CHAPTER TWO
The six men crawled flat on their bellies across the snowfield, moving forward a few inches at a time. Their white winter-camouflage smocks rendered them all but invisible against the background.
Slowly now, the leader of the six told himself. Slowly. Only another fifty yards to the objective, but don’t rush. All the training has paid off. We’ve come through twenty miles of hostile country to get this far. Only a few more yards …
A machine-gun chattered, the bullets flicking up spurts of snow just a few feet in front of the line of crawling men. They froze, hearts pounding. The burst of fire came again, the second stream of bullets following the path of the first, underlining the fact that it was all over, finished.
Suddenly, the leader of the group wanted desperately to be sick.
‘All right,’ a voice called. ‘You’re all dead. Up you get.’
Over on the right, a small group of what had seemed to be boulders suddenly shook themselves free of snow and resolved themselves into men, one of whom cradled a Bren light machine-gun. They advanced to meet the others, who were now rising ruefully to their feet. The man with the Bren stood in front of the leader of the ambushed group and grinned at him.
‘Hard luck, Einar,’ the man said, a slight Scottish accent betraying his origins. ‘But don’t look so downhearted. You’ve come close enough to the target to qualify. The main test was to get across country without being spotted, and this time you managed it very well indeed. Congratulations. Now let’s go over to the hut. You’ve earned your rations.’
Einar, who like the other five in his group was a Norwegian, trudged through the snow towards the hut that had been their objective, shoulder to shoulder with the man carrying the Bren.
‘Captain Douglas,’ he said, ‘does this mean our training is now completed?’ The Norwegian spoke excellent English, although a little slowly. He had been a Professor of Physics at Oslo University before the war, and still could not quite comprehend the circumstances which had brought him to this wild and remote part of Scotland on the west coast of Inverness.
The other looked at him, smiling. ‘I think it means that the hard part is over, Einar. I can’t say I’m sorry, either. After all, we’re supposed to be here for a rest.’
Behind Douglas, Sergeant-Major Stan Brough chuckled. Rest — and by that he meant proper rest — was something this particular Special Air Service detachment hadn’t known for more than a year. First there had been North Africa, and operations deep behind the enemy lines that had culminated in a hair-raising attack on a German headquarters in Tunisia; then a landing on the island of Pantelleria to blow up Italian gun positions and supply dumps prior to the main Allied invasion; and after that the SAS men had been thrown more or less immediately into the murderous Partisan war in Yugoslavia, where they had been sent to make contact with Tito, the legendary guerrilla leader.
The wilds of western Inverness were gentle compared to the harsh mountain fastnesses of Yugoslavia, yet in a way Brough had been sorry when the RAF Dakota transport had come to take them away. There was something about that land, and its people, which appealed to him deeply. Maybe he would go back there after the war, if only to see how things had turned out for the people the SAS men and others had gone to help. The same thoughts, he knew, had been foremost in the mind of Callum Douglas, but for the young officer there had been the added attraction of a young Partisan woman called Mila.
Anyway, he told himself, it was all academic. The war might go on for a long time yet, and the odds were stacked heavily against any of them coming through it alive.
Not many of Douglas’s original command were left. Some had died in North Africa, others in Yugoslavia. Apart from Douglas and Brough himself, there remained only Liam Conolly, the Irishman, and Trooper Brian Olds, the stolid and dependable ex-farm hand from Norfolk.
Brough looked around at Conolly, who was keeping up a halting conversation with one of the Norwegians in the latter’s own language. A born linguist, the Irishman’s talent in that direction had got his companions out of a desperate situation on more than one occasion. During the weeks in Inverness he had set himself the goal of learning the basics of Norwegian, and had managed to build up a considerable vocabulary — not that it really mattered to anyone except Conolly, because all the Norwegians spoke English.
Brough shook his head at the memory of some of the irrepressible Irishman’s antics during the past year. His native sense of humour had done much to raise their morale in perilous times. He looked habitually untidy, even when wearing his best uniform — a uniform that now sported a sergeant’s stripes, which Conolly had accepted only after much protest — and his vivid blue eyes wore a dreamy, faraway expression that belied his talent for killing swiftly and silently with a variety of weapons ranging from commando knives to crossbows. A student of Dublin University, he had been on vacation in Germany when Hitler invaded Poland, escaping by the skin of his teeth on one of the last trains to cross the Dutch border. Brough knew that Conolly had turned down the offer of a commission at least twice.
Brian Olds was a different sort entirely. At this moment he was in the hut up ahead, preparing a meal for the dozen men who had been taking part in the training exercise. It was the farm boy from Norfolk who, in his own quiet, soft-spoken way, had imparted to the Norwegians something of his own uncanny sixth sense; he could look at a stretch of countryside and tell almost at a glance if anything was wrong or out of context in it. His ability to pick out the location of an ambush, a sniper or an enemy patrol simply by observing the movements of birds and listening to their warning calls had proved more than a mere asset; as far as Douglas, Brough and the rest were concerned, it had often been the recipe for survival in a hostile terrain.
Among the others who made up Douglas’s ten-man team, two — Troopers Barber and Mitchell — had joined as replacements just before the Pantelleria operation. Barber had created some hostility against himself at first because of his garrulous Cockney nature, but the opposition had disappeared soon after the first demonstration of his ability to move with catlike stealth over any kind of ground. Mitchell, the signaller, was something of a mystery. He was a Rhodesian, from one of the longest-established settler families, and had the look of the veldt in his grey eyes. He spoke only in monosyllables, as though conserving reserves of apparently inexhaustible energy. He could run up one side of a mountain and down the other, carrying a radio pack, with scarcely an increase in his heartbeat rate.
The other four, Troopers Cowley, Lambert, Sansom and Willings, were newcomers. Cowley and Lambert had transferred to the Special Air Service from the Commandos, and had taken part in the historic attack on St Nazaire in 1942 — the raid that had denied the use of the harbour to the battleship Tirpitz. Sansom and Willings had both come from the Royal Engineers, and were demolition experts. All had adapted themselves well to the tough SAS lifestyle.
This, then, was the small band of men who comprised No. 2 Special Raiding Unit, a designation recently bestowed upon them following their activities in Yugoslavia. No. 2 SRU was an offshoot of ‘D’ Squadron of the 1st Special Air Service Regiment, which — commanded by its founder, the redoubtable Colonel David Stirling — had first won its laurels in North Africa. Stirling was now a prisoner of war, but the organization he had formed continued to flourish and expand.
In the two and a half years of its existence, the Special Air Service had grown from what many senior Army officers had regarded as something of a cowboy outfit into a hard-hitting force which had inflicted damage upon the enemy out of all proportion to its size. The badge of the SAS — Excalibur, the winged sword of King Arthur, surmounting the legend ‘Who Dares Wins’ — had become an object of fierce pride among those who were qualified to wear it.
Now, in the first days of January 1944, the Special Air Service units which had fought around the shores of the Mediterranean, from North Africa to the Greek Islands, were regrouping and training in readiness for the biggest venture yet: the assault on no
rth-west Europe. No one yet knew when it would come, but all the signs were that it would be soon, within a few months. Britain was being turned into a vast aircraft carrier and a depot for the supplies and troops that were pouring in from the other side of the Atlantic.
Here, in snowbound Inverness, the war seemed very remote. The hut into which the SAS men and the Norwegians tramped was pleasantly warm and filled with the aroma of frying bacon, sizzling away in a large pan which Olds was tending on top of a glowing stove. He turned the rashers, saw that they were ready and scooped them onto a tin plate which he left on the stove to keep warm, replacing the bacon in the pan with a batch of eggs. Minutes later, the men were falling hungrily on the food which he dished up.
Callum Douglas chewed on a piece of bread, made succulent with the last of the bacon fat which he had wiped from his mess tin, and washed down with a mouthful of tea. The influx of sixteen damp bodies into the hut was already making the atmosphere stuffy. They would be spending the night there, and suddenly Douglas felt the need to get as much fresh air as possible before the darkness and the cold confined him to its interior.
Outside, he scrubbed his mess tin with snow before lighting a cigarette. Inhaling deeply, he looked around. The only time he ever smoked was after a meal, when he enjoyed it; any more than that and his mouth felt sour.
He gazed north-westwards across Loch Morar, taking in the spur of land beyond and letting his eyes rest on the dark violet of Skye’s rugged hills, rising from the sea in the fading light. Far away, the sun dropped slowly towards the rim of the Hebrides, a cold red ball ensnared in mist.
Douglas shivered slightly, not so much with the cold but at the stark beauty of the scene. Even in the depth of winter the Western Isles, lapped by tendrils of the Gulf Stream, seemed to retain a peculiar warmth all of their own; the snow on them served to soften their contours and make different plays of colour upon them as the light varied, whereas snow merely accentuated the rugged savagery of the highlands that towered to the east.
For once, Douglas noticed, the sea was empty of ships. Normally it was otherwise, for the waters out there were the preserve of the Royal Navy, and nothing other than warships, fishing boats and the necessary island ferries was allowed into them. Because of the heavy naval presence the whole area around the Western Isles was restricted, which suited certain secretive people very well indeed.
Here on the western coast of rugged Inverness, a number of country houses in the vicinity of Arisaig, on the tip of South Morar, had been commandeered early in the war and designated Special Training School Group A. For the past three years, amid this wild and lonely landscape, agents of the Special Operations Executive — the organization responsible for sending its men and women into enemy-occupied Europe to liaise with and train the resistance movements — had been brought to a peak of physical condition and taught how to kill their enemies silently and effectively with whatever weapon was to hand at the time, whether it were a knife, piece of rope, broken bottle or even a rolled-up newspaper. They had also learned how to use pistols and sub-machine-guns, how to jump trains and blow them up, and how to land from small boats on a defended coastline.
Douglas had enjoyed his weeks here, helping to put the SOE agents through their paces, not least because for him Scotland was home. The rambling house overlooking the River Tay, where he had been born twenty-five years ago, held both fond and bitter memories for him; fond because of the care of his father, who had brought him up, and bitter because he knew his mother only as a blurred memory. His father had destroyed every photograph of her after she had run off with an American rancher, a wealthy Texan who had come to Scotland for the salmon fishing, when Douglas was a very small child.
‘Think they’ll be all right, sir?’
The voice at his elbow made him start. ‘What? Oh, it’s you, Stan. What did you say?’
‘The Norwegians,’ Brough said. ‘Do you reckon they’ll be up to it?’
Douglas threw his cigarette end into the snow. ‘Well, we’ve taught them all we know, but I’ve no idea what they will be up against. It’s probably for the best that we don’t know, but I must confess to being intrigued, especially since most of them appear to be scientists of some sort. They’re a nice bunch. I hope it all works out for them.’
Brough began to make another comment, but broke off as a faint, alien sound broke the silence of the hillsides. Both men found the source of the noise almost immediately. Above the shadows that were descending on Loch Morar they made out the cross-shape of an aircraft, turning in its flight and then steadying so that it was nose-on to the two watchers and level with them, as they were several hundred feet up on a hillside. As it drew nearer, Douglas recognized the high wing and heavy, spatted undercarriage of a Westland Lysander. He had seen plenty of them during his time in the desert, and in fact had flown in one during an intelligence operation in Palestine.
The Lysander tilted a wing as it crossed the shore of the Loch, as though the pilot was checking his bearings, then resumed its course.
‘Seems to be looking for something,’ Brough said, as the aircraft tilted a wing once more.
‘Or somebody,’ Douglas observed. ‘I wonder if it’s us? We’re the only ones up here at the moment.’
He realized suddenly that the Lysander pilot would have difficulty in spotting them, dressed as they were in their white winter clothing. Quickly delving into his camouflage smock, he extracted the small mirror which he always carried in the breast pocket of his battledress. The sun was not yet fully down and he aimed the mirror at it, making an improvised heliograph.
The Lysander pilot caught sight of the reflected rays and turned towards the flickering light source, flying low over the hut from which some of the others had now emerged, their curiosity aroused by the roar of the engine. They waved, and the gesture was returned by the pilot and his observer, clearly visible in the cockpit.
The pilot turned and flew back towards the hut, throttling back and coming down as low as he dared. As the Lysander passed overhead, its engine idling, the observer tossed a message container from the cockpit. It spiralled down, a red streamer fluttering in its wake, as the pilot gunned the engine again and climbed away to a safer height.
The container landed in the snow some distance away from the group by the hut. Mitchell was nearest to it, and ran through the snow to retrieve it. He brought it to Douglas, who held it aloft and waved at the circling Lysander. The pilot rocked the aircraft wings in response before heading south into the gathering dusk.
Wondering what this was all about, Douglas unfastened the cap of the container and pulled out a rolled-up message form. Around him the others waited expectantly while their officer read it. The message was simple enough.
‘Captain Douglas report immediately to telephone box by roadside at head of Glen Beasdale. Transport waiting.’ The message ended with a map reference, to make sure that Douglas found the right spot, and the time when it was written. It was signed by a brigadier whom Douglas knew to be on the staff of SOE.
Taking Brough on to one side, he said quietly, ‘Stan, I’ve got to go. I haven’t a clue what’s going on, but this only involves me. Bring in the party as planned, as soon as it’s light tomorrow.’
He glanced at the sunset. ‘Glen Beasdale,’ he muttered to himself. ‘That’s about three miles away, and all downhill. Well, whoever is waiting won’t have to wait long.’
Five minutes later Douglas was skiing down the hillside in the twilight, scarf pulled up around his face against the cold breeze. The exercise was to have ended the next day with a cross-country ski run, for which purpose sixteen pairs of skis had been off-loaded at the hut. Douglas was grateful for that now, and for the fact that he knew this bit of territory like the back of his hand. There were few pitfalls, and those that did exist he could avoid with ease, even in the rapidly fading light.
It was almost completely dark by the time he reached the designated spot on the road that led towards Arisaig — the only road
, in fact, in this remote part of the British Isles. He unfastened the skis and, resting them across his shoulder, made his way towards the telephone box. There was no sign of the promised transport, but he made up his mind to wait for a few more minutes before ringing up HQ to find out what exactly was going on.
Breaking his self-imposed smoking rule, he lit a cigarette, partly because its glow broke the monotony of the darkness and made him feel a little warmer. He had smoked it down to its last inch when he caught sight of masked headlights approaching from the direction of Arisaig. He moved out into the road to make himself visible.
The vehicle was an Austin 10 light utility car. It drew up a few feet away and the driver got out, a vague shape in the darkness. Douglas could make out little more than the pale blue of a face, topped by a beret. The figure was wearing a greatcoat, its skirt almost reaching the ground.
‘Captain Douglas? I’m sorry I’m late. The snow has blown in over the road back there, and I’m afraid I got stuck. Please wait until I turn round before you get in. I might need a push.’
The voice was soft, cultured and unmistakably female.
Before Douglas had a chance to say anything, the woman got back into the car and turned it expertly on the narrow, slippery road, causing Douglas to step sharply out of the way. He slid his skis into the back, which was covered by a canvas tilt, then climbed into the passenger seat. As the car moved off, he looked curiously at its driver.
‘What are you?’ he asked, ‘ATS, or something like that?’
He sensed that the woman was smiling in the dark. ‘No, captain. I’m a civilian. You can call me Colette, if you like.’
She volunteered no further information about herself, and Douglas was not in the mood for talking, so the two drove on in silence. At length, the car turned left off the winding road and passed between two enormous stone pillars that flanked a gateway. There was no sign of the gate itself, and Douglas suspected that in common with most other ornamental metal structures throughout the British Isles, it had long since been removed and melted down in aid of the war effort.
Attack at Night Page 2