Alistair MacLean - The Complete Navarone

He went up hard and steady, climbing from the hips, his mind fixed on the next hold, never mind the top; the top was just another rest, and would look after itself. It was not until he got into the couloir that he started to shake.

Up in the Swallow’s Nest, Wills’ head was getting clearer by the minute. One of the things becoming clearest was that he was in a tightish spot, with a woman. He opened a tin of sardines, and looked at Clytemnestra, the olive curve of her cheek against the black fringe of her shawl; hard as a steel spring, light on her feet as a feather. The other thing he had noticed, now that his brain was working again, was that she was extremely beautiful. In Wills’ experience of women, which was limited to a few devoted hours spent carrying the golf clubs of his cousin Cynthia, they were not to be counted on in tight spots. Well, not not counted on, exactly; but their place was not in the line of fire, but on the … well … home front. Clytemnestra seemed to be different. This had come as a shock to Wills, though not a disagreeable one. He ate another sardine.

Clytemnestra was peering down one of the spouts of the Swallow’s Nest. As Wills watched, she took a German stick grenade, pulled the toggle, and dropped it through the spout.

Well, thought Wills, fitting her into a known structure. For Clytemnestra and the islanders of Kynthos, this is the home front. He watched the grenade fall, wobbling in the air. The little figures on the zigzag were bigger now, five hundred feet below. They did not look up.

It was a nicely calculated drop. The grenade burst in the air, at about waist height. Wills heard nothing that he could class as an explosion; a flash and a puff of smoke, and a split-second later a flat, ineffectual-sounding whap . Three of the little figures on the path were not on the path any more. The rest stopped and lay down; fifteen of them at the most, with more coming up behind. A lot more. They faltered, all of them. It must be unnerving to find yourself under fire from a place you could not see, on an island of which you were supposed to be in control.

After a while, small voices floated up from below, mingled with birdsong. The men below started to move in little rushes. If they had been on a plain or a hillside, they would undoubtedly have spread out. But this was a cliff, and the path was the only means of access. They were bunching again, directly below the Swallow’s Nest …

Thermopylae!’ yelled Wills, and pulled the strings on two bombs, and let them go.

Again the flash and the puff and the whap . Again the little figures, flung off the path and vanishing over the horizon. Again the silence.

But in that silence, a Single word. Hoch . Up. And all of a sudden, in that huddle of figures, a series of pale discs: faces. And after the faces, the small flicker of muzzle flashes, and the sting and whine of bullets beyond the Swallow’s Nest walls.

Clytemnestra sat back, her legs out in front of her, and took a sip of water, and smiled at Wills, showing those white teeth and those fierce eyes, slapping the dirty floor-slabs as you might pat a horse. What she was saying was that there were six feet of good solid masonry between them and those bullets. Nothing was going to shift them, short of artillery.

Wills grinned back at her, feeling the stretch of burned skin on his face.

A shadow flitted across his thoughts. There were a lot of Germans out there. Up here in the Swallow’s Nest there was food and ammunition for a couple of days, no more. Maybe they would be relieved. The men in the Acropolis were good men, they had proved that already. Four men, said the small, dark voice in Wills’ head. Against a thousand or so.

He heard the scritch of grenade fuses, the blat of the explosions, Clytemnestra hiss a curse. A file of soldiers was running up the last zigzag and into the shelter of the cliff. The grenades knocked three of them down, but that left a dozen. Clytemnestra grabbed for her Schmeisser. The Swallow’s Nest filled with its jackhammer clatter. She swore again, stopped firing. The range was too big. Wills found himself a loophole that covered the mouth of the path, and waited, sighting down the groove in the stone. Clytemnestra had shot the first lot. It was Wills’ turn.

For twenty minutes, nothing moved out there except a lizard, hunting flies on the plates of rock at the mouth of the defile. Then the lizard became suddenly still, as if listening. A fly landed within six inches of it. It paid no attention. Fast as an eye blinking, it was gone.

After it there came, first of all, a boot. Wills rested the foresight of the Schmeisser on the place where the knee would be, and moved the v of the backsight up to cradle it.

A man came out, helmet down, like a rabbit with a ferret on its tail, slap into the sights. Wills fired a four-round burst. The man straightened up and fell backwards into the soldier who was following, stopping him. While he was stopped, Wills shot him in the head. He slammed back. Another man was behind him, and another. Wills fired a longer burst. Hands went up and legs buckled and somebody somewhere began shouting, whether from pain or shock he could not tell. The main thing was that nobody else came through the gap. Like pheasants, he thought. Like pheasants that you take out in front, one, two, except with a machine pistol you could take three, four, five. His head was light, and he thought that he might be going to laugh or cry, he could not tell which. ‘Like pheasants,’ he said.

‘Like Nazi swine,’ said Clytemnestra.

Suddenly, Wills was shaking. Clytemnestra put her hand on his shoulder, and made small, soothing noises. I’m sorry,’ he said, when he could speak. ‘I was in the Navy. It’s a new way of … seeing men die.’

She smiled and nodded. She did not understand, though. She had seen her brother hanged for no reason except that he had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was not thinking about the way she felt. She was thinking about the enemy, hoping one of them would show himself and she would have a chance to kill him. Kill or be killed, thought Wills, a little wildly: that is the whole of the Law –

Outside, a machine gun started hammering. The bullets whanged off the stones. None of them found its way through the loophole. Clytemnestra was firing now, short bursts again. She must have learned from someone, thought Wills. Short bursts don’t overheat, and guns that don’t overheat don’t jam. Andrea might have taught her –

‘Four more,’ she said, snapping out the magazine.

It was lives out there, Wills knew. Not weapons training. Seven men bleeding down that hillside. Five left.

The machine gun opened up again. Clytemnestra was still reloading. Wills popped up, saw two more men running along the groove, squeezed the trigger, tumbled the first one like a rabbit, cut the second one’s knees from under him. Don’t do it, you bloody fools, he was thinking. Christ, why am I saying this? I want to live. But now he could see these men, he wanted them to live too, to stop bursting out of the slot in the cliff and running down that gutterful of flying lead –

He got his wish. They stopped. Down below, the path zigzagged empty. Wills offered Clytemnestra a cigarette. She refused. He lit one himself. He could feel the pressure of the silence: fifty men, waiting in dead ground for the next thing to happen.

Whatever that was going to be.

‘They’re getting ready,’ he said.

Clytemnestra showed her teeth. ‘Soon, we kill them all,’ she said; Helen, Medea, the whole vengeful regiment of Greek myth rolled into one and carrying a sub-machine-gun.

They waited.

Nothing happened.

They both watched the slot in the cliff, the things lying in the rock gulley that had once been men, but were now mere bundles of rags drowned in a long gutter of shadow. The sun was going down.