The Heights of Zervos (31 page)

'You'll never make it, Mac...' It was Prentice's strained voice which spoke, but the Scot maintained the same even pace as he called back to them.

'Prentice, get to the back and watch the tracks - the outside one. If I'm going over, signal Ford by waving your hand. Ford! You warn me by clapping a hand on my left shoulder -damned quickly, too!' He heard feet moving back along the floorboards. Someone slipped in the snow and swore as they saved themselves. On his own initiative Grapos went back to watch the inner track which had to pass the boulder. Macomber reduced speed to a point where he feared the engine might stop altogether and the snow-covered obstacle crept closer and seemed to magnify itself hugely as he steered away from the mountain wall to give himself maximum clearance, which involved placing the left-hand track on the very edge of the precipice.

The half-track crept forward through the deepening gloom, because now the snow drifting down had made it seem almost like night, and his headlights reflected weirdly off the ice covering which had formed over the mountain wall. It was like living through a bad dream, Macomber thought wearily - the drifting snow which he no longer brushed away from the windscreen, from his weighted coat; the uncanny silence, the muffled throb of the engine, the creak of the turning tracks, the blurred cones of the headlights, and now that frozen gleam off the rock wall. Inside his gloves his hands had hardly any feeling left, his feet were losing contact with the rest of his body, the dull ache in his forehead was fogging his mind, and he had the strange sensation that he was disembodied, that his limbs belonged to someone else, that he was reacting like an automaton. Perhaps his judgement had gone, he was attempting the impossible, and they would end up plunging into that abyss which could easily go down for a couple of thousand feet. He blinked, bit his lip, pushed the defeatist thoughts out of his mind and glared ferociously ahead as the trapped boulder moved closer and closer and the outer track revolved along the rim of the ledge. They were within yards of the obstacle now, would attempt to slide past it within seconds.

At the rear of the vehicle Prentice was leant half over the side as he followed the progress of the caterpillar which was starting to inch out over the precipice as they began to pass the boulder. It was a frightening sight - a portion of the moving belt suspended over the drop - and he was on the verge of signalling to Ford when he decided to wait a few seconds longer, to see whether the position deteriorated. On the far side, mid-way along the half-track, Grapos was gazing down at the boulder with equal intensity while the inner track churned slowly forward, drew alongside it and shaved snow from its encrusted surface. Glancing over his shoulder towards Prentice he frowned at the lieutenant's precariously poised position and then looked down at the boulder again. The main section of track was beginning to slide past it. Prentice, leaning over the outer edge, was supporting himself with one hand only to give himself the best possible view of what was happening, and the fact that his head was almost upside down probably brought on the attack. He was in the same position, staring intently as an inch of track revolved in mid-air, when the dizziness swept over him and he knew he was going to faint. Muddled, disorientated, he felt the quick movement of his right foot slipping over a patch of snow at the same moment as he heard the first grind of the vehicle against the boulder. His balance went completely, both feet sliding under him as Grapos lurched across the half-track, grasped his right arm and jerked him backwards. Prentice fell heavily, caught the back of his head on the bench and sprawled on the floorboards.

Macomber was concentrating on the precipice brink, his hands gripping the wheel, his foot ready to apply a little pressure, when he heard the scraping sound of the inner track contacting the boulder. He waited, his nerves strung up to fever pitch, waited for the hand to descend on his shoulder warning him to brake, and when nothing happened - confident that Prentice was still checking the outer caterpillar - he continued forward. The vehicle was shuddering unpleasantly as the scraping developed into a grinding sound and he suppressed the urge to glance back. His job was driving, not observation, but again he was obsessed with the mounting fear of what would happen if the caterpillar disengaged from the vehicle, leaving it with only two wheels and a single track, which must cause a state of fatal disequilibrium within seconds. The half-track shuddered again and the vibrations travelled up the steering column while he resisted the temptation to steer the front wheels, which were now well past the boulder, in towards the mountain wall. Then the shuddering and grinding noise ceased at the same moment. He drove a few yards farther forward and turned the wheel, taking the half-track away from the edge. Within minutes the road was fanning out, becoming wider as the weather began to clear and the snow drifted down more slowly, soon to stop altogether. To his right the mountain wall moved away from him, the road followed it at a distance, and on his left the precipice faded away where the ground sloped more gradually. He increased speed, experiencing a sense of exhilaration.

'Soon we shall see the monastery.' It was Grapos who spoke with hoarse confidence as he stood behind the Scot and stared over the windshield. 'We go down, pass a big rock, and there it is.'

'How are the others?'

'Prentice fell down and struck his head, but he is conscious again and Ford is helping him.'

Macomber glanced over his shoulder and saw Prentice seated on the rear bench with his head between his hands and Ford beside him. The lieutenant looked up, caught the Scot's frowning expression and waved back encouragingly. 'I'll be OK in a minute - how much farther before we see something?'

'Not far. Take it easy while you can.' Macomber looked up at Grapos. 'That rock you mentioned - I seem to remember it hangs out over the road, doesn't it?'

'Yes. We pass it - we see the monastery.'

They were travelling downhill but the view to the south was obscured by a snowbound slope as they lost altitude rapidly, descending into a bowl with wintry hills sweeping down on all sides. Along the ridges the wind whipped up the snow in flurries which eddied briefly and then vanished, but the sky above was a clear cold blue and the sun shone palely and without warmth. Macomber thought he had never seen such a bleak landscape, a wilderness where savage rocks reared up in strange shapes which reminded him of the wastelands of Arizona. They were close to one of these weird rock formations

- the only one which towered above the road - when Grapos' hand gripped his shoulder tightly. 'There is someone up there

- up on the crag.' Macomber looked up a second too late and they were already moving into the faint shadow the rock cast across the road. He slowed down, braked under the lee of the rock, and followed Grapos out of the half-track, flexing his stiffened fingers which had become almost locked to the wheel.

They had climbed only a few feet when the Greek pulled the Scot close to the rock and whispered. 'I go up this side - you take the other and wait. If he hears me coming he will go down your side — you wait and he meets you.' Macomber nodded, scrambled stiffly back down through knee-deep snow to the road, gestured to the other two men to stay where they were, and made his way under the looming rock. The far side was a steep slope covered with harder snow where the east wind had blown over it, and he had climbed less than fifty feet before he came up behind a large boulder which provided a perfect ambush point. With his Luger in his hand he settled down to wait, and while he waited he stared out at the panoramic view.

The monastery was in sight. Mount Zervos, remote above the vagaries of the weather was fully exposed to view. Crouched behind his boulder, Macomber saw that it was as he remembered it - the huge bluff shouldered out from the mountain, hanging over the sea on one side while on the other it plunged hundreds of feet to the lake below. The walls of the monastery rose vertically from the summit of the bluff; four windowed slabs like giant watch-towers linked together by battlemented walls. They seemed to grow up out of the rocky bluff as they sheered upwards and were silhouetted against the sea with the mainland beyond, the most remote and ascetic hermitage in all Europe - and the ultimate objective of Colonel Burckhardt.

The sea was grey and choppy but comparatively calm as the last of the snowstorm crossed the gulf. Macomber doubted whether the snow had even reached the bluff this time, so once again the monastery had retained its unimpaired view across the sea to the mainland supply road. Below where he waited-the ground receded away to the lake, a stretch of water at least half a mile wide, a lake frozen solid. The road went down to the eastern shore, turned along the northern edge of the ice-sheet, and then vanished before reappearing at the far end, close to the sea at the point where it began its unseen ascent to the bluff. A good half mile of the road was lost, blocked completely by an immense mass of snow heaped up against the slope below Macomber. This was drift snow, probably anything up to thirty feet deep, snow blown there recently by the high wind and which would strangle any type of powered vehicle attempting to drive through it. He stared down at the frozen lake, a sheet of water which must have frozen steadily thicker throughout the long winter. Was it solid enough to support half-tracks and mountain guns? A rattle of disturbed stones beyond the boulder warned him that someone was coming.

'Do not shoot! Please!'

Grapos' voice. Macomber lowered his Luger, stood up and saw the Greek leaning against the rock face with his rifle hoisted harmlessly over his shoulder. 'What's wrong?' he asked sharply.

'He is dead. Come, you must see.'

'Who's dead?'

But the Greek had turned back and was scrambling up again through the snow, using one hand to lever his limping foot more rapidly up past the rock. Macomber swore at his ambiguousness and went up after him. When he arrived at the top, receiving the full blast of the wind in his face, Grapos was staring down at a flattened projection just below which spurred out over the road, and Macomber found he could see down past the spur into the half-track where Ford still sat on the rear bench while Prentice stood in the road gazing up at them with his machine-pistol at the ready.

The uniformed figure on the spur lay sprawled over a machine gun. His attitude was that of a soldier watching the road from the north, the road they had just driven down in the half-track, but despite the presence of the two men above him he remained in his life-like posture until Grapos reached down and prodded him with his rifle tip. The uniformed figure went over sideways and ended up on his back with his face staring at the sky, a face with a rigid look and an unnatural bluish tinge. The poor devil had frozen to death at his post. Macomber gazed down at the Alpenkorps uniform, the stiffened Alpenkorps cap which still clutched the head, the weapon which still stood mounted in position, the barrel encased in ice and frozen snow so that it had the appearance of a glass gun. The Germans were already on Zervos, had already penetrated the monastery.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Sunday, Zero Hour

The attack on the monastery was planned, agreed in detail, and each man knew the part he had to play. The plan was Macomber's, a plan which relied on audacity, on an eruptive breakthrough into the heart of the sanctuary, and it was based on the unproven assumption that only a small number of Germans had taken over the place in preparation for the arrival of Burckhardt's army. It was also based on Grapos' intimate knowledge of the interior of the monastery, knowledge which Prentice had transferred to his notebook as a series of ground-plans which showed the layout. It was the basic assumption which still worried Prentice as he closed the book and tucked it inside his pocket.

'If there are more men up there than we think, we haven't a hope,' he warned.

'I agree,' Macomber replied briskly, 'but it's logical. They must have arrived as civilians - the only safe way they could travel before war was declared - and in that case a large party would arouse suspicion. They only faced the monks, so a few of them could do the job.' He checked his watch. 'And we've spent twenty-one minutes working this out, so we'd better get moving before Burckhardt lands on our tail. God knows there's enough to do in the time ...'

He had kept the engine ticking over during their discussion; now he released the brake and the half-track began moving down towards the lake. Behind him the others were seated on the floor of the vehicle, their backs against its sides and their heads crouched forward, so from a distance it appeared that only Macomber, still wearing his Alpenkorps cap, occupied the vehicle. As they rumbled downhill at a steady pace the caterpillars whipped up the soft snow and cast it into the ditches on either side, and within a few minutes they had driven past the point where the road entered the massive snowdrift, had crossed a stretch of uneven ground and were pulling up at the eastern end of the lake to give Macomber a chance to study the ice. He would have liked to conduct a reconnaissance, to attempt walking out over the ice, but time was short. He had little faith in the Germans being held up for long by that boulder on the mountain ledge: with their manpower and the equipment they carried they would soon shift it higher up the ravine, and since he had negotiated the formidable road the weather had improved. German luck again. The wind, bitter and penetrating, whined eerily across the frozen sheet and he could see snow powder blowing over the dulled surface, but was Grapos right - right in his conviction that the prolonged winter had solidified the ice to a depth which would support the enormous weight of a half-track? He turned in his seat as though looking back up the road and saw Prentice's anxious face staring up at him. 'You think we might make it?' the lieutenant inquired.