'I'd suspect an airborne and sea invasion of Yugoslavia. But I wouldn't be sure.'
'The German reaction exactly,' Jensen said with some satisfaction. 'They're badly worried, worried to the extent that they have already transferred two divisions Italy to Yugoslavia to meet the threat.'
'But they're not certain?'
'Not quite. But almost.' Jensen cleared his throat, see, our four captured mission leaders were all unmistakable evidence pointing to an invasion — of Central Yugoslavia in early May.'
'They carried evidence — ' Mallory broke off, looked Jensen for a long and speculative moment, then it on quietly: 'And how did the Germans manage capture them all?'
'We told them they were coming.'
'You did what!'
'Volunteers all, volunteers all,' Jensen said quickly, were, apparently, some of the harsher realities total war that even he didn't care to dwell on too long 'And it will be your job, my boy, to turn near-conviction into absolute certainty.' Seemingly obvious of the fact that Mallory was regarding him with a marked lack of enthusiasm, he wheeled round ideally and stabbed his cane at a large-scale map Central Yugoslavia.
'The valley of the Neretva,' Jensen said. The vital sector of the main north-south route through Yugoslavia. Whoever controls this valley controls Yugoslavia — no one knows this better than the Germans. If the blow falls, they know it must fall here. They are fully aware that an invasion of Yugoslavia is on the cards, they are terrified of a link-up between the Allies and Russians advancing from the east and they know it any such link-up must be along this valley. They already have two armoured divisions along the Neretva, two divisions that, in the event of invasion, could be wiped out in a night. From the north — here — they are trying to force their way south to the Neretva with a whole army corps — but the only way is through the Zenica Cage here. And Vukalovic and his seven thousand men block the way.'
'Vukalovic knows about this?' Mallory asked. 'About what you really have in mind, I mean?'
'Yes. And the Partisan command. They know the risks, the odds against them. They accept them.' 'Photographs?' Mallory asked. 'Here.' Jensen pulled some photographs from a desk drawer, selected one and smoothed it out on the table 'This is the Zenica Cage. Well named: a perfect cage,i perfect trap. To the north and west, impassable mountains. To the east, the Neretva dam and the Neretva gorge. To the south, the Neretva river. To the north of the cage here, at the Zenica gap, the German 11th Army Corps is trying to break through. To the west here — they call it the West Gap — more units of the 11 tl i trying to do the same. And to the south here, over the river and hidden in the trees, two armoured divisions under a General Zimmermann.'
'And this?' Mallory pointed to a thin black lim spanning the river just north of the two armoured divisions.
'That,' Jensen said thoughtfully, 'is the bridge at Neretva.'
Close-up, the bridge at Neretva looked vastly more impressive than it had done in the large-scale photograph: it was a massively cantilevered structure in solid steel, with a black asphalt roadway laid on top. Below the bridge rushed the swiftly-flowing Neretva greenish-white in colour and swollen with melting, snow. To the south there was a narrow strip of green meadowland bordering the river and, to tin south of this again, a dark and towering pine forest began.
In the safe concealment of the forest's gloomy depths, General Zimmermann's two armoured divisions crouched waiting.
Parked close to the edge of the wood was the divisional command radio truck, a bulky and very long vehicle so beautifully camouflaged as to be invisible at more than twenty paces.
General Zimmermann and his ADC, Captain Warburg, were at that moment inside the truck. Their mood appeared to match the permanent twilight of woods. Zimmermann had one of those high-foreheaded, lean and aquiline and intelligent faces which so rarely betray any emotion, but there was no lack of emotion now, no lack of anxiety and impatience as he gloved his cap and ran his hand through his thinning grey hair. He said to the radio operator seated behind the big transceiver:
'No word yet? Nothing?'
'Nothing, sir.'
'You are in constant touch with Captain Neufeld's
'Every minute, sir.'
'And his operator is keeping a continuous radio watch?'
'All the time, sir. Nothing. Just nothing.'
Zimmermann turned and descended the steps, folded by Warburg. He walked, head down, until he was out of earshot of the truck, then said: 'Damn it! Gods damn it! God damn it all!'
'You're as sure as that, sir.' Warburg was tall, good-looking, flaxen-haired and thirty, and his face at moment reflected a nice balance of apprehension and unhappiness. 'That they're coming?'
'It's in my bones, my boy. One way or another it's coming, coming for all of us.'
'You can't be sure, sir,' Warburg protested.
'True enough,' Zimmermann sighed. 'I can't be sure But I'm sure of this. If they do come, if the 11th Army Group can't break through from the north, if we can't wipe out those damned Partisans in the Zenica Cage — '
Warburg waited for him to continue, but Zimmermann seemed lost in reverie. Apparently apropos of nothing, Warburg said: 'I'd like to see Germany again sir. Just once more.'
'Wouldn't we all, my boy, wouldn't we all.' Zimmermann walked slowly to the edge of the wood and stopped. For a long time he gazed out over the bridge at Neretva. Then he shook his head, turned and was almost at once lost to sight in the dark depths of the forest.
The pine fire in the great fireplace in the drawing room in Termoli was burning low. Jensen threw on some more logs, straightened, poured two drinks and handed one to Mallory.
Jensen said: 'Well?'
'That's the plan?' No hint of his incredulity, or his near-despair, showed in Mallory's impassive face That's all of the plan?'
'Yes.'
'Your health.' Mallory paused. 'And mine.' After an even longer pause he said reflectively: 'It should be interesting to watch Dusty Miller's reactions when he hears this little lot this evening.'
As Mallory had said, Miller's reactions were interesting, even if wholly predictable. Some six hours later clad now, like Mallory and Andrea, in British Army uniform, Miller listened in visibly growing horror as Jensen outlined what he considered should be the proposed course of action in the next twenty-four hours, or so. When he had finished, Jensen looked directly at Miller and said: 'Well? Feasible?'
'Feasible?' Miller was aghast. 'It's suicidal!'
'Andrea?'
'Andrea shrugged, lifted his hands palms upwards lid said nothing.
Jensen nodded and said: 'I'm sorry, but I'm fresh out of options. We'd better go. The others are waiting at the airstrip.'
Andrea and Miller left the room, began to walk the long passageway. Mallory hesitated in the doorway, momentarily blocking it, then turned to face Jensen who was watching him with a surprised lift of be eyebrows.
Mallory said in a low voice: 'Let me tell Andrea, at least.'
Jensen looked at him for a considering moment or two, shook his head briefly and brushed by into the corridor.
Twenty minutes later, without a further word being token, the four men arrived at the Termoli airstrip to find Vukalovic and two sergeants waiting for them: the third, Reynolds, was already at the controls of his Wellington, one of them standing at the end of the if strip, propellers already turning. Ten minutes later both planes were airborne, Vukalovic in one, Mallory, Miller, Andrea, and the three sergeants in the other, each plane bound for its separate destination.
Jensen, alone on the tarmac, watched both planes climbing, his straining eyes following them until they disappeared into the overcast darkness of the moonless sky above. Then, just as General Zimmermann had done afternoon, he shook his head in slow finality, turned and walked heavily away.
CHAPTER THREE
Friday 0030-0200
Sergeant Reynolds, Mallory reflected, certainly knew how to handle a plane, especially this one. Although his eyes showed him to be
always watchful and alert, he was precise, competent, calm and relaxed in everything he did. No less competent was Groves: the poor light and cramped confines of his tiny plotting-table clearly didn't worry him at all and as an air navigator he was quite clearly as experienced as he was proficient. Mallory peered forward through the windscreen, saw the white-capped waters of the Adriatic rushing by less than a hundred feet beneath their fuselage, and turned to Groves.
The flight plan calls for us to fly as low as this?'
'Yes. The Germans have radar installations on some of the outlying islands off the Yugoslav coast. We start climbing when we reach Dalmatia.'
Mallory nodded his thanks, turned to watch Reynolds again. He said, curiously: 'Captain Jensen was right about you. As a pilot. How on earth does a Marine Commando come to learn to drive one of those things?'
'I've had plenty of practice,' Reynolds said. 'Three years in the RAF, two of them as sergeant-pilot in a Wellington bomber squadron. One day in Egypt I took a Lysander up without permission. People did it
Mallory looked at Groves. 'And you?'
Groves smiled broadly. 'I was his navigator in that old crate. We were fired on the same day.'
Mallory said consideringly: 'Well, I should think I hat might be rather useful.'
'What's useful?' Reynolds asked.
The fact that you're used to this feeling of disgrace. It'll enable you to act your part all the better when the time comes. If the time comes.'
Reynolds said carefully: 'I'm not quite sure — '
'Before we jump, I want you — all of you — to remove I every distinguishing badge or emblem of rank on your clothes.' He gestured to Andrea and Miller at the rear of the flightdeck to indicate that they were included as well, then looked at Reynolds again. 'Sergeants' stripes, Regimental flashes, medal ribbons — the lot.'
'Why the hell should I?' Reynolds, Mallory thought, had the lowest boiling-point he'd come across in quite some time. 'I earned those stripes, those ribbons, that Hash. I don't see — '
Mallory smiled. 'Disobeying an officer on active service?'
'Don't be so damned touchy,' Reynolds said.
'Don't be so damned touchy, sir.'
'Don't be so damned touchy, sir.' Reynolds suddenly grinned. 'OK, so who's got the scissors?'
'You see,' Mallory explained, 'the last thing we want to happen is to fall into enemy hands.'
'Amen,' Miller intoned.
'But if we're to get the information we want we're going to have to operate close to or even inside their lines. We might get caught. So we have our cover story.'
Groves said quietly: 'Are we permitted to know just what that cover story is, sir?'
'Of course you are,' Mallory said in exasperation. He went on earnestly: 'Don't you realize that, on a mission like this, survival depends on one thing and one thing only — complete and mutual trust? As soon as we start having secrets from each other — we're finished.'
In the deep gloom at the rear of the flightdeck, Andrea and Miller glanced at each other and exchanged their wearily cynical smiles.
As Mallory left the flightdeck for the fuselage, his right hand brushed Miller's shoulder. After about two minutes Miller yawned, stretched and made his way aft. Mallory was waiting towards the rear of the fuselage. He had two pieces of folded paper in his hand, one of which he opened and showed to Miller, snapping on a flashlight at the same time. Miller stared at it for some moments, then lifted an eyebrow. 'And what is this supposed to be?' 'It's the triggering mechanism for a 1,500-pound submersible mine. 'Learn it by heart.'
Miller looked at it without expression, then glanced at the other paper Mallory held. 'And what have you there?'
Mallory showed him. It was a large-scale map, the central feature of which appeared to be a winding lake with a very long eastern arm which bent abruptly at right-angles into a very short southern arm, which in turn ended abruptly at what appeared to be a dam wall. Beneath the dam, a river flowed away through a winding gorge.
Mallory said: 'What does it look like to you? Show them both to Andrea and tell him to destroy them.' Mallory left Miller engrossed in his homework and moved forward again to the flightdeck. He bent over Groves's chart table. 'Still on course?' 'Yes, sir. We're just clearing the southern tip of island of Hvar. You can see a few lights on the mainland ahead.' Mallory followed the pointing hand, located a few clusters of lights, then reached out a hand to steady himself as the Wellington started to climb sharply. He glanced at Reynolds. 'Climbing now, sir. There's some pretty lofty stuff head. We should pick up the Partisan landing lights about half an hour.'
'Thirty-three minutes,'Groves said 'One-twenty,near enough.'
For almost half an hour Mallory remained on a map-seat in the flightdeck, just looking ahead. After a few minutes Andrea disappeared and did not reappear, Miller did not return. Groves navigated, Reynolds flew, Saunders listened in to his portable transceiver and nobody talked at all. At one-fifteen Mallory rose, touched Saunders on the shoulders, told him to pack his gear and headed aft. He found Andrea and a thoroughly miserable looking Miller with their parachute lap-catches already clipped on to the jumping wire, Andrea had the door pulled back and was throwing out tiny pieces of shredded paper which swirled away in the slipstream. Mallory shivered in the suddenly intense cold. Andrea grinned, beckoned him to the open doorway and pointed downwards. He yelled in Mallory's ear: 'There's a lot of snow down there.' There was indeed a lot of snow down there. Mallory understood now Jensen's insistence on not landing a plane in those parts. The terrain below was rugged in the extreme, consisting almost entirely of a succession of deep and winding valleys and steep-sided mountains. Maybe half of the landscape below was covered in dense forests of pine trees: all of it was covered in what appeared to be a very heavy blanket of snow. Mallory drew back into the comparative shelter of the Wellington's fuselage and glanced at his watch.
'One-sixteen.' Like Andrea, he had to shout.
'Your watch is a little fast, maybe?' Miller bawled unhappily. Mallory shook his head, Miller shook his. A bell rang and Mallory made his way to the flight deck, passing Saunders going the other way. As Mallory entered, Reynolds looked briefly over his shoulder, then pointed directly ahead. Mallory bent over his shoulder and peered forwards and downwards. He nodded.
The three lights, in the form of an elongated V, were still some miles ahead, but quite unmistakable. Mallory turned, touched Groves on the shoulder and pointed aft. Groves rose and left. Mallory said to Reynolds: 'Where are the red and green jumping lights?'
Reynolds indicated them.
'Press the red light. How long?'
'Thirty seconds. About.'
Mallory looked ahead again. The lights were less than half as distant as they had been when first he'd looked. He said to Reynolds: 'Automatic pilot. Close the fuel switches.'
'Close the — for the petrol that's left — '
'Shut off the bloody tanks! And get aft. Five seconds'
Reynolds did as he was told. Mallory waited, briefly made a last check of the landing lights ahead, pressed the green light button, rose and made his way swiftly aft. By the time he reached the jump door, even Reynolds, the last of the first five, was gone. Mallory slipped on his snap-catch, braced his hands round the edge of the doorway and launched himself out into the bitter Bosnian night.
The sudden jarring impact from the parachute harness made him look quickly upwards: the concave circle of a fully open parachute was a reassuring spectacle. He glanced downwards and saw the equally reassuring spectacle of another five open parachutes, two of which were swaying quite wildly across the sky — just as was his own. There were some things, reflected, about which he, Andrea and Miller had great deal to learn. Controlling parachute descents vas one of those things.
He looked up and to the east to see if he could locate the Wellington, but it was no longer visible. Suddenly, as he looked and listened, both engines, almost in perfect unison, cut out. Long seconds passed when the only sound w
as the rush of the wind his ears, then there came an explosively metallic sound as the bomber crashed either into the ground into some unseen mountainside ahead. There was no fire or none that he could see: just the crash, then silence. For the first time that night, the moon broke through.
Andrea landed heavily on an uneven piece of ground, rolled over twice, rose rather experimentally to his feet, discovered he was still intact, pressed the quick-release Button of his parachute, then automatically, instinctively — Andrea had a built-in computer for assuring survival — swung through a complete 360 degree circle. But no immediate danger threatened, or none that he could see. Andrea made a more leisurely survey of their landing spot.
They had, he thought grimly, been most damnably lucky. Another hundred yards to the south and they'd have spent the rest of the night, and for all he knew, the rest of the war, clinging to the tops of the most impossibly tall pine trees he had ever seen. As it was, luck had been with them and they had landed in a narrow clearing which abutted closely on the rocky scarp of a mountainside.
Or rather, all but one. Perhaps fifty yards from where Andrea had landed, an apex of the forest elbowed its way into the clearing. The outermost tree in this apex had come between one of the parachutists and terra firma. Andrea's eyebrows lifted in quizzical astonishment, then he broke into an ambling run.
The parachutist who had come to grief was dangling from the lowermost bough of the pine. He had his hands twisted in the shrouds, his legs bent, knees and ankles close together in the classic landing position, his feet perhaps thirty inches from the ground. His eyes were screwed tightly shut. Corporal Miller seemed acutely unhappy.
Andrea came up and touched him on the shoulder, gently. Miller opened his eyes and glanced at Andrea, who pointed downwards. Miller followed his glance and lowered his legs, which were then four inches from the ground. Andrea produced a knife, sliced through the shrouds and Miller completed the remainder of his journey. He straightened his jacket, his face splendidly impassive, and lifted an enquiring elbow. Andrea, his face equally impassive, pointed down the clearing. Three of the other four parachutists had already landed safely: the fourth, Mallory, was just touching down.
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