‘See, boss? Just like I said – nothin’ like it.’ He shook his head admiringly. ‘Wide awake in an instant, as the literary boys would say. Never saw a shock and concussion victim recover so fast!’
‘What the hell are you trying to do?’ Mallory demanded. The fire had died down in his throat, and he could breathe again. ‘Poison me?’ Angrily he shook his head, fighting off the pounding ache, the fog that still swirled round the fringes of his mind. ‘Bloody fine physician you are! Shock, you say, yet the first thing you do is administer a dose of spirits –’
‘Take your pick,’ Miller interrupted grimly. ‘Either that or a damned sight bigger shock in about fifteen minutes or so when brother Jerry gets here.’
‘But they’ve gone away. I can’t hear the Stukas any more.’
‘This lot’s comin’ up from the town,’ Miller said morosely. ‘Louki’s just reported them. Half a dozen armoured cars and a couple of trucks with field guns the length of a telegraph pole.’
‘I see.’ Mallory twisted round, saw a gleam of light at a bend in the wall. A cave – a tunnel, almost. Little Cyprus, Louki had said some of the older people had called it – the Devil’s Playground was riddled with a honeycomb of caves. He grinned wryly at the memory of his momentary panic when he thought his eyes had gone and turned again to Miller. ‘Trouble again, Dusty, nothing but trouble. Thanks for bringing me round.’
‘Had to,’ Miller said briefly. ‘I guess we couldn’t have carried you very far, boss.’
Mallory nodded. ‘Not just the flattest of country hereabouts.’
‘There’s that, too,’ Miller agreed. ‘What I really meant is that there’s hardly anyone left to carry you. Casey Brown and Panayis have both been hurt, boss.’
‘What! Both of them?’ Mallory screwed his eyes shut, shook his head in slow anger. ‘My God, Dusty, I’d forgotten all about the bomb – the bombs.’ He reached out his hand, caught Miller by the arm. ‘How – how bad are they?’ There was so little time left, so much to do.
‘How bad?’ Miller shook out a pack of cigarettes and offered one to Mallory. ‘Not bad at all – if we could get them into hospital. But hellish painful and cripplin’ if they gotta start hikin’ up and down those gawddamned ravines hereabouts. First time I’ve seen canyon floors more nearly vertical than the walls themselves.’
‘You still haven’t told me –’
‘Sorry, boss, sorry. Shrapnel wounds, both of them, in exactly the same place – left thigh, just above the knee. No bones gone, no tendons cut. I’ve just finished tying up Casey’s leg – it’s a pretty wicked-lookin’ gash. He’s gonna know all about it when he starts walkin’.’
‘And Panayis?’
‘Fixed his own leg,’ Miller said briefly. ‘A queer character. Wouldn’t even let me look at it, far less bandage it. I reckon he’d have knifed me if I’d tried.’
‘Better to leave him alone anyway,’ Mallory advised. ‘Some of these islanders have strange taboos and superstitions. Just as long as he’s alive. Though I still don’t see how the hell he managed to get here.’
‘He was the first to leave,’ Miller explained. ‘Along with Casey. You must have missed him in the smoke. They were climbin’ together when they got hit.’
‘And how did I get here?’
‘No prizes for the first correct answer.’ Miller jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the huge form that blocked half the width of the cave. ‘Junior here did his St Bernard act once again. I wanted to go with him, but he wasn’t keen. Said he reckoned it would be difficult to carry both of us up the hill. My feelin’s were hurt considerable.’ Miller sighed. ‘I guess I just wasn’t born to be a hero, that’s all.’
Mallory smiled. ‘Thanks again, Andrea.’
‘Thanks!’ Miller was indignant. ‘A guy saves your life and all you can say is “thanks”!’
‘After the first dozen times or so you run out of suitable speeches,’ Mallory said dryly. ‘How’s Stevens?’
‘Breathin’.’
Mallory nodded forward towards the source of light, wrinkled his nose. ‘Just round the corner, isn’t he?’
‘Yeah, it’s pretty grim,’ Miller admitted. ‘The gangrene’s spread up beyond the knee.’
Mallory rose groggily to his feet, picked up his gun. ‘How is he really, Dusty?’
‘He’s dead, but he just won’t die. He’ll be gone by sundown. Gawd only knows what’s kept him goin’ so far.’
‘It may sound presumptuous,’ Mallory murmured; ‘but I think I know too.’
‘The first-class medical attention?’ Miller said hopefully.
‘Looks that way, doesn’t it?’ Mallory smiled down at the still kneeling Miller. ‘But that wasn’t what I meant at all. Come, gentlemen, we have some business to attend to.’
‘Me, all I’m good for is blowin’ up bridges and droppin’ a handful of sand in engine bearin’s,’ Miller announced. ‘Strategy and tactics are far beyond my simple mind. But I still think those characters down there are pickin’ a very stupid way of committin’ suicide. It would be a damned sight easier for all concerned if they just shot themselves.’
‘I’m inclined to agree with you.’ Mallory settled himself more firmly behind the jumbled rocks in the mouth of the ravine that opened on the charred and smoking remains of the carob grove directly below and took another look at the Alpenkorps troops advancing in extended order up the steep, shelterless slope. ‘They’re no children at this game. I bet they don’t like it one little bit, either.’
‘Then why the hell are they doin’ it, boss?’
‘No option, probably. First off, this place can only be attacked frontally.’ Mallory smiled down at the little Greek lying between himself and Andrea. ‘Louki here chose the place well. It would require a long detour to attack from the rear – and it would take them a week to advance through that devil’s scrap-heap behind us. Secondly, it’ll be sunset in a couple of hours, and they know they haven’t a hope of getting us after it’s dark. And finally – and I think this is more important than the other two reasons put together – it’s a hundred to one that the commandant in the town is being pretty severely prodded by his High Command. There’s too much at stake, even in the one in a thousand chance of us getting at the guns. They can’t afford to have Kheros evacuated under their noses, to lose –’
‘Why not?’ Miller interrupted. He gestured largely with his hands. ‘Just a lot of useless rocks –’
‘They can’t afford to lose face with the Turks,’ Mallory went on patiently. ‘The strategic importance of these islands in the Sporades is negligible, but their political importance is tremendous. Adolph badly needs another ally in these parts. So he flies in Alpenkorps troops by the thousand and the Stukas by the hundred, the best he has – and he needs them desperately on the Italian front. But you’ve got to convince your potential ally that you’re a pretty safe bet before you can persuade him to give up his nice, safe seat on the fence and jump down on your side.’
‘Very interestin’,’ Miller observed. ‘So?’
‘So the Germans are going to have no compunction about thirty or forty of their best troops being cut into little pieces. It’s no trouble at all when you’re sitting behind a desk a thousand miles away … Let ’em come another hundred yards or so closer. Louki and I will start from the middle and work out: you and Andrea start from the outside.’
‘I don’t like it, boss,’ Miller complained.
‘Don’t think that I do either,’ Mallory said quietly. ‘Slaughtering men forced to do a suicidal job like this is not my idea of fun – or even of war. But if we don’t get them, they get us.’ He broke off and pointed across the burnished sea to where Kheros lay peacefully on the hazed horizon, striking golden glints off the western sun. ‘What do you think they would have us do, Dusty?’
‘I know, I know, boss.’ Miller stirred uncomfortably. ‘Don’t rub it in.’ He pulled his woollen cap low over his forehead and stared bleakly down the slope. ‘How soon do th
e mass executions begin?’
‘Another hundred yards, I said.’ Mallory looked down the slope again towards the coast road and grinned suddenly, glad to change the topic. ‘Never saw telegraph poles shrink so suddenly before, Dusty.’
Miller studied the guns drawn up on the roads behind the two trucks and cleared his throat.
‘I was only sayin’ what Louki told me,’ he said defensively.
‘What Louki told you!’ The little Greek was indignant. ‘Before God, Major, the Americano is full of lies!’
‘Ah, well, mebbe I was mistaken,’ Miller said magnanimously. He squinted again at the guns, forehead lined in puzzlement. ‘That first one’s a mortar, I reckon. But what in the universe that other weird-looking contraption can be –’
‘Also a mortar,’ Mallory explained. ‘A five-barrelled job, and very nasty. The Nebelwerfer or Moanin’ Minnie. Howls like all the lost souls in hell. Guaranteed to turn the knees to jelly, especially after nightfall – but it’s still the other one you have to watch. A six-inch mortar, almost certainly using fragmentation bombs – you use a brush and shovel for clearing up afterwards.’
That’s right,’ Miller growled. ‘Cheer us all up.’ But he was grateful to the New Zealander for trying to take their minds off what they had to do. ‘Why don’t they use them?’
‘They will,’ Mallory assured him. ‘Just as soon as we fire and they find out where we are.’
‘Gawd help us,’ Miller muttered. ‘Fragmentation bombs, you said!’ He lapsed into gloomy silence.
‘Any second now,’ Mallory said softly. ‘I only hope that our friend Turzig isn’t among this lot.’ He reached out for his field-glasses but stopped in surprise as Andrea leaned across Louki and caught him by the wrist before he could line the binoculars. ‘What’s the matter, Andrea?’
‘I would not be using these, my Captain. They have betrayed us once already. I have been thinking, and it can be nothing else. The sunlight reflecting from the lenses …’
Mallory stared at him, slowly released his grip on the glasses, nodded several times in succession.
‘Of course, of course! I had been wondering … Someone has been careless. There was no other way, there could have been no other way. It would only require a single flash to tip them off.’ He paused, remembering, then grinned wryly. ‘It could have been myself. All this started just after I had been on watch – and Panayis didn’t have the glasses.’ He shook his head in mortification. ‘It must have been me, Andrea.’
‘I do not believe it,’ Andrea said flatly. ‘You couldn’t make a mistake like that, my Captain.’
‘Not only could, but did, I’m afraid. But we’ll worry about that afterwards.’ The middle of the ragged line of advancing soldiers, slipping and stumbling on the treacherous scree, had almost reached the lower limits of the blackened, stunted remains of the copse. ‘They’ve come far enough. I’ll take the white helmet in the middle, Louki.’ Even as he spoke he could hear the soft scrape as the three others slid their automatic barrels across and between the protective rocks in front of them, could feel the wave of revulsion that washed through his mind. But his voice was steady enough as he spoke, relaxed and almost casual. ‘Right. Let them have it now!’
His last words were caught up and drowned in the tearing, rapid-fire crash of the automatic carbines. With four machine-guns in their hands – two Brens and two 9 mm Schmeissers – it was no war, as he had said, but sheer, pitiful massacre, with the defenceless figures on the slope below, figures still stunned and uncomprehending, jerking, spinning round and collapsing like marionettes in the hands of a mad puppeteer, some to lie where they fell, others to roll down the steep slope, legs and arms flailing in the grotesque disjointedness of death. Only a couple stood still where they had been hit, vacant surprise mirrored in their lifeless faces, then slipped down tiredly to the stony ground at their feet. Almost three seconds had passed before the handful of those who still lived – about a quarter of the way in from either end of the line where the converging streams of fire had not yet met – realised what was happening and flung themselves desperately to the ground in search of the cover that didn’t exist.
The phrenetic stammering of the machine-guns stopped abruptly and in unison, the sound sheared off as by a guillotine. The sudden silence was curiously oppressive, louder, more obtrusive than the clamour that had gone before. The gravelly earth beneath his elbows grated harshly as Mallory shifted his weight slightly, looked at the two men to his right, Andrea with his impassive face empty of all expression, Louki with the sheen of tears in his eyes. Then he became aware of the low murmuring to his left, shifted round again. Bitter-mouthed, savage, the American was swearing softly and continuously, oblivious to the pain as he pounded his fist time and again into the sharp-edged gravel before him.
‘Just one more, Gawd.’ The quiet voice was almost a prayer. ‘That’s all I ask. Just one more.’
Mallory touched his arm. ‘What is it, Dusty?’
Miller looked round at him, eyes cold and still and empty of all recognition, then he blinked several times and grinned, a cut and bruised hand automatically reaching for his cigarettes.
‘Jus’ daydreamin’, boss,’ he said easily. ‘Jus’ daydreamin’.’ He shook out his pack of cigarettes. ‘Have one?’
‘That inhuman bastard that sent those poor devils up this hill,’ Mallory said quietly. ‘Make a wonderful picture seen over the sights of your rifle, wouldn’t he?’
Abruptly Miller’s smile vanished and he nodded.
‘It would be all of that.’ He risked a quick peep round one of the boulders, eased himself back again. ‘Eight, mebbe ten of them still down there, boss,’ he reported. ‘The poor bastards are like ostriches – trying to take cover behind stones the size of an orange … We leave them be?’
‘We leave them be!’ Mallory echoed emphatically. The thought of any more slaughter made him feel almost physically sick. ‘They won’t try again.’ He broke off suddenly, flattened himself in reflex instinct as a burst of machine-gun bullets struck the steep-walled rock above their heads and whined up the gorge in vicious ricochet.
‘Won’t try again, huh?’ Miller was already sliding his gun around the rock in front of him when Mallory caught his arm and pulled him back.
‘Not them? Listen!’ Another burst of fire, then another, and now they could hear the savage chatter of the machine-gun, a chatter rhythmically interrupted by a weird, half-human sighing as its belt passed through the breech. Mallory could feel the prickling of the hairs on the nape of his neck.
‘A Spandau. Once you’ve heard a Spandau you can never forget it. Leave it alone – it’s probably fixed on the back of one of the trucks and can’t do us any harm … I’m more worried about those damned mortars down there.’
‘I’m not,’ Miller said promptly. ‘They’re not firing at us.’
‘That’s why I’m worried … What do you think, Andrea.’
‘The same as you, my Captain. They are waiting. This Devil’s Playground, as Louki calls it, is a madman’s maze, and they can only fire as blind men –’
‘They won’t be waiting much longer,’ Mallory interrupted grimly. He pointed to the north. ‘Here come their eyes.’
At first only specks above the promontory of Cape Demirci, the planes were soon recognisable for what they were, droning in slowly over the Aegean at about fifteen hundred feet. Mallory looked at them in astonishment, then turned to Andrea.
‘Am I seeing things, Andrea?’ He gestured at the first of the two planes, a high-winged little monoplane fighter. ‘That can’t be a PZL?’
‘It can be and it is,’ Andrea murmured. ‘An old Polish plane we had before the war,’ he explained to Miller. ‘And the other is an old Belgian plane – Breguets, we called them.’ Andrea shaded his eyes to look again at the two planes, now almost directly overhead. ‘I thought they had all been lost during the invasion.’
‘Me, too,’ Mallory said. ‘Must have patched up some bits and pi
eces. Ah, they’ve seen us – beginning to circle. But why on earth they use those obsolete death traps –’
‘I don’t know and I don’t care,’ Miller said rapidly. He had just taken a quick look round the boulder in front of him. ‘Those damned guns down there are just linin’ up on us, and muzzle-on they look a considerable sight bigger than telegraph poles. Fragmentation bombs, you said! Come on, boss, let’s get the hell outa here!’
Thus the pattern was set for the remainder of that brief November afternoon, for the grim game of tip-and-run, hide-and-seek among the ravines and shattered rocks of the Devil’s Playground. The planes held the key to the game, cruised high overhead observing every move of the hunted group below, relaying the information to the guns on the coast road and the company of Alpenkorps that had moved up through the ravine above the carob grove soon after the planes reported that the positions there had been abandoned. The two ancient planes were soon replaced by a couple of modern Henschels – Andrea said that the PZL couldn’t remain airborne for more than an hour anyway.
Mallory was between the devil and the deep sea. Inaccurate though the mortars were, some of the deadly fragmentation bombs found their way into the deep ravines where they took temporary shelter, the blast of metal lethal in the confined space between the sheering walls. Occasionally they came so close that Mallory was forced to take refuge in some of the deep caves that honeycombed the walls of the canyons. In these they were safe enough, but the safety was an illusion that could lead only to ultimate defeat and capture; in the lulls, the Alpenkorps, whom they had fought off in a series of brief, skirmishing rearguard actions during the afternoon, could approach closely enough to trap them inside. Time and time again Mallory and his men were forced to move on to widen the gap between themselves and their pursuers, following the indomitable Louki wherever he chose to lead them, and taking their chance, often a very slender and desperate chance, with the mortar bombs. One bomb arced into a ravine that led into the interior, burying itself in the gravelly ground not twenty yards ahead of them, by far the nearest anything had come during the afternoon. By one chance in a thousand, it didn’t explode. They gave it as wide a berth as possible, almost holding their breaths until they were safely beyond.
The Complete Navarone Page 23