Midnight Never Comes - Jack Higgins [58]
'All right now, miss?' Benson said.
She nodded slowly and they crossed the hall and went out into the courtyard at the rear of the house. The Land Rover in the garage was the one Murdoch had driven earlier that morning and still carried the fake insignia which had been used to fool von Bayern's party. Obviously Stavrou had driven to the loch in the other one.
She climbed into the passenger seat and Benson got behind the wheel. The starter rattled hollowly when he pressed it, but the engine refused to turn over. He tried the choke with no better success and cursed.
'Sounds as if the damned thing's been immobilised, miss. I'd better take a look.'
He walked round to the front of the vehicle and Stavrou appeared in the garage entrance, a machine pistol in his hands. Asta cried a warning. Benson swung round, alarm on his face and Stavrou drove him back against the bonnet of the Land Rover with a quick burst.
The savage hammering seemed to fill the building, bouncing back from the walls and as Benson spun crazily and fell to the floor, Asta saw Hector and Rory Munro emerge from the back door of the house on the other side of the courtyard.
Stavrou fired, a line of bullets cutting across the wall of the house as he swung, smashing a window, catching Rory Munro as he jumped for the shelter of the door after his father.
Stavrou turned, his face terrible in its calmness and Asta reached for the Land Rover's heavy steel starting handle, scrambled out and backed away from him. He placed the machine pistol carefully on the bonnet of the vehicle and moved towards her.
She threw the starting handle at him with all her strength and, as he ducked, ran for the other side of the Land Rover. He caught her by one arm, moving with amazing speed for such a big man, swinging her hard against the wall and struck her back-handed across the jaw, knocking her unconscious.
15
Force of arms
Sitting in the cockpit of the Beaver beside von Bayern, a chart on his knees, Chavasse saw Fhada lift out of the sea on the horizon, a grey hump under cumulous clouds, the great six hundred foot cliffs at the northern end wreathed in mist.
They were flying at no more than two hundred feet above the sea, the German's hands steady on the wheel. Rain rattled against the windows and, below, the grey-green surface of the sea was whipped into white-caps.
'If we come in from the north, the cliffs should conceal our approach,' von Bayern said.
'What about the wind direction? Will it be okay for landing?'
'Good enough. It's the down-draughts from those cliffs we'll have to watch for.'
He turned to starboard a couple of points, running north-west into the Atlantic and when the cliffs of Fhada were to port, altered course again, dropping towards the sea, making his approach at no more than a hundred feet.
The great black cliffs, streaked with guano, reared above them and, below, Chavasse saw a shining expanse of wet sand a quarter of a mile wide.
Von Bayern took the Beaver in on a dummy run, feeling for the wind and a cross current from the island caught them so that they rocked violently. He swung the wheel full circle, taking the Beaver out to sea again, banked, and came in low over the waves, throttling back and dropping his flaps.
The wheels seemed to touch the surface of the water and then they were down, biting into the hard wet sand and the jagged rocks at the base of the cliffs rushed towards them. To Chavasse, it seemed as if they might never stop and then, suddenly, the Beaver was turning to port, completely under control.
After the engine was switched off, the propeller spun for a moment or two and then stopped. Von Bayern turned and smiled through the silence. 'A