Force 10 from Navarone by Alistair MacLean

Author:Alistair MacLean
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Sterling
Published: 2011-07-05T16:00:00+00:00

Neufeld, followed by Droshny, walked briskly and confidently into his radio hut, a bleak, ramshackle lean-to furnished with a table, two chairs, a large portable transceiver and nothing else. The German corporal seated before the radio looked up enquiringly at their entrance.

‘The Seventh Armoured Corps HQ at the Neretva bridge,’ Neufeld ordered. He seemed in excellent spirits. ‘I wish to speak to General Zimmermann personally.’

The corporal nodded acknowledgment, put through the call-sign and was answered within seconds. He listened briefly, looked up at Neufeld. ‘The General is coming now, sir.’

Neufeld reached out a hand for the ear-phones, took them and nodded towards the door. The corporal rose and left the hut while Neufeld took the vacated seat and adjusted the head-phones to his satisfaction. After a few seconds he automatically straightened in his seat as a voice came crackling over the ear-phones.

‘Hauptmann Neufeld here, Herr General. The Englishmen have returned. Their information is that the Partisan division in the Zenica Cage is expecting a full-scale attack from the south across the Neretva bridge.’

‘Are they now?’ General Zimmermann, comfortably seated in a swivel chair in the back of the radio truck parked on the tree-line due south of the Neretva bridge, made no attempt to conceal the satisfaction in his voice. The canvas hood of the truck was rolled back and he removed his peaked cap the better to enjoy the pale spring sunshine. ‘Interesting, very interesting. Anything else?’

‘Yes,’ Neufeld’s voice crackled metallically over the loudspeaker. ‘They’ve asked to be flown to sanctuary. Deep behind our lines, even to Germany. They feel – ah – unsafe here.’

‘Well, well, well. Is that how they feel.’ Zimmermann paused, considered, then continued. ‘You are fully informed of the situation, Hauptmann Neufeld? You are aware of the delicate balance of – um – niceties involved?’

‘Yes, Herr General.’

‘This calls for a moment’s thought. Wait.’

Zimmermann swung idly to and fro in his swivel chair as he pondered his decision. He gazed thoughtfully but almost unseeingly to the north, across the meadows bordering the south bank of the Neretva, the river spanned by the iron bridge, then the meadows on the far side rising steeply to the rocky redoubt which served as the first line of defence for Colonel Lazlo’s Partisan defenders. To the east, as he turned, he could look up the green-white rushing waters of the Neretva, the meadows on either side of it narrowing until, curving north, they disappeared suddenly at the mouth of the cliff-sided gorge from which the Neretva emerged. Another quarter turn and he was gazing into the pine forest to the south, a pine forest which at first seemed innocuous enough and empty of life – until, that was, one’s eyes became accustomed to the gloom and scores of large rectangular shapes, effectively screened from both observation from the air and from the northern bank of the Neretva by camouflage canvas, camouflage nets and huge piles of dead branches. The sight of those camouflaged spearheads of his two Panzer divisions somehow helped Zimmermann to make up his mind.

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.