The Complete Navarone Read online

  ALISTAIR MACLEAN

  SAM LLEWELLYN

  The Complete Navarone

  The Guns of Navarone

  •

  Force 10 from Navarone

  •

  Storm Force from Navarone

  •

  Thunderbolt from Navarone

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Introduction

  The Guns of Navarone

  DEDICATION

  MAP

  ONE: Prelude: Sunday 0100–0900

  TWO: Sunday Night 1900–0200

  THREE: Monday 0700–1700

  FOUR: Monday Evening 1700–2330

  FIVE: Monday Night 0100–0200

  SIX: Monday Night 0200–0600

  SEVEN: Tuesday 1500–1900

  EIGHT: Tuesday 1900–0015

  NINE: Tuesday Night 0015–0200

  TEN: Tuesday Night 0400–0600

  ELEVEN: Wednesday 1400–1600

  TWELVE: Wednesday 1600–1800

  THIRTEEN: Wednesday Evening 1800–1915

  FOURTEEN: Wednesday Night 1915–2000

  FIFTEEN: Wednesday Night 2000–2115

  SIXTEEN: Wednesday Night 2115–2345

  SEVENTEEN: Wednesday Night Midnight

  Force 10 from Navarone

  DEDICATION

  MAP

  ONE: Prelude: Thursday 0000–0600

  TWO: Thursday 1400–2330

  THREE: Friday 0030–0200

  FOUR: Friday 0200–0330

  FIVE: Friday 0330–0500

  SIX: Friday 0800–1000

  SEVEN: Friday 1000–1200

  EIGHT: Friday 1500–2115

  NINE: Friday 2115–Saturday 0040

  TEN: Saturday 0040–0120

  ELEVEN: Saturday 0120–0135

  TWELVE: Saturday 0135–0200

  THIRTEEN: Saturday 0200–0215

  EPILOGUE

  Storm Force from Navarone

  DEDICATION

  PROLOGUE: March 1944

  ONE: Sunday 1000–1900

  TWO: Sunday 1900–Monday 0900

  THREE: Monday 0900–1900

  FOUR: Monday 1900–Tuesday 0500

  FIVE: Tuesday 0500–2300

  SIX: Tuesday 2300–Wednesday 0400

  SEVEN: Wednesday 0400–0500

  EPILOGUE: Wednesday 1400

  Thunderbolt from Navarone

  DEDICATION

  PROLOGUE

  ONE: Monday 1800–Tuesday 1000

  TWO: Tuesday 1000–Wednesday 0200

  THREE: Wednesday 0200–0600

  FOUR: Wednesday 0600–1800

  FIVE: Wednesday 1800–Thursday 0300

  SIX: Thursday 0300–1200

  SEVEN: Thursday 1200–2000

  EIGHT: Thursday 2000–2300

  NINE: Thursday 2300–Friday 0300

  TEN: Friday 0300–Saturday 0030

  EPILOGUE

  About the Authors

  Other Works

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Introduction

  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

  ALISTAIR MACLEAN

  The Guns of Navarone

  DEDICATION

  To my mother

  MAP

  ONE

  Prelude: Sunday

  0100–0900

  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 o
f 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, damn-fool 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.’