Force 10 from Navarone Read Online Free PDF Page A

broad-shouldered characters and had about them a look of tough and hard-bitten competence. They were dressed in the uniform of that élite of combat troops, the Marine Commandos, and they looked perfectly at home in those uniforms.
    But what caught and held the unwavering attention of Mallory and his two companions was neither the rather splendidly effete decadence of the room and its furnishings nor the wholly unexpected presence of the three commandos: itwas the fourth figure in the room, a tall, heavily built and commanding figure who leaned negligently against a table in the centre of the room. The deeply-trenched face, the authoritative expression, the splendid grey beard and the piercing blue eyes made him a prototype for the classic British naval captain, which, as the immaculate white uniform he wore indicated, was precisely what he was. With a collective sinking of their hearts, Mallory, Andrea and Miller gazed again, and with a marked lack of enthusiasm, upon the splendidly piratical figure of Captain Jensen, RN, Chief of Allied Intelligence, Mediterranean, and the man who had so recently sent them on their suicidal mission to the island of Navarone. All three looked at one another and shook their heads in slow despair.
    Captain Jensen straightened, smiled his magnificent sabre-toothed tiger’s smile and strode forward to greet them, his hand outstretched.
    ‘Mallory! Andrea! Miller!’ There was a dramatic five-second pause between the words. ‘I don’t know what to say! I just don’t know what to say! A magnificent job, a magnificent –’ He broke off and regarded them thoughtfully. ‘You – um – don’t seem at all surprised to see me. Captain Mallory?’
    ‘I’m not. With respect, sir, whenever and wherever there’s dirty work afoot, one looks to find -’
    ‘Yes, yes, yes. Quite, quite. And how are you all?’
    ‘Tired,’ Miller said firmly. ‘Terribly tired. We need a rest. At least, I do.’
    Jensen said earnestly: ‘And that’s exactly whatyou’re going to have, my boy. A rest. A long one. A
very
long one.’
    ‘A
very
long one?’ Miller looked at him in frank incredulity.
    ‘You have my word.’ Jensen stroked his beard in momentary diffidence. ‘Just as soon, that is, as you get back from Yugoslavia.’
    ‘Yugoslavia!’ Miller stared at him.
    ‘Tonight.’
    ‘Tonight!’
    ‘By parachute.’
    ‘By
parachute!’
    Jensen said with forbearance: ‘I am aware, Corporal Miller, that you have had a classical education and are, moreover, just returned from the Isles of Greece. But we’ll do without the Ancient Greek Chorus bit, if you don’t mind.’
    Miller looked moodily at Andrea. ‘Bang goes your honeymoon.’
    ‘What was that?’ Jensen asked sharply.
    ‘Just a private joke, sir.’
    Mallory said in mild protest: ‘You’re forgetting, sir, that none of us has ever made a parachute jump.’
    ‘I’m forgetting nothing. There’s a first time for everything. What do you gentlemen know about the war in Yugoslavia?’
    ‘What war?’ Andrea asked warily.
    ‘Precisely.’ There was satisfaction in Jensen’s voice.
    ‘I heard about it,’ Miller volunteered. ‘There’s abunch of what-do-you-call-’em – Partisans, isn’t it – offering some kind of underground resistance to the German occupation troops.’
    ‘It is probably as well for you,’ Jensen said heavily, ‘that the Partisans cannot hear you. They’re not underground, they’re very much over ground and at the last count there were 350,000 of them tying down twenty-eight German and Bulgarian divisions in Yugoslavia.’ He paused briefly. ‘More, in fact, than the combined Allied armies are tying down here in Italy.’
    ‘Somebody should have told me,’ Miller complained. He brightened. ‘If there’s 350,000 of them around, what would they want us for?’
    Jensen said acidly: ‘You must learn to curb your enthusiasm, Corporal. The fighting part of it you may leave to the Partisans – and they’re