“Not if ya don’t remove the safety pin,” Dore informed her. “Order about twenty rockets, Kat.”
She’d fired a bazooka a few times and knew safety pins weren’t as safe as they were supposed to be. She also worried about being stuck in the desert without transportation of their own. They would need at least three Jeeps, and she couldn’t imagine Stirling just giving them up. He probably didn’t have enough for his own team. She turned to Stewart.
“Harry, you were with The Long Range Desert Group. If we manage to score two or three Jeeps, do you think you could find the Moghra Oasis?”
Stewart frowned and scratched his nose, which meant the answer was yes. Stewart always scratched his nose when he knew the answer to a difficult question. It was his quirky New Zealand way of making sure that everyone listened.
“The Moghra Oasis was our old stomping ground. Mike Sadler could find it with his eyes closed.”
“I’m sure he could, but could you?”
He grinned. “Fraid not. I’ll need to cheat and find it with my eyes open.”
“A Jeep?” Stirling exclaimed when they were back in his office. “Do you have any idea how hard they are to get hold of? My team practically stole the ones they’re using.”
“Actually, we need three,” Kat said, glancing at Capetti. “And it’s much easier than flying us there… for you, I mean. Also, if we’ve got our own transport, we wouldn’t get in the way of the SAS.”
“Miss Wolfram, get one thing straight, you’ll be under my Command, or, the Command of Jock Lewes. Whatever missions you go on will be synchronized with ours.”
“Yes sir. No problem. We’ll still need our own transportation, and anything that’s not 4-wheel drive would be hopeless in the desert.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Don’t be surprised if all I can dig up is a truck.”
When Kat and the team turned up at the armory later that day, three brand new Willys Jeeps were parked out front, loaded and ready to go. Stirling must have pulled some serious strings. Leaving the team to load all the weapons and supplies, she went in search of the Major to thank him. When she arrived at his makeshift office, they told her that he’d already departed to join his men in the desert.
Capetti was determining the teams for each vehicle. Since Stewart knew the desert better than anyone, he suggested that Kat and Dore went with him, Capetti would take Kelly, and Atkins would drive the supply Jeep. It would be more practical if Dore switched with Kelly. Dore had years of experience driving in the desert, and as Capetti was the Commanding Officer, he should be a passenger.
“It makes sense, Sandro,” Kelly said. “We should get used to working in two groups, and you’re going to need Jock when things get a bit rough.”
“How it better?”
“You’ll be stealing planes, Sandro. You’ll need Jock and Atkins to support you. I’ll be in the same boat. I’ll need Harry and Kat.”
“I want Kat with me. She more experienced.”
“That’s exactly why I need to be with Kelly,” Kat said, waving her arms in exasperation. “He’s not used to the desert… any more than you are.”
Capetti thought about this for a moment. “So those are the teams? You, Sam and Harry? Me and Jock. Atkins drive supplies?”
“Unless you can think of a better way of doing it.”
Capetti shrugged. “No. If you are all happy.”
After a last-minute check, they drove west towards the Giza Pyramids, where the desert already encroached on the city. For a time, they drove on a paved highway, scurries of sand drifting across the road. When, after an hour, it took a more southerly track towards El Harrar, they left the road headed out on desert trails. They were in the desert now, mile after mile of sandy scrub that faded off into the distance in a shimmer of heat. The road not as bad as Kat feared. They were following a camel trail, and it seemed to take a natural course between the hills, it’s surface often remarkably smooth. At times, they even managed thirty miles an hour. The only issue, gusting winds blowing in from the south. Sand began filling the air, and after a while, they were forced to cover their mouths with the keffiyehs that Steward bought in a flea market.
“Do you think we should stop?” Kat yelled.
Stewart waved a hand at her. “It’ll die down! If we stop every time the wind blows, we’ll never get there!”
He was right. When they reached a small oasis and stopped to take a break, the wind dropped to a soft breeze. There seemed no point in hurrying. They took their time to drink and eat. They were never going to reach the Moghra Oasis in daylight. At some point, they would be setting up tents. They brought four tents. Not only did this give Kat one of her own, making her grateful she didn’t have to share, and the inevitable complaints about her snoring, Capetti would have one to himself as well.
They drove on. The terrain became sandier, high dunes blocking the horizon.
Kat wondered, “I don’t know how you do it, Harry.”
He glanced back at her. “What? Know where the hell I’m going?”
“It’s just that dunes are all around us. There’s no horizon.”
He laughed. “It’s easy. The desert changes all the time. After these dunes, there’s about fifty miles of flat scrub. Then there’s a range of hills and more dunes. I use the sun to get my bearings. We’ll probably make camp when we reach the next lot of dunes. Don’t worry. I know where I’m going.”
The sun neared the horizon when they reached Stewart’s dunes. They were deep, rolling dunes, dunes that from the air would have looked like huge golden waves carved by the wind, waves that were forever changing shape. Kat loved it here. The warmth and the musty, almost herbal smell intoxicating. A hot wind blew in from the south, sending whirling eddies of sand drifting across the slopes.
When they’d made camp and eaten their meager rations, she’d climbed to the top of a dune and sat alone to study the stars, searching out the Big Dipper, and The Plow. The stars were always incredibly bright in the desert. It almost felt as if you could reach out and touch them, pluck them from the sky and reposition them. Except that in the south, they were gradually disappearing. As if, one by one, someone switched them off.
“Why are you sitting here, all on your own?” Atkins asked.
“Just thinking. What are you doing here?”
He glanced up at the sky. “Sarge told me to come get you. He said you can’t sit up here.”
“Why not? I’m studying the stars.”
He jutted his chin. “Look over there. In the next few minutes, there won’t be any. The air is filling with sand.”
Squinting into the distance, she sat up in alarm. “We’re gonna be hit by a sandstorm?”
Kat jumped to her feet, the wind already pulling at her hair, she grabbed Atkins’ hand, and they slithered down the side of the dune. She’d been in sandstorms before, but not when they only had tents or open Jeeps to protect them. Tents could be covered in a mound of sand and in severe winds, even trucks could disappear. Running up to the nearest Jeep, she yanked up the folded roof. They may only have minutes.
“What are you doing?” Atkins yelled. “Get inside the tent!”
“It’s safer in the Jeep. Grab the tent, and we’ll use it as a cover.”
It took five minutes to sling the tent over the Jeep and tie it down, by which time the wind tore at the canvas and filled the air with whirling sand. The Jeep had no doors to shut, or windows to close, so they pulled back the tarp and climbed inside.
“You think we’re safe?” Atkins asked, wiping the sand from his eyes.
“It depends on how long it lasts. Did you make a note of where everyone’s tents are?”
> “Sort of. They’re near the other Jeeps. Why? Are they gonna disappear?”
“Probably,” she said, running a hand through her hair. “If this keeps up, we may have to dig them out.”
“Wonderful. Our first night in the desert, and we all get buried.”
For a time, they didn’t speak, they just listened to the moan of the wind, sand hissing on the snapping canvas. It didn’t seem dangerous. It felt like a windy night. Kat knew the dunes were shifting, their shapes changing as the wind ate away at them and rebuilt them somewhere else. In the morning, the landscape would look different.
For a few hours, Kat and Atkins played cards. Atkins always had a deck handy.
As they played, Atkins asked Kat, “why are you here? I got drafted into this man’s Army, but you volunteered. And yer always in the thick of it. I mean, yer so pretty, you could marry some fine gentleman and live in Windsor or maybe Buckinghamshire.”
“Why Corporal, that’s so sweet. Is that why you’ve never so much as given me a second glance is because you think I’m above your station?”
In Atkins finest cockney drawl, “oh I’ve gotten me glances in. Fact be known, if the Bobbies ever found out how many glances I’ve stolen, they’d arrest me peepers for shoplifting. But I know me place. I don’t punch above me weight, and I think for me safety, maybe we should leave it at that.”
“Now that I know how you feel,” Kat winked at Atkins, “maybe after the war, I’ll stop by the East End, and treat you to a couple of pints in the seedy pubs. And when some blokes try to steal me away from you, we can kick some arse. It’ll be such jolly good fun.”
“That’s just it… Kicking arse is kinda your bailiwick, and Sarge’s, not mine. You two were made for each other.”
The wind blew so hard, the canvas tent covering them rippled and made snapping and crackling noises. The sand beating so hard against the canvas, it sounded exactly like rain.
With all the violence from Mother Nature going on, Kat said to Atkins, “you might want to say a prayer that this storm blows over before we’re buried alive.”
Atkins turned to her and said, “wouldn’t know how.”
“I would have thought you were a God-fearing man. Weren’t your family churchgoers?”
“Well, me pops was. Mums, not so much?”
“With two different beliefs, who did you more take after?”
“It was hard to know who to believe. I remember going to me pops once and asked if he knew where the wee ones come from. Me pops tells me, from some blokes with the names Adam and Eve. Me pops then tells me these blokes got married, had wee ones and when those wee ones grew up, they got married, and they had wee ones, and then those wee ones grew up, got married, and they too had wee ones. Well, this went on for many years until one day, your mums and me got married, and we had you.
Well, then I goes to me mums and tells her what me pops said. Mums tells me pops got it all wrong, and tells me there’s no blokes named Adam and Eve and tells me the truth of the matter. Mums says, a long time ago, some monkeys got together and had wee ones. Those wee monkeys grew up, got together, and they had wee monkeys. These monkeys went on for many years having wee monkeys until one day, mums and pops got together, and we had you.
Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather. Me mums never lied to me before, so I went back to me pops. I tells him mums says your telling me tales, and I tell him what mums said.
Me pops looks at me, smiles, and said mums spoke to you truly, but she was telling about her side of the family.”
Before Kat’s head exploded over that story, she threw in her hand of cards and said yawning, “I’m going to try to sleep,” she said, clambering into the back. “You should, as well. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.”
He grunted. “Just imagine, we could be sleeping in a boring, luxury hotel right now. How awful. You saved me from a fate worse than death.”
She laughed. “I do my best.”
Kat woke the following morning to complete silence. Through the Jeep’s windscreen, all she saw was a landscape of sand. The Jeep’s hood completely disappeared. In its place, an avenue of sand stretched away from the base of the screen to the nearest dune. Sand covered most of the Jeep, and there was silence. She would have expected to hear voices or some sign of life. There was nothing. Even the wind dropped.
She looked at Atkins. He was stretched out across the front seats, his chin resting on his chest, his head leaning against the uprights of the roof. Reaching out, she shook him awake.
“Atkins, wake up. Something’s wrong.”
He jerked awake. “What d’you mean, wrong? What’s wrong?”
“We’re buried in sand. I can’t hear anything.”
Unhooking some of the canvas, they peered outside. A few yards away, half-buried in the side of a newly formed dune, they saw the other Jeeps. Only one tent visible.
“Where are the other tents? I can only see one.”
“I don’t know. Everything looks different. They were behind the Jeeps.”
“Grab a shovel!” she cried, scrambling out of the Jeep. “We’ve got to find them.”
Stewart climbed out of his tent when they rounded the nearest Jeep, followed seconds later by Dore, who seemed to appear from nowhere as he threw back the flap of his buried tent in a shower of sand.
“Goddamn deserts!” he croaked, heaving the flap further open to let Kelly out.
“Sandro!” Kat yelled. “Where’s Sandro’s tent? He’s on his own!”
Capetti’s tent was harder to find. He’d pitched his tent where the side of the new dune now stood. They began digging in different spots until they heard faint yelling. The tent was further away than they’d thought, and by the time they got him out, he was caked in sand and panicking.
“Grazie! Grazie! Molto grazie!” he coughed. “I thought I die.”
“We wouldn’t let you die,” Dore remarked. “Who would make coffee?”
It took three hours to dig all the Jeeps out and make sure the engines still ran, three hours of digging in 45 Celsius degrees of heat. There’s no shade in the dunes, no rocky overhangs they could rest under, so they paced themselves, taking it in turns to do the heavy digging. When all three Jeeps were finally clear and the engines running, they didn’t take a break to cool off. They loaded on the tents and drove away, happy to feel the wind in their hair.
The first sign of the Moghra Oasis was a low range of hills, the first hills they’d seen since leaving Cairo. They weren’t very high, certainly not as high as the dunes they’d escaped. They did, however, give the desert a certain perspective. Atkins cheered when he saw them, and as they drew closer, even Dore looked happier. They were driving through sparse tufts of grass now, the first sign of vegetation since leaving Cairo. They also saw palms in the distance.
They were shocked when they finally reached the oasis. Expecting a small waterhole dotted with straggly palms, the Moghra Oasis turned out to be a small saltwater lake surrounded by a vast expanse of reeds and the kind of grass that only grows in brackish water with no sign of life. Even the Berbers couldn’t live here, and Kat found herself wondering why David Stirling chose it as a camp. It wasn’t even pleasant. The lake made the air humid, so it felt incredibly hot, which meant there were probably mosquitos as well.
On the other side of the lake, there were vast stretches of sand and, beyond them, the low range of hills they’d seen from the desert, hills that would hopefully contain caves and rocky overhangs. Maybe that’s why there was no sign of Stirling’s camp. Perhaps they were sheltering from the heat. A hopeful thought occurred to her. Maybe there was freshwater in the hills. Maybe it was cooler there.
; Pulling up at the water’s edge, they all climbed out to stretch their legs. Kat saw a mosquito feeding on her arm. “So where’s the camp?” she asked Stewart, squishing the annoyance. “I hope it’s not near here.”
“It’s on the other side of the hills, but it won’t be easy to find. They move every few days.”
“So how do we find them?”
“Don’t worry, Stirling’s men will be looking for us.”
Piling into the Jeeps again, they drove on and were soon found themselves driving through a deep, sandy ravine. Rocky escarpments loomed above them, and Kat wondered if it would be possible to land a plane here. She started to mention it to Kelly when a muffled explosion echoed through the valley. She squinted into the distance. There was no sign of whatever caused it. Catching up with Stewart’s Jeep, she flagged him down.
“Do you think that was the SAS?”
“I bloody hope so,” he laughed.
The ravine began to shallow out, the rocky slopes not so high, and moments later they came upon another oasis, except that this time it was only a scattering of straggly palms. Eight Jeeps with Vickers machine guns mounted on them, parked in their shadows, but there was no sign of the men of the SAS. When one by one, they began to appear. They weren’t at all what Kat expected. They were wearing British Army shorts, khaki shirts with the sleeves rolled up, and wearing scruffy keffiyehs, with black bandanas to keep them in place. Some had beards or were simply unshaven. They looked like a bunch of renegades, and Kat remembered Stirling saying that the men of the SAS were more like a militia than an Army platoon. He hadn’t been exaggerating.
A bearded young man with faded Lieutenant’s pips made his way over to them, glanced across at Kat and Kelly, and addressed Harry Stewart. “You found us. We were expecting you yesterday. Did you get lost?”
“Got caught in a sandstorm,” Stewart informed him. “Had to dig ourselves out.”
Kat and Die Wolfsschanze Page 2
