Assault on Abbeville

by Jack Badelaire

  Gorski lowered the binoculars for a moment and looked at the luminous dial of his wristwatch. The time read five minutes past midnight. They were, in theory, right on time, but all it would take is a brief delay on the other side of the Channel to make their rendezvous late, and the other party wouldn’t necessarily expect Gorski and his men to be at the pickup point right at midnight, anyhow.

  The second explosive, the one placed thirty meters after the turn, had detonated fifteen minutes ago. They’d heard the distant sound of the blast while still on the road, and Gorski had smiled, knowing that the gruesome sight of the severed German heads he’d used to decorate several tree branches at the intersection had distracted and enraged the Germans. They’d no doubt rushed ahead without looking for a trap, and the sound of the blast meant they’d paid for their recklessness.

  Now, another sound reached his ears, the metallic squeaking and grinding of tank treads, coming from the direction of the road.

  “They’ve brought up the Hotchkiss,” Gorski said.

  Dumond grunted next to him. “They figure those charges aren’t going to do more than scratch its paintwork.”

  “And they are right,” Gorski replied. “We don’t have anything left that can hurt that beast. Lambert, the signal again, please.”

  As Lambert flashed the signal out into the Channel again, Gorski heard the sound of the tank’s treads diminish, then stop. A few seconds later, there was another explosion.

  “They found the car,” Dumond muttered.

  “Whoever opened that door,” Lambert said, as he finished the signal, “they’ll need a bucket and a scrub brush to get the poor bastard’s bits and pieces off the tank’s armor plating.”

  Gorski had rigged one of their last charges inside the Renault’s cab in such a way that opening either of the sedan’s front doors would activate a pull fuze and set off the charge. They’d left the sedan at the edge of the road, about half a kilometer away.

  “There!” Lambert said, raising his voice just a little and pointing out across the water. “A signal flash.”

  “Repeat the signal,” Gorski told him, raising the binoculars to get a better look. A moment later, he saw the acknowledgment signal from the recovery boat.

  “Send the following,” Gorski instructed. “Success. Enemy close. Send launch now.”

  As Lambert sent the message, there was a low whistle from the woods behind them, and Verhoeven emerged from behind a tree.

  “You heard the charge?” he asked.

  Gorski nodded. “How many?”

  “Three transport trucks, a pair of Kübelwagen, and that damned tank. Probably a reinforced platoon’s worth of Heer infantry,” Verhoeven answered. “Last I saw, they were shaking out by five-man sections, getting ready to start their search sweep.”

  “How much time do you think we have?” Gorski asked.

  Verhoeven shook his head. “I don’t know. We left enough presents along the way here that I’m betting they are going to advance slowly and carefully. That doesn’t mean they won’t find us, though. Once they get to the beach, there’s no way we’ll be able to board the launch and get away without being seen.”

  “Response from the recovery craft,” Lambert announced. “Message reads: Hold fast. We are coming.”

  Gorski glanced back in the direction of the road. There was five hundred meters of trees and brush between them and the Germans, but if one of them heard the sounds of a motor boat, they’d descend on the beach like a pack of grey-clad wolves, heedless of booby-traps or ambush. It would be a race against time, and Gorski suspected the winner would be the Germans.

  Someone would have to slow them down, buy time for the other men to escape. Gorski knew that someone had to be him. He turned to Verhoeven.

  “Give me your pistol and your spare magazines,” he said.

  “Why?” Verhoeven answered.

  “Because I said so,” Gorski told him. “I’m going to make a bit of a fuss, draw the Germans away.”

  “The hell you are,” Johansen said, speaking for the first time since they’d arrived at the beach.

  “He’s right,” Dumond spoke up. “We all get off the beach, or none of us do. There’s no other option.”

  “This isn’t open for discussion,” Gorski snapped. “I lead here. That means it’s my responsibility to see you get away. If we all get caught, then the Boche win, and that’s not going to happen. Now, give me your pistol.”

  Verhoeven cursed and drew his Browning automatic, then pulled several spare magazines from his coat pocket. He handed them off to Gorski, who slung his MP-38 over his shoulder. Johansen pulled one of their last remaining Mills bombs and two German stick grenades from his musette bag and gave them to Gorski.

  “Save the last for yourself,” he said.

  Gorski nodded, then pointed out towards the beach. “When the boat gets here, no waiting. Get aboard and shove off. I’m going to try and draw them north, up along the coast. If I can get away, well, I’ll go underground and send word somehow.”

  With that, he turned and moved through the brush, heading in the direction of the road. He drew back the slide of Verhoeven’s automatic and saw the gleam of brass inside. The four spare magazines, each holding nine cartridges, gave him fifty-four rounds. He’d probably wear out the suppressor before he ran out of ammunition, and he had his Vis 9mm and the MP-38 as well. Indeed, ammunition was the least of his problems.

  Gorski moved through the brush as quickly as he was able, trading a little silence for speed. After all, he was hoping to draw the Germans away from the landing site, not stay unnoticed. After about two hundred meters, he heard a voice call out ahead of him, perhaps a hundred meters away. Crouching and peering around a tree, Gorski caught the gleam of moonlight off of a bayonet fitted to the end of a rifle, The Germans, five of them, were moving right in his direction, and if unchecked, would emerge on the beach within spitting distance of Gorski’s men.

  Moving quickly, he slipped through the brush, moving laterally to his left. When he’d covered maybe twenty meters, Gorski took a knee next to a thick tree trunk, and bracing his arm against it, sighted down the length of the Browning. The sights were small and low-profile, and they barely cleared the suppressor tube at the end of the weapon, making them all but useless at this range, perhaps seventy meters. But Gorski didn’t need precision, he just needed to get rounds in proximity to the target.

  Taking a shallow breath and holding it, he began to fire, the Browning giving a cough with every shot. In a couple of seconds he’d emptied the nine-round magazine, and in that time, there had been shouts and a couple of gunshots from the Germans, but without any muzzle flash, they had only a general idea of where Gorski was. One of them, probably the section leader, scythed through the trees with a long burst from a machine pistol, but none of the shots came within a meter of Gorski.

  Someone in the Germans’ section blew a metallic whistle, and immediately several other whistles responded. Gorski reloaded the Browning and kept moving to his left, towards the north-east and away from his men. In the distance, he heard the roar of an engine, and the unmistakable squeak of tank treads, as the Germans readied the Hotchkiss tank. He guessed the tank would serve as the anchor point of the advance, with a squad supporting the tank and one squad to each of its flanks, all of them pushing in his direction. Ahead, perhaps forty meters away, someone swept the beam of a flashlight through the trees.

  Gorski went low, sighted the pistol, and fired three shots rapid-fire. Someone shouted in pain and the flashlight swung in his general direction a moment later, followed by a burst of rifle fire. A fist-sized chunk of wood exploded from a tree trunk an arm’s length from Gorski, a splinter gouging the back of his neck. Scuttling away to his left, he brought himself out of the cone of the German’s fire, long enough to prepare and arm one of the stick grenades Johansen had given him. Standing up for a moment, Gorski drew back his arm and threw the grenade as hard as he could, arcing it high overhead and dropping it a few
meters from the men with the light.

  The grenade exploded with a flash and the light went out, followed by a long, high-pitched scream of agony, and Gorski used the distraction to run charging through the brush as fast as he could without slamming face-first into a tree. There was gunfire to his right, and he heard bullets tearing into trees and snapping off branches behind him, but again, none of the gunfire came his way, although the rifles and machine pistols were now accompanied by the roar of light machine guns, what sounded like a pair of MG-34s hammering long bursts of slugs through the brush.

  Suddenly, a fusillade of gunfire tore through the trees right in front of him, and Gorski gasped in pain as a slug ripped his trouser leg, the pain like someone had laid a hot poker across the front of his thigh. He staggered and dropped to the ground, bringing up the Browning and firing the pistol dry. The enemy gunfire had come from his front-right, which meant the Germans had guessed the direction he’d been moving in, and had hustled a section of men in a move to outflank him.

  Gorski had no time to reload the .32 automatic, so he shoved it into his musette bag with one hand while pulling his Vis 9mm from its shoulder holster with the other. He heard men crashing through the brush, heading his way, and Gorski managed to get to his feet, his wounded leg trembling with the effort. Flinching as bullets snapped through the air all around him, Gorski took deliberate aim and fired four times at the oncoming Germans. One shadowy form tumbled into the undergrowth, but three others kept coming, and a bullet plucked at the musette bag, ricocheting off something within and nearly tearing the bag from his shoulder. Gorski fired the last four rounds in the pistol and dropped the Gefreiter carrying the machine pistol, then the pistol’s slide locked back, the weapon empty, and the two remaining Germans charged him, bayonets gleaming.

  Gorski flailed at the first bayonet thrust, knocking the blade aside with the barrel of his pistol, but the German followed through with his charge and drove his shoulder into Gorski’s chest, bowling him over. Gorski managed to smash the butt of his pistol into the German’s shin and the man cursed, then tripped over something unseen in the dark. The second German brought up his rifle and thrust down hard, putting his weight into it, and Gorski rolled out of the way, but the bayonet punched through his coat and pinned him to the ground. Desperate, Gorski grabbed the Mauser’s forestock and sling, keeping the German from pulling the rifle away. Out of the corner of his eye, Gorski saw the other German get to his feet and recover his rifle. Out of options, Gorski dropped his Vis and fumbled in the pocket of his coat, trying to reach the looted MAB .32 auto, but he knew he wouldn’t get to it in time.

  There was a stupendous blast behind him, and the German standing over Gorski spun away, the rifle pinning Gorski to the ground falling from lifeless hands. The second German turned and brought up his Mauser, only to lose his face an instant later to a second massive report. Gorski looked up, and a huge, dark figure loomed over him.

  “Better get on your feet,” Dumond said, a huge smile showing white teeth. “You’re going to miss your ferry home.”

  Gorski tugged the bayonet out of his coat and raised his hand. Dumond grasped it and pulled him to his feet. Gorski bent and found his Vis, then pointed towards the shadowy forms of Germans moving through the trees towards them.

  “We might not make it on time,” he told Dumond.

  The Frenchman broke open his shotgun and reloaded it, then pulled one of the Verey pistols from his pocket. “Don’t be so sure,” he said, then he pointed the pistol skyward and fired it, the flare shooting through the foliage above them to burst high overhead, the crimson light of the flare turning everything around them bloody and ghoulish.

  Almost immediately, there was the sound of heavy weapons fire, and lines of tracer slashed through the trees, coming from the beach. Gorski heard the steady hammering of a Vickers machine gun and at least one Bren, but over them thumped the report of something considerably heavier.

  “Come on!” Dumond shouted over the sound of gunfire. “Let’s go!”

  The two men ran through the brush, chased by the occasional German bullet, but the withering fire from the beach was keeping the Germans occupied. Behind them sounded the immense crack of a high-velocity tank cannon and a shell flashed through the dark a hundred meters to Gorski’s left, but the rest of the Germans were too busy keeping their heads down.

  Gorski and Dumond burst out of the brush and onto the beach. In front of them, the small motor launch was sitting at the shoreline, rolling in the phosphorescent surf. The three other Revenants were on board, all of them firing machine pistols towards the treeline to Gorski’s left. Two hundred meters offshore, the much larger gunboat sat with its starboard side to the beach, and the entire length of the boat was alight with muzzle flashes, tracers filling the air between the boat and the treeline.

  “That’s against orders!” Gorski exclaimed, “They shouldn’t be this close to shore!”

  “Shut up and be grateful,” Dumond replied, grabbing Gorski by the arm and all but dragging him towards the launch.

  The two men ran across the sand and sloshed into the surf, the water coming up past their knees before they reached the launch. Hands grasped them and dragged them aboard, the launch’s motor roaring to life before they finished clearing the side. Gorski barely made it into his seat before a weapon was thrust into his hands, a Lanchester submachine gun. Gorski automatically checked to see that the bolt was drawn back, then leveled the weapon at the shoreline and cut loose, emptying the Lanchester’s fifty-round magazine in one long burst as the launch turned away from the shore and gunned its engines. The motor gunboat’s own engine rumbled, and Gorski saw the water behind the gunboat turn white with froth as the vessel began to move, turning its bow in the same direction as the launch. On the gunboat’s aft deck, the twenty-millimeter autocannon continued to hammer shells towards the treeline, while two other muzzle-flashes, both from light machine guns, kept up a steady rate of fire.

  “It’s a wonder they didn’t chop us to pieces!” Gorski shouted to Dumond over the sounds of engines and gunfire.

  “That’s why I used the flare,” Dumond replied. “Lambert signalled for them to keep their fire south of the flare. That way we would be safe.”

  “Safe is a relative term,” Gorski noted, but he clapped his hand against Dumond’s immense shoulder. “But thank you, even if you disobeyed orders.”

  Dumond’s face broke into another enormous grin. “Don’t thank me, thank Johansen. He told us that if we left you here, he’d cut all our throats in the middle of the night.”

  Gorski turned and looked to the tall silhouette of the Norwegian, who sat fitting another magazine into his machine pistol. Gorski caught his eye with a wave of thanks, but Johansen said nothing, only offering a small nod.

  Two minutes later, they drew alongside the gunboat and scrambled up a lowered rope ladder. Ensign Sims stood at the gunwale, pulling each man aboard in turn, and as he helped Jones aboard, he undid the line to the launch and tossed it over the side.

  “No time to secure it, I’m afraid,” Sims said, a note of regret in his voice. He turned towards the gunboat’s cabin. “All ahead full, now, if you please!”

  “Thank you for risking your vessel, sir,” Gorski said to Sims, shaking the young officer’s hand. “But we’re not out of danger yet. The Germans will send up aircraft and try to sink us before we get across the Channel.”

  Sims smiled at Gorsk, “On any other night, I dare say we’d be in quite a pickle all the way back to Blighty. But Jerry is going to be a bit busy tonight, too busy to worry about us, I imagine.”

  Before Gorski could ask what Sims was talking about, he heard, high overhead, the drone of aircraft engines - lots of them - through the steady growl of the gunboat’s own motor. Looking up, he saw nothing, but now and then, a star winked at him.

  “A flight of bombers,” he said.

  “Quite right,” Sims answered. “Although their squadron command didn’t know why, they were on
alert and ready for takeoff since midnight. As soon as you sent a signal telling of a successful mission, we sent a signal of our own. Those Wellingtons are going back to paste the aerodrome at Abbeville again, now that another squadron of fighters has landed, and they don’t have to worry about Hauptmann Kohl any longer.”

  Gorski nodded. Any air assets the Germans might have dedicated towards finding and sinking the gunboat were going to be racing for the flight of bombers passing overhead. Although he felt a pang of guilt at the thought of the bomber crews taking on the danger he would have faced, after the day’s events, Gorski was too exhausted and relieved to care.

  “Ensign,” Gorski asked Sims. “You wouldn’t happen to have a bottle of whiskey aboard, would you? I’m feeling a bit chill.”

  Sims’ teeth shone in the moonlight. “As luck would have it, there is a bottle-shaped parcel below deck, given to us by a fellow we both might know, name of Wormwood.”

  Gorski nodded, then turned to his men. The four Revenants were sitting on the aft deck, backs against the gunwales. They all looked up at him.

  “Well now,” Gorski said to them. “Anyone care for a drink?”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Scotland

  One Week Later

  Gorski pulled aside the curtain as he saw the Invicta four-door sedan come to a stop in front of the manor house. Lance-corporal Phillips emerged from the driver’s side door, and a moment later, had the door open for Wormwood, who emerged from the back seats in a cloud of pipe smoke, a valise in hand. Gorski heard the measured tread of Kinley, the groundskeeper, as he crossed the foyer and opened the front door, the sounds of voices in greeting audible even in the parlor room. A moment later, Wormwood stepped through the door and immediately offered his hand to Gorski.

  “My apologies for not making an appearance sooner. How’s the leg?” Wormwood asked.