The Dark Crusader

by Alistair MacLean

  ‘Nearly all night, you said. Nearly?’

  ‘Well, there was a dark patch, lasting maybe half an hour, round about one o’clock,’ he admitted reluctantly.

  ‘He wouldn’t want half an hour, fifteen minutes would be all he needed,’ I said heavily.

  ‘There’s no future in kidding ourselves.’

  There was no future anyway. I’d expected far too much. To expect him to slip away unobserved from his ship, in clear moonlight, with a guard on the pier and a working party with brilliant floodlamps not a hundred yards away, was to expect just a little bit too much: and to expect him afterwards to reach unseen the captain’s hut where the keyboard was, not fifty yards from the hangar, steal the keys, free Marie from the armoury and then free us – well, it had been expecting far too much altogether. But it had been the only shadow of hope that we had had and the clutch of a drowning man is pretty fierce.

  The time dragged on, a night that could never end but, for all that, a night that would end all too soon. I don’t think anyone slept, there would be time and to spare for rest later on. The scientists and their wives murmured away softly most of the time, it occurred to me with a sense almost of shock that I wouldn’t have been able to identify any of those women had I met them again, I had never seen one in daylight. The air became more and more vitiated, breathing in that foul used-up atmosphere was becoming painful, the heat became steadily worse and sweat dripped from my face, ran down my arms and back. Every now and then a seaman would be hoisted up to look through the grille, and every time he had the same to report: bright moonlight.

  Every time, that was, until four o’clock. The seaman had no sooner reached eye-level to the grille than he called out: ‘The moon’s gone. It’s pitch dark outside. I can’t see – ’

  But I never did hear what he couldn’t see. There came from outside in swift succession the sounds of a quick rush of feet, a scuffle, a heavy blow then a metallic scratching as someone fumbled for the keyhole. Then a solid click, the door swung open and the cool sweet night air flooded into the room.

  ‘Fleck?’ Griffiths said softly.

  ‘Fleck it is. Sorry to be late but – ’

  ‘Miss Hopeman,’ I interrupted. ‘She there?’

  ‘Afraid not. Armoury key wasn’t on the board. I spoke to her through the window bars, she told me to give you this.’ He thrust a paper into my hand.

  ‘Anyone with a match?’ I asked. ‘I want – ’

  ‘It’s not urgent,’ Fleck said. ‘She wrote it this afternoon, been waiting for a chance to – ’ He broke off. ‘Come on. No time to waste. That damn moon isn’t going to stay behind a cloud all night.’

  ‘He’s right, you know,’ Griffiths said. He called softly: ‘Outside, all of you. No talking. Straight up the face of the hill and then cut across. That’s best, eh, Bentall?’

  That’s best.’ I stuck the note into my shirt pocket, stood to one side to let the others file quietly out. I peered at Fleck. ‘What you got there?’

  ‘A rifle.’ He turned and spoke softly, and two men came round the corner of the blockhouse, dragging a third. ‘LeClerc had a man on guard. Gun belongs to him. Everybody out? All right, Krishna, inside with him.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Fleck didn’t sound worried one way or another. There came the sound of something heavy being dumped unceremoniously on the concrete floor inside and the two Indians came out. Fleck pulled the door quietly to and locked it.

  ‘Come on, come on.’ Griffiths whispered impatiently. ‘Time we were off.’

  ‘You go off,’ I said. ‘I’m going to get Miss Hopeman out of the armoury.’

  He was already ten feet away, but he stopped, turned and came back to me.

  ‘Are you mad?’ he said. ‘Fleck said there’s no key. That moon comes out any minute now. You’ll be bound to be seen. You won’t have a chance. Come on and don’t be so damn stupid.’

  ‘I’ll take the chance. Leave me.’

  ‘You know you’re almost certain to be seen,’ Giffiths said softly. ‘If you’re out, they’ll know we’re all out. They will know that there’s only one place we could go. We have women with us, it’s a mile and a half to that cave entrance, we would be bound to be intercepted and cut off. What it amounts to, Bentall, is that you are prepared to risk almost certain loss of all our lives on the selfish one in a thousand chance of doing something for Miss Hopeman. Is that it, Bentall? Is that how selfish you are?’

  ‘I’m selfish all right,’ I said at last. ‘But I’m not all that bad, I just hadn’t thought of it. I’ll come with you to the point where there is no further possibility of interception. Then I’ll turn back. Don’t make the mistake of trying to stop me.’

  ‘You’re quite crazy, Bentall.’ There was anger and worry both in Griffiths’ voice. ‘All you’ll do is lose your life, and lose it to no purpose.’

  ‘It’s my life.’

  We moved straight towards the face of the hill, all in a closely bunched group. No one talked, not even in whispers, though LeClerc and his men were then well over half a mile away. After we’d gone about three hundred yards the hill started to rise steeply. We’d made as much offing as we could so now we turned south and began to skirt the base of the mountain. This was where things began to become dangerous, we had to pass by the hangar and buildings to get to the cave entrance, and just behind the hangar a sharp spur of the mountain rose above the surrounding level and would force us to come within two hundred yards of where LeClerc and his men were working.

  Things went well in the first ten minutes, the moon stayed behind the cloud longer than we had any right to hope, but it wasn’t going to stay there all night, eighty per cent of the sky was quite free from cloud and in those latitudes even the starlight was a factor to be reckoned with. I touched Griffiths on the arm.

  ‘Moon’s coming out any second now. There’s a slight fold in the mountain about a hundred yards farther on. If we hurry, we might make it.’

  We made it, just as the moon broke through, bathing the mountain and the plain below in a harsh white glare. But we were safe, for the moment at least, the ridge that blocked us off from the view of the hangar was only three feet high, but it was enough.

  Fleck and his two Indians, I could see now, were dressed in clothes that were completely sodden. I looked at him and said: ‘Did you have to take a bath before you came?’

  ‘Damn guard sat on the pier all night with a rifle in his hands,’ Fleck growled. ‘Checking us, checking to see we didn’t go near the radio. We had to slip over the far side, about one o’clock when the moon went in, and swim for it, maybe a quarter-mile along the beach. Henry and the boy, of course, went the other way.’ I had asked that Henry make straight for the cave, hurry through the chamber that had served as an armoury and bring back amatol blocks, primers, R.D.X., chemical fuses, anything he could find. If they were still there, that was: there would certainly be neither arms nor ammunition left now, and though the explosive would be a poor substitute for arms at least they would be better than nothing.

  ‘Getting the keys was dicey.’ Fleck went on, ‘and there were only two – the inner and outer blockhouse doors. Then we tried to force the door and window on the armoury to get Miss Hopeman out. It was hopeless.’ He paused. ‘I don’t feel so good about that, Bentall. But we tried, honest to God we tried. But we couldn’t make a noise, you understand that.’

  ‘It’s not your fault, Fleck. I know you tried.’

  ‘Well, anyway, we came to the blockhouse just as the moon came out. Lucky for us it did. LeClerc had left a guard. We had to hide there two solid hours waiting till it got dark so we could rush him. I’ve got a pistol, so has Krishna here, but the water got through the wrappings. Couldn’t have used them anyway.’

  ‘You did damn well, Captain Fleck. And we have a gun. Any good with it?’

  ‘Haven’t the eyes for it. Want it?’

  ‘Hell, no. I couldn’t fire a pop-gun tonight.’ I turned an
d located Griffiths. ‘Any good shots among your men, Captain?’

  ‘As it happens, I have. Chalmers here’ – he gestured towards the red-haired lieutenant over whose refusal to answer a question a seaman had been shot –’ is one of the best shots in the Royal Navy. Would you care to have a go at them, Chalmers, if the need arises?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Chalmers said softly. ‘I would like that.’

  A cloud was approaching the moon. It wasn’t much of a cloud as clouds go, it wasn’t half as big as I would have liked it to be, but it was going to have to do, there wasn’t another anywhere near the moon.

  ‘Half a minute, Captain Griffiths.’ I said. ‘Then we’re off.’

  ‘We’ll have to hurry,’ he said worriedly. ‘Single file is best, I think. Fleck to lead the way, then the women and the scientists, so that they can make a break for the cave if anything happens. My men and I will bring up the rear.’

  ‘Chalmers and I will do that.’

  ‘So that you fade away and go down to the armoury when the moment comes, is that it, Bentall?’

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘It’s time to go.’

  We almost made it, but Bentall was around and nothing ever went right with Bentall around. We had safely passed the hangar where the two gantry cranes were slowly lowering the Dark Crusader into its cradle, and were a good two hundred yards clear when one of the women gave a high-pitched cry of pain. We found later that she’d slipped and sprained a wrist. I glanced back, saw every man in the brilliantly illuminated space before the hangar stop what they had been doing and whirl round. Within three seconds as many men started running in our direction while others raced for their parked guns.

  ‘Run for it,’ Griffiths shouted. ‘Go like hell.’

  ‘Not you, Chalmers.’ I said.

  ‘Not me,’ he said softly. ‘No, not me.’ He sank down on one knee, lifted, cocked and fired the rifle all in one smooth motion. I saw a puff of white jump up from the concrete two yards ahead of the nearest Chinese. Chalmers adjusted the sights with one quick turn.

  ‘Shooting low,’ he said unhurriedly. ‘It won’t be low the next time.’

  It wasn’t. With his second shot the leading guard flung his rifle into the air, then pitched forward on his face. A second died, a third rolled over and over like a man in agony, and then suddenly all the lights in front of the hangar went out. Someone had just got on to the fact that they made a perfect target silhouetted against the floodlit concrete.

  ‘That’s enough.’ Griffiths shouted. ‘Get back. They’ll be fanning out, coming towards us. Get back!’

  It was time to get back, nothing surer. A dozen guns, some of them automatic carbines, had opened up on us now. They couldn’t see us, it was too dark for that, but they had us roughly located from Chalmers’ gun-flashes and bullets were beginning to smash into the solid rock all around us, half of them lifting in screaming ricochet. Griffiths and Chalmers turned and ran, and so did I, but in the opposite direction, back the way we’d come. I didn’t see I’d any chance of getting back to the armoury, the moonlight was beginning to filter through the ragged edges of the cloud, but if I did get back the diversion made a perfect cover-up for smashing my way into the armoury. I took four steps, then pitched my length on the rock as something smashed into my knee with tremendous force. Dazed, I pushed myself shakily to my feet, took one step and fell heavily again. I wasn’t conscious of any great pain, it was just that my leg refused to support me.

  ‘You bloody fool! Oh, you bloody fool!’ Griffiths was by my side, Chalmers close behind him. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘My leg. They got my leg.’ I wasn’t thinking about my leg, I wasn’t caring about my leg, all I was caring about was that my last chance to get to the armoury was gone. Marie was there, alone. She was in the armoury, waiting for me. Marie would know I would come for her. She knew Johnny Bentall was every kind of fool there was, but she knew I wouldn’t leave her to LeClerc. I was on my feet again, Griffiths supporting me, but it was no good, the leg was paralysed, completely without power.

  ‘Are you deaf?’ Griffiths shouted. ‘I’m asking you if you can walk.’

  ‘No. I’m all right, leave me. I’m going down to the armoury.’ I didn’t know what I was saying, I was too dazed to express the difference between a wish and an intention. ‘I’m really all right. You must hurry.’

  ‘Oh, God!’ Griffiths took me by one arm, Chalmers by the other and they half-hustled, half-dragged me along the flank of the mountain. The others were already out of sight, but after a minute Brookman and a seaman came hurrying back to see what had happened, and lent a hand with the job of dragging me along. I was a great help to everyone. Jonah Bentall. Come with me and you come a cropper. I wondered vaguely what I’d ever done to deserve luck like this.

  We arrived at the cave almost three minutes after the last of the others were safely inside. I was told this, but I don’t remember it, I don’t remember anything about the last half-mile. I was told later that we wouldn’t have made it had the moon not broken through and Chalmers held up the Chinese by picking off two of them as they came over the last ridge. I was told, too, that I talked to myself all the way, and when they begged me to be quiet in case the pursuers caught us I kept on saying: ‘Who? Me? But I wasn’t talking,’ very hurt and indignant. Or so they told me. I don’t remember anything.

  What I do remember was coming to inside the cave, very close to the entrance. I was lying against the wall, and the first thing I saw was another man lying beside me, face down. One of the Chinese. He was dead. I lifted my eyes and saw Griffiths, Brookman, Fleck, Henry and some petty officer I didn’t know, on the other side, pressed close against the wall. At least I thought it was them, it was still dark inside the tunnel. There was room enough for them to shelter. Although the tunnel had been four feet wide and seven high all the way to the end when I’d followed it, the last few feet where Hewell and his men had broken through was no more than three feet high and barely eighteen inches in width. I looked around to see where the others were, but I could see nothing. They would be a hundred yards back in the cavern Hewell had excavated for the temporary storage of the tunnelled out limestone. I looked out again through the tiny opening of the tunnel. The dawn was in the sky.

  ‘How long have I been lying here?’ I asked suddenly. My voice sounded in my ears like the husky quavering of an old, old man, but maybe it was just the echo inside the cave.

  ‘About an hour.’ Funny, Griffiths’ voice didn’t sound a bit like an old man’s. ‘Brookman says you’ll be all right. Chipped knee-cap, that’s all. You’ll be walking again in a week.’

  ‘Did we – did we all get here all right?’

  ‘Everyone made it.’ Sure, everyone made it. Marie Hopeman didn’t make it. Why should they care? What was all the world to me was only a name to them. Marie Hopeman was down there alone in the armoury and I would never see her again but she was only a name. It didn’t really matter if you were only a name. And I would never see her again, never. Never was a long time. Even in this last thing, this most important thing I’d ever known, I’d failed. I’d failed Marie. And now it was never. Never was going to be always.

  ‘Bentall!’ Griffiths’ voice was sharp. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m all right.’

  ‘You’re talking to yourself again.’

  ‘Am I?’ I reached out and touched the dead man. ‘What happened?’

  ‘LeClerc sent him in. I don’t know whether he thought we’d retreated to the other end of the cave or whether it was a kind of suicide mission. Chalmers waited till he was all the way in. And then we had two guns.’

  ‘And what else? An hour is a long time.’

  ‘They tried firing into the cave after that. But they had to stand in front if they weren’t going to do it blindly. They soon gave it up. Then they tried to blow up the entrance, to seal it off.’

  ‘They would try that,’ I said. ‘It wouldn’t have made much difference, we could have got
out. What they meant to do, if things had gone their way, would have been to blow in the tunnel roof for a hundred yards or so. That would really have finished us.’ I wondered vaguely why I was saying this, none of it mattered any more.

  ‘They set off one charge, above the entrance,’ Griffiths was continuing. ‘Nothing much happened. Then we heard them working just outside, using picks to make holes for more charges. We flung out a couple of fused amatol blocks. I think they lost some men. They didn’t try anything like that again.’

  ‘The note.’ I said. ‘Didn’t you tell them about the note?’

  ‘Of course.’ Griffiths said impatiently. I had told Fleck to leave a copy of a faked radio message on the wireless table, saying: ‘Message acknowledged: H.M.S. Kandahar proceeding high speed Suva-Vardu. Expect arrive 8.30 a.m.’ The inference would be that Fleck had sent an SOS by radio. ‘We told LeClerc a naval vessel was coming. He wouldn’t believe us, saying it was impossible, the sentry had been there to prevent messages from being sent, but Fleck said he’d been asleep. Maybe the sentry was one of those killed, I don’t know. We told him he’d find the message on the schooner. He sent someone to fetch it. LeClerc couldn’t afford to ignore it, it might mean he had only three hours left. Less, for Fleck says the captain of the Grasshopper, without him to pilot it in, wouldn’t attempt the gap in the reef before daybreak.’

  ‘LeClerc would be pleased.’

  ‘He was mad. He was out there talking to us and we could hear his voice shaking with fury. He kept asking for you but we told him you were unconscious. He said he would shoot Miss Hopeman if you didn’t come out, so I told him you were dying.’

  ‘That would cheer him up,’ I said drearily.

  ‘It seemed to,’ Griffiths admitted. ‘Then he went away. Perhaps he took his men with him. We don’t know.’