Alistair Maclean - The guns of Navaronne

Mallory waited another half-minute, touched Miller's arm, rose to his feet and started running madly across the square, the long hooked bamboo pressed close to his. side, the American pounding behind him. In a few seeonds they had reached the gates of the fortress, the startled guards running the last few feet to meet them.

«Every man to the Street of Steps!» Mallory shouted. «Those damned English saboteurs are trapped in a house dawn there! We've got to have some mortars. Hurry, man, hurry, in the name of God!»

«But the gate!» one of the two guards protested. «We cannot leave the gate!» The man had no suspidons, none at all: in the circumstances — the near darkness, the pouring rain, the German-clad soldier speaking perfect German, the obvious truth that there was a gunbattle being fought near-hand — it would have been remarkable had he shown any signs of doubt

«Idiot!» Mallory screamed at him. « Dummkopf! What is there to guard against here? The English swine are in the Street of Steps. They must be destroyed! For God's sake, hurry!» he shouted desperately. «If they escape again it'll be the Russian Front for all of us!»

Mallory had his hand on the man's shoulder now, ready to push him on his way, but his hand fell to his side unneeded. The two men were already gone, running pell-mell across the square, had vanished into the rain and the darkness already. Seconds later Mallory and Miller were deep inside the fortress of Navarone.

Everywhere there was complete confusion — a bustling purposeful confusion as one would expect with the seasoned troops of the Alpenkorps, but confusion nevertheless, with much shouting of orders, blowing of whistles, starting of truck engines, sergeants running to and fro chivvying their men into marching order or into the waiting transports. Mallory and Miller ran too, once or twice through groups of men milling round the tailboard of a truck. Not that they were in any desperate hurry for themselves, but nothing could have been more conspicuous — and suspicious — than the sight of a couple of men walking calmly along in the middle of all that urgent activity. And so they ran, heads down or averted whenever they passed through a pool of light, Miller cursing feelingly and often at the unaccustomed exercise.

They skirted two barrack blocks on their right, then the powerhouse on their left, then an ordnance depot on their right and then the Abteilung garage on their left. They were climbing, now, almost in darkness, but Mallory knew where he was to the inch: he had so thoroughly memorised the closely tallying descriptions given him by Vlachos and Panayis that' he would have been confident of finding his way with complete accuracy even if the darkness had been absolute.

«What's that, boss?» Miller had caught Mallory by the arm, was pointing to a large, uncompromisingly rectangular building that loomed gauntly against the horizon. «The local hoosegow?»

«Water storage tank,» Mallory said briefly. «Panayis estimates there's half a million gallons in there — magazine flooding in an emergency. The magazines are directly below.» He pointed to a squat, box-like, concrete structure a little farther on. «The only entrance to the magazine. Locked and guarded.»

They were approaching the senior officers' quarters now — the commandant had his own flat on the second story, directly overlooking the massive, reinforced ferro-concrete control tower that controlled the two great guns below. Mallory suddenly stopped, picked up a handful of dirt, rubbed it on his face and told Miller to do the same.

«Disguise,» he explained. «The experts would consider it a bit on the elementary side, but it'll have to do. The lighting's apt to be a bit brighter inside this place.»

He went up the steps to the officers' quarters at a dead run, crashed through the swing doors with a force that almost took them off their hinges. The sentry at the keyboard looked at him in astonishment, the barrel of his sub-machine-gun lining up on the New Zealander's chest.

«Put that thing down, you damned idiot!» Mallory snapped furiously. «Where's the commandant? Quickly, you oaf! It's life or death!»

«Herr — Herr Kominandant?» the sentry stuttered. «He's left — they are all gone, just a minute ago.»

«What? All gone?» Mallory was staring at him with narrowed, dangerous eyes. «Did you say 'all gone'?» he asked softly.

«Yes. I — I'm sure they're …» He broke off abruptly as Mallory's eyes shifted to a point behind his shoulder.

«Then who the hell is that?» Mallory demanded savagely.

The sentry would have been less than human not to fall for it. Even as he was swinging round to look, the vicious judo cut took him just below the ear. Mallory had smashed open the glass of the keyboard before the unfortunate guard bad bit the floor, swept all the keys — about a dozen in all — off their rings and into his pocket. It took them another twenty seconds to tape the man's mouth and hands and lock him in a convenient cupboard; then they were on their way again, still running.

One more obstacle to overcome, Mallory thought as they pounded along in the darkness, the last of the triple defences. He did not know how many men would be guarding the locked door to the magazine, and in that moment of fierce exaltation he didn't particularly care. Neither, he felt sure, did Miller. There were no worries now, no taut-nerved tensions or nameless anxieties. Mallory would have been the last man in the world to admit it, or even believe it, but this was what men like Miller and himself had been born for.

They had their hand-torches out now, the powerful beams swinging in the wild arcs as they plunged along, skirting the massed batteries of A.A. guns. To anyone observing their approach from the front, there could have been nothing more calculated to disarm suspicion than the sight and sound of the two men running towards them without any attempt at concealment, one of them shouting to the other in German, both with lit torches whose beams lifted and fell, lifted and fell as the men's arms windmilled by their sides. But these same torches were deeply hooded, and only a very alert observer indeed would have noticed that the downward arc of the lights never passed backwards beyond the runners' feet.

Suddenly Mallory saw two shadows detaching themselves from the darker shadow of the magazine entrance, steadied his torch for a brief second to check. He slackened speed.

«Right!» he said softly. «Here they come — only two of them. One each — get as close as possible first. Quick and quiet — a shout, a shot, and we're finished. And for God's sake don't start clubbing 'em with your torch. There'll be no lights on in that magazine and I'm not going to start crawling around there with a box of bloody matches in my hand!» He transferred his torch to his left hand, pulled out his Navy Colt, reversed it, caught it by the barrel, brought up sharply only inches away from the guards now running to meet them.

«Are you all right?» Mallory gasped. «Anyone been here? Quickly, man, quickly! »

«Yes, yes, we're all right.» The man was off guard, apprehensive. «What in the name of God is all that noise—»

«Those damned English saboteurs!» Mallory swore viciously. «They've killed the guards and they're inside! Are you sure no one's been here? Come, let me see.»

He pushed his way past the guard, probed his torch at the massive padlock, then straightened his back.

«Thank heaven for that anyway!» He turned round, let the dazzling beam of his torch catch the man square in the eyes, muttered an apology and switched off the light, the sound of the sharp click lost in the hollow, soggy thud of the heel of his Colt catching the man behind the ear, just below the helmet. The sentry was still on his feet, just beginning to crumple, when Mallory staggered as the second guard reeled into him, staggered, recovered, clouted him with the Colt for good measure, then stiffened in sudden dismay as he heard the vicious, hissing plop of Miller's automatic, twice in rapid succession.