Delirium is our best deceiver.

ledge he had levelled out for himself. For a few idle moments he watched Panayis pacing restlessly to and fro just inside the perimeter of the grove, lost interest when he saw him climbing swiftly up among the branches of a tree, seeking a high lookout vantage point and decided he might as well follow his own advice and get some sleep while he could. "Captain Mallory! Captain Mallory!" An urgent, heavy hand was shaking his shoulder. "Wake up! Wake up!" Mallory stirred, rolled over on his back, sat up quickly, opening his eyes as he did so. Panayis was stooped over him, the dark, saturnine face alive with anxiety. Mallory shook his head to clear away the mists of sleep and was on his feet in one swift, easy movement. "What's the matter; Panayis?" "Planes!" he said quickly. "There is a squadron of planes coming our way!" "Planes? What planes? Whose planes?" "I do not know, Captain. They are yet far away. But" "What direction?" Mallory snapped. "They come from the north." Together they ran down to the edge of the grove. Panayis gestured to the north, and Mallory caught sight of them at once, the afternoon sun glinting off the sharp dihedral of the wings. Stukas, all right, he thought grimly. Sevenno, eight of themless than three miles away, flying in two echelons of four, two thousand, certainly not more than twenty-five hundred feet. . . . He became aware that Panayis was tugging urgently at his arm. "Come, Captain Mallory!" he said excitedly. "We have no time to lose!" He pulled Mallory round, pointed with outstretched arm at the gaunt, shattered cliffs that rose steeply behind them, cliffs crazily riven by rockjumbled ravines that wound their aimless way back into the interioror stopped as abruptly as they had begun. "The Devil's Playground! We must get in there at once! At once, Captain Mallory!" "Why on earth should we?" Mallory looked at him in astonishment. "There's no reason to suppose that they're after us. How can they be? No one knows we're here." "I do not care!" Panayis was stubborn in his conviction. "I know. Do not ask me how I know, for I do not know that myself. Louki will tell youPanayis knows these things. I know, Captain Mallory, I know!" Just for a second Mallory stared at 12 mp digital camera for sale him, uncomprehending. There was no questioning the earnestness, the utter sinceritybut it was the machine-gun staccato of the words that tipped the balance of instinct against reason. Almost without realising it, certainly without realislug why, Mallory found himself running uphill, slipping and stumbling in the scree. He found the others already on their feet, tense, expectant, shrugging on their packs, the guns already in their hands. "Get to the edge of the trees up there!" Mallory shouted. "Quickly! Stay there and stay under cover-we're going to have to break for that gap in the rocks." He gestured through the trees at a jagged fissure in the cliff-side, barely forty yards from where he stood, blessed Louki for his foresight in choosing a hideout with so convenient a bolt-hole. "Wait till I give the word. Andrea!" He turned round, then broke off, the words unneeded. Andrea had already scooped up the dying boy in his arms, just as he lay in stretcher and blankets and was weaving his way uphill in and out among the trees. "What's up, boss?" Miller was by Mallory's side as he plunged up the slope. "I don't see nothin'." "You can hear something if you'd just stop talking for a moment," Mallory said grimly. "Or just take a look up there." Miller, flat on his stomach now and less than a dozen feet from the edge of the grove, twisted round and craned his neck upwards. He picked up the planes immediately.. "Stukas!" he said incredulously. "A squadron of gawddamned Stukas! It can't be, boss!" "It can and it is," Mallory said grimly. "Jensen told me that Jerry has stripped the Italian front of them over two hundred pulled out in the last few weeks." Mallory squinted up at the squadron, less than half a mile away now. "And he's brought the whole damn' issue down to the Aegean." "But they're not lookin' for us," Miller protested. "I'm afraid they are," Mallory said grimly. The two bomber echelons had just dove-tailed into line ahead formation. "I'm afraid Panayis was right." "Butbut they're passin' us by" "They aren't," Mallory said flatly. "They're here to stay. Just keep your eyes on that leading plane." Even as he spoke, the flight-commander tilted his gull-winged Junkers 87 sharply over to port, halfturned, fell straight out of the sky in a screaming power-dive, plummeting straight for