Death Trap

By Charles Whiting

Common Smith is in a race against time to retrieve sensitive British intelligence before it falls into enemy handsYugoslavia, Winter 1924. The British official courier plane from Cairo to Gibraltar has been forced down in the mountains off the Yugoslavian coast by snow. 

The plane was on its way to London bearing vital documents about Moscow's plans for the Balkans, including an uprising in Yugoslavia. It is vital that no one finds these plans, including the Royal Yugoslavian Secret Police, for they too have communist sympathisers in their ranks.

Now, in a race against time, Common Smith and the crew of the Swordfish must sail to the island of Vis, then up the River Dvar and smuggle themselves into the snow-bound mountains. Their mission: recover the British airmen and the sensitive documents they were carrying.

But the elements and Yugoslavian Secret Police are not the only forces Common Smith is contending with. A mysterious Communist leader is hiding out in these mountains with his men, and they know about the crash too...

A gripping, edge-of-your-seat race against time from one of the masters of military adventure fiction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Canelo Action
• Release date: Jun 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781800320536

Charles Whiting

A man who joined the army at 16 by lying about his age, Charles Whiting became a well-known author and military historian through his academic prowess. His first novel, written while still an undergraduate, was published in 1954 and by 1958 had been followed by three wartime thrillers. Between 1960 and 2007 Charles went on to write over 350 titles, including 70 non-fiction titles covering varied topics from the Nazi intelligence service to British Regiments during World War II. He passed away in 2007.

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Death Trap, Charles Whiting

Author’s Note

The late Sir de Vere Smith, who had won his secret Victoria Cross at the age of nineteen, was a typical upper class Englishman of his time. As his contemporary at Harrow and old shipmate Commander ‘Dickie’ Bird, DSO, wrote long afterwards in his autobiography Down to the Sea in Ships Again, ‘I would describe him [Smith] as an Englishman of the very finest type. That is to say he regarded his country… as the supreme country in the world. He did not force his opinions down other people’s throats – it was simply so. If the other chap didn’t agree, that was his funeral.’

In those exciting and dangerous times in Central Europe and the Middle East, when everything was in pretty much the same turmoil and chaos as today, ‘Common Smith VC’ ensured that a lot of chaps who disagreed were carried off in a box, feet first, pretty damned quick at that, or, as he always put it in that schoolboy manner of his, ‘PDQ’.

For him his first loyalty always lay with his country and the British Empire – ‘all that red on the map,’ as he habitually remarked, a little awed, it seemed, by the greatness of that empire. Young as he was, he was always prepared to risk his neck in dangerous places for little pay as long as it served the purposes of the King-Emperor, George V. I suppose they don’t make young men like that any more in our own cynical age.

But Common Smith VC was no fool. He was a very experienced naval fighter and agent. He took risks, but they were calculated ones. But in all his long undercover career, working for the mysterious ‘C’, the head spymaster of an organisation which at that time did not exist officially, he never faced death so often as he did when he set sail from Egypt to Yugoslavia in that winter of 1929. The mission was vital and Smith and the crew of the Swordfish were prepared to take every chance to complete it. But as Smith would confide to his secret service cronies in latter years, ‘Then we chaps faced imminent death virtually every day,’ and he would gaze over the rim of his glass of his fine old malt whisky and add, ‘We managed to survive by the skin of our teeth, but let me tell you this, gentlemen, Yugoslavia meant death!’

C.W.

Book One

The Voyage Out

One

De Vere Smith, known to the British Press as ‘Common Smith VC’, shivered dramatically and dug his hands deeper into the wet serge of his greatcoat. Next to him on the bridge of the Swordfish, his second in command Dickie Bird said, ‘Great balls of fire, heaven help a sailor on a ruddy night like this!’

Smith, straining to hear the slightest sound as the ex-RN torpedo-boat glided through the damp, bone-chilling fog almost noiselessly, hissed, ‘Keep it down to a dull roar, that’s a good chap! They can’t be far off by now, you know.’

‘They could have picked better weather,’ Dickie Bird mumbled. ‘I thought the Med was all sunshine and bathing beauties. And what do we get? Ruddy fog, worse than off the Yorkshire coast. God, what wouldn’t I give to wrap myself around a couple of stiff pink gins or even better a very large lady with very loose morals.’

Despite the tension, Common Smith grinned. Dickie Bird, who had been at Harrow-on-the Hill with him and his second in command of the Swordfish since 1918, was totally, absolutely unflappable. But beneath that languid, lounge-lizard manner that Dickie affected, there was steel-hard purpose and determination when. After all, it wasn’t every young ‘snotty’ who won the DSC for bravery by the time he had reached the age of seventeen.

‘What’s the drill?’ Dickie asked as the torpedo-boat ploughed through the rolling mist and darkness.

‘Well, as you know the Italians are supplying the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood with arms. Ever since that Mussolini chap took over Italy two years ago he’s been trying to provoke the natives to rise against the King-Emperor, though, God knows, Mussolini’s got trouble enough with his own Arabs in Libya. Now C’ – then head of the British Secret Service – ‘wants an example set.’

Dickie whistled softly. ‘You mean we’re going to do the lot of them in?’

‘Something like,’ Common Smith answered. For a moment he remembered the stem look on C’s grey, emaciated face as he had briefed him back in Alexandria two days before. Sitting in the great marble office of the admiral commanding the Eastern Mediterranean Fleet, he had barked, as if he were back on the quarterdeck of the battleship he had commanded before the war: ‘I want every man-jack of them killed, Smith. Let’s be quite clear about that. Every man aboard the gun runner, Italian or native. I want to send a very clear signal to this upstart, Fascist fellow Mussolini, that we shall go to any lengths to stop treachery and sedition in our Empire.’ He had growled out the word ‘Empire’ proudly and Smith had realised yet once again just how fierce the old man’s devotion to the Empire was – ‘all owned by a little island off the coast of Europe’.

‘C wants no survivors, Dickie. That should tell the Italians that they are engaged in a very dangerous business.’ He shrugged. ‘Might stop their gun running for a bit. I mean we’ve got so many problems already with the Empire – India, Ireland and the like. We don’t want any new trouble to start in Egypt.’

Dickie nodded. ‘Agreed. Our boys didn’t give their blood in the last show so that a lot of native hot-heads and rabble-rousers with no trousers can take away from us the Empire they fought and died for.’

‘Exactly. Stoutly said,’ Common Smith agreed. ‘We won’t attempt to board her. The quick-firer will have to do the trick.’ He indicated the lean, menacing three-pounder gun on the foredeck. ‘Anyone who attempts to escape from her will be shot.’ He frowned and Dickie could see that his old comrade and school chum didn’t like the idea of killing people in cold blood. It wasn’t the kind of thing they had been taught at Harrow.

‘Got to be done, de Vere,’ Dickie said with unusual firmness for him. ‘You can’t make an omelette without cracking eggs, you know.’

‘Suppose you’re right.’ Suddenly, his eyes hard and determined, Common Smith cocked his head to one side. ‘What’s that?’

Old grizzled CPO Thirk, who had been inspecting the lookouts, confirmed with a tense whisper that he had really heard something. ‘To starboard, sir. Engines. It has to be them. They’re on the right course.’

Now the crew of Swordfish sprang into action like the trained, disciplined team they were. Ginger Kerrigan swung himself behind the quick-firer, while his old shipmate, burly Billy Bennett, cradled another shell in his arms ready to thrust it into the breech, once Ginger had fired the first one. Others took up their positions behind the twin Lewis guns, ready to hose the deck of the other ship with machine gun bullets to keep the crew down. And both Smith and Bird picked up the newfangled Tommy-guns which C had had specially imported from the United States for operations of this kind. ‘Feel like Al Capone,’ Dickie quipped. Smith didn’t answer, he was too busy preparing for the bloodshed soon to come.

Now the steady throb-throb of engines was getting ever closer. On Swordfish the tension was rising. They had all been through this many times before, but as Common Smith told himself, you never got used it: those few minutes before everything exploded into violent action.

‘Slow both,’ he whispered into the voice tube, as if he half-expected the men they had come to kill could hear him. The Swordfish was hardly moving now. Smith was letting the gun runners come to him. He reasoned that their surprise would be greater when they first spotted the lean, rakish, ex-naval craft waiting for them in the fog. That way he would gain those first precious seconds before the other side started to react.

‘Ship dead ahead, sir,’ one of the lookouts sang out.

Smith craned his neck and stared at the gloom and fog. A felucca was emerging from the murk, trailing black coal-smoke after her, her sail furled. It was the craft they were after all right. Smith recognised her immediately from the photo that Intelligence had. The combination of sail and engine in a native boat was unusual. He waited no longer.

‘Open fire!’ he commanded sharply, as across on the other craft the crew had begun to react, already overcoming their surprise at finding this lean, aggressive craft waiting for them in the middle of the fog.

The rating manning the twin Lewis guns just behind the bridge was the quickest off the mark. He sent a stream of tracer hurrying off like a swarm of angry red hornets towards the felucca. The slugs ripped the length of the wooden superstructure, splintering it to matchwood, as in the same instant Ginger Kerrigan jerked back the firing bar of the quick‑firer.

The Swordfish trembled as the first shell cut the air. Immediately Billy Bennett loaded the second shell. A gout of angry white water shot upwards near the felucca. Ginger had missed with his first shot. He didn’t with his second. It struck the base of the mast squarely, which came tumbling down with a crash in a mess of tangled rigging.

‘Good show!’ Dickie chortled. ‘That’s the style, Ginger. Give ’em hell!’

On the debris-littered deck of the gun runner, they were beginning to fire back now, which made Smith feel a little easier. Now he had an excuse for killing the other crew.

Ginger Kerrigan lowered his sights, not even seeming to notice the slugs striking the deck all around him. Smith knew what he intended. He wanted to hole the felucca below the water line. That would be the quickest way to sink her. But already the unknown captain of the other ship was beginning to take evasive action and had obviously ordered the engineer to take her to stern. Her screws were thrashing the water in a desperate attempt to take back into the cover of the murk.

‘Fire a flare!’ Smith yelled above the snap-and-crackle of the angry fire fight.

Old CPO Thirk, who was reputed by the crew to have fought at the Battle of Trafalgar with Nelson, had been waiting for this order. He raised the bulbous, brass flare pistol which he had kept handy and pressed the trigger. With a hiss the flare soared into the sky over the water between the two ships. A crack. Next moment the flare exploded, turning night into day, bathing the felucca in bright, unreal white light.

Ginger Kerrigan on the quick-firer whooped with joy. Now he could see every detail of the other craft. Swiftly he picked his aiming point: midships just below the collapsed mast. Billy Bennett grunted and thrust home the next shell into the smoking breech. ‘Ready,’ he yelled above the racket and slapped Ginger on his right shoulder. That was the signal to fire.

The big, red-haired sailor from Liverpool didn’t hesitate. He pulled back the bar. The shell scudded across the water and slammed into the felucca just where Ginger had planned it should. The felucca reeled violently, then almost immediately she began to list badly.

Dickie Bird whooped and yelled exuberantly. ‘That gave the beggars something to think about, eh, Smithie!’

Another shell slammed into the already stricken vessel. Her engines stopped. Thick smoke started to pour upwards from below. Her stack came tumbling down. Clearly outlined in that hard, unreal, white light, the felucca’s crew panicked. They started throwing their weapons over the side. Others clambered to the bows, ready to throw themselves overboard. Others began to wail and fling up their arms as if praying to Allah for deliverance. But this terrible night the Gods were looking the other way.

The crew of Swordfish showed no mercy. Systematically they began to kill off the crew of the felucca. Those who tried to jump in the water were machine gunned mercilessly as they pleaded for their lives, waving their arms to be rescued, weeping in their overwhelming fear.

The senior CPO, Ferguson, a man even older than Thirk, who was rumoured by the crew to have come over at the Norman Conquest, began tossing hand grenades over the side, which exploded viciously among the struggling men. The water stained red and still the slaughter continued, while the felucca sank lower and lower a hundred yards away.

A voice hailed them in broken English. Smith thought he detected an Italian accent. ‘Help us!’ the voice cried, ‘Ple—’ but the plea ended in a sudden groan then went silent.

And still the slaughter continued.

But the end was close now. The sea was full of corpses bobbing among the shattered wreckage of the felucca, including case after case of what Smith took to be rifles. Then suddenly, startlingly, the other craft keeled over completely. One second she was on the surface, the next she was rushing down below, with great obscene belches of trapped air exploding on the surface.

‘Cease firing!’ Smith ordered. As the rattle of musketry died away and Ginger Kerrigan and his mate Billy Bennett sagged, suddenly exhausted, at their gun, Smith breathed out hard and said, ‘Thank God that’s over, Dickie. One of the most beastly things I’ve ever done.’

For once Dickie Bird looked serious. ‘Had to be done, old bean. Don’t forget they would have done the same—’ He stopped abruptly. ‘What the devil’s that?’ he exclaimed.

‘What’s what?’

‘It’s a hound, a pooch, a dog… There’s a dog out there barking.’

‘You’re hearing things, Dickie.’

But Dickie Bird was right. For there, quite easy to see, was a little dog, its fur soaked, balanced on what looked like part of a door, alternatively barking and whimpering.

‘Poor little bugger!’ Ginger Kerrigan said, leaving his quick-firer. ‘Give me a hand, Billy. I’ll get him aboard.’

‘No you won’t!’ CPO Thirk snapped severely. ‘Dogs are a bloody nuisance aboard ship. We used to have one on the old Black Prince. Pissed and shat all over the place. But I couldn’t do anything about it because it belonged to the bloody lah-di-da Number One.’

Smith, standing in the background, looked curiously at the old petty officer, who had just been recruited to serve on Swordfish. Thirk had an excellent record. He had won the DSM at Jutland, but had been beached in the naval cuts of 1922 after serving twenty years in the Royal Navy. Yet he always seemed surly, as if he had a grudge against the world.

‘All right,’ Smith broke in, ‘bring the poor thing aboard. We’ll dump it when we get back to the Alex.’

Minutes later the wet, bedraggled dog was shaking itself dry on the deck while Billy Bennett, who dearly loved his ample stomach, was feeding it one of his own corned beef sandwiches.

‘What we gonna call the poor mutt, sir?’ Ginger Kerrigan asked, while Thirk glowered at the animal.

‘What about IT?’ Smith suggested. ‘After all it did come off an Italian boat.’

‘Ner,’ Billy Bennett said, disagreeing ‘not that, sir. Wouldn’t be patriotic. What about Bully ’cos he likes his bully beef?’

‘And he’s not the only one,’ Ginger, his mate, intoned darkly.

‘Bully it is then,’ Smith agreed, as the dog wagged its stumpy tail, as if it was pleased with its new name. ‘All right, CPO Ferguson, let’s splice the mainbrace. I think the lads deserve a drop of rum.’

‘Ay, ay, sir,’ the ancient Scottish petty officer agreed, for he, too, liked his rum. ‘A wee dram o’ Nelson’s blood wouldna go amiss on a nasty night like this.’

So with the crew enjoying their mugs of fiery Issue rum and Bully enjoying yet another thick, corned beef