The Heights of Zervos

by Colin Forbes

  'Fire!'

  Ford had again made an adjustment and Prentice saw that the mortar's barrel was pointing at an extreme angle, saw also the bomb cradled in Macomber's arms nearly slip as the Scot forced his wearied body to further effort. The bomb coursed out over the lake, became a tiny dark speck against the whiteness below, and landed close to the distant eastern shore on the far side of the scattering troops. The thump was fainter. A fresh channel of water opened up, starting at the shoreline and spreading inwards towards the centre as three more bombs landed and black dots scurried over the diminishing white surface. Two mountain guns vanished. A half-track driving to the rear to escape the cannonade drove straight over the edge. More than a third of the attacking force on the frozen lake had disappeared and for the first time Prentice grasped the painstaking cleverness of Ford's plan. He had quartered the lake systematically in his mind and was destroying it section by section in such a way that he inflicted the maximum amount of damage, commencing with the vital section near the road up to the monastery, working backwards, and then over-leaping to destroy the ice near the far shore. His ultimate objective was to compress the surviving Wehrmacht force on a huge island of ice caught between water to east and west, the snow-drifted road to the north, and the sheer wall of the bluff to the south.

  'Fire!' The bomb landed uselessly in clear water. Fire!' Prentice's glass was focused just beyond the most recent dropping point and he saw two puffs of snow as the bomb bounced across the ice and detonated in the midst of a crowd of German troops fleeing towards the bluff. At this point some of the more quick-witted Alpenkorps were escaping. Using their climbing ropes, they had begun to scale the precipitous bluff face, realizing that only suspended in air would they be safe from the rain of missiles pouring down on them. Ford now turned his attention to the section of frozen lake which bordered the snow-drifted road. A large number of troops and a mountain gun were heading for the drift zone when the falling bombs began to shatter their escape route, driving them back on the huge remaining sheet of ice which covered perhaps a third of the lake. 'Fire!' Prentice removed the Monokular, dropped it into his pocket. The fatigue of staring through the glass made him rub his eyes and then dab them with his handkerchief, and all the time the bombardment was continuing as Ford concentrated on the huge island of ice covered with marooned Germans. 'Fire!' 'Fire!' 'Fire... !' Prentice lost count of the number of bombs Macomber slipped down the barrel, and the rate was increasing as Ford built up the barrage and Macomber, wiping his hands frequently on his trousers for fear of dropping a bomb, summoned up his last reserves of energy and went on feeding the mortar with fresh ammunition.

  When Prentice looked out across the lake again he was astounded at the changed scene. The lake, which had so recently been a white plain, was now a dark sheet spattered with what, from that height, looked like slivers of snow, but which were really large spars of floating ice. The central island had almost disappeared and there was only a handful of men still marooned on a small patch of whiteness. Macomber fed in more bombs, surrounded the ice islet with five fountainheads of spurting water. Five misses. The next bomb landed dead centre on the remaining floe, fragmented it, tipped the survivors choking, drowning, sinking into the chill water. Perhaps a dozen Alpenkorps men still clung to the bluff which they were ascending slowly, but the invasion force on the lake had been annihilated.

  'Like a target range,' Ford said. 'Unique.'

  'Not quite,' Macomber reminded him. 'There was also Austerlitz.'* In response to the shake of the sergeant's head, he replaced the bomb he was holding on the near-empty canvas and went stiffly over to the parapet. 'And now we've got to face that lot.'

  There were three bombs left on the tower roof when Macomber made his grim remark and pointed out over the wall. Unlike the others, whose whole attention had been concentrated on the lake below, the Scot had been observing with increasing anxiety the ski troops' progress. They had now climbed the slope to an altitude well above the bluff and were coming forward in a line which curled over the flank of the mountain. The leading man was less than a quarter of a mile away as he sped closer towards the monastery. Grapos hobbled out from bis corner and gripped Macomber's arm.

  'You make avalanche,' Grapos said urgently. 'Where the dark hole is...'

  'He means that hollow in shadow,' Prentice interjected. 'Why there?' Macomber had already gone back to the mortar, was helping Ford to shift the weapon's position, then waiting, cradling another bomb in his arms as the staff-sergeant checked the mountain slope and changed the angle of fire.

  'Because,' Grapos explained, 'that is where the Austrian ski man started the avalanche. We had warned him not to go - but he laughed at us. I was standing on this roof watching him. He comes down over the hole and the avalanche begins. The mountain comes alive.'

  'We'd better try it, Ford,' Macomber said quickly. 'It's a gamble, but it's the only one we've got. A hundred bombs could miss them all considering the speed they're moving at.'

  He waited, still cradling the bomb, while Ford reconsidered the angle of fire and made a further adjustment. The reaction was setting in, his arms and legs felt like jelly, and he knew he might collapse on the roof at any moment. For God's sake stop fiddling with that mortar, man, and let's get on with it! Ford nodded - to indicate he was satisfied - and Macomber let the first one go. Because the mountain slope rose above the tower he was now able to see what was happening and he saw the bomb hit the snow some distance above the hollow.

  * At Austerlitz Napoleon destroyed a Russian army by firing at a frozen lake and drowning the enemy crossing the ice.

  'Damn!' It was the first display of emotion Ford had shown since they had begun firing the mortar. The shot was wide and he knew it was his fault - not enough care taken over the initial preparation. And there were no bombs to waste this time on ranging shots. He adjusted the angle of fire as Macomber picked up the second bomb. The missile went away. Macomber saw this one land below the hollow, close enough to the Alpenkorps column to provoke a sudden swerve in the well-spread line - the section leader had not overlooked the lesson of what had happened on the lake - but no more than a swerve. Ford bit his lip as Macomber encouraged him. Third time lucky.' The staff-sergeant looked dubious - too high last time, too low this time. And only one more to go. But he kept his nerve: the first two shots had bracketed the target above and below, so now they must drop one mid-way between the two points. He took a deep breath, adjusted the barrel very carefully, then nodded to Macomber. The final bomb burst on the mountain a short way above the hollow.

  It was very quiet on the tower and the four men stood perfectly still while they waited. Behind them the sea was empty, the destroyer had disappeared; below them the lake was still and lifeless; above them rose the peak of Zervos, crisp-edged against the palest of skies. The mortar barrel gaped upwards, as harmless now as a piece of old scrap iron, something they might as well tip over the wall so that at least the Alpenkorps would never use it. Probably it was imagination, but the Scot fancied he heard the swish of oncoming skis as he stood with his eyes fixed on Mount Zervos. He blinked and looked again, unsure whether his eyes had played him a trick. He had been watching the hollow but now he transferred his gaze higher up the mountain to a point near the summit where something had attracted his attention. Was there a gentle ripple of movement, so gentle that his eye might never have noticed it but for his fading hope? There seemed to be a trembling, a hazy wobble close to the peak. Slowly, like the rolling back of a sheet, the snow began to move in a long wave, the wave stretching the full width of the slope as it surged downwards, gathering height as it swallowed up more snow. And now Macomber heard something - a faint growl which gradually swelled and deepened to a sinister rumble as he saw fresh signs of something terrible happening. The slope was shifting downwards at increasing velocity, a moving slope at least a mile wide as the wave mounted higher, picked up momentum and thundered down on the Germans like a tidal wave. The mountain had come alive.

 
The slope seemed like a living thing as it seethed and rolled towards the lake far below, a whole mountain erupting sideways, the wave curling at the crest, the snow-slide roaring down, the rumble a tremendous sound in their dazed ears, a sound like the eruption of a major volcano, blowing its lava flow up from the interior of the earth. The Alpenkorps tried to scatter at the last moment - some skiing downhill, some whipping across the slope, all trying to race the wave which bore down on them and for a brief moment in time they were like a disturbed nest of ants scurrying away from catastrophe. Then the wave arrived, swept over the broken line, engulfing them, burying them, carrying them down the slope and over the bluff face where it cascaded down the precipice like a vast waterfall and washed away the men still ascending it before it plunged down into the depths of the lake. Prentice shouted his frantic warning as the wave reached the bluff's brink - the leading skier, not yet overwhelmed by the avalanche, had stopped, unlooped his rifle from his back, was taking aim at the roof of the tower. Macomber, his gaze fixed on the bluff, heard the shout too late. He was dropping to the floor when the bullet thudded into him and he was unconscious before he sprawled over the stones.

  The Australian doctor had underestimated Macomber's vitality, so he came out of the drugged state at the wrong moment, the moment when they started to take him down the nose of Cape Zervos, strapped to a stretcher, powerless to move, but conscious enough to think, to remember, to experience to the full the unnerving ordeal of being transported in the prone position down a track a mule might jib at. The track, no more than a rather broad path, was the route from the cliff summit to the base of the cape where the Allied troops had landed. It was a fine morning, the sun was shining, there was not a trace of sea mist, so his downward view was unobscured as his life balanced in four hands - two holding the rear of the stretcher, two supporting the front. The stretcher tilted downwards at an angle of forty-five degrees as the two men carrying him found the way increasingly dangerous - ascending a precipitous zigzag can be difficult, descending it may prove impossible. The Scot thought the unobscured view was impressive - a sheer drop seaward to the ruffled waters of the Aegean far below, a glimpse of a lower level of the zigzag, perched on another brink. And in his invalid state, Macomber had lost his head for heights.

  He watched the uncertain gait of the man in front through half-closed eyes, half-closed because he was determined they shouldn't realize he had come awake - even a small surprise like that at the wrong moment could make a foot stumble, a hand lose its grip, could cause the stretcher to leave them and send him vertically down to his grave as the stretcher turned over and over in mid-air before it mercifully reached the sea and the waves closed over him. Cursing his over-vivid imagination, he tore his mesmerized gaze away from the trembling distant waters and tried to concentrate his mind on what had happened, on what Prentice had told him when he first recovered consciousness. 'He got you in the shoulder ... the bullet's out now ... the quack says you'll be all right... they'll be taking you to Athens.'

  Macomber wasn't sure what day it was as he went on staring at the back of the man below him, but he remembered other things the lieutenant had told him. The Australians had come up this hellish track like demons. With the New Zealanders. They had dragged up dismantled twenty-five-pounder guns by brute strength, had reassembled them on the heights, were now in full command of Zervos. The blowing up of the Hydra had warned them something was seriously wrong; the great cloud of black smoke rising over Katyra had forced a quick decision - the sending of a destroyer laden with troops. I wish I had one of those bloody German cigars, Macomber thought as the man behind him tripped and the stretcher wobbled uneasily. They should have let Grapos take the rear. But at least the bearer had held on firmly, had regained his balance quickly. They went slowly down another section, then another, poised over sheer drops, the only sound a slithering of boots over the treacherous ground. Time stopped for the Scot, went into a state of suspension, so that it seemed to go on for ever. They were close to the half-ruined jetty at the base of Cape Zervos, but still a hundred feet above the sea, when the man in front stumbled over a hidden rock, fell sideways onto the track, saving himself by cannoning against a boulder and completely losing his grip on the stretcher. Macomber's legs hit the earth with a bump. He braced himself for the long spiralling fall.

  The rear of the stretcher sagged a foot, then steadied and was held there by two hands only until the other man climbed to his feet, started to apologize, then stopped as he saw the look in the eyes of the man holding Macomber. He lifted the stretcher again and they went on down the track to where the launch moored by the jetty waited to transport the Scot to the destroyer anchored farther out. Macomber delayed his official awakening until he was rested on the jetty wall, then he twisted his head round to say thank you. Grapos' whiskered face stared down at him. 'I come with you,' he said simply. 'Now they take me in the Greek army. Yes?'