‘Across the other side of the square, boss. That’s who those birds along there are firing at.’
‘The other side of the square!’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Heavens above, man, what’s he doing there?’ He was moving through the house now, speaking over his shoulder. ‘Why did you let him go?’
‘I didn’t let him go, boss,’ Miller said carefully. ‘He was gone when I came. Seems that Brown here saw a big patrol start a house to house search of the square. Started on the other side and were doin’ two or three houses at a time. Andrea – he’d come back by this time – thought it a sure bet that they’d work right round the square and get here in two or three minutes, so he took off like a bat across the roofs.’
‘Going to draw them off?’ Mallory was at Louki’s side staring out of the window. ‘The crazy fool! He’ll get himself killed this time – get himself killed for sure! There are soldiers everywhere. Besides, they won’t fall for it again. He tricked them once up in the hills, and the Germans –’
‘I’m not so sure, sir,’ Brown interrupted excitedly. ‘Andrea’s just shot out the searchlight on his side. They’ll think for certain that we’re going to break out over the wall and – look, sir, look! There they go!’ Brown was almost dancing with excitement, the pain of his injured leg forgotten. ‘He’s done it, sir, he’s done it!’
Sure enough, Mallory saw, the patrol had broken away from their shelter in the house to their right and were running across the square in extended formation, their heavy boots clattering on the cobbles, stumbling, falling, recovering again as they lost footing on the slippery wetness of the uneven stones. At the same time Mallory could see torches flickering on the roofs of the houses opposite, the vague forms of men crouching low to escape observation and making swiftly for the spot where Andrea had been when he had shot out the great Cyclops eye of the searchlight.
‘They’ll be on him from every side.’ Mallory spoke quietly enough, but his fists clenched until the nails cut into the palms of his hands. He stood stock-still for some seconds, stooped quickly and gathered a Schmeisser up from the floor. ‘He hasn’t a chance. I’m going after him.’ He turned abruptly, brought up with equal suddenness: Miller was blocking his way to the door.
‘Andrea left word that we were to leave him be, that he’d find his own way out.’ Miller was very calm, very respectful. ‘Said that no one was to help him, not on any account.’
‘Don’t try to stop me, Dusty.’ Mallory spoke evenly, mechanically almost. He was hardly aware that Dusty Miller was there. He only knew that he must get out at once, get to Andrea’s side, give him what help he could. They had been together too long, he owed too much to the smiling giant to let him go so easily. He couldn’t remember how often Andrea had come after him, more than once when he had thought hope was gone . . . He put his hand against Miller’s chest.
‘You’ll only be in his way, boss,’ Miller said urgently. ‘That’s what you said . . .’
Mallory pushed him aside, strode for the door, brought up his fist to strike as hands closed round his upper arm. He stopped just in time, looked down into Louki’s worried face.
‘The American is right,’ Louki said insistently. ‘You must not go. Andrea said you were to take us down to the harbour.’
‘Go down yourselves,’ Mallory said brusquely. ‘You know the way, you know the plans.’
‘You would let us all go, let us all –’
‘I’d let the whole damn world go if I could help him.’ There was an utter sincerity in the New Zealander’s voice. ‘Andrea would never let me down.’
‘But you would let him down,’ Louki said quietly. ‘Is that it, Major Mallory?’
‘What the devil do you mean?’
‘By not doing as he wishes. He may be hurt, killed even, and if you go after him and are killed too, that makes it all useless. He would die for nothing. Is it thus you would repay your friend?’
‘All right, all right, you win,’ Mallory said irritably.
‘That is how Andrea would want it,’ Louki murmured. ‘Any other way you would be –’
‘Stop preaching at me! Right, gentlemen, let’s be on our way.’ He was back on balance again, easy, relaxed, the primeval urge to go out and kill well under control. ‘We’ll take the high road – over the roofs. Dig into that kitchen stove there, rub the ashes all over your hands and faces. See that there’s nothing white on you anywhere. And no talking!’
The five-minute journey down to the harbour wall – a journey made in soft-footed silence with Mallory hushing even the beginnings of a whisper – was quite uneventful. Not only did they see no soldiers, they saw no one at all. The inhabitants of Navarone were wisely obeying the curfew, and the streets were completely deserted. Andrea had drawn off pursuit with a vengeance. Mallory began to fear that the Germans had taken him, but just as they reached the water’s edge he heard the gunfire again, a good deal farther away this time, in the very north-east corner of the town, round the back of the fortress.
Mallory stood on the low wall above the harbour, looked at his companions, gazed out over the dark oiliness of the water. Through the heavy rain he could just distinguish, to his right and left, the vague blurs of caiques moored stern on to the wall. Beyond that he could see nothing.
‘Well, I don’t suppose we can get much wetter than we are right now,’ he observed. He turned to Louki, checked something the little man was trying to say about Andrea. ‘You sure you can find it all right in the darkness?’ ‘It’ was the commandant’s personal launch, a thirty-six-foot ten-tonner always kept moored to a buoy a hundred feet offshore. The engineer, who doubled as guard, slept aboard, Louki had said.
‘I am already there,’ Louki boasted. ‘Blindfold me as you will and I –’
‘All right, all right,’ Mallory said hastily. ‘I’ll take your word for it. Lend me your hat, will you, Casey?’ He jammed the automatic into the crown of the hat, pulled it firmly on to his head, slid gently into the water and struck out by Louki’s side.
‘The engineer,’ Louki said softly. ‘I think he will be awake, Major.’
‘I think so, too,’ Mallory said grimly. Again there came the chatter of machine-carbines, the deeper whiplash of a Mauser. ‘So will everyone else in Navarone, unless they’re deaf or dead. Drop behind as soon as we see the boat. Come when I call.’
Ten seconds, fifteen passed, then Louki touched Mallory on the arm.
‘I see it,’ Mallory whispered. The blurred silhouette was less than fifteen yards away. He approached silently, neither legs nor arms breaking water, until he saw the vague shape of a man standing on the poop, just aft of the engine-room hatchway. He was immobile, staring out in the direction of the fortress and the upper town: Mallory slowly circled round the stern of the boat and came up behind him, on the other side. Carefully he removed his hat, took out the gun, caught the low gunwale with his left hand. At the range of seven feet he knew he couldn’t possibly miss, but he couldn’t shoot the man, not then. The guard-rails were token affairs only, eighteen inches high at the most, and the splash of the man falling into the water would almost certainly alert the guards at the harbour mouth emplacements.
‘If you move I will kill you!’ Mallory said softly in German. The man stiffened. He had a carbine in his hand, Mallory saw.
‘Put the gun down. Don’t turn round.’ Again the man obeyed, and Mallory was out of the water and on to the deck, in seconds, neither eye nor automatic straying from the man’s back. He stepped softly forward, reversed the automatic, struck, caught the man before he could fall overboard and lowered him quietly to the deck. Three minutes later all the others were safely aboard.
Mallory followed the limping Brown down to the engine room, watched him as he switched on his hooded torch, looked around with a professional eye, looked at the big, gleaming, six-cylinder in-line Diesel engine.
‘This,’ said Brown reverently, ‘is an engine. What a beauty! Operates on any number of cylinders you like. I know the type
, sir.’
‘I never doubted but you would. Can you start her up, Casey?’
‘Just a minute till I have a look round, sir.’ Brown had all the unhurried patience of the born engineer. Slowly, methodically, he played the spotlight round the immaculate interior of the engine-room, switched on the fuel and turned to Mallory. ‘A dual control job, sir. We can take her from up top.’
He carried out the same painstaking inspection in the wheelhouse, while Mallory waited impatiently. The rain was easing off now, not much, but sufficiently to let him see the vague outlines of the harbour entrance. He wondered for the tenth time if the guards there had been alerted against the possibility of an attempted escape by boat. It seemed unlikely – from the racket Andrea was making, the Germans would think that escape was the last thing in their minds . . . He leaned forward, touched Brown on the shoulder.
‘Twenty past eleven, Casey,’ he murmured. ‘If these destroyers come through early we’re apt to have a thousand tons of rock falling on our heads.’
‘Ready now, sir,’ Brown announced. He gestured at the crowded dashboard beneath the screen. ‘Nothing to it really.’
‘I’m glad you think so,’ Mallory murmured fervently. ‘Start her moving, will you? Just keep it slow and easy.’
Brown coughed apologetically. ‘We’re still moored to the buoy. And it might be a good thing, sir, if we checked on the fixed guns, searchlights, signalling lamps, life-jackets and buoys. It’s useful to know where these things are,’ he finished deprecatingly.
Mallory laughed softly, clapped him on the shoulder.
‘You’d make a great diplomat, Chief. We’ll do that.’ A landsman first and last, Mallory was none the less aware of the gulf that stretched between him and a man like Brown, made no bones about acknowledging it to himself. ‘Will you take her out, Casey?’
‘Right, sir. Would you ask Louki to come here – I think it’s steep to both sides, but there may be snags or reefs. You never know.’
Three minutes later the launch was half-way to the harbour mouth, purring along softly on two cylinders, Mallory and Miller, still clad in German uniform, standing on the deck for’ard of the wheelhouse, Louki crouched low inside the wheelhouse itself. Suddenly, about sixty yards away, a signal lamp began to flash at them, its urgent clacking quite audible in the stillness of the night.
‘Dan’l Boone Miller will now show how it’s done,’ Miller muttered. He edged closer to the machine-gun on the starboard bow. ‘With my little gun I shall . . .’
He broke off sharply, his voice lost in the sudden clacking from the wheelhouse behind him, the staccato off-beat chattering of a signal shutter triggered by professional fingers. Brown had handed the wheel over to Louki, was morsing back to the harbour entrance, the cold rain lancing palely through the flickering beams of the lamp. The enemy lamp had stopped but now began again.
‘My, they got a lot to say to each other,’ Miller said admiringly. ‘How long do the exchange of courtesies last, boss?’
‘I should say they are just about finished.’ Mallory moved back quickly to the wheelhouse. They were less than a hundred feet from the harbour entrance. Brown had confused the enemy, gained precious seconds, more time than Mallory had ever thought they could gain. But it couldn’t last. He touched Brown on the arm.
‘Give her everything you’ve got when the balloon goes up.’ Two seconds later he was back in position in the bows, Schmeisser ready in his hands. ‘Your big chance, Dan’l Boone. Don’t give the searchlights a chance to line up – they’ll blind you.’
Even as he spoke, the light from the signal lamp at the harbour mouth cut off abruptly and two dazzling white beams, one from either side of the harbour entrance, stabbed blindingly through the darkness, bathing the whole harbour in their savage glare – a glare that lasted for only a fleeting second of time, yielded to a contrastingly Stygian darkness as two brief bursts of machine-gun fire smashed them into uselessness. From such short range it had been almost impossible to miss.
‘Get down, everyone!’ Mallory shouted. ‘Flat on the deck!’
The echoes of the gunfire were dying away, the reverberations fading along the great sea wall of the fortress when Casey Brown cut in all six cylinders of the engine and opened the throttle wide, the surging roar of the big Diesel blotting out all other sounds in the night. Five seconds, ten seconds, they were passing through the entrance, fifteen, twenty, still not a shot fired, half a minute and they were well clear, bows lifting high out of the water, the deep-dipped stern trailing its long, seething ribbon of phosphorescent white as the engine crescendoed to its clamorous maximum power and Brown pulled the heeling craft sharply round to starboard, seeking the protection of the steep-walled cliffs.
‘A desperate battle, boss, but the better men won.’ Miller was on his feet now, clinging to a mounted gun for support as the deck canted away beneath his feet. ‘My grandchildren shall hear of this.’
‘Guards probably all up searching the town. Or maybe there were some poor blokes behind those searchlights. Or maybe we just took ’em all by surprise.’ Mallory shook his head. ‘Anyway you take it, we’re just plain damn lucky.’
He moved aft, into the wheelhouse. Brown was at the wheel, Louki almost crowing with delight.
‘That was magnificent, Casey,’ Mallory said sincerely. ‘A first-class job of work. Cut the engine when we come to the end of the cliffs. Our job’s done. I’m going ashore.’
‘You don’t have to, Major.’
Mallory turned. ‘What’s that?’
‘You don’t have to. I tried to tell you on the way down, but you kept telling me to be quiet.’ Louki sounded injured, turned to Casey. ‘Slow down, please. The last thing Andrea told me, Major, was that we were to come this way. Why do you think he let himself be trapped against the cliffs to the north instead of going out into the country, where he could have hidden easily?’
‘Is this true, Casey?’ Mallory asked.
‘Don’t ask me, sir. Those two – they always talk in Greek.’
‘Of course, of course.’ Mallory looked at the low cliffs close off the starboard beam, barely moving now with the engine shut right down, looked back at Louki. ‘Are you quite sure . . .’
He stopped in mid-sentence, jumped out through the wheelhouse door. The splash – there had been no mistaking the noise – had come from almost directly ahead. Mallory, Miller by his side, peered into the darkness, saw a dark head surfacing above the water less than twenty feet away, leaned far over with outstretched arm as the launch slid slowly by. Five seconds later Andrea stood on the deck, dripping mightily and beaming all over his great moon face. Mallory led him straight into the wheelhouse, switched on the soft light of the shaded chart-lamp.
‘By all that’s wonderful, Andrea, I never thought to see you again. How did it go?’
‘I will soon tell you,’ Andrea laughed. ‘Just after –’
‘You’ve been wounded!’ Miller interrupted. ‘Your shoulder’s kinda perforated.’ He pointed to the red stain spreading down the sea-soaked jacket.
‘Well, now, I believe I have.’ Andrea affected vast surprise. ‘Just a scratch, my friend.’
‘Oh, sure, sure, just a scratch! It would be the same if your arm had been blown off. Come on down to the cabin – this is just a kindergarten exercise for a man of my medical skill.’
‘But the captain –’
‘Will have to wait. And your story. Ol’ Medicine Man Miller permits no interference with his patients. Come on!’
‘Very well, very well,’ Andrea said docilely. He shook his head in mock resignation, followed Miller out of the cabin.
Brown opened up to full throttle again, took the launch north almost to Cape Demirci to avoid any hundred to one chance the harbour batteries might make, turned due east for a few miles then headed south into the Maidos Straits. Mallory stood by his side in the wheelhouse, gazing out over the dark, still waters. Suddenly he caught a gleam of white in the distance, touched Brown�
�s arm and pointed for’ard.
‘Breakers ahead, Casey, I think. Reefs perhaps?’
Casey looked in long silence, finally shook his head.
‘Bow-wave,’ he said unemotionally. ‘It’s the destroyers coming through.’
SEVENTEEN
Wednesday Night
Midnight
Commander Vincent Ryan, RN, Captain (Destroyers) and Commanding Officer of His Majesty’s latest S-class destroyer Sirdar, looked round the cramped chart-room and tugged thoughtfully at his magnificent Captain Kettle beard. A scruffier, a more villainous, a more cut and battered-looking bunch of hard cases he had never seen, he reflected, with the possible exception of a Bias Bay pirate crew he had helped round up when a very junior officer on the China Station. He looked at them more closely, tugged his beard again, thought there was more to it than mere scruffiness. He wouldn’t care to be given the task of rounding this lot up. Dangerous, highly dangerous, he mused, but impossible to say why, there was only this quietness, this relaxed watchfulness that made him feel vaguely uncomfortable. His ‘hatchet-men’, Jensen had called them: Captain Jensen picked his killers well.
‘Any of you gentlemen care to go below,’ he suggested. ‘Plenty of hot water, dry clothes – and warm bunks. We won’t be using them tonight.’
‘Thank you very much, sir.’ Mallory hesitated. ‘But we’d like to see this through.’
‘Right then, the bridge it is,’ Ryan said cheerfully. The Sirdar was beginning to pick up speed again, the deck throbbing beneath their feet. ‘It is at your own risk, of course.’
‘We lead charmed lives,’ Miller drawled. ‘Nothin’ ever happens to us.’
The rain had stopped and they could see the cold twinkling of stars through broadening rifts in the clouds. Mallory looked around him, could see Maidos broad off the port bow and the great bulk of Navarone slipping by to starboard. Aft, about a cable length away, he could just distinguish two other ships, high-curving bow-waves piled whitely against tenebrious silhouettes. Mallory turned to the captain.
The Guns of Navarone Page 30