Farther up on the slope, almost in the centre of the grove, Andrea had built a high platform of broken branches and twigs against a couple of carob poles maybe five feet apart, gradually filling up the space between slope and trees until he had a platform four feet in width, as nearly level as he could make it. Andy Stevens lay on this, still on his stretcher, still conscious. As far as Mallory could tell, Stevens hadn’t closed his eyes since they had been marched away by Turzig from their cave in the mountains. He seemed to have passed beyond the need for sleep, or had crushed all desire for it. The stench from the gangrenous leg was nauseating, appalling, poisoned all the air around. Mallory and Miller had had a look at the leg shortly after their arrival in the copse, uncovered it, examined it, smiled at one another, tied it up again and assured Stevens that the wound was closing. Below the knee, the leg had turned almost completely black.
Mallory lifted his binoculars to have another look at the town, but lowered them almost at once as someone came sliding down the slope, touched him on the arm. It was Panayis, upset, anxious, almost angry looking. He gesticulated towards the westering sun.
‘The time, Captain Mallory?’ He spoke in Greek, his voice low, sibilant, urgent – an inevitable voice, Mallory thought, for the lean, dark mysteriousness of the man. ‘What is the time?’ he repeated.
‘Half-past two, or thereabouts.’ Mallory lifted an interrogatory eyebrow. ‘You are concerned, Panayis. Why?’
‘You should have wakened me. You should have wakened me hours ago!’ He was angry, Mallory decided. ‘It is my turn to keep watch.’
‘But you had no sleep last night,’ Mallory pointed out reasonably. ‘It just didn’t seem fair –’
‘It is my turn to keep watch, I tell you!’ Panayis insisted stubbornly.
‘Very well, then. If you insist.’ Mallory knew the high, fierce pride of the islanders too well to attempt to argue. ‘Heaven only knows what we would have done without Louki and yourself . . . I’ll stay and keep you company for a while.’
‘Ah, so that is why you let me sleep on!’ There was no disguising the hurt in the eyes, the voice. ‘You do not trust Panayis –’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ Mallory began in exasperation, checked himself and smiled. ‘Of course we trust you. Maybe I should go and get some more sleep anyway; you are kind to give me the chance. You will shake me in two hours’ time?’
‘Certainly, certainly!’ Panayis was almost beaming. ‘I shall not fail.’
Mallory scrambled up to the centre of the grove and stretched out lazily along the ledge he had levelled out for himself. For a few idle moments he watched Panayis pacing restlessly to and fro just inside the perimeter of the grove, lost interest when he saw him climbing swiftly up among the branches of a tree, seeking a high lookout vantage point and decided he might as well follow his advice and get some sleep while he could.
‘Captain Mallory! Captain Mallory!’ An urgent, heavy hand was shaking his shoulder. ‘Wake up! Wake up!’
Mallory stirred, rolled over on his back, sat up quickly, opening his eyes as he did so. Panayis was stooped over him, the dark, saturnine face alive with anxiety. Mallory shook his head to clear away the mists of sleep and was on his feet in one swift, easy movement.
‘What’s the matter, Panayis?’
‘Planes!’ he said quickly. ‘There is a squadron of planes coming our way!’
‘Planes? What planes? Whose planes?’
‘I do not know, Captain. They are yet far away. But –’
‘What direction?’ Mallory snapped.
‘They come from the north.’
Together they ran down to the edge of the grove. Panayis gestured to the north, and Mallory caught sight of them at once, the afternoon sun glinting off the sharp dihedral of the wings. Stukas, all right, he thought grimly. Seven – no, eight of them – less than three miles away, flying in two echelons of fours, two thousand, certainly not more than twenty-five hundred feet . . . He became aware that Panayis was tugging urgently at his arm.
‘Come, Captain Mallory!’ he said excitedly. ‘We have no time to lose!’ He pulled Mallory round, pointed with outstretched arm at the gaunt, shattered cliffs that rose steeply behind them, cliffs crazily riven by rock-jumbled ravines that wound their aimless way back into the interior – or stopped as abruptly as they had begun. ‘The Devil’s Playground! We must get in there at once! At once, Captain Mallory!’
‘Why on earth should we?’ Mallory looked at him in astonishment. ‘There’s no reason to suppose that they’re after us. How can they be? No one knows we’re here.’
‘I do not care!’ Panayis was stubborn in his conviction. ‘I know. Do not ask me how I know, for I do not know that myself. Louki will tell you – Panayis knows these things. I know, Captain Mallory, I know!’
Just for a second Mallory stared at him, uncomprehending. There was no questioning the earnestness, the utter sincerity – but it was the machine-gun staccato of the words that tipped the balance of instinct against reason. Almost without realising it, certainly without realising why, Mallory found himself running uphill, slipping and stumbling in the scree. He found the others already on their feet, tense, expectant, shrugging on their packs, the guns already in their hands.
‘Get to the edge of the trees up there!’ Mallory shouted. ‘Quickly! Stay there and stay under cover – we’re going to have to break for that gap in the rocks.’ He gestured through the trees at a jagged fissure in the cliff-side, barely forty yards from where he stood, blessed Louki for his foresight in choosing a hideout with so convenient a bolt-hole. ‘Wait till I give the word. Andrea!’ He turned round, then broke off, the words unneeded. Andrea had already scooped up the dying boy in his arms, just as he lay in stretcher and blankets and was weaving his way uphill in and out among the trees.
‘What’s up, boss?’ Miller was by Mallory’s side as he plunged up the slope. ‘I don’t see nothin’.’
‘You can hear something if you’d just stop talking for a moment,’ Mallory said grimly. ‘Or just take a look up there.’
Miller, flat on his stomach now, and less than a dozen feet from the edge of the grove, twisted round and craned his neck upwards. He picked up the planes immediately.
‘Stukas!’ he said incredulously. ‘A squadron of gawddamned Stukas! It can’t be, boss!’
‘It can and it is,’ Mallory said grimly. ‘Jensen told me that Jerry has stripped the Italian front of them – over two hundred pulled out in the last few weeks.’ Mallory squinted up at the squadron, less than half a mile away now. ‘And he’s brought the whole damn issue down to the Aegean.’
‘But they’re not lookin’ for us,’ Miller protested.
‘I’m afraid they are,’ Mallory said grimly. The two bomber echelons had just dove-tailed into line-ahead formation. ‘I’m afraid Panayis was right.’
‘But – but they’re passin’ us by –’
‘They aren’t,’ Mallory said flatly. ‘They’re here to stay. Just keep your eyes on that leading plane.’
Even as he spoke, the flight-commander tilted his gull-winged Junkers 87 sharply over to port, half-turned, fell straight out of the sky in a screaming power-dive, plummeting straight for the carob grove.
‘Leave him alone!’ Mallory shouted. ‘Don’t fire!’ The Stukas, air-brakes at maximum depression, had steadied on the centre of the grove. Nothing could stop him now – but a chance shot might bring him down directly on top of them: the chances were poor enough as it was . . . ‘Keep your hands over your heads – and your heads down!’
He ignored his own advice, his gaze following the bomber every foot of the way down. Five hundred, four hundred, three, the rising crescendo of the heavy engine was beginning to hurt his ears, and the Stuka was pulling sharply out of its plunging fall, its bomb gone.
Bomb! Mallory sat up sharply, screwing up his eyes against the blue of the sky. Not one bomb but dozens of them, clustered so thickly that they appeared to be jostling each other as they arr
owed into the centre of the grove, striking the gnarled and stunted trees, breaking off branches and burying themselves to their fins in the soft and shingled slope. Incendiaries! Mallory had barely time to realise that they had been spared the horror of a 500-kilo HE bomb when the incendiaries erupted into hissing, guttering life, into an incandescent magnesium whiteness that reached out and completely destroyed the shadowed gloom of the carob grove. Within a matter of seconds the dazzling coruscation had given way to thick, evil-smelling clouds of acrid black smoke, smoke laced with flickering tongues of red, small at first then licking and twisting resinously upwards until entire trees were enveloped in a cocoon of flame. The Stuka was still pulling upwards out of its dive, had not yet levelled off when the heart of the grove, old and dry and tindery, was fiercely ablaze.
Miller twisted up and round, nudging Mallory to catch his attention through the crackling roar of the flames.
‘Incendiaries, boss,’ he announced.
‘What did you think they were using?’ Mallory asked shortly. ‘Matches? They’re trying to smoke us out, to burn us out, get us in the open. High explosive’s not so good among trees. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred this would have worked.’ He coughed as the acrid smoke bit into his lungs, peered up with watering eyes through the tree-tops. ‘But not this time. Not if we’re lucky. Not if they hold off another half-minute or so. Just look at that smoke!’
Miller looked. Thick, convoluted, shot through with fiery sparks, the rolling cloud was already a third of the way across the gap between grove and cliff, borne uphill by the wandering catspaws from the sea. It was the complete, the perfect smoke-screen. Miller nodded.
‘Gonna make a break for it, huh, boss?’
‘There’s no choice – we either go, or we stay and get fried or blown into very little bits. Probably both.’ He raised his voice. ‘Anybody see what’s happening up top?’
‘Queuing up for another go at us, sir,’ Brown said lugubriously. ‘The first bloke’s still circling around.’
‘Waiting to see how we break cover. They won’t wait long. This is where we take off.’ He peered uphill through the rolling smoke, but it was too thick, laced his watering eyes until everything was blurred through a misted sheen of tears. There was no saying how far uphill the smoke-bank had reached, and they couldn’t afford to wait until they were sure. Stuka pilots had never been renowned for their patience.
‘Right, everybody!’ he shouted. ‘Fifteen yards along the tree-line to that wash, then straight up into the gorge. Don’t stop till you’re at least a hundred yards inside. Andrea, you lead the way. Off you go!’ He peered through the blinding smoke. ‘Where’s Panayis?’
There was no reply.
‘Panayis!’ Mallory called. ‘Panayis!’
‘Perhaps he went back for somethin’.’ Miller had stopped, half-turned. ‘Shall I go –’
‘Get on your way!’ Mallory said savagely. ‘And if anything happens to young Stevens I’ll hold you –’ But Miller, wisely, was already gone, Andrea stumbling and coughing by his side.
For a couple of seconds Mallory stood irresolute, then plunged back downhill towards the centre of the grove. Maybe Panayis had gone back for something – and he couldn’t understand English. Mallory had hardly gone five yards when he was forced to halt and fling his arm up before his face: the heat was searing. Panayis couldn’t be down there; no one could have been down there, could have lived for seconds in that furnace. Gasping for air, hair singeing and clothes smouldering with fire, Mallory clawed his way back up the slope, colliding with trees, slipping, falling, then stumbling desperately to his feet again.
He ran along to the east end of the wood. No one there. Back to the other end again, towards the wash, almost completely blind now, the superheated air searing viciously through throat and lungs till he was suffocating, till his breath was coming in great, whooping, agonised breaths. No sense in waiting longer, nothing he could do, nothing anyone could do except save himself. There was a noise in his ears, the roaring of the flames, the roaring of his own blood – and the screaming, heart-stopping roar of a Stuka in a power-dive. Desperately he flung himself forward over the sliding scree, stumbled and pitched headlong down to the floor of the wash.
Hurt or not, he did not know and he did not care. Sobbing aloud for breath, he rose to his feet, forced his aching legs to drive him somehow up the hill. The air was full of the thunder of engines, he knew the entire squadron was coming in to the attack, and then he had flung himself uncaringly to the ground as the first of the high explosive bombs erupted in its concussive blast of smoke and flame – erupted not forty yards away, to his left and ahead of him. Ahead of him! Even as he struggled upright again, lurched forward and upward once more, Mallory cursed himself again and again and again. You madman, he thought bitterly, confusedly, you damned crazy madman. Sending the others out to be killed. He should have thought of it – oh, God, he should have thought of it, a five-year-old could have thought of it. Of course Jerry wasn’t going to bomb the grove: they had seen the obvious, the inevitable, as quickly as he had, were dive-bombing the pall of smoke between the grove and the cliff! A five-year-old – the earth exploded beneath his feet, a giant hand plucked him up and smashed him to the ground and the darkness closed over him.
TWELVE
Wednesday
1600–1800
Once, twice, half a dozen times, Mallory struggled up from the depths of a black, trance-like stupor and momentarily touched the surface of consciousness only to slide back into the darkness again. Desperately, each time, he tried to hang on to these fleeting moments of awareness, but his mind was like the void, dark and sinewless, and even as he knew that his mind was slipping backwards again, loosing its grip on reality, the knowledge was gone, and there was only the void once more. Nightmare, he thought vaguely during one of the longer glimmerings of comprehension, I’m having a nightmare, like when you know you are having a nightmare and that if you could open your eyes it would be gone, but you can’t open your eyes. He tried it now, tried to open his eyes, but it was no good, it was still as dark as ever and he was still sunk in this evil dream, for the sun had been shining brightly in the sky. He shook his head in slow despair.
‘Aha! Observe! Signs of life at last!’ There was no mistaking the slow, nasal drawl. ‘Ol’ Medicine Man Miller triumphs again!’ There was a moment’s silence, a moment in which Mallory was increasingly aware of the diminishing thunder of aero engines, the acrid, resinous smoke that stung his nostrils and eyes, and then an arm had passed under his shoulders and Miller’s persuasive voice was in his ear. ‘Just try a little of this, boss. Ye olde vintage brandy. Nothin’ like it anywhere.’
Mallory felt the cold neck of the bottle, tilted his head back, took a long pull. Almost immediately he had jerked himself upright and forward to a sitting position, gagging, spluttering and fighting for breath as the raw, fiery ouzo bit into the mucous membrane of cheeks and throat. He tried to speak but could do no more than croak, gasp for fresh air and stare indignantly at the shadowy figure that knelt by his side. Miller, for his part, looked at him with unconcealed admiration.
‘See, boss? Just like I said – nothin’ like it.’ He shook his head admiringly. ‘Wide awake in an instant, as the literary boys would say. Never saw a shock and concussion victim recover so fast!’
‘What the hell are you trying to do?’ Mallory demanded. The fire had died down in his throat, and he could breathe again. ‘Poison me?’ Angrily he shook his head, fighting off the pounding ache, the fog that still swirled round the fringes of his mind. ‘Bloody fine physician you are! Shock, you say, yet the first thing you do is administer a dose of spirits –’
‘Take your pick,’ Miller interrupted grimly. ‘Either that or a damned sight bigger shock in about fifteen minutes or so when brother Jerry gets here.’
‘But they’ve gone away. I can’t hear the Stukas any more.’
‘This lot’s comin’ up from the town,’ Miller said morosely.
‘Louki’s just reported them. Half a dozen armoured cars and a couple of trucks with field guns the length of a telegraph pole.’
‘I see.’ Mallory twisted round, saw a gleam of light at a bend in the wall. A cave – a tunnel, almost. Little Cyprus, Louki had said some of the older people had called it – the Devil’s Playground was riddled with a honeycomb of caves. He 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’.’