Alistair MacLean - Where Eagles Dare

Down there at ground level—if seven thousand feet up on the Weissspitze could be called ground level—the snowfall was comparatively slight compared to that blizzard they’d experienced jumping from the Lancaster but, even so, visibility was almost as bad as it had been up above, for there was a twenty-knot wind blowing and the dry powdery snow was drifting quite heavily. Smith made a swift 360° sweep of his horizon but there was nothing to be seen, nobody to be seen.

With fumbling frozen hands he clumsily extracted a torch and whistle from his tunic. Facing alternately east and west, he bleeped on the whistle and flashed his torch. The first to appear was Thomas, then Schaffer, then, within two minutes altogether, all of the others with the exception of Sergeant Harrod.

‘Pile your chutes there and weight them,’ Smith ordered. ‘Yes, bed them deep. Anyone seen Sergeant Harrod?’ A shaking of heads. ‘Nobody? No sight of him at all?’

‘Last I saw of him,’ Schaffer said, ‘he was going across my bows like a destroyer in a heavy sea.’

‘I saw a bit of that,’ Smith nodded. ‘The shrouds were twisted?’

‘Put a corkscrew to shame. But I’d have said there was no danger of the chute collapsing. Not enough time. We were almost on the ground before I lost sight of him.’

‘Any idea where he landed, then?’

‘Roughly. He’ll be all right, Major. A twisted ankle, a bump on the head. Not to worry.’

‘Use your torches,’ Smith said abruptly. ‘Spread out. Find him.’

With two men on one side of him, three on the other, all within interlocking distance of their torch beams, Smith searched through the snow, his flashlight raking the ground ahead of him. If he shared Schaffer’s optimism about Harrod, his face didn’t show it. It was set and grim. Three minutes passed and then came a shout from the right. Smith broke into a run.

Carraciola it was who had called and was now standing at the farther edge of a wind-swept outcrop of bare rock, his torch shining downwards and slightly ahead. Beyond the rock the ground fell away abruptly to a depth of several feet and in this lee a deep drift had formed. Half-buried in its white depths, Sergeant Harrod lay spread-eagled on his back, his feet almost touching the rock, his face upturned to the falling snow, his eyes open. He did not seem to notice the snow falling on his eyes.

They were all there now, staring down at the motionless man. Smith jumped down into the drift, dropped to his knees, slid an arm under Harrod’s shoulders and began to lift him to a sitting position. Harrod’s head lolled back like that of a broken rag doll. Smith lowered him back into the snow and felt for the pulse in the throat. Still kneeling, Smith straightened, paused for a moment with bent head then climbed wearily to his feet.

‘Dead?’ Carraciola asked.

‘He’s dead. His neck is broken.’ Smith’s face was without expression. ‘He must have got caught up in the shrouds and made a bad landing.’

‘It happens,’ Schaffer said. ‘I’ve known it happen.’ A long pause, then: ‘Shall I take the radio, sir?’

Smith nodded. Schaffer dropped to his knees and began to fumble for the buckle of the strap securing the radio to Harrod’s back.

Smith said: ‘Sorry, no, not that way. There’s a key around his neck, under his tunic. It fits the lock under the flap of the breast buckle.’

Schaffer located the key, unlocked the buckle after some difficulty, eased the straps off the dead man’s shoulders and finally managed to work the radio clear. He rose to his feet, the radio dangling from his hand, and looked at Smith.

‘Second thoughts, what’s the point. Any fall hard enough to break his neck wouldn’t have done the innards of this radio any good.’

Wordlessly, Smith took the radio, set it on the rock, extended the antenna, set the switch to ‘Transmit’, and cranked the call-up handle. The red telltale glowed, showing the transmission circuit to be in order. Smith turned the switch to receive, turned up the volume, moved the tuning knob, listened briefly to some static-laden music, closed up the radio set and handed it back to Schaffer.

‘It made a better landing than Sergeant Harrod,’ Smith said briefly. ‘Come on.’

‘We bury him, Major?’ Carraciola asked.

‘No need.’ Smith shook his head and gestured with his torch at the drifting snow. ‘He’ll be buried within the hour. Let’s find the supplies.’

‘Now, for God’s sake don’t lose your grip!’ Thomas said urgently.

‘That’s the trouble with you Celts,’ Schaffer said reprovingly. ‘No faith in anyone. There is no cause for alarm. Your life is in the safe hands of Schaffer and Christiansen. Not to worry.’

‘What else do you think I’m worrying about?’

‘If we all start sliding,’ Schaffer said encouragingly, ’we won’t let you go until the last possible minute.’

Thomas gave a last baleful glance over his shoulder and then began to edge himself out over the black lip of the precipice. Schaffer and Christiansen had an ankle apiece, and they in turn were anchored by the others. As far as the beam of Thomas’s torch could reach, the cliff stretching down into the darkness was absolutely vertical, black naked rock with the only fissures in sight blocked with ice and with otherwise never a hand-or foot-hold.

‘I’ve seen all I want to,’ he said over his shoulder. They pulled him back and he edged his way carefully up to their supply pile before getting to his feet. He prodded the pack with the skis protruding from one end.

‘Very handy,’ he said morosely. ‘Oh, very handy for this lot indeed.’

‘As steep as that?’ Smith asked.

‘Vertical. Smooth as glass and you can’t see the bottom. How deep do you reckon it is, Major?’

‘Who knows?’ Smith shrugged. ‘We’re seven thousand feet up. Maps never give details at this altitude. Break out that nylon.’

The proper supply pack was located and the nylon produced, one thousand feet of it coiled inside a canvas bag as it had come from the makers. It had very little more diameter than a clothes-line but its wire core made it immensely strong and every yard of it had been fully tested to its rated breaking strain—its actual breaking strain was much higher—before leaving the factory. Smith tied a hammer to one end, and with two of the men holding him securely, paid it out over the edge, counting his arm spans as he let it go. Several times the hammer snagged on some unseen obstruction but each time Smith managed to swing it free. Finally the rope went completely slack and, despite all Smith’s efforts, it remained that way.

‘Well.’ Smith moved back from the edge. ‘That seems to be about it.’

‘And if it isn’t, hey?’ Christiansen asked. ‘If it’s caught on a teensy-weensy ledge a thousand feet above damn all?’

‘I’ll let you know,’ Smith said shortly.

‘You measured it off,’ Carraciola said. ‘How deep?’

‘Two hundred feet.’

‘Eight hundred feet left, eh?’ Thomas grinned.

‘We’ll need it all to tie up the garrison of the Schloss Adler.’

No one was amused. Smith said: ‘I’ll need a piton and two walkie-talkies.’

Fifteen feet back from the edge of the cliff they cleared away the snow and hammered an angled piton securely into the bare rock. Smith made a double bowline at one end of the nylon, slipped his legs through the loops, unclasped his belt then fastened it tightly round both himself and the rope and slipped a walkie-talkie over his shoulder. The rope was then passed round the piton and three men, backs to the cliff, wrapped it round their hands and prepared to take the weight. Schaffer stood by with the other walkie-talkie.

Smith checked that there were no sharp or abrasive edges on the cliff-top, wriggled cautiously over and gave the signal to be lowered. The descent itself was simple. As Thomas had said, it was a vertical drop and all he had to do was to fend himself off from the face as the men above paid out the rope. Once only, passing an overhang, he spun wildly in space, but within ten seconds regained contact with the rock face again. Mountaineering made easy, Smith thought. Or it seemed easy: perhaps, he thought wryly, it was as well that he couldn’t see what stretched beneath him.