Appearances, as always, were deceptive. Reynolds had judged there to be no life at the western end of the bridge but there was, in fact, life and quite a lot of it, although admittedly there was no action Concealed in the massive boulders about twenty feet back from the bridge, Droshny, a Cetnik sergeant and perhaps a dozen German soldiers and Cetniks lay in deep concealment among the rocks.
Droshny had binoculars to his eyes. He examined the ground in the neighbourhood of the far side of the swing bridge, then traversed to his left up beyond the boulder where Reynolds and Maria lay hidden until he leached the dam wall. He lifted the glasses, following the dimly-seen zig-zag outline of the iron ladder, checked, adjusted the focus as finely as possible, then stared again. There could be no doubt: there were two men clinging to the ladder, about three-quarters of the Way up towards the top of the dam.
'Good God in heaven!' Droshny lowered the binoculars, the gaunt craggy features registering an almost incredulous horror, and turned to the Cetnik sergeant I by his side. 'Do you know what they mean to do?'
The dam!' The thought had not occurred to the sergeant until that instant but the stricken expression on Droshny's face made the realization as immediate as it was inevitable. 'They're going to blow up the dam!' It did not occur to either man to wonder how Mallory could possibly blow up the dam: as other men had done before them, both Droshny and the sergeant were beginning to discover in Mallory and his modus operandi an extraordinary quality of inevitability that transformed remote possibilities into very likely probabilities.
'General Zimmermann!' Droshny's gravelly voice had become positively hoarse. 'He must be warned! If that dam bursts while his tanks and troops are crossing — '
'Warn him? Warn him? How in God's name can we warn him?'
'There's a radio up on the dam.'
The sergeant stared at him. He said: 'It might as well be on the moon. There'll be a rearguard, they're bound to have left a rearguard. Some of us are going to get killed crossing that bridge, Captain.'
'You think so?' Droshny glanced up sombrely at the dam. 'And just what do you think is going to happen to us all down here if that goes?'
Slowly, soundlessly and almost invisibly, Mallory and Miller swam northwards through the dark waters of the Neretva dam, away from the direction of the dam wall. Suddenly Miller, who was slightly in the lead, gave a low exclamation and stopped swimming. 'What's up?' Mallory asked.
'This is up.' With an effort Miller lifted a section of what appeared to be a heavy wire cable just clear of the water. 'Nobody mentioned this little lot.'
'Nobody did,' Mallory agreed. He reached under the water. 'And there's a steel mesh below.' 'An anti-torpedo net?' 'Just that.'
'Why?' Miller gestured to the north where, at a distance of less than two hundred yards, the dam made an abrupt right-angled turn between the towering cliff-faces. 'It's impossible for any torpedo bomber — any bomber — to get a run-in on the dam wall.'
'Someone should have told the Germans. They take no chances — and it makes things a damned sight more difficult for us.' He peered at his watch. 'We'd better start hurrying. We're late.'
They eased themselves over the wire and started swimming again, more quickly this time. Several minutes later, just after they had rounded the corner of the dam and lost sight of the dam wall, Mallory touched Miller on the shoulder. Both men trod water, turned and looked back in the direction from which they had come. To the south, not much more than two miles away, the night sky had suddenly blossomed into an incandescent and multi-coloured beauty as scores of parachute flares, red and green and white and orange, lifted slowly down towards the Neretva river. 'Very pretty, indeed,' Miller conceded. 'And what's all this in aid of?'
'It's in aid of us. Two reasons. First of all, it will make any person who looks at that — and everyone will look at it — at least ten minutes to recover his night-sight, which means that any odd goings-on in is part of the dam are all that less likely to be observed: and if everyone is going to be busy looking at way, then they can't be busy looking this way at the same time.'
'Very logical,' Miller approved. 'Our Captain Jensen doesn't miss out on very much, does he?' 'He has, as the saying goes, all his marbles about him.' Mallory turned again and gazed to the east, his head cocked the better to listen. He said: 'You have to hand it to them. Dead on target, dead on schedule. I hear him coming now.'
The Lancaster, no more than five hundred feet above the surface of the dam, came in from the east, its engine throttled back almost to stalling speed. It vas still two hundred yards short of where Mallory and Miller were treading water when suddenly huge black silk parachutes bloomed beneath it: almost simultaneously, engine-power was increased to maximum revolutions and the big bomber went into a steeply banking climbing turn to avoid smashing into the mountains on the far side of the dam.
Miller gazed at the slowly descending black parachutes, turned, and looked at the brilliantly burning flares to the south. 'The skies,' he announced, 'are full of things tonight.'
He and Mallory began to swim in the direction of the falling parachutes.
Petar was near to exhaustion. For long minutes now he had been holding Groves's dead weight pinned against the iron ladder and his aching arms were beginning to quiver with the strain. His teeth were clenched hard, his face, down which rivulets of sweat poured, was twisted with the effort and the agony of it all. Plainly, Petar could not hold out much longer.
It was by the light of those flares that Reynolds, still crouched with Maria in hiding behind the big boulder, first saw the predicament of Petar and Groves. He turned to glance at Maria: one look at the stricken face was enough to tell Reynolds that she had seen it, too.
Reynolds said hoarsely: 'Stay here. I must go and help them.'
'No!' She caught his arm, clearly exerting all her will to keep herself under controclass="underline" her eyes, as they had been when Reynolds had first seen her, had the look of a hunted animal about them. 'Please, Sergeant, no. You must stay here.' Reynolds said desperately: 'Your brother — ' 'There are more important things — ' 'Not for you there aren't.' Reynolds made to rise, but she clung to his arm with surprising strength, so that he couldn't release himself without hurting her He said, almost gently: 'Come on, lass, let me go.'
'No! If Droshny and his men get across — ' She broke off as the last of the flares finally fizzled to extinction, casting the entire gorge into what was, by momentary contrast, an almost total darkness. Maria went on simply: 'You'll have to stay now, won't you?' 'I'll have to stay now.' Reynolds moved out from the shelter of the boulder and put his night-glasses to is eyes. The swing bridge, and as far as he could tell, the far bank seemed innocent of any sign of life. He traversed up the gully and could just make out the form: Andrea, his excavations finished, resting peacefully behind the big boulder. Again with a feeling of deep lease, Reynolds trained his glasses on the bridge. He suddenly became very still. He removed the glasses, wiped the lenses very carefully, rubbed his eyes and ted the glasses again.