by Glenn Meade
The village was in darkness, streaks of black cloud racing across the face of the quarter-moon. The wind moaned, sand flurries tossing rolls of camel thorn through the deserted streets. Not exactly favorable weather for the important work he had to do. The dog stopped howling and the village became silent again, except for the banshee sound of the wind. Achmed dressed and went downstairs, his excitement mounting.
The Seti Hotel was a decaying six-bedroom inn, but it was a palace compared to the rest of the village’s mud-brick hovels, once popular with Arab merchants on the trade route from Tunisia to Egypt. Now the only visitor Achmed saw was the occasional businessman passing through on his way to Cairo. But when the Germans were close to taking Alex, it had been a different story.
Then, the hotel had billeted a succession of British officers and had once even served as a command post. Achmed had gone out of his way to please the officers, sucking up to them like a faithful dog, and the fools had mistaken his enthusiasm for loyalty. They confided in him, told him their failures and successes, and Achmed learned a lot about their morale and tactics. What the officers didn’t know was that he had a radio and a Luger pistol hidden in the barn at the back of the hotel.
The Germans had paid him well for his information, but he would gladly have done the job for nothing. He hated the British, and the sooner the swine were kicked out of Egypt, the better. Passing the shabby reception desk, Achmed paused to grab a sackcloth bag from behind the counter. “Time to go to work.”
• • •
The enclosed yard and the rusting corrugated barn at the back of the hotel served as a general storage area, a covered pen for Achmed’s chickens and goats, and a garage for his Fiat truck. A grateful British captain had rewarded his hospitality with the captured Italian vehicle, and Achmed had lovingly kept it in excellent condition ever since.
Before climbing into the cab, he opened his sackcloth bag. He had everything he needed—flashlights and spare batteries. He checked the truck’s spare wheel, just to be certain, and made sure he had the jerry can of extra fuel. Satisfied, he crossed the yard and unlocked the back gates.
A savage wind raged into the enclosure, disturbing the chickens and goats in the barn behind him. Was it his imagination, or was the weather getting worse? He had sensed the previous evening that the weather might turn bad, but not as bad as this. He sat in the driver’s seat, started the ignition, and the Fiat roared into life. The wind would help drown the engine noise, but no doubt some of his neighbors would hear. There was nothing Achmed could do about that, and he nosed the Fiat out into the unpaved street before climbing out again to close the gates, then turned the truck onto the main road leading out of the village. It ran through the desert, northeast towards Alex, over twenty miles away, but when he had gone five miles he turned south onto a desolate minor track.
He halted in front of a pair of steel-and-wire swing gates, a barbed-wire run stretching to either side. Sand grains were tossed against the windshield, but beyond the gates he could make out the landing strip. With the desert war finished, it lay abandoned, the half-dozen huts and two hangars with rusting corrugated roofs standing like forgotten monuments in the stormy darkness. No one came here anymore, except passing Bedouin tribesmen who scavenged among the dented oil drums and discarded military junk. Achmed climbed out of the truck, opened the unlocked gates, drove towards one of the Nissen huts, and pulled up outside.
Covering his face to ward off the blowing sand, he killed the engine, stepped out of the cab again, and moved inside. The hut stank of rotting wood and excrement, and the walls had been defaced with chalk. “Run, Rommel, run!” “Bert was here.”
Achmed heard a bleating sound in the darkness and called out, “Mafouz? Are you there?”
Out of the shadows, a small boy of twelve appeared, rubbing his eyes from tiredness.
“Yes, Father.”
Achmed could make out the blanket in the corner, the small parcel of food he had given his son. Half a dozen of Achmed’s goats had bedded down beside the boy, snug out of the wind. They bleated and stirred, but stayed where they were.
“Did anyone come?”
“No, Father. I have seen no one.”
“Good work, Mafouz.” Achmed beamed and patted his son’s head. He had left him at the airfield the previous evening, pretending to tend the goats. He needed to be certain that none of the Bedouin had come wandering by and taken refuge in the huts, which they sometimes did in bad weather, for that could have upset his plans. Mafouz was completely trustworthy and an intelligent boy, reasons enough for Achmed to delegate the task to him.
“Help me with the flashlights.”
He squatted on the filthy concrete floor, opened his bag, and laid out the four electric flashlights. Mafouz helped him check each of them again; they all worked. Achmed would use one to signal to the aircraft that the field was clear and it was safe to land. The other three flashlights he’d place in an L-shape on the runway, mounted on wooden stakes which he’d brought in the back of the truck, to mark out the landing strip’s exact width and length.
Once the aircraft returned his signal, he would switch on the other flashlights so the landing could proceed, and not before. Achmed checked his wristwatch: 4:00 a.m. In just over an hour, he hoped, the Germans would arrive. He didn’t know why they were coming—that wasn’t his business—but he guessed it had to be something important. They wouldn’t operate this far behind enemy lines without good reason. He just hoped the wind had died down by then, otherwise it could make things difficult. A gust rattled the corrugated roof, and Mafouz looked up at him, excitement on the child’s face.
“Is the airplane really going to come, Father?”
“If it is Allah’s will, my son.”
Achmed felt the excitement, too, but with it came a jab of fear. He had once witnessed a Wellington bomber crash during the khamsin on the very same runway. The aircraft was lifted into the air by a severe gust in the last moments before landing, then its wing dipped, and the plane skewed in a half-circle and exploded in a shower of flames, instantly killing the crew. This wasn’t the khamsin, but from the sound of the wind raging outside, there could be a bad storm brewing.
Achmed heard the wind rattle the roof again, slipped a set of worry beads between his fingers, and considered the plight of the incoming aircraft. “Let’s hope, my friends, you have better luck.”
4:20 A.M.
It was cold in the Dakota, and Halder woke from a fitful doze. He was surprised to see Rachel fast asleep, so he went up to the darkened cockpit and found Falconi and the copilot, Remer, drinking coffee from a Thermos.
“Can’t rest?” Falconi asked loudly, over the noise of the engines.
“It seems not. Mission nerves, I reckon.”
“It happens to us all. Here, have some coffee.”
He accepted the metal cup from Falconi and sat in the empty wireless operator’s seat. When he looked out at the night sky, the quarter-moon gave just enough light to see. Puffs of occasional black cloud raced past, and flurries of rain lashed the cockpit windshield, bright stars winking in the blackness.
“Where are we?”
Remer showed him a route map opened on his knees. “Just over halfway between Sicily and Egypt, off the west coast of Crete. In less than an hour we should be passing Alex on our left. So far it seems pretty quiet—there’s no radio activity at all out there.”
“Let’s hope it stays that way. What about the weather, Vito?”
Falconi pointed to a thick, ominous-looking bank of dark cloud on the distant horizon, and Halder saw frightening streaks of fork lightning flashing deep in its core, illuminating the night sky. “That looks pretty bad.”
“Bad enough. We’ll try to steer clear of the worst of it, but we may get thrown around a little. Nothing we can do about that, I’m sorry to say.”
Halder offered round cigarettes, and as he lit Falconi’s said, “I thought you would have finished with this lousy war by now. Don’t tell m
e you’ve taken a liking to it?”
Falconi smiled. “Hardly. But it’s either fly for the Luftwaffe, or wind up in a prison camp bored out of my skull, and that wouldn’t do at all. Or worse still, in a penal battalion on the Russian front.”
“You could always try landing in Sicily on the return leg and give yourself up.”
Falconi laughed. “I won’t say I haven’t considered it. Except Remer here might complain. And I have a brother imprisoned in a German POW camp in Milan, since Italy surrendered two months ago. I doubt Schellenberg would take kindly to him if I deserted.”
“It seems Walter has us all stitched up nicely.”
“You, too?”
“I’m afraid so.”
A sympathetic look appeared on Falconi’s face. “He told me about your father and child, Jack. A terrible business. I’m truly sorry, my friend.”
Halder nodded, his mouth tight, then turned towards the cockpit door. “I’ll go see how the others are doing.”
“There’s some more coffee in the Thermos if your lady friend wants some.”
“Thanks.” Halder turned back towards the cabin. “Don’t forget to keep your eyes peeled for enemy aircraft.”
“It’s a milk run, Jack.” Falconi smiled reassuringly. “The skies are as quiet as the grave in this weather. Anyway, it’s conditions on the ground I’m more worried about—let’s keep our fingers crossed we can get this crate down safely, and lift off again in one piece.”
4:35 A.M.
Flight Lieutenant Chuck Carlton from Dallas, was singing “The Yellow Rose of Texas” as he sat in the darkness of the Bristol Beaufighter’s cockpit, trying to keep himself awake. In the navigator’s seat behind him, Flight Sergeant Bert Higgins could bear it no longer. It was the only song Carlton ever sang, and to make matters worse the Texan had a voice like a chainsaw cutting through metal.
“Don’t you know any other songs, sir?” he asked over the intercom.
Carlton grinned. “That’s the best one there is, boy. Heck, you British don’t recognize a good tune when you hear it.”
“With respect, sir, I heard it a hundred times already tonight. I hoped by now you’d belt up.”
Carlton laughed. A veteran pilot with fifteen years’ experience, he was a burly man in his early thirties, with restless blue eyes that seemed full of impatience, as if life were too slow for him. At a mere seventeen years old he had earned his wings working for a private mail service, criss-crossing America in every weather condition Mother Nature could throw at him. Afterwards, there had been two years flying a crop duster out of Atlanta, and a pretty exhilarating year with a flying circus act, none of which explained why he was still alive and flying for RAF 201 Group out of Alex, except that when war broke out, like many of his American countrymen who had volunteered to fight for Britain, pitching in seemed the right thing to do, and Carlton had longed to see some action.
“OK, our time’s nearly up.” He eased the stick forward and gently pulled back on the throttle to start his descent from fourteen thousand feet. “Give me a bearing and we’ll get this baby home and give those ungrateful British ears of yours a rest.”
The Beaufighter was flying night coastal patrol, cruising at 150 knots in cloud. Higgins checked his compass and took a bearing on Alex. They were northwest of the Egyptian port, and he estimated they’d be landed and home in another half-hour.
He looked out at the bank of ugly storm cloud off to his left, the lights of Alex just a dim cluster. There was a sandstorm blowing down on the mainland, the orange-brown swirl just about visible, even though they were seventy miles from the coast. The Met Forecasting Unit of Coastal Command had warned them about the imminent bad weather, but Higgins had checked with the Alex tower every half hour; the sandstorm hadn’t hit the city yet and the runway conditions were still within landing limits. As he finished taking the bearing, the Beaufighter broke cloud at twelve thousand feet. He looked down, and was startled when he glimpsed the dark shape of an aircraft about a mile off his starboard wing.
“Target at two o’clock low!”
Carlton tensed and peered down to scan the black sky. The moonlight wasn’t terrific, and there was only a faint glow of dawn on the far horizon, but his eyes were accustomed to the dark after almost three hours’ night flying and he noticed the aircraft ahead of them, flying at about ten thousand feet.
“Right you are, buddy. OK, let’s go down and take a look.”
Carlton nudged the stick down and to the right, and at the same time eased the throttles forward, giving him a burst of power. The nose tilted down and he picked up speed. Carlton loved the Beaufighter. A two-seater, it was a real thrill to fly and one of the fastest in its class. And right now he knew he had the advantage; the target was ahead of him and low, and probably wouldn’t see him approach. Within two minutes, he was less than a quarter-mile behind it, and he recognized the unmistakable outline of a sand-camouflaged Dakota C-47, the Stars and Stripes on the wing and tail, and the USAAC legend. He relaxed a little.
“It’s a Gooney Bird—one of ours,” he said on the intercom.
“I see that, sir.”
“The question is, what the heck’s he doing up here?” Carlton had requested a traffic update from the tower only ten minutes before, and there was no report of aircraft in the vicinity.
“OK, let’s give him a call.” He flicked the radio switch to transmit. ‘‘C-47, this is coastal patrol on your rear, high at five o’clock, identify yourself. Roger and out.”
There was no reply. Carlton tried again. “C-47, identify yourself, please. I’m behind you, high, at five o’clock. Roger and out.”
When he still got no reply, Carlton did a quick check on the other three communications channels. One was for the tower and base, and the other two were distress frequencies, used solely for emergencies in case an aircraft was in trouble. He scanned each, just in case the C-47 was trying to transmit. All the airwaves were dead.
“Maybe their radio’s out,” he said to Higgins.
“What do you want to do, sir? Show him the colors of the day?”
Recessed into the Beaufighter’s fuselage were three dome-covered lights; red, green and white. They could be flashed on in different combinations to display a coded identity signal, which was changed each day. There was no way an enemy intruder could know either the code or the correct reply, and by such a simple method genuine Allied aircraft could still identify each other, even if their communications channels were unserviceable.
But Carlton was still cautious. The C-47 could have a technical problem, and the last thing he wanted to do was destroy one of his own planes. But the preflight briefing had been very specific. An intelligence report suggested the Germans were likely to try to breach Allied air defenses along the North African coast, and any aircraft encountered on patrol was to be verified. Carlton intended to flash the C-47 with the colors of the day, but first he wanted to be certain there was no stray traffic in the area. “Hold off on the colors of the day for the moment,” he said to Higgins over the intercom. “Call up Alex Tower quick, and find out if there’s a C-47 in the area.”
Carlton heard Higgins call up the tower, and got the reply in his earphones moments later. “Larchtree, this is Alex Tower to Coastal Patrol Beaufighter. No reported Allied C-47 in your area. “There was a pause, and then the voice said, “You better bring him back.”
Carlton perked up with excitement. For the last three months he’d seen no action. What had started out as a dull patrol was turning into a lively one. The C-47 could still be legitimate, but he knew the Germans weren’t beyond using captured Allied aircraft. Either way he was going to find out, and quickly. The C-47 was unarmed and slow. The Beaufighter was fast and had four twenty-millimeter Hispano cannon under the fuselage, another four .303 machine guns in the port wing, and two more .303s starboard. Carlton could easily outrun him and blow him out of the sky, if necessary.
He flicked open the red “Fire” cover on the stick that
operated the machine guns. “OK, just to be on the safe side, let’s flash our friend with the colors. If there’s no response, I’ll fire a warning burst and we’ll take it from there.”
• • •
The Dakota hit a pocket of turbulence, then settled again. Rachel awoke in the cold, a dim white dome light on overhead. She looked across and noticed that the two SS men were asleep, just as Halder came down the cabin with a Thermos of coffee.
“I thought you could do with some of this. It’ll put some heat into you.”
She accepted the coffee without comment, and Halder said, “Am I really that repulsive?”
“Maybe it’s the uniform you represent. The man I’m not quite sure about yet.”
Halder smiled. “That’s a slight improvement, at least.” He saw her shiver. “Cold?”
“A little.”
He knelt and pulled the blanket around her. “Are you afraid, Rachel?”
“I don’t know what I feel.”
“It does seem odd, the two of us together again under these circumstances. I can still hardly believe it myself.”
She said quietly, ‘Tell me about your wife. Did you love her very much?”
There was an instant look of grief on Halder’s face. She touched his arm lightly, brushed it with her fingertips. “I meant it when I said I was sorry, Jack.”
A burst of machine-gun fire shattered the air and the aircraft rolled violently. Halder said, “What in the . . . !”
There was another long burst, the Dakota rocked again, and Halder was flung forward, landing on Kleist and Doring, who came awake.
