Mattie drew fire immediately and threw herself flat on the ground under an outcropping of rock. She sure as hell was a target now, she thought, as she huddled beneath the meager protection afforded by the rock, unable to move further as she heard the shots ricochet off the stone above her. Mattie crawled forward on her stomach, using her elbows and knees. She peered around the corner of the rock, not raising her head, and saw Sturm and one of his men engaged in a classic flanking maneuver, using cover in an effort to reach a higher level on either side of the intruders so they could turn the tables and place them in a cross-fire. Facing this new threat, the attackers were no longer concentrating their fire on her. Mattie thought that if she could safely cross 20 yards of open space ahead of her to more substantial rock cover, she would be able to offer supporting fire for Sturm and the other flanker.
Mattie raised herself to a sprinter‘s crouch and burst from behind the rocks just as she had done in the 100 yard dash and the 120 yard hurdles at university. Five yards from safety, she was no longer on a smooth track, only a rocky field. Her foot landed on the side of a rock and she felt a sharp pain in her ankle as her foot turned. She fell heavily, tearing the left side of her blouse as she landed. She knew she was a sitting duck so she began to pull herself forward, using her elbows, but more slowly than before, dragging her useless right ankle. Another volley and Mattie winced as rock fragments flew from the boulder above, stinging her back. She looked back and saw blood seeping from her right calf, staining her khaki trousers. A bullet? She hoped not. That would be a distinct impediment for the mountain trek which lay ahead. Twenty yards away, she saw the tall blond figure of Willi Wirth, crouched low, running towards her.
Mattie carefully peeked over the boulder‘s top and raised her assault rifle into position. She sensed Wirth beside her now but she was focused on the upper torso of one of the attackers as he fired his weapon at Sturm‘s man. Then, he had wheeled back in a 180 degree turn to shoot at Sturm when Mattie caught him in her sights and slowly squeezed the trigger. Yes! she thought as she hit him high in the shoulder and saw the man lurch and the rifle fly from his hands.
Nice shot, McGary. You finally made a difference, she said to herself, and turned her face toward Willi Wirth. “Did you see that…” she began but the words died in her throat as she heard the crack of a rifle shot and, almost simultaneously, Willi‘s head exploded, showering her with blood and grey brain tissue. She stifled a scream and used her sleeve to wipe the blood from her eyes as she heard two more shots. As she lay there, she was struck by the sudden stillness. The gunfire was gone and she raised her head to see Kurt von Sturm standing over the man Mattie had wounded. He was attempting to crawl away when Sturm drew his Luger, aimed it at the back of the man‘s head and fired. The body jerked once and then lay still as Sturm knelt down and rolled it over. Moments later, he stood up and began walking down the hill directly to Mattie‘s position. He did not look happy.
Sturm‘s voice was cold as he stared down at her and Wirth‘s body. “Can you walk?”
“No, I turned my ankle. It‘s pretty weak.”
“Your leg, it‘s bleeding. How bad is it?” Sturm asked.
“It hurts, but I don‘t think it‘s serious.”
Sturm said no more as he reached down and pulled her to her feet and carried her back to the trees where Mattie had left Campbell and the three Austrians. Sturm‘s silence was more of a reproach than if he had delivered another lecture on her recklessness.
Finally, it was Mattie who broke the silence. “Who were those people?”
Sturm waited nearly 30 seconds before replying, his silence serving as a continuing rebuke. “More of the same men who attacked us in Alexandria. The Brotherhood, whatever that is, is how they referred to themselves at Weber‘s villa. There were four of them. I‘ve only seen the bodies of the two that I killed but I recognized one of them. It was the man who held Weber‘s head up after the execution. Both bodies have a tattoo of a Celtic cross on the inner portion of their left wrist.”
46.
Stick With the Plan
Milan
Wednesday, 10 June 1931
THE autogiro squadron was airborne by mid-morning. Cockran had spent an hour and a half training Rankin while they waited for McNamara and Murphy to arrive from Rome. They left word for Donal at his hospital that Harmony was with them. Cockran took the point and Rankin brought up the rear, bracketing Bobby between them. Each aircraft carried line-of-sight two-way radio transmitters and receivers so that they could communicate. They had packed each autogiro with two sleeping bags, water, provisions, tarpaulins, and rifles in the passenger compartment, as well as surplus fuel containers in the baggage section.
Cockran took Harmony in his aircraft. She had to fly with someone, notwithstanding her deception, and it might as well be him. He decided against asking Harmony to explain herself. It wouldn‘t change anything and he was content to leave it alone and move on. Nothing was going to change until he found Mattie.
Two hours later, the trio of aircraft gently floated to earth on the shores of the lake at Zell-Am-See, a short walk from the airfield. The wind here was stiffer and came across their stern, making it difficult to keep the aircraft steady as they approached. Cockran had no trouble, but Sullivan came in a little steep and landed more harshly. Cockran and Rankin inspected the delicate hinges on the rotary blades but they appeared fine.
Cockran sent McNamara and Murphy over to the airfield to purchase more aviation fuel. Then he pulled out a topographic map and spread it out on the autogiro‘s wing.
“Lost already?” Harmony asked.
Cockran didn‘t look up. “Nope. But I‘m thinking we should choose another spot than those waterfalls. Someplace with more room for Bobby to land.”
“You can‘t do that,” Harmony said abruptly.
“Why not?”
“Here,” she said, taking the map. “Our plan is to fly as far as we can today. Virgental Falls are at the limits of our range. If we don‘t land there, the alternative is here in this valley.”
“So?” Cockran said.
“It‘s 20 miles east of the falls, 20 miles further from Mattie. Doing that could cost us nearly an hour. Stick with the plan. Bobby‘s landing wasn‘t great here but he did better this morning.”
Cockran wasn‘t so sure but as he looked up, he saw McNamara and Murphy approaching, carrying four large aviation fuel containers between them. Harmony was right, Cockran decided. Sullivan had done fine yesterday. The extra hour was more important, the risk worth it.
They flew low, their altitude rarely exceeding 500 feet from the ground, except when they reached the first mountain pass, which took them up several thousand feet, flying between the mountain peaks, stripped bare of all but the shortest vegetation, the wind gusting and unpredictable. Cockran saw a narrow mountain road snaking up the pass and, as he passed the halfway point several hundred feet above the road, he could see the wreckage of a motor vehicle and what looked like a body beside it. He couldn‘t be certain, but the wind currents in the mountain pass were too tricky to risk descending lower. By early afternoon, they arrived at the first point on Cockran‘s map, a spectacular series of cascading mountain waterfalls at Virgental.
They circled past once, to be sure they had found the right spot on the map, and it wasn‘t promising. From what they could see, the small strip of flat grass land couldn‘t be more than 30 yards long. It was an awkward plateau carved out by the streams running away from the waterfalls and cut into a sharp slope on a low, tree covered hillside. The plateau was grass covered, but the topographic map didn‘t include the jagged, rock-strewn terrain which greeted them, making their landing strip more challenging. The only good thing to say about it was that the approach itself was bare of trees which allowed them to come in nice and low.
Cockran landed first and it wasn‘t easy, the underbrush catching his ship‘s wheels to help bring the aircraft to a stop. “I‘m in,” Cockran said through the radio. “Try to come
in low, close to seventeen miles per hour, but keep your engine running till you‘re over the plateau.”
“I thought you said twenty miles per hour was as slow as I should land.”
“It‘s going to be tight, Bobby. Try and bring her in around seventeen.”
Cockran restarted the motor on the propeller to turn the plane around and pull it from the underbrush and out of Sullivan‘s runway path. He cut the engine and stepped out to watch Sullivan‘s approach. He looked good at first, descending to the plateau‘s level slowly and evenly but his angle of descent was too steep. His aircraft dipped below the plateau‘s edge and out of sight and Cockran held his breath. Several long seconds later, the autogiro reappeared and cleared the edge seconds before he cut the engine, its wheels nearly touching the grass as he landed with almost impossible smoothness. As the aircraft slowed on the grass, Sullivan had the space to turn just short of Cockran.
Sullivan looked down at the strands of greenery that clung to the wheels of Cockran‘s autogiro and then up at Cockran without smiling, “Could you use a wee refresher course?”
Cockran laughed. “You ungrateful Mick! I clear your path and that‘s the thanks I get?”
After Rankin landed without problem, they quickly set about refueling from their spare tanks before settling down bedside a rushing stream for a hasty lunch of sandwiches and thermoses of coffee they had picked up in Zell-Am-See. Thick bushes lined the muddy banks of the stream and Rankin wandered from the group over to the waterfall on their left, looking carefully at the ground. Cockran watched him scale the rugged terrain, pleased at the good fortune of having him here. The Austrian Alps weren‘t the Scottish Highlands where Rankin had grown up but having a man used to the mountains gave him comfort.
Cockran had stooped to gather their belongings when the first rifle shot rang out. McNamara cried in pain and clutched his shoulder as he fell. Cockran dropped to the ground. Sniper! he thought as he scanned the horizon and heard the crack of a second rifle shot, a cloud of dirt puffing up a few yards in front of him. “Move!” Cockran shouted. A five second reload, he thought. The shots had come from the treecovered hills on their right but the shooter hadn‘t compensated for distance. Cockran did not intend to give him time to adjust.
“Drop down to the stream bed! Up against the bank!” Cockran shouted again as gunfire erupted from the pistols of Sullivan and Murphy, who were using an autogiro for cover. Not there, damn it!, he thought. That was the wrong place to be. If the autogiros were damaged, they‘d never catch up in time to rescue Mattie.
Cockran seized McNamara by his right shoulder and helped Harmony scramble with them through the bushes and down the muddy slope of the river bank just as the third shot rang out without result. Another five second reload he noted. McNamara dropped to his knees as soon as he was clear of fire and fell over, his face twisted with pain. Cockran and Harmony crouched over him. Blood seeped between his fingers as he clutched his shoulder.
“Stop the bleeding!” Cockran said to Harmony.
Behind the muddy bank, they were shielded from the shooter who kept them pinned down, unable to move. It wouldn‘t be long before he turned his fire towards the autogiros and they had to get to the shooter before then. Cockran peered through the bushes on top of the bank. Directly ahead of him, Sullivan and Murphy still crouched behind an autogiro, their handgun fire ineffectual at that range.
Cockran looked to the left and saw that Rankin was almost back from the falls, keeping out of the shooter‘s line of sight. The Scot hadn‘t been seen. He was their best chance. When Rankin reached his own autogiro, he opened the baggage compartment and pulled out an Enfield rifle with a telescopic sight. Cockran realized he had to keep the shooter‘s attention on him and away from Rankin, Sullivan and the autogiros. He pulled himself up over the top of the river bank and raised his head above the bushes. A bullet tore through the foliage, inches from his body, the rifle crack echoing off the mountainside. He had the bastard‘s attention all right.
Cockran was counting on a five second reload for the sniper as he burst through the bushes, turned right and raced along the bank of the stream in an all out, straight-line sprint. Three seconds. With any luck, the sniper would focus on Cockran, thinking he was trying to outflank him. One second. Time to bail out, Cockran thought as he dove through the bushes and down the muddy bank. The crack of a rifle followed but the bullet didn‘t find him this time either. His hip was not happy from the sprint and the sharp pain let him know it. He peered back up through the bushes.
Rankin, rifle in hand, was making his way to higher ground under cover of the trees. Cockran could not see the shooter but Rankin seemed to have a line on him. The big Scot took a prone firing position and brought the Enfield‘s telescopic sight to his eye. Two shots rang out but they did not seem to come from Rankin and they did not sound like the sniper either. Rankin still had the telescopic sight up to his face when suddenly he stood up and motioned to the others to join him.
Cockran ran back along the bank of the stream until he reached Harmony, who was still trying to tear off pieces of McNamara‘s shirt. “How is he?”
“It‘s still bleeding,” she said, frustrated with the tenacity of the cloth she tugged at ineffectually. “Went clean through.”
“Leave his shirt alone,” Cockran said. “Go over to the medical supplies in our autogiro and get the gauze and tape. The coast should be clear.”
Rankin stayed at the same spot until Sullivan and Cockran had made their way up to them. He gave the Enfield to Cockran. “Take a look.” he said. “Tell me what you see.”
Cockran put his right eye on the scope and saw the body and its shattered skull. He looked up at Rankin.
“Now look down and to the left, maybe another ten feet,” Rankin directed.
Cockran did so and quickly found another body, seemingly down with another head shot. But there was no rifle beside the second man as there had been with the first.
“Snipers usually work with a spotter,” Rankin said. “Someone has done us a wee favor.”
They made their way up the hill between moss covered trees. “Would you be looking at that?” Bobby Sullivan said. “I don‘t want whoever took this lad down to have his sights on me.”
Cockran looked at the corpse which had an entry wound at the base of his neck.
“Let‘s see if our man has any identification.” As they rolled the man over to look through his pockets, it was apparent that no identification was needed. The uniform was all black, with dual silver lightning bolts forming the letters “SS” on both sides of his collar.
“How in hell did the SS know to set an ambush for us here?” Cockran asked.
“I don‘t care.” Sullivan replied. “Who did this to the SS is what I‘m wanting to know.”
They didn‘t wait around to find out. Once McNamara‘s wound was bandaged and his arm in a sling, the autogiro squadron took off and flew another two hours before landing to make camp for the night near their second stop at a small mountain farm. Outside the farmhouse, two Mercedes trucks were parked. From his time in a prisoner of war camp, the wounded Gavin McNamara spoke passable German. The pain in his shoulder had diminished and he was able to learn from the old couple who lived there that a group of eleven people had passed through this morning, left their two vehicles and headed out with sturdy pack animals for the mountain pass looming high above the couple‘s cozy mountain hut.
“There were ten men and one woman,” McNamara said. “And the woman had red hair.”
“That‘s Mattie.” Cockran said. “If they left this morning, we‘ll reach them tomorrow.”
“There‘s more,” McNamara said. “Eighteen men came through late this afternoon. All on horseback, dressed in black and heavily armed, each of them carrying a rifle and a sidearm.”
“The SS again. Why the hell are they following Mattie‘s expedition?” Murphy asked.
“They must be after the Spear of Destiny as well. It looks like the Kaiser is not the onl
y Kraut who‘s superstitious,” Cockran said. But who they were no longer mattered. Barring another ambush, they would overtake both groups some time tomorrow. Mattie then would be safe with him and he could make things right. Only one more night to go.
47.
The Aftermath
The Austrian Alps
Wednesday, 10 June 1931
BACK among the trees, Sturm decided to go no further that day and directed the Austrians to set up camp. Once they did so, he assisted Mattie to her tent and began to dress her wounds. Closing the tent flap for privacy, he helped her remove her torn bloody trousers and her blouse. Mattie was nearly naked, clad only in her brassiere and panties and, despite her painful ankle, his warm hands felt soothing on her body, tending to her wounds. Keep your focus, she told herself. Sturm, however, worked wordlessly and efficiently, showing no tenderness or any other sign of their shared intimacy the night before.
The cuts on her back from the rock splinters were superficial. He cleaned them with alcohol and swabbed them with iodine so that her back took on a polka dot appearance. The cut on her left calf was deeper but at least it wasn‘t a gunshot wound. He wound it in gauze and then tape. He took care of her ankle last, wrapping it in adhesive tape, criss-crossing the tape around her arch and the back of her heel to give the ankle lateral support.
The Parsifal Pursuit Page 33
