Colin Forbes - The Heights of Zervos

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.