The guns of Navaronne

by Alistair MacLean

  Mallory had his hand on the man's shoulder now, ready to push him on his way, but his hand fell to his side unneeded. The two men were already gone, running pell-mell across the square, had vanished into the rain and the darkness already. Seconds later Mallory and Miller were deep inside the fortress of Navarone.

  Everywhere there was complete confusion — a bustling purposeful confusion as one would expect with the seasoned troops of the Alpenkorps, but confusion nevertheless, with much shouting of orders, blowing of whistles, starting of truck engines, sergeants running to and fro chivvying their men into marching order or into the waiting transports. Mallory and Miller ran too, once or twice through groups of men milling round the tailboard of a truck. Not that they were in any desperate hurry for themselves, but nothing could have been more conspicuous — and suspicious — than the sight of a couple of men walking calmly along in the middle of all that urgent activity. And so they ran, heads down or averted whenever they passed through a pool of light, Miller cursing feelingly and often at the unaccustomed exercise.

  They skirted two barrack blocks on their right, then the powerhouse on their left, then an ordnance depot on their right and then the Abteilung garage on their left. They were climbing, now, almost in darkness, but Mallory knew where he was to the inch: he had so thoroughly memorised the closely tallying descriptions given him by Vlachos and Panayis that' he would have been confident of finding his way with complete accuracy even if the darkness had been absolute.

  «What's that, boss?» Miller had caught Mallory by the arm, was pointing to a large, uncompromisingly rectangular building that loomed gauntly against the horizon. «The local hoosegow?»

  «Water storage tank,» Mallory said briefly. «Panayis estimates there's half a million gallons in there — magazine flooding in an emergency. The magazines are directly below.» He pointed to a squat, box-like, concrete structure a little farther on. «The only entrance to the magazine. Locked and guarded.»

  They were approaching the senior officers' quarters now — the commandant had his own flat on the second story, directly overlooking the massive, reinforced ferro-concrete control tower that controlled the two great guns below. Mallory suddenly stopped, picked up a handful of dirt, rubbed it on his face and told Miller to do the same.

  «Disguise,» he explained. «The experts would consider it a bit on the elementary side, but it'll have to do. The lighting's apt to be a bit brighter inside this place.»

  He went up the steps to the officers' quarters at a dead run, crashed through the swing doors with a force that almost took them off their hinges. The sentry at the keyboard looked at him in astonishment, the barrel of his sub-machine-gun lining up on the New Zealander's chest.

  «Put that thing down, you damned idiot!» Mallory snapped furiously. «Where's the commandant? Quickly, you oaf! It's life or death!»

  «Herr — Herr Kominandant?» the sentry stuttered. «He's left — they are all gone, just a minute ago.»

  «What? All gone?» Mallory was staring at him with narrowed, dangerous eyes. «Did you say 'all gone'?» he asked softly.

  «Yes. I — I'm sure they're …» He broke off abruptly as Mallory's eyes shifted to a point behind his shoulder.

  «Then who the hell is that?» Mallory demanded savagely.

  The sentry would have been less than human not to fall for it. Even as he was swinging round to look, the vicious judo cut took him just below the ear. Mallory had smashed open the glass of the keyboard before the unfortunate guard bad bit the floor, swept all the keys — about a dozen in all — off their rings and into his pocket. It took them another twenty seconds to tape the man's mouth and hands and lock him in a convenient cupboard; then they were on their way again, still running.

  One more obstacle to overcome, Mallory thought as they pounded along in the darkness, the last of the triple defences. He did not know how many men would be guarding the locked door to the magazine, and in that moment of fierce exaltation he didn't particularly care. Neither, he felt sure, did Miller. There were no worries now, no taut-nerved tensions or nameless anxieties. Mallory would have been the last man in the world to admit it, or even believe it, but this was what men like Miller and himself had been born for.

  They had their hand-torches out now, the powerful beams swinging in the wild arcs as they plunged along, skirting the massed batteries of A.A. guns. To anyone observing their approach from the front, there could have been nothing more calculated to disarm suspicion than the sight and sound of the two men running towards them without any attempt at concealment, one of them shouting to the other in German, both with lit torches whose beams lifted and fell, lifted and fell as the men's arms windmilled by their sides. But these same torches were deeply hooded, and only a very alert observer indeed would have noticed that the downward arc of the lights never passed backwards beyond the runners' feet.

  Suddenly Mallory saw two shadows detaching themselves from the darker shadow of the magazine entrance, steadied his torch for a brief second to check. He slackened speed.

  «Right!» he said softly. «Here they come — only two of them. One each — get as close as possible first. Quick and quiet — a shout, a shot, and we're finished. And for God's sake don't start clubbing 'em with your torch. There'll be no lights on in that magazine and I'm not going to start crawling around there with a box of bloody matches in my hand!» He transferred his torch to his left hand, pulled out his Navy Colt, reversed it, caught it by the barrel, brought up sharply only inches away from the guards now running to meet them.

  «Are you all right?» Mallory gasped. «Anyone been here? Quickly, man, quickly!»

  «Yes, yes, we're all right.» The man was off guard, apprehensive. «What in the name of God is all that noise—»

  «Those damned English saboteurs!» Mallory swore viciously. «They've killed the guards and they're inside! Are you sure no one's been here? Come, let me see.»

  He pushed his way past the guard, probed his torch at the massive padlock, then straightened his back.

  «Thank heaven for that anyway!» He turned round, let the dazzling beam of his torch catch the man square in the eyes, muttered an apology and switched off the light, the sound of the sharp click lost in the hollow, soggy thud of the heel of his Colt catching the man behind the ear, just below the helmet. The sentry was still on his feet, just beginning to crumple, when Mallory staggered as the second guard reeled into him, staggered, recovered, clouted him with the Colt for good measure, then stiffened in sudden dismay as he heard the vicious, hissing plop of Miller's automatic, twice in rapid succession.

  «What the hell—»

  «Wily birds, boss,» Miller murmured. «Very wily indeed, There was a third character in the shadows at the side. Only way to stop him.» Automatic cocked in his ready hand, he stooped over the man for a moment, then straightened. «Afraid he's been stopped kinda permanent, boss.» There was no expression in his voice.

  «Tie up the others.» Mallory had only half-heard him; he was already busy at the magazine door, trying a succession of keys in the lock. The third key fitted, the lock opened and the heavy steel door gave easily to his touch. He took a last swift look round, but there was no one in sight, no sound but the revving, engine of the last of the trucks clearing the fortress gates, the distant rattle of machine-gun fire. Andrea was doing a magnificent job — if only he didn't overdo it, leave his withdrawal till it was too late… . Mallory turned quickly, switched on his torch, stepped inside the door. Miller would follow when he was ready.

  A vertical steel ladder fixed to the rock led down to the floor of the cave. On either side of the ladder were hollow lift-shafts, unprotected even by a cage, oiled wire ropes glistening in the middle, a polished metal runner at each side of the square to guide and steady the spring-loaded side-wheels of the lift itself. Spartan in their simplicity but wholly adequate, there was no mistaking these for anything but what they were — the shell hoist shafts going down to the magazine.

  Mallory reached the so
lid floor of the cave and swept his torch round through a 180-degree arc. This was the very end of that great cave that opened out beneath the towering overhang of rock that dominated the entire harbour. Not the natural end, he saw after a moment's inspection, but a man-made addition: the volcanic rock round him had been drilled and blasted out. There was nothing here but the two shafts descending into the pitchy darkness and another steel ladder, also leading to the magazine. But the magazine could wait: to check that there were no more guards down here and to ensure an emergency escape route — there were the two vital needs of the moment.

  Quickly Mallory ran along the tunnel, flipping his torch on and off. The Germans were past-masters of booby traps — explosive booby traps — for the protection of important installations, but the chances were that they had none in that tunnel — not with several hundred tons of high explosive stored only feet away.

  The tunnel itself, dripping-damp and duckboard floored, was about seven feet high and even wider, but the central passage was very narrow — most of the space was taken up by the roller conveyors, one on either side, for the great cartridges and shells. Suddenly the conveyors curved away sharply to left and right, the sharplysheering tunnel roof climbed steeply up into the neardarkness of the vaulted dome above, and, almost at his feet, their burnished steel caught in the beam from his torch, twin sets of parallel rails, imbedded in the solid stone and twenty feet apart, stretched forward into the lightened gloom ahead, the great, gaping mouth of the cave. And just before he switched off the torch — searchers returning from the Devil's Playground might easily catch the pin-point of light in the darkness — Mallory had a brief glimpse of the turn-tables that crowned the far end of these shining rails and, crouched massively above, like some nightmare monsters from an ancient and other world, the evil, the sinister silhouettes of the two great guns of Navarone.

  Torch and revolver dangling loosely in his hands, only dimly aware of the curious tingling in the tips of his fingers, Mallory walked slowly forward. Slowly, but not with the stealthy slowness, the razor-drawn expeotancy of a man momentarily anticipating trouble — there was no guard in the cave, Mallory was quite sure of that now — but with that strange, dream-like slowness, the half-belief of a man who has accomplished something he had known all along he could never accomplish, with the slowness of a man at last face to face with a feared but long-sought enemy. I'm here at last, Mallory said to himself over and over again, I'm here at last, I've made it, and these are the guns of Navarone: these are the guns I came to destroy, the guns of Navarone, and I have come at last. But somehow he couldn't quite believe it… .

  Slowly still Mallory approached the guns, walked half-way round the perimeter of the turn-table of the gun on the left, examined it as well as he could in the gloom. He was staggered by the sheer size of it, the tremendous girth and reach of the barrel that stretched far out into the night. He told himself that the experts thought it was only a nine-inch crunch gun, that the crowding confines of the cave were bound to exaggerate its size. He told himself these things, discounted them: twelve-inch bore if an inch, that gun was the biggest thing he had ever seen. Big? Heavens above, it was gigantic! The fools, the blind, crazy fools who had sent the Sybaris out against these …

  The train of thought was lost, abruptly. Mallory stood quite still, one hand resting against the massive gun carrIage, and tried to recall the sound that had jerked him back to the present. Immobile, he listened for it again, eyes closed the better to hear, but the sound did not come again, and suddenly he knew that it was no sound at all but the absence of sound that had cut through his thoughts, triggered off some unconscious warning bell. The night was suddenly very silent, very stifi: down in the heart of the town the guns had stopped firing.

  Mallory swore softly to himself. He had already spent far too much time daydreaming, and time was running short. It must be running short — Andrea had withdrawn, it was only a matter of time until the Germans discovered that they had been duped. And then they would come running — and there was no doubt where they would come. Swiftly Mallory shrugged out of his rucksack, pulled out the hundred-foot wire-cored rope coiled inside. Their emergency escape route — whatever else he did he must make sure of that.

  The rope looped round his arm, he moved forward cautiously, seeking a belay but had only taken three steps when his right knee-cap struck something hard and unyielding. He checked the exclamation of pain, investigated the obstacle with his free hand, realised immediately what it was — an iron railing stretched waist-high across the mouth of the cave. Of course! There had been bound to be something like this, some barrier to prevent people from falling over the edge, especially in the darkness of the night. He hadn't been able to pick it up with the binoculars from the carob grove that afternoon-- close though it was to the entrance, it had been concealed in the gloom of the cave. But he should have thought of it.

  Quickly Mallory felt his way along to the left, to the very end of the railing, crossed it, tied the rope securely to the base of the vertical stanchion next to the wall, paid out the rope as he moved gingerly to the lip of the cave mouth. And then, almost at once, he was there and there was nothing below his probing foot but a hundred and twenty feet of sheer drop to the land-locked harbour of Navarone.

  Away to his right was a dark, formless blur lying on the water, a blur that might have been Cape Demirci: straight ahead, across the darkly velvet sheen of the Maidos Straits, he could see the twinkle of far-away lights — it was a measure of the enemy's confidence that they permitted these lights at all, or, more likely, these fisher cottages were useful as a bearing marker for the guns at night: and to the left, surprisingly near, barely thirty feet away in a horizontal plane, but far below the level where he was standing, he could see the jutting end of the outside wall of the fortress where it abutted on the cliff, the roofs of the houses on the west side of the square beyond that, and, beyond that again, the town itself curving sharply downwards and outwards, to the south first, then to the west, close-girdling and matching the curve of the crescent harbour. Above-but there was nothing to be seen above, that fantastic overhang above blotted out more than half the sky; and below, the darkness was equally impenetrable, the surface of the harbour inky and black as night. There were vessels down there, he knew, Grecian caiques and German launches, but they might have been a thousand miles away for any sign he could see of them.

  The brief, all encompassing glance had taken barely ten seconds, but Mallory waited no longer. Swiftly he bent down, tied a double bowline in the end of the rope and left it lying on the edge. In an emergency they could kick it out into the darkness. It would be thirty feet short of the water, he estimated — enough to clear any launch or masted caique that might be moving about the harbour. They could drop the rest of the way, maybe a bone-breaking fall on to the deck of a ship, but they would have to risk it. Mallory took one last look down into the Stygian blackness and shivered; he hoped to God that he and Miller wouldn't have to take that way out.

  Dusty Miller was kneeling on the duckboards by the top of the ladder leading down to the magazine as Mallory came running back up the tunnel, his hands busy with wires, fuses, detonators and explosives. He straightened up as Mallory approached.

  «I reckon this stuff should keep 'em happy, boss.» He set the hands of the clockwork fuse, listened appreciatively to the barely audible hum, then eased himself down the ladder. «In here among the top two rows of cartridges, I thought.»

  «Wherever you say,» Mallory acquiesced. «Only don't make it too obvious — or too difficult to find. Sure there's no chance of them suspecting that we knew the clock and fuses were dud?»

  «None in the world,» Miller said confidently. «When they find this here contraption they'll knock holes in each others' backs congratulatin' themselves-and they'll never look any further.»

  «Fair enough.» Mallory was satisfied. «Lock the door up top?»

  «Certainly I locked the door!» Miller looked at him reproachfully. «
Boss, sometimes I think … »

  But Mallory never heard what he thought. A metallic, reverberating clangour echoed cavernously through the cave and magazine, blotting out Miller's words, then died away over the harbour. Again the sound came, while the two men stared bleakly at one another, then again and again, then escaped for a moment of time.

  «Company,» Mallory murmured. «Complete with sledge-hammers. Dear God, I only hope that door holds.» He was already running along the passage towards the guns, Miller close behind him.

  «Company!» Miller was shaking his head as he ran. «How in the hell did they get here so soon?»

  «Our late lamented little pal,» Mallory said savagely. He vaulted over the railing, edged back to the mouth of the cave. «And we were suckers enough to believe he told the whole truth. But he never told us that opening that door up top triggered off an alarm bell in the guardroom.»

  CHAPTER 16

  Wednesday Night

  21:15 — 23:45

  Smoothly, skillfully, Miller paid out the wire-cored rope — double-turned round the top rail — as Mallory sank out of sight into the darkness. Fifty feet had gone, he estimated, fifty-five, sixty, then there came the awaited sharp double tug on the signal cord looped round his wrist and he at once checked the rope, stooped and tied it securely to the foot of the stanchion.

  And then he had straightened again, belayed himself to the rail with the rope's end, leaned far out over the edge, caught hold of the rope with both bands as far down as he could reach and began, slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, then with gradually increasing momentum, to swing man and rope from side to side, pendulum-wise. As the wings of the pendulum grew wider, the rope started to twist and jump in his hands, and Miller knew that Mallory must be striking outcrops of rock, spinning uncontrollably as he bounced off them. But Miller knew that he couldn't stop now, the clanging of the sledges behind him was almost continuous: he only stooped the lower over the rope, flung all the strength of his sinewy arms and shoulders into the effort of bringing Mallory nearer and still nearer to the rope that Brown would by now have thrown down from the balcony of the house where they had left him.