Midnight Never Comes

resembled an impregnable stone wall, but a closer inspection revealed great gullies and fissures providing an easy, if strenuous route up from the beach.

Chavasse scrambled over the top fifteen minutes later into a nightmare world of broken grey boulders, sparse grass and clinging mist. Von Bayern followed and they waited for the others to join them.

'From here, the ground slopes steeply to the camp at the other end of the island,' von Bayern said. 'The mist will conceal us for most of the way. After that, we stick to the broken ground.'

'How far?' Chavasse asked him.

'A little over a quarter of a mile.'

They set off down the hillside, keeping together, Chavasse and von Bayern in the lead, moving into a strange and alien world, the grey, damp walls of mist, pressing in on them.

As the ground fell away beneath them, they moved faster and as they descended, visibility increased until finally, the mist disappeared altogether.

A dry stream bed gave them the cover they needed and they followed it for several hundred yards until von Bayern finally called a halt. He and Chavasse crawled up the bank and peered over the edge.

The camp was spread before them no more than a hundred and fifty yards away and von Bayern beckoned to Steiner to join them. As they watched, a truck pulling a trailer carrying a small rocket emerged from behind the missile pens. It drove through the camp and took the road down towards the harbour.

'Firebird?' Chavasse said.

'One would imagine so. The officers' mess is the building directly behind the flagstaff. The armoury is beyond. The radio room is in the concrete tower.'

Sergeant-Major Steiner pointed to a long, low concrete building to their right. 'Isn't that the fuel store, Colonel?'

'That's right.'

'I wonder why they've put a guard on it?'

As he pointed, they saw one of Donner's men step out of the entrance, a machine pistol slung from his shoulders.

'A good place to imprison thirty-eight men, from the look of it,' Chavasse said.

Von Bayern nodded. 'You're probably right. The interesting thing is that the trawler Donner mentioned isn't in the harbour, so presumably they're still waiting for her.'

'That makes sense,' Chavasse said. 'Especially if that was Firebird we just saw going down to the harbour. That trawler isn't going to come in until she's sure they're absolutely ready for her. I bet they've got the whole thing timed to such a degree that she's in and out again in half an hour.'

'It would be a pity to frighten her away,' von Bayern said. 'And the moment we start shooting, whoever is in that radio room will do just that.'

'All right,' Chavasse said. 'Give me one good man to help me and I'll tackle the radio room. Donner's only got thirteen men including himself, so he can't have more than two or three up there. We might be able to jump them before any shooting starts.'

'A good idea. I'll give you Steiner. I have a feeling you're going to need him. I'll leave two men here to tackle the guard on that fuel store and move in on the armoury with the rest in exactly fifteen minutes. You'd better take a shotgun each, by the way. Whatever happens in that tower is going to be very much at close quarters.'

Chavasse nodded. 'I hope to God you get into that armoury. If you don't, we won't last long against automatic weapons.'

'The thought had occurred to me.' Von Bayern grinned. 'Do your best to survive, Paul. You promised to sample the delights of the Oktoberfest with me in Munich at the end of the month, remember.'

'It had better be worth the blood and sweat, that's all,' Chavasse said and he moved away along the stream bed with Steiner.

It petered out a hundred yards further on and they crawled across broken ground to the shelter of the missile pens. From there, they skirted the back of a Nissen hut and paused in its shelter, no more than ten yards from the concrete tower. It was perhaps fifty feet high and obviously contained a spiral staircase, narrow slotted windows going up at ten-foot intervals.

The radio room was at the very top, a narrow balcony encircling its glass walls and a steel emergency ladder ran from top to bottom of the building.

Chavasse pointed to the ladder. 'That's my way to the top, Sergeant-Major. You take it from inside.'

Steiner grinned, showing even white teeth. 'Rather you than me. I never did have much of a head for heights.'

Chavasse moved forward quickly and holding the shotgun in one hand, started to climb. Steiner waited until he was ten or fifteen feet high and then he ran forward, opened the door in the base of the tower and went inside.

A spiral staircase started on his right and there was a door to the left. He started towards the staircase and at the same moment, the door opened and one of Donner's men emerged. He carried a machine pistol in one hand and his reflexes were excellent.

In one quick moment he took in Steiner, the uniform, the fact that he was a stranger. The machine pistol swung up, and Steiner couldn't get close enough to do anything else except give him both barrels full in the face.

As Steiner dropped his shotgun and picked up the machine pistol, heavy steps thundered on the spiral staircase above. He swung round and as a bullet chipped the concrete beside the door, fired a quick burst in reply. There was no sign of his assailant, only the sound of someone going back up the steel stairs. Steiner sat down, pulled off his boots and went after him, silent on stockinged feet.

Chavasse was no more than half way up the ladder when he heard the shooting from inside the tower. He paused, hanging on with one hand, thumbing back the hammers of the shotgun awkwardly with the other and glanced over his shoulder.

The guard outside the armoury was looking up towards him. He took a step forward, unslinging his machine pistol and von Bayern came round the corner, a shotgun in his hands. He drove the butt hard against the unprotected skull, catching the man's machine pistol as he fell.

There was a sudden cry from beyond the officers' mess and three of Donner's men ran towards him. Von Bayern dropped to one knee and drove them back with a long burst and behind him his men crowded into the armoury.

Above Chavasse, a man leaned over the rail and fired at von Bayern, the bullets landing so close that they kicked dirt into the German's face. Chavasse swung the shotgun up, one-handed, firing both barrels at once, the weapon flying from his hand with the shock of the explosion. The man screamed, his face dissolving into a mask of blood and he disappeared. Chavasse lost his footing, hung crazily for a moment, then got a grip with the other hand and started to climb.

When he reached the balcony, he peered over the edge cautiously, but there was no one there except the dead man who lay against the wall, face down. The radio room itself was empty, the door swinging to and fro in the wind and when he went inside, he found, to his relief, that the equipment was still intact.

There was a quick step behind him, a sudden intake of breath and when he turned, Jack Murdoch stood in the doorway, blood on his face where a flying chip of concrete had sliced across the cheek.

'Chavasse!' he said incredulously, and for a moment the revolver in his hand wavered.

Behind him, Steiner emerged from the stairway, silent in stockinged feet. He touched Murdoch once very gently in the back of the neck with the barrel of the machine pistol, reached over and plucked the revolver from his hand.

'You lose, Murdoch.' Chavasse grinned. 'At a conservative estimate, I'd say you'll have about twenty years to sit back and decide where you went wrong. Where's Donner?'

Murdoch laughed unsteadily. 'Well out of this bloody lot. He would be.'

'You mean he isn't here?'

Murdoch nodded. 'He left two hours or more ago. It was all in the plan. Once we'd taken over and things were running smoothly, there was no reason for him to stay.'