suddenly alert. He peered down at the British men. There was the shoulder tab, 'Yorks Rangers,' on their uniforms. It was the same as he had seen on the men on the mountain. How had they got there? He leant over them. One of the Tommies, wounded in the head and shoulder, was unconscious. The Frenchman, he could see, was dead; he had the blue-grey waxy complexion that he had already learnt to recognize as the mask of death. But the third was awake, his head tilted to one side, staring towards the tent's entrance. Zellner leant closer to him and the Tommy's eyes widened in recognition.
'You!' Zellner said, grabbing the young man's collar. 'Where are they? How did you get here?'
The Tommy looked at him, fear in his eyes, muttering in English.
'Tell me!' shouted Zellner, shaking him. 'Tell me where they are!' Bitter rage consumed him now. 'Speak!' said Zellner in English. 'Where is Tanner?' The Englishman mouthed something, words Zellner could not hear. 'What?' He shook him again. 'What are you saying? Tell me!' Frothy blood appeared from the Tommy's mouth then his eyes became fixed. A faint gasp and a last exhalation came from his mouth. Zellner dropped the lifeless body back on to the stretcher, then raced towards two medics bringing in another stretcher. 'Where did those men come from?' he demanded. 'Those three - the Frenchman and the two Tommies? Who brought them here?' But the medics did not know. No one did.
A hand on his shoulder. Zellner turned and saw a major surgeon standing in front of him. 'That's enough, Hauptmann,' he said. 'We don't concern ourselves with how the wounded get here. Our job is to deal with them as best we can. Now, please, stop making a scene, and let us get on with our job. We have lives to save.'
Chastened, Zellner scowled and left the tent. He wondered what else could go wrong. No British Tommy was going to make a fool of him. Consumed with thoughts of revenge, he stumbled off in search of his men.
Chapter 11
Not until the afternoon did Tanner return to the safety of the cave above the Rostad's farmstead, by which time Anna and her father were safely at home. He had learnt much, and reported his findings to Lieutenant Chevannes and the two Norwegian officers. As he had hoped, Tretten was now far quieter than it had been. Soldiers had been leaving all day and continued to do so. A half battalion of mountain troops was still in the village, as was a tented field dressing station, but a number of the wounded had already been loaded on to a train south. The upturned boats that Anna had mentioned were down by the jetty - the bank jutted out into the river and there was a shingle beach where they lay. He also suggested an approach route that would enable them to stay within the cover of the trees almost to the riverbank. The only open ground was the last seventy-five yards across the road to the water's edge.
Chevannes dismissed him without a word, so he went to find Sykes and the others, who were sitting in a corner of the cave. Hepworth and Kershaw were on guard duty, McAllister and Erwood asleep, while the corporal, Moran, Bell and Chambers, were playing poker.
Sykes put down his cards when he saw Tanner. 'I've lost a fortune, Sarge.' He grinned. 'IOUs. Mac's cleaning up.'
'I've got to think of my future, Sarge,' said McAllister. 'I see it as a kind of nest-egg for when the war's over. At this rate I reckon I'll be able to move to a big house in Harrogate when I get back.'
Tanner lit two German cigarettes from one of the orange Niderehe packets he had taken from the prisoners the day before, and passed it to Sykes.
'Cheers, Sarge.'
'It's a bit rough, but it's tobacco, isn't it? Better than nothing.'
'Too bloody right.' Sykes inhaled deeply, then said, 'Are we going to be all right, then?'
Tanner nodded. 'It's not going to be much fun crossing the river, but if we hold our nerve .. .'
'Course.' They smoked in silence for a moment, then Sykes said, 'We've been having a gander at some of that Jerry kit. Here.' He picked up a rifle and passed it to Tanner.
Tanner gripped it, weighing it in his hands. 'About the same weight as the SMLE. Eight pounds or so.'
'That's what we thought,' said Sykes.
Tanner lifted it to his shoulder, aimed, then pulled back the bolt. 'Oi, oi,' he said. 'Don't like this much.' He whistled. 'Bloody hell, it comes back a long way, doesn't it? How are you supposed to keep your aim with that bloody great thing knocking your cheek every time?'
'You couldn't fire thirty rounds a minute with it, could you?'
'Not accurately, that's for sure.' He tried a sequence of five blank shots, then passed it back to Sykes. 'I reckon if you fired fifteen properly aimed shots a minute you'd be doing well. I'd rather have my old No.l Enfield any day. What about the shells?'
'Fractionally larger. Almost nothing in it.'
'But enough. We'd better make sure no one mixes this ammo up.'
'Don't worry, I've warned everyone already. What's the pistol like?'
Tanner took it out of its holster and passed it to him. 'See for yourself. I don't really feel that comfortable with pistols, but useful for clearing a room, I suppose.'
'Close-quarters stuff.'
'Exactly.' Tanner watched as Sykes loaded and unloaded the magazine, cocked and uncocked the pistol, then examined the safety catch. Not far away, the others continued to play cards and sleep. All the Rangers were on the same side of the cave, he noticed, while the French and Norwegians were on the other. There was, he recognized, a cohesion to his men, even though the patrol had originally been brought together by combining two different parts of the platoon. It was strange, he thought, how attached to them he now felt. After all, his background was so completely different; really, he knew very little about any of them, or they about him. They had nothing in common as far as he knew - except shared nationality and the experience of being stuck together, but clearly that was enough.
He hoped he had made the right decision to cross the valley, hoped he wasn't wasting these men's lives. They trusted him, he knew, and trust was so important - but was it justified? Was he leading them to capture - death? Just a few years ago most of them would have been young boys scampering around the backstreets of Leeds, playing football, getting into trouble and bunking off school. Now they were sitting in a damp cave on a mountain in Norway, deep behind enemy lines on a mission of critical importance. Jesus, he thought. How did we all get into this bloody mess? He looked at Sykes again, still fiddling with the pistol. He barely even knew his corporal, a man he considered in many ways a friend.
'I've been meaning to ask,' he said at length, to Sykes, 'where did you learn how to handle explosives like that? You set that booby trap like an expert.'
'In the Army, of course.'
'In your basic infantry training? Pull the other one.'
'We did a bit of training with grenades. Even live ones.'
'But not handling gelignite.' He stared at Sykes, who smiled sheepishly. 'Come on, Stan. Spit it out.'
Sykes glanced around to check no one else was listening, then leant forward. 'I, um - before I joined the Army - well, I was ... I got in with a few bad 'uns and, well, I used to rob stuff.'
Tanner raised an eyebrow. Go on.
Sykes sighed, took out his tobacco and began rolling a cigarette. 'Yes, you know, houses, offices - I could crack most safes, but they didn't always have combination locks, you see. So that's when I learnt how to use explosives.'
'Christ, Stan,' said Tanner.
