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 arrowed 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 –’
