10

Fire on the Mountain

Lying there In the hollow between the rocks, the sun warm on his back, Lomax had been aware of the truck’s approach for several minutes in spite of the bleating of the sheep as they moved reluctantly across the hillside.

He got to his feet and leaned across a boulder beside Boyd as the truck appeared around the shoulder of the mountain in the valley below. A few moments later it disappeared from view again behind a great outcrop of rock.

He moved out of the hollow and waved to George and Yanni who immediately started to drive their flock down the slope, pelting those at the rear vigorously with stones.

Lomax and Boyd went down the hill on the run, heels digging into the crumbling earth, and dropped into the ditch. Sheep milled around them, crying piteously, and George and Yanni wielded their long staffs, driving the bewildered animals up the steep bank until they blocked the narrow road.

Lomax could hear the truck start to slow and he nodded to Boyd and they crouched under an overhang where the dry soil had started to erode and then the truck had passed them and braked to a halt.

The driver leaned out of his cab and called angrily to George who stood a few yards away looking convincingly helpless as sheep milled around him.

The driver leaned further out of the window and shouted again. At that moment, Yanni came round the back of the truck and moved forward quickly. His long staff rose and fell across the unprotected neck with the force of a headsman’s axe. The German made no sound and when the young shepherd reached up and opened the door, his lifeless body tumbled to the ground.

Lomax and Boyd were already scrambling out of the ditch and running towards the truck. Boyd stuffed his beret into a pocket of his camouflaged battle smock and pulled on the driver’s grey forage cap. It was a size too small, but tilted down across the forehead was convincing enough to pass at a distance.

He scrambled behind the wheel and Lomax turned to Yanni who was on his knees going through the dead man’s pockets. “Shove him into the ditch and get to hell out.of here. You haven’t got long, remember.”

George Samos was already driving the sheep from the road and Boyd took the truck forward as Lomax climbed up into the cab from the other side. Within a few moments they were clear of the sheep and the noise fell away behind them as they turned another shoulder of the mountain and moved through a deep ravine.

As Lomax took Boyd’s Mauser from one of his pockets and checked the silencer and the clip, they moved out of the ravine and the monastery came into view.

It was perched spectacularly on the edge of a small plateau which jutted from the side of the mountain like a shelf. Behind it, a wall of rock at least five hundred feet high blocked any other access.

Lomax crouched on the floor of the cab, his head and shoulders under Boyd’s legs, the Mauser ready in his right hand.

Boyd kept the truck moving at a relatively fast speed. As he started to slow he said, “That’s a bit of luck. He’s raising the swing bar already.”

“Well still have to take care of him.”

Boyd nodded. “Right, here we go.”

He braked to a halt, keeping the engine ticking over, and opened the door. The sentry called out something which Lomax couldn’t catch and came round the side of the door.

He was a small, undersized man in his forties and wore a pair of ugly steel military spectacles. His rifle was slung carelessly over one shoulder and there was a smile on his face.

Lomax gave him no chance. He grabbed him by the front of his tunic, pulled him forward and shot him between the eyes. He scrambled back, hauling the body up into the cab, and Boyd slammed the door and took the truck through the gates.

The slight, foolish smile was still frozen into place on the dead man’s face, but blood poured from his nostrils and mouth. Lomax shoved him to one side as Boyd turned the truck in a half-circle and braked sharply at the entrance to the tower.

Lomax opened the door, jumped down to the steps and moved inside quickly, submachine gun ready. It was cool and dark and very quiet. The first steps of the spiral staircase were only a few feet away, the door to the guardroom beside them. When someone inside laughed, it sounded remote and somehow unreal.

Lomax moved to the door, Boyd at his shoulder. He wiped sweat from his brow with the back of a hand and nodded. Boyd opened the door quietly and they moved inside.

Two of the guards sat at a table playing cards in their shirtsleeves while the other lay on one of the narrow iron cots reading a magazine. One of the card-players cursed and threw down his cards. The other one started to laugh, his hand reaching out for the coins in the centre of the table, and then he saw Lomax and Boyd.

“On your feet,” Lomax said in German. “Do as you’re told and live.”

They stood up slowly, hands clasped behind their necks. The two card-players were little more than boys, but the one who had been reading the magazine was older with a hard, cold look to him and shrapnel scars down the side of his face.

He stared at them unwinkingly and Lomax said to Boyd, “Right, upstairs quick. I’ll see to these three.”

Boyd moved out and Lomax said, “Take off your belts and turn round.”

One of the boys started to tremble and the man with the scarred face said, “Don’t worry, son. They won’t get very far.”

“Shut your mouth and do as you’re told,” Lomax said. “If we could have afforded the noise, you’d be dead.”

There was the sound of gunfire on the stairs. Instinctively, he glanced towards the door and the man with the scarred face kicked a chair at him and jumped for the arms rack on the wall.

Lomax turned, firing from the hip in a wide arc that drove the man against the wall and continued to cut down the two boys who still stood by the table, bewildered and uncertain. One of them screamed in his agony, heels drumming against the floor. Lomax finished him with another quick burst and turned and ran out into the hall.

As he reached the foot of the stairs, Boyd came round the corner. There was blood on his face where a piece of stone had sliced his cheek.

“Turned the corner and met one of them coming down,” he said. “Too bloody quick for me. Closed some kind of steel trapdoor where the stairs pass through the first floor.”

“They’ll have every soldier in town up here before we know it,” Lomax said. “And Nikoli isn’t supposed to blow the bridge until he hears this lot go. You’ll have to lay your charges here.”

Boyd didn’t argue. He took off his pack and opened it. The plastic explosive he was using was already made up into charges and Lomax helped him to fuse them quickly. Boyd placed them round the walls at spaced intervals. As he started to wire them up, an explosion sounded in the distance.

They looked at each other for a brief moment and then Boyd continued with his task, face calm. Something had obviously made Nikoli Aleko move ahead of time. Probably a vehicle had tried to cross the bridge and he had realised that something must have gone wrong. “Is there enough?” Lomax demanded. Boyd shrugged. “Depends how good the foundations are. In this climate, the mortar in these old buildings is usually pretty rotten.”

He linked the wires to a small, battery-operated detonating box and nodded. “You get the truck moving. As soon as I hear the engine, I’ll set this thing for thirty seconds.”

Lomax moved outside quickly. The dead sentry still crouched on the floor of the cab, flies crawling over his face. Lomax dragged him out and clambered behind the wheel. The engine roared into life and as he moved into gear, Boyd ran out of the entrance and swung up beside him.

Lomax turned so tightly that the off-side wheels lifted. As they accelerated across the yard, someone fired a Schmeisser from one of the upper storeys, the bullets kicking fountains of dust into the air ten yards to the left and then they were through the gates.

The explosion, when it came, was tremendous and in the driving mirror Lomax saw a great cloud mushroom above the walls, the tower rising from its centre.

For a few moments it remained straight and true and then it seemed to lurch to one side. It started to fall in slow motion, gathering momentum as it disappeared into the dust and smoke.

Boyd had been leaning out of the window and he turned with a grin and wiped blood from his face with the back of his hand. “I don’t mind telling you I was worried there for a moment or two.”

“I still am,” Lomax told him. “The sooner we’re on the other side of the mountain, the better I’ll like it.”

He took the truck down through the ravine in a cloud of dust and braked sharply as they came out into the open. A German troop-carrier had just rounded the shoulder of the mountain a couple of hundred yards below and was moving towards them.

There were only seconds in which to act and he gave Boyd a shove towards the other door. “Get out of it,” he shouted.

Boyd didn’t argue. He jumped to the ground and Lomax took the truck forward in a burst of speed. A moment later, he opened the door and jumped.

The Germans seemed unaware of their danger until the last moment and then their driver swung the wheel of the troop carrier so sharply that the vehicle heeled over into the ditch as the empty truck rolled past. Fifty yards further on, it went over the edge of the road and disappeared from view as another troop-carrier came round the shoulder of the mountain.

As Lomax climbed out of the ditch and started across the road, a dozen soldiers ran towards him. He dropped to one knee and loosed off a long burst that sent them diving for cover and then continued across the road and began to scramble up the slope.

Behind him, the grey-clad figures fanned out as he worked his way up diagonally, keeping to the shelter of the boulders. He paused once and a bullet kicked up dirt uncomfortably close and he ducked and kept on moving.

They were close now, very close. He slipped, losing his footing, and slid back several paces on the steep slope and heard a cry of triumph behind him that was immediately followed by an explosion. As the echo died away, he heard not the sound of pursuit, but the cries of the wounded and dying.

As he got to his feet, Boyd appeared from behind a boulder a little further up the hill. His arm went back and a grenade curved through the air. Lomax ducked instinctively as it exploded and scrambled desperately up the last few feet and joined Boyd on a tiny shelf.

He turned, gasping for breath, and leaned against the boulder. Below them, the survivors of the first troop were still coming up the slope. At their backs, an exposed cliff lifted to the summit.

“Nikoli should have blown that bridge sooner,” he said.

Boyd nodded. “This whole thing’s beginning to stink.”

On their left, the mountainside lifted steeply to the tiny hollow in which stood the shepherd’s hut in which they had spent the night. The men from the other troop-carrier were already well up the slope, moving to cut off their retreat.

Lomax didn’t hesitate. He moved out quickly and started across the slope, Boyd at his heels. Bullets thudded into the ground a few feet beneath them and he knew it could only be a matter of seconds until they found the range. To keep going on the steep hillside was difficult enough, but Boyd paused and loosed off a wild burst to keep their heads down. The Germans didn’t even bother to look for cover. They halted and started to fire in earnest and then, quite suddenly, one of them spun round and fell on his face and then another. Immediately, the whole group fanned out and dropped behind the nearest available cover.

Someone was firing at them from the hollow just below the rim of the mountain and Lomax slung his submachine gun round his neck and moved upwards, blood in his mouth, hands clawing at the loose stones.

He scrambled over the rim of the hollow, Boyd right behind him. Katina was lying behind a boulder, Boyd’s Winchester sporting rule to her shoulder. She fired two shots in rapid succession and moved beside him. “What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded.

“I was worried,” she said. “When I woke up this morning I had a bad feeling so I thought I’d come and wait for you at the hut. I found the rifle and the rest of your things and then everything started to happen at once.”

Boyd was sitting with his back to a boulder. He’d lifted his battle smock and shirt and was in the act of pressing a field dressing against an ugly, puckered wound.

Lomax dropped to one knee beside him. “Is it bad?”

Boyd forced a grin. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll take my belt in another notch.”

Katina peered over the edge of the plateau and drew back quickly. “They’re very close.”

“Right, we’d better get moving,” he said.

He gave Boyd a hand and got him to his feet and they worked their way up the slope to the plateau and the Tomb of Achilles.

They crossed to the far rim and looked down the mountain to the other side of the island. Boyd’s face was twisted with pain and sweat stood in great drops on his forehead. He turned despairingly to Lomax. “It’s no go, I can’t move fast enough. I’m just going to drag you down.”

Lomax ignored him and turned to Katina. “I’ll hold them here. Get him as far down the hillside as possible. In ten minutes, I’ll make a run for it and try to lead them away. Get him down to the farm. I’ll join you there after dark.”

He took the Winchester from her and handed her Boyd’s submachine gun. He didn’t give either of them a chance to argue, but turned and ran back to the far edge of the plateau and dropped behind a boulder that gave him a clear view of the hut.

A soldier moved cautiously over the edge of the hollow. Through the telescopic sight, Lomax could see the eagle clearly on the man’s tunic as he squeezed the trigger.

When he glanced back over his shoulder a moment later, he was alone.