Force 10 from Navarone (17 page)

‘It’s not my day,’ Mallory said sadly. ‘Evening rather. First, I forget about Baer’s duplicate keys. Then about the ponies. Then about the brakes. Now the ropes. I wonder what I’ll forget about next?’

‘Perhaps about Neufeld and Droshny.’ Reynolds’s voice was carefully without expression.

‘What about Neufeld and Droshny?’

Reynolds pointed back up the railway track with the barrel of his Schmeisser. ‘Permission to fire, sir.’

Mallory swung round. Neufeld, Droshny and an indeterminate number of other pony-mounted soldiers had just appeared around a bend in the track and were hardly more than a hundred yards away.

‘Permission to fire,’ Mallory agreed. ‘The rest of you get down.’ He unslung and brought up his own Schmeisser just as Reynolds squeezed the trigger of his. For perhaps five seconds the closed metallic confines of the tiny cabin reverberated
deafeningly to the crash of the two machine-pistols, then, at a nudge from Mallory, the two men stopped firing. There was no target left to fire at. Neufeld and his men had loosed off a few preliminary shots but immediately realized that the wildly swaying saddles of their ponies made an impossibly unsteady firing position as compared to the cab of the locomotive and had pulled their ponies off into the woods on either side of the track. But not all of them had pulled off in time: two men lay motionless and face down in the snow while their ponies still galloped down the track in the wake of the locomotive.

Miller rose, glanced wordlessly at the scene behind, then tapped Mallory on the arm. ‘A small point occurs to me, sir. How do we stop this thing.’ He gazed apprehensively through the cab window. ‘Must be doing sixty already.’

‘Well, we’re doing at least twenty,’ Mallory said agreeably. ‘But fast enough to out-distance those ponies. Ask Andrea. He released the brake.’

‘He released a dozen levers,’ Miller corrected. ‘Any one could have been the brake.’

‘Well, you’re not going to sit around doing nothing, are you?’ Mallory asked reasonably. ‘Find out how to stop the damn thing.’

Miller looked at him coldly and set about trying to find out how to stop the damn thing. Mallory turned as Reynolds touched him on the arm. ‘Well?’

Reynolds had an arm round Maria to steady
her on the now swaying platform. He whispered: They’re going to get us, sir. They’re going to get us for sure. Why don’t we stop and leave those two, sir? Give them a chance to escape into the woods?’

‘Thanks for the thought. But don’t be mad. With us they have a chance – a small one to be sure, but a chance. Stay behind and they’ll be butchered.’

The locomotive was no longer doing the twenty miles per hour Mallory had mentioned and if it hadn’t approached the figure that Miller had so fearfully mentioned it was certainly going quickly enough to make it rattle and sway to what appeared to be the very limits of its stability. By this time the last of the trees to the right of the track had petered out, the darkened waters of the Neretva dam were clearly visible to the west and the railway track was now running very close indeed to the edge of what appeared to be a dangerously steep precipice. Mallory looked back into the cab. With the exception of Andrea, everyone now wore expressions of considerable apprehension on their faces. Mallory said: ‘Found out how to stop this damn thing yet?’

‘Easy.’ Andrea indicated a lever. ‘This handle here.’

‘Okay, brakeman. I want to have a look.’

To the evident relief of most of the passengers in the cab, Andrea leaned back on the brake-lever. There was an eldritch screeching that set teeth on edge, clouds of sparks flew up past the sides of
the cab as some wheels or other locked solid in the lines, then the locomotive eased slowly to a halt, both the intensity of sound from the squealing brakes and the number of sparks diminishing as it did so. Andrea, duty done, leaned out of the side of the cab with all the bored aplomb of the crack loco engineer: one had the feeling that all he really wanted in life that moment was a piece of oily waste and a whistle-cord to pull.

Mallory and Miller climbed down and ran to the edge of the cliff, less than twenty yards away. At least Mallory did. Miller made a much more cautious approach, inching forward the last few feet on hands and knees. He hitched one cautious eye over the edge of the precipice, screwed both eyes shut, looked away and just as cautiously inched his way back from the edge of the cliff: Miller claimed that he couldn’t even stand on the bottom step of a ladder without succumbing to the overwhelming compulsion to throw himself into the abyss.

Mallory gazed down thoughtfully into the depths. They were, he saw, directly over the top of the dam wall, which, in the strangely shadowed half-light cast by the moon, seemed almost impossibly far below in the dizzying depths. The broad top of the dam wall was brightly lit by floodlights and patrolled by at least half a dozen German soldiers, jack-booted and helmeted. Beyond the dam, on the lower side, the ladder Maria had spoken of was invisible, but the frail-looking swing bridge,
still menaced by the massive bulk of the boulder on the scree on the left bank, and farther down, the white water indicating what might or might not have been a possible – or passable – ford were plainly in sight. Mallory, momentarily abstracted in thought, gazed at the scene below for several moments, recalled that the pursuit must be again coming uncomfortably close and hurriedly made his way back to the locomotive. He said to Andrea: ‘About a mile and a half, I should think. No more.’ He turned to Maria. ‘You know there’s a ford – or what seems to be a ford – some way below the dam. Is there a way down?’

‘For a mountain goat.’

‘Don’t insult him,’ Miller said reprovingly.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Ignore him,’ Mallory said. ‘Just tell us when we get there.’

Some five or six miles below the Neretva dam General Zimmermann paced up and down the fringe of the pine forest bordering the meadow to the south of the bridge at Neretva. Beside him paced a colonel, one of his divisional commanders. To the south of them could just dimly be discerned the shapes of hundreds of men and scores of tanks and other vehicles, vehicles with all their protective camouflage now removed, each tank and vehicle surrounded by its coterie of attendants making last-minute and probably wholly unnecessary adjustments. The time for hiding was over.
The waiting was coming to an end. Zimmermann glanced at his watch.

‘Twelve-thirty. The first infantry battalions start moving across in fifteen minutes, and spread out along the north bank. The tanks at two o’clock.’

‘Yes, sir.’ The details had been arranged many hours ago, but somehow one always found it necessary to repeat the instructions and the acknowledgements. The colonel gazed to the north. ‘I sometimes wonder if there’s
anybody
at all across there.’

‘It’s not the north I’m worrying about,’ Zimmermann said sombrely. ‘It’s the west.’

‘The Allies? You – you think their air armadas will come soon? It’s still in your bones, Herr General?’

‘Still in my bones. It’s coming soon. For me, for you, for all of us.’ He shivered, then forced a smile. ‘Some ill-mannered lout has just walked over my grave.’

‘We’re coming up to it now,’ Maria said. Blonde hair streaming in the passing wind, she peered out again through the cab window of the clanking, swaying locomotive, withdrew her head and turned to Mallory. ‘About three hundred metres.’

Mallory glanced at Andrea. ‘You heard, brakeman?’

‘I heard.’ Andrea leaned hard on the brake lever. The result was as before, a banshee shrieking of locked wheels on the rusty lines and a pyrotechnical display of sparks. The locomotive came to a juddering halt as Andrea looked out his cab window and observed a V-shaped gap in the edge of the cliff directly opposite where they had come to a stop. ‘Within the yard, I should say?’

‘Within the yard,’ Mallory agreed. ‘If you’re unemployed after the war, there should always be a place for you in a shunter’s yard.’ He swung down to the side of the track, lent a helping hand to Maria and Petar, waited until Miller, Reynolds and
Groves had jumped down, then said impatiently to Andrea: ‘Well, hurry up, then.’

‘Coming,’ Andrea said peaceably. He pushed the handbrake all the way off, jumped down, and gave the locomotive a shove: the ancient vehicle at once moved off, gathering speed as it went. ‘You never know,’ Andrea said wistfully. ‘It might hit somebody somewhere.’

They ran towards the cut in the edge of the cliff, a cut which obviously represented the beginning of some prehistoric landslide down to the bed of the Neretva, a maelstrom of white water far below, the boiling rapids resulting from scores of huge boulders which had slipped from this landslide in that distant aeon. By some exercise of the imagination, that scar in the side of the cliff-face might just perhaps have been called a gully, but it was in fact an almost perpendicular drop of scree and shale and small boulders, all of it treacherous and unstable to a frightening degree, the whole dangerous sweep broken only by a small ledge of jutting rock about halfway down. Miller took one brief glance at this terrifying prospect, stepped hurriedly back from the edge of the cliff and looked at Mallory in a silently dismayed incredulity.

‘I’m afraid so,’ Mallory said.

‘But this is terrible. Even when I climbed the south cliff in Navarone –’

‘You didn’t climb the south cliff in Navarone,’ Mallory said unkindly. ‘Andrea and I pulled you up at the end of a rope.’

‘Did you? I forget. But this – this is a climber’s nightmare.’

‘So we don’t have to climb it. Just lower ourselves down. You’ll be all right – as long as you don’t start rolling.’

‘I’ll be all right as long as I don’t start rolling,’ Miller repeated mechanically. He watched Mallory join two ropes together and pass them around the bole of a stunted pine. ‘How about Petar and Maria?’

‘Petar doesn’t have to see to make this descent. All he has to do is to lower himself on this rope – and Petar is as strong as a horse. Somebody will be down there before him to guide his feet on to the ledge. Andrea will look after the young lady here. Now hurry. Neufeld and his men will be up with us any minute here – and if they catch up on this cliff-face, well that’s that. Andrea, off you go with Maria.’

Immediately, Andrea and the girl swung over the edge of the gully and began to lower themselves swiftly down the rope. Groves watched them, hesitated, then moved towards Mallory.

‘I’ll go last, sir, and take the rope with me.’

Miller took his arm and led him some feet away. He said, kindly: ‘Generous, son, generous, but it’s just not on. Not as long as Dusty Miller’s life depends on it. In a situation like this, I must explain, all our lives depend upon the anchorman. The Captain, I am informed, is the best anchorman in the world.’

‘He’s what?’

‘It’s one of the non-coincidences why he was chosen to lead this mission. Bosnia is known to have rocks and cliffs and mountains all over it. Mallory was climbing the Himalayas, laddie, before you were climbing out of your cot. Even you are not too young to have heard of him.’

‘Keith
Mallory? The New Zealander?’

‘Indeed. Used to chase sheep around, I gather. Come on, your turn.’

The first five made it safely. Even the last but one, Miller, made the descent to the ledge without incident, principally by employing his favourite mountain-climbing technique of keeping his eyes closed all the time. Then Mallory came last, coiling the rope with him as he came, moving quickly and surely and hardly ever seeming to look where he put his feet but at the same time not as much as disturbing the slightest pebble or piece of shale. Groves observed the descent with a look of almost awed disbelief in his eyes.

Mallory peered over the edge of the ledge. Because of a slight bend in the gorge above, there was a sharp cut-off in the moonlight just below where they stood so that while the phosphorescent whiteness of the rapids was in clear moonlight, the lower part of the slope beneath their feet was in deep shadow. Even as he watched, the moon was obscured by a shadow, and all the dimly-seen detail in the slope below vanished. Mallory knew that they could never afford to wait until the moon
reappeared, for Neufeld and his men could well have arrived by then. Mallory belayed a rope round an outcrop of rock and said to Andrea and Maria: ‘This one’s really dangerous. Watch for loose boulders.’

Andrea and Maria took well over a minute to make this invisible descent, a double tug on the rope announcing their safe arrival at the bottom. On the way down they had started several small avalanches, but Mallory had no fears that the next man down would trigger off a fall of rock that would injure or even kill Andrea and Maria; Andrea had lived too long and too dangerously to die in so useless and so foolish a fashion – and he would undoubtedly warn the next man down of the same danger. For the tenth time Mallory glanced up towards the top of the slope they had just descended but if Neufeld, Droshny and his men had just arrived they were keeping very quiet about it and being most circumspect indeed: it was not a difficult conclusion to arrive at that, after the events of the past few hours, circumspection would be the last thing in their minds.

The moon broke through again as Mallory finally made his descent. He cursed the exposure it might offer if any of the enemy suddenly appeared on the clifftop, even although he knew that Andrea would be guarding against precisely that danger; on the other hand it afforded him the opportunity of descending at twice the speed he could have made in the earlier darkness. The watchers below
watched tensely as Mallory, without any benefit of rope, made his perilous descent: but he never even looked like making one mistake. He descended safely to the boulder-strewn shore and gazed out over the rapids.

He said to no one in particular: ‘You know what’s going to happen if they arrive at the top and find us halfway across here and the moon shining down on us?’ The ensuing silence left no doubt but they all knew what was going to happen. ‘Now is all the time. Reynolds, you think you can make it?’ Reynolds nodded. ‘Then leave your gun.’

Mallory knotted a bowline round Reynolds’s waist, taking the strain, if one were to arise, with Andrea and Groves. Reynolds launched himself bodily into the rapids, heading for the first of the rounded boulders which offered so treacherous a hold in that seething foam. Twice he was knocked off his feet, twice he regained them, reached the rock, but immediately beyond it was washed away off balance and swept down-river. The men on the bank hauled him ashore again, coughing and spluttering and fighting mad. Without a word to or look at anybody Reynolds again hurled himself into the rapids, and this time so determined was the fury of his assault that he succeeded in reaching the far bank without once being knocked off his feet.

He dragged himself on to the stony beach, lay there for some moments recovering from his
exhaustion, then rose, crossed to a stunted pine at the base of the cliff rising on the other side, undid the rope round his waist and belayed it securely round the bole of the tree. Mallory, on his side, took two turns round a large rock and gestured to Andrea and the girl.

Mallory glanced upwards again to the top of the gully. There were still no signs of the enemy. Even so, Mallory felt that they could afford to wait no longer, that they had already pushed their luck too far. Andrea and Maria were barely halfway across when he told Groves to give Petar a hand across the rapids. He hoped to God the rope would hold, but hold it did for Andrea and Maria made it safely to the far bank. No sooner had they grounded than Mallory sent Miller on his way, carrying a pile of automatic arms over his left shoulder.

Groves and Petar also made the crossing without incident. Mallory himself had to wait until Miller reached the far bank, for he knew the chances of his being carried away were high and if he were, then Miller too would be precipitated into the water and their guns rendered useless.

Mallory waited until he saw Andrea give Miller a hand into the shallow water on the far bank and waited no longer. He unwound the rope from the rock he had been using as a belay, fastened a bowline round his own waist and plunged into the water. He was swept away at exactly the same point where Reynolds had been on his first attempt and was finally dragged ashore by his friends on
the far bank with a fair amount of the waters of the Neretva in his stomach but otherwise unharmed.

‘Any injuries, any cracked bones or skulls?’ Mallory asked. He himself felt as if he had been over Niagara in a barrel. ‘No? Fine.’ He looked at Miller. ‘You stay here with me. Andrea, take the others up round the first corner there and wait for us.’

‘Me?’ Andrea objected mildly. He nodded towards the gully. ‘We’ve got friends that might be coming down there at any moment.’

Mallory took him some little way aside. ‘We also have friends,’ he said quietly, ‘who might just possibly be coming down-river from the dam garrison.’ He nodded at the two sergeants. Petar and Maria. ‘What would happen to them if they ran into an Alpenkorps patrol, do you think?’

‘I’ll wait for you round the corner.’

Andrea and the four others made their slow way up-river, slipping and stumbling over the wetly slimy rocks and boulders. Mallory and Miller withdrew into the protection and concealment of two large boulders and stared upwards.

Several minutes passed. The moon still shone and the top of the gully was still innocent of any sign of the enemy. Miller said uneasily: ‘What do you think has gone wrong? They’re taking a damned long time about turning up.’

‘No, I think that it’s just that they are taking a damned long time in turning back.’

‘Turning back?’

‘They don’t
know
where we’ve gone.’ Mallory pulled out his map, examined it with a carefully hooded pencil-torch. ‘About three-quarters of a mile down the railway track, there’s a sharp turn to the left. In all probability the locomotive would have left the track there. Last time Neufeld and Droshny saw us we were aboard that locomotive and the logical thing for them to have done would have been to follow the track till they came to where we had abandoned the locomotive, expecting to find us somewhere in the vicinity. When they found the crashed engine, they would know at once what would have happened – but that would have given them another mile and a half to ride – and half of that uphill on tired ponies.’

‘That must be it. I wish to God,’ Miller went on grumblingly, ‘that they’d hurry up.’

‘What is this?’ Mallory queried. ‘Dusty Miller yearning for action?’

‘No, I’m not,’ Miller said definitely. He glanced at his watch. ‘But time is getting very short.’

‘Time,’ Mallory agreed soberly, ‘is getting terribly short.’

And then they came. Miller, glancing upward, saw a faint metallic glint in the moonlight as a head peered cautiously over the edge of the gully. He touched Mallory on the arm.

‘I see him,’ Mallory murmured. Together both men reached inside their tunics, pulled out their Lugers and removed their waterproof coverings. The helmeted head gradually resolved itself into a
figure standing fully silhouetted in the moonlight against the sharply etched skyline. He began what was obviously meant to be a cautious descent, then suddenly flung up both arms and fell backwards and outwards. If he cried out, from where Mallory and Miller were the cry could not have been heard above the rushing of the waters. He struck the ledge halfway down, bounced off and outwards for a quite incredible distance, then landed spread-eagled on the stony river bank below, pulling down a small avalanche behind him.

Miller was grimly philosophical. ‘Well, you said it was dangerous.’

Another figure appeared over the lip of the precipice to make the second attempt at a descent, and was followed in short order by several more men. Then, for the space of a few minutes, the moon went behind a cloud, while Mallory and Miller stared across the river until their eyes ached, anxiously and vainly trying to pierce the impenetrable darkness that shrouded the slope on the far side.

The leading climber, when the moon did break through, was just below the ledge, cautiously negotiating the lower slope. Mallory took careful aim with his Luger, the climber stiffened convulsively, toppled backwards and fell to his death. The following figure, clearly oblivious of the fate of his companion, began the descent of the lower slope. Both Mallory and Miller sighted their Lugers but just then the moon was suddenly obscured again
and they had to lower their guns. When the moon again reappeared, four men had already reached the safety of the opposite bank, two of whom, linked together by a rope, were just beginning to venture the crossing of the ford.