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

by Michael Asher

  Netanya’s translation evoked a taut shake of the head. ‘He says there aren’t any other enemy around,’ the interpreter said. ‘Adud will fill you in on anything you need to know. The important thing is to get moving now.’

  Caine was staring around in the darkness. ‘I don’t see any sign of the donkeys we asked for,’ he said. ‘And if they thought we might have trouble, why didn’t they show themselves before?’

  Netanya repeated Caine’s words. Sidi Mohammed shifted and poked at his beard with stumpled fingers. He watched Caine as he spoke. ‘They weren’t sure who we were at first,’ Netanya said. ‘As for the donkeys, we’ll find them when we reach Adud …’ The Arab rose abruptly, gabbling, waving a calloused hand, standing over Caine on hard bare feet and bandy legs. His face in the moonlight was angry. ‘He says we must get going,’ Netanya translated. ‘He wants us to move right now.’

  Caine didn’t budge. ‘Tell him we’re not going anywhere. We’re bivvying here, and we’ll move before first light.’

  Netanya put this to the sheikh: he scowled, raved, shook his head furiously. Then he slung his rifle and stomped off to join his band.

  Caine shifted to a crouch: he felt weak with hunger. The Senussi lit a woodfire: Caine heard a plaintive bleating and realized they were slaughtering a goat. ‘If it’s so unsafe here, why have they lit a fire?’ Copeland whispered.

  ‘Yeah,’ the cowboy growled, ‘and if they intended to move pronto, why bring a goat?’

  ‘It’s not like the Arabs to be so hasty,’ Pickney commented. ‘Usually they only have two speeds: slow and very slow.’

  Caine scratched his prickly, sunburnt jaw. ‘Anybody salvage rations?’

  They scoured their manpacks and webbing, came up with hardtack biscuits, tins of oatmeal, tea, sugar, condensed milk, a few bars of chocolate. They had no water and no firebox: Netanya had to beg a waterskin from the Senussi while the others collected deadfall along the wadi bank. They lit a fire with handfuls of dry grass, boiled water in mess tins, broke up the chocolate, oatmeal and biscuits to make porridge; the aroma of barbecued meat drifted over to them tantalizingly from the Senussi camp. Wallace distributed all the tea leaves they had into mess tins, sniffed savoury meatfumes, huffed to himself. ‘It just ain’t like them,’ he exploded suddenly. ‘I mean, the Senussi have a thing about guests – they’re well known for it.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t hold with eating poor, defenceless creatures anyway,’ Copeland jibed.

  Wallace licked chapped lips, pinhole eyes lost in the dark furrows of his crumpled face. ‘Goats is domestic animals, you duffer,’ he barked, swirling tea furiously with a twig. ‘That’s different, innit.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. Meat is meat, after all …’

  ‘Yeah, and a meathead’s a meathead, after all, too.’

  ‘Fred’s right, though,’ Pickney cut in quickly. ‘I mean, we prevented most of Adud’s tribe from getting their necks stretched by Brandenburgers only four months ago. Tom saved the life of Adud’s daughter twice, for Christ’s sake. They reckon an Arab never forgets a favour or a wrong, not in forty years, but you notice the sheikh never said a word about it …’

  ‘Mebbe a different crew?’ the cowboy suggested.

  ‘Maybe,’ Pickney said. ‘But the Senussi are clannish as hell. I can’t see Adud trusting anyone outside his own.’

  ‘Yes,’ Audley said, yawning. ‘There’s something in that. If he wanted to change plan, the right thing to do would be to come in person.’

  Caine took a mug of sweet, milky tea from Wallace. ‘Maybe they’re just mean Senussi,’ he said, sipping. ‘Whatever the case, though, I want two men on hour stags through the night. Even when you’re not on stag, keep your footwear on, your weapons on you and your manpack close: Sandhog is finished if those Lewes bombs go walkies. Mr Audley, I’d like you and Corporal Larousse to take first watch. Wake me if anything happens.’

  Audley’s face dropped. ‘Excuse me, Mr Caine,’ he protested, ‘I’m an officer. I shouldn’t even have to do sentry duty, let alone take first stag.’

  The men went quiet: Caine’s teeth glowed, luminous in the moonblue dark.

  ‘You shouldn’t have lost us the wireless, either,’ Taff Trubman cut in suddenly, his voice unfamiliar in its harshness. ‘But you did. Thanks to you, there’s now no way we can call for an aircraft or an LRDG patrol to pull us out.’

  The men didn’t snigger or comment: Audley sat up, fuming. ‘It wasn’t my fault. I told you I took extra care with your manpack.’

  ‘Whatever the case,’ Caine said, waving the argument away. ‘As far as routine duties go, we make no distinction between officers and enlisted men. In this unit, everyone does their bit.’

  The cold had already fallen by the time they hit the sack: from far to the south there came rumbles of dry thunder and occasional lightning flares like the flicker of damaged neontubes. Some of the lads had ditched their sleeping bags back at the leaguer and had to share, huddling close together with a fleabag between two, held lengthways across their upper bodies. Audley and Larousse took an arc each, lay down in the bushes fifty paces on either side of the circle.

  Caine dozed off and woke with a start an hour later. He sat up: an owl hoohooed in the trees nearby and he wondered if it could have been this that woke him. The night was cold and very still, the moon still out, stars spangling the blueness, and there was the momentary scorpion sting of dry lightning far away. His fingers touched the bore of his Tommy-gun in the fleabag: he checked that he had the infrared nightsight near at hand but didn’t touch it. Instead, he peered raweyed into the night. The lads were asleep, breathing rhythmically: they were arranged around him like the spokes of a wheel, with their feet to the hub, touching each other, to ensure that everyone was alerted if they had to stand to.

  He didn’t see Larousse or Audley among them: his watch told him it was past relief time, and he hoped they hadn’t succumbed to exhaustion: if Audley was asleep after losing them the wireless set, he’d roast him alive, he thought. He strained his eyes towards the Senussi camp: the fire had burned down and he saw no movement, nothing at all in the darkness but the dying embers.

  He suppressed a yawn, debated whether to check that the pickets had been relieved. He had almost fallen asleep again when someone shook his shoulder: a cowled shadow leaned across him. He was fully awake instantly, sitting up, grabbing his pistol with one hand and the arm that had shaken him with the other. He felt stringy muscles yield to his grip, brought his weapon to bear. ‘Don’t move,’ he growled, but the shadow was not struggling. Instead, it squatted softly beside him in a rustle of black draperies, a hint of sandalwood, a head masked and hooded. ‘Get up, Caine,’ a female voice sussurated. ‘Quick.’ The hood was abruptly pushed back, and in the ironlight Caine recognized the sloe eyes, high-bridged nose, full lips and gleaming white teeth of Layla, the daughter of Sheikh Adud, the girl whose life he’d saved twice from the Brandenburgers. Her eyes were dark drillbits, her oval face distorted in warning. ‘Treachery, Caine,’ she hissed. ‘Sta attento … beware.’

  For an instant Caine thought he was dreaming. Then he was out of his sleepsack, flat on his stomach grasping his Thompson: he kicked at the others’ feet, making a sign for silence as they opened their eyes and lay to. Layla fell prone so near he could feel the warmth of her body. ‘Sidi Mohammad is bad Senussi,’ she whispered, her mouth almost touching his ear. ‘He work with Al-Malaikat al-Mowt. He bring Tedesci here.’

  Caine sensed the rest of the lads crawling up around him. ‘They come,’ Layla hissed in his ear. Caine strained to make out movement then remembered the nightsight, felt for it in his haversack. He brought out the boxcamera-like apparatus, peered through the eyepiece. The night was momentarily peeled back, the wadi seemed bathed in brimstone. At once he clocked a dozen figures creeping along the wadi side towards them, taut bodies whispering along the rim of the trees. They were Senussi, but Senussi transformed: gone the sweeping robes, the headcloths, the stately
grace. These Arabs went barefoot, naked but for baggy britches, torsos slick with animal fat, hung with magical charms in hide pouches, heads bristling with greased plaitlocks or shaven down to the bone, faces devilish with antimony. Their almond eyes burned catlike, the black pits of their mouths were set in deadly purpose. In their hands they held rifles, clubs and daggers and they moved with an animal stealth, edging highshouldered through the purlieus with the adroitness of hunting leopards. There could be no doubt about their intentions: they would be on his position in no more than five minutes.

  Caine lowered the nightsight, turned his head to the others, nodded towards the nearest bushes, emphasizing the order with a handsign. Leaving their fleabags and manpacks where they were, the SAS men crawled backwards, four or five yards into the thornbush and tamarix. They waited, their weapons ready, their eyes riveted on the sleeping place. Caine scanned the empty sleepsacks and realized with a sudden jolt of horror that not all were unoccupied. Among them, breathing sonorously, was the sacklike mass of Taffy Trubman.

  Caine had no time to alert him. Next moment, the Senussi had moved in on the dummy sleepers, throwingsticks held high, wan starlight mirrored on needle teeth and basilisk eyeballs. Caine sighted up on the first Arab to take a step towards the dark mound that was Trubman. He saw the bludgeon raised, the greased iron. The Thompson clappered: gunshots warped the glassbubble stillness. Garands horned out sharp spears of fire. The night heaved and splintered. The bludgeon vanished, the Arab’s hand wilted as a bullet severed his wristbones, another tore open his bicep like a paper bag; he seesawed, danced: a dozen rounds pincushioned him. His stalklike neck buckled, his jawbone, malleted off by an M2 dumdum, sailed over Trubman’s head in a comet of flesh, toothshards and splintered bone. The Arab coalsacked, fell on top of Trubman, strangled gurgling issuing from his throat, gore hosing from his wounds. Caine saw the signaller sluiced with blood, saw him roll out from under the gouging body, saw him grab his pistol, crawl away. Two more Arabs loomed over him: Caine saw the signaller turn, saw the Browning in his chubby fist, heard the sprutz as he belted a round pointblank into an Arab’s groin. He saw the smokepuff, heard the screech, saw the Arab boogie in pain. Copeland’s rifle shirred like a straplash: a .303 tracer hotwired air, needled Trubman’s second assailant in the arse, spearshotted clean through one cheek and into the other, sledded out in a gout of scorched mincemeat, plunged into his jitterbugging comrade’s thigh with a wet clap. Blood gouted and sprizzled: the two Senussi went bellydown together, drybreasting sand, bleeding from the ears, spewing gore, bleating and praying. The other Arabs, frozen in the act of clubbing empty bedrolls, roared in confusion, joggling madly, jumping like netted fish, trying to dodge bullets, trying to see where the shots were coming from. A couple fell flat on their faces: Caine couldn’t tell if they were hit. Some cursed in Arabic, hurled daggers and throwingsticks blindly, loosed off shots from their ancient rifles: most ran for it, leaping and bounding like spooked antelopes into the lampblack night.

  The SAS men fired after them but quickly stopped: their first concern was for the Lewes bombs, and they turned back to survey their sleeping place, now lying under a soapsud warp of smoke and dust. Taffy Trubman stood up shakily, wiping gore out of his eyes, covering the dead and dying Arabs with his pistol.

  Caine moved cautiously out of the trees towards him. Of the three Senussi who’d gone for the signaller, one lay still in gorewaxed sand: the two others rolled and thrashed, choking, cursing, trying to get up. Caine drew his bayonet and stepped towards the first: before he could move, Rossi and Gibson stalked in, the knives in their hands going slick as they sawed at the necks of the two dying Senussi. Warm blood slathered their faces: the Arabs gargled, went rigid, but the Reapers didn’t cease from their butchery until they’d hacked right through the neck vertebrae, cut both heads clean off. They looked, Caine thought, as if they’d done it before. They held up their trophies by the hair, scattering gore droplets as if in benediction, their faces smeared with Rorschach bloodspots like warpaint.

  Caine stifled a protest, turned away in disgust, saw Trubman bend over and throw up. ‘You all right, mate?’ he asked.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘How come you never pulled out with the rest of us?’

  ‘Just dog-tired I s’pose.’

  Caine moved over to Copeland, who was poking at another prone Arab with the muzzle of his rifle. The man was paperpale and appeared unconscious: Caine had seen him go down but didn’t know if he’d been shot. He was just saying, ‘I’m not sure about …’ when the Arab’s eyes opened wide: he lunged at Cope with a long, curved dagger he’d been concealing in the folds of his baggy trousers. Before Copeland could squeeze iron, a gunshot snaredrummed: buckshot flayed off the naked skin of the Arab’s gut in shirttail flaps, exposing raw entrails like handfuls of groping fingers, pitching the shattered body into a five-yard forward flip. Copeland turned his head to see the broad nightracked face of Fred Wallace, eyes like silver pennies, the twineyed bores of his sawnoff smoking in his big hand. Wallace’s eyes didn’t leave the Arab’s corpse. ‘That quick enough for you, mate?’ he growled.

  Caine was so distracted that he didn’t notice the other Arab who’d played possum get to his feet panther quiet behind him. ‘Sta attento,’ a female voice sopranoed; Caine had half turned when the Senussi struck at him with a throwing stick. Caine ducked, brought up his Tommy gun: in that instant Layla pounced on the Arab’s bare shoulders, clinging there like a giant vampire bat. The man jumped, jigged, bellowed, tried to knock her off with backhanded swipes. Caine saw a slimblade knife flash, saw the Senussi girl draw it across the man’s throat, saw blood skew from a wound like a gaping fishmouth. The Arab tottered: Layla dropped from his back. Caine blobbed a doubletap into his belly, slapped him into the dust.

  There was a moment’s silence as the SAS men caught their breath, took in the carnage, the five broken and dismembered Senussi corpses, the slathertrails of blood in the darkness. ‘Grab everything and move out,’ Caine ordered, pointing at the dense trees on the wadi bank. ‘Get in there, all-round defence.’

  Moments later they’d humped the heavy kit into the trees and formed a loose perimeter covering every arc. Caine crouched in the centre with Copeland and Layla. ‘Thank you,’ he told her. ‘If you hadn’t warned us, we’d have all been captured or killed.’

  ‘The thanks is to Allah,’ she said.

  Caine looked at her, saw flecks of starlight in her eyes like tiny crescent moons. ‘I am so happy see you,’ she said, touching his hand lightly with her fingers. It was an extraordinarily forward gesture for a Senussi girl, he thought: but then she was no ordinary girl. Only minutes ago he’d seen her kill a fellow tribesman with a dagger. She stroked the back of his hand, gazing into his eyes so tenderly that he had to look away: he recalled how Nolan had once told him that Layla cared for him.

  ‘What happened to my guards?’ he asked.

  ‘Sidi Mohammad and his men, he take them … you sleep … I see. He leave other men to get you. He take them away.’

  ‘Where?’ Caine asked. ‘Took them where?’

  Layla shrugged, nodding northwards. ‘Into hills. To Tedesci maybe. Sidi Mohammad is traitor Senussi. He work for Angel of Death.’

  ‘Who is the Angel of Death?’ Caine said.

  The girl shrugged a second time. ‘I don’t know. Nobody know. He is wicked man, bad jinn, some say.’

  Caine called Netanya to speed the exchange: Layla spoke at length, rarely taking her eyes from Caine’s face. ‘Adud is camped at the RV,’ Netanya explained at last, ‘with the donkeys. He’s been there a couple of days waiting for us. He sent Layla here to look for us while it was still daylight, and she spotted that Sidi Mohammad chap and his band moving towards the Shakir cliffs. She followed them, but she had to stay well hidden. She waited till they settled down and was just going to alert you when she saw them capture Audley and Larousse.’

  ‘She’s sure they’re not dead?’

  ‘They ha
d orders to capture us,’ Copeland cut in. ‘They must have done, otherwise they’d have come in shooting, or even picked us off from cover.’

  Caine considered it. ‘But how did they know we were coming?’ he demanded. ‘Did Layla or Adud or any of their band let it slip?’

  Netanya was about to ask Layla when she cut him off, sloe eyes flashing angrily. ‘We no tell no one,’ she said. ‘Hooker – the Ingleezi who send us message – he did not say you would come up Shakir. He only told us the meeting place. My father send me to look along all paths: I come here only because I follow Sidi Mohammad’s men.’

  Caine swallowed dryly, locked eyes with Copeland. Both of them knew this was yet another confirmation that Sandhog had been compromised. But how? Only Stirling and Mayne had known they were heading for the Shakir cliffs, but even they hadn’t known exactly when they’d climb them. Caine hadn’t known it himself, couldn’t have predicted it with any precision until that morning. Copeland guessed what he was thinking. ‘The Axis ground patrol that was tracking us,’ he said. ‘They must have been in contact with someone up here.’

  Caine frowned in the darkness. ‘How could they know our plan was to scale the cliff, though? We might have trekked along the base and gone up one of the easier passes miles further on. Our RV with Adud might have been anywhere.’

  Copeland was thinking about something else. ‘If they’re taking Larousse and Audley to the Jerries,’ he said, ‘they’ll torture and interrogate them: they’ll find out that our plan is to hit the Olzon-13 stocks in the Citadel.’

  Caine sucked his teeth, tasted bile and grit. ‘We’ve got to go after them, get them back. If we go now, maybe we can pull them out before they reach the Jerries.’

  ‘But skipper,’ Copeland objected. ‘We’d be playing into the enemy’s hands. We’ve only got until midnight on 25/26 October – that’s the day after tomorrow. We should move on the Citadel asap, and hope that Larousse and Audley will keep them distracted with red herrings long enough to cover us. And how the heck are we going to catch up with them lugging a two-hundred-pound manpack apiece, anyway? More, because we now have extra manpacks to lug? I’m sorry, Tom, but I think it’s crazy.’ He paused. ‘As for Audley, for all the use he is, we may as well let the Hun have him.’