Where Eagles Dare

“It's not a pop-gun, and that's a fact,” Smith agreed. “Flat on the floor.” He reached forward, pulled a switch, and the eighteen-inch long semaphore indicator began to wave gently up and down. Smith first dipped his main headlights, then switched them off altogether, covering the last thirty yards on side-lamps alone and praying that all those signs of peaceful normality might help to keep nervous fingers away from the firing button of the most lethal tank cannon ever devised.

The fingers, for whatever reason, left the button alone. Smith slowed to a walking pace, turned right through the guard-house gates and stopped. Taking care to keep his injured right hand well out of sight, he wound down his window and leaned out, left elbow over the sill as three guards, led by a sergeant and all with machine-pistols at the ready, closed in on the driver's cab.

“Quickly!” Smith shouted. “Telephone. Surgeon to the sick-bay.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Colonel Weissner. They got him twice. Through the lungs. For God's sake, don't just stand there!”

“But—but the post-bus!” the sergeant protested. “We had a call from—”

“Drunk, by God!” Smith swore savagely. “He'll be court-martialled in the morning.” His voice dropped menacingly. “And you, if the Colonel dies. Move!”

Smith engaged gear and drove off, still at walking pace. The sergeant, reassured by the sight of a major's uniform, the fact that the bus was moving into the barracks, the slow speed with which it was moving and, above all, by the authoritative clamour of the Alpine horn which Smith still had not switched off, ran for the nearest phone.

Still crawling along in first gear, Smith carefully edged the post-bus through the press of men and machines, past a column of booted and gauntleted soldiers mounted on motorcycles, past armoured vehicles and trucks, all with engines already running, some already moving towards the gates—but not moving as quickly towards the gates as Smith would have wished. Ahead of the post-bus was a group of officers, most of them obviously senior, talking animatedly. Smith slowed down the bus even more and leaned from the window.

“They're trapped!” he called excitedly. “Upstairs in ‘Zum Wilden Hirsch’. They've got Colonel Weissner as hostage. Hurry, for God's sake!”

He broke off as he suddenly recognised one of the officers as the Alpenkorps captain to whom in his temporary capacity of Major Bernd Himmler, he'd spoken in “Zum Wilden Hirsch” earlier that evening. A second later the recognition was mutual, the captain's mouth fell open in total incredulity and before he had time to close it Smith's foot was flat on the accelerator and the bus heading for the southern gates, soldiers flinging themselves to both sides to avoid the scything sweep of the giant snow-plough. Such was the element of surprise that fully thirty yards had been covered before most of the back windows of the bus were holed and broken, the shattering of glass mingling with the sound of the ragged fusillade of shots from behind. And then Smith, wrenching desperately on the wheel, came careering through the southern gates back on to the main road, giving them at least temporary protection from the sharp-shooters on the parade ground.

But they had, it seemed, only changed from the frying pan to the fire. Temporary protection they might have obtained from one enemy—but from another and far deadlier enemy they had no protection at all. Smith all but lost control of the bus as something struck a glancing blow low down on his cab door, ricocheted off into the night with a viciously screaming whine and exploded in a white Sash of snow-flurried light less than fifty yards ahead.

“The Tiger tank,” Schaffer shouted. “That goddamned 88-millimetre—”

“Get down!” Smith jack-knifed down and to one side of the wheel until his eyes were only an inch above the foot of the windscreen. “That one was low. The next one—”

The next one came through the top of the back door, traversed the length of the bus and exited through the front of the roof, just above the windscreen. This time there was no explosion.

“A dud?” Schaffer said hopefully. “Or maybe a dummy practice—”

“Dummy nothing!” Upright again, Smith was swinging the bus madly, dangerously, from side to side of the road in an attempt to confuse the tank gunner's aim. “Armour-piercing shells, laddie, designed to go through two inches of steel plate in a tank before they explode.” He winced and ducked low as a third shell took out most of the left-hand windows of the bus, showering himself and Schaffer with a flying cloud of shattered glass fragments. “Just let one of those shells strike a chassis member, instead of thin sheet metal, or the engine block, or the snow-plough—”

“Don't!” Schaffer begged. “Just let it creep up on me all unbeknownst, like.” He paused, then continued: “Taking his time, isn't he? Lining up for the Sunday one.”