The telephone alongside Marsden gave a sudden buzz, an urgent sound that made Adams jump. A second later the Brigadier was at the table, taking the receiver from Marsden. As he leaned forward to take the message, a premonition of disaster shot through Adams like the stab from a decayed tooth.
“Hello,” the Brigadier called. “Hedgerow speaking. . . .” Adams guessed this was a password. “Hello, Graham, what is it? What’s that. . . ?” The Brigadier’s clipped voice was suddenly tense, shocked. In the hush the metallic rasp of the voice on the ’phone could be heard clearly. The words were not distinct but their urgency was unmistakable.
Davies drew near, his bright eyes and jerky movements reminding Adams, even at that moment, of a nervous cockerel. The Brigadier let out a sudden gasp of dismay, an event of such significance that Davies turned pale. Adams jumped to his feet, waiting anxiously alongside the Air Commodore.
The Brigadier dropped the receiver and turned towards Davies. His face was grey and drawn, with a look about his eyes that shocked the others.
“Get in touch with Grenville at once! Tell him to turn back. Quickly! There’s no time to lose.”
Davies started. “Why? What’s happened?”
It was clearly an effort for the Brigadier to speak. “We’ve just had a message from one of our Norwegian agents over there. He was wounded, but managed to escape and reach his transmitter____”
Davies’s voice was suddenly shrill. “Don’t tell me they haven’t managed to capture the flak posts!”
The Brigadier shook his head heavily. “Worse than that, I’m afraid. They haven’t even had the chance to try. The Gestapo rounded up every man during the night.”
Davies stared at the Brigadier in horror. “Rounded them up? But how? How could they know . . . ?” His voice trailed off as he remembered.
“Torture will get anything from a man if he suffers it long enough,” the Brigadier said wearily. “We’ve always known that. It wasn’t Bergman who talked—it was Ericson, the poor devil they captured later that day. The Gestapo must have passed on the news before Grenville destroyed the place. . . .” His voice sharpened. “Hurry, man, and warn him. Can’t you see, the whole thing is a trap. After failing in their attack on your airfield, they’ve deliberately delayed capturing the patriots until the last minute. If it wasn’t for this message the squadron would fly into a death trap.”
“My God, you’re right,” Davies muttered. He nodded to Marsden, who immediately sent out the Station call sign to the squadron. While they were waiting for a reply, Davies turned back to the Brigadier.
“There’ll be everything waiting for them—fighters, the lot. For all we know they might be among them now. We can’t receive their R/T at this range.”
The Brigadier had himself under control again. “I don’t think that’s likely, not yet. Remember—they don’t know we have been warned. I think they will let the squadron fly right into the fjord before showing their hand. Once they’re inside Jerry can close the net and they haven’t a chance.”
Davies shuddered at the mental picture of the Mos-221 quitoes trapped among a hundred guns. The buzz of morse in Marsden’s earphones came as a welcome relief. It was Grenville, acknowledging their call.
“Thank God,” Davies muttered, snatching a pencil from Adams’ pocket. “Here, send this.” He wrote on the pad. Dudley calling. Patriots captured. Guns still in enemy hands. Return to base immediately.
Marsden tapped out the message.
“Send it again,” Davies ordered, taking no chances.
Marsden obeyed, the transmitter key jerking up and down under his practised fingers.
There was a pause of perhaps fifteen seconds, then Marsden’s earphones buzzed again. Three pairs of eyes followed his pencil as it traced out words on the pad.
Vesuvius leader calling. Request permission to attack alone.
Adams felt sick. Davies turned towards the Brigadier, his eyes unnaturally bright. “Grenville’s offering to go in alone. What shall I tell him?”
For a moment a wild flicker of hope had sprung into the Brigadier’s eyes. It died as he shook his head. “No; it would be suicide. And even if he got through it’s most unlikely one bomb would bring it down. Tell him to come back.”
One bomb useless, Davies wrote on the pad. Return to base. Dudley.
Silence followed this transmission. All four men looked at one another uneasily. “What’s happened now?” Davies muttered. “Don’t say the Focke-Wulfs have got them.” He was just about to order Marsden to transmit again when the ear-phones began buzzing afresh. Words grew on the pad.
Vesuvius leader here. Have called for volunteers. Squadron will go in with me. Believe we have chance. Request permission....
Nothing, not even the magnitude of the disaster, could keep the glowing pride from Davies’s voice now. “They’ve all volunteered to go in with him, sir—every man jack of ’em. What do you want now?”
Adams’ imagination came back when he wanted it least. Mosquitoes entering that black fjord . . . running the gauntlet of a hundred guns that could weave an unbreakable web of steel from wall to wall . . . the vision brought the sweat out of him, cold though the morning was. He wanted to shout his protests to the Brigadier: instead he stared at him mutely, pleading with his eyes.
The Brigadier, overcome by emotion at the news, had swung abruptly away. The few words he spoke, when he could speak at all, were the outward expression of the conflict raging inside him.
“There’ll never be another chance! After this they’ll make it impossible to get near the place. And it’s so desperately important....”
So are those lives, Adams wanted to shout. You can’t send them in there now. It’s murder. Plain bloody murder....
It was full thirty seconds before the Brigadier faced them again. “If they have volunteered, then I must say yes.” He paused, then went on quietly, “I’m very sorry —please believe that.”
He walked over to the long table and stood stiffly before it, his back towards them. Davies’s voice had a dry, proud sob in it as he looked down at Marsden.
Permission granted. God bless you all. Dudley.
God help you, you mean, Adams thought bitterly.
29
The Mosquitoes were riding as tight as a troop of horsemen, stirrup to stirrup, nose to tail. Every man was aware of an odd kinship between himself and his machine that morning. The powerful engines seemed to merge their vitality into his own, the speeding wings to be an extension of his young, powerful arms. It was a madly intoxicating feeling.
Even Grenville felt it, and his mind, coldly analytical, dissected the reasons. One was the morning. White columns of cumulus towering into a blue sky . . . sea-washed islands with patches of dazzling green . .. grey-blue sea streaming under their wings. Spring always had the magic quality that made a man feel godlike.
There were other factors bound up in it too. One of them he had often felt before, in the spring before a raid. To walk out to one’s plane with the smell of spring in one’s nostrils and the knowledge that impossibly soon one would be flying into a sky stinking of death—to do that was to know the real bitter-sweetness of life.
Then there was the spirit of sacrifice. It gave men a feeling of unity and purpose that was near ecstasy. It might well be the greatest ecstasy a man could experience. The trouble was that to sustain it one had to fight shoulder to shoulder with one’s comrades, or it had a way of betraying one and letting in the fear of death. And in the air one had always to fight alone.
“Five minutes more to the coast, sir. And Utvik at two o’clock.”
Grenville’s mind returned from the abstract. That was Phillips, his new observer, playing safe. He glanced at him briefly. Phillips had a sallow complexion, a pencil-thin moustache, and dark, intense eyes. He looked the keen, earnest type. He wasn’t new to operational flying, of course, or he would not have been sent to them at this time, but he’d had little train- ing for this job. Grenville had managed to take hi
m three times up to Scotland, and that was all. He must be feeling more than nervous, particularly after the news from base. ... At the same time Grenville was glad Hoppy was tucked away safely in hospital.
He took a long, careful look at the dazzling white clouds ahead, but could see nothing. They’d be up there, all right, waiting for the trap to close before coming down. His job was to keep them there as long as he could.
Telling Phillips to keep his eyes open, Grenville swung nearer the rocky island of Utvik. He passed close enough to catch a glimpse of a harbour, the camouflaged shapes of oil tanks, and a couple of destroyers, but no flak opposed them as they swept by. His lips pressed tightly together. No doubt now that the trap was laid.
He swung five degrees to port and the high mountains flanking the Svartfjord lay dead ahead. He fired a Very light and his crews began falling back in line astern as if preparing to enter the fjord. He had given them their new orders during the last ten minutes— enemy R/T would have picked them up, of course, but he was hoping there had been no time to put out a general alarm. If the Focke-Wulfs received advance warning of their intentions they wouldn’t have a chance.
As he watched the rapidly approaching mountains, a vision of the waiting gun crews came to him. They had everything in that fjord: batteries of 20 mm. in both double and quadruple mountings, at least three dozen 37 mms., an unknown number of 88 mms. near the target, and all with predictors. . . . The gun muzzles would be swinging about like the heads of waiting cobras as the Mosquitoes drew nearer the trap.
Phillips stabbed a finger upwards. Fearful that the Focke-Wulfs had been told his new plan and were making a swift counter attack, Grenville glanced upwards, only to see a black speck dodging back into the towering cumulus north of the Svartfjord. He nodded his relief. Better they were hiding on that side than the south, although there might be more than one squadron up there....
The entrance of the Svartfjord was taking detailed shape now, the grim, soaring rocks, the dense clumps of birch, the seagulls cluttered around some object in the water. . . . Beyond the entrance he could see the twisting, shadowy fjord beckoning them in.
Out of the sun now, into the shadow of the mountains, the entrance only 200 yards away. ... A seagull smacked right into his windscreen, sliding off in a mass of blood and feathers. A second more, the arms of the fjord were almost around him—then Grenville suddenly flung his Mosquito into a tight, ninety-degree turn. The right flank of the fjord reeled under his vertical port wing, not fifty yards away. Another ninety-degree turn a few seconds later, to port this time, and the line of Mosquitoes were now speeding inland parallel to the fjord, with its own flanking mountains protecting them.
Grenville knew the alarm would be up now. The fox had dodged the trap: now the hounds would come baying down. But as yet he could not see the 190’s; the mountains on either side hid them from view.
ßirch, patches of scrub, rocks, flashed beneath them. They were in a wide valley. A stream ran under them for half a mile, its clear water reflecting back their racing shadows. A bridge shot by, a white-painted house, a clump of fruit trees laden with blossom. . . . Then the land began rising again, black rocks showing through the grass, patches of snow appearing.
Grenville’s eyes were intent upon the steep mountain range on his left, the one flanking the Svartfjord. The responsibility made his whole body clammy with sweat One mistake on his part now and the mission was a hopeless failure. It would fail anyway, he reminded himself, without the X factor, luck....
He ordered the planes behind him to throttle back and increase further the distance between themselves. He forced his memory alert as his eyes probed the unfolding mountain range. A minute gone, a minute and a half.... Nearly half the range covered and still no break in it. Had he missed it? He fought back panic, gritting his teeth. The ground below was shelving steeply upwards now, there were thick patches of snow on the mountain-tops above him. Two minutes . . . two min226 utes and a quarter ... the Focke-Wulfs were now overdue. Where was it?
Then he caught sight of the blacker rift among the early morning shadows. His voice snapped out over the R/T.
“Attention, all Vesuvius aircraft. Follow me at twenty second intervals. Repeat time alteration—twenty seconds! Notify me the moment you enter the main fjord. Green sections one and two go over and attack flak posts. Going in now...”
He banked steeply, saw the massive rocks leaping towards him, and for one ghastly moment thought he had made a mistake. Then, with a deafening roar, the walls of the gorge closed around the shuddering plane.
It was a little easier this time than the last because now the gorge was falling away from him. He shot over the waterfall into which the Focke-Wulf had crashed and plunged on, followed by the rushing water. The noise of his engines, reverberating from the steep walls of rock, made the Mosquito tremble. Trees and bushes, growing precariously from crevices, reached out and seemed to touch his wingtips.
Relaxing for a few seconds, Grenville reviewed his plan while his body flew the plane instinctively. The six members of his Green sections, who had jettisoned their bombs to make their planes more manoeuverable, should emerge over the fjord at approximately the same time as he entered it. Their job was to harass the guns, to make things a little easier for the squadron following behind. They would provide only a slight diversion: Grenville had no illusions regarding the nightmare ahead. By entering the fjord via the gorge they had avoided Innvik and twelve miles of the fjord, which meant they had by-passed perhaps half of the waiting guns. Theoretically that doubled their chances. But a devil voice in his mind reminded him that double zero was still naught. ...
The thoughts blazed in his mind with the clarity and suddenness of a photoflash. Then they changed, fixing themselves on Phillips again. Poor devil; what an introduction to a new squadron! Wonder what he was thinking....
The gorge widened, then quite suddenly fell away, its stream plunging a sheer 700 feet to the bottom of the Svartfjord.
The sensation was like walking over a cliff edge. Instinctively Phillips gasped and drew back. Grenville banked steeply, gave his engines full boost, and waited for the inferno to begin----
In the split-second before the gun crews recovered from their surprise, he had an unmolested view of the Svartfjord from the inside. Here, barely eight miles from its eastern end, it was a grim and savage place. From the black water that looked like oil, the mountains shelved steeply upwards, their lower slopes covered in birch and scrub, their upper slopes rising as sheer as the walls of some enormous prison. Impressions registered themselves indelibly on Grenville’s mind in that final moment before hell broke loose. The grey clefts among the black rocks caused by melting snow . . . the rockfalls that had left inverted funnels of scree . . . the wisps of snow in crevices . . . the golden ledge of sunlight far above ... a waterfall up there, bursting into a rainbow....
Then it came. A huge eye suddenly winked from the shadowy mountainside and a glowing chain of shells came swirling towards them. Two more guns opened out on the opposite side of the fjord, then one from above. A line of red-cored white puffs burst dead ahead, making both men flinch back. A vicious explosion made the Mosquito rear like a frightened horse.
Now every gun within range had opened out, vieing with one another for the kill; 20 mm. parabolas made dazzling white bridges under which the Mosquito tried to dive. Tracer squirted out from clumps of trees and from rocky eyries, lacing the fjord with a deadly net of steel. Shells came reaching out, slowly at first, then with diabolical speed, clawing for their eyes. A succession of black explosions rocked the Mosquito, and shrapnel gashed her port wing; 37 mm. now, trying to bracket her....
Grenville had never seen flak like this before. Thank God his Green sections were up there, ready to attack.
If only there was an escort to help them. ... He spoke-into his microphone.
“Vesuvius leader calling Green sections. Attack now, Go.”
The distraction they caused could not help him. T
hey could not pin-point the guns until they opened fire on him, and before they could make their attack he would be either past or shot down. But it should afford some relief to those behind. His earphones crackled a moment later.
“M Mother calling, Skipper. Am in fjord now.”
That was Milner, twenty seconds behind him. One half of Grenville’s mind was on his mission, checking, calculating, deducing: the other half was engrossed with the business of keeping alive. A massive rock face, black-bearded with trees, thrust itself at him from out of the smoke. He hugged it closely, trying to find cover from the flak, and nearly impaled himself on a doublepronged fork of tracer that stabbed upwards from a clump of trees. He saw the shuddering flashes open up and instinctively slammed his stick forward, kicking the rudder bar at the same time. The Mosquito skidded away, a whiplash of steel snapping two feet above its fuselage. The twin barrels swung down viciously, but Grenville had banked into the cliff again and his speed carried him to safety behind a rock shoulder.
Sweat poured into his eyes, almost blinding him. That was one flak post that had to be destroyed. . . . He gave orders to his Green sections, inwardly cursing the shakiness of his voice.
He found himself counting and realized that some cell of his mind had been doing so ever since hearing Milner enter the fjord. Twenty seconds then . . . now thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three. ... In distance covered about two and a half miles. At least five more to the target.
The lichen-stained rocky walls of the fjord streamed by, their shadows lit up by the rapid flashes of automatic guns. Another mountain spur deflected the fjord from its course. Grenville took this one wide, kicking his rudder bar left and right as he went by. The fire this time came from two posts on the rock face above them. Dazzled by the tracer, Grenville and Phillips crouched down. Coloured lights flashed by the perspex windshield, deadly white puffs cast a hail of shrapnel in all directions. There was a sharp metallic crack, a jerk, and the smell of burnt rubber and cordite. A hollow voice echoed round Grenville’s mind as if his skull were a cavern. This is it! Here it comes...!
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