Sam Llewellyn: Thunderbolt from Navarone

The soldier stood undecided. Mallory could not work out whether he had seen them. Beside him, Andrea sighted on the place under the man’s left shoulder blade where he would drive the knife. He put one mighty palm on the gritty soil, tensed his legs to spring –

‘Go on, then,’ said the soldier.

‘I evacuate my bowels on your mother’s grave,’ said Clytemnestra, in Greek. ‘I dig up her remains and feed them to my pigs, who vomit.’

‘Nice meeting you,’ said the German, in German, and stamped back down the beach.

Mallory took his hand away from the cocking lever. The palm was wet with sweat. He and Andrea rose from cover. After that, they marched in silence.

As they turned up the track behind the beach, Andrea said, ‘Wait.’

They waited.

Ahead, over the noise of the cicadas, there came the sound of a stone rolling under a boot.

‘Three minutes,’ said Andrea’s huge, purring whisper by Mallory’s ear. Then, silent as a shadow, he was gone.

The path unreeled under Andrea’s boots as he ran. He could feel the blood taking the power around his body, the thing that made him not a man in the grey pre-dawn, but a hunting animal closing with its prey. He saw the figure ahead, clambering up the path. He was alone, moving probably quite fast, but to Andrea slow and clumsy.

Andrea looked around him with that special radar of his. He sensed the town, Mallory and Clytemnestra behind him, the German soldiers on the beach, the two corpses in the surf, the little party ahead.

He sprang.

A great hard hand went over the mouth. The other hand went to the nape of the neck. He began the pull sideways to dislocate the vertebrae.

It was the smell that stopped him.

It was the smell of hair oil; a hair oil that Andrea had smelt before, on the MTB, in the dinghy, tonight. A powerful smell, sickly even by Greek standards. Expensive.

The smell of Captain Carstairs.

Andrea decided not to break the neck, after all. Instead he kept a hand over the mouth, and said, ‘No noise, or you die.’ Then he waited for Mallory.

So Miller lay with his eyes closed, devoting himself to analysis of the night sounds.

He heard Carstairs coming up the path, and rolled to his feet, Schmeisser in hand. Then he heard Andrea’s attack. After the brief scuffle came the brief bleep of a Scops owl. Mallory’s signal. Miller let out a long breath as three dark figures arrived in the camp.

‘All right,’ said Mallory’s voice. ‘Moving out.’

‘Where to?’ said Miller.

‘Germans on the beach,’ said Mallory. ‘Silence.’

Wills was already upright. Nelson’s cut had stiffened, and he needed some persuading. ‘Hurts,’ he said, whining.

‘Up,’ said Wills. ‘Show a leg.’

Grumbling, Nelson got up. Then they were slinging packs and weapons, starting up a steep, stony path among the bushes. And very soon the path was so steep that there was no spare energy even for wondering, or indeed doing anything except keeping the feet moving and the breath rasping and the heart beating. All the time, the sky in the east grew lighter.

Just after six o’clock, the sun hauled itself over the mountain. ‘Stop now,’ said Clytemnestra. ‘We eat.’

They slumped to the hot, stony ground and started fumbling for cigarettes and chocolate. They were on a ledge, a bare shelf of rock made by a crack that ran across a great cliff that seemed to rise sheer from the sea. Nelson said, ‘Water.’ Miller passed him his canteen. The seaman drank avidly, water spilling down his face and on to his shirt. Miller twitched the water bottle out of his hand.

‘Sod that,’ said Nelson. ‘I’ve got a mouf like a bleeding lime kiln.’

‘We all have,’ said Miller. He pulled a cigarette from his packet and lit it with a Zippo. He had been a Long Range Desert Group man, doing damage behind enemy lines in the Western Desert. Water was more important than petrol, which was more important than motherhood, religion and the gold standard. ‘You drink in the morning and at night. Drink in the day, you just sweat it right out again. Now let’s have a look at your arm.’

Nelson would not let him. His face was bluish and hostile under his sweat-matted red hair. “S all right,’ he said, and fell back into a sullen silence.

Wills said, in his odd, marble-mouthed voice, ‘Pull yourself together, man.’ But Nelson would not meet his eye.

In daylight, Wills was a mess. He had no eyebrows, and no hair on the front part of his head. His skin shone with tannic acid jelly, and there was a great bruise on his right temple. As he looked out over the blue void of the sea, his eyes were glassy and his hand trembled. Mallory guessed that he was thinking about his ship. He offered him a slab of chocolate and a wedge of the bread they had brought from Mavrocordato Street. Wills shook his head.

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