base of the cranes as cover. Peploe had also reversed the truck tight behind the derricks so that it lay out of the line of fire from the fortress. Bullets zinged uselessly into the metal behind them as, with the engine running, Chambers helped the women into the back.
Tanner now joined him, hoisting the boy up beside his mother. ‘Where’s Captain Vaughan?’ he asked.
‘In the front,’ Chambers told him. ‘He’s been hit.’
‘And where the hell’s Sykes?’
‘Here, sir,’ gasped Sykes, from behind.
‘Good – now get in quick. Mac – time to go.’
Moments later they were all in, the boy and the women crouched in the middle, Tanner and Chambers at either side, with Sykes next to McAllister and the machine-gun.
‘Go, sir!’ called Tanner, and now they sped along the harbour walls, bullets continuing to ring out behind them. They raced to the end of the harbour wall, as another machine-gun opened up from the direction of the arsenal. Tanner could feel Nerita trembling with fear, but the lines of tracer from the enemy machine-gun were both wide and too high and now Peploe had turned up the Street of the August Martyrs and out of the line of fire. Suddenly another explosion rocked the town to the west as they continued to speed along.
And now they were back on Evans Street, seemingly deserted.
‘Nearly there,’ said Tanner.
‘Here,’ said Sykes, passing Tanner a twenty-ounce packet of Nobel’s. In his own hand he held two blocks of TNT. ‘Reckon you can hit these, Mac?’
‘I’ll give it a go, Sarge.’
‘Punter, jump up with me,’ Tanner said to Chambers, and pulled himself up so that he was clutching the rail around the cab. They were now nearing the Kenouria Gate and up ahead, in the faint night light, he saw guards stepping out into the road. They would not be stopping this time, and at thirty yards he opened fire, Chambers following a split second later, the men collapsing by the side of the road. As they reached the gate, Sykes threw out a block of TNT, and McAllister’s MG spat bullets, livid darts of tracer soon finding their mark, the packet detonating with a bright eruption of flame and a million stone shards. Tanner opened fire again, blindly into the dark on either side of the road, as they sped on through the archway. Then Sykes lobbed another block, which, seconds later, McAllister hit, and then finally the packet of Nobel’s. From the bastions rifle shots cracked out, but already, as the packet of gelignite exploded behind them, they were away, speeding clear of the town and up the low ridge to safety.
‘We’ve done it!’ laughed Sykes. ‘We’ve bleedin’ well gone and bloody well done it.’
20
But they had not made it. Not yet, at any rate – Tanner knew he would not relax until they were safely at the monastery above Krousonas. As they crested the ridge they now knew so well, Peploe turned off the main Knossos road, taking a rough track that led them through the vineyards to the west of the ruined palace where they had fought just days before.
Peploe was taking them south-west, towards the mountains, which even in the darkness of midnight loomed heavily ahead. The countryside was alive once more with the sound of the night: cicadas with their strange chirruping noises. It was still warm: the heat was no longer completely dying each day, but lingering throughout the hours of darkness. No one spoke now, as though to do so would be to tempt the good fortune they had enjoyed so far. And then, from Heraklion, came one last explosion, bigger than any before it, which, even several miles away, was so loud and distinct that the women and the boy started.
‘It’s all right,’ said Tanner, softly. ‘Just one last little message to Jerry.’
Alexis repeated the words to the boy, then touched Tanner’s hand. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
Soon after they reached a stream, and there they left the Snipe, having first filled the engine with loose soil, and made a sling for Vaughan, who had been shot in the arm. It was not far – a three-hour walk at most – but as they moved through the groves and vineyards and climbed into the foothills of the Ida Mountains, Tanner felt overcome with fatigue. The adrenalin had worn off, and the sudden peacefulness, with the night-time beauty of the countryside, bathed as it was in an ethereal glow, contrasted too starkly with the din and violence of the action. He sensed the others felt the same.
When they finally reached the monastery and Alopex was reunited with his wife, son and sister, he wept quite openly, overcome to see them alive. For Mandoukis, however, their arrival prompted an outpouring of despair. Clutching his head and tearing at his hair he was inconsolable.
‘I told him we looked for her,’ Vaughan explained to the others, ‘but she wasn’t there. He said she was in the Sabbionera Bastion, as he’d told us.’
‘But that’s not what Satanas said,’ Peploe reminded him.
‘Poor bugger,’ said McAllister.
‘He’ll need watching,’ muttered Tanner.
In the monastery’s refectory, they were fed, given wine and coffee, then set off on the final stage of their journey, back up to the cave in the mountains.
Tanner slept. He’d dressed the gash on his forearm, changed back into his old uniform of denims, shirt and battle blouse, then with his German trousers and shirt as a pillow and the jump smock as a rug, he had settled down in a soft hollow in the ground he’d discovered a little way from the cave. Almost the moment he closed his eyes, he succumbed to deep, dreamless sleep. When he awoke, Alexis was standing over him with an enamel mug of coffee.
‘Here,’ she said.
Tanner rubbed his eyes, thanked her and looked at his watch. It was after nine; he hadn’t slept that long in ages.
‘Thank you,’ he said, but now sitting up he saw bruises on her cheeks. ‘Are you hurt anywhere else?’
‘It is nothing.’
‘The bastards,’ he muttered.
‘But it is not as bad as the ones my brother gave you.’
Tanner smiled. ‘Nor the ones I gave him.’
‘He will not fight you again,’ she said, returning his smile. ‘I owe you my life, Jack. They would have shot us all.’
‘Not just me, Alexis.’
‘But it was your idea. Giorgis told me. You risked everything.’
‘I couldn’t bear the thought of them taking you,’ he said.
She sat down beside him and clasped his hand. ‘I do not know you at all,’ she said, ‘but still I feel as though I do.’ She lightly kissed his cheek, then stood up. ‘Thank you, Jack. Thank you for what you did.’
Tanner smiled. She left him, and Tanner remained where he was, thinking. Woodsmoke wafted towards him, sweet and soothing – unlike cordite or the dust of explosives. His throat was dry after the night’s fighting, and having drunk the coffee, he reached for his water bottle. He was about to begin cleaning his weapons when Sykes and McAllister joined him.
‘Morning, sir,’ said McAllister. ‘That was quite a bloody night.’
‘It certainly was,’ said Tanner. ‘You did well, lads.’
‘I still can’t quite believe we got out alive,’ said McAllister. He was a small lad, still not quite twenty, but stockier now than when Tanner had first known him – many of the boys were better fed in the army than they had been back home in the working-class areas of Leeds and Bradford, the recruiting heartland for the Yorks Rangers. McAllister had been in the Territorial Battalion along with Hepworth, Chambers and Bell when Tanner had first known them. They were not Territorials now, though. Tanner reckoned they were as good as any regular soldiers he had ever known.
‘As I always tell you, Mac,’ said Tanner, ‘surprise is one hell of an advantage. We knew exactly when we were going in and pretty much what we were going to do.’
