Major Thomas ran, half-crouching, across the narrow track and stared down at him.
“Ready?”
Allenby nodded without glancing up. It was getting lighter all the time. The pier and the sleeping patrol boat were invisible from here, and the village merely a huddle of pale shapes. But it would not last.
He replied sharply, “Nearly.. I’m going to drop this pylon across the railway tracks. It will take about a minute more.”
Thomas grunted .and raised his night glasses. “The partisans say the whole village is in hiding or gone to the hills.”
Allenby looked at the soldier. “Carry on.”
Thomas added, “I was here a few weeks ago,” He seemed to need to talk. “The patrol boat’s captain is coming over to our side. He’s not waiting for an invasion. He’ll take our party to the rendezvous.”
The soldier came bouncing down the ridge, his blackened face split by a grin.
“All done, sir.” As he threw himself down, his leather jerkin worked up over his battledress and Allenby saw the flash of the Royal Engineers on his shoulder.
He heard himself say, “My father was a sapper too.” The man eyed him curiously but said nothing.
Thomas waved his arm at several running figures, and one in the familiar sheepskin coat skidded to a halt. Maroca could move fast when he wanted to.
Thomas’s runner said, “Thought I heard a shot.”
Thomas ignored him and spoke in a fierce whisper to the squat partisan.
Then he said, “The Carabinieri are in the new building.
When the wires were cut ” he shot Maroca an angry stare,
“they took cover with the engineers.”
Maroca muttered, “Then they all die together.”
Allenby said, “It will be loud. I suggest you take cover.
With the ground this hard the blast will be like a daisy-cutter.” Thomas regarded him bleakly. “I know your work,
Lieutenant!”
Weeks tore off his balaclava and pressed his hands to his ears as Allenby said, “Here goes-then.”
The explosion was like a thunderclap and for what seemed like an age it was barely possible to breathe as dust and sharp fragments of stone and sand rained down over them. Allenby felt the earth jerk beneath his body and knew the pylon was down. As he lurched to his feet he saw its vague outline sprawled across the narrow-gauge railway in a tangle of buckled girders.
Weeks said softly, “No trains today!”
Thomas waved his machine pistol and, with Maroca loping beside him, ran along the track towards the new concrete building.
Allenby gasped as a thin line of bright green tracer slashed down from the top of the pale building; he heard the bullets cracking and ricocheting amongst the stones like enraged hornets.
Weeks exclaimed, “That’s bloody torn it!” He cocked his sub-machine gun and banged the magazine with his palm to make sure it was firm.
Allenby waited until the sapper had gathered up one of the satchels and then ducked as more sporadic firing ripped above his head. They, whoever they were, could see nothing in the gloom and swirling dust. But once daylight came they could pin the raiders down and wait for help to arrive.
Allenby wiped his lips with his hand. The building should have been empty, the guards accounted for by Maroca’s men, instead-He dragged Weeks by the sleeve. “Round here. We must get closer.”
Weeks bobbed his head. “Right bloody potmess this has turned out to be!” Surprisingly he grinned. “Trust the army, eh sir?”
Shots were coming from the village now, and Allenby saw chips of concrete flying from the high wall as the partisans’ bullets wasted themselves.
Thomas was back again, his breath loud and painful.
“I’ll give you covering fire, Lieutenant. Get up there and lay a charge at the corner.” He peered at his watch. “The marines should be in position now. About bloody time!”
Allenby crawled farther along the litter of rocks and discarded building equipment.
He heard a man scream out in agony and the sound was like a blow. He tried not to think of the nearness of danger and death. He told himself again and again, he was used to
that. Nothing new.
Weeks said, “No windows, sir.”
Allenby groped for his pouch again. If Goudie were here he would have said, “Piece of cake.”
He gestured to the soldier. “Second charge. Lively.”
The man crawled up beside him. “There, sir. Gap in the wall.” It was probably intended to allow access for power cables.
Allenby pressed himself against the wall and watched as the soldier molded the explosive charge into place. Once he looked up and saw the top of the wall framed against the sky. Paler still, but with ranks of low scudding clouds to hold back the dawn a little longer.
It only needs one brave soul to look over the edge. A grenade would do for the lot of us.
“All done, sir.”
Allenby heard shouts from above, Italian not German. Why did that matter so much?
Weeks said, “The partisans have pulled back. ” He sounded stunned. “We must have their cover!”
Allenby looked round. Being against the wall was like being in a trap. He clenched his teeth and felt the grit between them, like that day when they had dug him out after the mine had exploded.
“No time for anything fancy. They’ll be onto us at any second.” He lit a fuse with his lighter, the flame like a beacon in the gray light.
“Run!” They stumbled down the slope like drunks and Allenby thought he saw Thomas and some of the others scattering towards the nearest cottages.
The explosion was more like a_muffled thud after the first one which had brought down the pylon, and Allenby heard the debris cascading down and upending scaffolding and a concrete mixer in a miniature avalanche.
Thomas yelled, “Now! Attack!”
Voices and shots echoed around the hillside and Allenby saw some of Maroca’s men pushing forward again, firing as they ran. Somewhere a whistle shrilled and Weeks said heavily, “Here come the Royals, bless ‘em!”
The big Siebel ferry was hidden by a jutting elbow of land, beyond which Allenby knew there was the newly constructed jetty. Thomas rushed past and shouted, “Wasted fifteen minutes!”
Allenby sighed. Was that all? It seemed like hours.
More crouching shapes ran towards him, and he recognized them as part of the Royal Marine detachment. They were carrying more explosives, their bodies bent double under the weight.
Allenby nodded. “Follow me.” It was strange to think that, had the fishing boat been sunk before they could get ashore, these marines would be trying to do it all on their own.
The firing was less and more erratic and Allenby heard the sharp crack of grenades as Maroca’s men flung them into the building. One marine, a corporal, said, “Ready when you are, sir.” He sounded tense, wild. Like a horse scenting blood.
Allenby clambered up the fallen concrete, his eyes streaming from smoke and the sting of small-arms fire. He saw the outline of the big generators, the catwalk which ran around the inside of the place; two corpses lay upon it.
Thomas touched his arm and asked sharply, “Can you do it?”
Allenby saw a figure being pursued along the catwalk, pushed and harried by some of the partisans. He looked away as the man’s scream cut down to a gurgle.
He said huskily, “It’s not like the machinery which Intelligence described. It will take a much larger charge.” He looked at the corporal. “The two red packs. Get them now. He glanced at Thomas. “I’ll need half an hour, you see-“
Thomas peered at him, his face so close Allenby could feel his fury.
“Half an hour? The Krauts will be here in ten minutes at the most!”
A man ran through the smoke and babbled something in Thomas’s ear.
The major said evenly, “We have trouble with the patrol boat. I shall deal with it.” He spoke slowly, carefully, as if he were afraid Alle
nby would not grasp the significance of his words. “The boat’s captain must have thought the raid had gone wrong,”
Allenby stared at him. “That’s what I think, as it happens!” He peered round as another terrible scream cut across his nerves like a knife. “Can’t you control those savages?”
Thomas stepped back, and by accident or design allowed the muzzle of his machine pistol to hover towards Allenby’s stomach. Weeks and the soldier stared at the gun with sudden anxiety, as if it could not be happening.
“You attend to your task. I shall deal with the boat.” His eyes shone like stones in his blackened face. Then he swung on his heel and left.
Allenby waited until he could trust his own voice. “Go and help the others with the charges, Weeks.” He felt sickened by what he had seen, by Thomas’s inhuman anger.
The sapper humped two satchels onto his shoulders and followed Allenby deeper into the unfinished site.
The dust and trapped smoke mercifully hid some of the carnage, but great patterns of blood lined the walls like unmoving specters where the grenades had blasted the defenders to fragments. In the poor light the blood looked like tar.
Allenby went about his work, his mind grappling with his revulsion, hanging on to the job he knew so well.
He heard someone groping towards him and without looking knew it was Maroca.
Allenby said, “Tell your men to clear the village. Everyone out.” The man said nothing and Allenby swivelled round on his knees and added harshly, “Right now!”
Some marines bounded past to lay the extra charges against the dust-covered machinery. Allenby watched them lash and tape it into place as he added slowly, “Otherwise I’ll blow up the lot of us.”
The marines melted away to rejoin the others and Allenby heard the stammer of machine guns and rifle fire. But it did not seem important, or that it concerned him in any way, Maroca grinned and tried to laugh. “You joke, huh?” “No joke.” Allenby stood up and saw Weeks raise his tommy gun threateningly. Even now the Germans might be coming along the coast road, unless they were stone deaf. Maroca stared from the piled explosives to the coils of fuse wire which lay by Allenby’s feet.
Maroca shook his head. “You’re mad!” His eyes shifted as Allenby bent down over the detonators. “I do what I can.”
Allenby strode across the floor and seized him by his filthy coat.
“They’re your people, for Christ’s sake! Don’t you care any more?”
Maroca shook him away and ran through the building as if he expected Allenby to shoot him down.
Allenby looked at his hands. They were steady enough. Detached. Perhaps he had gone past it, round the bend as they termed it. Bomb-happy. The thought -made him smile but he controlled it instantly. If I begin to laugh, I shall not be able to stop.
A sailor peered through the breach in the wall and saw him standing beside the explosives.
He shouted, “Time to pull out.” His eyes stayed on the explosives. “They’re ready to set the time fuses in the ferry when you says the word, sir.”
More shots, and a great gout of flame from the hillside where some tracer had touched off a fuel store.
Allenby looked up at the clouds. Suddenly it was daylight. Gray, cool, but daylight.
Bullets whimpered through the building, and he saw the soldier fall on his face, without even a cry.
Weeks ran to help him but Allenby said, “No use. Keep down.” He had seen enough dead men in his young life to recognize this one.
Suddenly they had the place to themselves, apart from the corpses. Even the sailor had vanished. Allenby shook himself. He had forgotten to ask about Frazer. He looked at the dead soldier, his blackened face screwed up at the moment of impact. Who was he?
Weeks said awkwardly, “I can hear a vehicle, sir, a tank or Jerry half-track most like.”
Allenby nodded. He too heard the distant clink and clatter of tracks. Delayed-action, they had told him. The Germans would defuse the charges in minutes, thanks to Major Thomas and his bloody allies.
“Fall back to the pier, Weeks, Tell them I am going to fire the charge myself. When it blows, set the ones on the ferry, right?”
Weeks stood firm, and did not even duck as a heavy bullet slammed into the machinery behind him.
“I’ll stay with you, sir. Just in case.”
Allenby swung on him angrily and instantly relented. The same quiet faith as Hazel would have shown. As he always had, even at the end.
“Why not?” He began to pay out the wire, with Weeks keeping beside him all the way.
There was more firing now, machine guns of a different pattern, probably from the patrol-boat. Suppose the boat went without them, or the Italian change of heart and loyalty prevented their escape, what then? Thomas would go to earth with Maroca and the partisans, while the raiders-he shuddered. The Germans would show no mercy after what had happened.
“Far enough, sir.”
Allenby got down on his knees again. From a corner of his eye he saw a gleam of pewter, the sea. It should be blue as it always was in travel pictures and stories, Allenby thought vaguely.
“You OK, sir?”
Allenby tugged down the peak of his cap. The marshal again.
“Here we go.” He pressed the switch and ducked his head as the hillside erupted in a deluge of rock and concrete. When the smoke finally drifted clear the building was reduced to half its height, and the inside had caved in amongst the new machinery like a violated tomb.
Allenby raised his head. “Bloody hell!”
Weeks hurried after him, his ears still numb from the explosion. But through and above it all he saw only Allenby. The pale and strangely determined lieutenant who rarely smiled, who found time to save a few stinking Sicilians when his own life was in the balance.
Weeks saw the end of the pier, and two dead marines being dragged towards the moored boat. They all had a very good chance of being killed. But the sea was here, and to Weeks that meant just about everything.
Lieutenant Keith Frazer strained his eyes above the bridge screen and watched the land as it appeared to pivot across the bows.
“Midships! Steady!” He heard Ives murmur a reply and thanked God for his coolness so far.
They had stopped the engines only once and that was to drop a boat with half a dozen marine commandos who would rendezvous with Thomas and take command of the Italian patrol boat. Even through his concentration the realization kept hitting him like a fist. It had all been too casual, with no apparent thought for the Italians’ change of heart. He had seen the flash of tracer from the pier, the ripping sounds of bullets spraying the wooden pier where the squad of marines should be in position.
A lookout in the blunt bows yelled, “Anchored barge dead ahead!”
“Full astern together!” The bridge shook as the big diesels responded instantly.
Lieutenant Commander Goudie’s lean figure ran to one side as he snapped, “Get past it!”
“Stop starboard.” Frazer gripped the screen to steady his nerves. “Half ahead port, starboard fifteen.”
As they swung crabwise towards where the new jetty and loading bay were supposed to be, Frazer felt the ferry’s flank crash against the moored craft and then drag it alongside, its cable wrapped around the Siebel ferry’s rudder.
Frazer said, “Half ahead together.”
Ives said, “Helm’s jammed, sir.”
Goudie joined Frazer and said softly, “Doesn’t matter now.” He raised his voice. “Stand by in the bows! Archer, get those men ashore as soon as you can!”
Frazer tried not to lick his lips. He knew that one of the machine gunners was staring at him, probably measuring his own chance of survival in what he saw.
He thought of Allenby. Was he still alive, or lying out there badly injured by the explosion?
The first one had been bad enough, but the second had, seemed more menacing. As if a volcano had erupted.
The lookout shouted, “That schooner’s heading s
eaward, sir! Port quarter!”
Frazer did not need his binoculars. The partisans were getting out, or some of them were.
Goudie glanced at him. “Stop engines.” He moved nearer so that the others could not hear and waited as Frazer passed his orders and brought the ferry and its tethered companion towards the promontory.
He said in a tightly controlled whisper, “The schooner is valuable to them. It doesn’t mean they’re saving their own skins!”
Frazer watched as the bows loomed over the snub-nosed jetty where the enemy had been preparing a bay for loading and unloading fast supply boats. The road and the railway would have done the rest.
He said, “I’d have thought the RAF could have done it better with one blockbuster.”
Goudie watched him. “These people have got to manage on their own when we pull out. We don’t want the Sicilians to remember that our bombers wiped out their village, do we?”
Frazer tensed as the ferry sidled against the pale concrete. When the charges in the hold were exploded it would probably destroy the whole place anyway. He examined his feelings and was surprised to discover he did not care. It was war at first hand. Not through a gun or bomb sight. He had seen plenty of innocent people in the air raids on Liverpool and Southampton laid out in rows to await their mass graves. Well, now it was their turn.
He shouted, “Stop engines, get the Chief and his men on deck!”
Men were leaping ashore with Sub-Lieutenant Archer, pistol in hand, in the lead.
Frazer saw the rest of the marines trotting forward to disembark. With all the explosions it seemed likely the enemy must soon react.
The marines could deal with this lot, but they could hardly be expected to take on a Panzer division from Palermo.
As the engines rumbled into silence he heard the sound of shots, hoarse shouts of command as the other raiders ran towards the pier and the coastal track. Ives stood down from the wheel and automatically wiped the compass with his sleeve to clear away the drifting dust.
The Volunteers Page 7