The Ian Fleming Files (22 page)

“The vents are
underwater,” said Fleming who picked up an acetylene torch and smiled. The boys
looked back in ignorance, having never seen such a device. “Let me explain,”
said Fleming.

The torrid sun
beat down over craggy, sandy foothills populated by camouflaged cannon nests.
Silence, until gradually was heard... a humming of motors. One Vichy truck
after another trundled by along the seafront going at a steady speed, filled
with desert troops.

The vehicles
stopped before the gun-nests installed in the hills and extra guards leaped out
and mobilized around them as the Typhoon soared overhead.

In the cockpit,
Fleming stared out through the canopy at the blinding white city of Algiers,
situated on the west side of a bay and nicknamed “El-Bahdja” or Alger la
Blanche (”Algiers the white”). The dawn outlined her features sharply. Her
arcades, columns, and majolica arches. The narrow, twisting streets of the
sweltering city were empty. The European cafes were still shuttered in the
Kasbah.

The Typhoon banked
into a curve and began its descent. As it dipped, Fleming saw more of the city,
a sun blanched montage of mosaics, terraces, round arches and low domes. The
city was fortified for an anticipated assault. There were road blocks and
coiled barb wire atop low concrete walls. Sandbags barricaded government
buildings. Buses were jammed across roads, blocking access.

“Radio silence,
Charlie,” Fleming told the pilot who flicked off switches as they shot over the
city to the desert outskirts.

The Typhoon
vectored toward a sand dune and looked as though it were going to crash into it
when the plane slowed down and sprouted landing gear. A pair of gigantic wooden
doors rose up from under the berm, hoisted by sturdy ropes, revealing a secret
landing strip inside a bustling base. The Typhoon disappeared into the dunes,
the ropes slackened and the doors flattened back down into the sand.

The dusty base was
a flurry of activity. Sunburned British officers shouted orders to local recruits
who stood by to assist Fleming as he directed his men out of the plane toward
six black unmarked helicopters readying to ascend.

“Move it!” he
shouted to his boys. “Let’s go, let’s go!”

Dalzel helped him
hustle the dozen commandos into the choppers. Several of the young soldiers
ducked unnecessarily as they passed under the rotors.

A familiar figure
hailed Fleming from afar, coming into focus as he neared. It was Colonel Remy,
dressed for war in a dark naval battledress with neither badge nor insignia. He
was also wearing a sidecap, rifle ammunition pouches on his belt and a gas cape
across his chest.

Fleming wasn’t
exactly thrilled. He yelled over the roar. “What are you doing here? You’re
supposed to be coordinating ground forces.”

“It’s OK, English.
Everything is set.”

Fleming introduced
him to Leeds, Dalzel and another commando, Sergeant Grant, a tall, husky man
with bright, cheerful eyes.

Darlan and Denise
were on the control platform with the chief engineer who was shouting orders
down to his workers through a megaphone. Jodl was present along with his two
stormtroopers.

“This is going to
make North Africa free from all outside interference,” said Darlan.
  

Jodl looked
unconvinced.

Darlan cracked his
knuckles as he contemplated a control board. “Let’s see what she’s capable of.”

“You don’t want to
wait until she’s launched?” asked the engineer, a local genius whose name was
Hasni Mouloud.

“The guns are
fully operational,” declared Darlan. “Let’s call it a rehearsal for the main
event.”

Denise snapped
open a retractable telescope and scanned the bay. “Nothing in the area apart
from a clipper. Civilian, probably.”

“Perfect!” said
Darlan.

Jodl peered
through binoculars at the clipper. “They’re flying the Swiss flag,” he said.

Darlan was
undeterred. “Not for much longer.”

Hasni Mouloud
signaled to gunners on board
The Nautilus
who steered the big cannons
into position using cranks and levers.

He looked at
Darlan expectantly. His face showed no emotion.

Jodl continued to
look through his binoculars at the Swiss ship.

Darlan nodded.
Hasni looked down over the gunboat and gave the order by raising his hand and
then lowering it.

There was a loud
muzzle blast as the massive shell was released and then two more deafening
booms as a pair of shells were blasted out in quick succession. The gunboat’s
power was astonishing.

The missiles
soared over the water at two hundred miles an hour as Darlan, Jodl, et al
waited breathlessly in the observation tower.

Seconds later, a
silent fireball erupted on the horizon. A mushroom cloud plumed, debris tumbled
and the sea was still. It was as if the Swiss clipper was never there.

Sunlight diffused
over the city as the French-Algerian Resistance seized key Vichy targets in the
center of town, taking the local gendarmerie by surprise and immobilizing all
metropolitan forces. It was chaos in the alleyways, on the steps, in the cafes,
in the Arab baths, the mosques and in the markets. French guerrilla fighters
swarmed government buildings, occupied the Ketchaoua mosques and gathered en
masse in Martyr’s Square or
Sahat ech-Chouhada
where they blasted their
Berthier rifles in the air.

Amidst the mayhem
there came a terrific throb of engines in the skies as Fleming and his boys
shuddered overhead in their dark assault helicopters.

Inside the lead
craft, Fleming looked behind him as half his unit, six coastal raiders led by
Leeds and Dalzel, parachuted down to the gun nests in the hills. Peering
forward through the canopy, Fleming could see a series of box-shaped docks on
the horizon. He turned behind him to address the small squad.

“All right, boys,
drop time!”

Fleming, Remy,
Grant and five commandos stripped down to dog-tags and underwear and slipped
into scuba gear.

“See if you can
drop us into the canal, Charlie,” Fleming said to the pilot and gestured to a
drainage canal adjacent to the docks.

“Listen up,
gentlemen!” Fleming hollered. “We’re a few miles from the last known place
Darlan was seen. You know my orders but don’t any of you wait for an invitation
from me to put a bullet in his head should the opportunity present itself.
Understood?”

A collective
‘hoorah!’ answered his question.

In the hills,
Leeds and Dalzel headed silently up a stairwell to the second level of the
first gun nest. An empty corridor receded into the dim distance. Leeds aimed
his Lanchester gun down the hall.

Their movements
synchronized, four other team members, wearing gas masks, rushed a stairway in
phalanx formation, assault weapons pointed, crouching behind a short wall to
avoid Vichy gendarmerie.

One of them rolled
out C-4 like a kid shaping play dough, pressed it along the door seal, then ran
around the corner to his triggerman who lit the fuse which burned like wildfire
to the detonator and...

KA-BOOM!! A huge
explosion of concrete, fire, metal and flesh.

At the next
gun-nest, Dalzel and Leeds signaled silently to each other as they approached
the heavily guarded battery.

A guard appeared
and was torn to bloody ribbons. A second guard stepped forth and was likewise
rendered lifeless by Leeds. The two men split up. They reappeared together,
then scattered again. Dalzel fixed an SDP against a gun-nest and nodded to
Leeds who lit the fuse.

The battery blew
to smithereens as Leeds and Dalzel absconded. At the next gun port, Dalzel
tossed in a satchel charge, rocking the bunker. The three soldiers in the nest
were killed instantly. The commandos hiked downhill a few hundred yards and
assembled with the others on a mound overlooking the dockyard. Leeds and his
men crouch-ran to the cover of a stone wall. Dalzel snapped open his field
binoculars. The viewing platform where Darlan stood could be seen over a walled
perimeter that encircled the docks, forming a kind of rampart.

Dalzel put his
binocs down. “What do we do now?” he said. “Climb over?”

Leeds looked at
the wall and then at the explosives. A grin was all that was needed to
communicate the plan. Dalzel planted sticks of TNT and uncoiled detonation wire
while Leeds set up a mortar launcher and attached a plunger.

“Better use it
all,” said Leeds. Dalzel placed three S.P.D.s and several bundles of dynamite
at the foot of the wall. The other commandos busied themselves with setting up
the radio and unwrapping equipment from sealed pouches.

Darlan was
inspecting the gundeck of
The Nautilus
with Denise and Hasni. “Will she
launch on time?” he asked the engineer.

“At precisely
twelve o’clock, Admiral,” said Hasni.

Darlan consulted
his watch in excitement. It was 11:30 A.M. “The British won’t know what hit
them!” he said to no one in particular.

The stealth
copter’s powerful rotor blades churned the waters of the canal as one by one
Fleming, Remy and the commandos were lowered into the water.

The small
infiltration team slipped into the canals unseen, agile and silent, and the
helicopter beat away. The eight men floated with the strong current to a series
of locks with three waterways to choose from. They huddled into a culvert under
the first bridge where they were shielded from view by an accumulated pile of
detritus.

Fleming indicated
to the middle canal and they all submerged and swam toward a large circular
rotating filter in the locked floodgate. Remy pulled at the vent’s grating and
signaled behind him to two men who fired up the underwater acetylene torch and
got to work cutting the metal mesh.

Ten minutes later,
the unit emerged a few hundred yards downstream and flopped out onto the
canal’s concrete embankment, with a tall barbed fence between them and the
dockyard that berthed
The Nautilus
.

Fleming removed
his breathing apparatus and saw silent explosions erupting in the foothills as
more gun-nests imploded. He looked at his Panerai and said “Right on time. You
lot wait here, I’m going to take a closer look at this monster.” Remy, keeping
watch, motioned that the coast was clear. Grant handed Fleming a waterproof
pouch containing explosives. Fleming slipped his mask back on and got ready to
dive.

Denise was on the
aft deck of
The Nautilus
with two armed guards. She lit a cigarette and
flitted her eyes about, reached down for her St. Etienne and worked the
chamber. The hot desert sun beat down.

Visible in the
control room behind her, Darlan watched as the chief engineer orchestrated the
launch of
The Nautilus
. Hasni was sweating bullets. Darlan’s eyes went
to a wall clock. It was 11:50 a.m.

A stream of
bubbles foamed up to the surface as Fleming appeared  and then swam to the
base of a concrete wall where he peeked out tentatively from behind a barnacled
pillar. He turned and waved the others on to join him.

Fleming tried to
make out
The Nautilus
but couldn’t quite discern it amidst all the
scaffolding and personnel buzzing about.

He saw Denise
standing alongside two serious-looking, ramrod guards on the viewing ledge
jutting out above the gunboat.

Fleming swam
silently closer and listened in.

“In ten minutes
the gunboat will launch and the British ships will be finished,” Denise said.
“Keep a sharp lookout, we don’t want anyone near this dock.”

She flicked her
cigarette over the roof. The glowing stub fell inches before Fleming and landed
in the murky water with an audible hiss.

Remy tapped his
back. Fleming signaled to the others with hand gestures that it was time to
scale the barbed wall.

One by one, the
eight men vaulted over the fencing and dropped silently down the other side in
the neighboring dock in a shadowy corner.

One of the two
Vichy guards stopped marching and pointed his rifle in their direction crying
out in French. He got closer and was inches from the dark corner hiding Remy
and Grant when Fleming pounced from behind and took him out with a powerful
uppercut, knocking him out cold, while Grant hurled a knife at the other guard
and nailed him in the heart.

Remy ran to the
stabbed man and muffled his groans, suffocating him.

They continued on
and cautiously peered over the edge to see
The Nautilus
ominously rising
as water flooded into the docks.

Fleming
scrutinized it, taking in its inflatable base, imposing Pom Pom guns and
formidable armored bulkhead.

Grant was
bewildered. “What the bloody hell is that?”

“A floating gun
nest,” said Fleming in a hushed voice. “Radio base, tell them to get any ships
within a hundred miles out of here. We don’t have much time.” He checked his
breathing apparatus. “I’m going to take a closer look.”

Grant made his way
back while Fleming dropped quietly into the water clutching a flashlight and
pouch. He swam about the submerged hull of
The Nautilus
looking for the
optimum place to position his SPD.

Fleming surfaced,
staying tight to the hull as he slipped the regulator out of his mouth and got
a lay of the land. Armed guards were overseeing ground workers and techs in
frog suits performing last minute tests to the craft.

He put his breathing
device back in and submerged. It didn’t take him long to snap the SPD into
place on the forward bow, just below the waterline. He removed the oxygen tank
from his back and shoved it into the whirring gears, causing a grinding sound.

Fleming absconded in
a hurry and didn’t see his explosives device shake loose as the hull shuddered
from the engine overload.