The guns of Navaronne

by Alistair MacLean

  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 missing 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 N.C.O. the best in the world gave Mallory the chance he never expected to have. He bad 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 stifi 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 hapossible 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 the mangled leg, beneath the lip of the jack-boot, 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 abifity 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, quavering «Aabs» 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, stifi 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 pound 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 jack-boot 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 ovуr 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 explosives, 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 rye 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 thorn?»

  «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 very 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 daylight: 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 after-effects 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 pin-point 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.

  «Thank Gawd that's done,» he said, wearily. He gastured at Stevens. «I feel just the way that kid looks.» Suddenly he stiffened, stretched out a warning arm. «I can hear something, Andrea,» he whispered.

  Andrea laughed. «It's only Brown coming back, my friend. He's been coming this way for over a minute now.»

  «How do you know it's Brown?» Miller challenged. He felt vaguely annoyed with himself and unobtrusively shoved his ready automatic back into his pocket.

  «Brown is a good man among rocks,» Andrea said gently; «but he is tired. But Captain Mallory…» He shrugged. «People call me 'the big cat,' I know, but among the mountains and rocks the captain is more than a cat. He is a ghost, and that was how men called him in Crete. You will know he is here when he touches you on the shoulder.»

  Miller shivered in a sudden icy gust of sleet.

  «I wish you people wouldn't creep around so much,» he complained. He looked up as Brown came round the corner of a boulder, slow with the shambling, stumbling gait of an exhausted man. «Hi, there, Casey. How are things goin'?»

  «Not too bad.» Brown murmured his thanks as Andrea took the box of explosives off his shoulder and lowered it easily to the ground. «This is the last of the gear. Captain sent me back with it. We heard voices some way along the cliff. He's staying behindto see what they say when they find Stevens gone.» Wearily he sat down on top of the box. «Maybe he'll get some idea of what they're going to do next, if anything.»

  «Seems to me he could have left you there and carried that damned box back himself,» Miller growled. Disappointment in Mallory made him more outspoken than he'd meant to be. «He's much better off than you are right now, and I think it's a bit bloody much…» He broke off and gasped in pain as Andrea's fingers caught his arm like giant steel pincers.

  «It is not fair to talk like that, my friend,» Andrea said reproachfully. «You forget, perhaps, that Brown here cannot talk or understand a word of German?»

  Miller rubbed his bruised arm tenderly, shaking his head in slow self-anger and condemnation.

  «Me and my big mouth,» he said ruefully. «Always talkin' outa turn Miller, they call me. Your pardon, one and all.… And what is next on the agenda, gentlemen?»

  «Captain says we're to go straight on into the rocks and up the right shoulder of this bill here.» Brown jerked a thumb in the direction of the vague mass, dark and strangely foreboding, that towered above and beyond them. «He'll catch us up within fifteen minutes or so.» He grinned tiredly at Miller. «And we're to leave this box and a rucksack for him to carry.»

  «Spare me,» Miller pleaded. «I feel only six inches tall as it is.» He looked down at Stevens lying quietly under the darkly gleaming wetness of the oilskins, then up at Andrea. «I'm afraid, Andrea—»

  «Of course, of course!» Andrea stooped quickly, wrapped the oilskins round the unconscious boy and rose to his feet, as effortlessly as if the oilskins had been empty.

  «I'll lead the way,» Miller volunteered. «Mebbe I can pick an easy path for you and young Stevens.» He swung generator and rucksacks on to his shoulder, staggering under the sudden weight; he hadn't realised he was so weak. «At first, that is,» he amended. «Later on, you'll have to carry us both.»

  Mallory had badly miscalculated the time it would req
uire to overtake the others; over an hour had elapsed since Brown had left him, and still there were no signs of the others. And with seventy pounds on his back, he wasn't making such good time himself.

  It wasn't all his fault. The returning German patrol, after the first shock of discovery, had searched the clifftop again, methodically and with exasperating slowness. Mallory had waited tensely for someone to suggest descending and expmining the chimney — the gouge-marks of the spikes on the rock would have been a dead giveaway — but nobody even mentioned it. With the guard obviously fallen to his death, it would have been a pointless thing to do anyway. After an unrewarding search, they had debated for an unconscionable time as to what they should do next. Finally they had done nothing. A replacement guard was left, and the rest made off along the cliff, carrying their rescue equipment with them.

  The three men ahead had made surprisingly good time, although the conditions, admittedly, were now much easier. The heavy fall of boulders at the foot of the slope had petered out after another fifty yards, giving way to broken scree and rain-washed rubble. Possibly he had passed them, but it seemed unlikely: in the intervals between these driving sleet showers — it was more like hail now — he was able to scan the bare shoulder of the hill, and nothing moved. Besides, he knew that Andrea wouldn't stop until he reached what promised at least a bare minimum of shelter, and as yet these exposed, windswept slopes had offered nothing that even remotely approached that.