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 other weird-looking contraption can be –’
‘Also a mortar,’ Mallory explained. ‘A five-barrelled job, and very nasty. The Nebelwerfer or Moanin’ Minnie. Howls like all the lost souls in hell. Guaranteed to turn the knees to jelly, especially after nightfall – but it’s still the other one you have to watch. A six-inch mortar, almost certainly using fragmentation bombs – you use a brush and shovel for clearing up afterwards.’
That’s right,’ Miller growled. ‘Cheer us all up.’ But he was grateful to the New Zealander for trying to take their minds off what they had to do. ‘Why don’t they use them?’
‘They will,’ Mallory assured him. ‘Just as soon as we fire and they find out where we are.’
‘Gawd help us,’ Miller muttered. ‘Fragmentation bombs, you said!’ He lapsed into gloomy silence.
‘Any second now,’ Mallory said softly. ‘I only hope that our friend Turzig isn’t among this lot.’ He reached out for his field-glasses but stopped in surprise as Andrea leaned across Louki and caught him by the wrist before he could line the binoculars. ‘What’s the matter, Andrea?’
‘I would not be using these, my Captain. They have betrayed us once already. I have been thinking, and it can be nothing else. The sunlight reflecting from the lenses …’
Mallory stared at him, slowly released his grip on the glasses, nodded several times in succession.
‘Of course, of course! I had been wondering … Someone has been careless. There was no other way, there could have been no other way. It would only require a single flash to tip them off.’ He paused, remembering, then grinned wryly. ‘It could have been myself. All this started just after I had been on watch – and Panayis didn’t have the glasses.’ He shook his head in mortification. ‘It must have been
