Jack Higgins by Night Judgement at Sinos Page A

Another wave took us in so fast that we were suddenly half-way across. For a moment, I thought we might make it and then a giant hand simply tipped us over.
    My feet touched bottom at once for it was no more than five or six feet deep. I was aware of the dinghy spinning beside me upside down, reached out blindly and grabbed hold of one of the handlines. There was no sign of Johnson or Dawson and in any event, it was all I could do to help myself.
    The world had turned upside down, darkness and spray, no clear way to go and I floundered there in bad trouble for a moment and then a light flashed briefly three times. I thought it my imagination until it came again. I kicked out desperately, in three feet of water.
    The sea poured in again, a great final wave that seemed determined to have me back, but I hung on, clawing into the shingle with my right hand for all I was worth. And as it flooded back again, someone grabbed me under the arm and pulled me to my feet. We splashedforward into the darkness and then my feet stumbled in soft dry sand and I fell on to my hands and knees and vomited what felt like half the Aegean.
    The sea was in my head, my heart, my brain, its roaring filled the night. I took a deep, deep breath and it stopped and then a dim light dazzled my eyes. I blinked a couple of times to get things into focus and a woman’s face loomed out of the darkness. Great flat cheekbones, slanting eyes, wide nostrils, a mouth that was far too big. She was almost a Tartar. Pure peasant. The most beautifully ugly woman I have ever known.
    â€œYou are all right now?” Her voice was low and rough in the way you get in the mountains of the north.
    â€œI’ll do,” I said. “But who in the hell might you be? I was expecting to be met by Mikali—John Mikali.”
    â€œHe was killed yesterday at the fort,” she said calmly. “One of the guards shot him by mistake. I am his daughter Anna.”
    â€œAnd you know what all this is about? You’ll help us?”
    â€œI know what is to be done,” she said, “and I will do it. For my father’s sake I will do it.”
    I crouched there, trying to make some sense of it all, aware of the stale, unwashed smell of her, pungent on the clean salt air and then Sergeant Johnson and Dawson staggered out of the surf hanging on to each other for dear life and collapsed beside me.
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    Both of them had lost everything in the surf. Radio, sub-machine guns, even their supply packs which left them with only a commando knife apiece and the .38 Smith & Wesson automatics we each carried in a shoulder holster. I still had my sub-machine gun and haversack slung round my neck. I gave them a couple of grenades each and we split into two groups and spent a fruitless half-hour searching for Forbes and O’Brien. It was a hopeless task, so dark that you could hardly see your hand in front of your face and the surf seemed to be getting worse all the time.
    So, now there were three of us which raised all kinds of new problems, but they would have to wait. The girl indicated a shallow cave where we left the dinghy ready inflated against a quick departure and we moved out, following her across the beach to climb the cliffs by means of a track so narrow and crumbling that it was probably best for all concerned that we had to manage in almost total darkness.
    Once out of the bay with its enclosing cliffs, things improved considerably. The low cloud had cleared and the dark night sky was a blaze of stars. The girl didn’t hesitate and started to lead the way across a plateau of short close-cropped grass without the slightest sign of caution.
    There was a movement in the bushes ahead of us. I swung, crouching, the sub-machine gun ready. There was the dull clanking of one of those home-made bells that peasants make to hang round the necks of their animals. A goat brushed past me, the stink of it tainting the air.
    â€œIt is nothing,” she said calmly.