Where Eagles Dare Part 29

'Loss of blood,' Schaffer said briefly, then added, unsympathetically: 'And all that brandy you guzzled back there. When it comes to opening pores -- '

He broke off and lay very still, lowering his head a fraction to sight along the barrel of his Schmeisser. He said softly: 'Give me your torch, boss.'

'What is it?' Smith whispered. He handed Schaffer the torch.

'Discretion,' Schaffer murmured. He switched on the torch and placed it on the floor, pushing it as far away from himself as he could. 'I reckon if I were in their place I'd be discreet, too. There's a stick poking round the corner of the pa.s.sage and the stick has a mirror tied to it. Only, they haven't got it angled right.'

Smith peered cautiously round the door jamb, just in time to see stick and suspended mirror being withdrawn from sight, presumably to make adjustments. A few seconds later and the stick appeared again, this time with the mirror angled at more or less forty-five degrees. Mirror and stick disintegrated under the flatly staccato hammering of Schaffer's machine-pistol. Schaffer stood up, took careful aim at the single overhead light illuminating the pa.s.sage and fired one shot. Now the sole light in the pa.s.sage came from the torch on the floor, the light from which would not only effectively conceal from the Germans at the far end of the pa.s.sage what was going on at the radio room door but, indeed, make it very difficult to decide whether or not the door itself was open or shut.

Smith and Schaffer moved back into the radio room, soundlessly closed the door behind them and as soundlessly turned the key in the lock. Schaffer used the leverage of his Schmeisser to bend the key so that it remained firmly jammed in the wards of the lock.

They waited. At least two minutes pa.s.sed, then they heard the sound of excited voices at the far end of the pa.s.sage followed almost at once by the sound of heavy boots pounding down the pa.s.sage. They moved away from the door, pa.s.sed inside the radio spares room, leaving just a sufficient crack in the doorway to allow a faint backwash of light to filter through. Smith said softly: 'Mary, you and Mr. Jones for Thomas there. A gun in each temple.' He took Christiansen for himself, forced him to kneel and ground his gun into the back of his neck. Schaffer backed Carraciola against a wall, the muzzle of his Schmeisser pressed hard against his teeth. At the other end of the machine-pistol Schaffer smiled pleasantly, his teeth a pale gleam in the near darkness. The stillness inside the little room was complete.

The half-dozen Germans outside the radio room door bore no resemblance to the elderly guard von Brauchitsch had interrogated in the courtyard. They were elite soldiers of the Alpenkorps, ruthless men who had been ruthlessly trained. No one made any move to approach the door handle or lock: the machine-like efficiency with which they broached that door without risk to themselves was clearly the result of a well-drilled procedure for handling situations of precisely this nature.

At a gesture from the Oberleutnant in charge, a soldier stepped forward and with two diagonal sweeps emptied the magazine of his machine-pistol through the door. A second used his machine-pistol to st.i.tch a neat circle in the wood, reversed his gun and knocked in the wooden circle with the b.u.t.t. A third armed two grenades and lobbed them accurately through the hole provided while a fourth shot away the lock. The soldiers pressed back on each side of the door. The two flat cracks of the exploding grenades came almost simultaneously and smoke came pouring through the circular hole in the door.

The door was kicked open and the men rushed inside. There was no longer any need to take precautions -- any men who had been in the same confined s.p.a.ce as those two exploding grenades would be dead men now. For a moment there was confusion and hesitation until the blue acrid smoke was partially cleared away by the powerful cross-draught then the Oberleutnant, locating the source of this draught with the aid of a small hand-torch, ran across to the open window, checked at the sight of the rope disappearing over the sill, leaned out the window, rubbed his now-streaming eyes and peered downwards along the beam of his torch. The beam reached perhaps half-way down the side of the volcanic plug. There was nothing to be seen. He caught the rope in his free hand and jerked it savagely: it was as nearly weightless as made no difference. For a moment he focused his torch on the disturbed snow on the window-ledge then swung back into the room.

'Gott in Himmel!' he shouted. "They've got away. They're down already! Quickly, the nearest phone!'

"Well, now.' Schaffer listened to the fading sound of running footsteps, removed the muzzle of his Schmeisser from Carraciola's teeth and smiled approvingly. 'That was a good boy.' Gun in Carraciola's back, he followed Smith out into the wrecked radio room and said thoughtfully: 'It isn't going to take them too long to find out there are no footprints in the snow down there.'

'It's going to take them even less time to discover that this rope is gone.' Swiftly, ignoring the stabbing pain in his right hand, Smith hauled the nylon in through the window. 'We're going to need it. And we're going to need some distractions.'

'I'm distracted enough as it is,' Schaffer said.

Take four or five plastic explosives, each with different fuse length settings. Chuck them into rooms along the corridor there.'

'Distractions coming up.' Schaffer extracted some plastic explosives from the kit-bag, cut the slow-burning R.D.X. fuses off to varying lengths, crimped on the chemical igniters, said, 'Consider it already done,' and left.

The first three rooms he came to were locked and he wasted neither time nor the precious ammunition of his silenced Luger in trying to open them. But each of the next five rooms was unlocked. In the first three, all bedrooms, he placed charges in a Dresden fruit bowl, under an officer's cap and under a pillow: in the fourth room, a bathroom, he placed it behind a W.C. and in the fifth, a store-room, high up on a shelf beside some highly inflammable-looking cardboard cartons.

Smith, meanwhile, had ushered the others from the still smoke-filled, eye-watering, throat-irritating atmosphere of the radio room into the comparatively purer air of the pa.s.sageway beyond, and was waiting the return of Schaffer when his face became suddenly thoughtful at the sight of some fire-fighting gear -- a big CO2 extinguisher, buckets of sand and a fireman's axe -- on a low platform by the pa.s.sage wall.

'You are slipping, Major Smith.' Mary's eyes were red-rimmed and her tear-streaked face white as paper, but she (could still smile at him. 'Distractions, you said. I've had the same thought myself, and I'm only me.'

Smith gave her a half-smile, the way his hand, hurt he felt he couldn't afford the other half, and tried the handle of a door beside the low platform, a door lettered AKTEN RAUM -- Records Office. Such a door, inevitably, was locked. He took the Luger in his left hand, placed it against the lock, squeezed the trigger and went inside.

It certainly looked like a Records Office. The room was heavily shelved and piled ceiling-high with files and papers. Smith crossed to the window, opened it wide to increase the draught then scattered large piles of paper on the floor and put a match to them. The paper flared up at once, the flames feet high within seconds.

'Kinda forgot this, didn't you?' Schaffer had returned and was bearing with him the large CO2 cylinder. He crossed to the window. 'Gardyloo or mind your heads or whatever the saying is.'

The cylinder disappeared through the open window. The room was already so furiously ablaze that Schaffer had difficulty in finding his way back to the door again. As he stumbled out, his clothes and hair singed and face smoke-blackened, a deep-toned bell far down in the depths of the Schloss Adler began to ring with a strident urgency. 'For G.o.d's sake, what next,' Schaffer said in despair. 'The fire brigade?'

'Just about,' Smith said bitterly. 'd.a.m.n it, why couldn't I have checked first? Now they know where we are.'

'A heat-sensing device linked to an indicator?'

'What else? Come on.'

They ran along the central pa.s.sage-way, driving the prisoners in front of them, dropped down a central flight of stairs and were making for the next when they heard the shouting of voices and the clattering of feet on treads as soldiers came running up from the castle courtyard.

'Quickly! In behind there!' Smith pointed to a curtained alcove. 'Hurry up! Oh, G.o.d -- -I've forgotten something!' He turned and ran back the way he had come.

"Where the h.e.l.l has he -- ' Schaffer broke off as he realised the approaching men were almost upon them, whirled and jabbed the nearest prisoner painfully with the muzzle of his Schmeisser. 'In that alcove. Fast.' In the dim light behind the curtains he changed his machine-pistol for the silenced Luger. 'Don't even think of touching those curtains. With the racket that bell's making, they won't even hear you die.'

n.o.body touched the curtains. Jack-booted men, gasping heavily for breath, pa.s.sed by within feet of them. They clattered furiously up the next flight of stairs, the one Smith and the others had just descended, and then u the footsteps stopped abruptly. From the next shouted words it was obvious that they had just caught sight of the fire and had abruptly and for the first time realised the magnitude of the task they had to cope with.

'Emergency! Sergeant, get on that phone!' It was the voice of the Oberleutnant who had led the break-in to the radio room. 'Fire detail at the double! Hoses, more CO2 cylinders. Where in G.o.d's name is Colonel Kramer. Corporal! Find Colonel Kramer at once.'

The corporal didn't answer, the sound of jutting heels striking the treads as he raced down the stairs was answer enough. He ran by the alcove and ran down the next flight of stairs until the sound of his footfalls was lost in the metallic clamour of the alarm bell. Schaffer risked a peep through a crack in the curtains just as Smith came running up on tiptoe.

'Where the h.e.l.l have you been?' Schaffer's voice was low and fierce.

'Come on, come on! Out of it!' Smith said urgently. 'No, Jones, not down that flight of stairs, you want to meet a whole regiment of Alpenkorps coming up it? Along the pa.s.sage to the west wing. We'll use the side stairs. For G.o.d's sake, hurry. This place will be like Piccadilly Circus in a matter of seconds.'

Schaffer pounded along the pa.s.sage beside Smith and when he spoke again the anxiety-born fierceness of tone had a certain plaintive equality to it. 'Well, where the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l have you been?'

'The man we left tied up in the room beside the telephone exchange. The Records Office is directly above. I just remembered. I cut him free and dragged him out to the pa.s.sage. He'd have burnt to death.'

'You did that, did you?' Schaffer said wonderingly. 'You do think of the most G.o.dd.a.m.ned unimportant things, don't you?'

'It's a point of view. Our friend lying in the pa.s.sage back there wouldn't share your sentiments. Right, down those stairs and straight ahead. Mary, you know the door.'

Mary knew the door. Fifteen paces from the foot of the stairs she stopped. Smith spared a glance through the pa.s.sage window on his left. Already smoke and flame were snowing through the windows and embrasures in the north-east tower of the castle. In the courtyard below, dozens of soldiers were running around, most of them without what appeared to be any great sense of purpose or direction. One man there wasn't running. He was the overalled helicopter pilot and he was standing very still indeed, bent low over the engine. As Smith watched he slowly straightened, lifted his right arm and shook his fist in the direction of the burning tower.

Smith turned away and said to Mary: 'Sure this is the room? Two stories below the window we came in?"

Mary nodded. 'No question. This is it.'

Smith tried the door handle: the room was locked. The time for skeleton keys and such-like finesse was gone: he placed the barrel of his Luger against the lock.

The corporal despatched by his Oberleutnant to locate Colonel Kramer was faced by the same problem when he turned the handle of the gold drawing-room, for when Smith and the others had left there for the last time Schaffer had locked the door and thoughtfully thrown the key out a convenient pa.s.sage window. The corporal first of all knocked respectfully. No reply. He knocked loudly, with the same lack of result. He depressed the handle and used his shoulder and all he did was to hurt his shoulder. He battered at the lock area with the b.u.t.t of his Schmeisser but the carpenters who had built the Schloss Adler doors had known what they were about. He hesitated, then 'brought his machine-pistol right way round and fired a burst through the lock, praying to heaven that Colonel Kramer wasn't sleeping in a chair in direct line with the keyhole.

Colonel Kramer was sleeping all right, but nowhere near the direct line of the keyhole. He was stretched out on the gold carpet with a considerately-placed pillow under his head. The corporal advanced slowly into the drawing-room, his eyebrows reaching for his hair and his face almost falling apart in shocked disbelief. Reichsmarschall Rosemeyer was stretched out beside the Colonel. Von Brauchitsch and a sergeant were sprawled in arm-chairs, heads lolling on their shoulders, while Anne-Marie -- a very dishevelled and somewhat bruised-looking Anne-Marie -- was stretched out on one of the big gold-lame couches.

Like a man in a daze, still totally uncomprehending, the corporal approached Kramer, knelt by his side and then shook him by the shoulder, with gentle respect at first and then with increasing vigour. After some time it was borne in upon him that he could shake the Colonel's shoulder all night and that would be all he would have for it.

And then, illogically and for the first time, he noticed that all the men were without jackets, and that everyone, including Anne-Marie, had their left sleeves rolled up to the elbow. He looked slowly around the drawing-room and went very still as his gaze rested on a tray with bottles, beakers and hypodermic syringes. Slowly, on the corporal's face, shocked incomprehension was replaced by an equally shocked understanding. He took off through the doorway like the favourite in the Olympics 100 metres final.

Schaffer tied the nylon rope round the head of the iron bedstead, tested the security of the knot, lifted the lower sash window, pushed the rope through and peered unhappily down the valley. At the far end of the village a pulsating red glow marked the smouldering embers of what had once been the railway station. The lights of the village itself twinkled clearly. Immediately below and to the right of where he stood could be seen four patrolling guards with as many dogs -- Kramer hadn't spoken idly when he'd said the outside guards had been doubled -- and the ease with which he could spot them Schaffer found all too readily understandable when he twisted his head and stared skywards through the thinly driving snow. The moon had just emerged from behind a black bar of cloud and was sailing across a discouragingly large stretch of empty sky. Even the stars could be seen.

'I'm going to feel a mite conspicuous out there, boss,' Schaffer said complainingly. 'And there's a wolf-pack loose.down below there.'

'Wouldn't matter if they had a battery of searchlights trained on this window,' Smith said curtly. 'Not now. We've no option. Quickly!'

Schaffer' nodded dolefully, eased himself through the window, grasped the rope and halted momentarily as a m.u.f.fled explosion came from the eastern wing of the castle.