Greg Iles - Black Cross

His right hand had just caught hold of the rough-edged crossbeam when McShane shouted: “That’s five pounds you owe me, mate!”

Stern looked up. The huge Highlander was already sitting above him on the crossarm, his bare legs hanging beneath his old kilt, his face laughing beneath his green beret. Stern heard a soft whirring sound and looked down the hill. Thirty meters along the wire that began beneath McShane’s kilt, a dark green gas cylinder trundled smoothly downhill toward the second pylon.

Stern reached out and jerked the rubber rope hanging from the pulley roller nearest him, yanking out the cotter pin that held the cylinder beneath it in place. Powered only by gravity, the green cylinder began to move away from the pylon and gather speed. The whole contraption looked something like a large oxygen bottle tied by its neck to a runaway ski-lift chair, but this did not stop it from working with absolute precision.

“I don’t have five pounds,” Stern grumbled, settling into an uncomfortable perch on his end of the crossarm.

McShane waved his hand. “You can stand me a pint in Fort William. Beats money anytime.”

Stern nodded, still trying to catch his breath.

“There’s Ben Nevis,” McShane said. “See it? I call her the crouching lion. Tallest mountain in Scotland.”

Stern raised his eyes and looked out over the glen. Far to the south he saw the wooded hump of the mountain shrouded in mist. Loch Lochy shimmered like polished slate in the pale sun.

“I think you’ve about got the knack of it,” McShane said above the rising wind. “’Course it’d take you another month to get up to my level.”

Stern nodded with resignation. “You’re damned good,” he admitted. “But why in God’s name do you work so hard at it? You’re not the one who’s going into—”

Stern stared hard into the Highlander’s blue eyes.

McShane winked. “Finally figured it out, have you? Christ, it only took you a week.”

“You close-mouthed bastard. You’re going in to hang the cylinders!”

McShane made an indignant face. “ Goin’ , you say? I’m leading the bloody mission!”

“Who else is going with you?”

McShane looked around cautiously, which appeared ridiculous sixty feet off the ground. “Three other instructors,” he said. “We get a little tired of wet-nursing pups like you. This is probably going to be the last real commando raid of the war, you know. In the classic sense, I mean. Hit and run. Shoot ’n scoot, as we used to say.”

“It’s all a game to you, isn’t it?” Stern said in an accusatory tone. “The war, I mean.”

McShane’s lips maintained their smile, but his eyes narrowed. “It’s one way of looking at it. That way, no matter how bad things get, you keep some perspective. But I’ll tell you this, man. When the Luftwaffe was pounding London into dust and the RAF lads were dying like flies over the Channel, it wasna any game. Churchill sent us across just to show Britain wasna lyin’ down for Hitler. We got chewed into little pieces. I lost many a mate those first two years. I dinna mind tellin’ you, the day of reckoning is at hand.”

McShane reached out with his boot and rocked a third gas cylinder, which hung from the wire beneath him. “I reckon most are content to wait for the invasion. But we Highlanders are a vindictive lot. To our own detriment sometimes. Smith offered me a chance to hit the bastards where it hurts, so I took it.”

Stern had never thought he would feel empathy for a British soldier, but in that moment he did. “How much do you know about the mission, Sergeant?”

McShane gazed past him to the gray hills. “I know all I need to know. Same as you. Dinna look to know more.” He glanced down to check his spikes for the descent. “You ought to be glad it’s me going. You need all the help ye can get.”

“What do you mean? I can take care of myself.”

“Can you?” McShane chuckled softly. “I hope you can hide yourself better than you hid that bicycle. I found the bloody thing four days ago.”

Stern’s mouth fell open.

“Dinna be worryin’ about that. The colonel doesn’t know. I slipped it back to that crofter’s hut for you.” The Highlander reached down and took hold of the cotter pin holding the third cylinder in place. “You’ll do fine,” he said. “Smith knew what he was doing. You’re the perfect man for your job.”

He yanked the pin from the roller wheel. “And I’m the perfect man for mine. If anyone can hang those cylinders, stow your gear and get out without the Hun any the wiser, it’s the boys from Achnacarry.”

Stern watched the cylinder glide smoothly down the wire. He was glad to know McShane would be preparing the way for him. He didn’t like any of the other instructors much, but after five days of training under them, he had to admit that he’d never met better or tougher soldiers in his life.

The rolling cylinder jumped the crossarm on the second pylon, then settled into a steady run down toward the loch.

“When are you jumping off?” Stern asked. “By my count, it’s time to go.”

“The cylinders from Porton Down are scheduled to arrive in one hour,” McShane said calmly. “My lot shoves off then.”

Stern felt a rush of excitement. “Tonight?”

McShane unclipped his safety belt, slid off the crossarm and dug his spikes into the thick pole beneath it. He looked over at Stern and grinned. “I just wish I was going to be there to see those cylinders land in that camp. It’ll be some show, that. One night only, and no one leaves alive.”

“No one but me and McConnell,” said Stern.

“Right,” McShane added quickly. “That’s what I meant.”

Beyond the Arkaig River where it bent north of the castle, McConnell wearily stuffed his chemistry and German books into a leather bag and started back toward the commando camp. He’d had enough studying, and his stomach was audibly begging for nourishment. To shorten his trip, he turned into a section of forest known as the Mile Dorcha , or Dark Mile. The origin of the name was plain enough. What had once been a forest lane was now a tunnel of overarching trees, with the road itself sunk between high banks covered with deep moss and lichens. It was the kind of place where one half-expected to hear the thunder of hoofbeats as a headless horseman galloped out of the trees.

But it was no horseman that stepped out of the forest to McConnell’s right, causing his heart to momentarily stop. It was a tall man of about sixty, wearing a beautiful kilt, a green beret and scuffed brogues. The gray-eyed stranger stood motionless beside the lane. When McConnell drew near, he lifted his walking staff and raised two fingers in greeting.

“Hello,” said McConnell.

“Fine day for a walk,” the man replied, then fell in beside him.

“Yes, it is,” Mark agreed.

The stranger said nothing else. Strangely, McConnell felt no urge or obligation to speak. The kilted walker seemed in absolute harmony with his surroundings, as if he were as much a part of the landscape as the moss and the crooked trees. In the easy silence, McConnell found himself reflecting on the past week. His time at Achnacarry had been a revelation. The emergency surgery on the riverbank had left him exhilarated, reminding him of what he had given up to work in the labs at Oxford. It had also marked the genesis of a careful friendship between himself and Stern. The taciturn Jew still refused to reveal what kind of training he was doing alone, but whenever McConnell heard the ka-whoom of explosions echoing through the hills, he pictured Stern with his hand on the detonator.

Twice more since the episode at the river, he had managed to surprise Stern. Yesterday, Sergeants McShane and Lewis had trotted up to them carrying a massive ten-foot log on their shoulders. Lewis’s knee was heavily taped, but he was making a great point of showing everyone that Stern had not crippled him. When the two sergeants pretended to pass the log to McConnell, Mark stunned everyone by taking it on his shoulder and marching off across the hill with little apparent strain. He didn’t tell them that during high school he had worked summers at a creosote plant, where with twelve tireless Negroes he had hauled sizzling black poles nine hours a day under the Georgia sun.