The Heights of Zervos

by Colin Forbes

  Macomber was concentrating on three things at once - on getting to know how this queer monster worked, on keeping an eye on the hilltop over which the Alpenkorps might stream at any moment, and with what little attention he had left he cast quick glances to the south where the road ran past the landing zone. The sky was littered with a fresh wave of falling parachutists and another transport plane had just come to a halt after a bumpy landing. Dammit, he said to himself and speeded up. The half-track reached the road at the moment when the leading Alpenkorps soldier crested the rise on his mule.

  Hahnemann! Macomber felt certain it was the German lieutenant on that animal. He must have been hurled overboard into the sea when the Hydra blew up, must have been one of those men swimming in the water. The thought darted through his brain as it all became a kaleidoscope and he reacted with pure instinct. Two more men on mules appeared behind Hahnemann. Parachutists hitting the earth, their 'chutes landing and pulling sideways. A giant glider cruising in to land on the brownish area. The steady throb of planes' engines overhead mingling with the urgent shouts of the men on the mules. Still feeling like a man towing a caravan, he turned the wheel and the half-track climbed onto the road. As its great metal tracks ground their teeth into the hard tar they set up a jarring vibration sound and the unexpected barrage of noise panicked the mules. There was more shouting, frantic now, as the animals headed across the hilltop, threading their way nimbly among the boulders and away from the strange machine. Macomber completed his turn, hunched his shoulders, pressed his foot down, and the half-track began to build up speed as the wheels spun and the tracks churned round faster and faster, half-deafening its passengers with the pounding beat of metal on tar.

  'How fast can it go?' shouted the Scot.

  'Twenty ... thirty ... forty. Fifty would be pushing it.* Ford had his arm out of the sleeve now and was taking off the right side of his jacket as he replied. There were three rows of bench seats across the vehicle behind the front seats and Grapos occupied the rear position. He had aimed his rifle at Hahnemann but the half-track had lurched at the wrong moment, almost throwing him off, and he hadn't fired a shot. Now there was no target - the mules and their riders were lost somewhere inside the tangle of boulders. He swore colourfully in Greek when Macomber shouted over his shoulder for him to get down on the floor out of sight - Grapos was rather too distinctive a figure for his Liking at the moment.

  Ahead more transport planes were droning in the sky as they waited their moment to come down, and already the plateau to the right of the road had the look of a disorganized military tattoo. So far there were no troops close to the road but a few hundred yards away parachutists were grappling with the supply containers and a number of men were already armed with machine-pistols. Several looked up as the half-track roared past and their uniform was very different from that of the Alpenkorps, so different that they might have belonged to another army. They wore pot-shaped helmets not dissimilar to diving helmets, smocks camouflaged with mottled dark green and brown, and overall trousers which gave them a deceptively clumsy appearance, but there was nothing clumsy about their movements as they began to form np in sections.- Macomber, having got the feel of the vehicle, was now sitting very erect so his Alpenkorps cap was prominently on view and frequently he drove with one hand while he waved with the other to the men assembling in the field, a performance which Prentice witnessed with some trepidation. It was typical of Macomber, he was thinking., to carry the bluff to its utmost limit,

  'Lookout!'

  Prentice shrieked out the warning. Like Macomber, all his attention had been fixed on the airborne force's landing area and it was only by chance that he glanced to the left. A Gotha assault glider released from its tow-rope was coming in to land from the east. It was already flying very low, perhaps twenty feet above the ground, flying on a course which would take it directly across the road just ahead of the speeding half-track. Prentice guessed that the pilot was desperately trying to maintain Sight long enough to take his machine beyond the marshland area and it was horribly clear that the two very different forms of transport were headed on a collision course. Macomber had time to slow down but nearby a drawn-up section of parachutists was marching steadily towards the road. If he slowed, stopped, they'd get a damn good look at who was inside the vehicle and they had machine-pistols looped over their shoulders. Without hesitation he accelerated and it became a race towards destruction.

  His shoulders hunched again, he watched road and oncoming glider. It was an uncomfortably fine calculation -known speed of half-track against estimated speed of glider, with the added element of tie plane's angle of descent. The half-track was now thundering down the road, which had begun to slope, at a pace which alarmed Prentice, the tracks rotating madly under increasing tension as the moving racial smashed its way forward with a rattling cannonade of sound.

  Across the green field the glider grew larger as it maintained its course unerringly and lost more height. He must be mad, Prentice was thinking. Macomber's going to try and beat the bloody thing, to sneak past ahead of it! The glider was so close now that he wanted to close his eyes, to look away, but he felt a terrible compulsion to stare at the oncoming machine which now seemed enormous.

  'We won't make it,' said Ford who had now become aware of what was happening, and Ford was good at this sort of hair's breadth calculation. Prentice would have felt even less happy had he known that exactly the same thought was pressing down on Macomber, and now it was too late to think of reducing speed. The converging projectiles were so close that he would probably smash into the tail of the glider as it passed. The only answer was a little more speed.

  The downward gradient of the road was increasing as he pressed his foot harder and prayed - prayed against two catastrophes. He had heard somewhere that if you drive a tracked vehicle too fast a caterpillar could break loose, freeing itself from the small wheels over which it revolved and leave the vehicle altogether. If that happened at the speed they were moving at now there would be very little hope of survival. Grimly, he kept his foot down, his mind totally concentrated on the straight road ahead, the tortured gyrations of the overstrained tracks, and that huge drifting shape about to move across his bows. Prentice had one arm steadying Ford while the other hand gripped the side of the vehicle as the glider lost more height and cruised forward barely six feet above the plateau and less than fifty yards from the road. Grapos, tying resentfully on the floor with his feet under a bench and his back against the rear of the vehicle, had the shock of his life when he looked up and saw the bulk of the Gotha loom up. The half-track raced forward, Grapos involuntarily ducked, and the wing of the Gotha passed over the rear of the vehicle, landing a short distance beyond the road.

  Prentice sagged against the back of the bench and stared at the back of the huge Scot, his lips moving soundlessly. Macomber was already slowing down to a safer speed, expecting some uncomplimentary comment from his passengers, but the occupants of the bench were stunned, so he was saved an argument. In the distance a transport plane was stationary close to the road and Macomber whistled under his breath when he saw something which looked like a part of a field-gun coming down a ramp through a large opening in the fuselage. "How is Ford?' he called out over his shoulder.

  'Ford is surviving,' Ford replied.

  'The bullet grazed him,' amplified Prentice who was now fixing a bandage to his final satisfaction. 'He's lost a bit of blood and he looks like Banquo's ghost but the fresh air will probably tone him up a treat.'

  'There's a plane ahead with something coming out - better try and identify it so we know what we're up against.'

  'We can see what we're up against,' Prentice told him bluntly. 'The cream of the Wehrmacht. And I suppose you've seen there are more half-tracks over to the right? One's just nosed its way out of that Gotha which just missed us.'

  'Do you think we're nearly clear of them?' asked Ford and there was a note of anxiety in his voice.

  'Not much ahead as far as
I can see. Why?' Macomber had detected the anxious note and was wondering what had struck the technically minded Ford.

  'Because we've been lucky so far - it's wireless communication that worries me. If the Alpenkorps who came over the hill can send a message ahead we may have a reception committee waiting for us.'.

  It was a point which had worried Prentice but he hadn't seen any point in raising new problems at this particular juncture. So far they had got away with their audacious dash along the fringe of the assembly area, and this didn't entirely surprise him: the Germans had just landed on enemy territory and were taken up with carrying out a certain vital routine - collection of weapons from the supply containers, the unloading of heavy equipment from the gliders and transport planes, and the assembling of the men into their units. They had no reason, when their attention was so divided, to see anything strange in one of their own recently landed half-tracks speeding along the road to Zervos. But wireless communication was a different matter.

  '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 alr
eady 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.