Storm Force from Navarone by Sam Llewellyn

Author:Sam Llewellyn [Llewellyn, Sam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

‘Nice place,’ said Dusty Miller. ‘Sea views. Sheltered bathing.’

They were looking at an Admiralty chart spread out on the scrubbed pine planks of the kitchen table of Guy Jamalartégui. It showed a coastline, steep-to, indented with small, stony coves exposed to the huge bight of the Bay of Biscay. But in the centre of that stretch of coast was something different.

In the times when the world was molten and rocks flowed like water, a huge geyser of liquid stone had forced itself through and at an angle to the other strata. Now, that great irruption of granite formed a peninsula that flung a protecting arm round the bay of San Eusebio. The arm was marked Cabo de la Calavera.

At its entrance, the bay was not more than a hundred yards wide; but inside, it broadened into a two-mile oval of water, deepening to twenty fathoms. The village of San Eusebio was on the landward side of the bay. On the tip of the peninsula, the chart said FORTALEZA: fortress. Below the fortress were buildings, with a note that said CHIMNEY CONSPIC.

‘There is a fort overlooking the entrance to the harbour,’ said Guy, through Jaime. ‘The Germans have put new guns. There is a magazine in the fort, well defended, vous voyez, I suppose for the ammunition of the guns and the torpedoes of the U-boats. Also, there is a line of fortifications here.’ He put a cracked and filthy thumb across the neck of the peninsula at its narrowest point. ‘This is the only way onto the Cabo. There are ancient fortifications, originally against the Arabs, and now also new ones from the Germans, I think. To seaward, the cliffs are high. The land slopes from the seaward side towards the harbour, so that there is a beach of sand looking across towards the town. On this beach there is much barbed wire, and a quantity of mines. These defences run from the inland end of the fortifications along to the buildings of the old sardine factory. There are also two merchant ships in the harbour, which arrived with supplies, ostensibly from Uruguay. These ships discharged their cargo at the fish factory quays. Now they are anchored off the factory. They have many machine guns on their decks, to cover the waters of the harbour.’

‘So where are the U-boats?’

Guy shrugged. ‘This is a very big fish factory,’ he said. ‘There was an American, a Basque who made a lot of money in the Pacific salmon fishing, and wanted to help his home town. He built four quays, with a dry dock, and many boats, and wanted to make a big sardine fishery. Naturally, it failed. There were not enough sardines in those years, or ever, on that scale: this was a madman, an American, need one say more? But the buildings are there still. It is a perfect place to make repairs on a ship, or a submarine, bien entendu.’ He drew with a matchstick, extending a puddle of red wine on the table.

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