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

by Michael Asher

  ‘Jesus wept,’ Cope said.

  They lurched out retching, forcing themselves not to throw up. ‘Looks like the Angel of Death came to call,’ Caine croaked. Some of the other huts had been burned to the ground, but they didn’t look any further. They turned their backs on the village, scrambled back down into the wadi, putting up a pair of pied crows from an acacia tree: the birds fluttered away cawing, then followed the patrol for a while in fits and starts.

  They crested a rise and saw the Shakir cliffs before them, a sheer rock wall jutting out of black talus, winding away on both sides as far as the eye could see. From back at the leaguer the rock had looked smooth as a planed board, but now they were closer Caine saw that the surface was pitted and scored, whittled into butts and chimneys, flying pedestals, soaring buttresses like watchtowers, fluted columns like great lopsided organpipes.

  They halted on the edge of the scree at the base of the cliffs, lowering their manpacks into the sand, reaching for cigarettes and waterbottles. They took only enough liquid to wet blistered lips and sandblasted tongues: few had as much as a third of a bottle left, and the prospect of a resupply that day looked grim. They’d been resting only a minute when they heard a low thump from the direction of their final leaguer, a barely audible hammerblow heard from far off. They exchanged glances, knowing that Dumper had just played his last card. ‘Poor bugger,’ Wallace said. Caine felt a terrible nausea welling up in his stomach: he had wondered how long the corporal would hold out. It was three and a half hours since they’d left their last position, so now he knew. Now he was wondering how quickly the enemy would be on their trail.

  Caine fought back the sick, heavy feeling. He smoked, watched the cigarette burn between his fingers, telling himself that when it had burned down to the butt, he must be on his feet again. He gave himself up to a few moments’ reflection. The night and the storm had seemed eternal, but since they’d come out of it, events had moved at lightning pace. The enemy had been waiting for them, there could be no doubt of that. The Stukas had fallen on them only minutes after their halt. When they’d bumped the Axis patrol two days back, his intuition told him they’d been expected. The dying Roland had suspected it, too; the German prisoner had confirmed that his unit had been looking for someone. This second attack, though, scotched all claims of coincidence. The Axis knew they were coming, knew about their landfall. There could be a leak at GHQ, of course, but as far as Caine knew, the details of his march in had been confined to Stirling, Mayne and his own team. If there was a stoolie, it could only be within the SAS.

  Gibson and Rossi were already on the scree, laying out the grappling gun, coils of rope, hammer and pitons for the climb. Caine ground out his cigarette, collected the butt, stood up. He posted Larousse and Wallace out, with Brens, as pickets, to watch for anyone coming up the trail behind them, and told the boys to make a dump of their manpacks: the gear would be hoisted up the cliff on a separate rope. Caine watched the cowboy tie the end of a ropecoil round Rossi’s waist, while the Swiss jammed a hammer into his belt and crammed an ammo pouch with pitons: he was wearing KD shirt and shorts, fingerless woollen gloves, and had wound strips of scrim-hessian around his knees. He had removed his sandals and wore only socks on his feet. ‘Rock’s gonna be damn’ hot,’ the cowboy told Caine. ‘It’d be better to wait till after dark. In any case, they’ll see us from miles away climbin’ the face.’

  Caine shook his head. ‘Can’t be helped,’ he said. ‘Time is the essence.’ He paused, watching Rossi sullenly slinging his Garand rifle across his back. ‘How do you rate it, anyway?’

  The Swiss shrugged, narrowed his eyes, not looking at Caine but at the cliffs. ‘I’ve seen worse,’ he said.

  ‘We’ll have you up,’ the cowboy said. ‘No problem.’

  Caine’s gaze lingered on Rossi’s feet with their thin covering of army-issue socks. ‘You going to be all right without boots?’ he enquired.

  Rossi’s gunblack eyes flickered. ‘Boots ain’t much good for cliff-scalin’,’ the cowboy said. ‘Not if you’re leadin’, that is. You need your toes to work into cracks, mebbe get a hold.’

  Caine nodded, watched the cowboy fit the grappling gun into a bony shoulder, watched the bleached-out oldman’s eyes narrow as they fixed on a rock claw extending from the top of the cliff. The cowboy aimed the rocketgun up almost vertically and squeezed the firing mechanism. The gun cracked: the grapple sleared upwards across the rockface with the rope snaking behind it. It struck the rock with a metallic bong and dropped back like a windless kite, hitting the earth near Gibson’s feet. ‘Shit,’ the cowboy said.

  He reloaded the grapple, picked out a different target: two overlapping fingers of rock standing out along the clifftop in a ‘V’ shape, like an obscene gesture. He aimed. He fired. The grapple skittered, the rope undulated: the grapple struck the fingers a glancing blow and fell back again. The cowboy picked up the grapple and swore: ‘Bloody useless piece o’ crap.’

  He fired a third time, and the lads watched with bated breath as the grapple whooshed up the face, tinkled against stone. It stuck: the cowboy jerked the rope hard, but it didn’t budge. He swung on the rope: it stayed put. He and Rossi swung on it together: it remained in place. The cowboy beamed, crinkle-eyed. ‘That should do it,’ he said.

  Rossi slank lowshouldered to the place where the rope dangled: he stood at the base for a long moment, contemplating the stone: almost, Caine thought, as if he were talking to it. Then he grasped the rope a full arm’s length above his head, pulled himself up until it was tucked under his elbows and trapped the trailing rope between his sockclad feet. He began to climb, steadily, methodically, using the rope at his feet for purchase, with the second rope hanging from his body like a tail. He reached up, pulled down, hoisted his legs, grasped the rope between his feet, extended his arms, his body undulating wormlike, moving with such precision, grace and poise that he might have had sticky pads on his limbs. The lads watched him, openmouthed – all but Trubman were climbers of some standard, but Rossi seemed to work up the rockface without effort, like a human lizard.

  Within minutes, his lean body was hanging on the rope two hundred feet above them: he was still going, but slower now, pausing between spasms of movement, taking short rests between every three or four pulls: Caine could imagine the backbreaking strain, the pressure on his arms and legs, increasing slowly as he ascended, the agony of his cracking, exhausted muscles. It took him fifteen minutes to cover the next hundred feet, and by the time he’d done it he was slowing visibly, resting between each pull. The final stretch must have been excruciating, Caine thought: Rossi did it by sheer willpower, moving more and more slowly until he came to a halt below the overhanging fingers, four hundred feet above Caine’s head.

  Caine watched as, clinging to the rope onehanded, Rossi took a piton from his pouch and worked it carefully into a crack that Caine couldn’t see: he eased the hammer from his belt and gave the piton a few judicious taps then, using it as a foothold, balancing like a cat, he hammered a second piton in at arm’s length. He unfastened the rope at his waist, tied a slipknot with one hand and looped it over the spike. Still balancing on the first piton, he began to hoist his body up, and at that instant the spike at his feet gave way: Caine gasped as Rossi lost purchase and dropped like a stone.

  Caine was just thinking that the Swiss would plummet to his death when Rossi grabbed the grapplerope and swung free, all his weight on his arms, his legs kicking. The cowboy watched stonefaced. The piton bounced down the cliff-face, striking the rock with a clang, falling to earth only yards away. By that time, Rossi had raised himself up to the second spike and, using it as a toehold, hauled his slim body in among the jagged rocks. Caine saw the dark head peering down at them, saw Rossi give thumbs up.

  The lads cheered, clapped, muttered words of awe. A moment later, Rossi had fixed the grappling rope more securely and belayed the second line. The cowboy strapped the end of a third coil of rope to his back, tied the securing line aro
und his waist and started to climb. He made fast progress, safe in the knowledge that if he slipped he would be saved by the secure line. Once he’d joined Rossi on the clifftop, he let the third line down for the rucksacks, in a place about ten yards along the cliff. While Caine took his turn on the face, Copeland, Netanya, Trubman and Pickney humped the heavy rucksacks over to the cliff base, where Audley took charge of tying them to the hoisting rope.

  By the time Caine reached the top he was shattered, his muscles screaming, his knifewound itching, his throat on fire with thirst: even wearing the securing rope, the climb had been a nightmare. He sat down for a few moments’ rest, uncorked his waterbottle: the water was almost gone. He took a gulp, swilled it round his mouth, spat it back. That was the way he’d been trained in the SAS, but he didn’t think it achieved much: you couldn’t train the body to do without water, any more than you could train it to do without air. If you didn’t have it, you were dead.

  He watched Rossi gripping the secure rope, helping to ease up the next climber, Copeland, while the cowboy hauled in the manpacks one by one. The day was already beginning to cool, the sun drooping down into the west through galleries of dustflocced cloud. They were on a table of cobbled talus sown with goatgrass like thinning hair, tilting down to a drywash invisible behind a screen of Aleppo pine, flat-topped acacia, waxleafed Sodom’s Apple, cactus spatulas of prickly pear. Beyond the wadi, a ragglestone escarpment swelled steeply, dressed in panic grass and stunted thorn.

  Glassing the desert to the south with his binos, Caine could still see feathers of smoke rising beyond the sandstone warren they’d tramped through that morning: the last souvenirs of Dumper’s stand. A little nearer, within the maze, he made out a plume of ashcoloured dust. He bit his lip, focused in on the dustcloud: it was impossible to be certain, but he’d have bet money it was the Boche, following their tracks. He stood up and pointed it out to Gibson and Rossi. ‘Looks like we’ve got company,’ he said.

  The Reapers glanced sliteyed in that direction without pausing from their work. ‘They won’t get far in their wagons,’ the cowboy grunted. ‘They’ll have to do it on foot. That’ll take them at least a couple of hours.’

  ‘… And if we’re lucky,’ growled Rossi, blackbore eyes sparking up, ‘they’ll find a few of our little surprises on the way.’

  Caine put away his binos and went to help Gibson dredging up the manpacks. A few moments later Harry Copeland wormed his lanky body over the lip of the rock. With more hands helping, the work shifted pace. Netanya followed Copeland, then Pickney. Four men together heaved the sacklike lump of Trubman up the rockface: the signaller was sweating, panting and trembling when they finally dragged him over the edge. He collapsed in a sweaty heap, blinking at them blindly like a mole, his lips and tongue mucus-smeared from thirst. ‘Tell Gibbo to be careful with the next manpack,’ he croaked. ‘It’s got the No. 11 set in it.’

  At almost the same moment, Gibson bawled, ‘Oh shit.’ Caine ramped over to him, found him peering over the cliff-face with a limp rope in his hands. Caine took a shufti over the gorge: far below him, the figures of Audley, Larousse and Wallace were gathered round the pancaked rucksack that had just come loose and tumbled down two hundred feet. Big Wallace squinted skyward, saw Caine looking, gave him thumbs down. ‘Christ,’ Caine swore, ‘we’ve lost the wireless. That means no comms.’

  Trubman tromped up behind them, wheezing, his moleface contorted with uncharacteristic rage. ‘That turd Audley,’ he grated, his voice quaking. ‘I told him to be careful tying up that manpack. The bloody idiot’s gone and lost it. Now what the heck am I going to do?’

  ‘Use signal flags?’ the cowboy suggested with a bloodless smile. ‘Or we can find us some pigeons, mebbe –’

  He was cut short by a distant thud from somewhere to the south. Caine roved the area with his glasses but couldn’t see anything. ‘Sounds like the Hun came across one of our offerings,’ the cowboy said.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Caine. ‘That means they’re on the way. Let’s get the last three lads up pronto: we’ll set up a bivvy down there in the trees.’

  When Audley came up he was nearly pushed back over by a fuming Trubman, who had already examined the smashed wireless and found it beyond repair. Caine had never seen the signaller so mad. ‘It was just bad luck,’ Audley protested, whitefaced. ‘I tied your manpack with what I thought was extreme care. I tugged on the rope, went for a slash: next thing I knew it came crashing down.’

  ‘Yeah, well, the result of your extreme care is that we’re out of comms with base,’ Caine retorted. ‘In other words, we’re on our own.’

  Audley dabbed sweat off his face with his silk scarf, his eyes indignant. ‘That caveman Wallace tried to assault me,’ he said. ‘It’s a good thing Corporal Larousse was there.’

  Caine made no comment. He turned his back on Audley to help haul up Larousse and Wallace: they came up at the same time, Wallace on the manpack line. By then, half the section under Copeland had already moved their kit down to the wadi to set up a perimeter in the cover of the bush.

  When Caine led the rest of the men towards the drywash thirty minutes later, the sun was ditching into a long red sunset, framing irongrey dustclouds with rims of fire. The stony surface turned to beaten pewter: shadows were draped in funereal curtains from the darkling trees. Caine felt drained: his mouth and throat lyeburned, his lips festering with thirst. They’d had nothing to eat and little to drink since Wallace’s desert special had pepped them up that morning. The Benzedrine down was kicking in again: they’d been up for most of thirty-six hours without a break. Yet Caine’s senses hadn’t deserted him. Just before breaking into the trees, he picked up low voices speaking a foreign tongue. He made a signal: the others froze, cocked their ears. Caine identified the voice of Manny Netanya, speaking to someone else in Arabic. He crouched in shadow: Wallace pressed close to him. ‘Must be the Senussi,’ he guttered.

  ‘This isn’t the RV, though.’

  Caine motioned the others to stay put: he and Wallace crept silently forward. They had moved ten yards through the trees when a host of spectral white figures slid out of the shadows without a whisper. They wore flowing shirts, cloaks and headcloths and carried ancient rifles: their faces were hooded masks of inkwashed black. There were at least twenty of them, and they had Caine and Wallace covered.

  26

  The standoff was broken by Netanya, who slipped in among the white spectres crowing, ‘Don’t shoot,’ snapping out orders in Arabic. Caine saw the interpreter’s skeletal face banded in shadow, his eyes deepsocketed in the dying light. ‘These are our Senussi,’ Netanya told him. ‘They’ve been sent to meet us.’

  He spoke more words in Arabic, and the tribesmen relaxed, put up their weapons. Caine called Gibson, Rossi and Larousse, who squirmed warily in through the scrub. Netanya introduced Caine to a short, squat, powerful Arab with a face like scored granite, eaglebeak nose, foxy eyes and bramblebush beard carrying an antique rifle half as tall as himself in hands as broad and hard as gauntlets. The Arab’s name was Sheikh Sidi Mohammad, Netanya said.

  They dumped their manpacks on the edge of the drywash, squatted down beyond the span of the tangled acacia woods: the light faded out, leaving them in bluelamped night. The Senussi settled two hundred yards down the wadi bed, sitting very straight and dignified – small, neatbodied, ageless men in threadbare robes and tightbound turbans, smelling of goat-grease and woodsmoke. Their rifles were tricked out with strips of goatskin and plaited woollen tassels: they carried curveheaded throwing clubs carved from acacia wood and wore daggers on rawhide belts, and bandoliers of bullets across their chests. They sat very close together in a half-circle, watchful and silent, their weapons across their knees, smoking powdered tobacco from brass cartridge cases. Sidi Mohammad knelt among the SAS men, passed round a sweating goatskin: Caine tasted mud and tar and goatpiss in the water when he drank.

  He gave Sidi Mohammad a cigarette: the Arab smoked holding it upturned between finger
and thumb with a curiously incongruous elegance. Caine watched him. ‘Where’s Sheikh Adud?’ he enquired.

  Sidi Mohammad spoke in bursts, waving the cigarette. ‘He sends his greetings,’ Netanya translated. ‘Sidi Mohammad has come to guide us to his camp.’

  Caine considered the words. ‘The plan was to meet Adud at the RV,’ he said. ‘That must be six miles further on. Why has there been a change of plan?’

  Sidi Mohammad launched into what sounded like a long explanation, jackal eyes riveted on Caine’s face. ‘They thought you might have trouble from the Boche,’ Netanya said. ‘He reckons it’s not safe here: he says we should get moving right away. They’ll escort us to Adud tonight.’

  Caine shook his head. ‘We’re not going any further: we’re tired and we need rest. Even if those Huns make the cliff, which I doubt, they won’t be able to climb it. Unless they’re trained mountain troops and have specialist gear with them, they won’t even manage it in daylight. I reckon we’re pretty safe here for a while.’ He paused. ‘Of course, he may be aware of other Axis forces in the area: I’d like to know about that Angel of Death chap and what’s been happening here lately.’