Winds of Change (Empires Lost Book 2)

by Charles S. Jackson

  “Oh my God, Max…” she breathed softly, as much in awe of the sight of those two huge tanks as the rest, although she recognised them for what they were… or, at least, from what they’d been copied.

  Eileen was a qualified engineer specialising in military hardware and weaponry, and the pair of newly-arrived tanks standing on the docks that day before her were two of the sweetest things she’d ever seen. “Max, they’re amazing…” she added, almost under her breath. “They’re absolutely beautiful…!” She’d been following the progress of the vehicles’ design and construction from afar, however that moment was the first time she’d seen them in person and what had seemed like a simple matter of excellent progress on paper now became two huge vehicles that were the culmination of almost eighteen months of ceaseless hard work.

  A quartet of guards climbed from the Humber behind hers at that moment, all armed with M2A2 assault rifles with their wire stocks folded forward beneath their foregrips to allow easy movement within confined spaces. An American-made variant of the British No.7 rifle introduced just a few months before the 1940 invasion, the weapon fired an ‘intermediate’ round titled ‘.30-inch M1941 Rimless Short Rifle’ that was a shortened version of the full-sized .30-06 rifle cartridge. The weapons could fire in semi- or fully-automatic modes and in the right hands could deliver devastating firepower at close to medium ranges.

  The commander’s hatch of the nearest tank lifted back as the group approached and a dark-haired man of stocky build appeared, rising through the opening as far as his waist. He looked to be in his mid-forties and there was just the hint of grey at his temples. Piercing, intelligent eyes stared down at the approaching general with a keen and serious interest that to some extent belied the broad grin spreading across his face.

  “Well, bugger me…!” He exclaimed, with no consideration whatsoever for appropriate protocols as he climbed completely from the hatch and stood atop the turret. “…Didn’t expect to be met right off the docks by the Theatre Commander himself: I feel honoured!” The man wore a plain, one-piece khaki jumpsuit similar to Monty’s – quite standard for the crew of an armoured vehicle – however his shoulder boards carried the ‘one-thick, one-thin’ pattern of blue-on-black stripes denoting the rank of an RAF air vice marshal. He wore an American-style forage cap, and also a small, hand-held radio and large, holstered pistol at his belt along with a small, canvas satchel of his own that he slung across his back the moment he was out of the tank and able to stand freely.

  “You’d be Max Thorne, then,” Montgomery observed with just a faint tinge of sarcasm in his words. “Not sure how things work in Australia, but we generally salute our superior officers in greeting here…”

  The men had never met, but most officers of high rank at least knew the name of the man who’d somehow appeared almost out of thin air two years ago, just months prior to the 1940 invasion, and had instantly become the darling of Whitehall …and of the Army, Navy and Air Force General Staffs into the bargain. Rumour and innuendo regarding the true nature of the man and the secretive ‘Hindsight’ unit he’d commanded had since permeated through all levels of the British and Allied officer corps of all three service arms, with some of the associated gossip and speculation as to the man’s real purpose and origin quite fanciful in the extreme.

  The orders they’d received from Imperial GHQ, Melbourne had forewarned them he was coming and with Thorne’s well-substantiated reputation for informality, irreverence and lack of respect for any rank – even his own – it wasn’t difficult for Montgomery to deduce the identity of the man now standing before him. There’d been no real offence taken over Thorne’s informal manner, but he thought it prudent to at least give a subtle reminder of who was in charge. The rank of air vice marshal was roughly equivalent to an army major-general, and that meant Montgomery outranked the newcomer, albeit only barely.

  “No offence, sir,” Thorne replied, the smile never leaving his face as he climbed down onto the front hull of the tank and then dropped to the ground beside him. He made a very casual attempt at coming to attention, but he did nevertheless make the effort to give a proper military salute. “Air Vice Marshal Max Thorne at your service.” As they stood close together, the general realised the fellow was perhaps slightly taller than average and indeed appeared to be quite fit and of solid build.

  “On the contrary,” Monty corrected, allowing a wry grin to creep across his features as he extended a hand that Thorne shook solidly. “According to orders from Melbourne, it appears it’s I who am at your service, but there was – as usual – precious little detail of what this is all about so if you’d care to enlighten me?”

  “It’d be a pleasure, sir,” Thorne agreed, nodding at the armoured cars, “but I’d be happier to do it somewhere private – perhaps the command post at Agruda, if that’s acceptable. Your western defences figures prominently in our mission here in any case and I’m eager to get a look at the situation first hand.” He nodded toward the line of armoured cars in the shade. “I can ride with you, or you can ride with us if you’d prefer… happy to accommodate either way.

  “I’ve no doubt we can find space for you inside the Humber,” Montgomery replied sourly, not at all relishing the idea of climbing into the bowels of the behemoth Thorne had climbed out of. ‘Will your crew manage without you?”

  “Oh, the driver doesn’t need me to tell ‘im what to do… probably work better without me breathing down his neck…” It was at that point that Thorne formally noted the woman standing slightly back from Montgomery’s right shoulder, adding: “Captain Donelson… good to see you again after so long. Apologies for the tardiness of my arrival: I hope the desert heat hasn’t weighed too heavily on you.”

  “Can’t say I care for the climate, air vice marshal, but I’m well all the same,” she nodded with a thin smile, neither displaying much evidence of their long-term friendship in the formality of their words, or the personal pleasure both felt over the meeting.

  “It appears we now have all three services represented in our little group here,” Montgomery observed drily.

  “I suspect it’ll be far too tight a squeeze in that Humber in this heat, general,” Eileen remarked, casting a glance back at the armoured cars and giving a grimace. “If it’s all right with yourself, sir, I might ride along behind in one of the trucks?”

  “Very good, captain; as you wish,” Monty acceded without a second thought. He turned his attention back to Thorne. “Let’s head out then, shall we? Considering how corruptible the local populace can be – particularly here at the port – I’ve no doubt news of your arrival is already on its way back to the nearest Italian HQ at Cairo… how long before it gets back to the OKW in Berlin is anyone’s guess but I’m sure they’d want to know about the lovely gadgets you have here.”

  “Couldn’t agree more, sir,” Thorne nodded, momentarily bracing up at attention once more before extending a hand, as if offering for the general to lead the way.

  With a nod, Monty turned on his heel and headed back to his Humber, Thorne in tow as Eileen Donelson hurried turned toward the line of trucks and waved a quick greeting to someone seated in the second one along as she recognised a familiar face. Inside that vehicle’s cab, the driver was already accompanied by a young army officer wearing combat fatigues of a camouflage pattern not unlike that of the tanks themselves.

  “Long time, no see, Evan,” Eileen grinned as she swung herself up into the passenger side of the GMC and the officer slid across to the middle to make room. “…Been a while…”

  “Close enough to six months,” Evan Lloyd of the Australian Special air Service replied with an equally warm smile. “…Made captain, I see…”

  “Aye… and lieutenant for you, too…” Eileen observed in return, pronouncing the word ‘leftenant’ as was customary in British and Commonwealth military forces.

  “Wouldn’t do having a mere NCO looking after ‘His Nibbs’, after all,” Lloyd grinned broadly, nodding in Thorne’s direc
tion as the man climbed into the distant Humber with Montgomery.

  “I’m amazed there isn’t an entire army corps set aside for the job,” Donelson replied with a smirk, both of them sharing a knowing glance of a kind that could only pass between old friends.

  A moment later the drivers of the tanks and GMC trucks were revving their engines once more in deafening preparation for departure, soon joined by Humber armoured cars as they also fired up their motors and moved off, threading their way slowly through the chaos of the wharves with three huge armoured vehicles and their attendant trucks in pursuit.

  At nineteen, Khalid was tall, strong and remarkably agile for his age, with sharp features and dark eyes that burned with an intelligence and strength of conviction rarely seen in someone so young. A private secondary school education had prepared the young man well for the next phase of his life and in the coming years, Khalid fully intended to further his studies at university in the fields of law and politics, just as soon as his country was once more free from the grip of the current, European war. In the meantime however, he was also more than happy to help his father and his three uncles with the day-to-day running of their farming businesses – something that might well range from managing the operation of one of their warehouses to something as simple as general maintenance in the fields of one of their many farms.

  Khalid al-Hakim came from a wealthy background. His father and uncles ran a lucrative family business growing dates, maize, cotton and other important commercial crops. The company owned substantial tracts of irrigated land along the western bank of the Suez Canal and along the Nile Delta, and his family had long been respected among the local Egyptian community as honest traders and fair employers. A large portion of the yearly crop was normally sold for export – mostly to British colonies and other Commonwealth nations – with the remainder supplying the needs of the QM stores of the Royal Air Force, which had maintained a strong presence in Egypt even before the outbreak of war.

  Khalid’s whole family were overtly pro-English as a result. Youssef, his youngest uncle (who at twenty-two was barely older than he) had worked as a chief orderly of the Officers’ Mess at RAF Fayid, south of Ismailia. Khalid had seen him wear his white uniform with pride and smile as he served their drinks, at the same time suffering the ‘good-natured’ racial taunts and jibes of pilots and aircrew convinced of the superiority not only of their white race but also that of the Englishman in particular – something that seemed to Khalid to be instilled in the British mentality almost from birth.

  Khalid felt quite differently about it all however. At nineteen, he was the oldest child of the family so far and was not only intelligent but had also been afforded the opportunity of an excellent education due to his family’s wealth. It was a great source of pride for his father that Khalid had studied hard and received his secondary school certificate, something no man in the family had ever before accomplished. His father was completely unaware however of some of the extra-curricular activities his son had become involved with during his time at the private boarding school in Helwan.

  Regardless of what his family might want to believe, anti-British sentiment was widespread throughout the country and that was particularly true within such political groups as the Young Egypt Society and the Egyptian Socialist Party. Khalid had attended several youth group meetings during his time at boarding school and had found inspiration in surrounding himself with other like-minded young men and women of the similar age.

  At one such meeting, a guest speaker had come who’d been a former student at the school... a young officer in the Egyptian Army in his early twenties who, rumour said, had been injured some years before during anti-British protests. Tall, confident and well-spoken, the man introduced as Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein had at the time been preparing to return to his army posting in the Sudan but had taken time out that particular night at the request of an old friend to speak to the eager young group about the idea of an independent Egypt... an Egypt free from the shadow of an imperialist European nation that had held power over their homeland for far too long.

  It was in his last year at school that he’d first been contacted by a somewhat shady character he’d met just once before through a mutual acquaintance... a fellow by the name of Farouk who’d come to him with an attractive proposition that would enable him to not only earn some extra personal money on the side – something that was always welcome – but would also present him with the opportunity to make some kind of active contribution toward removing the British from Egypt altogether.

  It was common knowledge that his family owned a good deal of warehouse space at Port Taufiq, some of which was rented out to others for a modest profit, and that these warehouses would be a perfect place for someone to observe the comings and goings of much of the Allied shipping in and out of Egypt. Khalid had agreed in an instant and it was in this fashion, without a second thought for his family or the possible consequences of what he was about to do, that Khalid al-Hakim had become a German agent.

  He watched now from a third-story window, standing alone in a small office above one of those very warehouses as the newly-arrived convoy of tanks and trucks departed, turning west on the main road outside the wharf area and making its way through the southern part of the city at a slow, steady pace. He’d taken many pictures with the small camera he held in his hand and he knew his contact, Farouk, would be very eager to get hold of them. How quickly those images then made it as far as Berlin was out of his hands.

  Oblivious to these goings on, the convoy of tanks, trucks and armoured cars skirted the southern side of the city with the Red Sea to their left flank before turning north-west on the other side and heading into the outskirts on the Cairo-Suez Road. Even the usually gregarious Thorne fell soberly quiet as he sat in the very rear of the Humber, staring out through a narrow firing port while the city passed by around them. As he watched in silence, he soon noted a dramatic change in the passing surroundings.

  Adobe housing and walled compounds that were the usual city architecture were gradually replaced by ramshackle, makeshift huts and ragged tents that lay on both sides of the main road and disappeared into the darkness. The ad hoc tent ‘city’ had sprung up as the advancing Axis forces had pushed thousands of refugees eastward and had almost entirely encircled Suez’s normal boundaries from the western bank of the canal right around to the shores of the Red Sea, near Adabiya in the south. A countless multitude of campfires burned all about, spread with random density across the black background of night, and the flickering of flames dotted the darkened landscape as far as the eye could see. Although it wasn’t possible to see much of the camps beyond the lighting close to the road, the fires themselves seemed to stretch endlessly into the distance on either side, something that gave a sobering indication of fathomless numbers of unseen tents and refugees that were undoubtedly huddled around each one.

  Thorne had seen the intelligence reports regarding the situation and had kept abreast of what was happening as best he could, yet nothing written as simple words on a page could possibly prepare against the shock of actually seeing what was happening with one’s own eyes. They carried on that way for ten or fifteen minutes, driving at reasonable speed as they made their way through the refugee encampments around the Cairo-Suez Road. During that time, Thorne witnessed numerous instances of army trucks dispensing food, water and other basic provisions to the clamouring masses while parked under the sparse lighting of the main road. He’d also observed several small scuffles breaking out around some of those aid vehicles, with shots fired into the air by nervous armed guards at one to disperse the crowds as they struggled to maintain control.

  Something that also hadn’t gone unnoticed was the fact that the gunner manning the machine gun turret atop the centre of the Humber’s armoured roof, having displayed a casual and relaxed air at other times, made a point of cocking his machine gun and maintaining a far higher level of alert during the entire time they’d been driving along those se
ctions of road surrounded by refugee camp. It was an unspoken indictment of the general level of tension that had developed over the last few weeks and months. Should poor judgement prevail over common sense on either side, it wasn’t hard to imagine how quickly the situation might get completely out of hand and possibly result in a massacre or – worse still – a complete uprising.

  “You were going to enlighten me as to your purpose here, Mister Thorne,” Montgomery reminded as he also moved to the rear of the vehicle, manoeuvring himself around the gunner, the man’s upper body obscured inside the tiny turret above.

  “Of course, sir,” Thorne agreed, smiling thinly as he pushed the misgivings from his mind. “… You’ve probably not been informed as to the nature of what I and my team have been working to accomplish in the two years since Britain fell. Although Commander Donelson and myself wear and hold official military ranks, our current positions are predominantly involved in the development and delivery of advanced armaments and technology: technology such as the two tanks we’ve brought with us today.”

  “You and your Hindsight team can bring surprises like those three along any time at all…!” Montgomery gave a dry chuckle. “The more the merrier in fact…” The smile quickly transformed into a grimace. “I’m sure you’ve seen the latest intelligence reports of our situation here?”

  “I have,” Thorne conceded, also managing barely a thin smile, “and while things do appear dire to be certain, I still have at least some hope your boys can hold out here a bit longer… at least long enough to get as many out as we can and allow the navy time to mine the canal completely.”