Storm Force from Navarone. Sam Llewellyn
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Название: Storm Force from Navarone
Автор: Sam Llewellyn
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Приключения: прочее
isbn: 9780007347827
isbn:
Who?
Andrea went to help the SAS man off the bed. The SAS man pushed him away, reached for his makeshift wooden crutch and hauled himself moaning to his feet. As Miller brought up the rear, he could hear the battering of rifle butts on the cafe’s front door.
More rats in more traps, he thought. And all for a cup of coffee and a girl in a red nightdress.
Maybe the coffee had been worth it, at that.
The back of the wardrobe slammed behind them. They went downstairs and out into a small yard, wet and empty under the sky. At the back of the yard was a shed, the lintel of its door blackened by smoke. There was a powerful smell of baking bread.
From over the wall came guttural shouts, and the barking of dogs. ‘Vite,’ said Marcel, shooing them into the shed.
The shed was a bakehouse. There were two bread ovens. The one on the left was shut. The one on the right was open. In front of the oven door was a big stone slab. On the slab lay a metal tray, six feet long by four feet wide. A small, one-eyed man in a dirty apron did not even glance at them. ‘On the tray,’ said Marcel. ‘Two at a time.’
‘Where are the others?’ said Mallory.
‘In the brothel. They speak French, bien entendu. Their papers are good. Vite.’
Miller jumped up onto the tray, and lay with his boxes on the big wooden paddle. Mallory climbed up beside him. ‘When the tray stops, roll off,’ said Marcel. ‘Cover your faces.’
Mallory could hear German voices. A trap, he thought. Another, smaller trap. After this trap, absolutely no more -
He was lying on the tray with his pack on his stomach. He covered his face with his hands. Someone shoved the paddle. A ferocious heat beat on the backs of his hands. He thought of the parabolic brick roof of the oven, smelt burning hair. The ammunition, he thought.
But the heat was gone, and they were shuffling off the paddle and onto a stone surface that was merely warm. Mallory raised his head. It was dark, black as ink. After six inches his forehead hit the roof. There seemed to be air circulating.
The tray returned, bearing Andrea and the SAS man. The SAS man was breathing hard and tremulous as Andrea shoved him off the tray. Somewhere, stones grated. That’s it, thought Miller. You’ve got your bread oven, circular, made out of bricks. And there’s a little door in the back of it, and we’ve been pushed through, and now they’ve closed the door -
Scraping noises emanated from the oven.
- and now they are going to bake a little bread.
He tried to raise his head, to see where the air was coming from. He hit the ceiling. Eighteen inches high, he thought. And nothing to see. Buried alive.
He put out his hand, touched his brass-bound boxes. On the way, his hand touched Mallory’s arm.
The arm was rigid, vibrating with what must have been fear.
No. Not Mallory. Mallory was cool as ice. Mallory had scaled the South Cliff at Navarone, when Miller had been mewing with terror at its base.
All right, thought Miller. But down in the middle of every human being there is a place kept locked tight, and in that place lives the beast a person fears most. But sometimes the locks go, and the beast is out, raging in the mind, taking over all its corners.
Mallory’s beast was confined spaces.
Dusty Miller stared at the invisible ceiling six inches above his nose, and listened to the sounds coming through the brick wall of the oven. There was a brisk crackling, and a sharp whiff of smoke. They had lit a fire in there, to heat the oven for the next batch of baking. How long do we have to stay in here? he thought. What if Mallory can’t take it?
He began to sing. He sang softly, ‘Falling in loaf with loaf is like falling for make-believe-’
‘Shut up,’ hissed the SAS man.
This is not well bread of you,’ said Miller.
‘For Christ’s sake-’
‘I’m oven a lovely time,’ said Miller. ‘And you’re baking the spell-’
Mallory knew it was the torpedoing all over again: the little metal room with four men jammed together, the thunder of the terrible blue Mediterranean pouring into the hull, four faces in six inches of air under the steel ceiling, the air bad, hot, unbreathable - and Mallory was going to die, of suffocation, certainly, but first of terror …
Someone seemed to be talking. Talking complete drivel, in a soft Chicago drawl. Beyond the drawl, far away, there were other voices. German voices.
Miller.
The terror went. Mallory found himself thinking that there were worse things than small spaces. Dusty Miller’s puns, for instance.
Miller felt Mallory’s hand prod him sharply in the side. He shut up. Mission accomplished.
Suddenly a dog was barking close at hand. Much closer than the far side of the fire in the oven. The compartment where the four men were hiding filled with the scritch of claws on stone. The air holes, thought Miller. There must be air holes, and the goddamn dog’s smelt us through them.
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