Death or Glory II: The Flaming Sword: The Flaming Sword

by Michael Asher

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Death or Glory: 2

  The Flaming Sword

  Michael Asher has served in the Parachute Regiment and the SAS. With his wife, Arabist and photographer Mariantonietta Peru, he made the first west–east crossing of the Sahara on foot – a distance of 4,500 miles – with camels but without technology or back-up of any kind.

  He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and has won both the Ness Award of the Royal Geographical Society and the Mungo Park Medal of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society for Exploration.

  He has written many books, including The Regiment: The Real Story of the SAS (Penguin, 2007). The bestselling first Tom Caine novel, The Last Commando, was published in 2009.

  Death or Glory

  PART 2

  The Flaming Sword

  MICHAEL ASHER

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

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  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

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  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  www.penguin.com

  First published 2010

  Copyright © Michael Asher, 2010

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-0-14-195335-9

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  To Mariantonietta, Burton and Jade, with thanks

  1

  Lieutenant Thomas Caine lay with his elbows dug into cold sand, scanning the el-Gala landing ground through his binos. His sandgoggles were pushed back over his cap comforter: he wore a khaki overall on top of shorts and KD shirt, rubbersoled commando boots, full battlekit. He had a .45-calibre Colt in a holster on his belt, and the weapon slung over his shoulder was a Thompson sub-machine-gun, with a nonstandard bayonet lug and a one-hundred-round drum magazine. It was 0310 hours on a moonless night. There was just enough ambient light for Caine to make out the grasshopper shapes of the Axis aircraft drawn up on the sides of the runway, two hundred yards distant: Caproni Ca.309 bombers, Ju-87 Stukas, Messerschmitt Me-109Fs. Beyond the aircraft, unseen in darkness, a knot of airfield buildings, anti-aircraft posts, and machine-gun nests crouched on the edge of a tarblack sea.

  The Itie gun crews would probably be dozing at this hour, but in any case Caine wasn’t worried about them. Their big ackack guns had too high an elevation to engage ground targets, and their 12.7mm Bredas would be set to fire on fixed lines only, to prevent collateral damage to the aircraft. Caine spotted no fence, no minefield, no tanktraps, no searchlights, no prowler guards. If he and his SAS boys got the job done as efficiently as they’d managed it in rehearsal, they would be in like Flynn, and out again before any lookout eyeballed them. The ’drome was wide open: the planes were fat and sitting birds.

  The RAF recce had suggested no more than thirty kites on the field. It was too dark for Caine to be sure, but if it was right, his team was carrying just enough Lewes bombs to deal with them all. It was crucial not only to wreck the planes completely to prevent cannibalizing but also to bag the lot: any crate they missed would be airborne come first light and on their trail as quick as axle grease.

  Caine put down the glasses and basked in silence, letting his raw senses probe the surroundings. This was the first time he’d commanded an SAS airfield raid, but he’d been up the Blue too long to neglect the virtues of stillness and patience. Nothing stirred on the aerodrome. A windsock jellyfished languidly on its pole; a seabreeze brought whiffs of salty, sunleached decay, scorched oil, aviation fuel. When he felt that he’d missed nothing, he sashayed down the slipface of the dune to where his squad was crouched in a huddle. The whites of their eyes stood out on bearded faces blackened with grime and burnt cork.

  Caine gave terse instructions, letting his hands talk. The SAS team didn’t need detailed orders: they’d rehearsed this raid so often they were perfect. Caine designated the present location as their emergency RV, then made signs to Lieutenant Bertram Audley, a cleancut ex-Guards officer, the next most senior rank after himself, to take up a position on the dunes with a covering group. Audley nodded and signed to his pair of Bren-gunners: the three of them crawled up to the place just vacated by Caine.

  Caine gave them time to set up, then formed the remaining nine men into Indian file, with himself in the lead. Once among the planes, they would divide into three groups of three, each taking a section of five aircraft at a time and leapfrogging each other until all the charges were wadded in. Their timepencils would be set at diminishing delays from forty-five minutes to ten. Immediately behind Caine were the other two men of his group: the lean, blond, storklegged Sergeant Harry Copeland and the massive, six-foot-seven shaghaired giant Trooper Fred Wallace. Like Caine, all the SAS men were clad in combat overalls and full battle webbing, including haversacks stuffed with primed Lewes sticky bombs and timepencils. They carried pistols and an assortment of grenades; some had Lee-Enfield rifles. Every third man hefted a Thompson sub-machine-gun.

  The demolitions squad spaced themselves out five yards apart and began the advance to target, working through a gap in the dunes and mooching in on the planes at an oblique angle. They moved over the sandy, stony ground with almost unbearable slowness, in the manner dr
illed into them in SAS night training: lifting their feet, feeling for any small obstacle – a pot hole, a boulder, a dry twig. Every man covered his own arc, and the tail-end Charlie – a gorillashaped French Canadian lancejack named Gaston Larousse – took three backward paces to every seven forwards. Caine halted the file at intervals: the men froze, scanned their arcs, listened to the night.

  The blind hammerbill snouts of the first Capronis loomed above them, larger than life in the starlight. Caine continued moving forward until the other two groups had peeled off left and right. Then he led Wallace and Cope towards a section of 109Fs: the Messerschmitts were the key targets because they outclassed anything the RAF could muster. Caine halted, cradled the stock of his overweight Thompson at his shoulder: the others stole forward to lay the bombs. Caine listened, his polished stonegrey eyes working left and right. The night remained perfectly tranquil, yet he felt a twinge of uneasiness that he couldn’t explain.

  He was distracted by a low thump and a scarcely audible hiss from Wallace: he was at the big man’s side in three paces. Wallace nodded to a fistshaped cavity in the 109’s fuselage where he had just punched his horny knuckles right through: it was soft threeply wood. ‘She’s a bloody dummy,’ the giant growled. Caine’s jaw dropped.

  As Caine reeled in shock, Copeland stalked up behind them on his camelline legs and examined the cavity. He jogged along the line of Messerschmitts rapping the fuselage of each, like a surveyor testing walls for dry rot. He was back with the others in a moment, his corkblack face taut. ‘Plywood and canvas on pipeframes,’ he whispered. ‘Mockups, the whole bleeding lot.’

  Caine worked his signal hand frantically. ‘Get the boys out, now.’

  It was a redundant order: the other squads had had the same epiphany and were flitting back through the avenues of planes like bat shadows. Moving fast and silent, Caine’s group followed close behind.

  They cleared the aircraft, fanned out across the open ground. They were only a hundred yards from cover when an eery voice shrilled out of the darkness. Caine never did find out what it said: at the same instant the night was shattered by the chunkachunk of Bredas, the stiff staccato snap of rifles, the sewingmachine burp of SMGs, the pop of grenade slingers and Very lights. The air whiplashed, the earth crumped, the darkness was quartered by yellow flare.

  Caine felt rounds whip past him like giant bugs: the air flapped and tremored. In the flarelight he saw an explosive round pop Penfold’s skull like a beachball, saw Ashdown crash squealing in agony, his kneecap blown out. Some of the SAS men were still running, others were prone, pumping rounds back at the hidden enemy with their Colts and Tommies. Big Wallace was roaring and whaling grenades, his spadesize hands working like a trebuchet; Copeland bowled a primed No. 76 Hawkins: it blatted apart, warped air with a brilliant starfish of white. Caine shoulderbraced his Tommy-gun, sank to a crouch, pulled steel, sutured an arc of .45-calibre ball and tracer in the direction of the ambush. ‘Get out of it, lads,’ he screamed. ‘Take cover.’

  Grenades busted; bombs rumped. The air rippled, the ground jerked, grit and dust and shrapnel barbs mushed: cottonwool whoffs of smoke groped the field like lady’s fingers. Enemy fire faltered. Ashdown was limp but still breathing: Caine grabbed him by the collar and started to drag him, his eyes desperately questing the dunes ahead for the flashbang of Audley’s support. ‘Covering fire,’ he bellowed towards the hidden officer. ‘Come on, man, for Christ’s sake, open up.’

  No answering fire. Smoke wafted: enemy rounds whacked and bumped. Caine kept dragging the deadweight body, saw black blood soaking blond earth; he clocked Wallace blamming off two shots in quick succession from his sawnoff Purdey shotgun as he scrambled through the gap in the dunes. He saw Copeland and a trooper carrying another casualty. Enemy rounds cooked air, lufted pecks of dust around their feet. Caine jogged after them, panting, spearing long rips of fire onehanded from his Thompson. No comforting Bren fire jagged out from the dunes. ‘Covering group, open fire,’ Caine yelled again in Audley’s direction. Still no answer.

  An Axis grenade hit the ground near him and crunched: Caine ducked, needle shards of steel pinwheeled over his head. He looked round for the grenade thrower, clocked an Italian soldier – a mask of bared white teeth and bulging white eyesockets, 22-inch sword bayonet carrying dull starlight. Caine snapshotted him pointblank, heard the tunk of rounds stoving flesh, saw the body slump. A bulky, redhaired figure scurried past: Caine saw a shambling simian shape silhouetted in a flash as the man hurled a smoke grenade with one hand, blemmed off a Tommy-gun burst with the other. It was the surly lancejack, Gaston Larousse, who threw himself flat on Caine’s right, growling, ‘Beat it, skipper. I’ll cover.’

  Caine resumed dragging Ashdown, hearing the low lump as Larousse potted suppressive fire at the hidden ambushers. Within seconds Caine had covered the remaining yards to the dunes and ducked in through the gap, laying Ashdown gently against the base of the slipslope. Apart from Larousse, he was the last man in. Vaguely aware of others milling around, he slipped the shelldressing from Ashdown’s pouch and began to rip it open with his teeth. ‘Don’t bother, skipper,’ a voice murmured in his ear. He glanced up to see the prematurely wizened face of his old comrade, medical orderly Corporal Maurice Pickney, frowning at him. ‘He’s had it,’ Pickney said. ‘Bled to death – must’ve hit an artery.’

  Caine stuffed away the dressing numbly, noticing the body of Lennox laid out in the sand like a butcher’s package: the side of his skull had been sheared off, grey matter bulged from shattered white fragments of skull. ‘Dead,’ Pickney said.

  Caine felt anger surging through him. Lennox, and Ashdown; Penfold left on the field. He switched magazines and jerked back the top handle savagely. ‘Where’s Audley?’ he raged.

  Pickney was about to answer when Copeland slithered down the duneslope next to him. ‘Bugger’s lit out,’ he said.

  Enemy rounds wheezed over the top of the dunes: Caine could see tracer scouring the darkness above him like wild shooting stars. He heard the thump-thump of a Thompson firing back. ‘Wallace covering Larousse,’ Cope commented. ‘The Canuck is coming in.’

  Almost before the words were out, Gaston Larousse staggered around the side of the dune, the muzzle of his Tommy-gun still smoking. He leaned against the duneside, battling for breath, let out a long sigh, stuck a cigarette in his mouth. ‘The Ities are coming,’ he rasped.

  Big Wallace crashed down through the loose sand, landing on all fours like a huge, dark jaguar. Caine leapt to his feet. ‘Back to the jeeps,’ he gasped. ‘Leave the dead. Let’s go.’ The jeeps lay at the other end of a long gully of sand, gravel and camelthorn. The five SAS men pelted along it with the speed of Olympian sprinters: just as they made the end of the gully, Caine spotted torches behind them on the dunetops. The lads ripped the camnets off the hidden vehicles: Caine realized that only three of their four wagons remained. ‘Audley,’ he cursed.

  Caine, Copeland and Larousse pivoted into driving seats, toed starters. As Caine’s motor soared, he clocked the outlines of enemy troops on the dune crests above him. Sub-machine-guns chattered and popped in the darkness. The other jeeps were already screaming, spinning rubber, gouging up nebulae of sand. Caine rammed the gearstick into first, heard the clunk behind him as Wallace cocked down the twin Vickers ‘K’ machine-guns pintlemounted on the back. ‘Hold on to your hat, mate,’ Caine bawled. He braced the throttle. The jeep lurched, belched fumes, accelerated into a long curve, stalled suddenly, creaked to a standstill.

  Caine swore, dimly registered Itie troops surfing down the slipslopes only fifty yards away. He tipped the starter, heard the engine splutter, heard rimfire, sensed enemy rounds crumple air around him. He pressed the starter once more, felt something tug at the sleeve of his overall: there was no pain but warm blood started trickling down his bicep. ‘Dammit,’ he swore. He hit the starter a third time: the engine ramped. At the same instant the twin Vickers behind him shrieked out a deafening metallic squall that d
rowned the sound of the engine, blunderbussed ball, fire-breaker, high explosive, in long sequences of crimson flame. The salvo scattered the first rank of Ities with what seemed like the swing of a massive invisible wrecking ball. Caine socketed the gearstick with a hand already glued with blood, hit the throttle hard. Knobbed tyres spun, punted sand-dust. The jeep shot off into the darkness after the others, with big Wallace, gripping frantically on to his guns for balance, still blitzing fire.

  2

  When Lieutenant Colonel David Stirling pulled back the tarpaulin flap and stepped out of the cave, the skyline was streaked with slim javelins of fire. He stood sucking quietly at his pipe, his peaked service cap with the SAS flaming sword badge skewed on his head. His ‘A’ Squadron boys were making use of the last moments of daylight to prep the wagons, to lay out a landing ground for the Bristol Bombay due in later. Stirling would be returning to Cairo by air with the wounded: the rest of the lads would go back to the ‘A’ Squadron position in the Great Sand Sea, to keep up the pressure on the coastal railway, ahead of Lightfoot – Monty’s Alamein push.

  The el-Hatiya forward base was sited in a wadi near the sunbleached ruins of an Arab village: low chalk cliffs riddled with caves and overhangs, shrouded with meagre palms, brakes of tamarix and flat-topped acacia. To the east, a track wound down through a corkscrew pass, a thousand feet to the floor of the Qattara depression, the great basin of quicksand and saltmarsh that stretched a hundred and fifty miles north-east towards the Alamein line. To the west lay a flat playa, its surface sparkling with mineral salts, where tiny black frogspawn figures were clearing away boulders and laying out tins filled with petrolsoaked sand. The petrol would be ignited after dark to form a flarepath for the incoming plane.

  Beyond that lay open desert – earthenware plains, dogsfang hills, shattered ridges, lavascree talus – petrified country the Ancient Greeks had believed to be the lair of serpent-haired Medusa, the gorgon whose look turned everything to stone. At midday, with the colours leached out of it, the desert was a stark, featureless glare. At this late-afternoon hour, though, brushed with wild sunset shades, swellfished out in three dimensions by muscular shadows that transformed the hills and ridges into galleon prows, the panorama took on epic proportions: a fitting background against which great and noble deeds might be wrought.