‘Leave you, eh?’ Mallory interrupted. ‘Leave you to die of the cold or be captured by the Germans. Forget it, laddie. We can look after you – and these ruddy guns – at the same time.’
‘But, sir –’
‘You insult us, Lootenant.’ Miller sniffed again. ‘Our feelings are hurt. Besides, as a professional man I gotta see my case through to convalescence, and if you think I’m goin’ to do that in any gawddamned dripping German dungeon, you can –’
‘Enough!’ Mallory held up his hand. ‘The subject is closed!’ He saw the stain high up on the thin cheeks, the glad light that touched the dulled eyes, and felt the self-loathing and the shame well up inside him, shame for the gratitude of a sick man who did not know that their concern stemmed not from solicitude but from fear that he might betray them … Mallory bent forward and began to unlace his high jackboots. He spoke without looking up.
‘Dusty.’
‘Yeah?’
‘When you’re finishing boasting about your medical prowess, maybe you’d care to use some of it. Come and have a look at these feet of mine, will you? I’m afraid the sentry’s boots haven’t done them a great deal of good.’
Fifteen painful minutes later Miller snipped off the rough edges of the adhesive bandage that bound Mallory’s right foot, straightened up stiffly and contemplated his handiwork with pride.
‘Beautiful, Miller, beautiful,’ he murmured complacently. ‘Not even in Johns Hopkins in the city of Baltimore …’ He broke off suddenly, frowned down at the thickly bandaged feet and coughed apologetically. ‘A small point has just occurred to me, boss.’
‘I thought it might eventually,’ Mallory said grimly. ‘Just how do you propose to get my feet into these damned boots again?’ He shivered involuntarily as he pulled on a pair of thick woollen socks, matted and sodden with melted snow, picked up the German sentry’s boots, held them at arm’s length and examined them in disgust. ‘Sevens, at the most – and a darned small sevens at that!’
‘Nines,’ Stevens said laconically. He handed over his own jackboots, one of them slit neatly down the sides where Andrea had cut it open. ‘You can fix that tear easily enough, and they’re no damned good to me now. No arguments, sir, please.’ He began to laugh softly, broke off in a sharply indrawn hiss of pain as the movement jarred the broken bones, took a couple of deep, quivering breaths, then smiled whitely. ‘My first – and probably my last – contribution to the expedition. What sort of medal do you reckon they’ll give me for that, sir?’
Mallory took the boots, looked at Stevens a long moment in silence, then turned as the tarpaulin was pushed aside. Brown stumbled in, lowered the transmitter and telescopic aerial to the floor of the cave and pulled out a tin of cigarettes. They slipped from his frozen fingers, fell into the icy mud at his feet, became brown and sodden on the instant. He swore briefly, and without enthusiasm, beat his numbed hands across his chest, gave it up and sat down heavily on a convenient boulder. He looked tired and cold and thoroughly miserable.
Mallory lit a cigarette and passed it across to him.
‘How did it go, Casey? Manage to raise them at all?’
‘They managed to raise me – more or less. Reception was lousy.’ Brown drew the grateful tobacco smoke deep down into his lungs. ‘And I couldn’t get through at all. Must be that damned great hill to the south there.’
‘Probably,’ Mallory nodded. ‘And what news from our friends in Cairo? Exhorting us to greater efforts? Telling us to get on with the job?’
‘No news at all. Too damn worried about the silence at this end. Said that from now on they were going to come through every four hours, acknowledgment or no. Repeated that about ten times, then signed off.’
‘That’ll be a great help,’ Miller said acidly. ‘Nice to know they’re on our side. Nothin’ like moral support.’ He jerked his thumb towards the mouth of the cave. ‘Reckon them bloodhounds would be scared to death if they knew … Did you take a gander at them before you came in?’
‘I didn’t have to,’ Brown said morosely. ‘I could hear them – sounded like the officer in charge shouting directions.’ Mechanically, almost, he picked up his automatic rifle, eased the clip in the magazine. ‘Must be less than a mile away now.’
The search party, more closely bunched by this time, was less than a mile, was barely half a mile distant from the cave when the Oberleutnant in charge saw that the right wing of his line, on the steeper slopes to the south, was lagging behind once more. Impatiently he lifted his whistle to his mouth for the three sharp peremptory blasts that would bring his weary men stumbling into line again. Twice the whistle shrilled out its imperative urgency, the piercing notes echoing flatly along the snowbound slopes and dying away in the valley below: but the third wheep died at birth, caught up again and tailed off in a wailing, eldritch diminuendo that merged with dreadful harmony into a long, bubbling scream of agony. For two or three seconds the Oberleutnant stood motionless in his tracks, his face shocked and contorted: then he jackknifed violently forward and pitched down into the crusted snow. The burly sergeant beside him stared down at the fallen officer, looked up in sudden horrified understanding, opened his mouth to shout, sighed and toppled wearily over the body at his feet, the evil, whip-lash crack of the Mauser in his ears as he died.
High up on the western slopes of Mount Kostos, wedged in the V between two great boulders, Andrea gazed down the darkening mountainside over the depressed telescopic sights of his rifle and pumped another three rounds into the wavering, disorganised line of searchers. His face was quite still, as immobile as the eyelids that never flickered to the regular crashing of his Mauser, and drained of all feeling. Even his eyes reflected the face, eyes neither hard nor pitiless, but simply empty and almost frighteningly remote, a remoteness that mirrored his mind, a mind armoured for the moment against all thought and sensation, for Andrea knew that he must not think about this thing. To kill, to take the life of his fellows, that was the supreme evil, for life was a gift that it was not his to take away. Not even in fair fight. And this was murder.
Slowly Andrea lowered the Mauser, peered through the drifting gun-smoke that hung heavily in the frosty evening air. The enemy had vanished, completely, rolled behind scattered boulders or burrowed frantically into the blanketing anonymity of the snow. But they were still there, still potentially as dangerous as ever. Andrea knew that they would recover fast from the death of their officer – there were no finer, no more tenacious fighters in Europe than the ski-troops of the Jaeger mountain battalion – and would come after him, catch him and kill him if humanly possible. That was why Andrea’s first case had been to kill their officer – he might not have come after him, might have stopped to puzzle out the reason for this unprovoked flank attack.
Andrea ducked low in reflex instinct as a sudden burst of automatic fire whined in murderous ricochet off the boulders before him. He had expected this. It was the old classic infantry attack pattern – advance under covering fire, drop, cover your mate and come again. Swiftly Andrea rammed home another charge into the magazine of his Mauser, dropped flat on his face and inched his way along behind the low line of broken rock that extended fifteen or twenty yards to his right – he had chosen his ambush point with care – and then petered out. At the far end he pulled his snow hood down to the level of his brows and edged a wary eye round the corner of the rock.
Another heavy burst of automatic fire smashed into the boulders he had just left, and half a dozen men – three from either end of the line – broke cover, scurried along the slope in a stumbling, crouching run, then pitched forward into the snow again. Along the slope – the two parties had run in opposite directions. Andrea lowered his head and rubbed the back of a massive hand across the stubbled grizzle of his chin. Awkward, damned awkward. No frontal attack for the foxes of the WGB. They were extending their lines on either side, the points hooking around in a great, encircling half-moon. Bad enough for himself, but he could have coped with that – a care
fully reconnoitred escape gully wound up the slope behind him. But he hadn’t foreseen what was obviously going to happen: the curving crescent of line to the west was going to sweep across the rock-shelter where the others lay hidden.
Andrea twisted over on his back and looked up at the evening sky. It was darkening by the moment, darkening with the gloom of coming snow, and daylight was beginning to fail. He twisted again and looked across the great swelling shoulder of Mount Kostos, looked at the few scattered rocks and shallow depressions that barely dimpled the smooth convexity of the slope. He took a second quick look round the rock as the rifles of the WGB opened up once more, saw the same encircling manoeuvre being executed again, and waited no longer. Firing blindly downhill, he half-rose to his feet and flung himself out into the open, finger squeezing on the trigger, feet driving desperately into the frozen snow as he launched himself towards the nearest rock-cover, forty yards away if an inch. Thirty-five yards to go, thirty, twenty and still not a shot fired, a slip, a stumble on the sliding scree, a catlike recovery, ten yards, still miraculously immune, and then he had dived into shelter to land on chest and stomach with a sickening impact that struck cruelly into his ribs and emptied his lungs with an explosive gasp.
Fighting for breath, he struck the magazine cover, rammed home another charge, risked a quick peep over the top of the rock and catapulted himself to his feet again, all inside ten seconds. The Mauser held across his body opened up again, firing downhill at vicious random, for Andrea had eyes only for the smoothly-treacherous ground at his feet, for the scree-lined depression so impossibly far ahead. And then the Mauser was empty, useless in his hand, and every gun far below had opened up, the shells whistling above his head or blinding him with spurting gouts of snow as they ricocheted off the solid rock. But twilight was touching the hills, Andrea was only a blur, a swiftly-flitting blur against a ghostly background, and uphill accuracy was notoriously difficult at any time. Even so, the massed fire from below was steadying and converging, and Andrea waited no longer. Unseen hands plucking wickedly at the flying tails of his snow-smock, he flung himself almost horizontally forward and slid the last ten feet face down into the waiting depression.
Stretched full length on his back in the hollow, Andrea fished out a steel mirror from his breast pocket and held it gingerly above his head. At first he could see nothing, for the darkness was deeper below and the mirror misted from the warmth of his body. And then the film vanished in the chill mountain air and he could see two, three and then half a dozen men breaking cover, heading at a clumsy run straight up the face of the hill – and two of them had come from the extreme right of the line. Andrea lowered the mirror and relaxed with a long sigh of relief, eyes crinkling in a smile. He looked up at the sky, blinked as the first feathery flakes of falling snow melted on his eyelids and smiled again. Almost lazily he brought out another charger for the Mauser, fed more shells into the magazine.
‘Boss?’ Miller’s voice was plaintive.
‘Yes? What is it?’ Mallory brushed some snow off his face and the collar of his smock and peered into the white darkness ahead.
‘Boss, when you were in school did you ever read any stories about folks gettin’ lost in a snowstorm and wanderin’ round and round in circles for days?’
‘We had exactly the same book in Queenstown,’ Mallory conceded.
‘Wanderin’ round and round until they died?’ Miller persisted.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ Mallory said impatiently. His feet, even in Stevens’s roomy boots, hurt abominably. ‘How can we be wandering in circles if we’re going downhill all the time? What do you think we’re on – a bloody spiral staircase?’
Miller walked on in hurt silence, Mallory beside him, both men ankle-deep in the wet, clinging snow that had been falling so silently, so persistently, for the past three hours since Andrea had drawn off the Jaeger search party. Even in midwinter in the White Mountains in Crete Mallory could recall no snowfall so heavy and continuous. So much for the Isles of Greece and the eternal sunshine that gilds them yet, he thought bitterly. He hadn’t reckoned on this when he’d planned on going down to Margaritha for food and fuel, but even so it wouldn’t have made any difference to his decision. Although in less pain now, Stevens was becoming steadily weaker, and the need was desperate.
With moon and stars blanketed by the heavy snow-clouds – visibility, indeed, was hardly more than ten feet in any direction – the loss of their compasses had assumed a crippling importance. He didn’t doubt his ability to find the village – it was simply a matter of walking downhill till they came to the stream that ran through the valley, then following that north till they came to Margaritha – but if the snow didn’t let up their chances of locating that tiny cave again in the vast sweep of the hillsides …
Mallory smothered an exclamation as Miller’s hand closed round his upper arm, dragged him down to his knees in the snow. Even in that moment of unknown danger he could feel a slow stirring of anger against himself, for his attention had been wandering along with his thoughts … He lifted his hand as vizor against the snow, peered out narrowly through the wet, velvety curtain of white that swirled and eddied out of the darkness before him. Suddenly he had it – a dark, squat shape only feet away. They had all but walked straight into it.
‘It’s the hut,’ he said softly in Miller’s ear. He had seen it early in the afternoon, half-way between their cave and Margaritha, and almost in line with both. He was conscious of relief, an increase in confidence: they would be in the village in less than half an hour. ‘Elementary navigation, my dear Corporal,’ he murmured. ‘Lost and wandering in circles, my foot! Just put your faith …’
He broke off as Miller’s fingers dug viciously into his arm, as Miller’s head came close to his own.
‘I heard voices, boss.’ The words were a mere breath of sound.
‘Are you sure?’ Miller’s silenced gun, Mallory noticed, was still in his pocket.
Miller hesitated.
‘Dammit to hell, boss, I’m sure of nothin’,’ he whispered irritably. ‘I’ve been imaginin’ every damn thing possible in the past hour!’ He pulled the snow-hood off his head, the better to listen, bent forward for a few seconds then sank back again. ‘Anyway, I’m sure I thought I heard somethin’.’
‘Come on. Let’s take a look-see.’ Mallory was on his feet again. ‘I think you’re mistaken. Can’t be the Jaeger boys – they were halfway back across Mount Kostos when we saw them last. And the shepherds only use these places in the summer months.’ He slipped the safety catch of his Colt .455, walked slowly, at a half-crouch, towards the nearest wall of the hut, Miller at his shoulder.
They reached the hut, put their ears against the frail, tar-paper walls. Ten seconds passed, twenty, half a minute, then Mallory relaxed.
‘Nobody at home. Or if they are, they’re keeping mighty quiet. But no chances, Dusty. You go that way, I’ll go this. Meet at the door – that’ll be on the opposite side, facing into the valley … Walk wide at the corners – never fails to baffle the unwary.’
A minute later both men were inside the hut, the door shut behind them. The hooded beam of Mallory’s torch probed into every corner of the ramshackle cabin. It was quite empty – an earthen floor, a rough wooden bunk, a dilapidated stove with a rusty lantern standing on it, and that was all. No table, no chair, no chimney, not even a window.
Mallory walked over to the stove, picked up the lamp and sniffed it.
‘Hasn’t been used for weeks. Still full of kerosene, though. Very useful in that damn dungeon up there – if we can ever find the place …’
He froze into a sudden listening immobility, eyes unfocused and head cocked slightly to one side. Gently, ever so gently, he set the lamp down, walked leisurely across to Miller.
‘Remind me to apologise at some future date,’ he murmured. ‘We have company. Give me your gun and keep talking.’
‘Castelrosso again,’ Miller complained loudly. He hadn’t even raised
an eyebrow. ‘This is downright monotonous. A Chinaman – I’ll bet it’s a Chinaman this time.’ But he was already talking to himself.
The silenced automatic balanced at his waist, Mallory walked noiselessly round the hut, four feet out from the walls. He had passed two corners, was just rounding the third when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a vague figure behind him rising up swiftly from the ground and lunging out with upraised arm. Mallory stepped back quickly under the blow, spun round, swung his balled fist viciously and backwards into the stomach of his attacker. There was a sudden explosive gasp of agony as the man doubled up, moaned and crumpled silently to the ground. Barely in time Mallory arrested the downward, clubbing swipe of his reversed automatic.
Gun reversed again, the butt settled securely in his palm, Mallory stared down unblinkingly at the huddled figure, at the primitive wooden baton still clutched in the gloved right hand, at the unmilitary looking knapsack strapped to his back. He kept his gun lined up on the fallen body, waiting: this had been just too easy, too suspicious. Thirty seconds passed and still the figure on the ground hadn’t stirred. Mallory took a short step forward and carefully, deliberately and none too gently kicked the man on the outside of the right knee. It was an old trick, and he’d never known it to fail – the pain was brief, but agonising. But there was no movement, no sound at all.
Quickly Mallory stooped, hooked his free hand round the knapsack shoulder straps, straightened and made for the door, half-carrying, half-dragging his captive. The man was no weight at all. With a proportionately much heavier garrison than ever in Crete, there would be that much less food for the islanders, Mallory mused compassionately. There would be very little indeed. He wished he hadn’t hit him so hard.
Miller met him at the open door, stooped wordlessly, caught the unconscious man by the ankles and helped Mallory dump him unceremoniously on the bunk in the far corner of the hut.
The Complete Navarone Page 15