The Heights of Zervos (28 page)

'We may "be lucky,' said Macomber. 'I made a mess of both of Burckhardt's wireless sets and if he hasn't got that tuning coil fixed he'll have to wait until he finds one with this airborne mob. Now, watch it, Ford.'

He had been travelling at little more than twenty miles an hour to give the tracks a rest but now he began to build up speed again as they approached the transport plane which had landed little more than a hundred yards from the road. Men were scurrying round the machine and he saw beyond it another plane which had been hidden from view. Close to the aircraft stood a complete field-piece. Ford twisted sideways on the bench as they roared past and this time, to Prentice's relief, the Scot did not attempt his cheerful waving act. The planes were receding behind them when Ford spoke.

'They're 75-mm mountain guns - just what they need where they're going. And I saw several 8-cm mortars. This lot is really going places."

'Some of the half-tracks will haul the mountain guns?* Prentice inquired.

'Yes, that's it. And they'll carry troops aboard as well, They've landed a beautiful heavy-nosed spearhead for the job.'

'Why send Burckhardt's expedition at all?' Macomber asked.

'That's very necessary,' Prentice explained, 'for a variety of reasons. First, if they hadn't had this patch of clear weather the airborne force could never have landed at all and then Burckhardt would have had to do the whole job himself. Second, I can see now that it was vital for them to land men at Katyra to seal off the peninsula...'

'And third,' interjected Ford, 'there's a limit to how much a glider or transport can carry. You can have heavy stuff - the mountain guns, the half-tracks - or you can have men, but you can't have both. So it's my bet Burckhardt's expedition is bringing in a sizable portion of the manpower while the airborne fleet brings in the heavy stuff. Together, it makes up a beautifully balanced force.'

'That's the second time you've used the word "beautiful",' Prentice complained. 'Frankly, I can't see one damned thing that's beautiful in what's coming to us.'

'Just a professional observation, sir,' Ford explained blandly.

'I think we've left them behind," Macomber called out. 'It looks as though those two planes landed closest to Zervos.'

The road stretched away across the plateau and still ran straight as a Roman road, a perfect highway for the advance of the German invaders. They were much closer to the mountain now but it no longer rose from its base with majestic symmetry; a heavy cloud bank from the east was drifting across the lower slopes and the peak had a lop-sided look. The disturbed Aegean was no longer visible from the plateau and another formation of low cloud was gradually obliterating the tableland itself. The road was sloping upwards as it climbed' towards the mountain wall and Macomber could feel a distinct drop in temperature as the wind grew stronger. The worsening of the weather was a development he viewed with some disenchantment; his photographic memory for places vividly recalled that murderous stretch of road farther on which zigzagged up the flank of the mountain, a road twisting and turning over precipitous drops as it ascended into the wilderness.

At least Burckhardt's tracked spearhead wouldn't be able to do a Le Mans over that course, but the trouble was he had to take the half-track up the same road. The gradient was increasing more steeply as Prentice called out to him.

'How are we off for petrol?'

'We had a hundred litres - a full tank - when we started, so that's the least of our problems.'

'The pilot of the glider would insist on a full tank before he took off,' Ford pointed out helpfully. 'That minimizes the risk of something going wrong during the flight - an explosion, even.'

Prentice groaned half-audibly. 'And talking about trouble, I don't much like the look of that dirty weather blowing up from the east.'

'Is the Greek still on the floor?' Macomber asked. 'He can get up now if he is and give us his opinion - a Met forecast, in fact.'

Prentice glanced round and lifted his eyes to heaven. Grapos was sprawled on his side with the rifle cuddled in his arms and he was fast asleep. The coil of Alpenkorps climbing rope, which earlier he had pulled from under a bench and examined with interest, lay with a German army satchel at his feet. How anyone could kip down on top of those vibrating tracks passed Prentice's comprehension. 'The Greek,' he announced in a loud voice, 'is in dreamland.'

'Well, wake him up,' Macomber commanded brutally.

Disturbed from his slumber, Grapos sat on the bench behind Prentice who put the question about the coming weather to him. He stared across the plateau, pulling absently at one corner of his moustache and then feeling the stubble on his chin. Then he stared ahead to where the mountain was fast losing itself behind the vaporous pall which was drifting across the plateau in front of them. As he watched, the mountain disappeared. 'It is bad,' he said. 'It is very bad. The worst. There will be much snow within the hour.'

'Exactly what makes you predict that?' Macomber called back to him sharply.

'It is from the east. The clouds are low. They are like a cow with calf - swollen with snow...'

'First time I've heard of cows with snow inside them.' Prentice commented in an effort to lighten the pall Grapos himself was spreading over them. But the Greek was not to be put off by unseemly levity.

'The sea has gone from the plateau - that is another sign. The top of the mountain has gone - another sign. As we climb it will get worse and worse. It will be very cold and there will be a big fall of snow.'

'Thank you,' said Prentice, 'you're fired! We'll get another met forecaster from the BBC.'

'You ask me - I tell you. There may be landslides on the mountain. There will be ice on the road...'

'And the sea shall rise up and encompass us, so we'd better find a Noah's Ark,' said Prentice in a kind of frenzy. 'For Pete's sake, man, we asked you for a weather forecast - not a gipsy's warning of doom. Now can it!' And he looks a bit like a gipsy, the old brigand, he thought as Grapos glared at him resentfully and then gazed stolidly ahead as though drawing their attention to the appalling prospect which lay before them. 'That answer your question, Mac?' he called out.

'I think so. Further outlook unsettled.'

It was the reference to ice on the road which most disturbed the Scot. He would have to take this cumbersome half-track up a route which, five years before, a car had found difficulty in negotiating in good weather, because during that trip only the plateau had been blotted out by low cloud. It would make it equally hazardous for Burckhardt, of course, so it really depended on which way you looked at the problem, but Macomber was going to be in front with the Germans coming up behind. He changed gear as the gradient increased again and they were moving at little more than twenty miles an hour when Prentice asked if he could borrow the Monokular glass. He kept it for only a short time and then handed it back as he spoke.

'You were right, the outlook is unsettled - behind us. A half-track is coming after us like a bat out of hell. It could be Hahnemann aboard, but I'm only guessing, of course.' 'How many men?' Macomber was already trying to coax a fraction more speed out of the vehicle.

'Three or four. I couldn't be sure. He's on the flat at the moment so he'll have to slow down when he starts coming up.' Ford and Grapos twisted round on their benches and saw in the distance the half-track coming towards them at speed. Macomber was watching what appeared to be the crest of the hill they were climbing and beyond it the cloud hid the base of the mountain which must be very close. He would bave to cut-drive Hahnemann up that devilish road: the snag was he would soon be slowed down by the mist while the German could drive full-tilt up to this point, thus narrowing the gap between them to almost zero. The weather was certainly not their friend at the moment. He drove up steadily, reached the crest, and immediately the road turned and dropped into a dip between dry-stone walls- where it turned again. The oxen were massed at the bend.

There were three Greek peasants with the animals which had accumulated at this point, and they were shouting their heads off and flailing the beasts with birches made of slim stems. So far as Macomber could see as he drove down towards them their efforts were only adding to the confusion and the road was well and truly blocked. With the thought of that other half-track tearing towards them, he pulled up his own vehicle inches from the chaos of animals and drovers. 'Sort them out, Grapos! Get them moving and damned quickly! They can shove them on to that bit of grass by the next bend till we get past. Then tell them to block the road again.' He waited while Grapos got out of the vehicle and began shouting at the drovers, who, at first, simply shouted back. An ox rested its horned head on the side of the half-track and stared at Ford with interest. Grapos continued his shouting and gesticulating match with the drovers and Prentice felt his temper going. A minute later the animals were still milling round the vehicle and Grapos was still conducting his verbal war with his countrymen. Something snapped inside Macomber. He stood up, pulled out his Luger and fired it over the heads of men and beasts. The animals panicked and began to trot off down the road, followed by the drovers who penned them into the grassy area while the half-track grumbled past them.

'You told them to block the road again?' Macomber shouted back to Grapos who had resumed his seat on the bench.

'I told them the Germans were coming and they must make them wait.'

Macomber swore violently to himself: mention of the Germans coming would undoubtedly frighten the drovers so much they'd keep their animals penned up off the road until the second half-track had passed. They had closed the road to him but he felt sure they would open it to the Germans. Something pretty drastic had to be done to widen the gap between the two vehicles. The road was straightening out once more as it went down a hill between high earthen banks, so he accelerated. The half-track built up speed rapidly under the pressure of his foot and he felt a coldness on his face as the road flew away under him. The mist was floating aimlessly and as it drifted to and fro he caught glimpses of the mountain wall rising up like an immense fortress bastion. Here and there pinnacles of rock spurred upwards and then vanished as the mist closed in again. Glancing at the speedometer, he saw that they were moving at the equivalent of fifty miles an hour and he was well aware that only the weight and stability of the racing tracks were holding them on the road. When the mist parted again momentarily he saw a stone bridge at the bottom and the old route came back to him: beyond the bridge the road veered to the right and then started its fierce climb up the mountain. Within a minute or two he would be reduced to crawling pace as he attempted the first acute bend and the realization of this fact made him exert a trifle more foot pressure.

Behind him Ford was white-faced with the aftermath of his wound, but Prentice was white-faced at the speed they were travelling as he clung tightly to the arm of the bench seat which was shuddering so violently that he was scared the screws attaching it to the floor might soon shake loose. Grapos had wedged himself in against the side of the vehicle, and when Prentice glanced back he thought he saw for the first time a flicker of uncertainty in the Greek's narrowed eyes. Ford's-reaction was brief but significant: he leaned forward, stared at the speedometer, then braced his back against the bench. In his determination to out-distance the following half-track Macomber seemed to be going far beyond the bounds of a calculated risk as he drove steadily downwards, the high earthen banks sliding past them in a blur, the sound of the pounding tracks confined inside the sunken road like the noise from a stamping mill, and now the revolving metal was developing a disconnected rhythm which brought Prentice's raw nerves to screaming point. Was the Scot intent on killing every man aboard?

The mist had rolled like a grey fog over the gulley below, temporarily blotting out the narrowing distance between the rushing half-track and the bridge, and it was only when the greyness dispersed briefly that Macomber grasped his mistake, understood that he had overestimated his margin of safety badly, saw the bridge - with the right-angled turn beyond -soaring up towards him, alarmingly close. He began to lose speed knowing that he was too late, that the half-track must still be moving too fast when the moment came to swing the wheel, to turn to the left sharply over the bridge and then turn to the right even more sharply once he was across it. He lost more speed, lost it dangerously quickly, and behind him his three passengers - Grapos now on his feet, grasping the rear of the bench which seated Prentice and Ford - were like frozen men, men who had lost all ability to move even as they stared petrified at what lay ahead of them, knowing that they were going straight through the bridge wall into the river below.

CHAPTER TEN

Sunday, 2 PM

Too late to brake, too late to reduce speed - by orthodox methods. Macomber veered to the left suddenly, immediately veered back to the right, straightened up again. At the speed they were moving the huge tracks at the rear responded a fraction later, as he had intended, and the left-hand caterpillar cracked into the earthen bank with shattering impact, jerking Prentice's bones almost out of their sockets as the caterpillar partially acted as a brake. The vehicle bounced smartly off the bank and a flurry of earth minced up by the revolving track showered over them as the other bank rushed towards them. Macomber had veered to the right now, then to the left, straightened up again, but this time the collision was far more violent and the wheel nearly leapt out of his hands, which would have brought on final disaster, but somehow he maintained his grip as the vehicle shuddered wildly, wobbled uncertainly, still holding its equilibrium as more earth burst in the air and rained down over them. The trouble was he had overdone it this time.