Storm Force from Navarone

Dusty Miller stared at the invisible ceiling six inches above his nose, and listened to the sounds coming through the brick wall of the oven. There was a brisk crackling, and a sharp whiff of smoke. They had lit a fire in there, to heat the oven for the next batch of baking. How long do we have to stay in here? he thought. What if Mallory can’t take it?

He began to sing. He sang softly, ‘Falling in loaf with loaf is like falling for make-believe-’

‘Shut up,’ hissed the SAS man.

This is not well bread of you,’ said Miller.

‘For Christ’s sake-’

‘I’m oven a lovely time,’ said Miller. ‘And you’re baking the spell-’

Mallory knew it was the torpedoing all over again: the little metal room with four men jammed together, the thunder of the terrible blue Mediterranean pouring into the hull, four faces in six inches of air under the steel ceiling, the air bad, hot, unbreathable - and Mallory was going to die, of suffocation, certainly, but first of terror …

Someone seemed to be talking. Talking complete drivel, in a soft Chicago drawl. Beyond the drawl, far away, there were other voices. German voices.

Miller.

The terror went. Mallory found himself thinking that there were worse things than small spaces. Dusty Miller’s puns, for instance.

Miller felt Mallory’s hand prod him sharply in the side. He shut up. Mission accomplished.

Suddenly a dog was barking close at hand. Much closer than the far side of the fire in the oven. The compartment where the four men were hiding filled with the scritch of claws on stone. The air holes, thought Miller. There must be air holes, and the goddamn dog’s smelt us through them.