Alistair Maclean: The guns of Navaronne

His first operational flight had been bis last. Within ten minutes of taking off from the Menidi airfield outside Athens on a January night in 1941, engine failure had brought them to an ignominious though weli-cushioned end in a paddy field some miles north-west of the city. The rest of the winter he had spent seething with rage in a cookhouse back in Menidi. At the beginning of April he resigned from the Air Force without telling anyone and was making his way north towards the fighting and the Albanian frontier when he met the Germans coming south. As Miller afterwards told it, he reached Nauplion two blocks ahead of the nearest panzer division, was evacuated by the transport Slamat , sunk, picked up by the destroyer Wryneck , sunk, and finally arrived in Alexandria in an ancient Greek caique, with nothing left him in the world but a fixed determination never again to venture in the air or on the sea. Some months later he was operating with a long-range striking force behind the enemy lines in Libya.

He was, Mallory mused, the complete antithesis to Lieutenant Stevens. Stevens, young. fresh, enthusiastic, correct and immaculately dressed, and Miller, dried-up; lean, stringy, immensely tough and with an almost pathological aversion to spit and polish. How well the nickname «Dusty» suited him: there could hardly have been a greater contrast Again, unlike Stevens, Miller had never climbed a mountain in his life and the only Greek words he knew were invariably omitted from the dictionaries. And both these facts were of no importance at all. Miller had been picked for one reason only. A genius with explosives, resourceful and cool, precise and deadly in action, he was regarded by Middle East Intelligence in Cairo as the finest saboteur in southern Europe.

Behind Miller sat Casey Brown. Short, dark and compact, Petty Officer Telegraphist Brown was a Clydesider, in peacetime an installation and testing engineer in a famous yacht-builder's yard on the Garelock. The fact that he was a born and ready-made engine-room artificer had been so blindingly obvious that the Navy had missed it altogether and stuck him in the Communications Branch. Brown's ill luck was Mallory's good f ortune. Brown would act as the engineer of the boat taking them to Navarone and would maintain radio contact with base. He had also the further recommendation of being a first-class guerrilla fighter: a veteran of the Special Boat Service, he held the D.C.M. and D.S.M. for his exploits in the Aegean and off the coast of Libya.

The fifth and last member of the party sat directly behind Mallory. Mallory did not have to turn round to look at him. He already knew him, knew him better than he knew anyone else in the world, better even than he knew his own mother. Andrea, who had been his lieutenant for all these eighteen interminable months in Crete, Andrea of the vast bulk, the continual rumbling laughter and tragic past, with whom he had eaten, lived and slept in caves, rock-shelters and abandoned shepherd's huts while constantly harried by German patrols and aircraft — that Andrea had become his alter ego , his doppelganger : to look at Andrea was to look in a mirror to remind himself what he was like. There was no question as to why Andrea had come along. He wasn't there primarily because he was a Greek himself, with an intimate knowledge of the islander's language, thought and customs, nor even because of his perfect understanding with Mallory, although all these things helped. He was, instead, there exclusively for the protection and safety he afforded. Endlessly patient, quiet and deadly, tremendously fast in spite of his bulk, and with a feline stealth that exploded into berserker action, Andrea was the complete fighting machine. Andrea was their insurance policy against failure.

Mallory turned back to look out the window again, then nodded to himself in imperceptible satisfaction. Jensen probably couldn't have picked a better team if he'd scoured the whole Mediterranean theatre. It suddenly occurred to Mallory that Jensen probably had done just that. Miller and Brown had been recalled to Alexandria almost a month ago. It was almost as long since Stevens's relief had arrived aboard his cruiser in Malta. And if their battery-charging engine hadn't slipped down that ravine in the White Mountains, and if the sorely harassed runner from the nearest listening post hadn't taken a week to cover fifty miles of snowbound, enemy patrolled mountains and another five days to find them, he and Andrea would have been in Alexandria almost a fortnight earlier. Mallory's opinion of Jensen, already high, rose another notch. A far-seeing man who planned accordingly, Jensen must have had all his preparations for this made even before the first of the two abortive parachute landings on Navarone.

It was eight o'clock and almost totally dark inside the plane when Mallory rose and made his way for'ard to the control cabin. The captain, face wreathed in tobacco smoke; was drinking coffee: the co-pilot waved a languid hand at his approach and resumed a bored scanning of the scene ahead.

«Good evening.» Mallory smiled. «Mind if I come in?»

«Welcome in my office any time,» the pilot assured him. «No need to ask.»

«I only thought you might be busy… .» Mallory stopped and looked again at the scene of masterly inactivity. «Just who is flying this plane?» he asked.

«George. The automatic pilot.» He waved a coffeecup in the direction of a black, squat box, its blurred outlines just visible in the near darkness. «An industrious character, and makes a damn' sight fewer mistakes than that idle hound who's supposed to be on watch… . Anything on your mind, Captain?»

«Yes. What were your instructions for to-night?»

«Just to set you blokes down in Castelrosso when it was good and dark.» The pilot paused, then said frankly, «I don't get it. A ship this size for only five men and a couple of hundred odd pounds of equipment. Especially to Castelrosso. Especially after dark. Last plane that came down here after dark just kept on going down. Underwater obstruction — dunno what it was. Two survivors.»

«I know. I heard. I'm sorry, but I'm under orders too. As for the rest, forget it — and I mean forget. Impress on your crew that they mustn't talk. They've never seen us.»

The pilot nodded glumly. «We've all been threatened with court-martial already. You'd think there was a ruddy war on.»

«There is… . We'll be leaving a couple of cases behind. We're going ashore in different clothes. Somebody will be waiting for our old stuff when you get back.»

«Roger. And the best of luck, Captain. Official secrets, or no official secrets, I've got a hunch you're going to need it.»

«If we are, you can give us a good send-off.» Mallory grinned; «Just set us down in one piece, will you?»

«Reassure yourself, brother,» said the pilot firmly. «Just set your mind at ease. Don't forget — I'm in this ruddy plane too.»

The clamour of the Sunderland's great engines was still echoing in their ears when the stubby little motorboat chugged softly out of the darkness and nosed alongside the gleaming hull of the flying-boat. There was no time lost, there were no words spoken; within a minute the five men and all their gear had been embarked; within another the little boat was rubbing to a stop against the rough stone Navy jetty of Castelrosso. Two ropes went spinning up into the darkness, were caught and quickly secured by practised hands. Amidships, the rust-scaled iron ladder, recessed deep into the stone, stretched up into the star-dusted darkness above: as Mallory reached the top, a figure stepped forward out of the gloom.

«Captain Mallory?»

«Yes.»

«Captain Briggs, Army. Have your men wait here, will you? The Colonel would like to see you.» The nasal voice, peremptory in its clipped affectation, was far from cordial. Mallory stirred in slow anger, but said nothing. Briggs sounded like a man who might like his bed or his gin, and maybe their late visitation was keeping him from either or both. War was hell.