Читать книгу The Complete Navarone 4-Book Collection: The Guns of Navarone, Force Ten From Navarone, Storm Force from Navarone, Thunderbolt from Navarone - Alistair MacLean, Alistair MacLean, John Denis - Страница 19

Once, twice, half a dozen times, Mallory struggled up from the depths of a black, trance-like stupor and momentarily touched the surface of consciousness only to slide back into the darkness again. Desperately, each time, he tried to hang on to these fleeting moments of awareness, but his mind was like the void, dark and sinewless, and even as he knew that his mind was slipping backwards again, loosing its grip on reality, the knowledge was gone, and there was only the void once more. Nightmare, he thought vaguely during one of the longer glimmerings of comprehension, I’m having a nightmare, like when you know you are having a nightmare and that if you could open your eyes it would be gone, but you can’t open your eyes. He tried it now, tried to open his eyes, but it was no good, it was still as dark as ever and he was still sunk in this evil dream, for the sun had been shining brightly in the sky. He shook his head in slow despair.

‘Aha! Observe! Signs of life at last!’ There was no mistaking the slow, nasal drawl. ‘Ol’ Medicine Man Miller triumphs again!’ There was a moment’s silence, a moment in which Mallory was increasingly aware of the diminishing thunder of aero engines, the acrid, resinous smoke that stung his nostrils and eyes, and then an arm had passed under his shoulders and Miller’s persuasive voice was in his ear. ‘Just try a little of this, boss. Ye olde vintage brandy. Nothin’ like it anywhere.’

Mallory felt the cold neck of the bottle, tilted his head back, took a long pull. Almost immediately he had jerked himself upright and forward to a sitting position, gagging, spluttering and fighting for breath as the raw, fiery ouzo bit into the mucous membrane of cheeks and throat. He tried to speak but could do no more than croak, gasp for fresh air and stare indignantly at the shadowy figure that knelt by his side. Miller, for his part, looked at him with unconcealed admiration.

‘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 the 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 pieces. 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.

About half an hour before sunset they struggled up the last few boulder-strewn yards of a steeply-shelving ravine floor, halted just beyond the shelter of the projecting wall where the ravine dipped again and turned sharply to the right and the north. There had been no more mortar bombs since the one that had failed to explode. The six-inch and the weirdly-howling Nebelwerfer had only a limited range, Mallory knew, and though the planes still cruised overhead, they cruised uselessly: the sun was dipping towards the horizon and the floors of the ravines were already deeply-sunk in shadowed gloom, invisible from above. But the Alpenkorps, tough, dogged, skilful soldiers, soldiers living only for the revenge of their massacred comrades, were very close behind. And they were highly-trained mountain troops, fresh, resilient, the reservoir of their energies barely tapped: whereas his own tiny band, worn out from continuous days and sleepless nights of labour and action …

Mallory sank to the ground near the angled turn of the ravine where he could keep lookout, glanced at the others with a deceptive casualness that marked his cheerless assessment of what he saw. As a fighting unit they were in a pretty bad way. Both Panayis and Brown were badly crippled, the latter’s face grey with pain. For the first time since leaving Alexandria, Casey Brown was apathetic, listless and quite indifferent to everything: this Mallory took as a very bad sign. Nor was Brown helped by the heavy transmitter still strapped to his back – with point-blank truculence he had ignored Mallory’s categorical order to abandon it. Louki was tired, and looked it: his physique, Mallory realised now, was no match for his spirit, for the infectious smile that never left his face, for the panache of that magnificently upswept moustache that contrasted so oddly with the sad, tired eyes above. Miller, like himself, was tired, but, like himself, could keep on being tired for a long time yet. And Stevens was still conscious, but even in the twilit gloom of the canyon floor his face looked curiously transparent, while the nails, lips and eyelids were drained of blood. And Andrea, who had carried him up and down all these killing canyon tracks – where there had been tracks – for almost two interminable hours, looked as he always did: immutable, indestructible.

Mallory shook his head, fished out a cigarette, made to strike a light, remembered the planes still cruising overhead and threw the match away. Idly his gaze travelled north along the canyon and he slowly stiffened, the unlit cigarette crumpling and shredding between his fingers. This ravine bore no resemblance to any of the others through which they had so far passed – it was broader, dead straight, at least three times as long – and, as far as he could see in the twilight, the far end was blocked off by an almost vertical wall.

‘Louki!’ Mallory was on his feet now, all weariness forgotten. ‘Do you know where you are? Do you know this place?’

‘But certainly, Major!’ Louki was hurt. ‘Have I not told you that Panayis and I, in the days of our youth –’

‘But this is a cul-de-sac, a dead-end!’ Mallory protested. ‘We’re boxed in, man, we’re trapped!’

Louki grinned impudently and twirled a corner of his moustache. The little man was enjoying himself.

‘So? The Major does not trust Louki, is that it?’ He grinned again, relented, patted the wall by his side. ‘Panayis and I, we have been working this way all afternoon. Along this wall there are many caves. One of them leads through to another valley that leads down to the coast road.’

‘I see, I see.’ Relief washing through his mind, Mallory sank down on the ground again. ‘And where does this other valley come out?’

‘Just across the strait from Maidos.’

‘How far from the town?’

‘About five miles, Major, maybe six. Not more.’

‘Fine, fine! And you’re sure you can find this cave?’

‘A hundred years from now and my head in a goat-skin bag!’ Louki boasted.

‘Fair enough!’ Even as he spoke, Mallory catapulted himself violently to one side, twisted in mid-air to avoid falling across Stevens and crashed heavily into the wall between Andrea and Miller. In a moment of unthinking carelessness he had exposed himself to view from the ravine they had just climbed: the burst of machine-gun fire from its lower end – a hundred and fifty yards away at the most – had almost blown his head off. Even as it was, the left shoulder of his jacket had been torn away, the shell just grazing his shoulder. Miller was already kneeling by his side, fingering the gash, running a gently exploratory hand across his back.

‘Careless, damn careless,’ Mallory murmured. ‘But I didn’t think they were so close.’ He didn’t feel as calm as he sounded. If the mouth of that Schmeisser had been another sixteenth of an inch to the right, he’d have had no head left now.

‘Are you all right, boss?’ Miller was puzzled. ‘Did they –’

‘Terrible shots,’ Mallory assured him cheerfully. ‘Couldn’t hit a barn.’ He twisted round to look at his shoulder. ‘I hate to sound heroic, but this really is just a scratch …’ He rose easily to his feet, and picked up his guns. ‘Sorry and all that, gentlemen, but it’s time we were on our way again. How far along is this cave, Louki?’

Louki rubbed his bristly chin, the smile suddenly gone. He looked quickly at Mallory, then away again.

‘Louki!’

‘Yes, yes, Major. The cave.’ Louki rubbed his chin again. ‘Well, it is a good way along. In fact, it is at the end,’ he finished uncomfortably.

‘The very end?’ asked Mallory quietly.

Louki nodded miserably, stared down at the ground at his feet. Even the ends of his moustache seemed to droop.

‘That’s handy,’ Mallory said heavily. ‘Oh, that’s very handy!’ He sank down to the ground again. ‘Helps us no end, that does.’

He bowed his head in thought and didn’t even lift it as Andrea poked a Bren round the angle of the rock, and fired a short downhill burst more in token of discouragement than in any hope of hitting anything. Another ten seconds passed, then Louki spoke again, his voice barely audible.

‘I am very, very sorry. This is a terrible thing. Before God, Major, I would not have done it but that I thought they were still far behind.’

‘It’s not your fault, Louki.’ Mallory was touched by the little man’s obvious distress. He touched his ripped shoulder jacket. ‘I thought the same thing.’

‘Please!’ Stevens put his hand on Mallory’s arm. ‘What’s wrong? I don’t understand.’

‘Everybody else does, I’m afraid, Andy. It’s very, very simple. We have half a mile to go along this valley here – and not a shred of cover. The Alpenkorps have less than two hundred yards to come up that ravine we’ve just left.’ He paused while Andrea fired another retaliatory short burst, then continued. ‘They’ll do what they’re doing now – keep probing to see if we’re still here. The minute they judge we’re gone, they’ll be up here in a flash. They’ll nail us before we’re half-way, quarter-way to the cave – you know we can’t travel fast. And they’re carrying a couple of Spandaus – they’ll cut us to ribbons.’

‘I see,’ Stevens murmured. ‘You put it all so nicely, sir.’

‘Sorry, Andy, but that’s how it is.’

‘But could you not leave two men as a rear-guard, while the rest –’

‘And what happens to the rear-guard?’ Mallory interrupted dryly.

‘I see what you mean,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

‘No, but the rear-guard would. Quite a problem, isn’t it?’

‘There is no problem at all,’ Louki announced. ‘The Major is kind, but this is all my fault. I will –’

‘You’ll do damn all of the kind!’ Miller said savagely. He tore Louki’s Bren from his hand and laid it on the ground. ‘You heard what the boss said – it wasn’t your fault.’ For a moment Louki stared at him in anger, then turned dejectedly away. He looked as if he were going to cry. Mallory, too, stared at the American, astonished at the sudden vehemence, so completely out of character. Now that he came to think of it, Dusty had been strangely taciturn and thoughtful during the past hour or so – Mallory couldn’t recall his saying a word during all that time. But time enough to worry about that later on …

Casey Brown eased his injured leg, looking hopefully at Mallory. ‘Couldn’t we stay here till it’s dark – real dark – then make our way –’

‘No good. The moon’s almost full tonight – and not a cloud in the sky. They’d get us. Even more important, we have to get into the town between sunset and curfew tonight. Our last chance. Sorry, Casey, but it’s no go.’

Fifteen seconds, half a minute passed, and passed in silence, then they all started abruptly as Andy Stevens spoke.

‘Louki was right, you know,’ he said pleasantly. The voice was weak, but filled with a calm certainty that jerked every eye towards him. He was propped up on one elbow, Louki’s Bren cradled in his hands. It was a measure of their concentration on the problem on hand that no one had heard or seen him reach out for the machine-gun. ‘It’s all very simple,’ Stevens went on quietly. ‘Just let’s use our heads, that’s all … The gangrene’s right up past the knee, isn’t it, sir?’

Mallory said nothing: he didn’t know what to say, the complete unexpectedness had knocked him off balance. He was vaguely aware that Miller was looking at him, his eyes begging him to say ‘No.’

‘Is it or isn’t it?’ There was a patience, a curious understanding in the voice, and all of a sudden Mallory knew what to say.

‘Yes,’ he nodded. ‘It is.’ Miller was looking at him in horror.

‘Thank you, sir.’ Stevens was smiling in satisfaction. ‘Thank you very much indeed. There’s no need to point out all the advantages of my staying here.’ There was an assurance in his voice no one had ever heard before, the unthinking authority of a man completely in charge of a situation. ‘Time I did something for my living anyway. No fond farewells, please. Just leave me a couple of boxes of ammo, two or three thirty-six grenades and away you go.’

‘I’ll be darned if we will!’ Miller was up on his feet making for the boy, then brought up abruptly as the Bren centred on his chest.

‘One step nearer and I’ll shoot you,’ Stevens said calmly. Miller looked at him in long silence, sank slowly back to the ground.

‘I would, you know,’ Stevens assured him. ‘Well good-bye, gentlemen. Thank you for all you’ve done for me.’

Twenty seconds, thirty, a whole minute passed in a queer, trance-like silence, then Miller heaved himself to his feet again, a tall, rangy figure with tattered clothes and a face curiously haggard in the gathering gloom.

‘So long, kid. I guess – waal, mebbe I’m not so smart after all.’ He took Stevens’s hand, looked down at the wasted face for a long moment, made to say something else, then changed his mind. ‘Be seein’ you,’ he said abruptly, turned and walked off heavily down the valley. One by one the others followed him, wordlessly, except for Andrea, who stopped and whispered in the boy’s ear, a whisper that brought a smile and a nod of complete understanding, and then there was only Mallory left. Stevens grinned up at him.

‘Thank you, sir. Thanks for not letting me down. You and Andrea – you understand. You always did understand.’

‘You’ll – you’ll be all right, Andy?’ God, Mallory thought, what a stupid, what an insane thing, to say.

‘Honest, sir, I’m OK.’ Stevens smiled contentedly. ‘No pain left – I can’t feel a thing. It’s wonderful!’

‘Andy, I don’t –’

‘It’s time you were gone, sir. The others will be waiting. Now if you’ll just light me a gasper and fire a few random shots down that ravine …’

Within five minutes Mallory had overtaken the others, and inside fifteen they had all reached the cave that led to the coast. For a moment they stood in the entrance, listening to the intermittent firing from the other end of the valley, then turned wordlessly and plunged into the cave. Back where they had left him, Andy Stevens was lying on his stomach, peering down into the now almost dark ravine. There was no pain left in his body, none at all. He drew deeply on a cupped cigarette, smiled as he pushed another clip home into the magazine of the Bren. For the first time in his life Andy Stevens was happy and content beyond his understanding, a man at last at peace with himself. He was no longer afraid.