The Odin Mission (36 page)

Men loomed into view ahead.
Bollocks
, he thought.
I've got sodding Jerries
either side.
He glanced behind and saw Sykes up ahead, urging him to follow, mouthing something
he couldn't hear above the ear-shattering noise of mortars, shouts and
small-arms fire. Another shell hit a tree not far from Sykes and exploded. Tanner
ducked again, then shot a glance back to his corporal. No one was there.

'No!' yelled Tanner. 'You bastards!' Bullets pinged above him and
slapped into the fallen tree-trunk. Blindly he fired another burst of the Bren,
then pulled out a grenade and hurled it at his attackers. A whistle as yet
another mortar round hurtled towards him, closer this time. Tanner ducked,
heard the explosion, then felt the blast knock him back against the tree-trunk.

He was unsure how long he had been unconscious, but when he came to he
was aware that the deafening din of battle had gone and then that he was
surrounded by half a dozen enemy troops. As his mind cleared and his eyes
focused, he realized he was looking up at none other than Hauptmann Zellner.

Tanner rubbed his head. He had a pounding headache,
his ears still rang shrilly and his mouth was drier than sand, yet despite his
predicament, he had the presence of mind to glance at his watch.
Well, that's something,
he thought. Nearly fifty
minutes had passed since Chevannes had led Sandvold into the trees. Fifty
minutes was a good head start.

Two men grabbed his arms and pulled him to his feet,
so that he was now face to face with Zellner. The German smiled, then rammed
his fist into Tanner's belly. The sergeant gasped and doubled over, only to be
pulled up again.

'Where is he?' Zellner hissed.

'Who?' said Tanner.

Zellner punched him again, every bit as hard. 'Where
is he?' he repeated, as Tanner gasped and retched a second time.

'I couldn't possibly say,' murmured Tanner. 'We're
just the holding force - holding you up, that is. And we have. In fact we are.
I am, right now. So, let's chat some more.'

'Enough!' said Zellner, and then struck him a third
time, this time on the jaw but the blow was misjudged. Tanner jerked his head
back and the blow barely hurt. 'That should wipe the smile off your face. In
any case, we do not need to know. We will just follow the tracks,' said
Zellner, 'and we will catch him.'

'You won't,' said Tanner. 'Because he'll be shot
before you get a chance.'

Zellner pulled out the pistol from Tanner's holster.
'Mine, I think,' he said. He held it, checked the magazine was full, then
cocked it and pointed it at the centre of Tanner's forehead. 'I said I would
kill you, Tanner, and so I will.'

Tanner smiled. 'You're a fool, Zellner,' he said. 'A
stupid Nazi bastard fool.'

Zellner glared back. 'Tanner,' he said slowly, 'you have said your
last.'

From the safety of his position among the trees on the slopes above,
Sykes crouched, watching his sergeant and wondering what on earth he could do.
Having seen Tanner knocked backwards, he had immediately thought to turn his
back, follow the others and slip into the trees, but something had made him
stop. As he had turned he had seen enemy troops hurry to Tanner and pull him to
his feet. Knowing he was alive, Sykes felt compelled to stay and help. But how?

Wincing as the German officer landed repeated punches
on his sergeant, he decided that a diversion was his best option. He still had
a few packets of Nobel's 808 as well as several sticks of dynamite, and he had
Tanner's pack too. Crouching, he glanced to his left in the direction the
fourth truck of troops had come from. It was hard to see, so he scampered a
short distance forward, climbed a bit higher, then he saw what he was looking
for: a jutting outcrop of rock, like a giant boulder. If he could get enough
explosives behind it and force it to tumble down the mountainside, he might
help Tanner escape or, at worst, give the enemy a further headache.

He took a deep breath, then glanced back at Tanner and
the enemy troops around him. He froze. The sergeant was now obscured from view
by another of the German troops but the officer had his arm extended with a
pistol pointing at Tanner's head. 'No!' mouthed Sykes, under his breath. He
turned his head, not daring to look.

Then came the sound of a single pistol shot.

Tanner had eyed the men gathered round Hauptmann Zellner. There were six,
with more milling about in the trees beyond and, he knew, others on the far
side of the shallow ravine behind him. But it was the seven men in front of him
that he needed to worry about first. Three had their rifles slung on their
shoulders, two clutched them loosely with one arm, while a sixth had a machine-
gun slung by his side from a strap that ran over his shoulder. Tanner was not
familiar with the different types of German machine-gun, but it looked to him
to be a similar if somewhat more sophisticated weapon than those he had seen
after the firefight at the
seter.
It had a similar air-cooled perforated barrel jacket,
with ribbed and rounded side magazines. The cock, he noticed, was on the right
of the breech. The crux of the matter, he realized, was whether or not the
magazine was empty. Surely no machine-gunner would wander around with an
unloaded weapon while the battle still had a chance of continuing. In any case,
it was his only
hope
of getting out of his current predicament alive.

Tanner was glad he had kept Zellner talking long
enough to take all of this in, but accepted that the moment had arrived to act.
Holding Zellner's stare, he brought up his left hand quickly and knocked away
the German's arm. Zellner fired harmlessly into the air as Tanner rammed his
stronger right fist straight into the man's mouth and nose. As the unconscious
Zellner fell backwards, blood spraying in a mist round his head, Tanner lunged
for the machine-gun and slid it down the stunned soldier's arm. Pulling back the
breech, he fired.

The recoil of the machine-gun nearly knocked him
backwards - it was heavier than the Bren - but a rapid burst of bullets emerged
from the barrel at a rate of fifteen rounds per second, neatly scything through
the six men so that only Zellner, who had slumped backwards, escaped being
nearly sliced in two. Seconds - that was all he had. Firing another quick burst
at the startled men behind, he grabbed a rack of two-drum magazines, then
spotted his rifle lying on the ground a few yards above him. He snatched it and
raced for the trees. Act decisively, act quickly, his first sergeant had told
him some years before. It was an adage Tanner had not forgotten.

It took the shocked German troops a few seconds more
to recover their composure, take their weapons from their shoulders and fire
after him. Bullets pinged and zipped either side of him, smacking into trees
and kicking up snow, but although one passed clean through a loose part of his
trousers, the trees were closing protectively round him.

On he ran, heart pumping furiously, driven by instinct
alone, until an explosion shook the ground and made him stop, lungs almost
bursting. Below and away to his left, he could hear the blast of rock. Screams
followed and as he stared wild-eyed, uncomprehending, through the pines he
heard someone call: 'Sarge! Sarge!'

Startled, he swung round and saw Corporal Sykes
scrambling towards him.

'Stan, you're alive!' Tanner grinned and held out a
hand, which was shaken gratefully. 'I thought you'd been killed back there.'

'And me you!'

They hurried on without any more talk, preserving what
energy they had for their climb. At last the gradient began to ease and as they
reached the plateau and the edge of the treeline, they emerged into a wide
expanse of snow.

'Look!' said Sykes. 'The others! All of them! We made
it!'

Away to their right, a peak emerged magisterially from
the snow. 'Olasfjellet,' said Tanner. 'That's the first of two that Anna
mentioned. Christ, we need to watch our backs up here. It's bloody exposed,
Stan.'

'And bloody hard going.'

'You're not wrong.'

One of the others turned and waved. Moments later
Tanner and Sykes had caught up with them.

'Come on, lads, get a bloody move on,' said Tanner, as
he reached them. 'Dan, what's the damage?'

'It just nicked me, Sarge. Took a bit of my forearm
out, but didn't break anything.'

'Good,' said Tanner. 'Any sign of the others?'

'Only tracks. Easy enough to follow,' said McAllister.
'Do you think Jerry's coming after us, Sarge?'

'I don't know. We need to catch up with the rest, then
get the hell out of this snow.'

'I'm about done in,' said Hepworth.

'Me too,' said Bell. 'Tell me it's not much further,
Sarge.'

'Stop bloody bellyaching,' said Tanner. 'We're all
sodding tired, but we've got two, maybe three miles of this, and then we should
be among the trees again, so it's not far. Come on, boys, keep fighting. We've
done the hard part - seen off those Jerries. We can't let ourselves down now.'

He said this for his own benefit as much as his men's,
for exhaustion had swamped him too. Fighting was tiring, especially when it was
followed by a steep running climb weighed down by a leaden load. The
instinctive desire to survive seemed to make part of his brain shut down so
that an adrenalin-fuelled primal capacity to keep going took over. Once the
immediate danger was past, though, his mind returned to normal and told him he
was physically and mentally all but spent.

The snow was crisp and hard, so walking on it was not
as difficult as it had been, but even so, each footstep seemed ever harder. On
his shoulders, he still carried his rifle and the German machine-gun, as well
as the drum magazines, his pack, gas-mask case and haversack. The weight now
seemed agonizingly oppressive.
Keep going. Keep bloody going.

And what of the enemy? There was still no sign. He
thought of Zellner and reckoned he'd judged the punch about right. A broken
nose, probably a broken jaw, and it would take him a while to wake up. Whether
they followed now or regrouped depended, he guessed, on whether other officers
and NCOs were present and still fit. By God, he was tired. He now realized he
was hungry and thirsty too. He leant over to pick up some snow and stumbled, falling
to his knees. McAllister was now beside him, grabbing his arm, but Tanner shook
him off. 'I tripped,' he snarled.

'Only trying to help, Sarge.'

Tanner got to his feet again, using his rifle as a
staff, and put the snow in his mouth. Numbingly cold, it offered some relief
from the cloying dryness. He fumbled in his pack and found a piece of bread the
Sulheims had given him. Slowly chewing it, he tramped onwards, his men
following. At least, he thought, it was nearly May. These mountains would be
deadly during the depths of winter, but with a high, warm sun, they presented
less danger and although it was cold, it was not debilitatingly so. In any
case, he now felt well dressed for the task in hand. His stout German boots
were warm, his clothes dry. The leather jerkin, with his belt and packs binding
it to his body, offered perfect insulation, while the snow goggles protected
his eyes from the worst of the glare; the rim of his helmet worked well as a
sun visor. No one would succumb to exposure.

Exhaustion was their main enemy now, but already
Tanner could see the second peak Anna had mentioned and then he heard - they
all heard - the distant boom of guns. His spirits rose. The battle at Kvam -
the Allies were still there! New reserves of energy found their way into his
legs. 'Lads!' he said, grinning. 'Hear those guns? We're nearly there. We've
nearly bloody well gone and made it!'

McAllister cheered. 'Hoo-bloody-ray, Sarge!' he
exclaimed. 'Come on, boys, let's get a move on. What's that you say, Sarge?
Iggery!'

Tanner glanced back: still no sign of the enemy, but
they had to remain watchful. The horizon behind them was shortening now that
they had crested the highest point of the mountain ridge and had begun to climb
down the reverse slope of the plateau. Ahead, he could see the treeline, still
masking the view beyond, but marking the crest of the valley sides.

Ahead, a figure emerged from the darkness of the
trees.
Bloody
hell
,
thought Tanner, those pines offered good cover - the man could not be seen
until he was well clear and standing in the snow. Tanner put his binoculars to
his eyes. 'Lieutenant Nielssen,' he said, and waved.