And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;

he'd been given of this long-range reconnaissance, this familiarising of himself with the terrain, the geography of the town. This was probably the one vantage point in the whole island that offered such an opportunity together with concealment and near immunity. No credit to himself, the leader of the mission, he reflected wryly, that they had found such a place: it had been Louki's idea entirely. And he owed a great deal more than that to the sadeyed little Greek. It had been Louki's idea that they first move upvalley from Margaritha, to give Andrea time to recover the explosives from old Leri's hut, and to make certain there was no immediate hue and cry and pursuitthey could have fought a rearguard action up through the olive groves, until they had lost themselves in the foothills of Kostos: it was he who had guided them back past Margaritha when they had doubled on their tracks, had halted them opposite the village while he and Panayis had slipped wraith-like through the lifting twilight, picked up outdoor clothes for themselves, and, on the return journey, slipped into the Abteilung garage, torn away the coil ignitions of the German command car and truckthe only transport in Margarithaand smashed their distributors for good measure; it was Louki who bad led them by a sunken ditch right up to the roadblock guard post at the mouth of the valleyft had been almost ludicrously simple to disarm the sentries, only one of whom bad been awakeand, finally, it was Louki who bad insisted that they walk down the muddy centre of the valley track till they came to the metalled road, less than two miles from the town itself. A hundred yards down this they had branched off to the left across a long, sloping field of lava that left no trace behind, arrived in the carob copse just on sunrise. And it had worked. All these carefully engineered pointers, pointers that not even the most sceptical could have ignored and denied, had worked magnificently. Miller and Andrea, who had shared the forenoon watch, had seen the Navarone garrison spending long hours making the most intensive house-to-house search of the town. That should make it doubly, trebly safe for them the following day, Mallory reckoned: it was unlikely that the search would be repeated, still more unlikely that, if it were, it would be carried out with a fraction of the same enthusiasm. Louki had done his work welL Mallory turned his head to look at him. The little man was still asleepwedged on the slope behind a couple of tree-trunks, he hadn't stirred for five camera canon digital sd750 elph hours. Still dead tired himself, his legs aching and eyes smarting with sleeplessness, Mallory could not find ft in him to grudge Louki a moment of his rest. He'd earned it alland he'd been awake all through the previous night. So had Panayis, but Panayis was already awakening, Mallory saw, pushing the long, black hair out of his eyes: awake, rather, for his transition from sleep to full awareness was immediate, as fleeting and as complete as a cat's. A dangerous man, Mallory knew, a desperate man, almost, and a bitter enemy, but he knew nothing of Panayis, nothing at all. He doubted if he ever would. Farther up the slope, almost in the centre of the grove, Andrea had built a high platform of broken branches and twigs against a couple of carob poles maybe five feet apart, gradually filling up the space between slope and trees until he had a platform four feet in width, as nearly level as he could make it. Andy Stevens lay on this, still on his stretcher, still conscious. As far as Mallory could tell, Stevens hadn't closed his eyes since they had been marched away by Turzig from their cave in the mountains. He seemed to have passed beyond the need for sleep, or had crushed all desire for it. The stench from the gangrenous leg was nauseating, appalling, poisoned all the air around. Mallory and Miller had had a look at the leg shortly after their arrival in the copse, uncovered it, examined it, smiled at one another, tied it up again and assured Stevens that the wound was closing. Below the knee, the leg bad turned almost completely black. Mallory lifted his binoculars to have another look at the town, but lowered them almost at once as someone came sliding down the slope, touched him on the arm. It was Panayis, upset, anxious, almost angry looking. He gesticulated towards the westering sun. "The time, Captain Mallory?" He spoke in Greek his voice low, sibilant, urgentan inevitable voice, Mallory thought, for the lean, dark mysteriousness of the man. "What is the time?" he repeated. "Half-past two, or thereabouts." Mallory lifted an interrogatory eyebrow. "You are concerned, Panayis. Why?" "You should have wakened me. You should have wakened me hours ago!" He was angry, Mallory decided. "It is my turn to keep watch." "But you had no sleep last night," Mallory pointed out reasonably. "It just didn't seem fair" "It is my turn to keep watch, I tell you!" Panayis insisted stubbornly.