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

by Michael Asher

  In prison, Wallace had acquired a loathing for confined spaces and a determination to escape from the restricted atmosphere of his home town. The army seemed the only available path, but his enlistment in the Horse Gunners after his release from jail had been the prelude to a family tragedy. His brother, Frank, had followed him into the Gunners and had been killed at Dunkirk. His two sisters had found employment making shells in an armaments factory and had died when the place was bombed in the Blitz. His father had died of grief shortly afterwards and, deprived of his entire family, alone in the world, Wallace had sworn that the Germans would pay.

  ‘I appreciate the sentiment, Fred,’ Caine said. ‘But you won’t get away with downing an MP officer. Not like when you belted Audley.’

  Wallace waggled his jaw, remembering Paddy Mayne’s punch. ‘Audley had it comin’. I don’t care what Stirling says.’

  ‘Forget it, mate. Keep focused on the stunt.’

  ‘Yeah, well, it’d help a whole lot if you told us what the stunt is.’

  ‘All in good time.’

  Stirling touched Caine’s elbow. ‘I think there’s one chap you don’t know,’ he said, beckoning over an oliveskinned, blackhaired soldier who was standing alone – a man with limbs as long as those of Copeland but so thin he looked emaciated. Caine took in fiery dark eyes set deep in a cadaverous face, a nose like a kedge, sunken cheeks and an elegant, pointed chin. Close up, he was astonished to see that the man’s features bore a striking resemblance to those of his late comrade Moshe Naiman, killed on Runefish.

  ‘I’m guessing you’re our Jewish Palestinian polyglot,’ Caine commented as they shook hands. ‘You’re a dead ringer for Moshe Naiman.’

  ‘I ought to be,’ the man said dryly. ‘I’m Emanuel Netanya. Moshe Naiman was my younger brother – well, half-brother: same mother, different father.’

  Caine raised his eyebrows in astonishment. ‘Moshe was a brave man,’ he said. ‘A hero.’

  Netanya didn’t smile. ‘I’ve heard that you were with him when he died. Is that so, sir?’

  Caine had made no secret of the fact that he’d assisted the maimed and dying Naiman to kill himself, but he hadn’t expected to be confronted by a family member like this. ‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘I was with him just before the end.’ He swallowed. ‘He was in a terrible state – foot blown off, shot in the leg. I wish I could have got him out, but I couldn’t.’

  Netanya’s eyes were cold. ‘I’d be obliged if you would give me a full account some time, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Certainly. How come you’re here?’

  ‘I’m attached from SIG.’

  Caine nodded. SIG – the Special Information Group – was a unit recruited mostly from German-born Jews resident in Palestine. They spoke fluent German – most of them spoke Arabic and Italian too – and were trained to impersonate Afrika Korps personnel on missions behind enemy lines. The Nazis considered them traitors as well as subhumans: if bagged, the best a SIG man could hope for was a quick death. Caine had been deeply moved by Naiman’s courage on the Runefish op but found the presence of his half-brother disturbing. He had a feeling that Netanya had volunteered for the op purely out of revenge. No one could blame him for that: half the men in the section had a personal grudge against the Krauts. A soldier motivated only by revenge, though, could be a liability to the mission.

  ‘My father was murdered in a Nazi deathcamp,’ Netanya said, as if an explanation were required. ‘I was sent to Palestine for safety in ’37 but, one way or another, Hitler has robbed me of most of my family.’

  ‘Join the club,’ Wallace murmured gravely. ‘That’s you, me and Larousse, all three.’

  Stirling clapped his hands for attention. ‘That’s it, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘I think we’re all here. Take your seats. Lieutenant Caine, over to you.’

  13

  Caine stood in front of a covered wall map, pausing for a moment as the men scuffled with chairs. He suckered a breath, surveyed the keen, hard, expectant faces. ‘I’ll tell you straight, boys,’ he began, ‘the stunt you’ve volunteered for is a bitch. For security reasons, I can’t reveal what the target is until we’re up the desert. All I can say now is that Sandhog comes straight from the GOC himself: its success is vital to the outcome of the next offensive, and so to the entire campaign. That means there’s absolutely no pressure on us at all.’

  There were whoops and murmurs of excitement from the men, most of whom had been expecting a standard SAS raid. ‘We’ll be operating in Libya,’ Caine went on, ‘in the Green Mountains area. I’ve divided the op into three phases: the march in, the hit and the march out. For now, I can only give you details of the march in. We’ll be using two jeeps and two 3-tonners, heading west through the Alamein line. We’re going to keep off the barreltracks to avoid enemy spotters. We’ll be RV-ing with an LRDG patrol this side of our lines.’

  Gasps of indignation broke out from the audience. ‘Not them tossers,’ Wallace chuntered. ‘Who needs them?’

  Caine had expected this. He was acutely aware of the rivalry between the two special units. The LRDG had been around longer and considered themselves the ‘real’ desert experts: in the recent shake-up, though, they’d been forced to concede the major raiding role to the SAS and had to be content with reconnaissance and transport roles. If they resented this, Caine’s crew also resented having to share their exclusive stunt with the LRDG, especially in a manner that made it look as though they couldn’t even find the way to the target without outside help.

  ‘Don’t worry about them,’ Caine said. ‘Believe me, Sandhog is pure SAS – something the LRDG couldn’t bring off in a month of Sundays. Their role is strictly to get us to first base. After that we’re on our own. Now …’ He picked up a pointer and moved over to the wall map. ‘The LRDG patrol will meet us here, at a lone pinnacle called the Ship’s Bell.’ He broke off to give the RV’s map reference, instructing the lads to commit it to memory rather than write it down. ‘The LRDG, under the command of Captain Oliver Roland, will escort us as far as the Jebel, which we’ll be approaching from the south. We make landfall here …’ he poked the map again with the pointer ‘… at the Shakir cliffs.’

  He gave the coordinates, then put the pointer down and surveyed the attentive faces. ‘Shakir is a four-hundred-foot cliffwall rising out of the desert piedmont, stretching on for miles. If there’s a single place in the Green Mountains the Axis won’t be expecting an approach, it’s there …’

  ‘Four ’undred foot?’ exclaimed Dumper. ‘It’s goin’ to be damn’ ’ard work gettin’ them wagons up, then, boss.’

  There were cackles of laughter: Caine ended them by rapping hard on the table with his fist. ‘This isn’t a joke, ladies,’ he said. ‘No, Corporal Dumper, we can’t get our vehicles up there, and we’re not going to try. We’re going to leave them on the piedmont for the LRDG to pick up later, load the kit into manpacks – you should all have been issued with one of the new hundred-litre manpacks – and climb the cliff, hauling the kit up after us. We’re going to cover the rest of the way to the target on foot. That’s why I said this stunt is one hundred per cent SAS. It’s what we’ve been trained for. The Axis won’t be expecting a march-in like this in a million years …’

  A rumble ran round the group. Caine could tell that the men were impressed, especially Gibson and Rossi, whose eyes were sparkling with anticipation. Caine focused on them. ‘Corporal Gibson and Trooper Rossi – you will head the climb. Everyone on the crew has been trained in cliff-climbing …’ He shuftied Taffy Trubman guiltily, remembering that, alone of the group, the bulky signaller hadn’t done commando training. Trubman clocked the look and turned pink. ‘Almost all of us have been trained in cliff-climbing,’ Caine corrected himself, ‘but we’re not experts. Your task is to get the section safely to the top with the kit intact. Is that clear?’

  Rossi stared back at Caine with his eyes, giving no indication that he even spoke the same language. The cowboy’s thin lips cracked a
grin. ‘We got it, skipper.’

  ‘Hey, hold on a sec,’ a voice cut in. Caine looked around, knowing who had spoken. Copeland was running a hand through his hair, a sure sign that he thought he’d detected a flaw. ‘I’ve seen the gear we’ve got,’ he said. ‘It’ll amount to about two hundred pounds apiece. That’s like each one of us lugging an extra man on his back. To move tactically through the hills packing that lot we’ll need a covering group, which means we’re going to have to work relays. It’s only a quick calculation, mind, but I’d say it’ll cut our progress down by fifty per cent. That means it’ll take us twice as long to reach the target.’

  Caine waited patiently for him to finish, a halfsmile playing on his lips. ‘You’re quite correct, Sarn’t Copeland,’ he agreed, ‘but you kicked in early. I was going to say that, once in the hills, we RV with a donkey caravan led by friendly Senussi. The donkeys will carry the heavy stuff for us: that should speed up our progress.’

  Copeland didn’t look as impressed as Caine had hoped. ‘You sure you can trust those Arabs?’ he enquired doubtfully. ‘You know as well as I do there’s big trouble in the Jebel right now. Who are these Senussi anyway?’

  Caine smiled. ‘They’re a band led by a certain Sheikh Adud …’

  ‘Adud? Our old mate from Runefish? Father of the beautiful Layla?’

  ‘The very same. It’s true that the Senussi clans on the Jebel are more disturbed than they’ve been in years, thanks to Axis atrocities and a local commander they call the Angel of Death … but more about that later. The crucial point is that we can trust Adud. The RV with the Senussi has been set up by our G(R) agents operating undercover in the hills.’

  Copeland fell silent and Caine dekkoed the other listeners. There were no more objections. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘That’s about all I can tell you for now. On the march in, it’s desert rules, as usual. I want strict discipline. Vehicle crews check petrol, oil, water and tyre pressure at every halt. We’ll be motoring like the clappers on this one, so co-drivers can expect to stag. We’ll be going at night, but we’ll also be using the heat haze to motor during the day. It won’t make us invisible, but it’ll give us a fighting chance. Keep petrol tanks topped up. If any wagon runs out of juice and holds us up, I’ll flay the culprit alive. Observers, I want all mounted guns buffed every chance we get, and the quilts kept on until action stations. When we halt in daylight, scrimming up takes precedence over anything else. Corporal Dumper … you double as i/c MT maintenance and quartermaster.’

  ‘Very good, skipper.’

  ‘Corporal Trubman, you’re i/c signals. You’ve got a No. 19 set inbuilt on one of the lorries and a separate No. 11 to take into the hills. I want comms with HQ established at my discretion, but I don’t want you to use standard W/T procedure. Is there any alternative?’

  Trubman squinched a chubby cheek between finger and thumb. ‘The LRDG use French commercial procedure to baffle the Jerry “Y” Service,’ he pouted. ‘I can do the same.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Caine beamed. ‘Corporal Pickney, I want at least one stretcher and a first-aid kit in every wagon, and the main stock in one of the jeeps for quick access.’

  ‘Right you are, skipper,’ Pickney said, squinting, his face like a cracked clay plate. ‘We’re going to need Mepacrine. That’s a malarial area, and we don’t want to risk going down with fever.’

  ‘Good point. I’ll leave it to you to draw enough Mepacrine for the section from RAMC stores.’

  ‘What’s the drill regardin’ badly wounded, skipper?’ Wallace asked.

  ‘The drill is to abandon the wounded,’ Caine said. He paused for a moment, reviewing the faces. ‘I can tell you now, though, that while I’m still standing, anyone who’s hit, no matter how badly, will be brought back if it’s humanly possible.’

  He glanced at Stirling hastily, as if expecting a reprimand, but the CO stared back at him pokerfaced. ‘All right,’ he continued. ‘Now, if your wagon hits a stick, only the immediate crew gets involved in the extraction, unless otherwise ordered. Action on being spotted by a shuftiwallah: freeze till the bugger’s gone, then run like hell.’

  ‘What about action on strafing or bomb attack?’ the cowboy enquired.

  ‘We’ve got our usual four choices: freeze, run for cover, disperse or shoot back. This op is covert, but still, nine times out of ten, our best response will be to let them have it. If we get jumped on the move, gunners open up immediately. Don’t aim at the kite: put up a field of fire in her line of dive …’

  ‘But skipper,’ Copeland objected, scratching at his stubble of hair again. ‘Some kites – like Macchis or Messerschmitt 109Fs – fly too fast for a field of fire to be effective …’

  ‘Granted, it doesn’t always work. It does work sometimes, though. It’s the best chance we’ve got.’

  ‘What about enemy forces, sir?’ Netanya asked, his mild but distinct German accent sounding strangely incongruous in a meeting of Allied special service troops. ‘Apart from the aircraft, I mean.’

  ‘All right, good question. Off the beaten track, the desert’s likely to be quiet. If we do run into an Axis patrol, we’ll play it by ear. If we decide to play hard, we wipe them out, no prisoners. In the Jebel, our main threat is from Leichte 999 Afrika Division, a mob of criminals scraped up from Kraut jails commanded by regular officers and NCOs. This is a tough outfit. Don’t be under any illusions, lads, we’re up against it. We’re a single section against the whole weight of the Panzer Group, the Luftwaffe, and the Regia Aeronautica. We’re superbly trained and we pack a big punch, but once we’ve done the job, getting back home is going to be dicey …’

  He paused and gazed around. ‘All right. As I said, you’ll be briefed on the target on the way. If there are no more questions, Colonel Stirling wants a word.’

  Stirling stood up stiffly, removing his unlit pipe from his mouth. ‘Thanks, Lieutenant Caine,’ he said. ‘To say there’s a lot riding on Sandhog is an understatement, lads. Some deskwallahs at GHQ are saying the SAS regiment isn’t worth its salt. True, we’ve had a few setbacks in recent months, but we know we’re the best, and this time we’re going to prove it. The whole future of the war could rest on what you eleven lads do in the next few days. You aren’t allowed to fail this one. The time has come for death or glory, gentlemen: I want you to go in there and show the world, once and for all, that who dares wins.’

  There were cheers, wolfwhistles, handclaps from the crew, broken only by the dulcet tones of Sam Dumper. ‘There ain’t eleven of us, though, Colonel,’ he piped up. ‘Whichever way yer slice it, I still make only ten.’

  ‘He’s right, sir,’ Copeland said. ‘We’re a man short.’

  Stirling eyed Caine in consternation. ‘Sorry, Tom,’ he said. ‘He should have been here. I completely forgot.’

  ‘Who, sir?’

  ‘Your eleventh man. Just hold on a moment, would you?’

  The colonel marched briskly out of the tent: he was back within two minutes, accompanied by another officer. With a sinking heart, Caine recognized the dazzling Hollywood smile of Lieutenant the Honorable Bertram Audley.

  ‘This is your missing man,’ Stirling announced. ‘Lieutenant Audley has been busy on other matters, but he’s now free. Tom, he’s going to be your second-in-command on this operation.’

  Caine felt himself flush. Sandhog might well be the most dangerous, difficult and important mission of his career, and Audley was the last man he wanted to share it with. The greenest ‘B’ Squadron recruit would have been better.

  ‘With all due respect, sir,’ he said, ‘I generally appoint my own 2 i/c. Sergeant Copeland and I have worked together on previous missions, and we know each other’s ways. I had assumed that Copeland would be …’

  ‘Not at all,’ Stirling insisted. ‘Lieutenant Audley won the MC for bravery …’

  ‘Sergeant Copeland won the MM, sir –’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know, but we can hardly place the son of a marquis, a former Guards officer, winner of
the MC, under a sergeant, can we? No matter how good an NCO he may be. No, Lieutenant Audley will be very handy, you’ll see.’

  Caine hesitated. He was tempted to say that if Audley was so ‘handy’, why not let him run the whole damn shebang? He, Caine, had more important things to do than kamikaze stunts: like finding Betty Nolan, for example. He was about to dig his heels in when he caught an almost imperceptible headshake from Copeland. He knew what it meant. He could walk out, but he’d already seen where that path ended – in jankers, at the mercy of shitheads like Sears-Beach. Caine fought back acid words and exhaled slowly. So much, he thought, for the ‘equality between officers and men’ that Stirling had spouted: another fine SAS principle bit the dust.

  ‘Rightoh, sir,’ he said.

  Stirling beamed. Audley treated Caine to his best Gibbs dentifrice smile.

  As the men dispersed, heading for the tent flap, big Wallace caught up with Caine. ‘I’m warnin’ you now, skipper,’ he growled. ‘If Audley and me goes up the Blue together, only one of us is comin’ back alive.’

  14

  On the third morning out of Kabrit, Caine’s column traversed a sandsheet as smooth as bleached bone where dust devils whirled in macabre dance and eyes blinked at them out of the nothingness like polished stones. The four wagons formed and broke, etching pale tramlines across the surface, layering the air behind them with long sequences of powdered dust. The men fell into a holy silence, as if they were in a vast, bluedomed cathedral, scanning the way ahead through their goggles, searching for some blemish on the landscape, some flaw in the desert’s mindnumbing spell. The soundless vacancy of these great reaches awed them. Fred Wallace tried to challenge the silence by belting out popular songs, but even his strong voice soon faltered, crushed by the ponderous weight of the void. In all of that great emptiness, they were the only things moving, yet Caine often had the sensation that they too were standing still.

  Time seemed frozen. He would glance at his watch, note the hour, then look at it again five hours later to find that only ten minutes had gone by. He knew that if he let himself turn inwards, he could soar off on a beam of light for aeons, coming back to earth with a bump to find that five hours really had passed in what seemed like ten minutes. He could not allow himself such absences, though, first because, when he let his mind drift, it always spun towards images of Betty Nolan, like a magnetic needle seeking north; second because, as navigator, he had to keep his eyes fixed on the sun compass, logging every small deviation with meticulous care.