angle of maybe twenty degrees. We go that way.'
Reynolds looked at Mallory in an almost dazed incredulity. 'It's madness!'
'Madness!' Miller echoed.
'I wouldn't do it from choice,' Mallory admitted. Nevertheless, it's the only way in.'
'But you're bound to be seen,' Reynolds protested.
'Not bound to be.' Mallory dug into his rucksack and produced from it a black rubber frogman's suit, while Miller reluctantly did the same from his. As both men started to pull their suits on, Mallory continued: We'll be like black flies against a black wall.'
'He hopes,' Miller muttered.
'Then with any luck we expect them to be looking the other way when the RAF start in with the fireworks. And if we do seem in any danger of discovery — well, that's where you and Groves come in. Captain Jensen was right — as things have turned out, we couldn't have done this without you.'
'Compliments?' Groves said to Reynolds. 'Compliments from the Captain? I've a feeling there's something nasty on the way.'
'There is,' Mallory admitted. He had his suit and hood in position now and was fixing into his belt some pitons and a hammer he had extracted from his rucksack. 'If we're in trouble, you two create a diversion.'
'What kind of diversion?' Reynolds asked suspiciously.
'From somewhere near the foot of the dam you start firing up at the guards atop the dam wall.'
'But — but we'll be completely exposed.' Groves gazed across at the rocky scree which composed the left bank at the base of the dam and at the foot of the ladder. 'There's not an ounce of cover. What kind of chance will we have?'
Mallory secured his rucksack and hitched a long coil of rope over his shoulder. 'A very poor one, I'm afraid.' He looked at his luminous watch. 'But then, for the next forty-five minutes you and Groves are expendable. Dusty and I are not.'
'Just like that?' Reynolds said flatly. 'Expendable.'
'Just like that.'
'Want to change places?' Miller said hopefully. There was no reply for Mallory was already on his way Miller, with a last apprehensive look at the towering rampart of rock above, gave a last hitch to his rucksack and followed. Reynolds made to move off, but Groves caught him by the arm and signed to Maria go ahead with Petar. He said to her: 'We'll wait a and bring up the rear. Just to be sure.'
'What is it?' Reynolds said in a low voice.
This. Our Captain Mallory admitted that he has already made four mistakes tonight. I think he's making fifth now.'
'I'm not with you.'
'He's putting all our eggs in one basket and he's overlooked certain things. For instance, asking the two of us to stand by at the base of the dam wall. If we have start a diversion, one burst of machine-gun fire from the top of the dam wall will get us both in seconds. One man can create as successful a diversion as two — id where's the point in the two of us getting killed? Bides, with one of us left alive, there's always the.ice that something can be done to protect Maria her brother. I'll go to the foot of the dam while you — '
'Why should you be the one to go? Why not — '
'Wait, I haven't finished yet. I also think Mallory's cry optimistic if he thinks that Andrea can hold off that lot coming up the gorge. There must be at least twenty of them and they're not out for an evening's fun and games. They're out to kill us. So what happens if they do overwhelm Andrea and come up to the swing bridge and find Maria and Petar there while we busy being sitting targets at the base of the dam wall? They'll knock them both off before you can bat an eyelid.'
'Or maybe not knock them off,' Reynolds muttered. 'What if Neufeld were to be killed before they reached the swing bridge? What if Droshny were the man in charge — Maria and Petar might take some time in dying.'
'So you'll stay near the bridge and keep our backs covered? With Maria and Petar in shelter somewhere near?'
'You're right, I'm sure you're right. But I don't like it,' Reynolds said uneasily. 'He gave us his orders and he's not a man who likes having his orders disobeyed.'
'He'll never know — even if he ever comes back, which I very much doubt, he'll never know. And he's started to make mistakes.'
'Not this kind of mistake.' Reynolds was still more than vaguely uneasy.
'Am I right or not?' Groves demanded.
'I don't think it's going to matter a great deal at the end of the day,' Reynolds said wearily. 'Okay, let's do it your way.'
The two sergeants hurried off after Maria and Petar.
Andrea listened to the scraping of heavy boots on stones, the very occasional metallic chink of a gun striking against a rock, and waited, stretched out flat on his stomach, the barrel of his Schmeisser rock-steady in the cleft between the boulders. The sounds heralding the stealthy approach up the river bank were not more than forty yards away when Andrea raised himself slightly, squinted down the barrel and squeezed the trigger.
The reply was immediate. At once three or four guns, all of them, Andrea realized, machine-pistols, opened up. Andrea stopped firing, ignoring the bullets whistling above his head and ricocheting from the boulders on either side of him, carefully lined up on one of the flashes issuing from a machine-pistol and fired a one-second burst. The man behind the machine-pistol straightened convulsively, his upflung right arm sending his gun spinning, then slowly top-sideways in the Neretva and was carried away in the whitely swirling waters. Andrea fired again and a second man twisted round and fell heavily among the rocks. There came a suddenly barked order and the firing down-river ceased.
There were eight men in the down-river group and now one of them detached himself from the shelter of a boulder and crawled towards the second, who had been hit: as he moved, Droshny's face revealed his usual wolfish grin, but it was clear that was feeling very far from smiling. He bent over the huddled figure in the stones, and turned him on his side: it was Neufeld, with blood streaming down from the gash in the side of the head. Droshny straightened, his face vicious in anger, and turned round as one of is Cetniks touched his arm.
'Is he dead?'
'Not quite. Concussed and badly. He'll be unconscious for hours, maybe days. I don't know, only a doctor can tell.' Droshny beckoned to two other men.
'You three — get him across the ford and up to safety.'
'Two stay with him, the other come back. And for God's sake tell the others to hurry up and get here.'
His face still contorted with anger and for the moment oblivious of all danger, Droshny leapt to his feet and fired a long continuous burst upstream, a burst which apparently left Andrea completely unmoved, for e remained motionless where he was, resting peacefully with his back to his protective boulder, watching with mild interest but apparent unconcern as ricochets and splintered fragments of rock flew off in all directions.
The sound of the firing carried clearly to the ears the guards patrolling the top of the dam. Such was the bedlam of small-arms fire all around and such were the tricks played on the ears by the baffling variety of echoes that reverberated up and down the gorge and over the surface of the dam itself, that it was quite impossible precisely to locate the source of the recent bursts of machine-pistol fire: what was significant, however, was that it had been machine-gun fire and up to that moment the sounds of musketry had consisted exclusively of rifle fire. And it had seemed to emanate from the south, from the gorge below the dam. One of the guards on the dam went worriedly to the captain in charge, spoke briefly, then walked quickly across to one of the small huts on the raised concrete platform at the eastern end of the dam wall. The hut, which had no front, only a rolled-up canvas protection, held a large radio transceiver manned by a corporal.
'Captain's orders,' the sergeant said. 'Get through to the bridge at Neretva. Pass a message to General Zimmermann that we — the captain, that is — is worried. Tell him that there's a great deal of small-arms fire all around us and that some of it seems to be coming from down-river,'
The sergeant waited impatiently while the operator put the call through and even more impatiently as the earphones crackled two minutes later and the operator started writing down the message. He took the completed message from the operator and handed it to the captain, who read it out aloud.
'General Zimmermann says, 'There is no cause at all for anxiety, the noise is being made by our Yugoslav
