Alistair MacLean - The Complete Navarone

The voice in the square had been different.

It had woken Miller up, a thing he held against it. When he put his eye to the waterspout in the belfry floor, he saw the big man in the breeches and jackboots and high-fronted cap, standing tough and arrogant among the sprawled bodies of the Germans. He saw Mallory hobble out to meet him. Miller’s stomach became hollow with apprehension.

It was not just that Mallory looked tired, and the monstrous figure in the jackboots looked fresh as paint.

There were other things to be seen: things invisible to Mallory, but visible to Miller in his eminence. It was what staff would call a fluid situation. Staff could call it what they liked. To Miller, it looked like a mess.

Round the corner from Mallory, out of his line of sight, a machine-gun post had been set up. Miller did not know why, but he had a nasty feeling it could have something to do with reprisals on the civilian workers. He was not actually worried about the civilian workers, because when those rockets went up, the Germans were going to need all the manpower they could get.

What really worried him was something else: a shadow he had seen floating from darkness to darkness in the alley on the far side of the square. A big shadow, impossibly big: a shadow with the shoulders of a bear and the lightness of a butterfly.

He dug Carstairs in the ribs. ‘Stand by to give covering fire,’ he said.

‘You’re joking,’ said Carstairs, huddling into his corner of the bell tower. ‘They’ll have us in a second.’

‘Listen up, Captain,’ said Miller. ‘If you don’t give covering fire, I’ll blow your Goddamn head off.’

‘Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?’ said Carstairs.

‘I’ll blow your head off, sir,’ said Miller. Then he gave him his orders.

Down below, there was the sound of a dagger clattering on to cobbles. The man in the breeches had Mallory in a headlock and appeared to be breaking his neck.

‘Open fire,’ said Miller. He stood up, tossed two grenades, sighted the Schmeisser on the three heads inside the Spandau emplacement, and fired two short bursts. Behind him the belfry trap door slammed open, and Carstairs’ boots clattered down the ladder. A man stood up in the Spandau emplacement and fell across his gun. The grenades exploded, blowing him out again, accompanied by the two other men. There was movement in other windows as a squad of Germans took cover, Miller waited for the withering fire that would lash Mallory to the ground –

But while he had been disposing of the machine gun, the shadow had detached itself from the alley and moved in half-a-dozen great strides across the cobbles. The shadow was no longer a shadow, but had become Andrea. And Andrea had put a mighty forearm around the neck of the man with the crooked head, and wrenched him away from Mallory, and tucked Mallory in behind him like a hen protecting its chicks, and reversed towards the church door, using the crooked-headed man, Hauptmann Wolf in person, as a human shield, though human was not the word anyone who knew Wolf would have used.

Miller found it all very impressive. He heard the church door below burst open, Carstairs open up. Then he flung himself through the trap door in the belfry floor and went down the ladder into the dark, into the middle of a knot of people that consisted of Carstairs and Spiro, Mallory and Andrea, with Wolf instead of sandbags.

Andrea said, ‘Get behind me.’ The German had a face that Miller did not like. He seemed to be swearing. Andrea’s mighty forearm tensed. The squashed-pumpkin skull turned purple under the thistledown hair. ‘Now,’ he said.

Miller took Carstairs’ Schmeisser gently away from him, and gave it to Mallory, just in case. They moved towards the mouth of the alley, crossing the wide floodlit spaces of the square. It felt horribly exposed out here. But none of the SS would shoot for fear of hitting their commanding officer –

A man flicked into view behind the church, wearing field grey, not camouflage, lifting a rifle to his shoulder. Miller put the bead of the Schmeisser’s sight on the man’s chest and squeezed off a four-round burst. The man crashed back into the shadows.

‘Thank you,’ said Mallory.

‘Don’t mensh,’ said Miller. But beneath the grin was something they all knew. Wolf’s soldiers might not like to shoot their colonel. But the regular Wehrmacht garrison would not be bothered one way or the other. With the amount of noise and fuss coming out of the Greek village, it stood to reason that reinforcements would start arriving soon. And that this time, they would do the job properly.

The mouth of the alley closed around them. Ahead, two lines of houses jostled each other on either side of a strip of cobbles. Then the houses on the left-hand side gave way to a blank wall: a wall with steps of ancient stone rising to battlements.

‘Up,’ said Andrea.

They went up. Behind them, the village was suddenly quiet as the dead under its lights. Mallory peered down the walkway behind the battlements. There was a guard tower, but as far as he could see, no guards.

‘Over,’ said Andrea.

Mallory unlimbered his pack, tossed the silk climbing rope over the edge. ‘Spiro,’ he said.

‘No,’ said Spiro. ‘I no go. I stays. High places, bullets, very bads.’

‘You go,’ said Mallory. ‘Rope round your neck, round your waist, all the same to me.’

‘But sea down there,’ said Spiro. ‘Very bad, wets, no swim good.’

‘Fields,’ said Andrea. ‘Not sea. Get in a ditch. Now go.’

He grabbed the fat man’s wrists. Mallory tied a bowline round the barrel chest and tipped him, still struggling, between the battlements. He and Miller lowered him into the dark until a sound floated up, more a squeak than a shout. Spiro had arrived.

Still the village lay quiet.

Wolf said, ‘You’re crazy. Give up now.’

‘Carstairs,’ said Mallory. ‘Go.’

Carstairs took hold of the rope and launched himself over the edge.

‘Miller,’ said Mallory.

The lights blazed off the cliff. The houses of the village stood bone-white and still. But the world was changing. Outside the orbit of the lights, the sky seemed paler. And from the gates came the sound of nailed jackboots, running.

As Miller put his foot over the wall, the first grey uniforms came round the corner. He flung himself to the ground, put the Schmeisser to his shoulder, and squeezed the trigger. Two men went down. The others fell back.

‘Go,’ said Mallory.

Miller would have hesitated, but he knew that when Mallory spoke in that tone of voice you did what he said. He grasped the rope and went down hand over hand. He could hear a voice shouting in German. Andrea’s voice. Shouting something about Hauptmann Wolf.

Miller’s boots hit the ground. ‘Where?’ he said.

‘Here,’ said Spiro, in a terrified squeak. Thank Gods you come.’

‘Now hear this!’ Andrea shouted, in German. ‘I have with me Hauptmann Wolf, a name known to you all. The Hauptmann is in great danger. Hold your fire.’

The noise of boots had stopped. The alley below the wall was empty. Silence had fallen. But it was not an empty silence. It was the silence of a village full of Greek labourers holding their breath; the silence of a platoon of Wehrmacht , waiting for Andrea to blink. A silence like the silence between the last tick of the timer and the detonation of the bomb.

Then a voice from the alley gave a curt order.

‘Nein!’ yelled Wolf.

But the order had been given by a serving officer of the Wehrmacht , and was not to be countermanded by an SS man in enemy hands. Half the platoon laid down covering fire. The other half began the advance.