Alistair MacLean - The Complete Navarone

There is a German behind that rock, thought Mallory, as Nelson approached a tall, pyramid-shaped slab. And I can’t cover Nelson because he won’t know what to do if I open fire …

Nelson was nearly at the pyramid rock, still waving his good arm and yelling. As he passed the rock, a camouflaged arm shot out and grabbed his collar, and a black boot kicked him behind the knees so they collapsed and he was suddenly kneeling on the path, sideways-on to the observers above the tomb. As Mallory watched, a hand with a Luger came out and dug into the nape of Nelson’s neck. The dull whap of the shot floated up the hill.

Nelson smashed forward on to his face and lay twitching.

Mallory had seen a lot of life, and a lot of death, too. But this cold assassination of an unarmed man in the process of surrender froze him to the spot. And that split second he stood frozen he heard a soft, metallic sound, and a voice behind him said in heavily-accented English, ‘Drop your gun.’

He dropped it. There was no chance of doing anything else. The order had only been an order, but the sound had been a rifle bolt. He waited for the bullet in the back of the neck, his mind clear of thoughts, his eyes on the mountains, rank on serried rank under the pink dawn sky.

The shot did not come.

The voice behind him said, ‘Marsch.’

Mallory marched.

He saw Miller walking towards him, a rifle at his nape. He saw the tomb mouth full of camouflage smocks, heard shouting, saw Carstairs come out, hands in the air, Wills, stumbling, eyes screwed up against the painful light of dawn.

A German strutted up to Miller, a Leutnant , sharp-faced under a grey peaked cap. ‘Is this all?’ he said, in English.

‘All what?’ said Miller.

‘All your people,’ said the German.

‘Nope,’ said Miller.

Mallory’s eyes rested on him with some curiosity. He trusted Miller. But he trusted Andrea too. And Andrea had disappeared, and so had Clytemnestra. He and his fellow-prisoners might be in considerable danger. But with Andrea on the loose, so were the Germans. What was Miller playing at?

‘Where are they?’ said the German.

‘As a citizen of the United States of America,’ said Miller, ‘I see all people as my people. Like it says, “Bring me your poor, your huddled millions” —’

‘Masses,’ said Mallory.

‘I thought it was millions,’ said Miller.

‘Silence!’ yelled the Leutnant , ‘Kneel!’

Miller looked at him, then at Mallory. They knelt.

‘What is your mission on Kynthos?’ snapped the Leutnant .

‘Name, rank and number,’ said Mallory. ‘I will give them to your superior officer.’

The Germans behind the rocks were coming out of cover, drifting towards them, curious now they had caught up with their quarry. Bunch up, said Mallory in his head. That’s good.

‘Together,’ said Wills, who sounded stronger and more definite, ‘with an official protest. How dare you.’ He was angry to the point of incoherence. ‘How dare you in contravention of the Geneva Convention summarily execute one of my —’

The Leutnant ’s jackboot sent him sprawling among the rocks.

‘Now,’ said the Leutnant . ‘Tell me now, or I will shoot you, this man first.’ Mallory could hear the shuffle of boots on rock as the men gathered round. Sonderkommando behaviour, he thought. Not Wehrmacht. Wehrmacht were soldiers. This lot were murderers.

‘Noo!’ cried Miller. ‘Please!’ He cast himself on the ground. Mallory cast himself down too, abasing himself.

And incidentally taking cover.

A sleet of lead blasted out of the rocks and the tomb mouth. The Leutnant screamed and fell across Mallory. Mallory grabbed the man’s Schmeisser. A German saw him move and brought his machine pistol round. Mallory saw the muzzle flash, felt the officer’s body shake as the rounds meant for him thumped into the Leutnant ’s torso. Then his own Schmeisser was hammering, and the German’s machine pistol was firing in a great arc in the sky as his dead finger tightened on the trigger.

After that everything was quiet, except for a voice, shouting. At first it shouted in German. ‘Hands up!’ it said. ‘You are covered!’

The three Germans left standing raised their hands. ‘Keep hidden!’ roared the voice, in Greek. Talking to Clytemnestra. Mallory climbed to his feet. Miller was already up.

Somewhere, a radio said, in German, ‘A Force, A Force, come in.’

Mallory found the set under a body, rolled it aside, lifted the mike to his mouth. ‘A Force,’ he said. ‘Mission complete.’

‘Please give me a code word with that,’ said the voice.

Mallory took his thumb off the transmit switch. ‘What is the code word?’ he said to the nearest living German.

‘Schultz, Feldwebel 175609 —’

Something moved at the corner of Mallory’s eye. It was Carstairs, with a Luger. He knocked the German to the ground with the barrel and jammed it into the man’s mouth. Mallory heard the pop as a tooth broke. ‘The man said, code word,’ said Carstairs. He pulled the gun out of the man’s mouth. ‘One. Two —’

The German had no way of telling whether Carstairs was going to count to three or fifty, but with a gun muzzle half an inch from his eye socket he was not going to hang around to find out. ‘Wild Hunt,’ he said.

Mallory thumbed the transmit switch. ‘Wild Hunt,’ he said, and released it.

The set hissed an empty wash of static. There was no reply.

The German with no front teeth laughed. ‘You are out of time. They are looking for you already.’

‘Bastard,’ said Carstairs, and cocked the Luger. The German turned grey. Sweat stood on his forehead as he stared at death.

‘Leave him,’ said Mallory.

Carstairs raised an eyebrow.

Mallory said, ‘Take their clothes.’

‘Clothes?’ said Carstairs, looking down at his own immaculately-tailored tunic. ‘They won’t fit.’

‘Best-dressed corpse in the mountains, right?’ said Miller, who was already taking off his trousers. ‘Change everything but your boots.’

‘Why?’

‘So your feet don’t get sore,’ said Miller, struggling into the camouflage smock and hanging the radio on his belt. ‘Move it.’ He grinned at Carstairs, a grin not at all sincere. ‘Pardon me. Move it, Captain.’

Carstairs moved it.

They rolled the bodies over a cliff. They took away weapons and ammunition, and the survivors’ boots and socks. Then they bound and blindfolded them, and left them barefoot and helpless in a field of razor-edged lava rock. Nelson they buried as best they could. Then they resumed the march, Mallory first, Wills after him, then Carstairs and Clytemnestra, with Andrea bringing up the rear.

They were on a sort of plateau now, a high, windswept place without cover, still cold with the morning chill, but brilliantly lit by the low sun. They marched on, towing long shadows from their boot heels, squinting against the sun in their eyes. Mallory hoped nobody would put any aeroplanes up. It was a forlorn hope, he was pretty sure. German uniforms or no German uniforms, German radio procedures were cast in stone. A dud procedure meant trouble. And these were not the kind of people who closed their eyes to trouble –

Someone stumbled into Mallory’s back. He looked round in time to see Wills plough off to the right, trip over a stone and fall flat on his face.

‘Leave him,’ said Carstairs.

Mallory ignored him. He went and crouched beside Wills. For the first time, he saw the damage the Leutnant ’s boot had done. The man’s face was a mask of blood, the bruise on his temple the colour of blue-black ink.