The Heights of Zervos (18 page)

'No!' Hahnemann's reply was savagely emphatic as his hand guided the lieutenant by the elbow to the rear of the bridge. 'We shall be landing shortly.'

'Through that lot!' Ford sounded incredulous as he gazed over the colonel's shoulder along the searchlight beam which cut across the darkness. To port and starboard of the illuminated avenue at least four mines floated, metallic spheres which gleamed palely, their surfaces speckled with small shadows -the dreaded nozzles which caused instant detonation on contact. Burckhardt spoke briefly over his shoulder, instructing Hahnemann to tell them about the missing demolition charge; after all, they were soldiers, so they might as well know the position. With waning enthusiasm, Prentice and Ford listened to Hahnemann and were then pushed to the rear of the bridge, squeezed in between a press of uniformed Alpenkorps troops. Looking to his right, Prentice found he was huddled next to the large German civilian who had come aboard at Istanbul. On their way up from the cabin they had seen him in the distance climbing a staircase and Prentice had enquired who he was.

'Herr Dietrich is with the Abwehr,' Hahnemann had replied with a hint of respect in his voice. Prentice looked up curiously at the huge figure who stared back at him as he lit a fresh cigar with one elbow rested on the shoulder of the corporal next to him. A rum cove, this Dietrich, was Prentice's reaction as he turned to listen to Ford who was keeping his voice down.

'How big did he say that demolition charge was? I couldn't catch all he said in this crush.'

'Ten kilograms. Is that bad?'

'It's not good, I can tell you that straight off. And if it's been dumped near the boilers and they go, too...'

He broke off as Burckhardt issued a stream of orders to Eberhay who had appeared at the door to the bridge and then hurried away when the colonel had finished speaking. They were close to the moment of disembarkation, which required disciplined control, and the little major was facing something like near-panic as the troops filed up the staircases. It was then that Prentice saw the Alpenkorps equipment which confirmed his worst fears: he had a glimpse of men with skis of hickory wood passing beyond the bridge. The skis were carried on their backs which also supported rucksacks - which could only mean they expected to be operating in the deep snows on Mount Zervos at the far end of the peninsula. The Alpenkorps' main objective was the natural observation post of the monastery which overlooked the mainland road carrying Allied supplies northward.

'Funny that bomb hasn't gone off already,' he remarked lightly to Ford. He would have liked to feel that he was praying for the charge to detonate, but the truth was that he was sick with apprehension. 'Perhaps the chap who fixed it didn't know what he was doing,' he suggested.

'That's possible, sir. But their time fuses aren't all that reliable - a Jerry we had in the bag told me that. The damned things have a habit of conking out at the wrong moment.'

'You mean they become harmless?' Prentice tried to keep the hope out of his voice.

'Now I didn't say that, did I? Apparently they sometimes stop and then start up again. Vibrations can get them going again as easy as winking. The ship's engines are ideal for the purpose.'

'That's right, cheer us all up.' Prentice did not feel particularly reassured. Ford was an ammunition examiner who spent too much of his life fiddling with things which might go bang in his face at any second - including enemy explosives and equipment on which he was also something of an expert. But here on this German-held vessel he was displaying distinct signs of nervousness as he pulled at the lobe of one ear and kept looking round the bridge as though he expected it to disappear without warning.

'Fasten those straps at once!' Hahnemann had returned briefly to the bridge and had noticed that Ford's life-jacket was loose. Every man on the bridge wore his life-jacket and these cumbersome objects took up more space and further impeded movement. Prentice had the feeling that he would soon be lifted clear off the floor if anyone else crowded in on the bridge. He jerked his head round again to look through the rear window which gave a view along the deck towards the stern, a deck which was almost deserted since the order for uniformed troops to keep out of sight was still in force. Almost deserted, but not quite. Prentice's eyes narrowed as he watched sea mist drift past a lamp near the starboard rail: by its light he saw a short, heavily built man on the wrong side of the rail, a man who carried a rifle over his back. Something about the shape and the movement reminded him of the Greek civilian who had also come aboard at Istanbul. Grapos, the captain had called him. Mist blurred the view and when it cleared the poised figure was gone. He had dived over the side.

'Seen a ghost, sir?' Ford inquired.

'I've got a crick in my neck if you're referring to my expression of almost unendurable agony.' Prentice felt sure that at the last minute Dietrich had also glanced through that window, but by then the mist would have blotted out the lonely figure. He was greatly relieved when the German said nothing and continued quietly smoking the cigar which was now adding to the growing foetid atmosphere inside the packed bridge. So Grapos had made a dive for it and was heading for the shore fast. Some people are lucky, he thought, and then he remembered the mine-strewn waters the Greek was swimming through at that very moment and he suppressed a shudder. Despite the number of men compressed inside the confined space it was very silent on the bridge in the intervals between Burckhardt giving sharp orders as officers and NCOs appeared at the door, a silence of suppressed dread which hung over their still heads like a pall as the engines slowly beat out their mechanical rhythm and the
Hydra
continued to turn eastwards.

The bows of the vessel were now moving through drifts of white mist which were fogging visibility, yet a further source of anxiety to Burckhardt, who had now left off his civilian raincoat and was dressed in full uniform with the Alpenkorps broad-brimmed cap set firmly on his head. Nopagos stood like a man of wax, his eyes trying to bore through the mist-curtain at the earliest possible moment. Schnell was crouched in a permanent stoop over the wheel, glancing frequently to starboard where the nearest mine bobbed gently less than fifty metres from the hull. At least, he hoped that was the nearest mine. From his all-round view at the rear, Prentice was looking from face to face, noting the gleam of sweat on tightly drawn skin, the nervous twitch of an eyelid, the hands which gripped rifles and machine-pistols so tensely that the knuckles were whitened. These men, all over the ship, were under the maximum possible pressure. They were going into action by dawn. They knew that the sea ahead was alive with mines, and that somewhere, perhaps under their feet, the time fuse was ticking down to zero. If someone had determined to bring well-night unbearable pressure on their morale they could scarcely have planned it better than this. He looked to his right again. Dietrich, outwardly the most composed man on the bridge, was still calmly smoking his cigar and looking down at Prentice as though assessing his character and qualities in an emergency.

'Not more than half an hour at the most.' Ford's voice was little more than a whisper, a whisper motivated more by a dislike of breaking the doom-like silence than by a wish not to be overheard.

'Less than that, I imagine. If we ever get there.' Prentice looked again at the landing-stage light which was visible and closer now the mist had temporarily cleared. And there seemed to be light in the east on the far side of the peninsula. Hoisting his wrist upwards, he looked at his watch. Exactly 5.45 AM. Schnell was turning the wheel to straighten course as Burckhardt transmitted an instruction he had received from Nopagos; Dietrich was studying the end of his cigar rather dubiously; a soldier was wiping moisture from his forehead; and Ford was looking round the bridge with quick darting glances when the explosion came.

The silence on the bridge was ruptured by a shattering roar. The
Hydra
shuddered from bows to stern as though struck by a mammoth blow and then wobbled. A wave was carried away from the ferry and swept towards the shore as it gathered up more water in its headlong flight from the vessel. For a few brief seconds it had been as light as day to starboard where a brilliant flash temporarily blinded those who had been looking in that direction. From beyond the open door of the bridge came a babble of panic-stricken voices and the sound of nailed boots scattering across the decks. Stark gibbering panic had seized the ship and on the packed bridge the hysterical murmuring was only silenced by Burckhardt thundering for quiet. He pushed aside Nopagos who had been leaning out of the window to starboard and leaned out himself. The sea appeared to have gone mad as it heaved and bubbled frothily. For a second Burckhardt thought that they had been struck by a torpedo and that a submarine was surfacing. Then the water began to settle. Schnell still held the ship on course, heading for the landing-stage which was coming closer and closer in the darkness, and he spoke without looking at the colonel. 'The mine was very close when it detonated.'

'It was a mine, just a mine, we have not been hit...' Hahnemann shouted out the news in German and then in English to stem the signs of panic.

'Well, if that doesn't start it ticking, nothing will,' Ford remarked grimly.

'It?' Prentice was still a little dazed with relief as well as shock.

'The demolition charge,' said Ford, whose mind was never far from explosives. 'If the time fuse mechanism had stopped only temporarily that thump was quite enough to get it moving again, believe you me.'

'I was under the impression that we had hit a mine,' Prentice told him icily. 'That's enough to be going on with, I should have thought.'

"Well, obviously we didn't - we're still steaming on course at the same speed. The mine just went off on its own accord rather too close for comfort.' He was having to lift his voice for Prentice to hear him above the shouts on deck as Burckhardt thrust his way roughly off the bridge and went out on deck himself.

'You mean they can be defective, too?'

'Frequently. They can go off without rhyme or reason. On the other hand something else may have bumped into it -although I can't imagine what.'

Prentice began to feel slightly ill. He could imagine what else might have bumped into that mine in its frantic efforts to reach the shore. He had a picture in his mind of Grapos diving overboard with that protruding rifle attached to his back, of him swimming among the mines and so easily forgetting the barrel projecting beyond his body. There would be nothing left of the poor devil now. Prentice didn't like to think of what explosive which could take out a ship's bottom might do to a single human being as it detonated within a few feet of the swimming body.

'I think that little bang has rattled them,' Ford remarked.

'It rattled me,' Prentice replied with feeling. He looked back through the rear window where there was a state of confusion on the deck below. Alpenkorps men in full uniform who had been huddled close to the rail were being sent under cover by Volber who was waving his arms like a man shepherding sheep back to the fold. Within a minute the deck was clear and the babble of voices beyond the open door had ceased when Burckhardt came back to take up his post behind Nopagos. But the damage had been done. Another heavy blow had been dealt at the morale of troops who, on land would have taken the explosion in their stride, but cooped up on the unfamiliar sea the experience was having an entirely different effect. Prentice thought he could see in the faces in front of him a little extra strain, a trace more tension as the cold light from the east died in the false dawn and the landing-stage light at Katyra drew steadily closer.

Schnell was showing great skill as he steered the
Hydra
on the last stage of her perilous course, threading his way between a scatter of mines which floated in the path of the searchlight beam. An oppressive silence had fallen on the limping vessel as she moved through the dark water which was impenetrable beyond the beam, water supporting perhaps a hundred more mines for all Burckhardt could tell. The men on the decks below were waiting - waiting for the final collision with a mine, waiting for the still-hidden demolition charge to detonate under them, waiting for the tension-fraught moment of the landing - although which of these hazards was uppermost in their strained minds it was impossible to guess. The engines ticked over monotonously as the ferry slipped towards a blurred shadow which was the coast.

Plagued by a dozen anxieties, Burckhardt maintained his outward appearance of calm confidence while inwardly he fretted at the damnably crawling progress of the vessel. He was already nearly thirty minutes behind his timetable and he was praying that the news of the general offensive launched at 5.45 AM was not yet on the air. It was unlikely - an hour or two should pass before the world read the reports of the German onslaught on Greece and Yugoslavia spearheaded by the Panzers and reinforced with airborne troops - and the peninsula was still devoid of Allied troops and wide open to his attack. The whole key to the operation was a swift dash back along the peninsula and the capture of the monastery before the Allies had time to recover their balance. Just so long as there really was nothing standing in his way - and that they were able to land safely. He felt the chill of the early morning air filtering through his uniform and braced himself to control a shiver as Dietrich appeared at his elbow.