Where Eagles Dare

'Or yourself.' In the de-synchronised thunder of the engines the soft-voiced interruption had gone unnoticed. 'A major in the Black Watch. No doubt you cut quite a dash playing the bagpipes atEl Alamein , but why the hell you to command us? No offence. But this is no more in your line than it is ours. Or Lieutenant Schaffer here. An airborne cowboy--'

'I hate horses,' Schaffer said loudly. That's why I had to leaveMontana .'

'Or take George here.' Carraciola jerked a thumb in the direction of the last member of the party, George Harrod, a stocky army sergeant radio-operator with an expression of profound resignation on his face. 'I'll bet he's never as much as made a parachute jump in his life before.'

'I have news for you,' Harrod said stoically. 'I've never even been in a plane before.'

'He's never even been in a plane before,' Carraciola said despairingly. 'My God, what a bunch of no-hopers! All we need is a team composed of specialist Alpinists, Commandos, mountaineers and safe-breakers and what do we have?' He shook his head slowly. 'We have us.'

Smith said gently: 'We were all the Colonel could get. Be fair. He told us yesterday that the one thing in the world that he didn't have was time.'

Carraciola made no reply, none of the others spoke, but Smith didn't have to be any clairvoyant to know what was in the minds of all of them. They were thinking what he was thinking, like himself they were back several hours in time and several hundred miles in space in that Admiralty Operations Room in London where Vice-Admiral Rolland, ostensibly Assistant Director of Naval Operations but in fact the long-serving head of M.I.6, the counter-espionage branch of the British Secret Service, and his deputy, Colonel Wyatt-Turner, had gravely and reluctantly briefed them on what they had as gravely and reluctantly admitted to be a mission born from the sheerest desperation.

Smith said: 'How are you so sure he's there, sir?'

'We're sure. Mosquito he was in crash-landed only ten miles away. The pilot got off a radio message just before a German patrol dosed in.' He paused, smiled grimly, continued : 'Schloss Adler, Major Smith, is the combined H.Q. of the German Secret Service and the Gestapo inSouth Germany . Where else would they take him?'

'Where indeed? How was he brought down, sir?'

"Through the most damnable ill-luck. We carried out a saturation raid on Numberg last night and there shouldn't have been a German fighter within a hundred miles of the Austrian border. But a wandering Messerschmidtt patrol got him. That's unimportant. What's important is getting him out before he talks.'

'He'll talk,' Thomas said sombrely. 'They all do. Why did they disregard our advice, sir? We told them two days ago.'

'The whys don't matter,' Wyatt-Turner said tiredly. 'Not any more. The fact that he'll talk does. So we get him out. You get him out.'

Torrance-Smythe cleared his throat delicately. There are paratroops, sir.'

'Scared, Smithy?'

"Naturally, sir.'

'Of course,' Christiansen said, 'the fact that there's no time to mount a massed paratroop attack has no bearing on the matter.' Christiansen appeared positively cheerful, the proposed operation obviously appealed vastly to him.

'Wyatt-Turner' gave him the benefit of his icy blue stare then decided to ignore him.

'Secrecy and stealth are the only hope,' he went on. 'And you gentlemen are--I trust--secretive and stealthy. You are experts at that and experts at survival behind enemy lines where all of you have spent considerable periods of time, Major Smith, Lieutenant Schaffer and Sergeant Harrod here in their professional capacities, the rest of you in--urn-- other duties. With the--'

'That was a damned long time ago, sir,' Carraciola interrupted. 'At least for Smithy, Thomas, Christiansen and myself. We're out of touch now. We don't know the latest developments in weapons and combat techniques. And God only knows we're out of training. After a couple of years behind a desk it takes me all my time to run fifty yards after a bus.'

'You'll have to get fit fast, won't you?' Wyatt-Turner said coldly. 'Besides, what matters most is, that with the exception of Major Smith, you all have an extensive knowledge ofWestern Europe . You all speak fluent German. You'll find your combat training--on the level you'll be engaged in--as relevant today as it was five years ago. You are men with exceptional records of resourcefulness, ability and ingenuity. If anyone has a chance, you have. You're all volunteers, of course.'

'Of course,' Carraciola echoed, his face carefully deadpan. Then he looked speculatively at Wyatt-Turner. "There is, of course, another way, sir.' He paused, then went on very quietly indeed. 'A way with a hundred per cent guarantee of success.'

'Neither Admiral Holland nor I claim to be infallible,' Wyatt-Turner said slowly. "We have missed an alternative? You have the answer to our problems?'

'Yes. Whistle up a Pathfinder squadron ofLancaster 's with 10-ton blockbuster bombs. Do you think