The Complete Navarone 4-Book Collection: The Guns of Navarone, Force Ten From Navarone, Storm Force from Navarone, Thunderbolt from Navarone. Alistair MacLeanЧитать онлайн книгу.
grinned wryly at the memory of his momentary panic when he thought his eyes had gone and turned again to Miller. ‘Trouble again, Dusty, nothing but trouble. Thanks for bringing me round.’
‘Had to,’ Miller said briefly. ‘I guess we couldn’t have carried you very far, boss.’
Mallory nodded. ‘Not just the flattest of country hereabouts.’
‘There’s that, too,’ Miller agreed. ‘What I really meant is that there’s hardly anyone left to carry you. Casey Brown and Panayis have both been hurt, boss.’
‘What! Both of them?’ Mallory screwed his eyes shut, shook his head in slow anger. ‘My God, Dusty, I’d forgotten all about the bomb – the bombs.’ He reached out his hand, caught Miller by the arm. ‘How – how bad are they?’ There was so little time left, so much to do.
‘How bad?’ Miller shook out a pack of cigarettes and offered one to Mallory. ‘Not bad at all – if we could get them into hospital. But hellish painful and cripplin’ if they gotta start hikin’ up and down those gawddamned ravines hereabouts. First time I’ve seen canyon floors more nearly vertical than the walls themselves.’
‘You still haven’t told me –’
‘Sorry, boss, sorry. Shrapnel wounds, both of them, in exactly the same place – left thigh, just above the knee. No bones gone, no tendons cut. I’ve just finished tying up Casey’s leg – it’s a pretty wicked-lookin’ gash. He’s gonna know all about it when he starts walkin’.’
‘And Panayis?’
‘Fixed his own leg,’ Miller said briefly. ‘A queer character. Wouldn’t even let me look at it, far less bandage it. I reckon he’d have knifed me if I’d tried.’
‘Better to leave him alone anyway,’ Mallory advised. ‘Some of these islanders have strange taboos and superstitions. Just as long as he’s alive. Though I still don’t see how the hell he managed to get here.’
‘He was the first to leave,’ Miller explained. ‘Along with Casey. You must have missed him in the smoke. They were climbin’ together when they got hit.’
‘And how did I get here?’
‘No prizes for the first correct answer.’ Miller jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the huge form that blocked half the width of the cave. ‘Junior here did his St Bernard act once again. I wanted to go with him, but he wasn’t keen. Said he reckoned it would be difficult to carry both of us up the hill. My feelin’s were hurt considerable.’ Miller sighed. ‘I guess I just wasn’t born to be a hero, that’s all.’
Mallory smiled. ‘Thanks again, Andrea.’
‘Thanks!’ Miller was indignant. ‘A guy saves your life and all you can say is “thanks”!’
‘After the first dozen times or so you run out of suitable speeches,’ Mallory said dryly. ‘How’s Stevens?’
‘Breathin’.’
Mallory nodded forward towards the source of light, wrinkled his nose. ‘Just round the corner, isn’t he?’
‘Yeah, it’s pretty grim,’ Miller admitted. ‘The gangrene’s spread up beyond the knee.’
Mallory rose groggily to his feet, picked up his gun. ‘How is he really, Dusty?’
‘He’s dead, but he just won’t die. He’ll be gone by sundown. Gawd only knows what’s kept him goin’ so far.’
‘It may sound presumptuous,’ Mallory murmured; ‘but I think I know too.’
‘The first-class medical attention?’ Miller said hopefully.
‘Looks that way, doesn’t it?’ Mallory smiled down at the still kneeling Miller. ‘But that wasn’t what I meant at all. Come, gentlemen, we have some business to attend to.’
‘Me, all I’m good for is blowin’ up bridges and droppin’ a handful of sand in engine bearin’s,’ Miller announced. ‘Strategy and tactics are far beyond my simple mind. But I still think those characters down there are pickin’ a very stupid way of committin’ suicide. It would be a damned sight easier for all concerned if they just shot themselves.’
‘I’m inclined to agree with you.’ Mallory settled himself more firmly behind the jumbled rocks in the mouth of the ravine that opened on the charred and smoking remains of the carob grove directly below and took another look at the Alpenkorps troops advancing in extended order up the steep, shelterless slope. ‘They’re no children at this game. I bet they don’t like it one little bit, either.’
‘Then why the hell are they doin’ it, boss?’
‘No option, probably. First off, this place can only be attacked frontally.’ Mallory smiled down at the little Greek lying between himself and Andrea. ‘Louki here chose the place well. It would require a long detour to attack from the rear – and it would take them a week to advance through that devil’s scrap-heap behind us. Secondly, it’ll be sunset in a couple of hours, and they know they haven’t a hope of getting us after it’s dark. And finally – and I think this is more important than the other two reasons put together – it’s a hundred to one that the commandant in the town is being pretty severely prodded by his High Command. There’s too much at stake, even in the one in a thousand chance of us getting at the guns. They can’t afford to have Kheros evacuated under their noses, to lose –’
‘Why not?’ Miller interrupted. He gestured largely with his hands. ‘Just a lot of useless rocks –’
‘They can’t afford to lose face with the Turks,’ Mallory went on patiently. ‘The strategic importance of these islands in the Sporades is negligible, but their political importance is tremendous. Adolph badly needs another ally in these parts. So he flies in Alpenkorps troops by the thousand and the Stukas by the hundred, the best he has – and he needs them desperately on the Italian front. But you’ve got to convince your potential ally that you’re a pretty safe bet before you can persuade him to give up his nice, safe seat on the fence and jump down on your side.’
‘Very interestin’,’ Miller observed. ‘So?’
‘So the Germans are going to have no compunction about thirty or forty of their best troops being cut into little pieces. It’s no trouble at all when you’re sitting behind a desk a thousand miles away … Let ’em come another hundred yards or so closer. Louki and I will start from the middle and work out: you and Andrea start from the outside.’
‘I don’t like it, boss,’ Miller complained.
‘Don’t think that I do either,’ Mallory said quietly. ‘Slaughtering men forced to do a suicidal job like this is not my idea of fun – or even of war. But if we don’t get them, they get us.’ He broke off and pointed across the burnished sea to where Kheros lay peacefully on the hazed horizon, striking golden glints off the western sun. ‘What do you think they would have us do, Dusty?’
‘I know, I know, boss.’ Miller stirred uncomfortably. ‘Don’t rub it in.’ He pulled his woollen cap low over his forehead and stared bleakly down the slope. ‘How soon do the mass executions begin?’
‘Another hundred yards, I said.’ Mallory looked down the slope again towards the coast road and grinned suddenly, glad to change the topic. ‘Never saw telegraph poles shrink so suddenly before, Dusty.’
Miller studied the guns drawn up on the roads behind the two trucks and cleared his throat.
‘I was only sayin’ what Louki told me,’ he said defensively.
‘What Louki told you!’ The little Greek was indignant. ‘Before God, Major, the Americano is full of lies!’
‘Ah, well, mebbe I was mistaken,’ Miller said magnanimously. He squinted again at the guns, forehead lined in puzzlement. ‘That first one’s a mortar, I reckon. But what in the universe that