Neufeld gestured to Droshny and together they ran towards the radio hut. The door, ominously enough on that icy night, was standing wide open. They were still ten feet short of the door when Neufeld shouted: The Nevetva bridge at once. Tell General Zimmermann — '
'He halted abruptly in the doorway, Droshny by his shoulder. For the second time that evening the faces of men reflected their stunned disbelief, their total uncomprehending shock.
Only one small lamp burned in the radio hut, that one small lamp was enough. Two men on the floor in grotesquely huddled positions, one lying partially across the other: both were unmistakably dead. Beside them, with its face-ripped off and interior smashed, lay the mangled remains of what had once been a transmitter. Neufeld gazed at the scene for some time before shaking his violently as if to break the shocked spell and turned to Droshny. 'The big one,' he said quietly. The big one did this.'
'The big one,' Droshny agreed. He was almost smiled, 'You will remember what you promised, Hauptman Neufeld? The big one. He's for me.'
'You shall have him. Come. They can be only minutes ahead.' Both men turned and ran back to compound where Sergeant Baer and a group of soldiers were already saddling up the ponies, machine-pistols only,' Neufeld shouted. 'No rifles. It will be close-quarter work tonight. And Sergeant Baer?'
'Hauptmann Neufeld?'
'Inform the men that we will not be taking prisoners.'
AS those of Neufeld and his men had been, the ponies of Mallory and his six companions were almost Invisible in the dense clouds of steam rising from their sweat-soaked bodies: their lurching gait, which could not now even be called a trot, was token enough of the obvious fact that they had reached the limits of exhaustion. Mallory glanced at Andrea, who nodded and said: 'I agree. We'd make faster time on foot now ' 'I must be getting old,' Mallory said, and for a moment he sounded that way. 'I'm not thinking very well tonight, am I?' 'I do not understand,'
'Ponies. Neufeld and his men will have fresh ponies from the stables. We should have killed them — or at least driven them away.'
'Age is not the same thing as lack of sleep. Ii never occurred to me, either. A man cannot think of everything, my Keith.' Andrea reined in his pony and was about to swing down when something on the slope below caught his attention. He pointed ahead.
A minute later they drew up alongside a very narrow-gauge railway line, of a type common in Central Yugoslavia. At this level the snow had petered out and the track, they could see, was overgrown and rusty, but for all that, apparently in fair enough mechanical condition: undoubtedly, it was the sam< track that had caught their eye when they had paused to examine the green waters of the Neretva dam on the way back from Major Broznik's camp that morning. Bin what simultaneously caught and held the attention of both Mallory and Miller was not the track itself, but a little siding leading on to the track — and a diminutive wood-burning locomotive that stood on the siding. Tin locomotive was practically a solid block of rust and looked as if it hadn't moved from its present position since the beginning of the war: in all probability, h hadn't.
Mallory produced a large-scale map from his tunic and flashed a torch on it. He said: 'No doubt of it, this is the track we saw this morning. It goes down along the Neretva for at least five miles before bearing off the south.' He paused and went on thoughtfully: 'I wonder if we could get that thing moving.'
'What?' Miller looked at him in horror. 'It'll fall to bs if you touch it — it's only the rust that's holding damn thing together. And that gradient there!' He in dismay down the slope. 'What do you think our terminal velocity is going to be when we hit one of monster pine trees a few miles down the track?'
'The ponies are finished,' Mallory said mildly, 'and know how much you love walking.' Miller looked at the locomotive with loathing.
'There must be some other way.'
'Shh' Andrea cocked his head. 'They're coming, I can hear them coming.'
'Get the chocks away from those front wheels,' Miller shouted. He ran forward and after several violent and well-directed kicks which clearly took into no account future state of his toes, succeeded in freeing the triangular block which was attached to the front of the locomotive by a chain: Reynolds, no less energetically, did the same for the other chock.
All of them, even Maria and Petar helping, flung their weight against the rear of the locomotive, locomotive remained where it was. They tried in, despairingly: the wheels refused to budge even faction of an inch. Groves said, with an odd mixture urgency and diffidence: 'Sir, on a gradient like this, Would have been left with its brakes on.'
'Oh my God!' Mallory said in chagrin. 'Andrea. Quick — Release the brake lever.'
Andrea swung himself on to the footplate. He said complainingly: 'There are a dozen damned levers up here-'
'Well, open the dozen damned levers, then.' Mallory glanced anxiously back up the track. Maybe Andrea had heard something, maybe not: there was certainly no one in sight yet. But he knew that Neufeld and Droshny, who must have been released from the block-house only minutes after they had left then themselves and who knew those woods and path better than they did, must be very close indeed by this time.
There was a considerable amount of metallic screeching and swearing coming from the cabin after perhaps half a minute Andrea said: 'That's the lot.'
'Shove,' Mallory ordered.
They shoved, heels jammed in the sleepers and backs to the locomotive, and this time the locomotive moved off so easily, albeit with a tortured squealing of rusted wheels, that most of those pushing were caught wholly by surprise and fell on their back on the track. Moments later they were on their feet and running after the locomotive which was already perceptibly beginning to increase speed. Andrea reached down from the cab, swung Maria and Petar aboard m turn, then lent a helping hand to the others. The last Groves, was reaching for the footplate when he sudden I v braked, swung round, ran back to the ponies, unhitched the climbing ropes, flung them over his shoulder and chased after the locomotive again. Mallory reached down and helped him on to the footplate.
'It's not my day,' Mallory said sadly. 'Evening rather First, I forget about Baer's duplicate keys. Then about the ponies. Then about the brakes. Now the ropes I wonder what I'll forget about next?'
'Perhaps about Neufeld and Droshny.' Reynolds voice was carefully without expression.
'What about Neufeld and Droshny?'
Reynolds pointed back up the railway track with barrel of his Schmeisser. 'Permission to fire, sir.' Mallory swung round. Neufeld, Droshny and and an indeterminate number of other pony-mounted soldiers had just appeared around a bend in the track and were more than a hundred yards away, 'permission to fire,' Mallory agreed. 'The rest of get down.' He unslung and brought up his own Schmeisser just as Reynolds squeezed the trigger of his, For perhaps five seconds the closed metallic confines of the tiny cabin reverberated deafeningly to the crash of the two machine-pistols, then, at a nudge from Mallory, the two men stopped firing. There was no target left to fire at. Neufeld and his men had loosed off a few preliminary shots but immediately realized that the wildly swaying saddles of their ponies made an impossibly unsteady firing position as compared to cab of the locomotive and had pulled their ponies into the woods on either side of the track. But not all of them had pulled off in time: two men lay motionless and face down in the snow while their ponies still galloped down the track in the wake of the locomotive.
Miller rose, glanced wordlessly at the scene behind, tapped Mallory on the arm. 'A small point occurs me, sir. How do we stop this thing.' He gazed apprehensively through the cab window. 'Must be doing sixty already.'
'Well, we're doing at least twenty,' Mallory said agreeably. 'But fast enough to out-distance those ponies. Ask Andrea. He released the brake.'
'He released a dozen levers,' Miller corrected. 'Any could have been the brake.'
'Well, you're not going to sit around doing nothing,?' Mallory asked reasonably. 'Find out how to stop the damn thing.'
Miller looked at him coldly and set about trying to find out how to stop the damn thing. Mallory turned as Reynolds touched him on the arm. 'Well?'
Reynolds had an arm round Maria to steady her on the now swaying platform. He whispered: They going to get us, sir. They're going to get us for sure. Why don't we stop and leave those two, sir? Give them a chance to escape into the woods?'
'Thanks for the thought. But don't be mad. With us they have a chance — a small one to be sure, but a
