Butcher and Bolt Read online

  Butcher and Bolt

  Will Belford

  The second instalment of the Joe Dean series.

  Published by The Style Merchants Pty Limited.

  Copyright 2017 The Style Merchants Pty Limited.

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  Thank you for your support.

  Chapter One

  The top of the cliff was only feet away. The commando placed his boot in a cleft, loosened his grip on the chalky outcrop and thrust upwards. The boot dislodged a chunk of the brittle rock, and white dust cascaded into the upturned faces of the men clinging below him. No-one coughed. No-one looked down.

  The commando reached the top and his hand crept over, searching left and right for a grip, like a demented spider. The hand discovered the root of a shrub and grasped it. The commando pulled himself up until he could peer over the edge into the darkness.

  A momentary flare to his left revealed the face of the sentry, huddled with his back to the wind. The match died instantly and the sentry struck another, and another. Then all was blackness again, but for the glow of the cigarette, moving steadily across the face of the cliff, flaring now and again.

  The commando waited. He waited until the hand gripping the root was screaming for relief and the footholds in the cliff were crumbling beneath his boots. He waited until the pain seared down to his shoulder, then he forced himself to count to sixty and hauled his long body up and over the edge.

  Behind him, his men clambered up and lay rubbing the cramp from their hands. The chalk he had kicked over them clung to the boot-black smeared on their faces, making them look like clowns, or maybe owls, he thought.

  Don’t be ridiculous man. Concentrate.

  The tiny glow of the cigarette re-appeared, bobbing towards them. None of the five men moved. The moon was behind a cloud for the moment, but out to sea its gleam revealed the white tops of the waves that had created such havoc in the rubber boats on the way in from the motor torpedo boat.

  The sentry took the last step of his beat and looked around.

  No one moved.

  The sentry uttered a muffled curse, ripped away by the wind. Guard duty on a cliff edge in a gale. Not a pleasant duty, if there was such a thing. Not a duty anyone would volunteer for, but a duty that had to be done for a time, until the next unfortunate came to relieve him. Every man lying there knew what the sentry was experiencing.

  The sentry set off again the way he had come.

  No-one moved.

  Before them lay an expanse of grass, so flattened by the wind that it seemed to be fleeing from them. It sloped down towards a grand two-story building, that gazed placidly out over the sea to the north-west. At its front was a driveway of crushed stone, with steps leading up to a pillared entranceway.

  It may once have been a lord’s manor. Perhaps carriages pulled up here two hundred years ago to disgorge aristocrats, mused the commando. Perhaps. Now it was a hotel, and in a window on the second floor, light filtered around the edges of the curtain.

  In that room was the man they had come for.

  The commando flicked his two fingers forward and the men started crawling. They’d made it twenty metres across open ground and were nearing the shadows of the trees when one of them made a sound: it may have been a helmet hitting a rifle butt, a bayonet clinking against a water bottle, but it was not a natural sound and it travelled clearly to the ears of the sentry.

  He spun in place, pulled the rifle from his shoulder and pointed it straight at them.

  A lantern flickered into life in the undergrowth nearby and a cigarette lighter flared.

  ‘Bang Bang, you’re dead,” came the sardonic voice of the sergeant in charge of the sentries, ‘training’s over for tonight. You can try again tomorrow night, maybe you’ll get third time lucky. I hope so for your sake, you useless bloody shower, it’s your last try before the real thing.’

  Lieutenant Joe Dean lay in the grass and cursed, then hauled himself to his feet and set off for the waiting truck with his men. If they couldn’t pull this off in training, what chance did they have over the Channel?

  Chapter Two

  The room was not clean, and the woman was more witch than midwife, but there hadn’t been a lot of choice. Either the child was Joe’s, who was gone, probably killed or captured at Dunkirk; or it was the unwelcome spawn of the many rapes the Nazi spy Schmidt had subjected her to.

  Either way, the child would be a bastard born of war that would only remind her of everything she had lost. She wanted nothing to do with it, and so she had knocked on the door of the small house in a disreputable part of Calais, and now found herself lying on a table while this horrible old woman poked around between her legs.

  ‘How long?’ asked the crone, picking some dirt out from under a fingernail.

  ‘I last bled two months ago.’

  ‘You are sure about doing this?’

  ‘Oui.’

  ‘Very well then. This will hurt, but it’s important that you don’t flinch or move at all. If you do, you will bleed to death. Do you understand?’

  ‘Oui. Just get it over with will you?’

  ‘First the money,’ said the woman, holding out her hand.

  Reaching for her bag, Yvette counted out 200 francs and handed them over.

  ‘Bon. Now, we begin.’

  The woman went to the stove where a pot was boiling and drew a foot-long piece of wire from the water. Yvette eyed it with mounting fear as she came over to the table.

  ‘Now, open your legs as wide as you can girl, and don’t move.’

  Yvette closed her eyes and parted her knees. When she felt the hot metal slide into her body she flinched involuntarily. The woman leaned over and slapped her viciously across the face.

  ‘Do not move if you want to live!’

  Yvette clung to the edge of the table and gritted her teeth as the wire pushed deeper inside her.

  ‘Be strong,’ she thought to herself, ‘this is no worse than the rape that caused it.’

  She heard a truck pull up outside in the street, and the sounds of boots hitting the pavement. Doors were being thrown open and people were crying out. Then there was a loud banging on the door and a voice yelling in German.

  ‘Aufmachen! Aufmachen!’

  The woman cursed, withdrew the wire and dropped it into the cutlery drawer beside the sink.

  ‘Get into the toilet,’ she hissed at Yvette.

  Huddled in the toilet, Yvette heard the front door open and the sounds of hobnailed boots stomping in.

  ‘What is going on officer?’ asked the woman innocently.

  ‘We’re looking for a prisoner who has escaped from our custody,’ replied a German in heavily-accented French.

  ‘Well he’s not here,’ said the woman, ‘only my niece, she’s in there.’

  The boots came towards Yvette and the toilet door was flung open, revealing a German lieutenant staring down at her. He couldn’t have been more than 19.

  ‘Ach, entschuldigung sie bitte fraulein,’ he sputtered in embarrassment, then closed the door.

  Five minutes later, the last of the boots left and Yvette emerged.

  ‘It is not safe to continue,’ said the old woman, pushing her towards the door, ‘you’ll have to come back another time.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Non, if we are caught they will hang us both you little fool, now get out.’

  ‘My money…’

  The woman thrust the 200 francs into her hand and slammed the door on her. Out in the street, the Germans had moved on and all the doors were closed once again.

  Yvette walked down the lane towards the docks. She put a hand on her bel
ly, but there was no tangible or visible sign of the child growing inside her. Yet.

  Chapter Three

  The first week of training in the Scottish Highlands had been the most agonising experience of Joe’s life. Worse than the cross-country trek he and Smythe had endured to reach Dunkirk, worse than being strafed in the water of the Channel. At least that was how Joe had felt until they began the second week.

  Seven days of running up mountains in full kit carrying a rifle had stripped away whatever spare flesh he may have had. Flopping exhausted to the ground at midnight of each day, he’d slept like the dead until dawn.

  That was the first week. Now in the second they were only being allowed two hours sleep each night before being kicked awake by a sergeant and forced to keep moving. Joe had gone beyond exhaustion into a bleary world of constant pain, where just putting one booted foot in front of the other required all of his willpower. Many times he had been on the verge of giving up and surrendering to the sergeant, but each time his pride and the mocking sneer of the Pommy git had forced him to persevere.

  With each passing day the platoon had become more strung out, as each man struggled with his own demons. Five had dropped out, unable to take the strain, and were already on a train back to their units. Only the thought of the shame and ignominy those men must be feeling kept Joe moving.

  After de-training in the bitter city of Glasgow, they’d travelled by truck to a nameless town in the Highlands and pitched camp in the rain amidst the ruins of an ancient castle. Along with Joe and Smythe there were thirty other men, all of whom quickly regretted their decision to volunteer for this ‘special duty’.

  The instructors wouldn’t talk to any of them except to bark orders, and there were few even of those. On the first day, a Scottish sergeant-major lined them and, after checking their water bottles, announced that ‘For the next few weeks you’ll be climbing some mountains, make sure you enjoy the view. Now, take out your compasses. See where it points north? That’s where you’re going. Off you go.’ The recruits had stood bewildered until the sergeant-major made the order clearer.

  ‘Get moving! NOW!’

  The platoon had run, then started walking north across-country. Country that became steeper and rougher with each day, until on the fourth day they crossed a major ridgeline and started down the other side. Joe had lost count of how many mountains he’d traversed; the last few days were a blur of gorse, heather, rain, mist, mud, grey rocks and agony. He had cuts and bruises all over him, but the thing that bothered him most was the sweat sore between his arse cheeks. With every step it felt like he was being sliced with blunt razors. For all that he’d been thankful they were doing it in summer, not winter. Thankful for that, and the companionship of Sergeant Smythe.

  The two of them had stuck together throughout the ordeal, and that was the only reason they’d made it. When one fell, the other picked him up; when one said he couldn’t go on, the other waited, then picked him up and pushed him on; when one asked to be put out of his misery the other beguiled him with tales of hot food and hot women. Despite the best efforts of the trainers to separate them, they’d found each other again on one mountainside or another, and stumbled onwards.

  Then, as abruptly as it had begun, the ordeal ended.

  Descending a hill studded with outcrops of wet black slate, they stumbled across a road heading north-east and decided to follow it. It was the first road they’d seen in days. Crossing a stone bridge, Joe saw a village ahead with an army truck parked on the side of the road. As they got closer he could see the hated instructors standing around the truck, smoking and sharing a hip flask.

  ‘So, Mr Dean and Mr Smythe,’ said the Scottish sergeant-major, as Joe stumbled up to them, ‘you made it then. Good work lads, you’re the first ones in. You’re home. Here, have a whisky.’

  He proffered the flask. Joe managed to gulp down a few mouthfuls of the fiery liquor before the world turned grey and he collapsed in a heap on the road.

  Chapter Four

  The motor gunboats crept through the icy waters, their engines on slow, giving only a low bubbling growl. The Met people had forecast a calm overcast night with a sliver of crescent moon, and they were right, but they had seriously underestimated the Channel’s habit of ignoring what was happening in the sky above. The moment the MGBs cleared the breakwater at Dover they had found themselves in a sharp choppy sea that assaulted the port bow, causing them to pitch and roll violently, sending geysers of salt spray over the twin 20mm cannon on the forward gun deck.

  Below decks, Joe, Smythe and the three commandos had huddled miserably, each alone with his personal demon of seasickness. The first had thrown up within five minutes of hitting the Channel proper, and now, unable to contain his own seasickness amidst the stench of vomit and diesel fumes below deck, Joe came up into the weather.

  As he emerged from the hatch, the bosun saw him and came over, walking as steadily across the swaying deck as if it were a bowling green.

  ‘Struggling a bit are we?’ he said companionably, holding up a lifejacket, ‘better put this on if you’re going to stay up here.’ As Joe pulled on the jacket, the bosun clipped the line that was attached to it to the leeward rail.

  ‘Just in case we hit a big one,’ he said, giving Joe the thumbs up.

  ‘How much longer?’ gasped Joe, struggling to hold down his leaping stomach.

  ‘Half an hour maybe? We’ll have to slow down when we get closer or they’ll hear our engines.’

  Joe groaned and leant over the rail. He’d heard of people on long voyages being sick the entire time. He couldn’t begin to imagine what it must have been like for the poor devils on the First Fleet heading to Australia. The idea of feeling this bad continually for six months was inconceivable.

  Ahead he could see nothing but darkness. The entire French coast was blacked out, and how the captain of the vessel knew where he was going was a mystery. A few score yards to his right, Joe could see the other gunboat that carried the rest of the troop. Eight men in all, a team supposedly big enough to shoot its way out of trouble, yet small enough to disappear if things got heavy.

  That was the theory anyway. To Joe it stank of compromise. He knew his CO had wanted to send either a whole platoon or just two men, on the basis that a platoon could shoot its way out of trouble, and two men, especially French speakers, really could disappear, but he’d been overruled. A question of tactical doctrine apparently.

  Back in England, Joe had gone over the plan with Captain Jensen more times than he could remember and he still didn’t believe it could work. As the icy spray splashed into his face, he closed his eyes and was back in the briefing room.

  ‘Our war criminal Hauptsturmfuhrer Richter has acquired a little bit of French tail while he’s been on leave,’ said Captain Jensen, ‘and he’s in the habit of visiting her every night after spending a few hours drinking with his officers. She’s a waitress at the Hotel Les Mauves on Cap Gris Nez, about six or so miles south-west of Calais, it’s the closest you can get to England without getting your feet wet. Around 2100 hours, his driver picks him up from the Hotel de la plage in Wissant and drives him down there. The driver returns at 2300 hours and drives him back to town.’

  Joe was astonished at the precision of the briefing.

  ‘How do we know all this sir?’

  ‘Because the waitress in question, a brave lass she must be too, has communicated his schedule to the local cell leader of the French Resistance, who passed it on to us by radio last week. We owe it to her to catch this bastard, after all, she’s given everything to the cause. And I mean everything,’ he added with a knowing look.

  The plan called for the commandos to land on the beach below Cap Gris Nez after nightfall, scale the cliff and lie in wait near the hotel. They would ambush the car and bring Hauptsturmfuhrer Richter to England. The man had ordered the massacre of an entire company of British soldiers during the invasion of France, an event from which Joe and
his Sergeant Smythe were the sole survivors, and the British wanted to get their hands on any such war criminal if they could. This was the part of the plan that Joe wasn’t happy about: assuming he managed to stop the car, how was he supposed to disable the driver silently and manhandle the officer down the cliff at gunpoint in the dark? All his men could climb, but Richter was an unknown quantity.

  ‘Why don’t we just shoot the bastard?’ said Joe, ‘that’s what he deserves.’

  Captain Jensen was about to answer when the door opened and a man in a dark suit entered the room. He removed a homburg to reveal a head covered in orange stubble, above penetrating blue eyes. Joe pegged him as maybe forty years old, but he was introduced only as ‘Mr Smith from the ministry’.

  ‘We want him alive for questioning about the massacres in Belgium and France, that’s why,’ said Major Benjamin, ‘plus, from what we’ve seen of these SS filth, if we raise any suspicion that the locals might have been involved, the Germans will launch reprisals against them and we could end up with innocent civilians being murdered.’

  ‘And to avoid that possibility we have to make it absolutely clear that this is a British raid,’ added Mr Smith in a dry voice.

  ‘And how do we do that?’ asked Joe.

  Major Benjamin and Captain Jensen exchanged looks.

  ‘This is now a dual mission Joe,’ said the captain, ‘as well as kidnapping Richter, we also want you to blow up the radar station the Boche have just built at Cap Gris Nez.’

  Joe looked from one officer to the other; neither would meet his eye.

  ‘Surely this mission’s complex enough without throwing a second objective in?’ he objected, ‘What idiot had this idea?’

  Major Benjamin coughed and glanced at Mr Smith, ‘Let’s just say the order has come from senior sources.’

  ‘Sir, with respect, the first rule of operations is to have a single objective. How will we manage the timing of this? How far away from the hotel is the radar station anyway?’