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

by Michael Asher

  Rohde’s inert eyes were fixed on Nolan: only a slight tick around his mouth betrayed his astonishment. ‘The Runefish girl, in person,’ he commented squeakily. ‘I thought Hellfinger had dealt with you long ago: his incompetence is sometimes staggering.’ He minced up to her, studied her for a moment, then slapped her face so viciously that her head snapped sideways. ‘You ruined my reputation with General Rommel. I’m glad to have the chance to pay you back in person.’

  Caine balled his fists. Nolan had uttered no sound and made no attempt to touch the livid red handmark on her cheek. She surveyed Rohde scornfully. ‘Reputation?’ she scoffed. ‘Rommel wouldn’t be seen dead with a butcher like you.’

  Rohde slapped her again: Nolan rolled with the blow, eyes flashing. Caine took an involuntary step towards Rohde, heard the clack of a sub-machine-gun being cocked. He stopped in his tracks: Rohde was moving towards him with the other officer at his elbow. The stranger’s Afrika Korps uniform was immaculate, but its clean lines could not disguise the man’s Quasimodo shoulders and shambling, simian gait. As they came nearer, Caine’s mouth gaped in shock: the officer was Gaston Larousse.

  Caine’s senses reeled. But Larousse was dead: for a second Caine wondered if this was all some elaborate trick the Canadian was playing to get them out of here. Then the truth hit him like a straplash. ‘You,’ he stammered. ‘You’re the Nazi stoolpigeon. It’s been you all along …’

  The two Jerry officers halted in front of him. Rohde assumed the familiar beauty-queen stance: his paperthin lips smiled but his eyes retained their bleak, adding-machine stare. Larousse chortled gruffly. ‘So sorry, skipper,’ he said, tilting the boulder head sideways. ‘I bet you thought you’d seen the last of me.’

  ‘You stinking pig,’ Rossi screamed: he darted forward, his face gleaming murderously, looking ready to tear Larousse apart with his bare hands. Caine clocked Schmeissers raised. ‘Stop,’ he hissed. He glared at the traitor, his scoured and poisoned insides heaving with pure hatred. ‘The piece of shit isn’t worth it.’

  Rossi stopped, shot razors at Larousse. ‘It was him,’ he drawled, scarcely able to get the words out. ‘It was him who betrayed us. It was thanks to him they scragged my mate.’ He hoiked up phlegm, spat volubly in the sand, his eyes locked on Larousse’s ape-like features.

  The ‘Canuck’ was cleanshaven now but his lynx eyes lay in the same packets of darkness. ‘I’m neither a traitor nor a stoolpigeon,’ he said coolly, raising his chin at Rossi. ‘My loyalty to the Fatherland has remained undiminished.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Copeland cut in. ‘I was there, remember, chum? I saw how many Krauts you wiped out.’

  Larousse shrugged. ‘There are always casualties. If I hadn’t done it, someone else would have: I had to play my part.’

  ‘My bloated dick,’ big Wallace thundered fearlessly from five yards away. ‘I seen you too, mate. I seen you slice up that AFV crew with a dagger. You ate it up like custard tart. You ain’t in it for no Fatherland: you don’t give two flicks of a donkey’s dangler whose side you’re on …’

  Larousse waggled his boulder head at the gunner in mock sadness. ‘You know, Fred,’ he said. ‘You were the only one of this lot I really had time for.’

  ‘Stick it up yer arse, then,’ Wallace spat. ‘Nazi swine. My whole family died because of the likes of you.’ A big Kraut trooper muscled in on the giant, his riflebutt raised: Rohde waved him away. ‘Let the fools bicker,’ he lisped. ‘It’s amusing to hear their pathetic bleatings.’

  He tipped his feminine hips jauntily, nodded towards Larousse. ‘Allow me to introduce Captain Reinhardt Kieffer,’ he said. ‘Brandenburger special operations division. Native of South Africa.’

  Caine fought down the urge to vomit: Copeland, Wallace, Rossi and even Audley stared at Larousse-Kieffer with pure loathing in their eyes.

  ‘I trusted you,’ Caine said quietly.

  ‘Of course you did,’ Larousse said softly. ‘You were meant to. I had to impress you at el-Gala or you might not have chosen me for the Sandhog stunt.’ He winked mischievously at Audley, turned back to Caine. ‘I guessed quite early that there were two things about dear old Bertie here that I could rely on: his incompetence and his desire to distinguish himself. I knew the Italians were waiting for us at el-Gala. All I had to do was tell Bertie I’d seen Axis troops coming up from the rear, and he was off like a shot, thinking he’d be the hero of the hour. That left the field open for me to “save” the section: my action made me the hero. Who was going to question my loyalty after that?’

  Caine watched Audley out of the corner of his eyes: the impostor’s face was contorted with rage. If what Larousse had just said about el-Gala were true, it sounded as though Audley was entirely innocent of anything other than the imposture he’d already admitted. Yet who knew what was truth or lies any more? It might be that Rohde was keeping ‘Audley’ in play for some further devilry. On the other hand, two stoolies in a small SAS team seemed like overkill. What if Audley wasn’t a rat? What if he was telling the truth and his only crime was impersonating an officer? Did that mean he really had set charges on the Olzon-13? No, that was impossible: Rohde’s lot would have spotted him long ago.

  It occurred to Caine belatedly that Larousse’s thick French-Canadian accent had gone. ‘So all that stuff about your wife,’ he murmured, ‘about your two kids getting snuffed by the Gestapo … That was all lies …’

  ‘The Jewish family was real,’ Larousse snickered, ‘only it wasn’t mine. In fact, I was the one who shopped them to the Nazis, together with the real Gaston Larousse. I kept his papers in case I ever needed a false identity. As it turned out, they served me well.’

  ‘And the prisoner,’ Caine gasped, recalling the 90th Div. soldier whom Larousse had shot down. ‘You gave him Rossi’s knife, didn’t you?’

  Larousse’s dark eyes glimmered. ‘That was interesting,’ he said, winking at the Swiss’s furious face. ‘Yes, I pickpocketed your little blade, Ricardo, and gave it to the 90th Div. boy with the suggestion that he should use it to kill you, Caine. My idea was to kill two birds with one stone: to get you out of the way and make sure the lad didn’t spill the beans. If I’d just scragged him, it would have raised eyebrows. He was too slow, of course, and I had to whack him with a full mag. Best of it was, you actually suspected Ricardo.’ He sighed theatrically. ‘Ricardo Rossi, of the notorious Reapers – one of the most dedicated killers of Axis soldiers in the business – but you, Caine, for all your much-vaunted loyalty to your men, couldn’t get past the idea that he was an Italian speaker. Fascinating what prejudice will do.’

  Caine swallowed, remembering guiltily how he’d given the Swiss the third degree.

  ‘Of course,’ Larousse went on, ‘that wasn’t my first attempt at taking you out. I tried to do it on our parachute course, when I sawed through your ringclip. Lucky for you, you swapped gear with Sutherland at the last minute. He piled in, you walked. That blimp Stocker came poncing round, but he never suspected me. I could easily have had another bash, but by that time Major Rohde had decided you were more valuable alive, at least for the time being …’

  Caine gulped, tried to stifle his fury. Larousse winked at him. ‘They needed you to lead your SAS boys to the Citadel, because you were a known quantity, and it would preclude any other attack being launched. With me tagging along, Major Rohde could control Sandhog, whereas an air attack, say, would have been much more unpredictable …’

  ‘Bullcrap,’ Copeland yelled at him. ‘Then why send a 90th Div. column to intercept us? Why deploy Stukas and a ground unit on the piedmont, or your renegade Senussi on the cliffs, to take us out?’

  Larousse swivelled round on him. ‘They weren’t meant to take you out, Harry, their orders were to capture you and bring you here. Of course, a few casualties were inevitable. Even if Caine himself had been killed, it wouldn’t have been the end of the world: the main thing was not to let your GHQ know that Sandhog had failed – not until it was too late to launch a
nother mission –’

  ‘And that time is gone,’ Rohde cut in, his reedy, effeminate voice an octave higher than Larousse’s gruff tones. ‘We knew the route you would use into the Citadel: I even sacrificed some 999 Division men to make it more credible. We knew that you must attack on the eve of Montgomery’s big push – around 25 October – tonight, in fact. While he was with you, Kieffer kept in touch with me through a clever little transmitter the Abwehr built specially for this purpose …’

  Larousse guffawed. ‘That’s where you came in useful again, Bertie. I made sure I was assigned to your jeep, knowing that I could use your ineptitude to my advantage – every time you got lost or strayed from the column, I had a chance to get comms. Remember the time we went off to pot game? When the crew downed the C42? I told you I’d spotted gazelle in the dunes, said the boys would appreciate fresh meat? Remember, I left the jeep and went off to “track them down”. Once I was out of sight, I used the opportunity to get comms … Of course, the enemy almost caught us on the way back …’

  He chuckled, glanced at Caine. ‘Once I’d got you up the cliffs I’d pretty much served my purpose, and I was free to do a bunk. We didn’t want you getting in touch with GHQ, of course, so I made sure the No. 11 set got wrecked going up.’ He winked at Audley once more. ‘You did tie Trubman’s manpack soundly enough, my friend,’ he said. ‘While you were off having a piss, though, I loosened the ties. I knew you’d get the blame. Caine was so miffed with you that he made you stand first stag. That was a bonus. It meant that I could get you out of the way easily when the Arabs came along, and use you as a witness of my own death. Knowing Caine’s proverbial loyalty to his men, I was sure he’d come after us, and he did. He found you waiting, full of the sad details of my demise. He had to butcher a few more Senussi in the process, of course, but they were just some lice-ridden vermin we’d already written off. By then, I was on my way to the Citadel. It only remained for me to fill in my chief on your team’s plans and personal details. He wanted to know everything – about Wallace’s time in jail, about Netanya’s little vendetta, about Pickney’s queer habits, even about Caine’s mother committing suicide …’

  Caine’s lips curled. ‘How could you know that?’

  ‘Our man in Cairo – Hellfinger : He had an informant at GHQ with access to SAS personnel files: same officer who blew the el-Gala operation, and all the rest …’

  ‘Beeston,’ Nolan hissed.

  ‘Yes, Clive Beeston was ideal material for us.’ Rohde chortled maliciously. ‘A spineless maggot ready to barter his soul for the chance of sex with an Egyptian whore. He also happened to be the liaison between your intelligence director and your raiding-forces planning cell, so he had access to the details of every special operation.’

  The Black Widow sighed with satisfaction. ‘All’s well that ends well, don’t you British say? I admit, I hadn’t expected things to go wrong at the Citadel: I had no idea that Miss Golden Girl had escaped from Hellfinger, or that, with the help of those Senussi swine, she would manage to break you out. Yes, it was an unexpected development, exacerbated by the fact that our wireless net was jammed. Some 999 Division men were killed, of course, but they’re mostly expendable: the escapees will soon be rounded up. I have my own secret exit, naturally: I guessed your next stop would be the airfield, and I was able to collect Kieffer and my reserve platoon and head you off.’

  He peered at his watch. ‘The aircraft will be here shortly. By the time Eighth Army is on the move tonight, the Olzon-13 will already be in position at the front line. You’ve experienced what the Olzon-13 can do, eh, Caine? It was only the purest luck that stopped your giant friend from crushing your skull to a pulp this morning. Just imagine, then: in a few hours, the whole Allied army will be in the same condition … only they will have artillery, tanks and aircraft to use on each other …’

  Rohde was distracted by the oboe chirr of aircraft engines: he glanced up, and for a split second Caine prayed that it might be an RAF flight that had somehow traced them. Instead, he recognized a trio of Heinkel III bombers tipple-winging down the razorblue skies like plump silverfish. His heart thunked: these planes were obviously the advance guard of the Luftwaffe squadron tasked to ship the Olzon-13 canisters to the front. The final act was approaching, and he was powerless to prevent it.

  ‘Here they are, at last,’ Rohde said, his face inscrutable. ‘Move these vermin down to the airstrip, would you, Captain Kieffer?’

  Kieffer-Larousse ordered them to put their hands on their heads: the Germans herded them in a bunch towards the airfield. Caine plodded in front of his men, with Audley at his left elbow: he couldn’t see the boys’ faces, nor the face of Nolan, the woman who’d risked everything to save him and whom he’d led into captivity, probably worse. Now he thought about it, he was almost certain they wouldn’t reach a prison camp alive. No, Rohde would have them mowed down right there on the runway, where the Heinkels were now taxiing, ready to pick up the poison gas he’d been sent to destroy, the secret weapon that would turn the tide of the war in the Axis’s favour.

  Caine’s head was still hazy: his world retained an aura of unreality that he guessed was due to the lingering effects of the Olzon-13. He wondered if Wallace felt the same: all the fear he’d experienced earlier seemed to have faded though, leaving a white-hot core of anger curdling inside him. As they neared the Nissen hut, he clocked the cylinders piled up there; saw the Heinkels coming to a standstill on the runway, heard their engines drone down, clocked a platoon of Jerries in overalls being marched towards the hut, ready to load the gas.

  He sucked in a breath, skewed an eyecorner glance at the guard on his right. By chance, the Jerry was carrying his captured Tommy-gun slung over his shoulder, the pot-bellied magazine still attached. He felt a sudden breathless surge of bloodlust, an overwhelming desire to get his weapon back, to pulp that Jerry’s skull to paste: to seize Rohde by the neck and throttle him. What was he doing being led like a lamb to the slaughter? He might not be able to save himself nor Nolan, nor Angela, nor his mates, but he still had a chance of destroying the Olzon-13, if only by grabbing his Thompson, making a run for it, spraying the cylinders with rounds. He would certainly be killed, but it might work.

  The guard was a yard from his elbow, looking to his front. It would need only a small effort to snatch the weapon: he knew there’d been a round in the breech, and was certain the Kraut hadn’t cleared it. He took a quick glance around him: Rossi was directly behind, Nolan and Brunetto following, Wallace and Copeland bringing up the rear. The Krauts encircled them, but his team seemed alert: he would have to hope that they were expecting something, that they’d act on his command. He turned his attention back to the guard, felt adrenalin stream in his gut, poised his whole body for a last, suicidal effort.

  At that moment Audley’s head snapped towards him. Caine took in a blanched face, wild eyes, sweat standing out on the forehead, mouth turned down in alarm: Audley nodded frantically at the hut, now only ten yards away. ‘It’s time,’ he mouthed. ‘We’re in range …’ In that instant, Caine saw the truth in his face, knew with absolute certainty that the man who’d masqueraded as Audley, impostor or not, had done the impossible: he really had set Lewes bombs on the cylinders, and they were about to blow.

  ‘Get down,’ he bullroared with all the force his lungs could muster. He barged into Audley, threw all his weight on him, knocked him off his feet, felt him fall clear. Just as he rolled on his face, the Nissen hut peeshacked up like a suppressed volcanic plug, squidged shapeless, went lava, balled into a giant seedcore of seething orange and black, geysered out in long witch-tongues of acid flame, spumed wefts of shockfire, spouted a morass of flotsam; the sky scranched, the air bombilated, the thornbush heaved, blackgrey smoke peeshooshed, gaspockets flambéed, twists of miscreant sheetiron and foetal cinders skittered down like rain.

  Caine felt the earth move, felt the shocksquall crepitate, felt the oxygen snatched from his lungs, saw Jerry bodies blowball past li
ke uprooted treetrunks. He saw the guard with his Tommy-gun hit dirt, dryslither a yard away. He leopard-crawled, ripped the weapon from the enemy’s shoulder, felt the slingswivel snap, felt the comforting shape of the pistolgrip, slipped the safety, saw the Kraut raise his head, ringbolted one round right through his left eye at hard-contact range.

  Caine came up on his feet: his ears had gone numb, his senses played the chaos soundlessly, each action vivid and acute like a silent, slowed-down movie. The whole field was obscured by smoke cloud, scattered with little nests of burning waste. He clocked Krauts gouging in the dust, getting up, burning, wounded; he saw big Wallace crouched, sawnoff Purdey miraculously in his great gauntlet hand, saw him squelch a Jerry’s face shapeless in a single mighty hammerblow. He saw the blond mops of Brunetto and Nolan wavering in dust spews, saw Copeland come up beside them with a sharp rock in each hand, saw him chin a Jerry, grind his face to mush. He saw Brunetto heist the falling Kraut’s Schmeisser, saw her drub rounds into the back of another about to stick Copeland with a bayonet. He saw Nolan snatch a Gewehr from the fallen, potshot a third 999-man through the chest.

  A round deep-fried air over his head: Caine wheeled, clocked Larousse, wide face fireblacked, lurching in on him out of the greymeld smoke that hid the runway from view. The stoolie’s jaw tightened: Caine squeezed steel, felt the working parts clump and stick. He took a step forward: Audley streaked past him, screaming, ranting. Larousse’s pistol chumped: Audley took the sting right in the teeth. Caine saw the back of his head detonate in clags of hair and crimson foam, saw his body ripsoar. His hands fumbled to clear the stoppage: he clocked the bowsprung shape of Larousse looming over him, drove the barrel of his Thompson as hard as he could into the Nazi’s eye. Larousse squealed but didn’t drop his pistol: he hurled his whole lopsided shank of a body on Caine, whalloping him off his feet, scrabbling half blind to bring his weapon to bear on him. Just as they fell, Caine jammed the Thompson’s muzzle into the gorilla’s mouth, yanked iron: the working parts chumped, gas kashoowed, the rear of Larousse’s potshaped head spoofed out in a reef of crimson gore.