The Dogs of War

Waldenberg caught his eye and waved. He pointed to the barrels and back to his ship.

“Okay?” he called, adding with a thick accent, “Ca va?”

From the window the customs man nodded and withdrew to make a note on his clipboard. At Waldenberg’s orders, the two Italian crewmen slipped cradles under the barrels and, one by one, winched them aboard. Semmler was uncommonly eager to help, steadying the drums as they swung over the ship’s rail, shouting in German to Waldenberg on the winch to let them down easily. They slid out of sight into the dark, cool hold of the Toscana, and soon the hatch was back in place and clamped down.

Langarotti, having made his dispatch, had long since left in his truck. A few minutes later the overall suit was at the bottom of a waste bin in the heart of town. From his bollard at the other end of the quay, Shannon had watched the loading with bated breath. He would have preferred to be involved, like Semmler, for the waiting was almost physically painful, worse than going into action.

When it was over, things quieted down on the Toscana. The captain and his three men were belowdecks, the engineer having taken one turn of the ship to sniff the salt air and then having gone back to his diesel fumes. Semmler gave them half an hour, then slipped down to the quay and came to join Shannon. They met around three corners and out of sight of the harbor.

Semmler was grinning. “I told you. No problems.”

Shannon nodded and grinned back with relief. He knew better than Semmler what was at stake, and, unlike the German, he was not familiar with port procedures.

“When can you take the men aboard?”

“The customs office closes at nine. They should come between twelve and one in the morning. We sail at five. It’s fixed.”

“Good,” said Shannon. “Let’s go and find them and have a drink. I want you back there quickly in case there are any inquiries still to come.”

“There won’t be.”

“Never mind. We’ll play safe. I want you to watch that cargo like a mother hen. Don’t let anyone near those barrels till I say so, and that will be in a harbor in Yugoslavia. Then we tell Waldenberg what he’s carrying.”

They met the other three mercenaries at a prearranged café and had several beers to cool down. The sun was setting, and the sea within the vast bowl of land that forms the anchorage and roads of Toulon was ruffled by only a slight breeze. A few sailboats pirouetted like ballerinas far out on the stage as their crews brought them about to catch the next gust.

Semmler left them at eight and returned to the Toscana.

Janni Dupree and Marc Vlaminck slipped quietly aboard between midnight and one, and at five, watched from the quay by Shannon and Langarotti, the Toscana slipped back to the sea.

Langarotti ran Shannon to the airport in midmorning to catch his plane. Over breakfast Shannon had given the Corsican his last set of instructions and enough money to carry them out.

“I’d prefer to be going with you,” Jean-Baptiste said, “or with the ship.”

“I know,” said Shannon. “But I need someone good to do this part of it. It’s vital. Without it we can’t go through. I need someone reliable, and you have the added advantage of being French. Besides, you know two of the men well, and one speaks a smattering of French. Janni couldn’t go in there with a South African pas

sport. Marc and I need to intimidate the crew if they cut up rough. I know you’re better with a knife than he is with his hands, but I don’t want a fight, just enough to persuade the crew to do what they’re told. And I need Kurt to check the navigation, in case Waldenberg chickens out. In fact, if the worse comes to the worst and Waldenberg goes over the side, Kurt has to skipper the ship. So it has to be you.”

Langarotti agreed to go on the mission. “They’re good boys,” he said with a little more enthusiasm. “It will be good to see them again.”

When they parted at the airport, Shannon reminded him, “It can all fall through if we get there and we have no backup force. So it depends on you to do it right. It’s all set up. Just do what I said and cope with the small problems as they arise. I’ll see you in a month.”

He left the Corsican, walked through customs, and boarded his plane for Paris and Hamburg.

nineteen

“My information is that you can pick up the mortars and bazookas anytime after June tenth, and that was reconfirmed yesterday by telex,” Alan Baker told Shannon the day after his arrival in Hamburg.

“What port?” asked Shannon.

“Ploc?e.”

“Where?”

“Ploc?e. Spelled P-L-O-C?-E, pronounced Plochay. It’s a small port almost exactly halfway between Split and Dubrovnik.”

Shannon thought. He had ordered Semmler while in Genoa to pick up the necessary sea charts to cover the whole Yugoslav coast, but he had supposed the pickup would be at one of the larger ports. He hoped the German had a chart covering the sea approaches to Ploc?e, or could get one at Brindisi.

“How small?”