The Guns of Navarone

by Alistair MacLean

  SIX

  Monday Night

  0200–0600

  The German patrol was everything that Mallory had feared – efficient, thorough and very, very painstaking. It even had imagination, in the person of its young and competent sergeant, and that was more dangerous still.

  There were only four of them, in high boots, helmets and green, grey and brown mottled capes. First of all they located the telephone and reported to base. Then the young sergeant sent two men to search another hundred yards or so along the cliff, while he and the fourth soldier probed among the rocks that paralleled the cliff. The search was slow and careful, but the two men did not penetrate very far into the rocks. To Mallory, the sergeant’s reasoning was obvious and logical. If the sentry had gone to sleep or taken ill, it was unlikely that he would have gone far in among that confused jumble of boulders. Mallory and the others were safely back beyond their reach.

  And then came what Mallory had feared – an organised, methodical inspection of the cliff-top itself: worse still, it began with a search along the very edge. Securely held by his three men with interlinked arms – the last with a hand hooked round his belt – the sergeant walked slowly along the rim, probing every inch with the spot-lit beam of a powerful torch. Suddenly he stopped short, exclaimed suddenly and stooped, torch and face only inches from the ground. There was no question as to what he had found – the deep gouge made in the soft, crumbling soil by the climbing rope that had been belayed round the boulder and gone over the edge of the cliff . . . Softly, silently, Mallory and his three companions straightened to their knees or to their feet, gun barrels lining along the tops of boulders or peering out between cracks in the rocks. There was no doubt in any of their minds that Stevens was lying there helplessly in the crutch of the chimney, seriously injured or dead. It needed only one German carbine to point down that cliff face, however carelessly, and these four men would die. They would have to die.

  The sergeant was stretched out his length now, two men holding his legs. His head and shoulders were over the edge of the cliff, the beam from his torch stabbing down the chimney. For ten, perhaps fifteen seconds, there was no sound on the cliff-top, no sound at all, only the high, keening moan of the wind and the swish of the rain in the stunted grass. And then the sergeant had wriggled back and risen to his feet, slowly shaking his head. Mallory gestured to the others to sink down behind the boulders again, but even so the sergeant’s soft Bavarian voice carried clearly in the wind.

  ‘It’s Ehrich all right, poor fellow.’ Compassion and anger blended curiously in the voice. ‘I warned him often enough about his carelessness, about going too near the edge of that cliff. It is very treacherous.’ Instinctively the sergeant stepped back a couple of feet and looked again at the gouge in the soft earth. ‘That’s where his heel slipped – or maybe the butt of his carbine. Not that it matters now.’

  ‘Is he dead, do you think, Sergeant?’ The speaker was only a boy, nervous and unhappy.

  ‘It’s hard to say . . . Look for yourself.’

  Gingerly the youth lay down on the cliff-top, peering cautiously over the lip of the rock. The other soldiers were talking among themselves, in short staccato sentences when Mallory turned to Miller, cupped his hands to his mouth and the American’s ear. He could contain his puzzlement no longer.

  ‘Was Stevens wearing his dark suit when you left him?’ he whispered.

  ‘Yeah,’ Miller whispered back. ‘Yeah, I think he was.’ A pause. ‘No dammit, I’m wrong. We both put on our rubber camouflage capes about the same time.’

  Mallory nodded. The waterproofs of the Germans were almost identical with their own: and the sentry’s hair, Mallory remembered had been jet black – the same colour as Stevens’s dyed hair. Probably all that was visible from above was a crumpled, cape-shrouded figure and a dark head. The sergeant’s mistake in identity was more than understandable: it was inevitable.

  The young soldier eased himself back from the edge of the cliff and hoisted himself carefully to his feet.

  ‘You’re right, Sergeant. It is Ehrich.’ The boy’s voice was unsteady. ‘He’s alive, I think. I saw his cape move, just a little. It wasn’t the wind, I’m sure of that.’

  Mallory felt Andrea’s massive hand squeezing his arm, felt the quick surge of relief, then elation, wash through him. So Stevens was alive! Thank God for that! They’d save the boy yet. He heard Andrea whispering the news to the others, then grinned wryly to himself, ironic at his own gladness. Jensen definitely would not have approved of this jubilation. Stevens had already done his part, navigated the boat to Navarone, and climbed the cliff: and now he was only a crippled liability, would be a drag on the whole party, reduce what pitiful chances of success remained to them. For a High Command who pushed the counters around crippled pawns slowed up the whole game, made the board so damnably untidy. It was most inconsiderate of Stevens not to have killed himself so that they could have disposed of him neatly and without trace in the deep and hungry waters that boomed around the foot of the cliff . . . Mallory clenched his hands in the darkness and swore to himself that the boy would live, come home again, and to hell with total war and all its inhuman demands . . . Just a kid, that was all, a scared and broken kid and the bravest of them all.

  The young sergeant was issuing a string of orders to his men, his voice quick, crisp and confident. A doctor, splints, rescue stretcher, anchored sheer-legs, ropes, spikes – the trained, well-ordered mind missed nothing. Mallory waited tensely, wondering how many men, if any, would be left on guard, for the guards would have to go and that would inevitably betray them. The question of their quick and silent disposal never entered his mind – a whisper in Andrea’s ear and the guards would have no more chance than penned lambs against a marauding wolf. Less chance even than that – the lambs could always run and cry out before the darkness closed over them.

  The sergeant solved the problem for them. The assured competence, the tough unsentimental ruthlessness that made the German NCO the best in the world gave Mallory the chance he never expected to have. He had just finished giving his orders when the young soldier touched him on the arm, then pointed over the edge.

  ‘How about poor Ehrich, Sergeant?’ he asked uncertainly. ‘Shouldn’t – don’t you think one of us ought to stay with him?’

  ‘And what could you do if you did stay – hold his hand?’ the sergeant asked acidly. ‘If he stirs and falls, then he falls, that’s all, and it doesn’t matter then if a hundred of us are standing up here watching him. Off you go, and don’t forget the mallets and pegs to stay the sheer-legs.’

  The three men turned and went off quickly to the east without another word. The sergeant walked over to the phone, reported briefly to someone, then set off in the opposite direction – to check the next guard post, Mallory guessed. He was still in sight, a dwindling blur in the darkness, when Mallory whispered to Brown and Miller to post themselves on guard again: and they could still hear the measured crunch of his firm footfalls on a patch of distant gravel as their belayed rope went snaking over the edge of the cliff, Andrea and Mallory sliding swiftly down even before it had stopped quivering.

  Stevens, a huddled, twisted heap with a gashed and bleeding cheek lying cruelly along a razor-sharp spur of rock, was still unconscious, breathing stertorously through his open mouth. Below the knee his right leg twisted upwards and outwards against the rock at an impossible angle. As gently as he could, braced against either side of the chimney and supported by Andrea, Mallory lifted and straightened the twisted limb. Twice, from the depths of the dark stupor of his unconsciousness, Stevens moaned in agony, but Mallory had no option but to carry on, his teeth clenched tight until his jaws ached. Then slowly, with infinite care, he rolled up the trouser leg, winced and screwed his eyes shut in momentary horror and nausea as he saw the dim whiteness of the shattered tibia sticking out through the torn and purply swollen flesh.

  ‘Compound fracture, Andrea.’ Gently his exploring fingers slid down th
e mangled leg, beneath the lip of the jackboot, stopped suddenly as something gave way beneath his feather touch. ‘Oh, my God!’ he murmured. ‘Another break, just above the ankle. This boy is in a bad way. Andrea.’

  ‘He is indeed,’ Andrea said gravely. ‘We can do nothing for him here?’

  ‘Nothing. Just nothing. We’ll have to get him up first.’ Mallory straightened, gazed up bleakly at the perpendicular face of the chimney. ‘Although how in the name of heaven –’

  ‘I will take him up.’ There was no suggestion in Andrea’s voice either of desperate resolve or consciousness of the almost incredible effort involved. It was simply a statement of intention, the voice of a man who never questioned his ability to do what he said he would. ‘If you will help me to raise him, to tie him to my back . . .’

  ‘With his broken leg loose, dangling from a piece of skin and torn muscle?’ Mallory protested. ‘Stevens can’t take much more. He’ll die if we do this.’

  ‘He’ll die if we don’t,’ Andrea murmured.

  Mallory stared down at Stevens for a long moment, then nodded heavily in the darkness.

  ‘He’ll die if we don’t,’ he echoed tiredly. ‘Yes, we have to do this.’ He pushed outwards from the rock, slid half a dozen feet down the rope and jammed a foot in the crutch of the chimney just below Stevens’s body. He took a couple of turns of rope round his waist and looked up.

  ‘Ready, Andrea?’ he called softly.

  ‘Ready.’ Andrea stooped, hooked his great hands under Stevens’s armpits and lifted slowly, powerfully, as Mallory pushed from below. Twice, three times before they had him up, the boy moaned deep down in his tortured throat, the long, quivering ‘Aahs’ of agony setting Mallory’s teeth on edge: and then his dangling, twisted leg had passed from Mallory’s reach and he was held close and cradled in Andrea’s encircling arm, the rain-lashed, bleeding mask of a face lolling grotesquely backwards, forlorn and lifeless with the dead pathos of a broken doll. Seconds later Mallory was up beside them, expertly lashing Stevens’s wrists together. He was swearing softly, as his numbed hands looped and tightened the rope, softly, bitterly, continuously, but he was quite unaware of this: he was aware only of the broken head that lolled stupidly against his shoulder, of the welling, rain-thinned blood that filmed the upturned face, of the hair above the gashed temple emerging darkly fair as the dye washed slowly out. Inferior bloody boot-blacking. Mallory thought savagely: Jensen shall know of this – it could cost a man’s life. And then he became aware of his own thoughts and swore again, still more savagely and at himself this time, for the utter triviality of what he was thinking.

  With both hands free – Stevens’s bound arms were looped round his neck, his body lashed to his own – Andrea took less than thirty seconds to reach the top; if the dragging, one hundred and sixty pounds deadweight on his back made any difference to Andrea’s climbing speed and power, Mallory couldn’t detect it. The man’s endurance was fantastic. Once, just once, as Andrea scrambled over the edge of the cliff, the broken leg caught on the rock, and the crucifying torture of it seared through the merciful shell of insensibility, forced a brief shriek of pain from his lips, a hoarse, bubbling whisper of sound all the more horrible for its muted agony. And then Andrea was standing upright and Mallory was behind him, cutting swiftly at the ropes that bound the two together.

  ‘Straight into the rocks with him, Andrea, will you?’ Mallory whispered. ‘Wait for us at the first open space you come to.’ Andrea nodded slowly and without raising his head, his hooded eyes bent over the boy in his arms, like a man sunk in thought. Sunk in thought or listening, and all unawares Mallory, too, found himself looking and listening into the thin, lost moaning of the wind, and there was nothing there, only the lifting, dying threnody and the chill of the rain hardening to an ice-cold sleet. He shivered, without knowing why, and listened again; then he shook himself angrily, turned abruptly towards the cliff face and started reeling in the rope. He had it all up, lying round his feet in a limp and rain-sodden tangle when he remembered about the spike still secured to the foot of the chimney, the hundreds of feet of rope suspended from it.

  He was too tired and cold and depressed even to feel exasperated with himself. The sight of Stevens and the knowledge of how it was with the boy had affected him more than he knew. Moodily, almost, he kicked the rope over the side again, slid down the chimney, untied the second rope and sent the spike spinning out into the darkness. Less than ten minutes later, the wetly-coiled ropes over his shoulder, he led Miller and Brown into the dark confusion of the rocks.

  They found Stevens lying under the lee of a huge boulder, less than a hundred yards inland, in a tiny, cleared space barely the size of a billiard table. An oilskin was spread beneath him on the sodden, gravelly earth, a camouflage cape covered most of his body: it was bitterly cold now, but the rock broke the force of the wind, sheltered the boy from the driving sleet. Andrea looked up as the three men dropped into the hollow and lowered their gear to the ground; already, Mallory could see, Andrea had rolled the trouser up beyond the knee and cut the heavy jackboot away from the mangled leg.

  ‘Sufferin’ Christ!’ The words, half-oath, half-prayer, were torn involuntarily from Miller: even in the deep gloom the shattered leg looked ghastly. Now he dropped on one knee and stooped low over it. ‘What a mess!’ he murmured slowly. He looked up over his shoulder. ‘We’ve gotta do something about that leg, boss, and we’ve no damned time to lose. This kid’s a good candidate for the mortuary.’

  ‘I know. We’ve got to save him, Dusty, we’ve just got to.’ All at once this had become terribly important to Mallory. He dropped down on his knees. ‘Let’s have a look at him.’

  Impatiently Miller waved him away.

  ‘Leave this to me, boss.’ There was a sureness, a sudden authority in his voice that held Mallory silent. ‘The medicine pack, quick – and undo that tent.’

  ‘You sure you can handle this?’ God knew, Mallory thought, he didn’t really doubt him – he was conscious only of gratitude, of a profound relief, but he felt he had to say something. ‘How are you going –’

  ‘Look, boss,’ Miller said quietly. ‘All my life I’ve worked with just three things – mines, tunnels and explosives. They’re kinda tricky things, boss. I’ve seen hundreds of busted arms and legs – and fixed most of them myself.’ He grinned wryly in the darkness. ‘I was boss myself, then – just one of my privileges, I reckon.’

  ‘Good enough!’ Mallory clapped him on the shoulder. ‘He’s all yours, Dusty. But the tent!’ Involuntarily he looked over his shoulder in the direction of the cliff. ‘I mean –’

  ‘You got me wrong, boss.’ Miller’s hands, steady and precise with the delicate certainty of a man who has spent a lifetime with high explosive, were busy with a swab and disinfectant. ‘I wasn’t fixin’ on settin’ up a base hospital. But we need tent-poles – splints for his legs.’

  ‘Of course, of course. The poles. Never occurred to me for splints – and I’ve been thinking of nothing else for –’

  ‘They’re not too important, boss.’ Miller had the medicine pack open now, rapidly selecting the items he wanted with the aid of a hooded torch. ‘Morphine – that’s the first thing, or this kid’s goin’ to die of shock. And then shelter, warmth, dry clothin’ –’

  ‘Warmth! Dry clothing!’ Mallory interrupted incredulously. He looked down at the unconscious boy, remembering how Stevens had lost them the stove and all the fuel, and his mouth twisted in bitterness. His own executioner . . . ‘Where in God’s name are we going to find them?’

  ‘I don’t know, boss,’ Miller said simply. ‘But we gotta find them. And not just to lessen shock. With a leg like this and soaked to the skin, he’s bound to get pneumonia. And then as much sulfa as that bloody great hole in his leg will take – one touch of sepsis in the state this kid’s in . . .’ His voice trailed away into silence.

  Mallory rose to his feet.

  ‘I reckon you’re the boss.’ It was a ver
y creditable imitation of the American’s drawl, and Miller looked up quickly, surprise melting into a tired smile, then looked away again. Mallory could hear the chatter of his teeth as he bent over Stevens, and sensed rather than saw that he was shivering violently, continuously, but oblivious to it all in his complete concentration on the job in hand. Miller’s clothes, Mallory remembered again, were completely saturated: not for the first time, Mallory wondered how he had managed to get himself into such a state with a waterproof covering him.

  ‘You fix him up. I’ll find a place.’ Mallory wasn’t as confident as he felt: still, on the scree-strewn, volcanic slopes of these hills behind, there ought to be a fair chance of finding a rock shelter, if not a cave. Or there would have been in day-light: as it was they would just have to trust to luck to stumble on one . . . He saw that Casey Brown, grey-faced with exhaustion and illness – the aftereffects of carbon monoxide poisoning are slow to disappear – had risen unsteadily to his feet and was making for a gap between the rocks.

  ‘Where are you going, Chief?’

  ‘Back for the rest of the stuff, sir.’

  ‘Are you sure you can manage?’ Mallory peered at him closely. ‘You don’t look any too fit to me.’

  ‘I don’t feel it either,’ Brown said frankly. He looked at Mallory. ‘But with all respects, sir, I don’t think you’ve seen yourself recently.’

  ‘You have a point,’ Mallory acknowledged. ‘All right then, come on. I’ll go with you.’

  For the next ten minutes there was silence in the tiny clearing, a silence broken only by the murmurs of Miller and Andrea working over the shattered leg, and the moans of the injured man as he twisted and struggled feebly in his dark abyss of pain: then gradually the morphine took effect and the struggling lessened and died away altogether, and Miller was able to work rapidly, without fear of interruption. Andrea had an oilskin outstretched above them. It served a double purpose – it curtained off the sleet that swept round them from time to time and blanketed the pinpoint light of the rubber torch he held in his free hand. And then the leg was set and bandaged and as heavily splinted as possible and Miller was on his feet, straightening his aching back.