Swordpoint (2011) (16 page)

‘How’s it going up there?’ he’d asked.

‘We’re very confident,’ Heathfield had said. ‘I think there’ll be little opposition.’

‘That’s just as well,’ the man at HQ had continued. ‘Because we want to know if you can let us have the 19th Division Artillery down here as soon as you’re across.’

Heathfield had hesitated and the other man was quick to take advantage of him.

‘I thought you were confident,’ he said.

‘We are.’

‘Then, how about it?’

Heathfield had reluctantly agreed and the request had been followed at once by another.

‘We’ve found your boats, by the way, but we’d like the lorries down here as soon as they’ve delivered them to your jumping-off point. We need everything we can raise. Good-bye, Wallace.’ The line went dead.

Now Heathfield listened to Yuell angrily. He had a feeling that he’d been outmanoeuvred over the artillery and it roused in him the same feeling as when he was out-thought at bridge. He wasn’t worried about the lorries because he’d told Tonge about them, but he’d omitted for the time being to mention the artillery because he wasn’t sure that Tonge would approve.

Hearing about the mortar bombs and grenades, he was quick to defend himself because he
had
heard about them.

‘I’m organising mules,’ he said. ‘But it’s not easy because every available bloody mule on this front seems to have gone north. However, I’m rounding a few up here and there and we’ll get your bombs and grenades to you in time. It’ll be only
just
in time, I’m afraid, but I’m watching it personally.’

Yuell hesitated before he answered. He was as aware of the difficulties as anybody. An army that could call on 600 tanks, 800 guns, 500 aircraft and 60,000 vehicles of one sort or another had become terribly dependent on that obstreperous object, the mule.

‘There can be no success without them,’ he said. ‘The Royal Sussex found in February that grenades more than anything else are needed for close fighting in this kind of terrain.’

‘I know that,’ Heathfield said sharply. ‘But I’ve promised them and they’ll come.’

Yuell seemed to be satisfied but, as Heathfield was about to put down the telephone and pick up the cup of coffee standing by his elbow, Yuell spoke again. ‘What about the air strike?’ he asked. ‘When does that go in?’

‘Late tomorrow afternoon.’

‘In this weather?’

Heathfield sounded irritated. ‘The RAF said they’d laid it on. They usually keep their word. Don’t you feel up to this thing, or something? Because if you don’t, we’d better find someone else.’

Yuell held on to his temper. It was always easy for the men at headquarters to talk about determination when they were rarely expected to show any.

‘I’m up to it,’ he said quietly. ‘We shan’t let you down, but I’m interested to know what the result of the patrol was.’

‘Which patrol?’ Heathfield was anxious to get at his coffee.

‘Sir–’ Yuell’s temper gave at last ‘you were putting a patrol across to find out what it’s like at the other side. Nobody’s passed anything down to battalion level.’

‘Yes, well–’ Heathfield shifted uneasily in his chair – ‘the Yellowjackets put a strong patrol across. But nothing came of it.’

‘What do you mean, sir? – nothing came of it.’

‘No one came back.’

There was a long silence. Then Yuell’s voice came again, slow and icy. ‘I see.’

There was a click as Yuell replaced the receiver and Heathfield stared at the silent instrument angrily. Banging it down, he picked up the coffee, took a sip, and shouted for the corporal clerk.

‘Sir!’

Heathfield jerked a hand at his cup. ‘This coffee’s cold! Bring me some more! And this time make sure it’s hot!’

It just wasn’t good enough. They needed to know more.

‘I’ll go,’ Jago offered. ‘All it needs is two determined men.’

Yuell looked at him as he leaned with one hand on the side of Yuell’s jeep, smiling and self-assured, like a big red, rangy fox. Jago was an invaluable officer. Immensely strong, daring, and indifferent to danger, in everything they’d done he’d always been well to the fore. Yuell had no wish to lose him, and he suspected he’d been pushing himself too hard for a long time. Nevertheless, he was also probably the only man who
might
take a patrol across to the other side and come back.

‘What have you in mind?’ he said.

‘Go across in a two-man dinghy, sir, knock the first chap we see on the head, chuck him aboard and bolt. Then turn him loose for the Intelligence wallahs to go at. If they can’t knock the truth out of him, let ’em turn him over to me. I bet I can.’

Yuell suspected that Jago was a man who could be brutal, and it must have shown in his face because Jago frowned.

‘Sir, there’s no such thing as clean fighting,’ he protested. ‘Only dirty fighting and dirtier fighting. We’re not playing kiss-in-the-ring, and the Gestapo wouldn’t hesitate if the boot were on the other foot.’

Yuell nodded because what he said was right. Jago had no head for plans but in small affairs like this he seemed to have a flair for doing the right thing.

‘Who would you take?’

Jago grinned. ‘McWatters,’ he said. ‘He’s a murderous sod, sir. I think he belonged to a Glasgow razor gang before the war. Just the sort for a thing like this.’

Yuell stared at him for a moment longer, then he nodded.

‘Let’s see if we can get you a dinghy from the Engineers,’ he said.

Faces blackened, cap comforters on their heads, Jago and McWatters climbed into the dinghy just after midnight. They were armed only with revolvers and clubs, which McWatters had made by winding barbed wire round the end of a stave. Anybody who received a blow from one of them would suffer a very nasty wound.

With the rain coming down now in thin wavering lines of drizzle, more mist than rain, the night was pitch-dark. Yuell had driven them down the road from San Bartolomeo in his jeep.

‘One prisoner,’ he said. ‘That’s all. Someone who’ll tell us a few things. I’ve told our Intelligence boy wonder, Harry Marder, to stand by for when you get back. How long do you expect to be?’

‘Hour, sir. Two hours. If we’re not back by then, I reckon we shan’t be coming back.’

The two men faded into the darkness, blurred figures with black faces. Patrolling was an art and the job for a specialist, and, though the best ones were often ghillies, poachers and gamekeepers, there were also the other kind who’d lived in city streets all their lives and had an instinctive sense of direction and an ability to make a quick decision.

Jago had rarely moved from his native Leeds before the war, but he was aware of possessing a special kind of skill and cunning when it came to affairs like this. He also didn’t like the Germans. He’d seen the fly-encrusted bodies of peasants shot by them, the tiny bits of flesh and clothing after the SS had tied dynamite to partisans and blown them up, the scarred wall of a village church where the men had
been dragged from Mass and shot.

So he’d never hesitated when a fighting patrol was asked for, and in the line had gone out nightly because there was always the need for information or a party to repair the gaps in the wire. Going out on patrol was always a cold-blooded business, and a lot depended on the experience of the leader; but as an unexpected finger of panic clawed at his stomach, he asked himself if he hadn’t volunteered once too often.

‘No fight if we can help it,’ he said to McWatters.

‘Nae fecht, sorr?’ McWatters turned.

‘No fight, I said.’

McWatters shrugged, thinking that Jago was changing. He’d been on many patrols with him and had never known him back away from a fight before.

‘Wha’ aboot mines, sorr? They say yon place is thick wi’ ’em.’

‘It’s my guess they’ll be behind the path along the bank,’ Jago said. ‘In any case, it’s a chance we’ll have to take. If we get a prisoner and anything happens to me, it’s up to you to get him back on your own. Okay?’

‘Aye. Okay, sorr. Where are we gaein’, sorr?’

‘There’s an observation post forty yards downstream from the bridge. That’s where we’ll head for. It’s my bet somebody’ll be there or will come there before long. They must have some idea there’s something in the wind and they’ll be watching.’

‘Aye. Richt, sorr.’

‘No arsing about,’ Jago warned. ‘We’re not playing ring-a-roses. We want a prisoner, but don’t be afraid to hit the bastard.’

As they whispered together the current was carrying them further downstream than they expected, and as the rubber dinghy grated softly on the bank at the far side Jago decided they couldn’t be more than twenty yards or so from the observation post. Climbing from the dinghy, they made fast to a willow growing from the water’s edge, and Jago tied a clean white handkerchief to the branches.

‘We might have to move fast when we come back,’ he said. ‘But we ought to spot that even in the dark. Remind me to pick it up.’

They made their way gingerly up the muddy bank to the path. They could just make out scrubby bushes on their right and the dimly looming slopes rising towards San Eusebio. They were just about to move ahead when McWatters laid a hand on Jago’s arm.

Petrified into silence, they saw the flash of a torch coming from the direction of the slopes, going on and off as though whoever held it was using it only over the more difficult stretches.

Jago touched McWatters’ shoulder and pulled him gently to the side of the path.

‘They’ll spot yon handkerchief, sorr,’ McWatters breathed.

‘That’s what I’m hoping. If they do, they’ll stop. That’s when we go for ’em.’

The approaching party consisted of Gefreiter Pramstrangl and three men. They were on their way to relieve the men in the observation post, and two of them were armed with rifles and two with 32-shot Schmeisser machine-pistols.

Pramstrangl was a small wiry man but wore spectacles, which didn’t help in the dark; especially now when they were blurred by the drizzle. As they reached the path, the leading man stopped dead so that Pramstrangl and the others crashed into him.

‘Gottverdammte–!’

In the dark Pramstrangl saw Jago’s clean white handkerchief on the tree, hanging limply as it grew heavy with the damp, and they all crowded round, wondering what it meant and puzzled how it got there. Then it dawned on Pramstrangl that it was a sign or something similar and, peering into the darkness, he spotted the rubber dinghy on the mud below.

He was just about to shout a warning when Jago shouted for him. ‘Now!’ he yelled, and he and McWatters leapt through the darkness swinging their clubs. The man who had spotted the handkerchief went down first, his skull fractured, his scalp laid open to the bone.

McWatters’ big shoulders sent another man flying into a ditch, but the collision put him off his stroke and the swinging club caught Pramstrangl on the upper arm, paralysing it and sending him spinning down the bank towards the water.

The third man was still struggling to get his rifle off his shoulder and screeching ‘Englanders!’ when McWatters shot him in the chest.

‘Englander be buggered,’ he yelled. ‘Ah’m a Scot, ye German hoor!’

‘We’ve got one!’ Jago said as the noise died down. ‘He went down the bank! Grab him, McWatters, and untie the dinghy! What happened to the other bastard? There were four of them.’

But the man who had disappeared into the ditch was wise enough not to attempt to climb out in a hurry. Instead he got quietly to his hands and knees, pawing the ground for the machine-pistol he’d dropped as he fell.

By this time McWatters was already waiting at the water’s edge, one hand twisting the dazed Pramstrangl’s collar until he was half-throttled, and the other unhitching the rope of the rubber dinghy. More to show off than anything else, Jago was unknotting the handkerchief.

‘Right,’ he said after what seemed to McWatters to be a delay of several weeks. ‘Let’s go.’

As McWatters released Pramstrangl to push the dinghy into the water before scrambling aboard, Jago picked up the German, flung him into it with a bone-cracking heave, and then flopped in after them.

‘Christ,’ he said, ‘that was quick! Can’t be more than a quarter of an hour since we left.’

They were out into the stream now and paddling hard. They could hear shouts on the bank and running feet, and guessed that the men at the observation post had realised that something had happened to their relief and were on their way to find out what.

‘Turn the wick up a bit,’ Jago panted, digging at the water. ‘A bit further and the bastards won’t even know where we are.’

As they paddled still harder, the man in the ditch struggled to his feet, holding his machine-pistol. He couldn’t see the dinghy now but he could still see the white handkerchief, which Jago had stuffed carelessly into his blouse pocket, and it seemed to glow through the darkness. As he raised his weapon to fire, however, the dinghy slid to his left on the current, and the willows got in the way. He cursed and, moving a little to the left, stepped on to the mud to get a better shot.