Vengeance 10

Freest was only three kilometres from the point where they crossed the Peene, but they were forced to circle inland to avoid another village, Kroslin, where a small army garrison had been stationed. Freest was located on the Greifswalder Boden, the bay that emptied into the Baltic proper, above the boom that closed the river to traffic. He had no clear idea what they were going to do when they got there, other than try to steal a boat and move along the coast, away from the immediate vicinity. For the moment the necessity for getting as far away as possible before dawn overrode all other considerations.

It took them an hour to cover the last kilometre to the village. Memling allowed a few moments’ rest crouched in the shelter of a building. He was exhausted, soaked to the skin, and shivering violently. The girl seemed to have slipped back into a mild delirium, and he had difficulty rousing her. Memling was not familiar with the village, so he could only follow along the top of the low bluff edging the bay. The terrain rose slowly. The wind seemed to have steadied from the north. Suddenly a light flashed, and he heard shouts only a few metres ahead. The girl stumbled and slipped from his grasp as he stopped; her cry was lost in the wind, but the sound scared Memling badly.

He sank down on his haunches, covering the girl’s mouth with one hand and holding her down with the other. The light flickered in their direction and then swung to show a soldier helping several men tie up a fishing smack that had worked loose from her moorings. Memling had a brief glimpse of a stove-in hull and guessed that she would be on the bottom by morning. Beyond the damaged boat were several others barely visible in the thin beam. He lay down then, covering the girl’s body with his own, resisting her feeble struggles until she was quiet. There was nowhere else he dared go.

As the rain beat upon his back and mud seeped into his clothes, a plan was beginning to take shape. Sweden lay one hundred and fifty kilometres or less due north. He had not considered attempting escape in that direction because of aircraft and naval patrols. But this storm gave every appearance of working up to a near hurricane. If they could make four knots, they would be in Sweden in less than twenty-four hours. The storm would likely keep the Luftwaffe grounded at least that long. And any naval patrols would have their hands full just staying afloat.

Memling’s experience with small boats was limited to his commando training, but there was no other choice. The trek to Denmark across three hundred miles of enemy territory was not only unrealistic but suicidal. And with four dead SD agents to his credit, the Nazis would not rest until they captured them both.

The men on the pier checked the moorings on the other boats and then moved off. Memling picked up the unconscious girl, stumbled through the blackness to the pier, and crossed slimy wooden planks to the third boat in the line. He eased down on to the deck, hanging on for dear life as the waves, even in the sheltered inlet, tossed the boat about. Checking quickly to see that the craft was unoccupied, he laid the girl on the deck in the shelter of the wheelhouse and found the engine compartment. The cover slid back with a squeal, and he froze. But the storm was loud enough to cover the firing of an eighty-eight-millimetre cannon.

Fifteen minutes of feeling about the greasy, fume-ridden space and he had found and set the magneto and opened the fuel petcock, all the while blessing his trainers for their hysterical insistence on operating machinery under the most adverse conditions. It took several tries before the engine coughed into life, and he left it to warm up then while he carried Francine down into the cabin. Even here he dared not risk a light. The cabin smelled of long occupancy and little cleaning, but it was dry. He stripped off her sodden clothing and chafed her cold body, covered her with dirty blankets found by touch in one of the lockers and tied her into the bunk with torn strips of cloth. It would be some time before he dared leave the wheel.

He then dried the machine pistol and left it under the other bunk. The Walther must have slipped from his pocket some time after he had left the house, but it made little difference now.