Wills gaped at him, then at the Enigma machine; the key to the deliberations of German High Command, a window into the enemy’s most secret responses to the Allied second front, due to open any day now.
‘There is a game you play with three cups and a pea,’ said Mallory. ‘Corporal Miller is the world champion. Now let us find somewhere to lie up for the day.’
Spiro’s face was a miserable bag of sweating lard. ‘Lie up?’ he said. ‘You crazy. They searches everywhere, finds us, catches us. We deads, matey boy.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ said Miller. ‘Personally I am alive. And I have an idea that people in the great wide world are going to think we were on that plane.’
Spiro’s face suddenly shone with hope and anticipation. ‘My hell!’ he cried. ‘By the Godsalmighty you are one hunnert per cents!’
Andrea came down from the bank. ‘They’re coming,’ he said.
‘Time to leave,’ said Miller, looking at his watch. Like ghosts, they flitted over the earthwork and were gone.
Feldwebel Braun approached the fuel dump wall with his usual briskness, his squad well scattered over the ground, as per the tactical manual when advancing in the face of enemy fire. Except that there was now no enemy fire. The defenders of the dump had gone quiet – not surprisingly, since they had all flown away in that Heinkel. There had been a lot of disorganization and general unpleasantness these last few days. Braun looked forward to a more normal life in which regulations would be observed and there would be the minimum of fighting.
Crouching slightly – from habit rather than the expectation of enemy fire – he led his squad to the earthwork and into the fuel dump in a succession of short, textbook rushes.
But the dump was empty. He wandered into the stacked oil drums. There were signs of occupation: spent cartridge cases, a foil wrapper from a bar of chocolate. But they were safely out of the way; out of the sky, too, he thought, chuckling heavily. All that remained were the oil drums, like the stumps of a forest turned to steel.
There was a fungus on one of the stumps. Braun walked closer, to examine it. An odd brown growth, with a pencil-sized object sticking out of it, a pencil with a black stripe on the shaft.
Braun opened his mouth to shout. He never made it.
A black time pencil means a ten-minute delay at twenty-five degrees centigrade. It was a warm spring morning, so the corrosive action of the liquid in the pencil’s barrel was accelerated. As Braun ran towards the oil drum, the fuel dump blew up in his face.
They were sitting in a deep creek in a clump of reeds when the explosion came. The dry stems hissed and shook, and a blast of heat passed overhead, a waft of air hot enough to fill their nostrils with the smell of scorched grass. Then the smoke rolled up, and blotted out the sun.
Mallory put his head on his pack, and squinted up at the lip of the creek. Andrea was up there, standing sentry. When you are dead already, thought Mallory, you don’t have to die …
At which point he fell asleep.
The sun was going down as the four SS men and two civilians wound out of the marshes and started along the fence of the aerodrome where it ran by the sea. The wire was bent, the angle-iron posts melted. The launch was where they had left it. Over on the Acropolis, all was quiet.
Reverently, Mallory laid the Enigma machine on the bottom boards of the boat, lifted the engine cover, and screwed the decompression lever back into place. He wound the starting handle, dropped the decompressor. The engine caught with a big, heavy chug.
‘Nice night for a test firing,’ said Miller. The sky was a vault of blue velvet pricked with stars. He looked at his watch again. They must have found the primary charges,’ he said. ‘They should have gone eight hours ago, easy.’
‘Cast off,’ said Mallory.
‘Wer da?’ said a voice from the shore. And suddenly there were figures there: dozens of figures, light gleaming on steel helmets and guns, and Mallory felt a great lurch of the heart, because the Thunderbolt squad were tired and sore and their identification would not stand up to scrutiny, and they had the most secret machine in the world in a sack on the boat’s deck.
‘Out,’ said the voice in the dark.
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ said Mallory.
The voice said, ‘Show us your documents.’
‘Go to hell,’ said Mallory. ‘Refer to Hauptmann Wolf.’
‘Hauptmann Wolf is dead, thank God. Out,’ said the shadowy figure.
The not so shadowy figure.
The whole island was suddenly lit by a gigantic white flash. It illuminated with a pale and deadly light the twisted fence. It flung the shadows of the platoon on the shore up the scorched black berm of the fuel dump, and brought the glare of noonday to the black sheet of the water and the sugar-white houses of the Acropolis.
After the flash came a blast wave that raised a four-foot ridge of water and knocked most of the soldiers on the beach off their feet. The boat lurched high, then down again, bounced off the coping of the jetty. The people on the boat had been facing away from the explosion. The men on the shore had been looking into it. Their vision was a series of red blobs, shifting and wavering. ‘Must help!’ shouted Mallory, ears ringing. ‘Quick!’
The boat’s engine hammered. Water churned under her counter. She moved away from the jetty, towards the Apocalypse.
The mountain was burning. From tunnels and shafts and galleries there spewed gouts of flame and sparks. And from the top of the mountain, presumably the launching area next to which the fuel tanks had stood, there rose huge and twisting tongues of fire that burned and detached themselves and rose into the smoke that climbed and spread like a roof over land and sea.
‘Most impressive, Corporal Miller,’ said Mallory.
‘I was born on the Fourth of July,’ said Miller.
Under the roof of smoke the launch, with Wills at the helm, chugged across the dark water towards the jetty on the opposite shore. Some three cables short of the jetty, anyone watching would have seen the boat turn hard-a-port, run parallel with the eastern shore of the bay, continue its course past the headland and out to sea.
But there was nobody to watch small boats going about their business. All eyes were on the mountain of Antikynthos, erupting for the second time.
The boat’s engine became a fading heartbeat, and vanished into the inky shadows offshore.
Two hours later they were at the rendezvous, on the long, glassy corrugations of the sea. Andrea found a bottle of brandy in his pack. They passed it round. There was a fishing line in a locker. Miller dangled it over the side, smoking and dozing. Mallory lay against the engine box with his eyes closed. Spiro sat and shivered, his eyes jerking left and right, his face a jaundiced yellow in the light of the lantern on the stubby mast. And in the shadows, close together, Wills and Clytemnestra sat holding hands. Into Wills’ mind had come the certainty that the currents of war that had thrust him and Clytemnestra together would soon start running in new directions. He should have been relieved that the long ordeal was over. Instead, sore, battered and burned though he was, he felt something approaching sadness.
Miller was singing ‘Your Feet’s Too Big’ and hauling in his line, when there was a commotion in the water nearby. A long, dark shape rose against the sky. A voice floated across the water. ‘Any of you chaps called Mallory?’
‘Yes,’ said Mallory.
‘Come on, then. Tea’s brewing.’ Pause. ‘Nasty smell of smoke,’ said the voice.
Mallory’s eyes went back across the water to the hot orange glow that had once been the V4 plant.
There was a clang of boots on a steel pressure hull, the slam of a hatch, the whine of ballast-pumps filling tanks. Then there was silence; silence except for a sound that might have been the fading pant of a single-cylinder diesel, and the great, stirring rumour of the sea.
EPILOGUE
The sun was shining brilliantly on an emerald-green lawn, laid out for croquet. At the end of the lawn stood a small
figure in an impeccable tropical uniform: Captain Jensen, a captain no longer, his sleeves and cap incandescent with bullion in the bright noonday. With him were Andrea, Mallory, Miller, and Wills; Wills looking faintly shifty in the presence of so much scrambled egg, the rest gaunt and hollow-eyed, and apprehensive, as if they were waiting for something.
The debriefing was over. The Enigma machine was already in a Hurricane en route for Tangmere, with a large and well-armed escort.
‘Well,’ said Jensen. ‘That’s that, then.’
Mallory said nothing. It would not have been politic to mention Admiral Dixon. Carstairs’ role had already been explained. But Mallory was not feeling politic. Carstairs had been first a liability, then a danger, and finally a traitor. Carstairs had been Admiral Dixon’s idea.
So Mallory said, ‘We’d expected to find Admiral Dixon here.’
Jensen grinned, his alarming tiger’s grin. ‘I bet you had,’ he said, and Mallory, as so often when he was with Jensen, knew that he had been outplayed and outmanoeuvred by a master. ‘By the way,’ said Jensen. ‘It isn’t Admiral Dixon any more. Captain Dixon, RN, Retired.’ He looked down at the bullion on his arm. A broad stripe had joined the narrower gold hoops. ‘Only room for so many admirals in the Service,’ he said.
They looked at him: Andrea, hulking against the sun, Miller with his hands in his pockets, apparently half-asleep, and Mallory, the flesh bitten away from his face by hunger and exhaustion. That was Jensen for you. They had thought they had been playing one game on Kynthos, and they had played it well. But they had been pieces in another game, the game of intrigue and back-stabbing that Jensen had been playing against Dixon –
‘Just one of those things,’ said Jensen. He nodded at Wills. ‘He doesn’t mind, even if you do.’
But Wills was not listening. His mind was back on the submarine, standing in the conning tower, feeling the last pressure of Clytemnestra’s hand on his, watching her steer the boat into the smokereeking night, heading for Parmatia. The turbulent currents of war had washed them apart, sure enough. In the smoother flow of peace, though, he would be back …
Jensen was saying something. ‘Well,’ he said, briskly. ‘All’s well that ends well, eh?’
‘Yessir,’ said Mallory.
‘And I am very glad to see you. Very glad. Particularly glad today, as it happens …’
‘Oh, no,’ said Miller, under his breath. ‘No, please.’ Andrea was staring at Jensen, horrified. Mallory opened his mouth to speak, but Jensen put up his hand.
‘… because I have a job for you,’ he said. ‘Just a tiny little job, really. And I thought, since the three of you are here anyway …’
Mallory sighed. ‘We would be fascinated to hear about it,’ he said. ‘But we will need brandy.’
‘Large amounts of brandy,’ said Andrea.
‘Five star,’ said Miller. ‘Roll out the barrel.’
‘Of course,’ said Jensen. ‘And then we will begin.’
About the Authors
ALISTAIR MACLEAN
Alistair MacLean, the son of a Scots minister, was born in 1922 and brought up in the Scottish Highlands. In 1941 at the age of eighteen he joined the Royal Navy; two-and-a half years spent aboard a cruiser was later to give him the background for HMS Ulysses, his first novel, the outstanding documentary novel on the war at sea. After the war, he gained an English Honours degree at Glasgow University, and became a school master. In 1983 he was awarded a D. Litt from the same university.
He is now recognized as one of the outstanding popular writers of the 20th century. By the early 1970s he was one of the top 10 bestselling authors in the world, and the biggest selling Briton. He wrote twenty-nine worldwide bestsellers that have sold more than 30 million copies, and many of which have been filmed, including The Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare, Fear is the Key and Ice Station Zebra. Alistair MacLean died in 1987 at his home in Switzerland.
SAM LLEWELLYN
Sam Llewellyn is the author of a number of hugely successful thrillers, including Blood Knot, Clawhammer and The Shadow in the Sands, the continuation of Erskine Childers’ classic adventure, The Riddle of the Sands. An experienced sailor, he has sailed all over the world and now lives with his wife and family in Herefordshire.
Other Works
HMS Ulysses
The Guns of Navarone
South by Java Head
The Last Frontier
Night Without End
Fear is the Key
The Dark Crusader
The Satan Bug
The Golden Rendezvous
Ice Station Zebra
When Eight Bells Toll
Where Eagles Dare
Force 10 from Navarone
Puppet on a Chain
Caravan to Vaccares
Bear Island
The Way to Dusty Death
Breakheart Pass
Circus
The Golden Gate
Seawitch
Goodbye California
Athabasca
River of Death
Partisans
Floodgate
San Andreas
The Lonely Sea (stories)
Santorini
Copyright
These novels are entirely works of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in them are the work of the authors’ imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
HARPER
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
77–85 Fulham Palace Road,
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk
This edition 2011
The Guns of Navarone and Force 10 from Navarone
by Alistair MacLean
first published in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1957, 1968
Storm Force from Navarone and Thunderbolt from Navarone
by Sam Llewellyn
first published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1996, 1998
The Complete Navarone omnibus edition first published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2008
Alistair MacLean and Sam Llewellyn assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of these works
Introduction copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers 2008
The Guns of Navarone copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers 1957
Force 10 from Navarone copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers 1968
Storm Force from Navarone and Thunderbolt from Navarone
characters and ideas copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers 1996, 1998
Storm Force from Navarone text copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers
and Sam Llewellyn 1996
Thunderbolt from Navarone text copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers
and Sam Llewellyn 1998
Typeset in Meridien by Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Polmont, Stirlingshire
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
EBook Edition © NOVEMBER 2012 ISBN 9780007438334
Version 2
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in
this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East – 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77–85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com
Alistair MacLean, The Complete Navarone
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends