Death or Glory III

by Michael Asher

  Quinnell and Jizzard pulled out: Caine and Copeland crouched in the pit until Wallace and Fiske were near, then climbed out to meet them. Caine saw that Wallace was bleeding from a wound in the neck.

  ‘What the heck was that?’ he demanded

  ‘Tripwire, skipper. I copped a bit of shrapnel, that’s all.’

  Caine examined his wound. ‘Better let Quinnell look at it.’

  ‘How did you come to set a tripwire off?’ Copeland enquired.

  Wallace glanced at Fiske. ‘Accident, wannit.’ A muscle twitched under his chin.

  ‘The bridge is clear otherwise, sir,’ Fiske cut in. ‘Not as solid as it looks. Crumbling masonry, missing blocks, cracks where we can lay cutting charges. We’ll need to go down on ropes, though.’

  ‘All right. Go back to the leaguer. Wallace, get that wound tended. Fiske, get the climbing ropes out. Harry, you stay here: I want us to put together a sketch map.’

  9

  Caine and Copeland returned to the leaguer fifteen minutes later to find themselves in the middle of a row. Wallace, with blood still running down his neck, was holding a mass of climbing rope balanced on one of his grappling-hook-sized hands: in the other he held up a length of rope no more than two feet long. More hanks of rope of similar length were scattered like dead snakes around his size fourteen feet. Fiske stood opposite him, looking slightly amused, smoking a pipe: Quinnell and Jizzard were sitting on the ground near the jeeps, smirking. Trubman was leaning over the drop-down table on the W/T jeep about thirty yards away, with his earphones on, apparently oblivious to anything else.

  ‘I wanna know ’oo was responsible for drawin’ these ropes,’ the big gunner roared. ‘Come on. ‘’Oo was it? It weren’t me, an’ it weren’t Trubman, so it must of bin one of you.’

  ‘What’s up, Fred?’ Caine asked. ‘What’s the problem with the ropes?’

  Wallace turned blackbead eyes on Caine. He threw down the single piece of rope in disgust, riffled through the mass of strands sitting on his other hand, showed Caine severed end after severed end. ‘Look at ’em, skipper. All cut. There ain’t a single length ’ere over two foot. ‘’Ow the ’ell are we goin’ to abseil down the bridge with these?’ He hurled the tangle of rope at the ground with both hands.

  Caine knelt, examined a few of the ends closely: there was no doubt they’d been cut with a knife.

  Wallace pointed a sausage-like finger at Fiske. ‘What I wanna know is ’oo drew ’em from the stores.’

  Fiske pulled the pipe from thin lips, blew smoke. ‘Don’t be a cretin, Wallace. We didn’t bring the ropes with us. We picked them up with the jeeps after the drop.’

  ‘Yah, ye great nana,’ Jizzard sniggered. ‘’Oo drew ’em from the stores, indeed.’

  Wallace turned his shaggy bull-head on the Scotsman. ‘You tellin’ me Fraser’s crew would of supplied us with dud ropes?’

  ‘Wouldn’t put it past those dagos,’ Quinnell said. ‘It wasn’t any of us, was it?’

  Wallace clenched his huge fists, held them up like warclubs. ‘If I find out ’oo it was, I’ll bloody …’

  ‘That’s enough, Fred,’ Caine said. ‘It must have been a mistake. We can knot ’em together, can’t we?’

  ‘We can, skipper, but it’ll be a long job, and it ain’t guaranteed.’

  ‘We better get cracking then.’

  Fiske, Jizzard and Quinnell began picking up the fallen strands. Caine glanced at Wallace. ‘I told you to get that wound fixed,’ he said.

  Wallace shrugged. ‘It ain’t much.’

  Caine ordered him to sit, told Quinnell to bring his medical bag. Quinnell carried it over, delved into it for iodine and cotton wool.

  He swabbed Wallace’s neck: the big man flinched. ‘Hey, watchit, will ya?’

  ‘Ye big pussy. It’s a fleabite, so it is.’

  Quinnell ripped open a field-dressing, applied it to Wallace’s rhinocerous-like neck, tied it tightly. Wallace gasped. ‘Whatcha tryin’ to do, throttle me?’

  ‘Och, I wish someone would.’

  Wallace thought fondly of Maurice Pickney, their previous medic, who’d been lost on Sandhog. Some had said he was the other way, but his reassuring manner had been just right for a field medical orderly. You couldn’t doubt his guts, either: he’d been killed covering their retreat.

  Quinnell finished tying the dressing. ‘You were lucky,’ he commented.

  Wallace glowered at Fiske, picking up and knotting ropes with the others. ‘Not half as lucky as some.’

  ‘Hey, skipper,’ Trubman yelled suddenly, ‘get a load of this.’

  Caine put down the ropes he was tying, walked over to the W/T jeep. Copeland followed. Trubman was still leaning against the table with his earphones on: his eyes were bright, his face more than usually flushed.

  ‘What is it, Taff ?’

  ‘Sounds like a Mayday call.’

  Caine put on the headphones, heard a wave of blips stuttering across the airwaves. It was a pattern repeated three times, then a different sequence, also recurring three times, followed by what sounded like a free jumble of dots and dashes. Then came the same two sequences, each repeated three times. The burst stopped abruptly. There was a gap, then it started again. Caine handed the headphones back to Trubman, shook his head. ‘Never heard anything like it.’

  Trubman listened again: his deepset eyes beneath the lenses dilated with concentration. Caine knew he was an expert telegrapher: in signals training he’d attained the highest marks of his intake for Morse code. He had the uncanny knack of being able to memorize ciphers and decode messages without writing them down. Now, though, he dickered on a signals pad with a stub of pencil.

  ‘It’s an emergency distress signal, skipper – Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. STENDEC. STENDEC. STENDEC … then a series of numbers, then STENDEC. STENDEC. STENDEC. Mayday. Mayday. Mayday again.’ He held his watch up, timed the gap. ‘Repeated every nine seconds. If I had to put money on it, I’d say it was coming from a Gibson Girl.’

  ‘A what?’ Caine said.

  Trubman tittered. ‘A Gibson Girl’s an emergency transmitter, see, shaped like, you know, like a girl’s bum?’ He made expansive curving gestures with his hands. ‘They designed it that way so it’s easy to get a grip of. Transmits a Mayday signal at 500 kilohertz, with a range up to two hundred miles. Jerry design originally, but it’s been developed by the Yanks. Vacuum tubes controlled by crystals.’

  ‘What’s it coming from?’

  ‘Most likely a downed plane, but no way to tell if she’s ours or theirs.’

  ‘What about STENDEC – what does that mean?’

  Trubman looked sheepish. ‘Not any code I know of.’

  ‘Can you triangulate the signal?’

  ‘No need to. I’m pretty certain those numbers are grid co-ordinates.’

  ‘I suppose it would make sense,’ Copeland said. ‘If you’re sending out a Mayday, you want rescue missions to know where you are. All we need to do is transfer the grid numbers to the map.’

  ‘OK. Let’s do it,’ Caine said.

  Trubman listened to the signal again, wrote out the co-ordinates in clear, listened once more to check, then passed the figures to Caine. Caine traced them on the map. ‘Christ! You sure that’s right, Taff ?’

  Trubman whipped off his glasses, rubbed them with a thumb. He replaced them and peered at the figures once more. ‘Yep, it’s right. Why?’

  ‘It’s only six miles away.’

  Caine looked at Copeland: Cope frowned, dropped his eyes. Caine saw that Wallace had come across to find out what was going on.

  ‘What’s up, skipper?’ he enquired.

  ‘Let’s get brew on,’ Caine said.

  Wallace made tea on a Tommy-cooker. Caine sat down against a hassock of grass, laid his Thompson next to him. Cope squatted on a boulder with his sniper weapon on his lap. He lit a cigarette. Trubman sat nearby. Fiske, Jizzard and Quinnell knelt or sat cross-legged around a treetrunk a few yards away. When the tea was
boiled Wallace ladled out mugs, sat down on a jerrycan.

  Copeland swigged tea, made a face at the giant. ‘What the heck did you put in this?’

  ‘Usual dogs’ piss. Why? Is there any problem with that?’

  ‘Nah, dogs’ piss is my favourite.’

  Wallace looked at Caine. ‘So what’s the big news, then, skipper?’

  Caine gulped tea. ‘Taff picked up a Mayday signal, probably a downed kite. It’s about six miles away.’

  Fiske looked up; his eyes lingered on Caine’s face. ‘If there’s aircrew stranded in the desert, sir, I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes. Not with that Totenkopf battalion around.’ He sounded almost as if he were gloating, Caine thought.

  ‘Aye, poor wee sods,’ Jizzard smirked.

  ‘We can’t abandon them,’ Caine said. ‘We could be there and back in ninety minutes.’

  ‘What?’ Jizzard objected. ‘Ah’m no’ stickin’ ma neck out for a bunch o’ Brylcreem Boys …’

  ‘No one asked you, Jizzard,’ Wallace waded in. He immediately regretted it – SAS tradition had always favoured sounding out the opinions of those whose lives were at stake.

  Copeland stamped out his cigarette. ‘We’re here to do a job, skipper,’ he said. ‘Even if there are fliers down there, who’s to say they’re ours? We’d be risking an op that could be crucial to Monty’s push.’

  ‘No telling what sort of traps might have been laid either,’ Fiske added. ‘Judging by what Wallace and I ran into, could be anything. I say it’s none of our business.’

  Wallace snorted, spilt tea. Caine peered at Fiske, caught a hint of truculent pleasure in his eyes.

  He shook his head. ‘We should have a shufti, pick up anyone we find. We can still be back by last light.’

  ‘We don’t even know they’re alive,’ Cope retorted. ‘If the signal’s coming from an emergency beacon, they might be dead for all we know.’

  ‘Not possible, sir,’ Trubman cut in. He removed his glasses, rubbed them with his scrap of four-by-two. Without them, his eyes looked several sizes too small. He replaced the glasses, scratched his doughy face. ‘The Gibson Girl transmitter’s handcranked, see. That means there’s got to be at least one man alive, or the signal would cut out. One version – I think it’s called the SCR-578 – comes with a box-kite aerial: a balloon with a hydrogen generator …’

  ‘That’s all very interesting, Taff,’ Copeland barked, ‘but how do we know it’s not a decoy? What if it’s Jerry trying to lure in Allied troops who want to play the hero?’ He gave Caine a sharp look.

  ‘I don’t think we ought to take the chance, sir,’ Fiske said, looking at Copeland now. ‘From what I hear of those Totenkopf boys, they’re not big on taking prisoners, so at least if they do find any aircrew, it’ll be over quickly.’

  Wallace glared at him. ‘How would you like it if you was in a tight spot, an’ a mate dumped yer to save ’is own skin?’

  ‘They’re not our mates,’ Fiske leered.

  Wallace drew himself up to full, formidable height, stuck out his paving-stone chin. ‘I’m with the skipper,’ he rasped.

  Cope cracked his knuckles, his face hard.

  ‘Why not hand it over to Captain Fraser?’ Trubman suggested. ‘Let him decide. If he gives us the green light, we’ll go for it.’

  ‘You got comms with Fraser yet, Taff ?’ Caine asked.

  ‘Well, no, but …’

  ‘It’s not Fraser’s call anyway, it’s mine, and I reckon we can’t leave our boys stranded in the Blue.’

  ‘What if we run into Jerry, though, sah?’ Jizzard queried. ‘What if they’re further ahead than you thought?’

  ‘Then you’ll get your chance to do some slottin’, wontcha?’ Wallace beamed. ‘Ain’t that what you said you was ’ere for?’

  Quinnell tittered. ‘Sure he’s got you there, Jizz. Ever since we got roped into this scheme you’ve been mouthing off about slotting Jerry, so ye have.’

  Jizzard blinked at him. ‘An’ ye’re all for it, are ye, Paddy?’

  Quinnell pulled at his earlobe. ‘Och, I suppose I am. Like the captain says, it’s the right thing to do. And don’t call me Paddy.’

  ‘How about sending one jeep?’ Cope suggested. ‘I’ll do the business, while the rest of you lay the charges here.’

  Caine shook his head. ‘No splitting up. If we go, we all go.’

  Fiske bit on his pipe. ‘Oh well,’ he said. ‘Ours not to reason why.’

  Caine glanced at Copeland, knew his mate was seeing another mission spiralling out of control, just when he was on the path to promotion. Caine also knew that, deep down, Cope trusted him.

  Copeland unslung his sniper’s rifle, his wadingbird features poker. ‘Well then,’ he said. ‘If we’re going to be back before last light, I suppose we’d better get moving.’

  10

  They mounted the jeeps, started along the scalloped track, trailed across the bridge, eyed the pit where the booby trap had been. Wallace and Jizzard patrolled ahead on foot with weapons at the ready, combing the surface for mines: the jeeps crept along behind them, sprawling on their springs, frames creaking. The vehicles were well armed: two of them carried twin Vickers ‘K’ aircraft machine-guns pintlemounted on the back, and all three had .50 calibre Brownings on the front. Every inch of space was taken up with jerrycans of petrol, water, ration boxes: the wireless jeep had no Vickers, but carried both an M1 stovepipe ‘bazooka’ rocketlauncher and a two-inch mortar. The men hefted .303 Lee-Enfield rifles, Colt automatics, bayonets, No. 36 grenades: Caine had his Tommy-gun, Trubman an M1 Carbine, Wallace his Bren.

  Half a mile from the bridge they came to the top of the pass, looked down across a plain the colour of gunpowder, bounded in the far distance by warped black spurs that seemed to loom out of the baseland in the shapes of dwarves and vultures. Caine swung a deep arc across the valley with his field-glasses. He would have been relieved at the prospect of open horizons, yet the landscape here felt alien – a devil’s dumpheap. It was a raddled sea of slate grey: giant cairns and cinderpiles, knobs of gnawed traprock, pinnacles sculpted into teeth, rubblestone escarpments, teetering yardangs like trees petrified in a holocaust. Dustdevils whiskbroomed down there: lightsnares blinked. The sun drifted slowly behind them through bevelled cloud, turning the plain into a centrifuge of shade and sombre light.

  ‘Hey, skipper, see that?’ Wallace yodled suddenly. ‘Left, ten o’clock.’

  Caine switched the glasses, clocked what looked like a silver blob hovering above the rocks, perhaps five miles away. He called Trubman over, handed him the binoculars. ‘Ever seen anything like that, Taff ?’ he enquired.

  The signaller took the glasses, peered through them. ‘That’s it, skipper,’ he yelled. ‘That’s the Gibson Girl. Like I said, it’s got a box kite attached – a blimp filled with hydrogen. The tethering cable is also the aerial. It’s got a little hydrogen generator that keeps it …’

  Caine took the glasses back: Trubman blinked. ‘That’s our downed plane,’ he said.

  ‘We’ll take a dekko,’ Caine said. ‘At least we won’t have any problem finding it.’

  They came down the escarpment at a snail’s pace, rattled between pebbledash bluffs, through rock junkyards where woody plants gripped the stones like claws. What remained of the track was a switchback, so rockstrewn that in places they had to get out and clear a path. Copeland glanced often at his watch, fretting – it was already taking longer than expected. At the bottom they leaguered up close in an old, dry wadi bed, in oblongs of shade under steepscarped walls. Caine jumped down to check the compass bearing, Copeland stood in the back of the jeep, shuftied the plain through his sights. ‘Hey, hold your horses,’ he hissed. ‘There’s a dust cloud coming. Go south, skipper, three o’clock.’

  Caine lifted his field-glasses, followed Cope’s directions, picked up a long smudge of dust above the skyline. It hadn’t been there when he’d surveyed the plain from the top of the pass. ‘Looks like the Hun arrived e
arly,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ Wallace boomed. ‘They wasn’t s’posed to get here till first light.’

  For a moment nobody spoke. All eyes were on Caine.

  He glanced around him, saw that Jizzard and Quinnell had stiffened in their seats: they were staring in the direction of the dust cloud with taut faces. ‘What the hell are we gonnae do now?’ Jizzard wailed.

  ‘Shut up, Jizzard,’ Copeland snapped.

  Caine felt a stab of fear: a melting sensation in his stomach, a prickling at the back of his skull. His heart clumped. He fought to stop any emotion showing on his face, to keep his thinking cool. His first impulse was to do a smart about turn and lead the patrol back up the pass, dynamite the bridge, make a hasty withdrawal to Fraser’s lines. That would be the wisest move.

  Yet something stopped him. Trubman had said that if the beacon was working, there must be someone alive at the crash-site. The odds were that they were British or Yank. They were only a few minutes away: he couldn’t leave them, especially with the Jerries so close. If he did, he’d never be able to forget it. He forced himself to stay where he was, tilted the field-glasses, homed in on the dust cloud again. It was a faint wisp by now, a dark eddy hanging in the haze – hardly visible. If it was a convoy, it had stopped, but he couldn’t even say for certain that it was a convoy. It could have been a a big dustdevil, a sudden breath of wind. It must be twenty miles away – maybe twenty-five – if it was the enemy, they wouldn’t be here for an hour or more, probably not before dark. They might well leaguer up for the night, anyway.

  ‘Come on,’ he said: he forced the words out, struggled to keep his voice even. ‘Let’s go and pick up that crew.’

  For an instant, no one moved. Copeland was looking at him with an incredulous grin, as if he’d just made a joke. ‘Skipper,’ he said quietly, ‘we weren’t expecting them for another fifteen hours. If we go back now we might just about have time to blow the bridge – even that’s pushing it.’

  Caine tightened his fists. ‘They’re not here yet, Harry,’ he said.