Alistair Maclean - The guns of Navaronne

«Give her everything you've got when the balloon goes up.» Two seconds later he was back in position in the bows, Schmeisser ready in his hands. «Your big chance, Dan'l Boone. Don't give the searchlights a chance to line up — they'll blind you.»

Even as he spoke, the light from the signal lamp at the harbour mouth cut off abruptly and two dazzling white beams, one from either side of the harbour entrance, stabbed blindingly through the darkness, bathing the whole harbour in their savage glare — a glare that lasted for only a fleeting second of time, yielded to a contrastingly stygian darkness as two brief bursts of machine-gun fire smashed them into uselessness. From such short range it had been almost impossible to miss.

«Get down, everyone!» Mallory shouted. «Flat on the deck!»

The echoes of the gunfire were dying away, the reverberations fading along the great sea wall of the fortress when Casey Brown cut in all six cylinders of the engine and opened the throttle wide, the surging roar of the big Diesel blotting out all other sounds in the night. Five seconds, ten seconds, they were passing through the entrance, fifteen, twenty, still not a shot fired, half a minute and they were well clear, bows lifting high out of the water, the deep-dipped stern trailing its long, seething ribbon of phosphorescent white as the engine crescendoed to its clamorous maximum power and Brown pulled the heeling craft sharply round to starboard, seeking the protection of the steep-walled cliffs.

«A desperate battle, boss, but the better men won.» Miller was on his feet now, clinging to a mounted gun for support as the deck canted away beneath his feet. «My grandchildren shall hear of this.»

«Guards probably all up searching the town. Or maybe there were some poor blokes behind these searchlights. Or maybe we just took 'em all by surprise.» Mallory shook his head. «Anyway you take it, we're just plain damn' lucky.»

He moved aft, into the wheelhouse. Brown was at the wheel, Louki almost crowing with delight

«That was magnificent, Casey,» Mallory said sincerely. «A first-class job of work. Cut the engine when we come to the end of the cliffs. Our job's done. I'm going ashore.»

«You don't have to, Major.»

Mallory turned. «What's that?»

«You don't have to. I tried to tell you on the way down, but you kept telling me to be quiet.» Louki sounded injured, turned to Casey. «Slow down, please. The last thing Andrea told me, Major, was that we were to come this way. Why do you think he let himself be trapped against the cliffs to the north instead of going out into the country, where he could have hidden easily.»

«Is this true, Casey?» Mallory asked.

«Don't ask me, sir. Those two — they always talk. in Greek.»

«Of course, of course.» Mallory looked at the low cliffs close off the starboard beam, barely moving now with the engine shut right down, looked back at Louki. «Are you quite sure …»

He stopped in mid-sentence, jumped out through the wheelhouse door. The splash — there had been no mistaking the noise-had come from almost directly ahead. Mallory, Miller by his side, peered into the darkness, saw a dark head surfacing above the water less than twenty feet away, leaned far over with outstretched arm as the launch slid slowly by. Five seconds later Andrea stood on the deck, dripping mightily and beaming all over his great moon face. Mallory led him straight into the wheelhouse, switched on the soft light of the shaded chartlamp.

«By all that's wonderful, Andrea, I never thought to see you again. How did it go?»

«I will soon tell you,» Andrea laughed. «Just after—»

«You've been wounded!» Miller interrupted. «Your shoulder's kinda perforated.» He pointed to the red stain spreading down the sea-soaked jacket

«Well, now, I believe I have.» Andrea affected vast surprise. «Just a scratch, my friend.»

«Oh, sure, sure, just a scratch! It would be the same if your arm had been blown off. Come on down to the cabin — this is just a kindergarten exercise for a man of my medical skill.»

«But the captain—»

«Will have to wait. And your story. Ol' Medicine Man Miller permits no interference with his patients. Come on!»

«Very well, very well,» Andrea said docilely. He shook his head in mock resignation, foliowed Miller out of the cabin.

Brown opened up to full throttle again, took the launch north almost to Cape Demirci to avoid any hundred to one chance the harbour batteries might make, turned due east for a few miles then headed south into the Maidos Straits. Mallory stood by his side in the wheelhouse, gazing out over the dark, still waters. Suddenly he caught a gleam of white in the distance, touched Brown's arm and pointed for'ard.

«Breakers ahead, Casey, I think. Reefs, perhaps?»

Casey looked in long silence, finally shook his head.

«Bow-wave,» he said unemotionally. «It's the destroyers coming through.»

Commander Vincent Ryan, R.N., Captain (Destroyers) and Commanding officer of His Majesty's latest Sclass destroyer Sirdar , looked round the cramped chart- room and tugged thoughtfully at his magnificent Captain Kettle beard. A scruffier, a more villainous, a more cut and battered-looking bunch of hard cases he had never seen, he reflected, with the possible exception of a Bias Bay pirate crew he had helped round up when a very junior officer on the China Station. He looked at them more closely, tugged his beard again, thought there was more to it than mere scruffiness. He wouldn't care to be given the task of rounding this lot up. Dangerous, highly dangerous, he mused, but impossible to say why, there was only this quietness, this relaxed watchfulness that made him feel vaguely uncomfortable. His «hatchetmen,» Jensen had called them: Captain Jensen picked his killers well.

«Any of you gentlemen care to go below,» he suggested. «Plenty of hot water, dry clothes — and warm bunks. We won't be using them to-night.»

«Thank you very much, sir.» Mallory hesitated. «But we'd like to see this through.»

«Right, then, the bridge it is,» Ryan said cheerfully. The Sirdar was beginning to pick up speed again, the deck throbbing beneath their feet. «it is at your own risk, of course.»

«We lead charmed lives,» Miller drawled. «Nothin' ever happens to us.»

The rain had stopped and they could see the cold twinkling of stars through broadening rifts in the clouds. Mallory looked around him, could see Maidos broad off the port bow and the great bulk of Navarone slipping by to starboard. Aft, about a cable length away, he could just distinguish two other ships, high-curving bow-waves piled whitely against tenebrious silhouettes. Mallory turned to the captain.

«No transports, sir?»

«No transports.» Ryan felt a vague mixture of pleasure and embarrassment that this man should call him «sir.» «Destroyers only. This is going to be a smashand-grab job. No time for dawdlers to-night — and we're behind schedule already.»

«How long to clear the beaches?»

«Half an hour.»

«What! Twelve hundred men?» Mallory was incredulous.

«More.» Ryan sighed. «Half the ruddy inhabitants want to come with us, too. We could still do it in half an hour, but we'll probably take a bit longer. We'll embark all the mobile equipment we can.»

Mallory nodded, let his eye travel along the slender outlines of the Sirdar . «Where are you going to put 'em all, sir?»

«A fair question,» Ryan admitted. «5 p.m. on the London Underground will be nothing compared to this little lot But we'll pack them in somehow.»

Mallory nodded again and looked across the dark waters at Navarone. Two minutes, now, three at the most, and the fortress would open behind that headland. He felt a hand touch his arm, half-turned and smiled down at the sad-eyed little Greek by his side.