Death or Glory III

by Michael Asher

  5

  Caine halted the convoy on the rise looking down on the el-Fayya gorge: he surveyed the position with binos. The bridge was a structure of stone arches spanning forty yards across the ravine: a walled blockhouse stood on a limb of the escarpment, set way back from the bridge’s western end. There was a copse of tamarix trees at the base of the limb – strange, twisted treetrunks, entwined around each other like vast serpents. Marbled scarps rose out of shattered tufa on both sides of the track – rock faces razored into terraces and scallopings, pocked with caves like dead eyes. Flights of small birds made spirals and veronicas along the clifftops.

  On the opposite side of the gorge, the old highroad disappeared over the rim of a hill. There were hard black peaks in the far distance: Caine couldn’t see the barren plain he knew lay between here and there. The sky was pewterglass, fleeced with cotton: it was hot, but not desert hot. Here in the hills of Tunisia, it felt like a different game of soldiers: even the air smelt different.

  Caine lowered the glasses, waited for reaction. There was no movement – the whole place seemed deserted. He examined the track ahead, looked for disturbed ground that might give telltale sign of mines. The road was scattered with pebbles sifted by recent rains: his best guess was that nothing human had been here in weeks.

  ‘It’s gonna be a sod blowin’ them buttresses,’ Wallace remarked. Standing up in the driver’s position, he looked more like some wild partisan than a regular soldier, Caine thought. He wore a rawhide jerkin over his patched and faded smock, and was hatless, his hair an unkempt tangle, his slab of a chest slung with bandoliers. His Purdey sawnoff hung from one side of his web belt, alongside a bayonet and a brace of grenades: a .45 Colt was holstered on the other. Wallace scratched the wirebrush bristle his chin, peered down through pindot eyes: his unassisted vision was keen as a kite’s.

  And he was right, Caine thought. He took another shufti at the arches. The bridge and its defences had been constructed by the French before the war, ready to hold this part of Tunisia in the event of an Italian invasion. It had been built to last: they would need every ounce of Nobel 808 they had to knock it down.

  ‘Let’s get on with it then,’ Copeland’s voice cut in from behind them. Cope was sprawled against the twin Vickers machine-guns mounted in the jeep’s rear, cracking his knuckles with nervous impatience: a cigarette dangled from his lower lip. ‘What are we waiting for – Christmas?’

  Wallace spat sideways, sat down so heavily in the driving seat that the vehicle rocked. ‘His imperial majesty speaks. You’d think ’e were a bleedin’ field-marshal. ’E ain’t even done his officer trainin’ yet.’

  ‘I’ll have you on a fizzer, watch out.’

  Caine slid back into his seat, chuckling. He knew Wallace didn’t begrudge Copeland’s new rank: it was just that Cope struggled so hard to conceal his pride that the big gunner couldn’t help needling him.

  ‘Nah.’ Caine grinned at Wallace. ‘He was world champion bighead even when he was a buckshee Tom.’

  ‘Oh yer, I forgot.’

  Caine half turned, waved to Trubman and Fiske, behind them in the W/T jeep. To the rear of Trubman’s vehicle, Jizzard and Quinnell manned the third jeep, laden with explosives and demo kit.

  ‘Let’s move it, ladies,’ Caine bawled.

  They descended the slope cautiously. Copeland trained the machine-guns on the blockhouse, pivoted muzzles. They ran the jeeps into loops of shade under the tamarix trees. The patrol sprang out in all-round defence: Cope stayed aboard, braced the Vickers, scanned areas of possible threat. For a few minutes there was dead silence, broken by the cawings of crows on the escarpment above.

  ‘All right,’ Caine growled. ‘Scrim ’em up.’

  ‘Is that really necessary, Captain?’ Fiske enquired. ‘We’ve got these nice trees as cover.’

  Caine gave him a long glance. He’d only known Fiske three days, but had already noticed his fondness for mouthing off. He might have been an officer once, but he was in the habit of forgetting he wasn’t one any longer. Caine was about to say something cutting when Trubman beat him to it. ‘If the captain says scrim up, you scrim up, man. Get on with it.’

  Caine raised an eyebrow, clocked Trubman’s fish-shaped face. The signaller had recovered from the bayonet wound he’d taken on their last op, but close up you could see a trace of fatigue in the eyes, a hint of resignation that made him look older. It was the long-distance stare of the battleweary: Caine also saw it when he looked in the mirror.

  ‘Fiske, go with Wallace,’ he said. ‘Clear the bridge, and any other defences you find. Work out how we can lay the charges.’

  Fiske and Wallace slunk off, weapons at the ready, five yards apart. Caine helped Jizzard and Quinnell stretch a cam-net over their jeep, noticed a dark stain in the sand beneath the front end of the wagon. He knelt down, touched the dampness, smelt his fingers. He inspected the condenser slung across the radiator grille. ‘You’ve sprung a leak,’ he told them. ‘Didn’t you notice?’

  Jizzard shook his head. His face had a coarse, parboiled look: his eyes were haunted. ‘Never saw a thing, sah, but then ah wasnae driving, was ah.’ He nodded at Quinnell. ‘What idjit would put a Paddy behind a steerin’ wheel?’

  Quinnell’s eyes blazed. For a moment Caine thought he was going to hit Jizzard.

  ‘The idjit would be me, Jizzard,’ Caine snapped. ‘In future you report all mechanical problems at once.’ He stared the Scotsman out, his slatepolished eyes hard, his massive shoulders bristling. ‘You want to take me on, Private?’

  Jizzard’s gloating look vanished. He dropped his eyes. ‘No, sah.’

  ‘Right. You two clear the blockhouse. And keep your eyes peeled. If you miss a booby trap like you missed that leak, you’ll be riding home with your legs in a basket.’

  The two of them sweated up the slope towards the blockhouse: Caine made safe his Thompson, helped Trubman set up the wireless antennae. Copeland cleared his .303 SMLE sniper’s rifle, strolled over to Caine, bracing it under his arm as if he were on a pheasant shoot. He was a lean figure with the sharpbeaked face of a trawling bird, cornstubble hair, snowblue eyes, prominent Adam’s apple. Though his smock and overalls were as worn and washed out as Caine’s, they looked almost smart. Copeland owed his commission to the fact that Caine had taken a shrapnel wound on desert ops the previous December. Caine had been evacuated: OC Paddy Mayne had promoted Cope, then a sergeant, to fill the vacant troop officer’s place.

  Copeland gave Caine a V cigarette, stuck one in his mouth. Caine lit them both with his Zippo lighter – his talisman ever since it had saved his life on the Runefish op. That seemed a heck of a long time ago. He’d found Nolan on that scheme – and lost her twice since. How could a man be so careless with the person in the world he most cared about?

  Copeland seemed to catch his thoughts. ‘You reckon Nolan’s alive?’ he asked softly, the cigarette still in his mouth.

  Caine shrugged, not ready to talk about it. He stubbed out his fagend hard. ‘Stand stag, Harry, will you? I’ve got a condenser to fix.’

  He took the toolkit and went to patch the leak. It required welding, but he had some stuff that would do the trick for now. Lying on his back with his head under the cylinder, his broad hands caressing the hot metal, he felt suddenly at ease. He had always found tinkering with machinery therapeutic. Unlike some human problems, mechanical ones could be mended, and he was good at mending them.

  As he worked, Caine remembered another time when he’d been lying under a car like this. He was sixteen years old, an apprentice mechanic in Steve Moss’s garage. Same smell of grease and diesel oil. A wireless playing a Glenn Miller dance tune. What make of car had it been? A Standard, he thought. He had been humming along, lost in his work, when Moss nudged him gently with his boot. ‘Hey, Tommy. There’s a copper here to see you.’

  Caine shuffled out from under, stood up, wiped his hands on a rag. ‘What does he want?’

  Moss, a kindly, balding man,
with a paunch under his greasy smock, looked apologetic. ‘I dunno.’ Caine knew he did, though, and so did he. He found PC Barry Jarrold in the office, staring at a dogeared calendar for the year 1937 featuring a photo of a sports car. The constable had spidery arms and legs, a grave, withered face with a sparse moustache. Caine always thought he looked too old and weedy to be a policeman: he wore a double row of Great War medal ribbons on his uniform, though.

  ‘I’ve told you, Tommy,’ Jarrold said gruffly. ‘You can’t go on working here.’

  ‘It’s my job, Constable.’

  Jarrold’s eyes were watery blue. ‘You broke both your stepfather’s arms with a smithy’s hammer, boy. He’s all for pressing charges. I’ve talked to him, though, and he’ll drop them on the condition you leave home – go somewhere far away.’

  Caine’s jaw had tightened. ‘And what’ll happen to Mum, and my sister? Do you know what he was doing to them?’

  Jarrold averted his eyes. ‘I know, but in court it won’t make a ha’penny’s worth of difference. You’ll go to borstal for two, three years: you won’t be able to look after them there, will you?’

  Jarrold laid a lean hand on Caine’s shoulder: his eyes were sympathetic. ‘You’re a good lad, Tommy: they don’t come better. But you’re an animal when you get riled, and you’re as fast as lightning. Your stepfather always was a swine. As far as the law’s concerned, though, you attacked him. You might have killed him. I know how you feel, son, but the best thing you can do is get yourself in the army. It’s all motors now. They need mechanics, and it’ll make a man of you – teach you to curb that temper, maybe.’

  Caine swallowed to relieve the swelling in his throat. ‘They don’t take you at sixteen.’

  Jarrold winked. ‘Lie about your age like I did – in the Great War. Nobody’ll check up: it’ll be between you and me. Don’t worry about your mum and sister. I’ll keep my eye on them.’

  Caine looked around, searching for a way of escape, but deep down knew there wasn’t any. A week later, he’d turned up at the recruiting office and signed on with the Royal Engineers. That was six, nearly seven years ago. It had been a long road, he thought. He’d seen more than his fair share of suffering and death, lost some good men. But here he was, a captain in the 1st SAS Regiment, with both the DSO and the DCM to his name. He reflected how proud his mum would have been if she’d lived to see it – if he hadn’t lost her. He blamed himself: he blamed himself for losing Betty Nolan, too.

  6

  Wallace and Fiske paced out the bridge. Fiske, in front, his .303 clinched in fleshless arms, halted every few minutes to lean over the parapet and peer at the masonry below. ‘What you doing?’ Wallace demanded.

  Fiske stared at him. He was almost unnaturally thin – his smock hung on his body like a tent – but he was one of those spindly, ropemuscled types who often turned out to be stronger than they looked, Wallace thought. His eyes were brown and cold, his stringlipped mouth without expression.

  ‘Checking for cracks in the stonework,’ he said. His voice was sharp, with a contemptuous quality. ‘To lay the charges in. Why? What would you do? Hang them over the side and say a prayer? We only get one bash at it, you know.’

  He leaned over again: the bed of the ravine lay a good fifty feet down, a snake of ivory sand curving through tufts of waterbuffed boulders and esparto grass. ‘We need to put cutting charges on all the spandrels,’ he added, ‘but the masonry here is too thick for an external charge. Unless we can find cracks to insert our 808 in, we’ll have to bore holes, and that takes time. In any case, we’ll have to go down on ropes. It’s not going to be a stroll in the park.’

  Wallace ignored the sneering tone. He guessed Fiske was the sort of bloke who didn’t like many people – a loner who had no friends, and didn’t care.

  ‘Where’d you learn this demolitions stuff anyway?’

  ‘At the Ordnance Depot. I was with No. 8 Commando too. When Layforce broke up, I was posted back to an Ordnance field unit …’ He wetted his lips. ‘That’s when I ended up in the chokey.’

  Wallace grinned. ‘How long d’you do, then?’

  ‘Six months. Would have been more if I hadn’t volunteered for this lark.’

  Wallace frowned. ‘Just got out of clink myself: only a few days, mind, but that were enough. I’d rather face an 88-mil than six months in the slammer.’

  The big man didn’t mention the eighteen months’ civvie time he’d copped for in Blighty, how the confinement, the shut-in feeling, had almost done for him. Thank Christ he was here in the open, not there, closed in.

  Fiske wet his narrow lips again, his eyes leaden. ‘So what did they do you for?’

  ‘Belted Paddy Mayne, di’n’ I?’

  Fiske raised an eyebrow. ‘Your OC? I’ll bet that made you popular.’

  ‘He was grindin’ some poor kid’s face to mush at the time. Paddy’s all right till he’s got two drinks down him, then he makes the Wolfman look like Shirley bleedin’ Temple. Anyway, I owed him one.’

  ‘They say he’s a tough nut.’

  ‘He ain’t that tough.’

  Fiske made a rasping noise that might have been a chuckle. ‘Belting your OC? No wonder you’re still a buckshee private while your pals are sporting pips.’

  Wallace stuck out his chin. ‘Matter of fact, I bin offered enough tapes to string a parachute, mate. Decorated soldier, I am: MM and bar. Don’t want ’em, though, do I? Private’s the best rank in the army – at least yer can’t get busted, like what ’appened to you. I ’eard you was an officer once.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘A little birdy. Is it true or ain’t it?’

  ‘It’s none of your damn’ business.’

  They worked along the rest of the bridge in silence: on the far side they found a lump of mangled steel lying in the track, a buckled hulk that might have once been a trailer, so rusted through that its sides were thin wafers bent in on themselves. It had a crooked axle, but no wheels. Fiske moved towards it: Wallace’s granite brow furrowed. His keen gaze swept the roadedge: there was a lump of oxidized metal peeking out of the gravel no more than four feet away. He grabbed Fiske’s bony arm. ‘Don’t go any closer, mate. Could be a booby trap.’

  Fiske shrugged him off. ‘Let me be the judge of that.’ He took another two paces: there was a sharp click like a breech block snapping shut. Wallace froze, felt the blood drain from his face, waited for the bang that never came. Fiske stood poised in midstep, rifle still clutched in his arms, not daring even to look down at what he might be standing on. ‘Don’t … fuckin’ … move,’ Wallace whispered.

  Sweat beaded the big man’s temple: his breath came in jerks. He saw that Fiske’s boot had caught a tripwire flush with the surface, disguised under a thin layer of dust. The wire, almost as fine as cotton thread, had snared against his toe-cap, which had pulled it taut. The pressure, Wallace guessed, had armed an explosive device buried in the verge: that would explain the click they’d heard. The fact that it hadn’t gone off yet, though, meant either it was a dud or that it had some sort of delayed-action set-up. In which case, withdrawing quickly would be his own best move. That would mean leaving Fiske in the lurch, though. He willed himself to move towards the thin man: for a moment, his legs wouldn’t budge.

  ‘Pressure-release tripwire,’ Fiske hissed: his eyes were riveted on the wire attached to his boot. ‘If I take my foot away, the wire goes slack, and she blows.’

  Wallace nodded with slow and awful comprehension. He shifted the weight of his Bren in his massive arms, felt bird-flutters in his stomach. Fiske was precariously balanced with most of his weight on his front foot: he only had to stumble and they’d both be mincemeat.

  The giant swallowed. ‘You sure?’ he demanded. ‘Might be diss.’

  ‘Want me to try it and see?’

  ‘No, no, don’t move, for Chrissake. Lemme think.’

  Fiske swore furiously. ‘The only thing to do is to apply equal pressure – can’t let the
wire go slack, but …’

  ‘Yeah. How we gonna exchange the pressure without you movin’ yer flamin’ foot?’

  Fiske had turned so pale his face was almost transparent. Wallace glanced about – there were plenty of loose stones around that might do for a counterweight. The question was, how to make the changeover.

  Wallace set his steel jaw. ‘I’m gonna put me Bren down. Then I’m gonna pick up one of them boulders and bring it over. It’ll be all right, mate. Just stay where you are.’

  ‘Where the hell do you think I’m going?’

  Fiske had aged ten years in the last sixty seconds, but at least he wasn’t the panicking type, Wallace thought. He laid the Bren down on its bipod, took careful steps towards the nearest scree. There were at least three boulders there he reckoned he could manage. He hefted one of them: it must have weighed five or six hundred pounds – too heavy even for him. A second, smaller, stone, was stuck in place, and wouldn’t move. He tried a third boulder: it seemed loose. He stretched clamshell hands around it until they met, squatted and let his thighs take the weight. He shifted it with a groan, came slowly upright in a classic powerlift. He hefted the boulder two or three yards to where Fiske stood. He squatted again, laid the rock as near to Fiske’s front foot as he could.

  Fiske was holding himself rigid, his eyes still fixed on the wire. ‘Slide it up, very slowly,’ he said.

  Wallace wiped sweat out of his eyes, felt his heart lob. He took a slew of breath, focused all his senses on the boulder – he only had to shove it forward a few inches, he told himself, but if he got it wrong they could both kiss their arses goodbye. The wire was only a fraction above the surface: he shoved the boulder forward as cautiously as he could until it made contact.