Petar, still holding the unconscious Groves pinned against the ladder, heard the sound of the words but did not understand them. Petar, with both arms round Groves, now had his forearms locked at an almost impossible angle between the stanchions and the rock-face behind. In this position, as long as his wrists or forearms didn't break, he could hold Groves almost indefinitely. But Petar's grey and sweat-covered face, the racked and twisted face, was mute testimony enough the almost unendurable agony he was suffering. Mallory and Miller also heard the urgently shouted commands, but, like Petar, were unable to understand what it was that was being shouted. It would be something, Mallory thought vaguely, that would bode no good for them, then put the thought from his mind: he had other and more urgently immediate matters to occupy his attention. They had reached the barrier of the torpedo net and he had the supporting cable in one hand; a knife in the other when Miller exclaimed and caught his arm.
'For God's sake, no!' The urgency in Miller's voice had Mallory looking at him in astonishment. 'Jesus, what do I use for brains. That's not a wire.' 'It's not — '
'It's an insulated power cable. Can't you see?' Mallory peered closely. 'Now I can.' 'Two thousand volts, I'll bet.' Miller still sounded shaken. 'Electric chair power. We'd have been frizzled alive. And it would have triggered off an alarm bell.' 'Over the top with them,' Mallory said. Struggling and pushing, heaving and pulling, for there was only a foot of clear water between the wire and the surface of the water, they managed to ease the compressed air cylinder over and had just succeeded in lifting the nose of the first of the amatol cylinders on to the wire when, less than a hundred yards away, a six-inch searchlight came to life on the top of the dam wall, its beam momentarily horizontal, then dipping sharply to begin a traverse of the water close in to the side of the dam wall.
'That's all we bloody well need,' Mallory said bitterly. He pushed the nose of the amatol block back off the wire, but the wire strop securing it to the compressed air cylinder held it in such a position that it remained with its nose nine inches clear of the water. 'Leave it. Get under. Hang on to the net.'
Both men sank under the water as the sergeant atop the dam wall continued his traverse with the search light. The beam passed over the nose of the first of the amatol cylinders, but a black-painted cylinder in dark waters makes a poor subject for identification and the sergeant failed to see it. The light moved on, finished its traverse of the water alongside the dam, then went out.
Mallory and Miller surfaced cautiously and looking swiftly around. For the moment, there was no sign of immediate danger. Mallory studied the luminous hands of his watch. He said: 'Hurry! For God's sake, hurry! We're almost three minutes behind schedule.' They hurried. Desperate now, they had the two amatol cylinders over the wire inside twenty seconds, opened the compressed air valve on the leading cylinder and were alongside the massive wall of the dam inside another twenty. At that moment, the clouds parted and the moon broke through again, silvering the dark waters of the dam. Mallory and Miller were now In a helplessly exposed position but there was nothing they could do about it and they knew it. Their time had run out and they had no option other than to secure and arm the amatol cylinders as quickly as ever possible. Whether they were discovered or not could still be all-important: but there was nothing they could do to prevent that discovery.
Miller said softly: 'Forty feet apart and forty feet down, the experts say. We'll be too late.'
'No. Not yet too late. The idea is to let the tanks across first then destroy the bridge before the petrol bowsers and the main infantry battalions cross.'
Atop the dam wall, the sergeant with the searchlight returned from the western end of the dam and reported to the captain.
'Nothing, sir. No sign of anyone.'
'Very good.' The captain nodded towards the gorge. Try that side. You might find something there.'
So the sergeant tried the other side and he did find something there, and almost immediately. Ten seconds after he had begun his traverse with the searchlight he picked up the figures of the unconscious Groves and the exhausted Petar and, only feet below them and climbing steadily, Sergeant Reynolds. All three were hopelessly trapped, quite powerless to do anything to defend themselves: Reynolds had no longer even his gun.
On the dam wall, a Wehrmacht soldier, levelling his machine-pistol along the beam of the searchlight, glanced up in astonishment as the captain struck down the barrel of his gun.
'Fool!' The captain sounded savage. 'I want them alive. You two, fetch ropes, get them up here for questioning. We must find out what they have been up to.' His words carried clearly to the two men in the water for, just then, the last of the bombing ceased and the sound of the small-arms fire died away. The contrast was almost too much to be borne, the suddenly hushed silence strangely ominous, deathly, almost, in its sinister foreboding. 'You heard?' Miller whispered. 'I heard.' More cloud, Mallory could see, thinner cloud but still cloud, was about to pass across the face of the moon. 'Fix these float suckers to the wall. I'll do the other charge.' He turned and swam slowly away, towing the second amatol cylinder behind him.
When the beam of the searchlight had reached down from the top of the dam wall Andrea had been prepared for instant discovery, but the prior discovery of Groves, Reynolds and Petar had saved Maria and himself, for the Germans seemed to think that they had caught all there were to be caught and, instead of traversing the rest of the gorge with the searchlights, had concentrated, instead, on bringing up to the top of the wall the three men they had found trapped on the ladder. One man, obviously unconscious — that would be Groves, Andrea thought — was hauled up at the end of a rope: the other two, with one man lending assistance to the other, had completed the journey up the ladder by themselves. All this Andrea had seen while he was bandaging Maria's injured leg, but he had said nothing of it to her.
Andrea secured the bandage and smiled at her. 'Better?'
'Better.' She tried to smile her thanks but the smile wouldn't come.
'Fine. Time we were gone.' Andrea consulted his watch. 'If we stay here any longer I have the feeling that we're going to get very, very wet.'
He straightened to his feet and it was this sudden movement that saved his life. The knife that had been intended for his back passed cleanly through his upper left arm. For a moment, almost as if uncomprehending, Andrea stared down at the tip of the narrow blade emerging from his arm then, apparently oblivious of the agony it must have cost him, turned slowly round, the movement wrenching the hilt of the knife from the hand of the man who held it.
The Cetnik sergeant, the only other man to have survived with Droshny the destruction of the swing bridge, stared at Andrea as if he were petrified, possibly because he couldn't understand how a man could suffer such a wound in silence and, in silence, still be able to tear the knife from his grasp. Andrea had now no weapon left him nor did he require one. In what seemed an almost grotesque slow motion, Andrea lifted his right hand: but there was nothing slow-motion about the dreadful edge-handed chopping blow which caught the Cetnik sergeant on the base of the neck. The man was probably dead before he struck the ground.
Reynolds and Petar sat with their backs to the guard-hut at the eastern end of the dam. Beside them lay the still unconscious Groves, his breathing now strenuous, his face ashen and of a peculiar waxed texture. From overhead, fixed to the roof of the guardhouse, a bright light shone down on them, while nearby was a watchful guard with his carbine trained on them. The Wehrmacht captain of the guard stood above them, an almost awe- struck expression on his face.
He said incredulously but in immaculate English: 'You hoped to blow up a dam this size with a few sticks of dynamite? You must be mad!'
'No one told us the dam was as big as this,' Reynolds said sullenly.
'No one told you — God in heaven, talk of mad dogs and Englishmen! And where is this dynamite?'
'The wooden bridge broke.' Reynolds's shoulders were slumped in abject defeat. 'We lost all the dynamite — and all our other friends.'
'I wouldn't have believed it, I just wouldn't have believed it.' The captain shook his head and turned away, then checked as Reynolds called him. 'What is it?'
'My friend here.' Reynolds indicated Groves. 'He is very ill, you can see that. He needs medical attention.'
'Later.' The captain turned to the soldier in the open transceiver cabin. 'What news from the south?'
'They have just started to cross the Neretva bridge, sir.'
The words carried clearly to Mallory, at that moment some distance apart from Miller. He had just finished securing his float to the wall and was on the point of rejoining Miller when he caught a flash of light out of the corner of his eye. Mallory remained still and glanced upward and to his right.
There was a guard on the dam wall above, leaning over the parapet as he moved along, flashing a torch
