Hurt or not, he did not know and her did not care. Sobbing aloud for breath, he rose to his feet, forced his aching legs to drive him somehow up the bill. 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 mad-man, he thought bitterly, confusedly, you damned crazy mad-man. 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.
CHAPTER 12
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. “or 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 o 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 anymore.”
“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, Fd 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 Fve 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’.”
“And Panayis?”
“Fixed his own leg,” Miller said briefly. “A queer character. Wouldn’t even let me look at it, far less bandage it. I reckon he’d have knifed me if I’d tried.”
“Better to leave him alone anyway,” Mallory advised. “Some of these islanders have strange taboos and superstitions. Just as long as he’s alive. Though I still don’t see how the hell he managed to get here.”
“He was the first to leave,” Miller explained. “Along with Casey. You must have missed him in the smoke. They were climbin’ together when they got hit.”
“And how did I get here?”
“No prizes for the first correct answer.” Miller jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the huge form that blocked half the width of the cave. “Junior here did his St. Bernard act once again. I wanted to go with him, but he wasn’t keen. Said he reckoned it would be difficult to carry both of us the bilL 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 comnñttin’ 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–“