Night Action (Commander Cochrane Smith series)

by Alan Evans

  Michel nodded. That was one method of breaking down a suspect: get him to relax, to hope, to trust. Then shock him by a sudden attack. Another was to let him see the results of “interrogation” then leave him to think about it, look forward. As they had let Michel see Paul when they took him down to the cells earlier in the night. He said, “So was I.”

  *

  Out on the quay the four soldiers of König’s guard stood or knelt close against the wall, firing steadily at the windows of the S.S. headquarters. The windows offered only a narrow target from this angle but by the same token König and his men were not under fire. The commandos inside would have had to lean out to see them.

  Ritter glanced sideways at the building by which they sheltered. It looked to be an office of some sort. He said, “I’ll reconnoitre the rear of this place, sir.” He jumped up onto the steps and kicked at the front door until it swung open. There was a passage inside and he blundered along that in the darkness, cursed when he stumbled and fell down a step he had not seen, finally came to another door. His groping hands found the key still in the lock, turned it and he emerged into a yard. He started down the yard, walking quickly, but then came the bang! of a bullet passing close overhead and the crack! of the report. He threw himself down and squirmed on elbows and knees into the shelter of a wall. He was able to stand up then, panting obscenities. He had been fired on from the rear of S.S. headquarters, so the Tommis were up there and keeping their eyes open, had spotted him as soon as he was clear of the house and in their field of view. They were still firing — and now he could hear other voices cursing, in German.

  There was a gate in the wall at the end of the yard and he was able to reach it without edging into that field of fire. He shouted, “Who is it out there?”

  A moment of silence, then a voice answered from the alley beyond, “Patrol.”

  “I am Major Ritter, Panzer Grenadiers. Hold your fire.” He opened the gate, eased through and saw the four men kneeling against the wall of the alley for cover. In the darkness they were no more than silhouettes of big helmets and rifle barrels. Ritter asked, “Any more of you?”

  The nearest soldier answered, “No. We’re the only patrol in the old port. The others are all across the river.”

  Ritter swore again, but under his breath. Aloud, he ordered, “Some Tommis have landed and they’ve occupied the second house from the end.” On the other side of the alley was a stack of logs cut to size to feed a stove and looking as if a cart had been unloaded there. They made a wall that was waist-high and four to five metres long. It ran along the opposite wall of the alley but an arm’s length from it. Ritter pointed, “Take cover behind that lot and keep the Tommis under fire. I’ll be back.”

  *

  König worked the button of the torch, its beam pointed at the trucks on the other side of the bridge, sending the morse slowly because he was out of practice. He ended: “— König.” He waited, wondered if anyone over there had noticed the flickering light through the smoke and among the muzzle-flashes. And if they had, would they recognise it as a signal? He was about to repeat the message when another light stuttered from the far end of the bridge: an acknowledgment.

  A sharp signals Gefreiter had picked out the hesitant dots and dashes, read their message and reported it to the commander of the force from the barracks: “— ends ‘König’, Herr Hauptmann.”

  “Acknowledge!” He snapped that, though he was glad to know the old man was all right. But he had already anticipated König’s order and tried to bring a boat round from the harbour to ferry his men across the river. The first men to make the attempt had been raked by fire from the S.S. headquarters when they began rowing the boat. Now he had swimmers in the water, shoving the boat around and sheltering in its cover. When it was clear of the harbour and hidden by the bridge he would ferry some men across.

  He had also sent Kurt Ritter’s young Leutnant running up the side of the river with a dozen of his assault troops. He had no way of knowing how they had fared. The Hauptmann glowered at the wreck of the bridge and wondered how many Tommis had landed, were waiting for him on the other side of the river.

  *

  The Leutnant had panted up to the lock with his men hard on his heels. In the light from the burning coach he saw the train some two hundred metres away, saw that there was something wrong in the irregular outline of the boxcars; but the train was not his business while the lock was.

  The gates stood open and when he attempted to close them he found the mechanism mangled and jammed. He blasphemed then ordered, “We’ll swim it!”

  *

  Ritter came out of the front door of the house, jumped down from the steps to stand by König and told him, “I found a patrol of four men in the alley at the back. They’re keeping the Tommis’ heads down.”

  Erwin König smiled wryly, “That’s about the best we can do for now. I think there are more of them in there than of us out here. So we bottle them up until we get more men — and grenades. That shouldn’t be too long.” He still held the torch and now trained it towards the guardship by the harbour mouth. “But we can bring a little more pressure to bear.” He started sending again in his slow, careful morse.

  *

  McNab moved crouching into the upstairs room at the front of the house. It was pitch-black, the darkness of the night thickened by dust hanging on the air and drifting smoke from the Thompson guns. They were firing from the window, a dark grey rectangle, and McNab picked his way carefully towards it; there were dead men littering the floor, some of the fourteen S.S. troopers who had been quartered in the house.

  In a break in the firing, he said, “We’ve got company at the back.”

  Jacko’s head turned, “Many?”

  “I reckon three or four. What about here?”

  “They tried to row a boat a few minutes back but we stopped that. I think they’ve got one, though. Can’t see much out there but I thought there was a shadow that could be a boat went round towards the bridge; somebody swimming and pushing or pulling it, maybe.”

  “So we’ll have a lot of them on our necks soon.” McNab winced as a dull explosion overhead brought more dust and plaster raining down from the ceiling. There was a clatter of falling rubble.

  Phil’s voice called faintly from somewhere above, “Right!”

  McNab muttered, “Thank Christ for that.” He hurried, stooping, back to the door and bawled down the stairs, “Everybody up to the top floor!”

  The commandos came scurrying from front and rear of the house. Michel and Louis lifted Paul between them and Suzanne followed them up the stairs.

  *

  The captain of the guardship was on his bridge, that was no more than a big wheel-house set right aft in the drifter. He stooped over the mouth of the engine-room voice-pipe and shouted into it, “How long before we have steam?” He had called for it an hour before when his wireless operator picked up a signal from the boat policing the fishing fleet: one drifter was missing after the fighting round the fleet and might have run for home. But if she didn’t turn up then the guardship might be ordered to sea to search.

  Now he listened to the metallic voice coming up the pipe and bellowed, “Ten minutes! It had better be no more than that. We’re sitting ducks, tied up here!”

  He straightened and looked out from the open wheel-house, its glass windows lowered to save them from blast, and narrowed his eyes as a light winked from the quay. The signalman behind him on the bridge started, “Somebody’s sending —”

  The captain cut him off, snarling, “I can see that, you fool!” He read the slow, hesitant signal himself, word by word, and swore at the end, “Damned soldier!” Then he bawled at the crew of the 40mm. gun mounted in the bow of the guardship, “The Tommis are in the second house from the end!” He thrust out a pointing finger, “Fire!”

  The slender barrel of the gun was trained out to sea but now it swung around, rose and fell as the crew found their point of aim, steadied, and then fired. The c
aptain saw the shells bursting low on the house with vivid orange flashes, spurting smoke, clouds of dust and shards of stone. Then he felt a tugging at his arm, turned and saw the signalman shouting at him, mouth opening and closing but the words blotted out by the hammering of the gun. He stared past the signalman and out to sea in disbelief.

  Chapter Thirteen - “I — am — sinking!”

  Jimmy Nash, on the drifter lying out in the cold, rainswept darkness, knew the timetable of David Brent’s plan. When he looked at his watch for the fifth or sixth time he calculated, believed — no, hoped, that the barge was hurrying on its way downriver to St. Jean. He finally decided: Don’t want to be early but, by God! better that than too late. He nodded to the French skipper of the drifter and got a lift of the hand in reply. Moments later the engine of the drifter churned, coughed, then settled into grumbling life. She moved ahead and Jimmy looked astern and saw Crozier’s and little Dent’s boats under way, using their auxiliaries so he could not hear them. They kept station on either quarter of the drifter, like ghost ships with only grey ripples at bow and stern as they slid through the sea.

  The rain had stopped save for occasional showers of drizzle drifting on the wind. Tommy Vance had the men of his party striding about the deck again as he had done every ten minutes or so all through the long hours of waiting. They carried their carbines slung over their shoulders and moved easily because of the constant exercise. They had to be ready. Tommy walked with them because he could not stand still.

  The three craft crept along parallel to the shore but out of sight of it, for a half-hour. Then the French skipper called a halt and the drifter’s engine puttered into silence. He beckoned and Jimmy Nash joined him in the wheel-house, and peered at the chart where the skipper pointed with a pencil. Jimmy nodded and stepped down to the deck again. He found Tommy Vance waiting there for him.

  Tommy asked, “How far?”

  “We’re about a mile out.” Jimmy wasn’t sure but he thought he could make out a deeper shadow in the night ahead that could be the loom of the land.

  “How long will it take us to cover that?”

  “Should be ten or twelve minutes from the time we go. This old girl makes a comfortable six knots and we can’t seem in too much of a hurry.”

  Tommy said, “I’m not.” He was thinking of the task ahead of him, afraid for himself, his men, Brent and the others ashore.

  Nash grinned at him. “Want my job instead?”

  “No.” Tommy had enough responsibility on his shoulders already and shied away from the thought of commanding all this little force at sea. He only wished he had Jimmy’s cool bravery and confidence.

  Jimmy Nash was wishing for those qualities now as he acted his part to encourage the others. So much hung on the success of the drifter, slow, unarmoured and unarmed except for the weapons in the hands of the men aboard her. And Brent had singled him out to command on the drifter: “That’s where you’re needed, I need you.” Jimmy voiced his thoughts to steel himself, “We can’t let the old man down, can we?”

  David Brent. “No,” said Tommy, “we can’t.” And that was all there was to it.

  They both saw the flickering light on the inshore horizon even as a dozen voices called softly from around the deck, “See that, sir?”

  “I saw it!” Jimmy Nash snapped that without taking his eyes off the distant shore. The flash, tiny and thin, had come and gone in the blink of an eye.

  They waited again, as they had waited before on this night. Jimmy was aware, without looking round, that the two boats lay close alongside. He could hear the small sounds of movements that were not aboard the drifter. He lifted his watch so its face was before his eyes and he could read the time without losing sight of the shadow of the shore. That flash had been the first, surely. Just about when it was due. But the second... That should have come by —

  This time the glare on the horizon was bigger and spread wide, seemed to stand for seconds in the sky. Then it died and the rumble of the explosion came rolling out over the sea.

  Jimmy whispered, incredulous, “They’ve done it!” He shivered with apprehension, then shouted at the skipper, “Now!” Seconds later the engine fired and Jimmy turned forward, ordered, “Hoist those lights!” He watched as the two big lamps swayed up to the masthead and bathed the deck in a yellow glow. “Take cover! Safety catches on!” Tommy Vance’s men, expecting the order, checked their carbines and lay down behind the starboard gunwale.

  The drifter was picking up speed now, stubby, high bow nodding as she rode the seas. Jimmy, apprehension now overlaid by excitement, gave Tommy Vance the raffish grin that had turned many a girl’s head: “Do you ever wonder why you joined?”

  *

  The guardship’s skipper glared at the drifter with its two big lamps at the mast-head, closing the harbour mouth. He recalled the message that one drifter might be on her way home, but he swore, “Bloody stupid Frenchman! Wanting to come in now!”

  His signalman ventured, “Maybe he’s got engine trouble — or something.”

  “I don’t care what he’s got! There’s chaos already in here without him adding to it! Tell him to haul off!” The signalman worked his lamp, the order blinking out. The 40mm. gun still banged away at the house on the quay while the rattle of small-arms fire rose and fell like the waves breaking on a beach. Smoke billowed from the guardship’s funnel as it had since the captain demanded steam and now it rolled down over the sea as the wind took it. For a few seconds the drifter was hidden, then the smoke lifted and the captain saw her, the deck under the lamps empty of life but still coming on.

  He thumped the side of the wheel-house with his fist and shoved the signalman towards the ladder, “Tell them to put a shot across her bow. The fool will understand that!”

  The signalman ran forward and the gun fired a final round then the barrel swung away from the quay and through a half-circle until it pointed at the harbour mouth. It fired two rapid rounds over the drifter, but she still came on. The captain blinked as the gun-smoke wisped over the wheel-house. It was not surprising that there was no one on the drifter’s deck now she was fired over, but odd that there hadn’t been a single man to be seen before. There was always a hand or two on deck as a boat entered harbour —

  He suddenly had an awful suspicion and shouted down to the gun crew staring up at him, “Shoot into her! Fire!” The barrel of the gun dropped and then it opened rapid fire. The drifter was barely a hundred yards away now but the gunlayer had over-corrected and the first rounds kicked up the sea under her bow. He raised his sights but she was still closing the range so the next rounds screamed high over her deck, harmlessly except that one carried away a lamp from the masthead. The layer desperately lowered the barrel again and this time the shells slammed into the drifter’s hull on or below the waterline. Then a man rose from hiding below the gunwale.

  Tommy Vance had flattened himself on the deck as the drifter ran in, jerked as the shells burst on her hull and he felt the vibration through the timbers. He was prey to fear and uncertainty. He had not trained or prepared for this. Not only did he have to do it himself, he had to inspire his men. But David Brent had thought he could, had given his orders without a trace of doubt, wholly confident that Vance would carry them out. And knowing that if he failed then all of them were lost and the operation as well.

  He found himself on his feet, standing straight. He had no need to shout his commands. His men lay with their eyes fixed on him. He lifted one open hand with the palm uppermost and they rose from the deck to line the gunwale. The carbines twitched in their hands as they fired and worked the bolts.

  The guardship’s captain saw the crew of the gun fall away from it and the signalman scramble for cover at the back of the wheel-house. The sea behind the drifter was churned into foam as her screw raced briefly astern, taking the way off her. Then she scraped against the guardship’s side and men from the drifter jumped across while others held the two together.

  The voice-pip
e squawked and the captain stooped to it, listened, then answered, “It’s too late now. Come up, all of you.” He had a wife and four children of school age in Hamburg. He lifted his hands high and so Tommy Vance found him.

  Jimmy Nash spared a second or two for a swift, sweeping glance around the harbour. He saw the spurts of flame from rifles and machine-guns, on the quay and from a house near the far end. He knew that one was the “butcher’s house”. The firing was heaviest from across the harbour, on the other side of a bridge that no longer spanned the river but ended only half-way over. There was a square littered with trucks stopped in untidy confusion and the prickling flames stabbed from the darkness all around them. His head swung back. The house at the seaward end of the quay was dark.

  He turned as Tommy Vance shouted, “She’s ours.” They grinned at each other, both breathless, relieved, elated that they had pulled it off. Then the French skipper stood before Jimmy, face dark, trying to tell him something, using gestures when he could not find the words. The miming finally became clear and the message got through.

  Jimmy Nash said softly, “Oh, hell!”

  Brent’s orders to Jimmy and Tommy Vance had been to capture or silence the guardship then lay the drifter alongside the sea-wall. There she would take off the landing party of Brent and the others, and the two rescued men, Max Neumann from the train and Michel from the cells. Now Crozier and Dent would have to carry out that part. Jimmy thought: And it’s too bad about you, Nash, Tommy and the rest of us here.

  The drifter was sinking.

  *

  McNab was again in the top-floor front-room and down on his belly by the window. The commandos kneeling either side of it glanced at him. They were all coated in the dust that fell steadily from the ceiling now. Bullets smacked into the wall outside and others cracked! in at the window to punch into the ceiling or ricochet howling off the walls.

  One of the commandos said, “That gun on the guardship gave us a pasting before it stopped, but now there’s a lot more stuff coming up from this side of the river. There are blokes in the streets and houses only fifty yards away. We’re keeping ‘em busy but that’s getting harder. We have to nip up, squirt a few off and duck down again.”