Thunderbolt from Navarone by Sam Llewellyn

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

‘Good dog, Mutzi,’ said Tietmeyer, the handler.

Marsdorff did not agree. This damned animal had dragged him and Schmidt and Kohl up a cliff in the noonday sun. It had relieved itself on a handhold, which he had then put his hand on, and of course everyone had found that very amusing. Marsdorff was a pudgy, maggot-coloured man, who owed his place in the Sonderkommando more to a lack of scruple than to any positive military talent. Basically, Marsdorff was very good at hanging people, an accomplished hand with a red-hot iron and a pair of pliers, and no beginner when it came to the process of gang rape – a business that in Marsdorff’s view was often approached crudely and without thought. A really well-handled woman could keep a squad amused for some days –

‘Good dog,’ said the handler. The Doberman on the choke lead growled and slavered, claws scritching on the bare rock as it hauled Tietmeyer up the path towards the ruined house. It had needed some persuasion to come out of the rocks by the tomb, into which it had fled after the death of its previous handler. Now it was back at work, though, it seemed enthusiastic to make amends. ‘There’s been someone in there, all right. Gone now.’

‘Oh, good,’ said Marsdorff, with sarcasm. ‘Eagles, are they? Or mountain goats?’

‘Let’s hope they’re goats,’ said Kohl, who disliked Marsdorff. ‘I don’t mind shagging a goat, but eagles are right out.’

‘You have to draw the line somewhere,’ said Marsdorff, sagely. He was not joking. ‘On a bit.’

Negligently, the four men approached the next group of ruins. They did not believe anyone was on this island who was not supposed to be. Apparently there had been shooting. Well, they would believe it when they saw it.

The path had come to a narrow place, a defile dug out between a blade of rock and the cliff. The defile ended in a sort of groove, shoulder-deep in bare rock, leading to another group of ruined houses, the first of them a massive stone building, with loopholes staring blankly at the defile and the groove. They entered the groove, Tietmeyer in the lead. In one of the loopholes, something moved; a short, slender pipe. The barrel of a machine pistol. Tietmeyer said, nervously, ‘I don’t –’ There was a large and dreadful noise, and the groove filled up with bullets. All of them jumped. None of them hit the ground alive.

Wills walked up to the bodies. He was pale again. ‘Christ,’ he said.

Clytemnestra squatted by Tietmeyer’s body and liberated his Schmeisser, half-a-dozen magazines and a bunch of stick grenades. Then she spat in the dead face, and moved on to the next corpse. Wills watched the place where the path came round the bend in the rocks. ‘They’ll be back,’ he said. ‘Unless they’re deaf.’

Clytemnestra raised a scornful eyebrow. ‘So let them come,’ she said. She pointed upwards, to where the cliff bulged out in an overhang like the brow of a stone genius.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.