Gold From Crete (13 page)

‘Brewer, you come with me in the
Magpie
. Coe’ll go with Captain Brown in the
Thrush
,’ said the major.

The shadowy forms of the two armoured barges could not be seen against the jetty. There was a broad gangplank leading into each barge, and over each was pouring a steady river of motor-cyclists, up one ramp, down another, and then round and over the flat bottoms of the barges, to come to a halt, tight-packed and yet in order, so that each barge was jammed with silent men sitting on silent machines.

Brewer could guess at the amount of drill and rehearsal necessary to achieve such a result without confusion. The major took him over a narrower gangplank in the bows. Here the darkness was even more complete; Brewer pulled to a standstill just in time to save himself from bumping his nose against a square mass that loomed before him.

‘I’ll get in first, if you’ll excuse me,’ said the major. He opened a door in the armoured car and climbed up with Brewer following him.

‘Sit down, please,’ said the major. ‘If you sit still you won’t bump yourself.’

Brewer found that out immediately by experience. As he settled himself he became abruptly conscious of something like a machine-gun butt at his shoulder; the roof was only just over his head.

‘Damn you, Owen,’ snapped the major. ‘I’ve told you before that you’re not to eat either onions or oranges when we’re going on a stunt.’

Brewer felt the force of the complaint; there were two hard- breathing privates just at his back, and as far as he could tell, one had been eating the one and the other had been eating the other.

‘Sorry, sir,’ said Owen, ‘but we didn’t know we was.’

‘Something in that, I suppose,’ said the major. He bent his head to peer at the luminous dial of his watch. ‘Twenty-fifteen. Ah!’

‘Cast off, there,’ came a voice from farther forward which Brewer recognized as that of the lieutenant-commander to whom he had been introduced in the hotel.

The barge trembled to the tremendous vibration of the engines, and almost immediately the bows lifted to a wave. They were at sea.

‘Escort’s outside,’ said the major. ‘Not that we’ll see anything of ‘em.’

Sitting in an armoured car in the bowels of an armoured barge on a pitch-dark night, Brewer did not expect to see anything at all.

‘We ought to make the run in an hour and twenty-two minutes,’ went on the major. ‘Bit longer than you’re used to.’

‘A bit,’ said Brewer. His time for crossing the Channel was under four minutes.

‘These damn tides are a hellish nuisance when it comes to operation orders timed to the second,’ went on the major. ‘You can’t ever be sure of anything at sea. Fogs and tides and subs. You always have to leave a margin and when you have to observe complete wireless silence the way we have to, ‘tisn’t always easy.’

‘What about mines?’ asked Brewer. He would far rather be fighting a Messerschmitt at twenty thousand feet than sitting here in such an unfamiliar - to say nothing of such an oniony - atmosphere.

‘We’re too shallow for most of ‘em,’ said the major, ‘For contact mines, that is to say. If we came across any of the other kinds it’d be just too bad, I expect.’

‘I expect so,’ said Brewer.

‘But you won’t be coming back this way, please God,’ said the major. ‘Not after all the trouble we’ve been to about you.’

‘Let’s hope not, anyway,’ said Brewer.

‘We’re more likely to bring it off than not,’ said the major. ‘It’s better than a fifty-fifty chance.’

‘Do or die,’ said Brewer. ‘That’s the motto of everyone in this country.’

‘It isn’t,’ said the major with more animation than he had displayed up to now.

‘You all think it, if you don’t say it.’

‘We don’t think anything of the sort,’ said the major heatedly. ‘We just go on and do what there is to do.’

Brewer decided that it was not the best subject for an argument. But he made a mental note of that ‘we just go on’ phrase. It sounded duller than ‘do or die’ and meant the same thing.

The barge was rolling and pounding a little in ungainly fashion. Outside could be heard the sound of the waves.

‘We can’t help rolling like this,’ said the major. ‘These damn barges are built for quick landings, and they’re not very seaworthy in consequence. Still, you can’t have everything.’

That was a safe point to agree upon, thought Brewer.

‘Hullo, Fantastic,’ said Marjorie’s voice almost in Brewer’s lap making him jump before he realized that it was the radiotelephone speaking. ‘Getaway calling.’

‘G-E-T-A-W-A-Y,’ said the major counting on his fingers. ‘Seven minutes to go.’ He peered at his watch again. ‘Can’t answer ‘em of course,’ he said. ‘Operation’s code name’s Zacharias tonight. The other thing’s useful so as not to tip Jerry off.’

‘Hullo, Fantastic,’ went on Marjorie’s voice. ‘Carlo at 15,000.’

‘That means five thousand tonight,’ explained the major. This is where the balloon goes up,’ he went on a moment later, looking at his watch without remission.

Brewer heard the roar of bombers overhead as he spoke; directly afterwards he heard the explosion of bombs right ahead, and even the dark interior of the barge was faintly lit by the reflection from the sky of the flashes of bombs and antiaircraft guns. The bombers were doing their work of distracting the observers on the shore.

‘Stand by!’ came the loud voice of the lieutenant-commander.

The major’s hands were swiftly at work, as he started his engine and ran it up. From behind came a combined roar as the motor-cycle engines joined in. The bows of the barge seemed to fall away. A moment later the car was moving forward. It lurched up and then down as it climbed a slight ramp and descended a steep one; water boiled, foaming white, around it for a space, and then Brewer was pressed back into his seat with the tremendous acceleration of the vehicle as they ran up the beach.

‘That’s the hard part over,’ said the major. ‘You can never be quite sure what’s waiting for you in the shallows.’

The car leaped and bumped about as it tore forwards and upwards. It was climbing the ruined ramp of the sea wall. The major spun the wheel and slipped into high gear. They were on a road so dark, except for the flash of the artillery, that Brewer could see almost nothing, but the major seemed to have no doubts as they raced along. He suddenly stooped a little more over his wheel and pressed the accelerator farther down. There was a crash, a fantastic leap, and they were through whatever it was that had barred the way.

‘Umph,’ said the major in a tone of satisfaction unusual to him.

They swung right-handed here, and Brewer had hardly recovered his balance when the roadsides suddenly blazed out into flame, the long flashes of the machine guns lighting up everything. Behind him the guns of the car opened up as Owen and his colleagues traversed their guns in a wide circle. But it was only the briefest time that the fight endured; directly afterwards all was dark again and as quiet as it could be in a car going at that speed.

‘Hullo, Fantastic,’ came Marjorie’s voice. ‘Getaway calling.’

’Seven minutes again,’ said the major. He managed to look at his watch while travelling at that speed.

The air seemed to be full of the sound of planes. Brewer knew the note of the engines - German night fighters. This corner of Belgium was in a pretty turmoil. He wondered if the parachutists dropped the night before had done their work of cutting the telephone wires. A dozen wires selectively cut, or a hundred haphazard, would play old Harry with the German communications for the few minutes that were necessary. Yet it was not of vital importance. The German command could not yet guess the objective of the raid, even if it was possible to circulate the news that one had landed.

On their left front the sky was suddenly lit like day as parachute flares slowly descended.

‘That’s the place,’ said the major.

The incredibly long flashes of the anti-aircraft guns darted up towards the sky, which was dotted with the bursting shells like popcorn in the light of the flares. Then there came the white bursts of the bombs; even at the rate at which he was travelling Brewer could make out that they were being methodically dropped in a ring round the objective. The whole affair was deliriously exciting. The medieval border forays of armoured men jogging along on horses were nowhere near as dramatic as this raid of cars and motor-cyclists tearing into a hostile country at sixty miles an hour.

The major spun the wheel to the left so that the car was now heading straight for the volcanic display of the raid on the airfield. They leaped and bumped. Guns spurted fire beside them, and bullets spanged on their armour.

‘Give ‘em the stop signal behind, Owen,’ snapped the major.

The car was drawing to a halt.

‘Now the rocket,’ said the major, as they stopped. Other cars were stopping beside them; roaring motorcycles were dying away into silence on either flank, and Brewer’s dazzled eyes were faintly conscious of shadowy forms running forward under burdens. One or two whistles blew signals. Four sudden pillars of white fire lit up everything ahead, and four stunning explosions shook the earth.

‘That fellow’s a minute behind schedule,’ grumbled the major.

He reached across Brewer and swung open the door for him. ‘Here’s your guide,’ he said. ‘Remember Coe’ll be a hundred yards to your right. Good luck.’

An enormously burly sergeant loomed up beside Brewer as he dismounted; half a dozen shadowy forms were apparent behind him.

‘This way, sir,’ said the sergeant.

They scrambled through the ditch and started over the rough ground. Brewer remembered the maps which he had so carefully studied during the day. Ahead of them, to right and to left, there came a sudden burst of firing from machine guns and rifles. It was not until some seconds later that a searchlight suddenly blazed out into the sky, descended slowly and started to sweep the ground. The delay confirmed Brewer in his suspicion that the attack on the airport was completely a surprise; that the Germans guarding the place had no knowledge up to that moment that there was any British force on the mainland. The parachutists of yesterday had done a good job.

A trench mortar banged off with a jet of fire, followed by a burst of flame close beside the base of the searchlight; another and another followed it and the searchlight went out abruptly. Machine guns began to rave, and were answered not only by British machine guns but by the half-dozen trench mortars. The German airport had been fortified (as had been plain from the photographs) against aerial bombardment, and against a possible attack by a small body of disorganized troops; this well-planned attack by trained men who knew exactly what they had to do was a very different story. The trench mortars were steadily knocking out the emplaced German machine guns in the fashion that their lofty trajectory exactly enabled them to do.

They came to a bomb crater; in the darkness it was impossible to guess what the bomb had hit, but it was very plain indeed that it had hit something; there were things that had been men in that crater. Beyond the farther lip they were on the smoother turf of the airfield, hurrying along, stooping close to the ground. Every advantage was with the British - the advantage of surprise over an enemy dazed by a tremendous bombing, the advantage of preparation, the advantage of a known objective. There was no question of capturing the airfield, but the Germans did not know that. All the British wanted was to push a small body of men unobserved inside the ring for a few minutes, and that objective was practically gained before the battle had really begun.

Brewer kept his head clear and called up before his mind the maps that Intelligence had constructed from the photographs. Over here on the right the map had marked a hangar that camouflage had not managed to conceal from the lens. Coe’s objective was another on the other side. They crept towards it; Brewer suddenly felt the sergeant’s hand grip his arm and hold him back. The sergeant’s eyes were more acute in the dark than were his; it was not until then that he saw the shadowy figures grouped about the door of the hangar. But they were not looking into the field; all their attention was taken up by the heavy firing on the other side. The sergeant thrust Brewer back and crept forward with his men to the little group. There was a sudden cry, not very loud; the muffled sound of blows, some gasps and some groans.

‘Come on, sir,’ said the sergeant.

When Brewer approached, stepping over the things that lay on the ground, the men were already rolling back the doors of the hangar. No one had dreamed of locking hangar doors within a ring fence of machine guns. There was a sudden subdued glow inside the hangar as the sergeant switched on his torch, carefully shaded.

‘This what we’re after, sir?’ said the sergeant.

‘Yes. This is it,’ said Brewer. He could not help a long sigh escaping him as he made out the outlines of the new Messerschmitt. He clamped down on his nerves with the stolidity that he owed partly to a childhood on an Ohio farm and partly to a long association with the British. ‘Roll her out,’ he said.

There was a faint breath of wind, more from ahead than across. Over there the machine guns still spoke and the trench mortars still called up their fountains of flame. Brewer climbed in, his torch in his hand; the controls were much the same as in the earlier models he had studied.

‘Okay,’ he called to the waiting men.

The shattering roar of the engine sounded loud even through the din of the fighting, but Brewer forced himself to sit still and let the engine warm up for as long as he dared take the chance. Then from across the field he suddenly saw the flashes of firing, points of flame stabbing the night. Coe had not been as lucky as he had, and it was time to go. Further delay would be dangerous.

He pushed open the throttle, and the little machine began to hurl itself over the field, bumping madly on the unevennesses of the turf. He pulled back, and the Messerschmitt left the ground, climbing like an express lift. As he banked and turned he saw under his elbow the red stars of the signal from the sergeant’s pistol which would call off the attack and send the expedition dashing for the coast again. He himself was over the coast before the stars had burned themselves out. He twirled ineffectively at the unfamiliar radio-telephone, imagining the orders which Marjorie would be issuing from the Operations Room which would allow a Messerschmitt to descend, uninterfered with, on a British airfield.