cars, whoever they were.
For a while the cars stopped and two men, perhaps their commanders, conferred over a map. Ferguson could see them quite clearly in his glasses. Both were big men with cruel, hawk-like faces and both wore some sort of uniform. ‘Rozzers,’ he told himself, though he didn’t know why he should think they were policemen and not soldiers. But his instinct told him they were.
On the deck, as the two armoured cars started to move once more, Dickie Bird ordered, ‘That’s it! No more hammering.’ Hurriedly he put up his glasses to check the direction in which the two vehicles were now moving.
Around him the ratings threw the planking over the side, while the gunlayer swung his weapon round to face the land and the brawny rating who was acting as his number two thrust a high-explosive shell into the gun’s breech.
Now they tensed, praying that nothing might happen, but all of them knowing that it would probably end in trouble. The minutes passed leadenly as the two armoured cars crawled ever closer to the coast. Dickie Bird was in a quandary. What was he to do?
Should he sacrifice his present advantage – that he knew where they were, but they didn’t know his presence – by opening fire now? Or should he wait till they were discovered and the other side began letting off the fireworks? Again he wished that Smith was there. He always seemed to know what was best in such situations.
For a few moments the two armoured cars disappeared in a dip in the ground and Dickie Bird hoped that they might have gone for good. But he was to be disappointed. Minutes later they reappeared and continued their unerring course towards the shore and the Swordfish, almost as if they knew she was there somewhere.
Below on the deck, the gun crew swung the quick-firer around, following the two vehicles all the time, for they were only too eager to end the tension by letting off a blast at them.
In the leading armoured car, someone, perhaps its commander, had now come up to the turret and, resting his arms on the armour, was sweeping his front with a pair of binoculars. ‘That’s torn it,’ Dickie Bird said to himself, knowing that the man could not help but soon spot the Swordfish through his glasses. In a hushed whisper, he ordered the gun crew to ‘Let them have it as soon as the balloon goes up.’
‘Ay ay, sir,’ the gunlayer answered with a grin on his broad face. ‘I reckon he’s just my collar size. He won’t know what’s hit him, will he, Alf?’
His number two agreed.
Now all the crew tensed as the man in the first armoured car swept the coastline with his glasses. They were virtually hidden from above, save for the tip of their wireless mast which was above the protection of the stunted bushes round them. If the unknown commander spotted it, Dickie knew they would be for it. He waited, his heart thudding noisily with the tension that was always there before trouble started.
Suddenly the man in the turret stopped his sweep of the area. Through his own glasses, Dickie Bird could see him adjusting the focus. Bird knew that he’d seen something. Suddenly the man bent and said something to those inside the armoured car. The car lurched forward once more, heading straight for them. ‘He’s spotted us,’ he hissed. ‘Knock out number two car first, then tackle the first one!’
‘Ay, ay, sir,’ the gunlayer answered cheerfully, as if this was a routine firing exercise and not the real thing. Again Dickie was grateful for such a good experienced crew. With men like these, he told himself, an officer could go to hell and back.
The gunlayer adjusted his sight, pressing his eye to the rubber cap of the optic. His right hand sought and found the firing bar. Dickie could see the man’s muscles flex beneath the cloth of his jacket. In a minute the balloon would go up. On the land the armoured car was rolling ever closer. Dickie swallowed hard and tensed.
Behind the gun, the layer pulled back the firing bar. A thick crump, a burst of grey smoke tinged with cherry red flame and the first shell shrieked towards the second armoured car.
‘Spot on!’ Dickie Bird yelled exuberantly as the shell struck the side of the armoured car and burst in a flash of violent flame, sending the car reeling. Next moment it came to an abrupt stop, its rear axle snapped clean through. Men tumbled from its sagging turret and doubled wildly for the cover of some bushes nearby.
Instantly the leading car opened up with its twin machine-guns. Tracer zipped towards the Swordfish like a myriad angry red hornets. Slugs spattered the length of the bridge and Ferguson ducked, crying angrily, ‘Watch ma paintwork, ye damned heathen foreigner!’
Again the gunlayer jerked back his firing bar, ignoring the bullets smacking against the armoured shield of the quick-firer like heavy tropical rain on a tin roof. A second shell shot from the muzzle of the quick-firer. Swiftly, Dickie Bird flung up his glasses to see the impact. But the slugs pattering against the gun’s shield must have rattled the gunlayer, for his shell fell short of the first armoured car, and exploded uselessly in the field next to the track.
Dickie Bird groaned. ‘That’s torn it!’ he moaned as the armoured car turned to the right suddenly. Furiously, the loader thrust home another shell and slammed the breech close. But before the gunlayer could pull his firing bar, the armoured car had scuttled out of sight into a fold in the earth and the gunlayer sagged over the breech, realising that his target had vanished.
Minutes later, Dickie Bird was in serious conference with a very worried-looking CPO Ferguson, who said, ‘Weel, the devil obviously got away, sir. The question is are there more of yon kind?’
Dickie, puffed out his cheeks in exasperation. ‘Yes, I’m afraid, Chiefie.’
Ferguson nodded his grizzled old head and said, ‘Ay, that’s ma way o’ thinking too. Now, sir, what are we gonna do? We can’t let the land party down by doing a bunk… and if we stay here and they come back—’ he shrugged and didn’t finish that sentence. ‘It looks as if they’ve got us between the devil and the deep blue sea. So what’s to be done?’ He looked pointedly at Bird.
But the Commander remained silent. For the time being he had no answer to that overwhelming question.
Two
They had been resting in the shelter of the vines down below the snowline. Behind them the mountain was silent and Smith had hoped that the horsemen had broken off the pursuit after running into the grenade booby trap. Now, however, as they slumped there pretty well exhausted from the descent and pursuit, he could hear the faint sound of firing coming from the sea and he knew immediately that the Swordfish was in trouble. Faint as it was, there was no mistaking the sharp crack and twang of the quick-firer.
The others looked at him questioningly. He answered their unspoken question as the firing died away and the plain grew silent again. ‘Yes, it’s the Swordfish and she wouldn’t have given away her position unless she was in trouble.’
‘What’s the drill, Smith?’ Hurd, the RAF officer, asked.
‘Well, there’s no use attempting to lie up here till nightfall. We’ll just have to push on and chance our luck.’
‘Oh, my aching back!’ Ginger moaned and his shipmate Billy Bennett said, ‘Me plates o’ meat is murdering me!’ Even the little dog hung its head wearily.
‘Come on then,’ Smith urged, rising to his feet stiffly and slinging the pack containing his share of the top-secret papers over his shoulder. ‘No use trying to dodge the column. The sooner we get cracking, the better. Remember, Mr Bird has been ordered not to risk the ship. He won’t stop there if it gets too dangerous.’
That did it. Even Ginger complained no more. None of them wanted to be left behind in this strange and dangerous land. Strung out in single file they started to make their way along a deep furrow, their gaze constantly flashing to the parallel track and sometimes behind, for they all knew the danger they were in.
It came from behind and perhaps now from their front. No one spoke. Each man was wrapped in a cocoon of his own thoughts and fears. All conserved their energy, for their limbs ached and protested against the strains of the past hours.
In the lead, Smith tried to work out some sort of plan as he plodded forward. If Dickie had ordered the quick-firer to be used, it stood to reason that he had been faced by some serious opposition. What it was he couldn’t guess. Could the Swordfish have been attacked by tanks? She wouldn’t have used her quick-firer against individual attackers. But tanks had guns, too, and there had been no return fire that sounded like cannons.
In the end he gave up. But one thing he did know: he had to expect trouble once he got close to the old ship. If only he had a radio, but he hadn’t. Then it dawned upon him. He turned and looked hard at the little dog trotting loyally if wearily at Billy Bennett’s feet. A plan slowly began to uncurl in his mind.
* * *
Five miles away at Mostar, Dusko’s brain worked overtime too. He had just heard that the two police armoured cars had found the ship the English deserter had told them about before he had been shot, but that they had failed to take the vessel. The opposition had been too strong.
He sat in his dark office, smoking a strong Turkish cigarette and pondering what he should do. His policemen were armed solely with light infantry guns, mostly rifles. The two armoured cars, one of which he had lost, had been his most powerful weapons. In other circumstances he would have asked the military for help, but the artillery regiment which had been stationed in Mostar had been sent the previous month up to the border with Italy, as indeed had the small naval craft that had patrolled the estuary. Again the fat dictator in Rome had been making threatening noises and demanding back parts of Istria where the people spoke Italian. As a result the King in Belgrade had ordered all troops available to that region.
Then it came to him. The submarine! Throughout the region it was known jokingly as ‘our underwater arm’. It was an old Austro-Hungarian naval submarine which the Serbian Army had seized off Vis at the end of the Great War. Battered and rusting, and because of its defective diving mechanism, it was unable to submerge. All the same it was regarded as a prestige item in the fledgling Royal Yugoslavian Navy. Every time the King came to visit, or some important personage, it was hurriedly given a coat of paint and then sailed proudly up and down the estuary at its maximum of five knots.
‘But it does possess a working deck cannon,’ Dusko told himself, stroking his big, flowing, black moustache as the idea formed in his mind. This English craft moored farther down the river would be no match for the ‘underwater arm’ because its large-calibre gun would allow it to shell the English, but keep out of the range of their smaller gun.
Mind made up, Dusko stubbed out his cigarette and reached for the phone on his desk. He was getting somewhere at last.
* * *
The Grey Wolf was angry. The news that his patrol chasing the English had walked into a trap annoyed him greatly. He had berated Marko savagely, snarling at the shame-faced second in command, ‘Where have you got your brains, man? Undoubtedly between your great stupid legs! All right, don’t waste any more time. Mount another patrol and get after them again. There is no time to lose!’
