Midnight Never Comes - Jack Higgins [60]
'All right,' Chavasse said. 'Give me one good man to help me and I'll tackle the radio room. Donner's only got thirteen men including himself, so he can't have more than two or three up there. We might be able to jump them before any shooting starts.'
'A good idea. I'll give you Steiner. I have a feeling you're going to need him. I'll leave two men here to tackle the guard on that fuel store and move in on the armoury with the rest in exactly fifteen minutes. You'd better take a shotgun each, by the way. Whatever happens in that tower is going to be very much at close quarters.'
Chavasse nodded. 'I hope to God you get into that armoury. If you don't, we won't last long against automatic weapons.'
'The thought had occurred to me.' Von Bayern grinned. 'Do your best to survive, Paul. You promised to sample the delights of the Oktoberfest with me in Munich at the end of the month, remember.'
'It had better be worth the blood and sweat, that's all,' Chavasse said and he moved away along the stream bed with Steiner.
It petered out a hundred yards further on and they crawled across broken ground to the shelter of the missile pens. From there, they skirted the back of a Nissen hut and paused in its shelter, no more than ten yards from the concrete tower. It was perhaps fifty feet high and obviously contained a spiral staircase, narrow slotted windows going up at ten-foot intervals.
The radio room was at the very top, a narrow balcony encircling its glass walls and a steel emergency ladder ran from top to bottom of the building.
Chavasse pointed to the ladder. 'That's my way to the top, Sergeant-Major. You take it from inside.'
Steiner grinned, showing even white teeth. 'Rather you than me. I never did have much of a head for heights.'
Chavasse moved forward quickly and holding the shotgun in one hand, started to climb. Steiner waited until he was ten or fifteen feet high and then he ran forward, opened the door in the base of the tower and went inside.
A spiral staircase started on his right and there was a door to the left. He started towards the staircase and at the same moment, the door opened and one of Donner's men emerged. He carried a machine pistol in one hand and his reflexes were excellent.
In one quick moment he took in Steiner, the uniform, the fact that he was a stranger. The machine pistol swung up, and Steiner couldn't get close enough to do anything else except give him both barrels full in the face.
As Steiner dropped his shotgun and picked up the machine pistol, heavy steps thundered on the spiral staircase above. He swung round and as a bullet chipped the concrete beside the door, fired a quick burst in reply. There was no sign of his assailant, only the sound of someone going back up the steel stairs. Steiner sat down, pulled off his boots and went after him, silent on stockinged feet.
Chavasse was no more than half way up the ladder when he heard the shooting from inside the tower. He paused, hanging on with one hand, thumbing back the hammers of the shotgun awkwardly with the other and glanced over his shoulder.
The guard outside the armoury was looking up towards him. He took a step forward, unslinging his machine pistol and von Bayern came round the corner, a shotgun in his hands. He drove the butt hard against the unprotected skull, catching the man's machine pistol as he fell.
There was a sudden cry from beyond the officers' mess and three of Donner's men ran towards him. Von Bayern dropped to one knee and drove them back with a long burst and behind him his men crowded into the armoury.
Above Chavasse, a man leaned over the rail and fired at von Bayern, the bullets landing so close that they kicked dirt into the German's face. Chavasse swung the shotgun up, one-handed, firing both barrels at once, the weapon flying from his hand with the shock of the explosion. The man screamed, his face dissolving into a mask of blood and he disappeared. Chavasse lost his footing, hung crazily for a moment, then got a grip with the other hand and started to climb.
When he reached the