Adud spoke first, pausing for Netanya to translate. ‘You remember the village where I met you this morning?’ he asked. Caine nodded. ‘That was inhabited by our relatives. Then the Tedesci devils of the Angel of Death came: they took everyone, old, young, men, women off to the Citadello. Not a single one of them has returned. In other places, where the Senussi resisted, terrible things have happened: men slaughtered like animals, women violated, children kidnapped …’
‘We found a small village in a wadi near the foot of the Shakir cliffs,’ Caine told him. ‘A Senussi man hanged: two women … murdered.’
Adud shook his tarpaper head. ‘There is no end to it,’ he said. ‘Many of those who have come back from the Citadello are changed, possessed by jinns – some of them kill themselves, others kill their own families. In all my years, I have never seen anything like it, not even when the Italiani persecuted us, when they executed Omar Mukhtar …’ He took a rattling breath, his old eyes bright. ‘That is why we thank God you have returned – why we are ready to help you, to go into the Citadello, to release our relatives held there, to kill the Angel of Death. May God assist us in our plan.’
The old man drew a sketch of the crater in the sand with a bony finger: SAS and Senussi drew near to study it. Caine took out his map and pieces of an aerial photograph he’d brought with him, compared them with Adud’s drawing. The Citadel’s main entrance was on the western side: Caine had used it on his last visit. The spur line now passed through it, connecting with an airstrip and a Nissen-hut warehouse that Adud said had recently been completed. While this area was heavily guarded, though, the eastern rimwall wasn’t, probably because there was no way in, except over the wall itself. There were AA guns and radar beacons inside the crater on that side, but only a single lookout sangar. Caine had decided days ago that this would be the best way in: if they went for the main entrance, it would have to be taken by force: stealth if possible, force if necessary was the SAS way. He pointed to the eastern wall on Adud’s sketch. ‘We’ll climb up there,’ he said. ‘We’ll approach the target through the thornforest on the crater floor.’
It took almost two hours to agree on the plan. Caine hadn’t bargained for the Chinese parliament style of Senussi discussion: every man, old or young, was entitled to have his say and had a right to be listened to. Finally, though, it was decided that the whole party would set off together: the donkeys would carry the heavy SAS kit. At the eastern wall, they would split up: the SAS would go in over the top, while the Senussi would make their way round to the main entrance, wait nearby for Caine’s signal. Caine’s team would go into the Olzon-13 bunkers, lay the charges, then come out and fire a green Very light. On that signal, Adud’s men would blow the spur line, start a diversionary attack, distract the Jerries while the SAS liberated the prisoners, located and took out the Angel of Death, and withdrew.
The more Caine visualized it, though, the more variables he saw: too much would depend on luck. But that was always the case in raids like this: the two big problems were going to be securing the main entrance long enough to get the prisoners out, and finding the Angel of Death. Copeland commented that there was also a problem with the diversionary attack: the Senussi didn’t do demolitions. ‘We’ll have to send someone with them,’ he said.
Caine nodded. He considered his team, wondering who he could spare. His top demo men were Gibson and Rossi, but he needed them for the climb, and for the main task: he was about to suggest Netanya or Trubman when Audley piped up. ‘I’ll go with them, old boy.’ His winning smile was in place again, Caine noted. ‘I’m trained in demolitions.’
‘Anything to get out of humping a manpack, eh?’ Wallace guttered.
Audley’s guttapercha grin wavered but didn’t die. ‘I was thinking of volunteering myself as liaison anyway,’ he went on. ‘I mean, the Senussi don’t use watches, do they? You’re going to need someone to coordinate the timing.’
It made sense, Caine realized. Audley was officially second-in-command: he spoke a little Arabic, could set a charge and, as he’d said, could synchronize the timing. The bottom line, though, was that he was the member of Caine’s team whom he felt he could most do without. ‘All right, Bertie,’ he said. ‘You’ll go with the Senussi.’
He shuftied his watch: the old man had told him that the eastern wall could be reached from here in two hours. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘The only problem left is that guard sangar. Gibbo, Rossi – I want you to go ahead for a recce as soon as it gets dark; you’ll need one of these Senussi chaps as a guide. Take your climbing gear: get as near to the sangar as you can. I want to know how many Jerries are on stag, and how long the stags are, and what sort of comms they have. It’ll be your job to take out the guard at the right time: I don’t want them giving the alarm before we even get inside …’
The cowboy beamed. ‘Tell you what, skipper,’ he drawled. ‘We can fix a line to make the climb easier and quicker as well.’
Caine nodded again, pleased. ‘We want to have the job done by 0700 hours. The rest of the party leaves here at midnight, on the dot. Now, I suggest that everyone gets some kip.’
A puce-coloured porridge of cloud filled the sky in whorls, and the sun was a red wedge quartered by the black ratchets of the hills. Caine made sure there was a permanent watch over the explosives, took his kit a little further into the trees, away from the bustle. He spread the fleabitten blanket he’d borrowed from Adud, lay down, and using his webbing as a pillow, crooked his Tommy-gun under his arm and went to sleep.
He dreamed once more of Betty Nolan, dancing a dark ballet on the stage of a Cairo nightclub, where he had never seen her. Someone shook him gently, and he opened his eyes to find the trees in twilight, and Layla leaning over him with the last beams of the dying sun hanging in her eyes. Caine was mildly surprised: it was the second time she’d woken him in twenty-four hours. ‘This is getting to be a habit,’ he told her.
He made to get up. She pushed him back, squatted down next to him in a whisper of robes. She wore no headscarf: she had brushed her hair out to its full lushness, and its silken ends touched the ground as she crouched. She looked at him, ran a hand down his stubbled cheek. ‘Ever since you went, I have thought of you, Caine,’ she said. ‘I have thought of you a lot.’
Caine opened his eyes wide. He’d had the feeling something like this was on the cards ever since he’d met her the previous evening. Yet he was still taken by surprise: Senussi girls weren’t supposed to behave like this.
He opened his mouth to say something, but she lodged a finger across his lips. It was a familiar gesture, and it took Caine a moment to remember that it was the same one that Betty Nolan sometimes used.
‘I want to be with you,’ she said. ‘Like man and woman. After this, I will go away with you … yes … I will go where you go. I will stay with you, be your woman …’ Her face shone: she leaned forward and kissed him. He felt the softness of her lips, felt her soft hair fall over him, caught a whiff of sandalwood. A powerful throb of desire pulsed through him: riding on the struggle of the past few days, the fear of the ordeal yet to come, it reared up like a seasurge, threatened to take him completely. It took all of his willpower to resist it.
When he withdrew his face, she sat back. Caine looked at her. Her expression was so ardent, so compliant, that his resolve almost gave way. That passive expression, he thought, was the most potent weapon in a woman’s armoury: it could move mountains, start wars. He took her hand in his: she put her other hand on his shoulder. ‘Do you want me?’ she said.
Caine swallowed. ‘Want you?’ he said. ‘Of course I want you. You’re a beautiful woman. You’re beautiful and clever and brave. Last night you saved my life, and maybe the lives of all my men. I’m grateful, very grateful. I would do anything for you. But I can’t do this. I’m really sorry.’
She raised her chin, peered down on him, eyes glittering behind the arched nose. ‘Why not?’ she whispered. ‘I know you desire me. I have seen it in your face.’ She paused,
watched him closely. ‘It’s another woman,’ she said. ‘You have another woman. It is the girl with the golden hair: the one you saved from the Boche at Biska …’ Whether she’d read some silent concurrence in Caine’s face, he didn’t know, but she withdrew her hand from his shoulder, and when she spoke again her voice was full of cold certainty. ‘It is her, isn’t it? That girl, that … Maddy. She is your woman now.’
She spoke the last sentence with such unexpected venom that Caine let her other hand go in surprise. It hit him suddenly that he was walking on a knife edge: Layla had only to claim that he’d made improper advances to her and Adud’s support would be gone in the wink of an eye. Not only would Sandhog be down the sink, but his SAS team might even find themselves fighting these Senussi as well as the Axis.
He took her hand again gently. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘It’s true that I like you, and that I want you. What man wouldn’t want you? It’s also true that that girl, Betty … the one you knew as Maddy … it’s true that she was my … my woman. But she was taken by the enemy. I’m almost sure she’s dead …’
His voice caught suddenly: it was only when he’d said it that the truth of it snapped shut on him like a trap. His heart lubbed leadweighted: he had to wrestle back tears. Layla caught his expression, lowered her head. ‘That is very sad,’ she said. ‘She was brave, that girl. I am sorry, very sorry. But if she is gone, I could take her place. It is terrible to lose someone close to you, I know, but I could help you forget her … forget your loss …’
She twisted her slender hands: Caine saw that all her pride and anger had drained away. ‘Layla,’ he said softly. ‘You know I think a lot of you. This is nothing to do with Betty, it’s your father, your people. I am your father’s guest. If I was to do this, it would be to betray his trust. It wouldn’t be honourable.’
She smiled bitterly. ‘You are an honourable man, Caine,’ she said. ‘But for me, I don’t care about such things any more. Why should I care? I have seen Senussi men kill other Senussi. I myself have killed a Senussi man, with my own hands. This war … it has changed everything. I want to go away with you …’
Caine shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Layla,’ he said. ‘I can’t.’
She stood up, tossed her cascade of ebony hair, her eyes on fire. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she said. ‘Yes, you are my father’s guest now, I understand that. But after that, when you are no longer his guest, you can take me with you. Why not? … It is that goldenhair, that … Betty. It’s her. You say she is dead, but in your heart you can’t let her go. You love her: you hope she is still alive.’
She turned and swept off into the trees, her black hair billowing behind her like a dark bridal train. Caine watched her go, feeling a mixture of sadness and guilt. He really did admire Layla: the last thing he had wanted to do was to hurt her. Deep down, though, he knew that she’d read him perfectly: that what she’d said about his feelings for Betty was exactly right.
31
When the Bombay shucked cloud cover over the Libyan coast, the Italian air defences clawhammered: onionflares burst, flak guns lobbed eddies of tracer, long-fingered searchbeams speared the night. In the cockpit, the warrant officer pilot wrestled with the controls, trying desperately to keep the thirty-ton bird stable. At the cabin door, hanging on her strop behind Hooker and the RAF dispatcher, Betty Nolan snorted gasoline fumes, watched the firework display, heard the riprap of the triple-A, tried to keep her nerve as the plane yawed and shimmied. She watched roundeyed as a shell as big as a drawerknob came up through the floor and plunked out through the cabin roof, just missing the extended fuel tanks. She blinked, sucked in breath, checked for the hundredth time that her static line was hooked up, reminded herself that the Bombay should clear the ackack batteries in seconds.
‘Six minutes to target,’ the dispatcher snapped.
The six minutes lasted an eternity. When the dispatcher called, ‘Action stations,’ though, Nolan went rigid. Her senses focused on the open door and the starry night beyond: all that mattered now was getting out. The green light flashed: Hooker vanished into the darkness. The dispatcher hustled Nolan out hard on his heels to prevent their separation on the landing zone. Nolan jumped, felt the slipstream wrench, felt the tug as her canopy inflated. Then all fast motion ceased: she was drifting like thistledown towards a phosphorescent blue landfall, absorbed into the quiet of the desert night.
The jump could have come off earlier if they hadn’t wasted precious hours bickering. Her chief, John Airey, had agreed that Caine must be warned about Audley, but didn’t want Hooker or Nolan for the mission. Hooker had just undergone surgery: Nolan was a woman, and therefore officially a non-com. Stirling said they needed an Arabic speaker who knew the area: Hooker had volunteered, and since he was Adud’s G(R) contact, he was the perfect man for the job. As for Nolan, Airey hadn’t had any qualms about her being used as bait in a Field Security op, so why get official now? In any case, this wouldn’t be the first time she’d parachuted in behind Axis lines. By the time Avery had finally seen sense they’d been set back hours.
One major challenge was that no one actually knew where Caine was, or even if his crew was operational. The remains of Roland’s missing LRDG patrol had been found: a clutch of burnt-out Axis wagons had been located a few kilometres away. There’d obviously been one hell of a shindy. That Caine’s crew had survived they knew from Maskelyne, but the fact that they’d been intercepted so early didn’t bode well. The only thing they knew for certain was that Caine was heading for Adud’s camp. Hooker was familiar with its location: the Brylcreem Boys said they could put parachutists down on the plateau nearby.
Now, Nolan watched the earth’s luminous crust rising to meet her, peered up to check that her periphery was unblown. She groped for the quick-release hooks on either side of her harness, snapped them down. The pack on her legs dropped: the fifteen-foot ropecoil unravelled. She felt the jerk as the pack reached the end of its tether and swung beneath her, stabilizing her flight. It was impossible to assess her drift in the darkness, but the ground rushed up on her almost at once: she pulled hard on the lift webs, braced her legs for a roll. She felt the pack hit the deck, struck the ground with her knees and ankles together. She hardly felt the impact. She rolled, came up into a sitting position. She’d seen no sign of Hooker during the forty-five-second jump, but now she could see his canopy lying lank and deflated no more than twenty yards away.
She scanned the night. The air here was clear, the moon a pale-blue float in a starblown sky. She was on a naked cinder table framed in swordgrass, sedge, and prickly pear: beyond its rim, a forested watercourse lay darkshawled in the night. Nolan couldn’t see any lights down there, but the odours of humanity were strong in her nostrils: dung, urine, sour milk, goat-fat, the ash of doused cookfires. At least, she thought, the Brylcreem Boys had dropped them in the right place: Adud’s camp had to be in those trees.
She twisted her quick-release catch, pressed it, felt the harness straps spring away. She wriggled out of them, turned over on her belly, grabbed the liftwebs, hauled in the canopy. When she had the silk beneath her fingers, she felt for the stuffbag under her hooded SAS smock. She untied the rope, bundled up the canopy, forced it into the bag. Then she followed the rope to her container, untied the covers, opened the rucksack, took out her web equipment. She put on the webbing, hoisted the rucksack to her shoulders. She coiled up the rope and left it on top of the stuffbag. Then she drew her Colt .45 and went to look for Hooker.
He was lying on the cinders with his head at an impossible angle, a trickle of blood issuing from one nostril, his face frosty in the creamblue light. Nolan shuddered. She holstered her pistol, dropped her pack, started to draw in Hooker’s canopy: come daylight, the white silk of the parachutes would stand out like beacons to Axis spotter planes.
It was difficult work, because Hooker’s leg was caught up in the liftwebs: Nolan thought he’d probably hit the ground upside down, struggling to disentangle his leg. She guessed he’d
done what they called a ‘rivet inspection’: he hadn’t cleared the aircraft properly, had hit the fuselage, had been sent spinning: the liftwebs had probably snagged his leg as they uncoiled.
In the end, she gave up, dragged Hooker’s broken body into a copse of acacia thorn, covered it with the folded canopy. Then she went back for her stuffbag and dumped it next to his body. Everything would need to be moved before first light, but she couldn’t do it now. She had to inform Caine about Audley while there was still time.
She followed a goatpath down the side of the plateau and into the bushes: the human scents were powerful here. A dog barked: almost at once a female voice cried out. Nolan was about to answer when she heard the snap of a twig behind her: she swirled round just as a club swished air, thwamped across her shoulders. She yelped, staggered, grabbed the club, tugged hard. The stick came free, but a lithe, blackrobed figure came with it, hurtling out of the bush, leaping on her, screeching in a wild, shrill voice, punching, tearing, clawing at her face. Nolan dropped the club, caught the girl’s wrists, flipped her backwards in a ju-jitsu throw. The girl crashed into the dust: Nolan sprang on her, straddled her, pinned her down, fought to suppress the flailing claws, saw goateyes glittering in dim eye sockets, a highbridged nose, sensual lips rimpled over ivory teeth. ‘Stop,’ she screeched. ‘Stop: I know you. You’re Layla bint Adud. Don’t you recognize me? I’m Maddy Rose – Betty Nolan, that is.’
The girl stopped struggling: Nolan let go her hands. For a moment they stared at each other. Nolan let her up, and they stood breathing hard, slapping dust from their clothes. Nolan relaxed; a tired smile broadened her mouth. ‘You remember me?’ she asked in English. ‘You helped rescue me from the Germans at Biska, four months ago.’
She held out her hand: Layla shook her head, raised her chin, pouted her lips. ‘I know who you are,’ she said icily. ‘You’re too late. Caine’s gone.’
Death or Glory II: The Flaming Sword: The Flaming Sword Page 26
