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«Off you go, then. Thank you all the same.»
A minute later, in the dim, candle-lit cellar, Miller prodded the soldier nearest him — the one most like himself in height and build. «Take your clothes off!» he ordered.
«English pig!» the German snarled.
«Not English,» Miller protested. «I'll give you thirty seconds to get your coat and pants off.»
The man swore at him, viciously, but made no move to obey. Miller sighed. The German had guts, but time was ru
«Mustn't spoil the nice uniforms, must we?» Miller asked conversationally. He lifted the automatic until the soldier was staring down the barrel of the gun. «The next goes between the eyes.» The casual drawl carried complete conviction. «It won't take me long to undress you, I guess.» But the man had already started to tear his uniform off, sobbing with anger and the pain of his wounded hand.
Less than another five minutes had passed when Mallory, clad like Miller in German uniform, unlocked the front door of the tavern and peered cautiously out. The rain, if anything, was heavier than ever — and there wasn't a soul in sight. Mallory beckoned Miller to follow and locked the door behind him. Together the two men walked up the middle of the street, making no attempt to seek either shelter or shadows. Fifty yards took them into the town square, then left along the east side, not breaking step as they passed the old house where they had hidden earlier in the evening, not even as Louki's hand appeared mysteriously behind the partly opened door, a hand weighted down with two German Army rucksacks — rucksacks packed with rope, fuses, wire and high explosive. A few yards farther on they stopped suddenly, crouched down behind a couple of huge wine barrels outside a barber's shop, gazed at the two armed guards in the arched gateway, less than a hundred feet away, as they shrugged into their packs and waited for their cue.
They had only moments to wait — the timing had been split-second throughout. Mallory was just tightening the waist-belt of his rucksack when a series of explosions shook the centre of the town, not three hundred yards away, explosions followed by the vicious rattle of a machine-gun, then by further explosions. Andrea was doing his stuff magnificently with his grenades and home-made bombs.
Both men suddenly shrank back as a broad, white beam of light stabbed out from a platform high above the gateway, a beam that paralleled the top of the wall to the east, showed up every hooked spike and strand of barbed wire as clearly as sunlight. Mallory and Miller looked at each other for a fleeting moment, their faces grim. Panayis hadn't missed a thing: they would have been pi
Mallory waited another half-minute, touched Miller's arm, rose to his feet and started ru
«Every man to the Street of Steps!» Mallory shouted. «Those damned English saboteurs are trapped in a house dawn there! We've got to have some mortars. Hurry, man, hurry, in the name of God!»
«But the gate!» one of the two guards protested. «We ca
«Idiot!» Mallory screamed at him. «Dummkopf! What is there to guard against here? The English swine are in the Street of Steps. They must be destroyed! For God's sake, hurry!» he shouted desperately. «If they escape again it'll be the Russian Front for all of us!»
Mallory had his hand on the man's shoulder now, ready to push him on his way, but his hand fell to his side u
Everywhere there was complete confusion — a bustling purposeful confusion as one would expect with the seasoned troops of the Alpenkorps, but confusion nevertheless, with much shouting of orders, blowing of whistles, starting of truck engines, sergeants ru
They skirted two barrack blocks on their right, then the powerhouse on their left, then an ordnance depot on their right and then the Abteilung garage on their left. They were climbing, now, almost in darkness, but Mallory knew where he was to the inch: he had so thoroughly memorised the closely tallying descriptions given him by Vlachos and Panayis that' he would have been confident of finding his way with complete accuracy even if the darkness had been absolute.
«What's that, boss?» Miller had caught Mallory by the arm, was pointing to a large, uncompromisingly rectangular building that loomed gauntly against the horizon. «The local hoosegow?»
«Water storage tank,» Mallory said briefly. «Panayis estimates there's half a million gallons in there — magazine flooding in an emergency. The magazines are directly below.» He pointed to a squat, box-like, concrete structure a little farther on. «The only entrance to the magazine. Locked and guarded.»
They were approaching the senior officers' quarters now — the commandant had his own flat on the second story, directly overlooking the massive, reinforced ferro-concrete control tower that controlled the two great guns below. Mallory suddenly stopped, picked up a handful of dirt, rubbed it on his face and told Miller to do the same.
«Disguise,» he explained. «The experts would consider it a bit on the elementary side, but it'll have to do. The lighting's apt to be a bit brighter inside this place.»
He went up the steps to the officers' quarters at a dead run, crashed through the swing doors with a force that almost took them off their hinges. The sentry at the keyboard looked at him in astonishment, the barrel of his sub-machine-gun lining up on the New Zealander's chest.
«Put that thing down, you damned idiot!» Mallory snapped furiously. «Where's the commandant? Quickly, you oaf! It's life or death!»
«Herr — Herr Kominandant?» the sentry stuttered. «He's left — they are all gone, just a minute ago.»
«What? All gone?» Mallory was staring at him with narrowed, dangerous eyes. «Did you say 'all gone'?» he asked softly.
«Yes. I — I'm sure they're …» He broke off abruptly as Mallory's eyes shifted to a point behind his shoulder.
«Then who the hell is that?» Mallory demanded savagely.
The sentry would have been less than human not to fall for it. Even as he was swinging round to look, the vicious judo cut took him just below the ear. Mallory had smashed open the glass of the keyboard before the unfortunate guard bad bit the floor, swept all the keys — about a dozen in all — off their rings and into his pocket. It took them another twenty seconds to tape the man's mouth and hands and lock him in a convenient cupboard; then they were on their way again, still ru