Алистер Маклин - Force 10 from Navarone

Almost thirty seconds elapsed from the time of the blowing up of the dam until Mallory could bring himself to move again. He did not know why he should have been held in thrall for so long. He told himself, rationalizing, that it was because of the hypnotic spectacle of the dramatic fall in the level of the dam coupled with the sight of that great gorge filled almost to the top with those whitely seething waters: but, without admitting it to himself, he knew it was more than that, he knew he could not accept the realization that Andrea and Maria had been swept to their deaths, for Mallory did not know that at that instant Andrea, completely spent and no longer knowing what he was doing, was vainly trying to negotiate the last few steps of the ladder to the top of the dam. Mallory seized the rope and slid down recklessly, ignoring or not feeling the burning of the skin on the palms of his hands, his mind irrationally filled with murder – irrationally, because it was he who had triggered the explosion that had taken Andrea to his death.

And then, as his feet touched the roof of the guardhouse, he saw the ghost – the ghosts, rather – as the heads of Andrea and a clearly unconscious Maria appeared at the top of the ladder. Andrea, Mallory noticed, did not seem to be able to go any further. He had a hand on the top rung, and was making convulsive, jerking movements, but making no progress at all. Andrea, Mallory knew, was finished.

Mallory was not the only one who had seen Andrea and the girl. The captain of the guard and one of his men were staring in stupefaction over the awesome scene of destruction, but a second guard had whirled round, caught sight of Andrea’s head and brought up his machine-pistol. Mallory, still clinging to the rope, had no time to bring his Luger to bear and release the safety catch and Andrea should have assuredly died then: but Reynolds had already catapulted himself forward in a desperate dive and brought down the gun in the precise instant that the guard opened fire. Reynolds died instantaneously. The guard died two seconds later. Mallory lined up the still smoking barrel of his Luger on the captain and the guard.

‘Drop those guns,’ he said.

They dropped their guns. Mallory and Miller swung down from the guard-house roof, and while Miller covered the Germans with his guns, Mallory ran quickly across to the ladder, reached down a hand and helped the unconscious girl and the swaying Andrea to safety. He looked at Andrea’s exhausted, blood-flecked face, at the flayed skin on his hands, at the left sleeve saturated in blood and said severely: ‘And where the hell have you been?’

‘Where have I been?’ Andrea asked vaguely. ‘I don’t know.’ He stood rocking on his feet, barely conscious, rubbed a hand across his eyes and tried to smile. ‘I think I must have stopped to admire the view.’

General Zimmermann was still in his command car and his car was still parked in the right centre of the bridge at Neretva. Zimmermann had again his binoculars to his eyes, but for the first time he was gazing neither to the west nor to the north. He was gazing instead to the east, up-river towards the mouth of the Neretva gorge. After a little time he turned to his aide, his face at first uneasy, then the uneasiness giving way to apprehension, then the apprehension to something very like fear.

‘You hear it?’ he asked.

‘I hear it, Herr General.’

‘And feel it?’

‘And I feel it.’

‘What in the name of God almighty can it be?’ Zimmermann demanded. He listened as a great and steadily increasing roar filled all the air around them. ‘That’s not thunder. It’s far too loud for thunder. And too continuous. And that wind – that wind coming out of the gorge there.’ He could now hardly hear himself speak above the almost deafening roar of sound coming from the east. ‘It’s the dam! The dam at Neretva! They’ve blown the dam! Get out of here!’ he screamed to the driver. ‘For God’s sake get out of here!’

The command car jerked and moved forward, but it was too late for General Zimmermann, just as it was too late for his massed echelons of tanks and thousands of assault troops concealed on the banks of the Neretva by the low escarpment to the north of them and waiting to launch the devastating attack that was to annihilate the seven thousand fanatically stubborn defenders of the Zenica Gap. A mighty wall of white water, eighty feet high, carrying with it the irresistible pressure of millions of tons of water and sweeping before it a gigantic battering ram of boulders and trees, burst out of the mouth of the gorge.

Mercifully for most of the men in Zimmermann’s armoured corps, the realization of impending death and death itself were only moments apart. The Neretva bridge, and all the vehicles on it, including Zimmermann’s command car, were swept away to instant destruction. The giant torrent overspread both banks of the river to a depth of almost twenty feet, sweeping before its all-consuming path tanks, guns, armoured vehicles, thousands of troops and all that stood in its way: when the great flood finally subsided, there was not one blade of grass left growing along the banks of the Neretva. Perhaps a hundred or two of combat troops on both sides of the river succeeded in climbing in terror to higher ground and the most temporary of safety for they too would not have long to live, but for ninety-five per cent of Zimmermann’s two armoured divisions destruction was as appallingly sudden as it was terrifyingly complete. In sixty seconds, no more, it was all over. The German armoured corps was totally destroyed. But still that mighty wall of water continued to boil forth from the mouth of the gorge.

‘I pray God that I shall never see the like again.’ General Vukalovic lowered his glasses and turned to Colonel Janzy, his face registering neither jubilation nor satisfaction, only an awestruck wonder mingled with deep compassion. ‘Men should not die like that, even our enemies should not die like that.’ He was silent for a few moments, then stirred. ‘I think a hundred or two of their infantry escaped to safety on this side. Colonel. You will take care of them?’

‘I’ll take care of them,’ Janzy said sombrely. ‘This is a night for prisoners, not killing, for there won’t be any fight. It’s as well, General. For the first time in my life I’m not looking forward to a fight.’

‘I’ll leave you then.’ Vukalovic clapped Janzy’s shoulder and smiled, a very tired smile. ‘I have an appointment. At the Neretva dam – or what’s left of it.’

‘With a certain Captain Mallory?’

‘With Captain Mallory. We leave for Italy tonight. You know, Colonel, we could have been wrong about that man.’

‘I never doubted him,’ Janzy said firmly.

Vukalovic smiled and turned away.

Captain Neufeld, his head swathed in a bloodstained bandage and supported by two of his men, stood shakily at the top of the gully leading down to the ford in the Neretva and stared down, his face masked in shocked horror and an almost total disbelief, at the whitely boiling maelstrom, its seething surface no more than twenty feet below where he stood, of what had once been the Neretva gorge. He shook his head very, very slowly in unspeakable weariness and final acceptance of defeat, then turned to the soldier on his left, a youngster who looked as stupefied as he, Neufeld, felt.

‘Take the two best ponies,’ Neufeld said. ‘Ride to the nearest Wehrmacht command post north of the Zenica Gap. Tell them that General Zimmermann’s armoured divisions have been wiped out – we don’t know, but they must have been. Tell them the valley of Neretva is a valley of death and that there is no one left to defend it. Tell them the Allies can send in their airborne divisions tomorrow and that there won’t be a single shot fired. Tell them to notify Berlin immediately. You understand, Lindemann?’