valley…'
It was Sergeant Len Reader. Of course.
Chapter Thirty-Five
'That bloody colonel commanding this column needs shooting,' Jaeger commented savagely to Schmidt. 'Yugoslavia isn't France, it isn't even Russia. To understand this theatre of war you go back to Wellington and the Peninsular War – the Spanish guerrillas. He's going to lead us straight into an ambush.'
'At least you persuaded him to position the mortar teams at the rear of the column,' Schmidt replied.
'Only by waving the Fuhrer's signed order,' Jaeger growled. 'Look at the terrain – the way he's crammed everything together. We should be spread out in well- separated sections…'
They were well south of Zagreb and dusk was beginning to descend on all sides like a sinister, cloud.
The armoured column – comprising tanks, mobile guns and motorized infantry was entering a narrow, winding defile. On both sides rose precipitous heights. Jaeger frowned and raised the field-glasses looped from his neck to focus on a rampart of huge boulders which lay strewn along the brink of the right-hand ridge.
They were travelling as passengers in a half-track, the last vehicle in the straggled column. Immediately ahead of them crawled two canvas-sided trucks carrying the mortar teams. It was very silent apart from the purr of slow-moving engines and Jaeger sat as rigid as a statue, his twin lenses studying the boulder rampart poised far above them.
'There's something funny about those damned rocks,' he told Schmidt. 'Here, you take a look.'
'What am I looking for?' Schmidt asked as he peered through the glasses.
'The slightest sign of movement up there. That's a geological oddity – that line of boulders. There are too many of them. They're too evenly spaced. They're all perched just on the brink. That crazy fool, Schrenk, should have sent a patrol up there before he entered the defile. According to this map the defile is over four kilometres long. Don't like it…'
They had attached themselves to the column because it was the only way to get deep into Yugoslavia. Jaeger hoped for Partisan prisoners, men he could question as to the whereabouts of Lindsay and the girl he had come to refer to as the Baroness.
Schrenk's column was undertaking a punitive expedition. He was searching for the phantom Amazon Brigade. An informant had told him the Brigade had passed along this route only a few hours earlier. Jaeger had made himself unpopular by being sceptical, almost contemptuous.
'This informant,' he had demanded,.. he is a local?'
'A Serb,' Schrenk had replied. 'Greedy for gold. Always before he has proved reliable.'
`So he is trustworthy forever?'
Schrenk had stormed off and the two colonels had not met again since the column moved off seven hours earlier. At intervals a courier had driven back along the column on his motorcycle with 'evidence' that they were on the right track. A discarded pair of woman's coarse pantaloons; a Partisan cap complete with the red star badge and a small tuft of feminine hair attached.
'Very convenient,' had been Jaeger's only comment.
'I still think this would be a good time to make a break for it,' Reader repeated to Lindsay. 'It will be dark in no time. There's no one guarding that hidden gulch I found.'
Lindsay looked carefully round the hilltop. On surface appearances Reader was right. Dusk was falling suddenly, the way it did in this part of the world. There was growing activity among the Partisans who, under Heljec's prodding, were gathering behind the rampart of boulders.
They were now armed with thick wooden poles which they seemed to be prepared to use as levers. The ends of the poles were being rammed under the line of boulders perched on the brink of the drop above the gorge where earlier the Amazon Brigade had marched.
'Well?' snapped Reader impatiently, 'do we make a run for it or can't you tear yourself away from that Paco?'
'I'm just not too partial to committing suicide. You're not familiar with these peasants, as you call them, Sergeant. They can hide in a cleft in the ground, merge against the background of a rock cluster. They're everywhere but you don't see them – until too late.'
'I think it's Paco…'
'Think what you like,' replied Lindsay calmly, refusing to be provoked. 'Heljec will certainly know about that so-called hidden gulch of yours. The first warning you'll get that I'm right will be a knife between the shoulder- blades…'
'Have it your own way – we've lost our chance now, anyway. We have company…'
Through the purple gloaming which was becoming denser by the minute, Lindsay saw Paco approaching. She was accompanied by Milic who carried a German machine-pistol at the ready.
'Heljec insists you both come over and watch.' There was a note of disapproval in her voice. 'And could Sergeant Reader please hand over his sten to Milic for the moment? Heljec has ordered him to confiscate the weapon no matter what means he has to use. Humour him, for God's sake – for my sake…'
'Give him the sten,' said Lindsay, standing up. 'I'll give him a burst…'
'Don't be a bigger bloody fool than you have to. Look behind us. We're surrounded. I warned you about men rising up out of the ground.'
'Christ Almighty…!'
A screen of a dozen or so Partisans stood silently, barely a few feet behind them. They carried a motley collection of guns, all aimed point-blank at Reader. The weapons were even more eloquent than their silence. With a curse, Reader handed the sten to Milic.
'Now you come with us very quietly. Heljec wishes you both to witness a demonstration of Partisan fighting…'
She led the way, and Lindsay walked beside her, towards where the main body of Partisans crouched behind their improvised wall of boulders. It was only as they came close that Lindsay saw Hartmann. He had been on the verge of asking Paco what had happened to the German.
Hartmann stood as erect as he could, turning his head to look at Lindsay. His wrists were bound behind his back. Again his eyes seemed to attempt to convey some message to the Englishman.
'Is that really necessary?' snapped Lindsay.
'Keep your voice down,' she hissed. 'It was done on the direct orders of Heljec. A German armoured column is approaching the gorge below. That is why the Amazon Brigade marched through it so openly earlier. It is a trap and the Germans are falling into it. Look down – not too close!' she warned.
The mutter of many slow-moving engines drifted up from the depths of the gorge. Peering over the edge, Lindsay saw the head-of the toy-like column snaking its way along the twisting defile. There was just enough light to see that this was an expedition in force.
Armoured cars and motorcyclists preceded the convoy. Behind came the tanks, nose to tail, their gun barrels swivelled to one side or the other at maximum elevation. Even to Lindsay's non-military eye this powerful cavalcade seemed useless, they would never be able to elevate the barrels to anything like the angle required to bombard the heights on which Heljec had placed his men.
And now he understood all the effort which had gone into shifting the boulders to the brink, the reason for the thick poles like pine trunks the Partisans had dug beneath the rocks and which they manned like giant levers, two or three Partisans to a pole.
Doubtless the German commander had taken a gamble – because it was established military lore that in this part of the world the Wehrmacht never moved at night. He was hoping to slip through under the cover of dusk – to break out into the open plain beyond which Lindsay had seen earlier to the south.
It was military madness. It would be a massacre.
Hartmann, compelled by Heljec to watch the destruction of his countrymen, stood close to Lindsay now with Paco between them. The Abwehr officer leaned forward to take a closer look into the abyss. He took a furtive step forward -and Paco ground her booted heel hard on the German's foot.
