Mac wingate 5, p.12
Mac Wingate 5, page 12
Wingate caught sight of the German officer. He was limping as he ran for cover. Wingate tried to cut him down, but he was out of range. Wingate cursed. Then two grenades exploded on the pavement in front of the officer. He pitched forward, his hands clutching at his stomach. A second later a bottle exploded beside him. Instantly, he was a screaming torch, a twitching worm on fire.
Glancing down the roof, Wingate saw Lisa and the rest of her unit continuing to pour fire upon the Germans, the great Walther in Lisa’s small hand jumping. They were all firing too much, Wingate realized. He wanted to call out to them to hold their fire for the moment, but this was their first battle in this war—and he wanted to let them fight it their way. They deserved that much.
The lone tank rumbled forward, its treads clanking above the sound of gunfire, causing the buildings about it to tremble slightly. The gun turret began to swivel, its gunner frantically looking for a target as it ground toward the intersection.
“Look at that, Captain!” cried Regnais, pointing.
Wingate only nodded. He had seen the boy the moment he ran out from an alley, heading for the tank. The boy could not have been much older than sixteen or seventeen. Darting in under the probing cannon, the kid flung a grenade into the tread. It exploded at once. The tread snapped. The tank lunged about wildly, catching the young boy and flinging him to the ground, crushing his slight form under its careening bulk.
Someone else darted out from cover, a bottle bomb held over his head. German fire cut him down. The bottle smashed to the pavement short of the tank. Another bottle was flung from a window. This, too, fell short. Then two more ZOB fighters darted out into the street. One of them got close enough before being cut down. His bottle shattered on the turret. Another bottle broke on the facing. Flames enveloped the tank. A thick column of black smoke pumped skyward. The hatches clanged open and two Germans flung themselves out, their hands held high.
One was cut down before he could fling himself to the street; the other, riddled, sank back down into his flaming coffin.
The SS troops began to pull back from the intersection, firing blindly up at the buildings as they retreated.
Wingate heard shouts from the buildings and roofs around him. The firing ceased as a ragged cheer went up from the ZOB ranks. Wingate stood up. He was smiling. This battle was not over, but German blood was now mixed with Jewish blood on the streets of the Warsaw ghetto. It was a beginning.
Lisa and the members of her unit were on their feet also, embracing. He heard their triumphant shouts. Someone below them in a window cried, “They’re running away! They’re getting out!”
Not likely, Wingate thought grimly. They would be back—and soon.
ZOB fighters were swarming over the street, snatching up weapons from the fallen SS. Wingate saw one of them moving calmly amid some charred and still-smoking corpses, pausing every now and then to sent a bullet into the brain of a still-living German. Another one, a young boy, was ripping off those uniforms that might still be useful.
Wingate heard a cry from a rooftop across the street. He saw someone standing up, pointing down Mila street. “They’re coming back!”
“Let’s get down there,” Wingate told his men.
Leading the way, Wingate left the roof and hurried down the stairs; he exited the building from the rear and came out into a back alley. Hurrying along the alley, he dashed across the intersection, entered the next alley, and plunged back into another building near the corner. On the second floor, they broke into a front apartment, found the living room, and crouched down behind the large front window.
Two tanks were moving down the street just below them, the SS following behind, darting carefully from doorway to doorway, spraying the fronts of the buildings with submachine gun fire. The throb of powerful engines filled the apartment, rattling the window. Wingate flung it up and looked down cautiously. He was almost directly over the second tank. Ignoring it, he began dropping grenades on the German soldiers crouching in the doorways below him as Regnais and Martens began firing at Germans across the street.
The tanks rumbled on toward the intersection. Before they reached it, however, a gasoline bomb hurled from a rooftop shattered on the lead tank’s turret. The tank burst into flames. In rapid succession, two more examples of Stern’s handiwork exploded, spraying fire over the second tank and the street behind it. Wingate saw a German soldier, his back a roaring mass of flames, drop his weapon and begin to flee back down the street. Before he took more than a couple of steps, he was cut down.
The roar of submachine guns and small arms fire filled the street. Wingate saw two SS fling down their weapons and start to run. Before they got far, ZOB fighters caught up with them. In a moment they had beaten the two Germans to the ground and dragged them out of sight into an alley. By that time, a unit of ZOB fighters began closing in on the SS from the rear, cutting them down with grenades and small arms fire. Wingate saw more than one Jew dart into the street, snatch up a German MP-40 submachine gun, and cut down fleeing SS.
But still the Germans pressed on, and just beneath him, Wingate glimpsed four SS dashing into their building’s front entrance. Turning from the window, he heard the German’s jackboots thundering on the stairs. Directing Martens to one side of the door, Regnais to the other, Wingate flung himself down behind an armchair.
Wingate heard the door splinter as it was kicked open. The Germans entered the apartment. An SS appeared in the living room entrance and sprayed the room with his MP-40, then ducked back out of sight. Wingate tossed a grenade through the open doors. He heard it strike the carpet and begin to roll down the hallway. A German cursed a split second before a terrific detonation filled the narrow hallway with smoke.
A German staggered into the living room, holding his face. Wingate cut him down, then got up and charged the door as Martens and Regnais ducked into the hallway ahead of him, their Stens chattering. When Wingate reached them, not a German was still alive.
Standing over one riddled corpse, Martens looked grimly at Wingate. “I feel a little better now, Captain.”
A shriek of agony came from the street below them. Wingate hurried back into the living room. He was almost to the window when a great blistering tongue of flame burst through it and roared into the room. The ceiling exploded into flames as did the upholstered chair behind which Wingate had thrown himself a moment before. The blistering heat sent him reeling back. For a moment he caught a glimpse of the building across the street. It too was being devoured by sudden, devastating tongues of fire snapping up at it from the street below.
The Germans had brought in their flamethrowers.
Wingate retreated swiftly from the apartment. “We better get the hell out of here,” he told the others. “This old building will go up in a matter of minutes.”
As they fled the building and cut down the alley, the stench of other burning buildings filled the air. The sky over their heads was almost completely hidden by thick, coiling clouds of black smoke. Racing back across the intersection, they looked back and saw the four corner buildings in flames.
They saw also the two tanks, dead in the middle of the intersection, burning fiercely as well, three crew members draped over the flaming hulls, the stench of their sizzling hides heavy upon the air.
Wingate turned back around. Ahead of him the ZOB fighters were pulling back, racing down the alley away from Mila Street. As Wingate followed, the sound of the conflagration behind them rapidly became a muffled roar loud enough to drown out the occasional flurry of small arms fire.
It was a little after six o’clock that same day. The German forces had finally withdrawn from the ghetto, leaving behind at least two hundred dead members of the dread Reinhardt Corps. Now, in Berensen’s bunker, a celebration was in progress.
Wingate was convinced he had never seen grown men and women this happy before. Though each one of them knew they were dancing on the edge of a precipice, all they seemed able to do was talk excitedly, slap each other on the back, kiss, and embrace. They were intoxicated with the results of their action that day, Lisa no less than the others. She was all smiles, glowing from the congratulations heaped on her by the other ZOB commandants. Her unit had been credited with the second tank.
She had kissed him openly when he reached the bunker, and when he had tried to point out to her that they might be cheering a little too soon, she had told him they were all celebrating the birth of the nation of Israel. Wingate found that a little difficult to understand, but he was humbled—as were Martens and Regnais—by the fervor, the unrestrained joy of all those who had gathered in Berensen’s bunker.
Now Berensen, his eagle’s eyes alight with triumph, approached Wingate and his men. All three of them had been handed tin cans filled with very bad wine when they entered. “Do not look so glum, Captain. Drink up! You and your men seem to be at a funeral. Don’t you understand what this means?”
“It means you have killed a few Germans. But there are more where they came from. And now three city blocks are in flames.”
“Yes, they will undoubtedly succeed in burning us out, Captain. But we have fought them! We have killed Germans! The Jews won’t fight? Now they know that we, too, are capable of killing. The whole world will learn this lesson someday! This is the end of centuries of bowing our heads and scraping before tyrants. The Diaspora is over. You shall see. Out of the ashes of this ghetto will arise our homeland, Israel!”
“Where?”
“It does not matter where. We will find a place. If not Palestine, somewhere else. But we will have a homeland after this. You will see. Never again will we be unwelcome guests in alien lands.”
Wingate nodded. He had heard all this before. But now, for a moment at least, Berensen’s enthusiasm was infectious. He smiled back at the man. “I hope so, Berensen. I admit it. It was good to see the Germans pulling back before your men. I am glad I was part of this action today. But it is still tanks and flamethrowers against rifles and handguns and those bottle bombs Stern has assembled. How long do you think you can hold out?”
“To tell you the truth, Captain, I had no confidence this morning that we would have been able to hold out more than a few hours! Now, each additional day we fight them off will only increase the measure of today’s triumph.”
“Three or four days longer, do you think?”
“Perhaps.”
“I’m worried about Stern.”
“Ah, yes. That is why you are here.”
“Yes, Berensen. That’s why we are here. Can you see now how important it is that Stern be taken back with us? His death in this flaming ghetto would serve no useful purpose.”
Soberly, Berensen nodded. “Of course, Captain. In that, you are perfectly correct.”
“As soon as we are ready, we’d like your help in getting him out of the ghetto. We have just come back from Barack’s bunker. He is still out fighting. If anything were to happen to him, I’d have to rely on you or one of your men to get us back through those sewers.”
“You realize, don’t you, that the members of the PPR are making no bones about pulling out of the ghetto? Even now they are trying to get our men to leave and join the partisans outside Warsaw.”
“Sounds like good sense to me.”
“Perhaps,” Berensen acknowledged grudgingly. “But tell me. How soon do you plan to leave with Stern?”
“We can’t leave until we get Aldini.”
“Are you still so determined to get him away from the Gestapo, Captain? Surely you must realize that the corporal is very likely dead by now—or wishes he were. I am sorry to be so blunt, but as Barack pointed out yesterday, the Gestapo is not gentle with its victims.”
“That doesn’t matter,” said Regnais. “We agree with the captain. We are not leaving here without Corporal Aldini.”
Berensen shrugged. “And what are your plans, Captain?”
“We intend to take Aldini from Gestapo headquarters.”
Berensen was astonished. “And you talk about us, Captain.”
“Tomorrow the Germans will be back. I figure they will be so preoccupied with their action here that it would be a good time for us to attack the Gestapo headquarters. But we would appreciate any help you could give us.”
“What kind of help?”
“We need someone who knows the sewer routes and the Gestapo building itself if that’s possible.”
“I will see what I can do, Captain.” Berensen finished the wine he was drinking, and smiled. “Now, join in the merriment. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow come the Germans!”
Someone began playing on a small accordion. The sound of a spritely country dance filled the bunker and men and women began hopping about, hands raised over their heads. It was, Wingate realized suddenly, the hora. A woman came after Berensen and pulled him away from Wingate. Wingate watched them for a moment, then turned to his men and started from the bunker. He had the feeling that this had suddenly become a private party, but he did not feel at all offended.
Lisa saw him go and waved to him, then thrust her arms akimbo and began dancing around a tall, gangling youth who was still clutching his can of wine, a foolish, happy grin on his face. But Wingate did not laugh at him. The boy had probably killed his share of Germans this day.
And there would be more for him to kill in the days to come—many, many more.
Chapter Ten
That night Wingate and his men slept on a roof, the blazing buildings in the distance sending an eerie light over the chimneys and rooftops—and across their own huddled forms. The faint sound of celebrations from the bunkers—ghostly sounds, Wingate had thought, coming as it seemed, from the bowels of the earth—ceased as soon as darkness fell over the ghetto.
For at that time, as Felix stole up onto the roof to warn them, German SS patrols reentered the ghetto and began stalking through the lightless streets and alleys, seeking out what bunkers they could find—and also seeking out those Jews who were still huddled, terrified, in their apartments. For the most part, these were the Jews who still toiled in the factories of the Germans, Toebbens and Schultz. The SS had brought dogs in with them, and the occasional sound of their barking in sudden frantic chorus told Wingate that one more huddled, terrified family had been found.
Exhaustion overtook Wingate and his men finally, and they slept—to awake the next morning in a smoke-shrouded universe. The fires of the night before had leaped across city blocks and now fed unmolested on the ghetto’s buildings. Wingate and his men hurried down off the roofs and returned to Barack’s bunker to find the commandant arming himself to go once more into battle, his PPR stalwarts clustered around him.
When he saw Wingate entering, he cried, “You see! The People’s Army fights. It is not just the Zionists who know how to kill Germans. It is not true that we wish only to flee! But it is madness. We cannot hold off the entire German army, trapped in this blazing ghetto.”
“You don’t have to convince me,” Wingate told the man, whose sour face had become a picture of frustration as he spoke.
“You are right,” he admitted angrily to Wingate. “It is not you I have to convince. But Berensen and the others! They think they are the only Jews in this ghetto.” He shook his head in angry frustration. “You do not know what I put up with these people! When the Germans first came for them, I told them what awaited them in Treblinka! But they would not listen. Resettlement, they called it. The Germans would not be such fools as to do such a thing! The Western democracies would not allow it! Now they wake up, but it is too late! Zionists!” he spat.
“Will you still help us get Stern out of the ghetto?”
“The old fool will not go!”
“He will go now, I think.”
“How can we help you now? We are going out to fight the entire German army. Do you not see us arming ourselves with pistols and slingshots?”
“Later. Will you help us later?”
“What about your Zionist friends?” he asked craftily. “Why do you need the PPR?”
“The informer may be in their unit.”
“Yes. That is true, Captain. I have thought the same thing. But, of course, I would not dare utter such a thing. I do not think much of Berensen’s security arrangements. He and the rest of his Zionists are too busy dancing the hora for that.” He took a deep breath. “All right, Captain. Gimolka has committed the People’s Army to this operation. So be it.” His eyes narrowed. “You have given up on your corporal, have you?”
Wingate shrugged fatalistically. “As Berensen said, if Aldini is not dead by now, he probably wishes he were.”
Barack nodded curtly, turned to the ZOB fighters in his unit, and beckoned them to precede him out of the bunker. As they filed past him, Barack turned to Wingate.
“You must excuse me, Captain,” he said ironically, “Berensen has assigned us the task of igniting the warehouses of the Werterfassung. I do not know who has told him he was in charge, but it is not such a bad idea, after all. There is no reason why the clothing and property expropriated from murdered Jews should be saved for the Germans’ use. If they can set fires, so can we.”
As soon as Barack had left with his men, both Martens and Regnais turned on Wingate. It was Martens who spoke first. “Captain, we are not going to leave here without Aldini!”
“I thought we had already settled the matter,” Regnais said ruefully. “When did you change your mind, Captain?”
“I have not changed it.”
“But you just told—”
Martens smiled and restrained Regnais with a hand on his shoulder. “Let the Captain explain,” he said.
“I do not trust Barack,” Wingate said.
“And you do not trust Berensen, either?”
Wingate nodded. “I like Berensen better than Barack. But both men might harbor the informer. I thought it best not to tell Barack any more than was necessary. Let him think we have given up trying to get Aldini away from the Gestapo.”
