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

by Michael Asher

  34

  A broad fan of sunlight streaked out into rococo skies: blades of flame opal trimmed away the ragends of night. Galleries of purple cloud unreeled, tendrils of brickdust hung in the hollows, light spindled along hill terraces, spun across the pates of downs covered in evergreen oak and spiny scrub as thick as fur. She lay among tufts of esparto grass like straw mopheads on the saddle of a wadi side, watching the sun weave patterns across the screes, glisten on knucklebone peaks. The Jerry airfield lay on the flats below her, a cool spill of tarmac adorned with ackack posts, a fuel dump, a windsock flapping idly on its post like a giant’s condom. There were no aircraft on the runway: the only movement was at the south end of the ’drome where a chain gang of Krauts in overalls was unloading gas cylinders from rolling stock coupled to a small locomotive. They worked methodically, swinging cylinders from hand to hand, stacking them in pyramids under the corrugated-iron curve of a wall-less Nissen hut.

  There were hundreds of cylinders: Nolan zoomed in her field glasses, knowing that the tubes could only contain Olzon-13. That meant Caine’s mission had failed. At first light they’d heard the gnash of small arms from beyond the crater wall, clocked the crabhand sprawl of a green Very light. The firefight had stopped abruptly, but minutes later another had irrupted from the western end of the Citadel. They’d heard the low crump of ordnance: Layla had claimed to recognize the sound of old Senussi rifles and was certain that her father’s men were battling for their lives. The second firefight had soon petered out, leaving a gaping silence. Layla had stared at her ashenfaced: Nolan had felt a gut-thump of despair, partly for Layla, partly for Sandhog, mostly for Caine, for the fact that she’d arrived too late to help him. Now, she fingered the .45 Colt hidden under the Senussi rags she’d borrowed. The pistol and a couple of No. 36 grenades were all she had: Layla carried a dagger. The notion of two women taking on the Jerry platoon and the guardposts armed only with these trifles was too futile even to consider. She stashed her glasses, shimmied backwards out of her hiding place, retraced her steps to where Layla crouched among featherleaved terfa trees on the wadi side guarding the bony she-donkey that carried the rest of Nolan’s kit in her panniers. She told Layla what she’d seen. ‘There’s nothing we can do here,’ she said. ‘Either we go back or we go on and find out what’s happened.’

  Layla’s coaltar eyes glimmered. ‘We go on,’ she said.

  They continued along the wadi with the donkey’s hooves clicking behind them on the gravel and the water-marbled stones. The black crater wall loomed over them to the left: the thorntrees on the sides of the arroyo rustled in the wind. They rounded the Citadel’s north-western face an hour and a half later in full daylight, climbing a sheeptrack up the wadi bank to where brakes of mangled myrtle and tamarix grew out of grassy dunes. Nolan glimpsed a dark figure hovering in the shadows of the trees, gripped Layla’s shoulder, wrenched her down just as a shot clapped out hollow in the silence, whazzing high over their heads. She was fumbling for her pistol when Layla gasped. ‘Father. It’s my father.’

  Adud didn’t seem surprised to see them, only angry at himself for opening fire and relieved that his hasty shot hadn’t done them any harm. His eyes were leached out with pain: he had a graze on the shoulder and a bullet in the calf. He’d bound both wounds in strips of dirty cotton torn from his headcloth. He slung his rifle, took the she-donkey’s headrope, hobbled to a tree, tethered her to it. He led the women haltingly through the forested dunes to a place overlooking a shallow canyon on the other side where a group of tribesmen huddled.

  Of the dozen who’d set off with Adud, only five were left, all of them wounded, some badly. Nolan saw arms mauled and lampblacked, legs hanked in soiled bandages, seeping blood. One young Senussi whose fingers had been blown off stared catatonically into midspace, his face white as alabaster: another had the side of his skull split open in a long, livid gash. The Arabs stared at the two girls, their eyes bulbous and white against filth-pitted faces: they grunted greetings through clenched teeth. Adud pointed to the wadi floor: Nolan saw down there a crescent of cadavers, Senussi and German, starch-faced, blood-darkened slugs spreadeagled in darker-stained blots of gravel. A motorcycle combo lay smoking on its broken back, its spoked front wheel reaving slowly back and forth like a pit-winch. Next to it stood an armoured half-track vehicle in Afrika Korps livery with a machine-gun and a light artillery piece mounted on her rear. A dead Jerry was draped over her open side, his KD uniform ripped and burnt, blood trickling from his outstretched arms: the driver lay curled up below the open cab door with a black cavity in his chest and a Senussi dagger stuck through his face.

  Nolan’s first instinct was to rush back to the donkey for her medical kit: if some of the Senussi’s wounds weren’t treated with sulphenamide, they’d turn gangrenous, she thought. She paused for a moment, though, crouching down against a sandbank to survey the battlefield: the canyon below was a side-wadi opening off the main watercourse along which the spur line had been laid. She caught a glimpse of warped and upended railtracks beyond the wadi mouth and realized that the Senussi must have blown the line. Her mouth creased: the Arabs had done their job, had fought off the Hun doggedly, but their efforts had been wasted. ‘I saw the Olzon-13 cylinders,’ she told Adud. ‘I saw them being discharged from the train at the airstrip. They must have moved them before you even got here.’

  Layla translated: the old sheikh batted bloodcricked eyes. Nolan reflected that the Hun had probably waited till first light to unload the train: they’d been in no hurry. It was almost as if they’d known when Caine’s party would strike, had sidestepped neatly like a matador dodging a bull: the firefight she and Layla had heard at first light must mean that the SAS team had been ambushed. She felt the gorge rising in her throat. Audley. That traitorous pig must have got word to the Krauts.

  Adud was nodding, his eyes turning watery as it dawned on him that his men had died for nothing. Nolan almost regretted mentioning it: she had opened her mouth to say that she was going for her first-aid kit when a question occurred to her. ‘How did your men blow the line?’ she asked. ‘You aren’t trained in sabotage …’

  ‘It was the Ingleezi,’ Layla cut in. ‘The one who came with them …’

  Nolan started. ‘What Ingleezi? You didn’t say …’

  She saw that Layla’s eyes were focused over her shoulder, glanced back to see an SAS soldier with a rakish green silk scarf tied around his neck, in KDs and grimy battlekit, slouching in from among the trees only a couple of yards away. He was a lean, lampjawed man with dark hair, gleaming beryl eyes and a fixed smile: his lips were drawn back from even white teeth, like a caricature of a B-film cowboy hero. He was carrying a manpack on his back, a Garand rifle slung over his shoulder and a Browning automatic in his hand. ‘I say, miss’ – he winked at Nolan – ‘if I’m being talked about, I should at least be introduced.’

  It was Audley: Nolan recognized him at once from the dossier she’d seen in Stocker’s office. She took a step backwards, groped for the pistol under her robe, her pulse racing. It was a mistake: Audley clocked the give-away movement and halted mid-step. Before Nolan’s hand had even closed on her weapon, he had seized Layla’s slender arm, jerked her towards him, stuck the muzzle of his Browning under her wealth of hair, into the fissure beneath her ear. The Senussi girl yelped but didn’t struggle. ‘Don’t do anything silly, now,’ Audley said hoarsely. ‘I don’t want to hurt this young lady, but I will if I have to. Put your hands up where I can see them.’

  His face had turned waxy, his breath was coming in nasal scoops. There was something apologetic and forlorn about his expression, Nolan thought, that didn’t quite mesh with the image of a Nazi masterspy. She raised her hands slowly. ‘I know what you are,’ she told him. ‘At least, I know you aren’t the Honourable Bertram Audley, that you’ve never won the MC. You’re a liar and a traitor. You’re not an officer: your supposed family doesn’t even exist.’

  Audley’s eyes bulged: his taut cheek twit
ched. His mouth worked, but no sound emerged. Adud stared at him, his chapped lips forming a round ‘O’ of confusion: those among the other Senussi who were able to stand rose to their feet. Audley wrenched Layla’s arm upwards until she squeaked, drew her back several paces. ‘I’m warning you, boys,’ he said.

  Adud muttered an order: the Senussi laid down their weapons. Nolan glared at Audley: his features seemed to have lost their squarejawed shape: he looked feeble and guilty, like a schoolboy caught cheating. His eyes no longer glowed with confidence, his pupils were peridots, his brows glowered with resentment. ‘The game’s up, eh?’ he wheezed. He was making an obvious attempt to appear nonchalant, but Nolan could recognize an act when she saw one: she caught an edge of hysteria in his voice, as if he were about to burst into tears. ‘I guessed it somehow,’ he rambled, ‘as soon as I heard you talking. I was listening over there. I could have slipped away, but like a fool I thought I could brass it out. I suppose it was always on the cards that somebody would find out.’

  Rage boiled in Nolan’s chest: she was so furious that she considered going for her weapon and risking everything. This dirty, double-crossing rat had sold Tom Caine to the Hun: through the perfidy of this one man, Monty’s whole campaign was in jeopardy. It would be worth sacrificing her life just to finish him. She let her hands drop slightly, but Audley clocked the action, drew Layla further away. ‘You would, wouldn’t you?’ he whined. ‘I know you upper-class bitches. You have no idea what it’s like … a hoity-toity bint like you, born with a silver spoon, always had everything your own way. I know your type all right.’

  Nolan blinked at the irony of it: Audley, or whatever his name was, evidently had no idea that until only months previously she’d been a cabaret girl. She studied him curiously: he was a pathetic excuse for a Jerry stoolpigeon and that somehow made it worse. ‘At least, thanks to you,’ he went on, almost to himself, ‘I know where the stuff is. There’s always a chance I can …’

  He gave Layla a hefty push, spatted off a single shot into the air. The report rocked air: Nolan and Adud ducked, Layla tripped and fell. Audley whipped round, hared off into the trees, his booted feet going whamp, whamp in the sand. Nolan skipped out of Layla’s way, wrestled her weapon from under her rags, brought it up, squeezed iron. Nothing happened: the safety was still on. Swearing, she released the catch, gripped the pistol in both hands, fired off two rounds. The shots slamped up sandspurts: sour cordite pinched her nostrils. She’d fired too late and she knew it: Audley had already vanished into the trees. She started after him, but Adud seized her arm with a clawed hand. Several of the Arabs were already staggering in Audley’s wake, too dazed and jumbofooted even to bring their rifles to bear. Layla was on her feet with her knife in her hand, cobalt eyes aflame: Nolan pulled away from Adud’s grip, but Layla stopped her. ‘Is not worth it,’ she hissed. ‘Let him go.’

  ‘He’s going to the airstrip. He’ll warn the Hun we’re here …’

  ‘Warn them of what? That we are two girls and a few Arabs too bad hurt to shoot their old guns? I think the Tedesci laugh at him.’

  Nolan cast about, desperately trying to control her fury, to clear her mind. It hit her that Layla was talking sense: the Jerries who’d sallied out from the Citadel to engage the Senussi had withdrawn, leaving their dead on the field. They knew the Arabs were here, and if they thought they posed any real threat, they’d have been back by now. The Krauts had outmanoeuvred them, and – Layla was right again – this little bunch of benighted Bedouin wasn’t going to stop them.

  She clenched a fist, swore, spat in the sand. She had to prevent the Olzon-13 cylinders from being loaded on Axis aircraft: once the stuff was airborne, it would be too late. Lightfoot would be kiboshed. There might still be time to stop it, but the means didn’t exist. Not unless Caine’s men, or some of them, were still standing. She grimaced. The chances were the SAS men were all goners but it wasn’t impossible that at least some had been bagged alive – maybe some had even evaded capture. To know for certain, she’d have to get into the Citadel, and attempting that now the Jerries were alert would be fatal. Layla’s original idea of going in disguised wouldn’t work, and there was no way this handful of ragtag walking scarecrows with their museum-piece smallarms was going to run the gauntlet of that narrow entrance defile. To do that they’d need armoured wagons, artillery …

  She spun round, glancing at the Jerry half-track down in the canyon. She studied the vehicle: it was armoured, certainly, and it appeared intact. And there was a cannon mounted on its back – it looked like a 40mm. In G(R), Nolan had done training on field guns: she felt sure she could handle the piece, but there was no way she could do that and drive the machine at the same time. She caught Layla’s wrist. ‘Can you drive?’ she demanded.

  Layla’s eyes opened wide. ‘What?’

  ‘A motor vehicle. Can you drive one?’

  ‘Yes, but …’

  ‘Can you or can’t you?’

  ‘I … they taught me to drive a car at the Italian mission school, yes. But is long time, I don’t know if I …’ She broke off, her eyes bugging as she stared from Nolan’s excited face to the halftrack in the corrie below. Understanding dawned on her. ‘No,’ she gasped. ‘You don’t mean … that … thing?’

  Nolan let go her wrist. ‘Is it still working? Ask your father. Did they wreck it or just kill the crew? Ask him.’

  Layla flashed her a last wild look and began gabbling to Adud. When she turned back, Nolan was already ripping off the rags of her Arab dress, revealing her KD uniform beneath. ‘My father say they never touch the vehicle, but –’

  ‘Then get ready,’ Nolan cut her off fiercely. ‘You’re going to drive that rattletrap into the Citadel while I work the gun: if Tom Caine’s alive we’re going to get him out of there.’

  35

  They branded his thighs with hot spoons, snickered at him as he cringed and puked: they drew burning rags across the back of his neck. They slammed him in the kidneys from behind with a club, guffawed as he went down bawling. They kicked him in the ribs and guts: they kicked him so hard up the arse that he thought his rectum had burst. He couldn’t see how many there were because his head was covered in a hessian sack: he could make out only slivers ghosting across the checkpattern light. They booted him in the solar plexus and in the scrotum. He screamed, he coughed, he brayed: he snorted snot, drooled bile, gurgled out bloody phlegm inside the sack. They hauled him up: they battered his back and shoulders with slats of plank until the wood shattered. They knucklepunched his head through the sack: they belaboured his legs with sticks, punted his shins with boot-caps, kneed him in the groin, sent him fishtailing on to a hardpacked floor to grovel in his own piss. They plucked him up and rammed him into an iron chair.

  Caine’s arms were tied behind him: he was naked but for his shorts, which were minging with shit and blood and urine. His head was still bleeding where Jerry shrapnel had grazed him: or had they stobbed him with a riflebutt? He didn’t know. He felt like he was wearing a lead hat, his neck and thighs burned, his gut was caving in: his senses gyrowheeled, his hands and legs quaked as he waited to be hit or burned again, not knowing from which direction the next attack would come. The 999 Div. boys had been catmousing with him like this for ever: beasting him and standing back to catch their breath, and beasting him again. They were evidently enjoying it. Caine could hear their rattlebreath, could hear them titter and dog-growl in Kraut: no one addressed him, no one demanded information. This beasting had to be strictly for pleasure, because they didn’t even want to know why he was here.

  He waited, his body shaking, trying to muster his thoughts: while he was being beasted it was impossible to think of anything but the pain, so he had to make use of these pauses. Gibson was dead, that was certain: Manny Netanya had blown himself to bits with a Lewes bomb, killing Rohde in the process. Caine was certain now that Rohde was behind the atrocities that had taken place here: a self-confessed war criminal, a former Einsatzkommando complicit i
n the shocking massacre of Russian Jews, he was the obvious candidate for the post of Angel of Death. Caine should have clicked long ago. The one small satisfaction to be salvaged from this cocked-up mission was that, thanks to Netanya, Rohde had been taken out.

  Before they’d hooded him, Caine had seen enough to know that he was in the prefab admin-block building he’d seen on the aerial shots. When they’d dragged him out of the cell where he’d come round, he’d caught, through an open door, a nauseating glimpse of Fred Wallace getting beasted. Plastered with grime and blood, the giant was bellowing in pain: he’d been made to crawl on his hands and knees while a Kraut rode him like a horse, and half a dozen others booted him, thrashed his buttocks with palmstalks, beat his limbs with sticks. Caine had almost thrown up at the sight, but he’d kept his eyes open: he’d clocked his team’s kit and weapons being stashed in a storeroom, had caught a shufti of Harry Copeland’s bleached face and cupshot eyes, his mouth skewed in a permanent yodel of agony, as a squad of Jerries hustled him along the corridor, thrashing him with leather belts and whips.

  Gibson and Netanya were down: Wallace and Cope had survived. Trubman was wounded, perhaps dead. Pickney, Rossi and Audley were unaccounted for but had most likely been killed in action. Caine wondered how the Senussi party had fared: he didn’t hold out any big hope for them. He recalled firing the green flare just before going down – yet another error of judgement on his part. The plan had been for Adud’s crew to cover the SAS team’s withdrawal, but there had been no withdrawal, which meant that, if the Arabs had come into action, they would have needlessly exposed themselves. The Olzon-13 gas had been moved already, so even if they’d blown the line, it could serve no purpose. The Hun outnumbered and outgunned them: he was sure they would by now have been ruthlessly hunted down. He sieved a thin breath through the hessian. Sandhog had been a fiasco: somehow Caine had felt it was doomed from the start.