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The Guns of Navarone
Alistair MacLean
The classic World War II thriller from the acclaimed master of action and suspense. Now issued for the first time as an e-book.Twelve hundred British soldiers isolated on the small island of Kheros off the Turkish coast, waiting to die. Twelve hundred lives in jeopardy, lives that could be saved if only the guns could be silenced. The guns of Navarone, vigilant, savage and catastrophically accurate. Navarone itself, grim bastion of narrow straits manned by a mixed garrison of Germans and Italians, an apparently impregnable iron fortress. To Captain Keith Mallory, skilled saboteur, trained mountaineer, fell the task of leading the small party detailed to scale the vast, impossible precipice of Navarone and to blow up the guns. The Guns of Navarone is the story of that mission, the tale of a calculated risk taken in the time of war…
The Guns of Navarone
Alistair MacLean
Copyright (#ulink_8bfc7a49-c7e8-5dac-a267-c0d414c4c9ec)
Harper
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First published in Great Britain by Collins 1957
Copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers 1957
Alistair MacLean asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780006172475
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2014 ISBN: 9780007289349
Version: 2018-05-08
Contents
Cover Page (#u314f14f6-c7c1-54c5-9d8d-2e2d0bf11462)
Title Page (#u71f37a9b-7751-504b-bb3e-ab47561e5dbb)
Copyright (#u614ec51f-b294-5479-91da-44726e1854d6)
Introduction (#u3fa767d3-8d65-56e9-9413-ecd4e248b67a)
Dedication (#u1c5aef07-a9e8-5239-943c-d44afd9087f0)
ONE Prelude: Sunday 0100–0900 (#ua8167f45-f679-5352-9a45-c1b16fb9af84)
TWO Sunday Night 1900–0200 (#u9ced0b0b-fdb1-5971-a9a1-69f503719a41)
THREE Monday 0700–1700 (#u35235be2-9e46-584e-b25f-6aa3bd9c7d98)
FOUR Monday Evening 1700–2330 (#ue69470d2-77b0-5bbc-9f5f-ab974ec69ad0)
FIVE Monday Night 0100–0200 (#litres_trial_promo)
SIX Monday Night 0200–0600 (#litres_trial_promo)
SEVEN Tuesday 1500-1900 (#litres_trial_promo)
EIGHT Tuesday 1900-0015 (#litres_trial_promo)
NINE Tuesday Night 0015-0200 (#litres_trial_promo)
TEN Tuesday Night 0400–0600 (#litres_trial_promo)
ELEVEN Wednesday 1400–1600 (#litres_trial_promo)
TWELVE Wednesday 1600–1800 (#litres_trial_promo)
THIRTEEN Wednesday Evening 1800–1915 (#litres_trial_promo)
FOURTEEN Wednesday Night 1915–2000 (#litres_trial_promo)
FIFTEEN Wednesday Night 2000–2115 (#litres_trial_promo)
SIXTEEN Wednesday Night 2115–2345 (#litres_trial_promo)
SEVENTEEN Wednesday Night Midnight (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by Alistair MacLean (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Introduction (#ulink_c09496b6-14ec-50ce-a0a7-f65a8d841d95)
I wanted to write a war story – with the accent on the story. Only a fool would pretend that there is anything noble or splendid about modern warfare but there is no denying that it provides a great abundance of material for a writer, provided no attempt is made either to glorify it or exploit its worst aspects. I think war is a perfectly legitimate territory for a story-teller. Personal experience, I suppose, helped to play some part in the location of this story. I spent some wartime months in and around Greece and the Aegean islands, although at no time, I must add, did I run the risk of anything worse than a severe case of sunburn, far less find myself exposed to circumstances such as those in which the book’s characters find themselves.
But I did come across and hear about, both in the Aegean and in Egypt, men to whom danger and the ever-present possibility of capture and death were the very stuff of existence: these were the highly trained specialists of Earl Jellicoe’s Special Boat Service and the men of the Long Range Desert Group, who had turned their attention to the Aegean islands after the fall of North Africa. Regularly these men were parachuted into enemy-held islands or came there by sea in the stormy darkness of a wind- and rain-filled night and operated, sometimes for months on end, as spies, saboteurs and liaison officers with local resistance groups. Some even had their own boats, based on German islands, and operated throughout the Aegean with conspicuous success and an almost miraculous immunity to capture and sinking.
Here, obviously, was excellent material for a story and it had the added advantage for the writer that it was set in an archipelago: I had the best of both worlds, the land and the sea, always ready to hand. But the determining factor in the choice of location and plot was neither material nor the islands themselves: that lay in the highly complicated political situation that existed in the islands at the time, and in the nature of Navarone itself.
There is no such island as Navarone – but there were one or two islands remarkably like it, inasmuch as they were (a) German-held, (b) had large guns that dominated important channels and (c) had these guns so located as to be almost immune to destruction by the enemy. Again the situation in the Dodecanese islands was dangerous and perplexing in the extreme, as it was difficult to know from one month to another whether Germans, Greeks, British or Italians were in power there – an excellent setting for a story. So I moved a Navarone-type island from the middle of the Aegean to the Dodecanese, close in to the coast of Turkey, placed another island, filled with trapped and apparently doomed British soldiers, just to the north of it, and took as much advantage as I could of what I had seen, what I had heard, the fictitious geographical situation I had arranged for my own benefit, and the very real political and military state of affairs that existed in the Dodecanese at that time.
ALISTAIR MACLEAN
Glasgow, 1958
To my mother
ONE Prelude: Sunday 0100–0900 (#ulink_8e79c56f-224e-5ba3-9707-69405353bcf2)
The match scratched noisily across the rusted metal of the corrugated iron shed, fizzled, then burst into a sputtering pool of light, the harsh sound and sudden brilliance alike strangely alien in the stillness of the desert night. Mechanically, Mallory’s eyes followed the cupped sweep of the flaring match to the cigarette jutting out beneath the Group-Captain’s clipped moustache, saw the light stop inches away from the face, saw too the sudden stillness of that face, the unfocused vacancy of the eyes of a man lost in listening. Then the match was gone, ground into the sand of the airfield perimeter.
‘I can hear them,’ the Group-Captain said softly. ‘I can hear them coming in. Five minutes, no more. No wind tonight – they’ll be coming in on Number Two. Come on, let’s meet them in the interrogation room.’ He paused, looked quizzically at Mallory and seemed to smile. But the darkness deceived, for there was no humour in his voice. ‘Just curb your impatience, young man – just for a little longer. Things haven’t gone too well tonight. You’re going to have all your answers, I’m afraid, and have them all too soon.’ He turned abruptly, strode off towards the squat buildings that loomed vaguely against the pale darkness that topped the level horizon.
Mallory shrugged, then followed on more slowly, step for step with the third member of the group, a broad, stocky figure with a very pronounced roll in his gait. Mallory wondered sourly just how much practice Jensen had required to achieve that sailorly effect. Thirty years at sea, of course – and Jensen had done exactly that – were sufficient warrant for a man to dance a hornpipe as he walked; but that wasn’t the point. As the brilliantly successful Chief of Operations of the Subversive Operation Executive in Cairo, intrigue, deception, imitation and disguise were the breath of life to Captain James Jensen, DSO, RN. As a Levantine stevedore agitator, he had won the awed respect of the dock-labourers from Alexandretta to Alexandria: as a camel-driver, he had blasphemously out-camel-driven all available Bedouin competition: and no more pathetic beggar had ever exhibited such realistic sores in the bazaars and market-places of the East. Tonight, however, he was just the bluff and simple sailor. He was dressed in white from cap-cover to canvas shoes, the starlight glinted softly on the golden braid on epaulettes and cap peak.
Their footsteps crunched in companionable unison over the hard-packed sand, rang sharply as they moved on to the concrete of the runway. The hurrying figure of the Group-Captain was already almost lost to sight. Mallory took a deep breath and turned suddenly towards Jensen.
‘Look, sir, just what is all this? What’s all the flap, all the secrecy about? And why am I involved in it? Good lord, sir, it was only yesterday that I was pulled out of Crete, relieved at eight hours’ notice. A month’s leave, I was told. And what happens?’
‘Well,’ Jensen murmured, ‘what did happen?’
‘No leave,’ Mallory said bitterly. ‘Not even a night’s sleep. Just hours and hours in the SOE Headquarters, answering a lot of silly, damnfool questions about climbing in the Southern Alps. Then hauled out of bed at midnight, told I was to meet you, and then driven for hours across the blasted desert by a mad Scotsman who sang drunken songs and asked hundreds of even more silly, damnfool questions!’
‘One of my more effective disguises, I’ve always thought,’ Jensen said smugly. ‘Personally, I found the journey most entertaining!’
‘One of your –’ Mallory broke off, appalled at the memory of things he had said to the elderly bewhiskered Scots captain who had driven the command vehicle. ‘I – I’m terribly sorry, sir. I never realised –’
‘Of course you didn’t!’ Jensen cut in briskly. ‘You weren’t supposed to. Just wanted to find out if you were the man for the job. I’m sure you are – I was pretty sure you were before I pulled you out of Crete. But where you got the idea about leave I don’t know. The sanity of the SOE has often been questioned, but even we aren’t given to sending a flying-boat for the sole purpose of enabling junior officers to spend a month wasting their substance among the flesh-pots of Cairo,’ he finished dryly.
‘I still don’t know –’
‘Patience, laddie, patience – as our worthy Group-Captain has just advocated. Time is endless. To wait, and to keep on waiting – that is to be of the East.’
‘To total four hours’ sleep in three days is not,’ Mallory said feelingly. ‘And that’s all I’ve had…Here they come!’
Both men screwed up their eyes in automatic reflex as the fierce glare of the landing lights struck at them, the flare path arrowing off into the outer darkness. In less than a minute the first bomber was down, heavily, awkwardly, taxiing to a standstill just beside them. The grey camouflage paint of the after fuselage and tail-planes was riddled with bullet and cannon shells, an aileron was shredded and the port outer engine out of commission, saturated in oil. The cabin Perspex was shattered and starred in a dozen places.
For a long time Jensen stared at the holes and scars of the damaged machine, then shook his head and looked away.
‘Four hours’ sleep, Captain Mallory,’ he said quietly. ‘Four hours. I’m beginning to think that you can count yourself damn lucky to have had even that much.’
The interrogation room, harshly lit by two powerful, unshaded lights, was uncomfortable and airless. The furniture consisted of some battered wall-maps and charts, a score or so of equally scuffed chairs and an unvarnished deal table. The Group-Captain, flanked by Jensen and Mallory, was sitting behind this when the door opened abruptly and the first of the flying crews entered, blinking rapidly in the fierceness of the unaccustomed light. They were led by a dark-haired, thick-set pilot, trailing helmet and flying-suit in his left hand. He had an Anzac bush helmet crushed on the back of his head, and the word ‘Australia’ emblazoned in white across each khaki shoulder. Scowling, wordlessly and without permission, he sat down in front of them, produced a pack of cigarettes and rasped a match across the surface of the table. Mallory looked furtively at the Group-Captain. The Group-Captain just looked resigned. He even sounded resigned.
‘Gentlemen, this is Squadron Leader Torrance. Squadron Leader Torrance,’ he added unnecessarily, ‘is an Australian.’ Mallory had the impression that the Group-Captain rather hoped this would explain some things, Squadron Leader Torrance among them. ‘He led tonight’s attack on Navarone. Bill, these gentlemen here – Captain Jensen of the Royal Navy, Captain Mallory of the Long Range Desert Group – have a very special interest in Navarone. How did things go tonight?’
Navarone! So that’s why I’m here tonight, Mallory thought. Navarone. He knew it well, rather, knew of it. So did everyone who had served any time at all in the Eastern Mediterranean: a grim, impregnable iron fortress off the coast of Turkey, heavily defended by – it was thought – a mixed garrison of Germans and Italians, one of the few Aegean islands on which the Allies had been unable to establish a mission, far less recapture, at some period of the war…He realised that Torrance was speaking, the slow drawl heavy with controlled anger.
‘Bloody awful, sir. A fair cow, it was, a real suicide do.’ He broke off abruptly, stared moodily with compressed lips through his own drifting tobacco smoke. ‘But we’d like to go back again,’ he went on. ‘Me and the boys here. Just once. We were talking about it on the way home.’ Mallory caught the deep murmur of voices in the background, a growl of agreement. ‘We’d like to take with us the joker who thought this one up and shove him out at ten thousand over Navarone, without benefit of a parachute.’
‘As bad as that, Bill?’
‘As bad as that, sir. We hadn’t a chance. Straight up, we really hadn’t. First off, the weather was against us – the jokers in the Met. Office were about as right as they usually are.’
‘They gave you clear weather?’
‘Yeah. Clear weather. It was ten-tenths over the target,’ Torrance said bitterly. ‘We had to go down to fifteen hundred. Not that it made any difference. We would have to have gone down lower than that anyway – about three thousand feet below sea-level then fly up the way: that cliff overhang shuts the target clean off. Might as well have dropped a shower of leaflets asking them to spike their own bloody guns…Then they’ve got every second AA gun in the south of Europe concentrated along this narrow 50-degree vector – the only way you can approach the target, or anywhere near the target. Russ and Conroy were belted good and proper on the way in. Didn’t even get half-way towards the harbour…They never had a chance.’
‘I know, I know.’ The Group-Captain nodded heavily. ‘We heard. W/T reception was good…And McIlveen ditched just north of Alex?’
‘Yeah. But he’ll be all right. The old crate was still awash when we passed over, the big dinghy was out and it was as smooth as a millpond. He’ll be all right,’ Torrance repeated.
The Group-Captain nodded again, and Jensen touched his sleeve.
‘May I have a word with the Squadron Leader?’
‘Of course, Captain. You don’t have to ask.’
‘Thanks.’ Jensen looked across at the burly Australian and smiled faintly.
‘Just one little question, Squadron Leader. You don’t fancy going back there again?’
‘Too bloody right, I don’t!’ Torrance growled.
‘Because?’
‘Because I don’t believe in suicide. Because I don’t believe in sacrificing good blokes for nothing. Because I’m not God and I can’t do the impossible.’ There was a flat finality in Torrance’s voice that carried conviction, that brooked no argument.
‘It is impossible, you say?’ Jensen persisted. ‘This is terribly important.’
‘So’s my life. So are the lives of all these jokers.’ Torrance jerked a big thumb over his shoulder. ‘It’s impossible, sir. At least, it’s impossible for us.’ He drew a weary hand down his face. ‘Maybe a Dornier flying-boat with one of these new-fangled radio-controlled glider-bombs might do it and get off with it. I don’t know. But I do know that nothing we’ve got has a snowball’s chance in hell. Not,’ he added bitterly, ‘unless you cram a Mosquito full of TNT and order one of us to crash-dive it at four hundred into the mouth of the gun cave. That way there’s always a chance.’
‘Thank you, Squadron Leader – and all of you.’ Jensen was on his feet. ‘I know you’ve done your very best, no one could have done more. And I’m sorry…Group-Captain?’
‘Right with you, gentlemen.’ He nodded to the bespectacled Intelligence officer who had been sitting behind them to take his place, led the way out through a side door and into his own quarters.
‘Well, that is that, I suppose.’ He broke the seal of a bottle of Talisker, brought out some glasses. ‘You’ll have to accept it as final, Jensen. Bill Torrance’s is the senior, most experienced squadron left in Africa today. Used to pound the Ploesti oil well and think it a helluva skylark. If anyone could have done tonight’s job it was Bill Torrance, and if he says, it’s impossible, believe me, Captain Jensen, it can’t be done.’
‘Yes.’ Jensen looked down sombrely at the golden amber of the glass in his hand. ‘Yes, I know now. I almost knew before, but I couldn’t be sure, and I couldn’t take the chance of being wrong…A terrible pity that it took the lives of a dozen men to prove me right…There’s just the one way left, now.’
‘There’s just the one,’ the Group-Captain echoed. He lifted his glass, shook his head. ‘Here’s luck to Kheros!’
‘Here’s luck to Kheros!’ Jensen echoed in turn. His face was grim.
‘Look!’ Mallory begged. ‘I’m completely lost. Would somebody please tell me –’
‘Kheros,’ Jensen interrupted. ‘That was your cue call, young man. All the world’s a stage, laddie, etc., and this is where you tread the boards in this particular little comedy.’ Jensen’s smile was quite mirthless. ‘Sorry you’ve missed the first two acts, but don’t lose any sleep over that. This is no bit part: you’re going to be the star, whether you like it or not. This is it. Kheros, Act 3, Scene 1. Enter Captain Keith Mallory.’
Neither of them had spoken in the last ten minutes. Jensen drove the big Humber command car with the same sureness, the same relaxed efficiency that hall-marked everything he did: Mallory still sat hunched over the map on his knees, a large-scale Admiralty chart of the Southern Aegean illuminated by the hooded dashboard light, studying an area of the Sporades and Northern Dodecanese heavily squared off in red pencil. Finally he straightened up and shivered. Even in Egypt these late November nights could be far too cold for comfort. He looked across at Jensen.
‘I think I’ve got it now, sir.’
