they would be landing a hundred metres beyond the brink. His estimate was correct. The startled Partisans ran into the barrage they had hoped to flee from.
On the hilltop Paco looked back and saw Heljec's men falling, throwing up their arms as they plunged down onto the hard ground. It was ideal mortar territory: the hilltop was coated with half-buried rocks which increased the killing power of the bombs a hundredfold. Instant detonation created maximum _ blast. Shrapnel like knife- blades hurtling with tremendous velocity cut them to pieces.
It was Hartmann who called out the warning. 'We're not moving fast enough – he'll use a creeping barrage…'
'This is bloody stupid!' Paco snapped. 'Stop a second…'
Taking a knife from her belt she sliced through the rope binding the German's wrists. Something fell heavily close to Lindsay. It was Milic's rotund, Falstaffian figure, the back of his head shattered. He was still clutching the sten gun. Reader bent down, tore the weapon from the lifeless hands and the spare magazines protruding from his jacket pocket.
'Hurry, for God's sake!' called out Hartmann over his shoulder.
They began running. Hartmann seemed to have taken over from Paco as leader of the group. The irony of the situation flashed through Lindsay's mind – an Abwehr officer guiding them into a less dangerous zone – from an attack unleashed by another German in the gorge below.
At that moment Jaeger was giving an order to his mortar teams which he had divided into two sections. He was leap-frogging them up the lower slope – so that one waiting section was always a hundred metres higher up than the other, its weapons elevated to fire the bombs a greater distance.
'Second team! Open fire…!'
The firing team fed bombs into the squat, sinister barrels – spread out over half a kilometre. It was all guesswork on Jaeger's part. It had to be, since he couldn't see what the hell was happening on the hilltop. He took encouragement from the fact that no more of the remaining rocks were being levered over the ridge which seemed deserted.
He would have been even more encouraged had he been able to view the hilltop. Five, minutes earlier Heljec held the upper hand and the destruction of the entire column seemed inevitable. Now it was hell and chaos on the hilltop as the disorganized and bewildered Partisans ran on into the next barrage.
'If the shits had any sense they'd run back to the precipice,' Reader gasped out to Lindsay as he ran alongside him.
'We have to get to the edge of the hill and down the other side,' Hartmann shouted. 'Any bomb coming that far will fall into the other gorge…'
Paco ran alongside the German, careful not to trip. There might never be time to get to her feet again. She could hear the hateful hiss and rattle of the shrapnel close by… a big enough piece could decapitate a man – or a woman. The barrage was horribly close, seemed to be scraping their heels. They were too late…'
Hartmann grabbed Paco by the forearm, slowed her down. They had reached the far side of the hill where it plunged down into another gorge. He saw a narrow steep gulch descending like the start of a stream bed. He pulled her with him, feet slithering on a gravelly surface. The dried-up stream bed zigzagged between more boulders.
They came to an overhang of rock protruding far out, providing a natural roof. Panting for breath, Hartmann paused, let go of Paco and looked back and up. Lindsay was close behind. At his heels Reader followed, waving the sten as he staggered on the uneven surface.
'Get your breath back here…' Hartmann said.
'We're safe here from the mortar bombs. Sit down on that rock…'
Paco was trembling. He sat on another rock himself, took out a handkerchief and wiped sweat from his forehead. Lindsay, silent and withdrawn, had perched on another rock while Reader sagged against the rear wall.
'In a minute we'll have to get moving and fast,' Hartmann told them. 'Is there a way round into this gorge from the other one?' he asked Paco.
'Yes. This hill is like a lozenge,' she explained, 'cut off from the rest of the countryside by roads. Where the Germans came in there's a fork…'
'So, from the point where you saw Jaeger he could backtrack, take the other fork – and he'd be coming along the gorge below which we have to cross to escape?'
'You're right,' Paco said, studying Hartmann. 'Except that I can't believe Jaeger has caught up with us, that the Germans will think of such a manoeuvre. They must be in a terrible mess.'
'If it's Jaeger he'll think of it, and he'll come,' Hartmann said firmly.
Lindsay was in a state of semi-shock. Locked into the cockpit of a Spitfire was one thing. But this was his first experience of real ground warfare. Illogically, he cursed his own slowness, the fact that it was Hartmann who had saved Paco was something he deeply resented.
Reaching automatically for a cigarette, his hand touched the hard outline of the diary in his pocket. That was all – was everything – which counted. He must get the information back to London. It was a hollow reflex thought. At that moment, watching Paco, he didn't really care what happened next.
The surviving Partisans had reached the edge of the hill and were fleeing into the gorge below down other gulches. Between the steady thump of the mortar bombs – like a martial drumbeat – Hartmann could hear on both sides the slither of fleeing feet, the slide of stones. He stood up.
'We must get moving – before they trap us…'
It was weird, thought Lindsay. Hartmann seemed to have taken command of their little group quite naturally. Even Paco was accepting his leadership. And poor Milic was dead, a man with only half a head. Milic who had – speaking not a word of German – travelled all the way to Munich as part of Paco's rescue team. A hand grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him roughly.
'Have you gone into a bloody trance? The others are half way down to the gorge…'
Reader, of course. Always Reader.
'I'm handing over command to you, Schmidt.' Jaeger gave the order as he stood in the back of the half- track studying a local map with the aid of a shaded torch. 'There's a fork barely a kilometre behind us. Remember? We took the right-hand turning. According to this map the left-hand one leads round the far side of this mountain. I'm going to trap the whole of this bloody Partisan group…'
'You'll get there in time?'
'That's why I've assembled this mobile force…'
Jaeger had achieved the apparently impossible twice over. He had – by cunning use of the mortar teams – converted potential destruction of the column into disaster for the Partisans. Now he had conjured up his mobile force – the half-track armed with a swivel-mounted machine-gun and a team of six motorcycles with side-cars – the side-cars each carrying a man armed with a machine-pistol and grenades.
The half-track was crammed with infantry also armed with machine-pistols and grenades. This, Jaeger was convinced, would be close-range – maybe hand-to-hand – fighting. As the first group of two motorcycles and side- cars headed back for the fork he gave final instructions to Schmidt.
'Get the men out of the death-trap they should never have been led into. Forget the transport, abandon the tanks. Save the men! They're to move – well spread- out – fast until they break out into the plain beyond. Regroup there and I'll rejoin you when I can.'
'Good luck, Chief.'
'Luck doesn't come into it,' Jaeger shouted as the half-track turned through a hundred and eighty degrees prior to moving back to the fork. 'It's fire-power, mobility and getting there..
Before he turned to face the way they were going, Schmidt was already kicking the starter of a borrowed motorcycle ready for his swift journey along the column to issue the order. Evacuate!
Something very peculiar happened. At the time it made no sense to Lindsay, no sense at all. They had stumbled after Hartmann to the bottom of the serpentine gulch. The road along the gorge was little more than a rock-strewn track. Lindsay suspected it was a tumbling torrent in winter.
They had crossed the road as a rearguard: the more experienced Partisans were already on the far side, scrambling up another steep slope. They could hear the German motorcycles and side-cars coming. They could see them coming as they roared forward with headlamps blazing
Paco waited until they were several hundred metres above the road. They had reached a rock ledge at the
