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

by Michael Asher

  Wallace dumped his mug with a clatter, slung his Bren across his broad, beefy shoulder. ‘I’m going to relieve Manny,’ he muttered. With a last smouldering glance at Copeland, he strode off into the dark.

  As the boys guffawed, Caine closed his mind to the bickering, sipped his tea gratefully. It could do with a dash of Woods rocketfuel, he thought, but he was too tired to go and get the flagon. He took a drag of his Camel and gazed up at the stars – they were slightly blurred, which told him there were dustclouds in the air, but he could still make out some familiar constellations – the Plough, the Pleiades, Orion. The weariness of the day hit him like a bolt.

  Entering the sandsea hadn’t been the end of their toil. In fact, they’d penetrated another fifteen miles before sunset, crossing half a dozen sets of dunes. Caine had led the convoy back and forth along the duneskirts, scanning the slipslopes until he found an opening – there was always some way through, no matter how slender, although they’d hit sticks a couple of times, in one of which Veronica’s exhaust system had been damaged. As the shadows had lengthened, it had become easier to spot gaps, clefts and channels in the sand, but it wasn’t until after the sun had melted into a peach and cream mist over the edges of the sandsea that Caine had finally been satisfied the Hun weren’t on their trail.

  A cold wind whipped across the depression. A sudden ghostly bang from the body of the jeep Doris made them all jump – Rossi spilled his tea and swore in Italian. Dumper howled with laughter. ‘Metal contraction,’ he announced gleefully. ‘Happens when the air cools very fast, like tonight.’

  The shock seemed to have reminded everyone that there were jobs to be done. Dumper went off to get his tools to repair Veronica’s exhaust, Copeland asked the cowboy to bring a 10lb tin of butter from Glenda. ‘Gazelle meat’s tasty,’ he told him, ‘but there’s no fat on it – not an ounce.’

  He looked round for a knife sharp enough to skin the animal. ‘Hey, Ricardo,’ he said, remembering Rossi’s razor-sharp knife, ‘can I borrow your blade?’

  Rossi groped in his belt, then stood up, looking annoyed. ‘It’s not here,’ he grumbled. ‘Has anyone seen it?’

  ‘You probably dropped it in the contact,’ Caine suggested.

  ‘No, I’ve had it since then. What happened to it?’

  He stalked off, mumbling to himself, scouring the ground around the leaguer. Gibson went to get the butter. Copeland sorted through the cooking gear and came up with a carving knife and a machete. Caine glanced at his watch and realized it was almost time for the Greenwich time signal: he had to take a starshot to fix their position. ‘By the way,’ he told Copeland as he got up, ‘you need to get that graze looked at.’

  Cope shrugged. Caine unwrapped a theodolite and lugged it over to Veronica, where Dumper already had his head under the rear end. Trubman was resting his bulk against the W/T stall, tuning into the BBC. ‘Ready for Greenwich, mate?’ Caine enquired.

  Caine spread the legs of the theodolite while the signaller slipped out a Zenith Chronometre stopwatch. They waited. Suddenly, the Greenwich time signal squibbed out across the airwaves, an alien communiqué from a distant world. Trubman counted off the pips, stopped the watch on the sixth. He gave Caine a thumbs up. Caine took the starshot, matched it against RAF astronomical charts for the day’s date, then compared it with the estimate of their position he’d calculated from dead reckoning. They were within half a mile of the point he’d figured they were at – not as accurate as it might have been, but not bad considering they were in the middle of a sandsea.

  Caine followed the aroma of roasting meat back to Doris, found Copeland already basting gazelle joints on a steel sandtray inserted in a pit he’d doused with petrol. Netanya and the German prisoner were standing around drinking tea while Larousse hovered silently in the background with his Garand slung, a mug in his hand and a cigarette in his mouth.

  Caine dumped the theodolite back in the jeep. ‘Where’s everybody else?’ he asked.

  ‘Wallace is on stag,’ Copeland said. ‘Dumper and Trubman are still busy. Gibson and Rossi went to see the quack. Don’t know where Audley is – probably went for a crap.’

  ‘What about your wound?’

  ‘I’m going to see Maurice – soon as the meat’s done.’

  Caine glanced at the German, who was clad in battledress and a greatcoat Pickney had lent him. He was a man in his early twenties: a long face, high cheekbones, wiry blond hair almost like Copeland’s, heavylidded eyes that were pools of hard steel in the moonlight. He didn’t look at Caine but stared sullenly into the middle distance, as if trying to pretend he wasn’t there.

  ‘Have you talked to him?’ Caine asked Netanya.

  The Palestinian nodded, his face eerily skeletal in the wan light. ‘Got his name, rank, number and date of birth. He’s Corporal Hans Leiter, 90th Light Division.’

  ‘So the column that attacked us was 90th Light?’ Caine said, looking at the German.

  ‘Yes,’ Netanya answered for him. ‘I already asked that.’

  ‘I want to know why they’re here,’ Caine told him. ‘I mean, what’s a small patrol like that doing behind our lines?’

  The interpreter repeated the question to the prisoner, but it evoked only a shake of the head and downcast eyes.

  ‘All right,’ Caine sighed. He took a step towards the corporal, planting himself directly in front of him, fixing him with a stone-eyed stare. ‘Tell him this. He can either explain why his unit is here and get handed over as a POW to our MPs on the Alamein line, or …’ He drew his Browning pistol with breathtaking speed, snapping the slide back with such force that the prisoner jumped. He placed the muzzle of the pistol to the German’s forehead. ‘… he can leave his bleached bones here for the vultures to pick …’

  The corporal squinted sourly at Caine’s massive, topheavy torso, hardmetal eyes meeting the lieutenant’s unyielding, sandhoned gaze. He began to speak slowly to Netanya, thrusting his hands deep into the pockets of his greatcoat. The Palestinian stopped him after a moment and turned to Caine. ‘Seems his column’s under special orders to intercept an enemy group headed west …’

  Caine’s eyes widened. He eased the pistol away from the German’s head. ‘How were they to recognize this column?’ he asked Netanya.

  The interpreter repeated the question. The corporal listened, nodding, his hands still in his greatcoat. He opened his mouth as if to answer, but in that instant jerked his right hand out of the pocket in a movement so fast Caine was taken by surprise. Bright steel flashed: the Jerry stabbed viciously at Caine’s neck. Caine just had time to bring his arm up in a defensive position before the sharp stiletto stuck through the sleeve of his duffel coat, incised flesh, jarred bone. Caine rocked back in shock: a rifle cracked with an earbursting bumph, bumph, bumph, bumph. Rounds bit flesh with the sound of splintering wood: Caine leapt aside, his eyes wide with horror. ‘No. No. No,’ he shrieked. It was too late. Bumph, bumph, bumph, bumph. The corporal shot forwards, blood squirting from slugs that had demolished his temple and stoved in his chest. He pirouetted gracefully with his arms raised, long gouts of gore spritzing from his thighs and neck. He tottered for a moment, his hands describing ineffectual infinity symbols, then his body collapsed heavily into the sand.

  He was slumped on the desert floor oozing blood, the knife still in his hand. ‘Shit. Shit. Shit,’ Caine howled, nursing his injured right arm with his left hand. The cut was numb, but the sleeve of his coat was soaked in gore. His head and chest were wet with blood that wasn’t his own. He wiped his eyes with his good hand and glared hotly at Larousse, whose ungainly frame was still hunched over his smoking Garand, inkwashed eyes fixed on the dead Jerry as if he thought the corpse might come to life. Harry Copeland stood transfixed: he held his Browning pistol in a ready stance, but it was clear that he hadn’t fired. All eight shots had come from Larousse, and it hit Caine that the Canuck had fired a full clip. ‘What the hell … ?’ he spat.

  Larousse’s eyes were wet sapphir
es in the moonlight. His face didn’t relax. He lowered the rifle, groped calmly in his ammo pouch, popped a fresh clip, worked the chamber. ‘He tried to kill you, skipper,’ he growled.

  Speechless, Caine turned back and saw Copeland squatting over the Jerry’s body, his fingers working rapidly at the bloody neck. Caine knelt down beside him. The salty ground was slick with blood. ‘He’s dead,’ Cope said.

  Caine swore venomously. Gravel scrunched: he looked up to see the other lads running in from all directions, weapons at the ready.

  ‘What the devil is going on?’ Audley demanded.

  Wallace peered at Caine, his dark face like tarpaper. ‘You all right, Tom?’

  Pickney gave the dead Hun the once-over, then turned to Caine, who was still nursing his wound. The orderly cut away his sleeves with scissors and slapped a field dressing on the bloody incision. ‘It’s deep but clean,’ he told Caine. ‘You’ll need stitches.’

  Copeland, still kneeling by the corpse, prised the knife out of stiff fingers, holding it up in the moonlight. It was a dagger similar to a Sykes-Fairbairn commando knife but with a serrated edge on one side. ‘Where did he get this?’ he demanded.

  ‘It’s mine,’ Rossi cried suddenly, snatching the dagger out of Cope’s hand and examining it. ‘It’s my Swiss Home Guard knife.’

  ‘Question is,’ Copeland said, standing up, ‘how did it get into the prisoner’s possession?’ Caine saw that his mate was eyeing Rossi accusingly, wearing his familiar schoolmaster expression, as if he’d just pulled up a student for some serious breach of the school rules. Cope was still grasping his Browning, and though it wasn’t pointing directly at the Swiss, his stance had a certain menace to it. ‘You know, Ricardo,’ he said, ‘I think you’ve got some explaining to do.’

  The men rolled up in their sleeping bags slugeyed that night. Much to Wallace’s glee, the gazelle meat had turned out to be inedible. ‘You berk,’ he howled at Copeland. ‘You shot a female in kindle. Tainted meat. Bloody good shootin’, Sergeant.’

  Cope opened his mouth to say something, but Dumper cut him off. ‘Reminds me of when I was attached to 7th Armoured,’ he drawled, his eyes twinkling in the starlight. ‘The food were so stinkin’ rotten, someone called the cook a bastard, see. Well, cookie complained to the RSM, didn’t ’e, and five minutes later the sarn’t major comes stompin’ into the mess wiv ’im, lookin’ daggers like he’s gonna ’av someone ’anged by the neck. “Now what I want to know,” ’e sez, “is ’oo called this bastard a cook.” ’

  The lads exploded with mirth, but Cope glowered, too tired to rise to the taunt. While the others had been burying Leiter, he and Caine had questioned Rossi on how the prisoner had managed to get his knife. Rossi simply didn’t know, unless the Kraut had picked it up somehow. After all, he’d had nothing to do with the prisoner all day – Leiter had been tied up in Dorothy with Audley and Larousse; Larousse was the one who’d cuffed him in Glenda; and it was Wallace who’d released him. Rossi hadn’t even gone to see Pickney until after he’d finished stitching up the Jerry. In the end, the cowboy had got fed up with them ‘picking on his buddy’, as he put it, and told them to lay off.

  Caine agreed. Pickney had sutured the stabwound in his arm, which hadn’t severed any artery but was awkward and painful. In any case, what concerned him as much as how the prisoner had got hold of the knife was why he’d attacked him when he was so obviously being watched. How could he have imagined he’d get away with it? Maybe he didn’t care.

  After the rest had retired, Caine lingered on a little longer drinking tea with Wallace and Cope, who were doing their best to ignore each other.

  ‘I thought the lads pulled off two pretty impressive actions today,’ Copeland commented. ‘I mean, crikey, three Kraut wagons taken out, a CR42 … all those casualties.’

  ‘It went our way, yes, but …’

  Cope caught the doubt in his voice and shot a glance towards him, a dim birdlike outline in the fading moonlight. ‘What’s up, Tom? You think we should have done a bunk like Audley said?’

  Caine shook his head. ‘No, it’s not that. I mean, it would have been ideal if we could have withdrawn, yep, but given the conditions, bumping them was all we could do. It’s just that I had this hunch from the start that they’d been sent to look for us. I thought it might be just my imagination until Roland said the same thing, just before he snuffed it: They knew we were here, he said.’

  ‘That bloke was out of his mind with pain, Tom,’ Wallace protested. ‘Both his hands was blown off, his eyes was like cokeholes in snow, and his leg were raw shishkebab. Not surprisin’ he were rambling.’

  Caine shook his head again. ‘Fred,’ he said, ‘the prisoner admitted his column was under special orders to intercept an enemy unit …’

  ‘It could have been any unit, though. Didn’t have to be us.’

  ‘Yeah, and what other unit happened to be taking this route across the Blue? If it was us, they must have known where the RV was, and only a handful of people knew that.’

  ‘You saying there’s a traitor in our own mob?’ Wallace demanded indignantly.

  ‘No, of course I’m not. It’s just that I thought RV locations were supposed to be confined to one or perhaps two people in SAS command, and members of the patrol itself. The idea that it could be any of our boys is ludicrous.’

  ‘I dunno,’ Copeland whispered, gazing guardedly around at the sleeping men. ‘I mean how much do we know about some of these lads, skipper? Rossi reckons he’s Swiss, but he sounds like an Itie to me. What about Netanya? There’s something creepy about that bloke. Is the cowboy really a Yank? A lot of Krauts served in the Legion before the war …’

  Wallace snorted contemptuously. ‘Bollocks,’ he swore softly. ‘Obviously the prisoner weren’t talking about us.’

  ‘We’ll never know now, will we?’ Caine said. ‘Larousse whacked him out.’

  ‘He was just doin’ his best to protect you, Tom,’ Wallace hissed, sitting up. ‘That bloke hates Krauts: they murdered his wife and kids in France, remember? An’ let me tell you, if I’d of been there, I’d of done the same thing.’

  ‘All right, Fred. I know Larousse had my back.’

  Wallace gave a leonine yawn and stood up, shouldering his Bren. ‘Tell you what, Tom,’ he growled. ‘I wouldn’t sweat it over a dead Jerry. Those buggers took Gaston’s wife and kids and my whole family, and the more of ’em we leave for the shite-hawks, the happier I’ll be. Only good Kraut’s a dead ’un, as my old dad used to say.’

  He scooped up his bedroll with a shovel-like hand, and swinging the bundle over his shoulder, stumped up to his sleeping space with ogre’s strides.

  20

  Caine hardly slept. He was haunted by recurrent images of bodies maimed and eyeless, of corpses floating in winecoloured groundswells, of a Jerry stinging his flesh with a blade he’d inexplicably managed to acquire, and being culindered by Gaston Larousse, whose close-set eyes illuminated his memory darkly like the double bores of Wallace’s sawn-off. He was turfed out of a doze by Audley’s yells and jerked his Thompson free from his sleeping bag to find the cowboy lopping off the head of a snake with his Bowie knife. The snake was small – only a foot long – and its scales glinted pinkly in the starlight. ‘Sandviper,’ Gibson grunted, probing the severed head with the talonlike knifepoint. ‘Venom of that thing’ll snuff you in four hours tops. I seen it happen, and it ain’t pretty.’

  Caine was dozing again, dreaming of Betty Nolan’s slender figure floundering in a sinkhole, when someone prodded him. Trubman’s lobster eyes augured him in the darkness, his face unnaturally pale and shiny with sweat. ‘I’ve picked up wireless chatter nearby, skipper,’ he said, voice quavering.

  ‘Ours or theirs?’ Caine asked.

  ‘Ours. Big tank leaguer, about ten miles away I’d reckon. Happen it’s a whole division.’

  ‘All right, Taff, thanks. What’s up with you, anyhow?’

  ‘I reckon it’s sandfly fever. Got bitten a f
ew times at Kabrit.’

  ‘Wake Maurice. He’s got dope.’

  When Caine opened his eyes again, dawn was stealing blandly over the dunes. An ochre fireglow nuzzled the desert’s eastern rim, but there was no warmth in the air. Caine ramped a dune to get the circulation going: the knifewound in his arm throbbed: the sand grains were sharp icicles through his chapplies’ open sides. From the top he saw an ocean of dunes in replicated patterns, the exact same shade and shape as the sandviper’s scales, like an unimaginably vast serpent with its coils wrapped around the world. There was something voluptuously feminine about it too: the way the sandmounts lay, undulant and gently curved like the recumbent bodies of nude women. That brought him back to Nolan, and a vacant feeling in his guts that made him, even now, want to rush back to Cairo to find her. He pinched his sutured wound until it hurt, driving her image from his head. Sandhog was what counted. Fail to knock out the chemical weapons in the Citadel, and Lightfoot might founder. Nolan was beyond his help, and there was no turning back now.

  Shufti-ing the sandsea with his glasses, he saw that the dunes petered out to the west, giving way to a plain of cool pumice, razored down to the bone by aeons of blown sand. The plain was jumbled with scoria, cut by the bleached ribs of ridges, rock faults like the vertebrae of dinosaurs whose flesh had been flayed off by the lashing of wind and rain. Here and there volcanic plugs and stone chimneys pierced the surface like warped monuments or the squinted minarets of ancient mosques. There was a hint of scalloped mauve hills on the skyline, but Caine couldn’t tell if it was an illusion: the horizon in that direction was hazy and indistinct. There was a faint potash smell in the air, and he recalled the occluded stars of the previous night: he was sure a ghibli would hit them sometime that day.

  The wagons emerged from the sandsea an hour later, following the pointing fingers of their own elongated shadows down to a valley floor that was now hammered cobalt blue, along the steepest slipslope they’d yet encountered. Halfway down, Glenda careened into a deep sandtrap that the others had somehow missed: she nosedived forward with an ominous splintering of metal, so hard that Netanya and Pickney were hurled against the aeroscreens and Trubman almost tumbled off the roof. The truck stalled. When Netanya tried to start her up, something deep in her innards whined and clanked like a fractured mangle. Dumper hoved up bowlegged to look. ‘I keeps tellin’ yer, me old china,’ he admonished Netanya, brandishing his maimed hand like a warning signal. ‘When you hits mishmish, you gotta change straight from high to low gear in one move. Ain’t yer got it yet?’