W E B Griffin - Men at War 4 - The Fighting Agents

by The Fighting Agents(Lit)

  After that, there was nothing to do but wait until dusk fell.

  Commander Lennox waited until he was sure that Whittaker -was in the control room, and then he started the dry run.

  "Close all hatches and watertight doors," he said, and the talker repeated the order.

  Lennox could see the hatches on the deck closing, and he could hear a dull metallic clanging from all over the boat. With the exception of the hatch from the bridge, which would be his responsibility to close, the boat should now be watertight.

  "All hatches and watertight doors secured, Sir," the talker confirmed.

  "Prepare to dive," Lennox ordered.

  "Clear the bridge!"

  "Prepare to dive," the talker repeated.

  "Bridge being cleared."

  "Dive!

  "Lennox ordered "Dive! Dive! Dive! "the talker said, and dropped through the hatch. Lennox followed him, then closed the hatch after him.

  The sound of the Klaxon hurt his ears.

  "Take her to one hundred feet," the captain ordered, and put his hand out to steady himself as the bow of the Drum nosed downward.

  Ten minutes later, the bow of the Drum broke the surface again.

  The moment it did, Lennox started his stopwatch.

  As soon as he was on the bridge, with water still spilling over the deck, he started issuing orders.

  "Battle stations," he ordered.

  The talker repeated the command, and the Klaxon went off.

  "Man all cannon," Lennox ordered.

  Submariners erupted from the hatches and went to the guns.

  "All astern one-third," he ordered.

  "Make her dead in the water."

  The pitch of the just-started diesels changed.

  It was time for another command, but there was nothing standard that Lennox could recall that fit the situation.

  "Make all preparations to launch the rubber boats," he finally ordered.

  As crewmen freed the rubber boats from the Bofors mount and handed them to crewmen on the deck, other crewmen emerged from other hatches.

  The weapons and ammunition boxes were first placed on the deck in a line, then tied together with ten-foot lengths of line.

  By the time the crewmen carrying the limp boats had reached the forward deck, others had air hoses waiting. It took what seemed like a long time for the boats to be inflated, and by the time they were, Whittaker, Hammersmith, and Radioman Second Joe Garvey had come onto the deck, wearing their gear, and were waiting.

  The chief of the boat and the chief torpedoman put the rubber boat over the side themselves, lowering it with ropes until it touched the nearly horizontal section of the hull, then they jumped down onto it with ropes around their waists.

  Then they pushed the boat off the hull into the water and raised their hands to help Whittaker from the deck to the sloping part of the hull and into the boat itself.

  Whittaker jerked the starting rope of the outboard motor. When he had it running, he checked to see that the line tied to a grommet in the heavy black rubber was in place. Then he put the motor in gear, and the boat started off.

  When the line tied to the grommet drew taut, crewmen slid the first of the two larger ammunition and weapons boxes (now wrapped with life preserver flotation packs) into the water, then skidded the line of small "film" boxes after it.

  Then the process was repeated for the second boat, except that both Ham mersmith and Joe Garvey got into that one.

  The atmosphere had been tense: to see if the boats could be launched and whether or not the flotation packets would keep the weapons and film boxes afloat.

  Then Lennox heard a guffaw, then a belly laugh, and then a high-pitched giggle. The first thing he thought, angrily, was that someone had fallen over the side. That, despite the genuine threat to life, was always good for a laugh from his men.

  And then he saw the object of the amusement.

  Jim Whittaker was fifty yards off the bow, making a wide turn to return to the Drum. The strain on the line towing the boxes behind the rubber boat, plus the weight of the outboard motor and of Whittaker himself, had caused the bow to rise almost straight up out of the water. The outboard was open full bore, but it was just barely moving, and Whittaker himself looked as if he was about to sink into the water.

  Sound carries well over water, and Whittaker heard the laughter of the crew.

  He rose to the occasion. Balancing himself precariously, he saluted crisply.

  "Man overboard!" a shout went up, followed by a bellow of laughter.

  Lennox looked quickly to see what had happened. The chief torpedoman had lost his footing and gone into the water. The chief of the boat was trying, with absolutely no success, to haul him back aboard by the rope around his waist.

  The captain of the USS Drum picked up his electric hailer and started to put it to his lips. Then he took it down and slammed it painfully against his leg until the pain was such that he was no longer overcome with hysterics.

  "Attention on the deck," he finally announced.

  "Prepare to recover rubber boats!

  "And then the temptation was too much.

  "And while you're at it, see if you can recover the chief torpedoman."

  XIII

  lONE]

  Canidy woke in the dark in a large bedroom in the Countess Batthyany's hunting lodge. He was buried deep in goose down, his nostrils full of perfume.

  But then he realized it wasn't perfume, it was something he had found in a bottle in his surprisingly ornate bathroom. The bottle bore a "Lanvin Paris London-New York" label underneath the words "Pour les Hommes." His French was good enough to understand what that meant, and the stuff hadn't smelled half bad when he sniffed at the bottle neck, and so he had liberally splashed it over himself after he'd wiped himself dry with a thick towel about the size of a pup tent.

  The cologne would be a nice change from the way he had smelled after the fishing boat from Vis to the mainland, and after the farm truck--redolent of horse manure--which had carried him across Yugoslavia to the neighborhood of the Hungarian border.

  It was only when he had put on a pair of silk pajamas and the odor of the "Pour les Hommes" had not diminished--had, in fact, seemed to intensify-that he began to suspect the legend on the bottle was directed to the gentle sex. If they doused themselves in "Pour les Hommes," men would be drawn to the smell like moths to a candle.

  It had confirmed the somewhat cynical impression he had formed not long after they'd first shown him his room that the Batthyany family had apparently not only done their hunting in considerable comfort, but also that when they returned from the vigors of the field, the comfort they'd received then had been furnished by females. In his bathroom, he had found a bidet, and in a heavy bookcase by the bedside was a collection of leather-bound photo albums, the photographs portraying handsome men and women in their birthday suits performing what could only be described as sexual gymnastics.

  He had at first wondered whether the albums had been purchased--they looked professionally done--or whether the Counts Batthyany had been unusually skilled amateur photographers. But when he got into the second volume, he recognized the huge fireplace in the main room of the lodge behind three dark-haired beauties and a hairy, skinny, mustachioed gentleman.

  The thought passed through his mind that it might be fun to peel several of the neatly matted photographs free of the albums and take them home for Ann. It might brighten her day, he thought. But then he decided against that.

  Ann took sex very seriously. But then he was sure that as far as Ann was concerned, dirty pictures would be as high on her taboo list for him as carrying on with Her Gracefulness, the Duchess of Stanfield.

  The next thought he had was that he would bring some of the dirty pictures back with him, to include them with his official report.

  "The photographs attached as Enclosures 16 through 26 are included in the belie that they might suggest exploitable character laws in the Hungarian aristocracy poss
ibly useful in future operations."

  That would shake up the system. Dave Bruce's near-glacial dignity would crack; he might even blush. He would certainly hem, haw, and stammer.

  And then he realized that he was already in enough trouble for having come to Hungary, without adding fuel to the fire. Did he need another demonstration that he didn't have the right attitude? Hardly.

  Obviously, he thought, suddenly chagrined, he did not have the right attitude.

  Instead of sitting here drooling over dirty pictures like some high-school junior, he should be wondering how to get Eric Fulmar and Professor Dyer out of St. Gertrud's prison without having to "terminate" them.

  He put the leather-bound albums back in their case and went to sleep thinking over what he had just about decided to do--the final decision to be made after talking it over with Ferniany and whoever London sent in to command the team.

  Ferniany would be here tomorrow, probably around noon. He would have with him two of his people, Hungarians he had recruited, and the signal panels, and the radio, and the Sten gun Captain Hughson had loaned him just before he left Vis. Canidy would be glad to have that back. There was plenty of room in the Lodge to put Ferniany and his men up for however long it took London to get off its ass and send him the team, and the worst possible scenario for that was five days.

  Von Heurten-Mitnitz and the Countess would return to Budapest tomorrow.

  Canidy saw no problem with that. He didn't need the Countess now: She had told her servants they were to do what he asked. And he didn't think there would be any suspicion directed toward the Countess and von HeurtenMitnitz for having been in Pecs several days before the prisoners had escaped from St. Gertrud's. Or several days before an unexplained explosion had destroyed a mine shaft in the Batthyany coal mine.

  It would be a coincidence, nothing more, that His Excellency had been enjoying the overnight hospitality of the Countess at the Countess's rustic love nest ten or so miles away.

  The most serious potential problem, Canidy had gone to sleep thinking, was not how to get Eric and the professor out of the hands of Hungarians, but how to do it without calling a hell of a lot of attention to the operation. He had been disturbed by Standartenfuhrer Muller's report that the SS not only had not grown bored with looking for Fulmar and the professor, but quite the reverse, had intensified the examination.

  St. Gertrud's prison would be swarming with SS and Gestapo just as soon as word got out that two prisoners had not only escaped but had been rescued by what it would take them about five minutes to figure out was a highly skilled team under the hands of either the SOE or the

  OSS.

  When he woke up smelling like a Hungarian courtesan, Canidy rested on his back in the dark for several minutes in the hope that, as sometimes happened, his subconscious had been working on the problem while he slept and that there would be new solutions, or new questions, or both.

  But none came.

  He fumbled for the bedside lamp, turned it on, then got out of bed and got dressed in the hunting clothes he had worn the day before. If nothing else, he decided, he would walk back through the woods to the drop zone and see for himself what it looked like at dawn.

  Then he would come back to the house and see about something to eat.

  He sensed, when he entered the main room of the lodge, that there was someone there, someone watching him.

  The room was lit now only by embers in the huge fireplace before which in happier times the aristocracy had staged their little tableaux vivants. He looked around, but he saw nothing.

  Then Alois, the chief hunter, rose out of a huge upholstered chair near the fireplace. Its bulk and high sides had hidden him. He was fully dressed and had

  apparently slept overnight in the chair as a sort of guard. He was wearing a heavy poncho like garment of gray wool, and he had his shotgun.

  "Good morning," Canidy said, smiling.

  Alois grunted.

  "I need a flashlight," Canidy said.

  There was confusion on Alois's face.

  Canidy mimed a flashlight, and lighting a path with one.

  Alois grunted again and left the room. He returned with two flashlights, a square light with a handle, and a tiny two-cell that looked like a child's toy. He extended both to Canidy, offering him his choice.

  Canidy took the larger light and walked to the door. Alois didn't move, but by the time Canidy had unlatched the chains and dead bolts, he became aware that Alois had moved soundlessly across the room and was standing behind him.

  Somewhere, far off, there was the sound of aircraft engines.

  The beam of his light picked out their footsteps in the snow from the day before, and Canidy, with Alois following him, walked away from the lodge toward the forest and the meadow beyond it.

  Concentrating on not losing the path or his footing in the dark, Canidy didn't pay much attention to the sound of the aircraft engines far away--until they suddenly seemed much closer.

  He looked up into the sky.

  Jesus! Those sound like Twin Wasps!

  He broke into a trot, slipping and sliding on the frozen snow.

  When he reached the meadow, it was light enough to see the meadow and the area beyond. But there was no aircraft in sight, and it was only when he strained his ears that he could convince himself that he could just barely hear the sound of faraway engines.

  Whatever it was, it was not for me. I should have known better. There's no way that could have been a Gooney Bird; no way they could have gotten a team here this quick. Now I look like a horse's ass in front of Alois.

  He met the large Hungarian's eyes and shrugged.

  And then he was sure the sound of the engines receding had changed, that it was growing louder. And it kept going in and out, growing louder then fainter, then louder again.

  And all of a sudden, it was very loud. A Gooney Bird appeared at the end of the meadow where the trees had been cut, its engine roar now deafening, and flashed overhead no more than two hundred feet off the ground. And there was no mistaking the star-in-a-bar U.S. identification painted on the wing.

  "Jesus, Maria, und Josef!

  "Alois said.

  The Gooney Bird banked, then disappeared from sight.

  Canidy stuck two fingers in his mouth, then raised them over his head to confirm his suspicion that the wind was coming from the direction of the stream and the cut-over area.

  He ran to the pile of pine boughs. He could just make out a shining glint underneath that had to be the kerosene.

  He dug it out. It was a five-gallon tin can, bearing a Shell logotype. A sealed tin can, he saw when he unscrewed the cap. There was a seal over the hole he would have to pry out before he could pour the kerosene.

  He changed his mind and threw the can atop the pile of boughs. And then he gestured to Alois.

  "Shoot the sonofabitch, Alois'"he said.

  Alois looked confused.

  Canidy gestured.

  "Bang! Bang!" Canidy shouted as he mimed the action.

  Alois looked confused, but he raised his shotgun and looked to Canidy for approval.

  "Right! Yes! Ja! Schlessen!"

  The shotgun barked, and the can erupted. Canidy felt droplets of kerosene in the air.

  Alois looked at Canidy, as if he was afraid he had misunderstood him and done the wrong thing.

  Canidy smiled at him, then ran to him and reached for the shotgun. Alois debated for a moment parting with the shotgun, but finally handed it over.

  Canidy found a puddle of kerosene, put the barrel to it, and fired the other barrel.

  There was a dull flicker of fire for a moment, and then the kerosene that had vaporized when the can had erupted ignited in a whoosh. A thick cloud of black smoke quickly formed.

  Christ, I hope they just haven't given up! That somebody sees that!

  The pine boughs were burning now, and noisily Canidy had just about decided that he could not hear the Twin Wasps at all anymore, when the Gooney B
ird appeared, flaps and wheels down, right on the edge of a stall.

  And then very quickly, surprising him, something fell--five somethings fell--from the door. And then the first canopy opened, and the second, and then one at a time all the rest, and five parachutes floated toward the ground.

  The Gooney Bird pulled up its flaps and its gear and was gone.

  A Gooney Bird! How the bell did they get a Gooney Bird this far?

  Canidy ran toward the first parachutist, who was just about to touch down. He heard Alois plodding behind him.