The Complete Navarone (112 page)

‘Tchah!’ said Spiro. ‘Coward! Be a mans!’

The 88 spoke again. This time the shell burst close enough to shower them with chemical-tasting spray. Another shell came, made a smaller splash, skipped, burst on the shore.

‘Hah!’ said Spiro, who had worked himself into a sort of frenzy. ‘Missed again! Bloody square-head fools!’

‘Shut up.’ Carstairs’ composure had cracked. ‘We’re dead. What the hell possessed me to –’

A huge explosion sounded from beside the harbourmaster’s hut. A mighty tree of black smoke grew in the sky.

‘Left a bit,’ said Mallory.

Carstairs climbed up from the bottom boards, and gaped at the shore. As the smoke cleared it was apparent that the 88 had been blown out of its pit. It now lay on the edge of a vast crater, a mass of twisted metal. As for the lorry, it had vanished clear off the face of the earth.

‘What was that?’ he said.

Miller gazed at him with blue and innocent eyes. ‘I guess,’ he said, ‘that I must have left a bomb in the truck. Very careless.’

Carstairs swallowed. He did not reply. The boat chugged on. The far shore was coming nearer. Finally, he said, ‘Why aren’t the machine guns firing?’

Mallory kept his eyes outside the boat. ‘It’s all that petrol,’ he said.

‘Petrol?’

Miller pointed a kindly finger at the land ahead. The shore consisted of a strip of white beach with a jetty. Above the jetty was a sun-scorched grass bank. On top of the jetty and the green bank were small, coloured objects. ‘Oil drums,’ he said. ‘Gas cans.’ He pointed over the stern, directly behind them.

‘There’s your guns,’ he said. Then he turned, and pointed straight ahead. ‘And there’s your aerodrome fuel dump. So if they miss us and take a ricochet, up goes the whole caboodle. They have a problem, my man.’

Carstairs thought for a moment of pointing out that it was not only the Germans who would find an aviation fuel dump a problematic place to be in a hail of bullets. Given what he knew of the present company, he kept his mouth shut. It would soon be over.

One way or another.

There were no guard towers along the seaward side of the aerodrome – this far out in the Aegean, the designers of the defences could be forgiven for not expecting shallow-water sea-borne attacks. But as the boat came to within a couple of hundred yards of the shore, a lorry roared down the buff-green strip of vegetation between the security fence and the beach. Andrea gave the tiller to Mallory, sighted down the barrel of the Spandau he had commandeered from the truck, and opened fire. The lorry swerved suddenly and crashed on to the beach. Andrea kept hosing down the little figures that crawled out of the back. Soon none of them was moving. Just to make sure, he loosed a burst at the drums on the jetty. They felt the blast of the flat, oily explosions, smelt the sweetish reek of the black smoke that rolled off the burning drums. Then they were ashore, low, crawling to the fence. There was no time for delicacy. Mallory opened the decompression valve on the boat’s engine, unscrewed the lever, and put it in his pocket. Miller shoved a brick of plastic explosive against the bottom of the wire and snapped the time pencil. ‘Down!’ he yelled.

Thirty seconds later, a roar and a fountain of sand announced that the fence was now metal rain. Odd shots were coming in from the wreckage of the lorry. The Thunderbolt squad used the explosion crater as cover, hauling themselves and the Spandau up the sparse, burned slope of the berm. On the other side, fenced in by a mound of earth, was a half-acre field of oil drums, and a bowser.

‘Well,’ said Miller. ‘They’re not going to do a whole lot of shooting in here, I guess.’

Spiro could not speak.

Mallory had sized up the situation. Now he took control. ‘They won’t do anything to endanger their fuel dump,’ he said. ‘We’ll hold it here. Carstairs, how about you?’

‘Transport,’ said Carstairs. He was looking white about the lips and pinched about the nose. He took out his cigarette case. ‘Turkish this side, Vir –’

‘Not here,’ said Mallory, mildly. ‘Now you get over there with Miller’ – he pointed to the dumpy fuel bowser parked by the entrance – ‘and he’ll hot-wire it for you, and you and I will go and steal an aeroplane, and then we will come back and get everyone.’

‘Piece of cake,’ said Carstairs.

Five minutes later Carstairs came back in the bowser and Mallory climbed in. They rolled out of the fuel dump and across the aerodrome. Andrea gave quiet orders to Miller, who trotted over to the far end of the dump. When he returned, there were two people with him: Clytemnestra and Wills.

‘Good morning,’ said Andrea, with old-world courtesy.

‘Morning,’ said Wills. Clytemnestra was holding his hand.

‘You found your way.’

‘Been here most of the night,’ said Wills. They walked back to an above-ground firefighting pond. Beside it, lying casually in the dirt, was a polished mahogany box with a webbing handle.

‘Yais,’ said Spiro. ‘Yais, this is the damn bloody machine that will make us all killed. I spit on him’ – he spat – ‘and curse him to hell.’

‘Sure,’ said Miller.

‘Better take cover,’ said Andrea, shoving rounds into the magazine of the Mauser. ‘Here.’ He handed the rifle to Wills, and said to Clytemnestra, ‘Do you want one?’

‘What do you think?’ Her eyes flashed dark fire.

Andrea shrugged. ‘Cover me,’ he said, and gave his orders.

Miller and Clytemnestra went to the top of the grassy earthwork protecting the fuel. The surface of the aerodrome stretched away under the sun, a yellow-dun billiard table shot with shining patches of wind-flattened grass. And on that billiard table, small figures were advancing.

Andrea had been busy. He had rolled two fifty-gallon drums of aviation fuel to the top of the bank, siting them six feet apart. Between the drums, he set up the Spandau. Miller kept working, rolling the barrels up the slope, placing them along the crest of the earthwork.

‘Bloody hell,’ said Wills, whitening somewhat beneath the peeling mahogany of his face. ‘It’s an Aunt Sally.’

‘What does that mean?’ Clytemnestra was scowling down the sights of her rifle. The nearest soldier was four hundred yards away.

‘If the Germans shoot at us,’ said Wills in a dazed voice, ‘they stand a good chance of hitting one of those drums. If they hit one of those drums, they stand a good chance of knocking it down and setting it on fire, and rolling it down into a lot of other drums, and blowing up their principal fuel dump. Their supply ship has been sunk. This is precious stuff. They won’t want to lose it.’

‘So?’ said Clytemnestra, shrugging her broad shoulders. ‘They won’t shoot. This is good, no?’

‘Of course,’ said Wills, weakly. ‘It’s just not … normal, that’s all.’

‘Nothing is very normal,’ said Clytemnestra. A German soldier was walking on top of her rifle’s foresight. Her finger tightened on the trigger. Even as she squeezed, Andrea’s Spandau started to chug heavily. Out there on the bare brown plain tiny figures began to drop and roll.

Wills sighted and squeezed, worked the bolt, sighted and squeezed again, and felt the barrel grow hot in his left hand. There were a lot of them: a terrible lot of them. They were not shooting back, though. Thus far, the gasoline drums were a success. But there were too many. They would be able to capture the position by sheer weight of numbers. Unless …

Wills knew with a sort of gloomy certainty that Andrea would have other plans, featuring the destruction of the fuel dump and everyone in it.

The machine gun jammed. The enemy trotted on over the shimmering grass. Any minute now, thought Wills.

Then from behind the line of attackers and to the left, he heard the cough and roar of an aero engine starting; first one, then another, throttling up, then back into a steady clatter. And from the direction of the huts there taxied a twin-engined Heinkel.

The aircraft stuck its nose on to the yellow-dun grass and swung towards the advancing Germans. A heavy, road-drill clatter added itself to the roar of the engines.

‘My God,’ said Wills. ‘He’s machine-gunning them.’ And even as he spoke, the front line of the advance began to collapse. The Germans faltered and stopped. The Heinkel swung back towards the fuel dump and taxied, fast. It came to a halt by the dump entrance. Andrea said, ‘Go. I’ll come.’ He had cleared the Spandau jam. There was still movement out there; squads were re-forming on the grass, and NCOs’ yells drifted down the breeze. As they ran for the entrance, they heard Andrea’s Spandau begin to chug again.

The Heinkel’s door opened. Mallory looked out. Beyond him, Carstairs sat at the controls, smiling an odd smile; a smug smile, cat-gets-the-cream.

‘All aboard,’ said Miller, swinging the mahogany Enigma case in his hand. Mallory jumped down, and went to fetch Andrea. Miller heaved the case up and into the plane. Carstairs reached down and grabbed it. Miller was starting to help Clytemnestra on to the step when Carstairs said, ‘I don’t think so.’ There was a Schmeisser in his hand. The muzzle trembled slightly. It was pointing straight between Miller’s eyes.

‘What?’ said Miller.

‘Bit of a load, six people plus pilot,’ said Carstairs. ‘Not a good idea.’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘We don’t want to take any chances with the machine, do we?’ said Carstairs. ‘I mean, who can you trust, nowadays?’

‘You bastard,’ said Wills. ‘You absolute bloody –’

Miller stopped him. He said, ‘What are you going to do with that thing?’

‘Take it to the Allies,’ said Carstairs. ‘Trouble is, I haven’t decided which ones. Everyone wants it. The Yanks have got dollars, the Russians have got gold, and even the poor old Brits have got a couple of bob stowed away in a sock, I shouldn’t wonder. And they don’t like each other much. I’m going to have a little auction, that’s all. Now stand back.’

Miller stood back, pulling Wills and Clytemnestra back with him. His face was completely blank. ‘Goodbye,’ he said.

The door slammed. The engines throttled up. The Heinkel began to roll. Wills raised his Schmeisser. Miller knocked it down with his hand.

‘You can’t let him get away,’ said Wills. ‘He’s a bloody thief. A traitor. You –’

‘Hush,’ said Miller, and Wills observed now that Andrea had come down from his post. ‘The Germans think we’re all on that plane.’

The Heinkel reached the end of the runway and pivoted on one wheel. The engines crescendoed as the throttles went through the gates. It began to roll. It rolled faster and faster, shrinking with distance, the tail lifting, the wheels rising on their suspension until there was daylight under them and the undercarriage came up. A hand came out of the pilot’s window and waved. Then the aircraft turned over the buildings and headed out to sea, chased by the impotent black puffs of a couple of anti-aircraft shells.

‘Hell,’ said Wills. ‘Oh, bloody hell.’

The Heinkel rose steeply into the deep Mediterranean blue. Soon it was no more than a dot, headed north-west, for Italy. Spiro was watching it as if it were a ghost. All his work, said his slack jaw and fishskin jowls; all his massive bravery, his tolerance of Captain Helmholz, his feigning of coma, his sliding around on ropes in the dark; all in vain.

Wills was not so tongue-tied. He was pale and shaking with rage. ‘Sir,’ he said to Mallory. ‘I must protest. I must jolly well tell you that I shall be submitting a report to my superiors about this shameful, pathetic –’

He stopped. The black dot hung high in the blue vault of heaven. And then, shockingly, it changed. There was a brilliant white flash, and a puff of smoke, and comet-tails of falling debris. And later, several seconds later, the small
bap
of an explosion.

‘It blew up,’ said Wills. ‘It just bloody well blew up.’

‘Goodness me,’ said Miller, mildly. ‘So it did.’

‘But he had the machine,’ said Wills.

‘Yeah, well,’ said Miller. ‘I knew there was something.’ He was leaning on the concrete lip of the firefighting pond. He pulled a string that led into the murky deeps. On the end of the string was a chunky oilcloth parcel. ‘This here is the Enigma machine,’ he said. ‘Captain Carstairs only had the case. I guess someone must have put something else in it.’

Wills gaped at him, then at the Enigma machine; the key to the deliberations of German High Command, a window into the enemy’s most secret responses to the Allied second front, due to open any day now.

‘There is a game you play with three cups and a pea,’ said Mallory. ‘Corporal Miller is the world champion. Now let us find somewhere to lie up for the day.’

Spiro’s face was a miserable bag of sweating lard. ‘Lie up?’ he said. ‘You crazy. They searches everywhere, finds us, catches us. We deads, matey boy.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ said Miller. ‘Personally I am alive. And I have an idea that people in the great wide world are going to think we were on that plane.’

Spiro’s face suddenly shone with hope and anticipation. ‘My hell!’ he cried. ‘By the Godsalmighty you are one hunnert per cents!’

Andrea came down from the bank. ‘They’re coming,’ he said.

‘Time to leave,’ said Miller, looking at his watch. Like ghosts, they flitted over the earthwork and were gone.

Feldwebel
Braun approached the fuel dump wall with his usual briskness, his squad well scattered over the ground, as per the tactical manual when advancing in the face of enemy fire. Except that there was now no enemy fire. The defenders of the dump had gone quiet – not surprisingly, since they had all flown away in that Heinkel. There had been a lot of disorganization and general unpleasantness these last few days. Braun looked forward to a more normal life in which regulations would be observed and there would be the minimum of fighting.