RESCUE
Stan kept under cover until he located the bridle path leading over the ridge. The Me’s were still combing the ridge above, but the woods and the meadows were full of long shadows which made spotting a camouflaged object impossible.
Moving down the path Stan kept a sharp watch for guards. The pathway was really a tunnel under the trees. Overlapping branches formed a natural roof. This cover made the path almost pitch-dark. But Stan moved swiftly. He wanted enough light to spot the prison where the boys were being held.
Reaching the opening in the hedge he discovered that someone had moved the branches of the hedge row so that they entwined over the opening hiding it. Standing behind the hedge he listened. Judging by the sounds, there was plenty of activity in the camp, and Stan could see lights shining through the wall of leaves. A motorcycle roared and a truck motor joined it. Men’s voices could be heard clearly.
Moving along the hedge Stan peered over it. He could see into the wide yard of the villa and also into the yards around the barns. Every building was lighted up and the place swarmed with Germans. Stan had never seen so many German officers in a single spot before. Groups of them sat around outdoor tables in the back yard of the villa. They were eating and drinking wine from the Bolero cellars. There was a lot of shouting and laughter.
Stan turned to the barns. He moved along them until he could see the back yard of the big barn. Here there were a number of smaller sheds and barns as well as the kennels. All of them were lighted and so were the yards around them. Guards marched back and forth in front of the kennels and before three of the sheds. Stan was certain he had located the prisons, but there was no way of telling which one contained his pals. One thing was certain, the Germans felt safe here at Bolero Villa. They probably figured Allied bombers would think the place was Italian and leave it alone. The many trees hid the trucks, cars, and German soldiers from view. Stan grinned. When he got back, the bomber boys would know where to drop a stick of bombs.
This condition made it easy for Stan to observe because the guards figured their only job was to keep the prisoners from escaping. They were not worried about an attack. Moving around behind the kennels Stan found darkness. He managed to wiggle up to the back wall. There were no windows in the back of the shed. He checked the other guarded sheds and found no windows in the rear of them. Moving back to the hedge he crouched there watching the three buildings.
The only way to get into any of those buildings was through the doors or one of the front windows. The windows were open and not barred, but at least a dozen guards patrolled the grounds. They were scattered out, making a blitz machine-gun attack difficult. By the time Stan had blasted the guards out of the way he would have several hundred officers and men attacking from the grounds below.
A soldier approached one of the guards, spoke to him, then entered one of the buildings, a shed between the kennels and the third barn. A light flashed on and Stan could see men inside the building. They were packed in, standing close together, those he could see through the window. All of them were Italian soldiers.
After a bit the soldier came out with an Italian officer walking ahead of him. They went directly to the grounds below. Stan eased along the hedge until he was opposite the kennels. Here he halted and parted the branches of the hedge. He listened intently. The prisoners in the kennels were talking but their voices were very low. One of them laughed and the guard at the door shouted an order in German. With the butt of his rifle he hammered against the sill. There was silence inside and then a voice called out:
“Get away from that door, ye dirty spalpeen! Yer disturbin’ the pleasure o’ gentlemen!”
Stan almost shouted. That was the voice of O’Malley. The guard beat harder upon the sill of the door and shouted louder. Stan heard Allison warning O’Malley to keep his mouth shut. Silence settled inside the building.
Pulling out his sheath knife Stan began cutting a hole in the hedge. The hedge had been carefully tended by the Bolero gardener. The limbs of the shrubs had been entwined and laced together, making the hedge almost a solid wall. Stan cut away a large hole, leaving only a few branches over the inside to hide his work. Getting down he crawled into the opening.
The guard was standing facing the spot where Stan was crouching. A floodlight in the yard made the whole place as light as day. Stan watched the other guards as they moved about. Under a tree at the entrance to the yard a heavy machine gun had been planted. A crew of three men manned the gun. It was set to cover the three jails and the whole yard.
The situation looked hopeless. With so much light an attack could not be engineered. Suddenly Stan’s lips pulled into a straight line. He had a bright thought. The yards and grounds had never been lighted up so completely by the Bolero family. That meant the Germans had strung a lot of wire. If he could locate the main line and cut it, he could plunge the place in darkness long enough to break into the shed where his pals were being held.
After studying the yard and the lighting, Stan decided the wires came in from the big barn. Working his way around the sheds he came to a spot where a wide and well-lighted roadway separated them from the big barn. Four Germans guarded the road and they were well spaced. Again he was blocked.
Then he noticed that a set of heavy wires came down from somewhere in the darkness to the corner of the big barn. They swung in from high above his head. Stan grinned. The electricity for the whole villa came in from behind the barns. It was like General Bolero to have unsightly power poles at the back of his estate. Stan turned and headed into the woods. He was looking for a power line pole.
The job of locating a pole among a forest of trees was not easy, but Stan had the general location from the run of the lines. After a few minutes of hunting he located the pole and got set to climb it. He stacked his things at the base of the pole. He would have to slide down in a hurry and dash to the attack. He hoped there would be plenty of confusion. He also hoped the lead-in wires were insulated. The line was at least 220-volt, because there were three wires leading to the barn.
Climbing up the pole Stan came to a transformer. Gingerly he tested one of the wires with the hard rubber handle of his knife. Nothing happened, so he started sawing away. He was not shorted by any part of the transformer or any wire he might be touching in the darkness. The wire was thick and heavy but it was copper and his sharp knife bit into it. With a tug Stan severed the heavy wire and felt it go twisting away into the darkness, which had suddenly become very black because all of the lights in and around the villa had snapped off.
Stan almost fell down the pole. He heard shouting and bellowing from the yard. Shots were fired and flashlights began to stab back and forth. Stan grabbed his machine gun and leaped into the road leading to the small barns. Suddenly the machine gun under the tree opened up. The Germans knew a prison delivery attempt was on. Stan halted and pulled a grenade from the sack slung over his shoulder. Jerking the pin, he tossed it just as he had often tossed a forward pass in a football game.
A sharp roar and a flash of fire told him the grenade had gone off, and the sudden ceasing of the staccato voice of the machine gun told him he had scored a hit. He did not have time to look as he charged toward the kennels. He ran into a German and knocked the soldier down with the barrel of his machine gun. Reaching the door he came to grips with three Germans. They had an electric lantern and they spotted him closing in, but not quick enough. Stan’s tommy-gun blasted them off the wide stone flagging before the door.
“Hi, Allison! O’Malley!” Stan hit the door with his shoulder in a leaping dive. He went crashing into the room with the door draped around him.
“Stan!” O’Malley roared from the darkness.
“Here! Get close to me and follow me!” Stan shouted as he staggered to his feet.
Outside, the flaming and the sound of Stan’s tommy-gun had given away his location. Rifles and pistols began blasting away. Bullets splintered the front of the building.
“Get down low!” Allison called.
A dozen men had rushed out of the kennels, carrying Stan with them. He heard a man groan and go down as a bullet hit him.
“Here!” he bellowed.
O’Malley and Allison located him. They knew just about where he was headed. Wiggling along on their hands and knees, the three fliers moved to the hole in the hedge.
They slid through and, paused. “Where’s Tony and Arno?” Stan asked.
“In the shed next to ours,” Allison answered. “They were captured the day we were shot down.”
“Sure, an’ if you’ll wait I’ll go beat down the door,” O’Malley whispered.
“We’ll all go,” Stan answered. “We’ll batter open both prisons.”
The three, keeping close together, circled and charged into the mass of milling Germans. They were not spotted because there was little light. Flashlight beams stabbed here and there, but none of the fingers of light found the three Yanks. They actually shouldered their way to within a few yards of the first door.
“I’ll take this one, you and O’Malley take the other. I’ll clear the way with the tommy-gun,” Stan hissed.
He opened up with a burst of fire which scattered the Germans, then charged the door. O’Malley and Allison smashed the other door. Stan heard the shouts of the prisoners as they piled out. He backed away as men lunged out of the building he had opened. Stan thanked his luck that the doors had been built out of light plywood. He leaped aside and turned his submachine gun on the Germans. He swung his arc of fire across the yard and sent the Nazis charging for cover.
Ceasing his fire he ducked for the hole in the hedge. Allison was already there, but O’Malley had not showed up.
“Hope he hasn’t gotten any crazy ideas,” Stan growled.
“He probably has,” Allison said. “How’d you douse the lights?”
“I cut the main line, but they’ll locate the break and fix it in a hurry.”
Suddenly they heard O’Malley coming. He ducked through the hedge. Behind him came two other men. O’Malley had stayed to locate Tony and Arno.
“How did you find us?” Tony asked excitedly.
“Allison got someone to smuggle out a note. I have a bomber up on your secret field to take us off, if we can get up there,” Stan answered. “It’s so dark, I don’t know whether we can locate the path.”
Arno laughed softly. “We will lead you and we will show you how to take off in the dark.”
“I’m glad you’re along,” Stan said.
Arno led the way up the trail. He moved along at a fast pace. He knew every twist and turn in the trail. The Yanks were hard put to keep up with him. Tony brought up the rear, which helped to keep the party together.
They reached the little meadow that served as a runway. Arno led them straight to the hidden parking ground. Here they halted under the wing of the Mosquito.
“What you flying?” O’Malley asked.
“A Mosquito bomber,” Stan answered.
“One o’ them wood crates?” O’Malley asked. He did not try to hide his disgust.
Stan laughed. “And I’m flying her, see? I wouldn’t ride in as fast and tricky a ship as this Mosquito with you at the controls.”
“I’ll bet me auld grandmother could fly as fast,” O’Malley said.
“The lights are on below,” Arno broke in. “I hear German soldiers coming up the slope through the woods.”
“They have a big force down there,” Allison said. “I’ll bet they comb this mountainside.”
“We’ll never be able to take off as black as it is,” Stan said. “We’ll have to wait for the first light so we can see something.”
“By that time the Germans will have found the ship. See the lights flashing in the woods below?” Tony spoke sharply.
Arno laughed. “Now I will show you how we took off on black nights. Will your bomber lift in a hurry?”
“Faster than a Nardi fighter,” Stan said.
“Wait. I will show you,” Arno said and disappeared into the blackness.
“We have done it many times,” Tony said, laughing.
Arno was gone only a few minutes. When he returned he explained:
“First we roll the ship out from under the trees by hand if we can.”
“That will be easy. There is a downgrade and the Mosquito is light weight,” Stan said.
“Then we get the engines warm enough to take off.” Arno paused.
“That will take a little time. We may have to stand off the Germans,” Stan said.
“When the engines are hot I will place two blue flares with a red one in the middle for a target. It is so easy. You head for the red flare and take off before you get to it.”
“Good work. You have the flares?” Allison asked.
“We keep a supply here,” Arno said. “I will place them. When you shout to me that the engines are ready, I will light them. Then I come running and we take off.”
“’Tis very simple,” O’Malley said eagerly. “Sure, an’ we better get her rolled out.”
The boys got hold of the Mosquito and rolled her out. Arno made off to set his flares. Before the boys piled in, Stan handed his tommy-gun to Allison. “You’re an artist with this sort of banjo. You stay on the ground. If any German squads show up, you chase them back into the woods.”
“Good idea, old boy,” Allison said as he took the gun.
Stan went up and wound up the radial motors. They coughed and sputtered but finally took hold, first with a rumbling gallop that was uneven, then with a smoother roar. The sound of those powerful radials shook the night air. Stan knew their full-throated exhausts could be heard by the Germans.
Flashes of light winked in the woods below, Stan judged that the German squads were not over two hundred yards down the slope. Some might be even farther up the hill. He tested the engines with a jerk of the throttle. They bogged down and sputtered, too cold to take off.
Suddenly rifle fire broke out across the open meadow. The Germans were firing at the flaring exhaust flames from the Mosquito’s engines. Bullets whistled past the ship. Allison opened up and the firing from the woods ceased. Suddenly a machine gun began to blast. Its bullets ripped into the ship and around it. Stan gunned the engines and they caught, bursting into a perfect and unbroken stream of power.
On the ground Allison could tell by the sound of the engines that the ship was ready. He began shouting to Arno. Stan throttled down to allow Allison’s shouts to carry.
Suddenly a flare blossomed. A few minutes later another flamed. Stan waited impatiently for what seemed a long time. He could tell by the stabs of flame from the rifles across the meadow that the Germans were charging down upon Arno. Then the red flare burst into flame. Stan fixed the spot in his mind, just in case a German got to the flare and put it out. Allison was blistering the Germans rushing down upon Arno, but the distance was too great for a tommy-gun.
Stan kicked the motors on, setting his brakes hard. The attackers were now fanned out and charging across the meadow. Allison could not halt them because they had spread out thinly over a wide front.
“Should we leave Arno?” Tony asked. “He would want more than anything else that you men got away.”
“We’re not leavin’ him!” O’Malley shouted. “I’ll get down an’ go help him. He may have been hit by a bullet.”
“No, we won’t leave him,” Stan agreed grimly.
Suddenly Allison climbed up. “They’ll be on us in a minute!” he shouted.
“Here comes the boy!” O’Malley bellowed.
Arno’s head appeared in the circle of light from the instrument panel. Allison gave him a hand, dragging him into the cockpit.
Before the trap could be closed Stan gave the Mosquito her head. She shot away like an arrow released from a bow as her brakes eased free. Straight at the stabbing tongues of rifle fire she roared. The firing ceased as the Germans leaped frantically out of the path of the charging bomber.
Stan held her straight for the red flare. Long before they reached it he hoiked her tail and bounced her off. She went up like a kite caught by a gale. O’Malley, sitting beside Stan, looked over and grinned.
“That was sweet!” he shouted.
“You haven’t seen anything yet!” Stan shouted back. He leaned toward O’Malley, “Have Allison get the radio set working.”
A few minutes later Allison had established long-range communications with the base at Messina and was reporting in. O’Malley went back to put in an order for three huckleberry pies and a steak. Arno took his place. Stan was letting the Mosquito cruise along. He leaned toward Arno.
“What about the general?”
“The Germans have him. He is a prisoner at Naples,” Arno said in a worried voice.
“We’ll take care of that. We’re taking Naples very soon,” Stan assured him.
“I’m afraid that may not help much. The Germans are in a fury over the action we have taken. They will take revenge not only upon Father, but upon the people of Naples and of every city they have occupied.” Arno looked straight ahead into the night.
“We’ll figure out something,” Stan said grimly.
O’Malley came forward and sat back of Stan. Stan called over his shoulder.
“I am to deliver you fellows to Colonel Benson.”
“Colonel Benson!” O’Malley yelped. “Sure an’ that means we’ll spend the rest o’ the war in the guardhouse!”
“That’s the safest place for you,” Stan retorted.
Allison called forward over the intercommunication phone that the colonel sent his regards and that he had personally ordered O’Malley’s pies and steak for him. O’Malley listened in. He began to grin.
“Sure, an’ mebby the old brass hat has some feelin’s after all.”
“Don’t build up any false hopes,” Stan warned.
“Did he send you after us?” O’Malley demanded.
“He did,” Stan said.
O’Malley leaned back and licked his lips. He closed his eyes so as to be better able to get a mental picture of the pies awaiting him.
Stan eased down a bit and called to Allison for a check on their location and course. Everything looked fine and fair, but Stan knew that it was at such times that trouble usually popped.
Messina was easily located as they came in at low altitude because the Yank and British batteries on the island were shelling the German-held port of Reggio across the two-mile strait. Flares were blossoming along the mainland, dropped by Yank fliers. Allison got in touch with their field and they came in. The air traffic was heavy and the field was a beehive of activity. No special attention was given the De Havilland except by the crew assigned to take her over. They came racing out to make her fast.
The master mechanic grinned at Stan as he jumped down. “Good work, sir,” he said eagerly. The Mosquito was his pet and he had worried about her all the time she was away. After finding out where she was going he had been sure she would never get back.
Stan smiled at him. “She’s home without a scratch, and she’s a great ship, sergeant,” he said.
The sergeant beamed happily. “She sure is, sir,” he agreed proudly. Then he added, just having remembered the important message he was to deliver to the bomber’s skipper, “Colonel Benson wishes to see your entire crew as soon as you land.” He snapped a salute and turned to his crew.
“Sure, an’ I’m starved. I’m hopin’ he won’t give us a two-hour lecture on how to invade Italy,” O’Malley grumbled.
They hurried to the colonel’s headquarters, where they found their commanding officer waiting for them. He beamed upon the dirty, unshaven group headed by Stan.
“I’ll only keep you a few minutes, gentlemen,” he said. “Be seated.”
Stan saluted smartly and spoke his piece. “I’d like you to meet General Bolero’s sons, Tony and Arno. They made it possible for us to deliver the papers from the general and later to escape.”
“What you have done is appreciated. I hope I may be able to be of service to you,” the colonel said.
“We wish to fight the Germans. We are both pilots,” Arno said.
“I believe that can be arranged,” Colonel Benson said.
He looked at Allison and O’Malley and a broad smile formed on his lips.
“I have heard of the luck of the Irish. Now I am willing to add the British to that list. What I wanted to say is that you are requested not to talk about your experiences at all until you have reported to headquarters in Malta. After that you will be returned to my command. No one is going to talk me out of three fliers like you men.” He looked at Tony and Arno. “Possibly I might be able to make it five.”
O’Malley seemed to feel this was a soft spot where he could safely make a request. He grinned at the colonel.
“We have a job to do, sor, one that won’t wait very long.”
The colonel’s smile faded and he eyed O’Malley sternly. “I’m listening,” he said warily.
“General Bolero has to be rescued from them Germans. They may decide to shoot him.”
The colonel looked suddenly very unhappy, “That is really a job I am not supposed to handle. After all, I am only a sector commander and not in charge of the war in the Mediterranean area.”
“It could be done aisy,” O’Malley said. “I’d like to have the job.”
The colonel regarded O’Malley grimly. “I don’t doubt but you would do it. However, there is some little risk. While you men are reporting to headquarters, Lieutenant Wilson and I will be giving the matter our consideration.” He got to his feet. “Wilson, you see that our friends are outfitted. Get cleaned up and have a big feed.” He nodded toward O’Malley. “I have set aside a supply of pie for you, Lieutenant.”
The party saluted and made off. O’Malley was not too happy. “If you sneak off alone to get the general, I’ll thrash the daylights out o’ you when I get back from seein’ the brass hats,” he growled.
“I won’t take on the whole German army alone,” Stan assured him. “I’ll see that you’re in on it.”
“You better,” O’Malley warned sourly.
They found their quarters and all headed for the showers. O’Malley wanted to eat first but they talked him out of the idea.