Death or Glory III

by Michael Asher

  He stuck his head out of the window, tilted back his beret. The girl glided closer: Davis saw she had brilliant green eyes, pert nose, full red lips, an entrancing slight unevenness in one of her front teeth. There was something almost sleepy in her eyes – in her whole face – like a little girl lost in the woods, something wistful and far-off: it took his breath away.

  ‘You wanna watch it, miss,’ he warbled. ‘You’ll get yerself run over.’

  ‘You couldn’t give me a lift, could you?’ she said. ‘I think I’m lost.’ Her voice was silken, her accent English – a bit plummy. She didn’t look a streetwalker: she looked more like Rita Hayworth or one of those bints you saw on the flicks.

  Davis scratched his ear, yanked his beret down. ‘Blimey, I dunno, miss. I’ll catch it if I give anyone a lift. Regulations, see.’

  She gave him a melting look, moistened bloodred lips. A raw tingle crept across Davis’s belly as if hot fingers were walking there. He shivered.

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘I’d be very grateful.’

  Her eyes were bottomless: falling into them would be like dropping into a pool of cool water, Davis thought. He wondered how grateful she would be.

  He shot a worried glance at the road ahead. The street was deserted: chinks of light bloomed dimly despite blackout regs.

  ‘It’ll cost yer,’ he winked. ‘I’ll do it for a kiss.’

  He got a glimpse of the delectable overlap. ‘Only one?’ she purred.

  He stifled a gasp, nodded at the opposite door. ‘All right, darlin’. Hop in.’

  He watched the blond head cross in front of the lorry, already lost in a reverie: this was the kind of girl you daydreamed about. He imagined her body naked on a bed under him, saw himself parting her legs, caressing her thighs, saw her panting with pleasure as he did her.

  The door cracked: the girl climbed in. Davis dekkoed elegant bare legs, the peaks of shapely breasts under the dress, the scar at the base of the neck that looked like a gunshot wound, but surely couldn’t be. She was wearing flatsoled brogues that were out of place with the rest of the attire. She sat down on the long seat, put down her handbag, eyed him through quivering lashes. He caught a whiff of perfume, noticed the almost boyish cut of her hair, the provocative blond curl over her eye.

  Fathomless seagreen eyes held him. ‘Well?’ she asked.

  Now she was close, Davis sensed the pull of her body. He gulped hard, as if his throat wouldn’t swallow. ‘Well what?’ he stammered.

  Her face dimpled. ‘Our bargain. Didn’t you want a kiss?’

  When she shuffled nearer to him, he felt weak-boned. He put his arms round her, snogged her mouth, felt soft lips yield, slid a hand under her dress, stroked the soft reaches of her inner thigh.

  ‘I didn’t say you could go there,’ she giggled. ‘That isn’t what we agreed on.’

  She didn’t close her legs or grab his hand, though, Davis noted. He left it where it was, came up for another kiss, eyes closed. He found her mouth wasn’t there: instead, a ring of warm metal jagged the flesh under his jaw. Davis opened his eyes wide, realized that she was pressing a handgun to his throat. She was still smiling the wistful smile. ‘Don’t do anything silly,’ she murmured, ‘and you won’t get hurt.’ She watched him, cateyed. ‘Taylor,’ she yodelled.

  The door on the driver’s side opened: a one-eyed man stood there, a man with a ragged beard, wild hair and a .45 Colt. His face was square, mapped out with creases, and there was an oriental touch in the high cheekbones: wide mouth, long jaw, hook nose, one eye glittering like quartzite, the other hidden under an eyepatch. He was tall, with large, hairy hands. He wore a mixture of military and civilian garb – silk scarf, corduroy trousers, tattered leather jerkin.

  ‘Right, me old China,’ he rumbled. ‘You ain’t got to do nothink but drive and keep yer trap shut. Don’t give us no lip and you’ll be all right.’

  The girl kept the gun lodged against Davis’s throat until she and Taylor had swapped places. Close up, the man smelt of whisky and sour tobacco. ‘Drive,’ he snarled.

  Davis felt his heart lump, squeezed the steering wheel with both hands.

  ‘’Ere, watchu doin’? This is army property, this is. You must be a pair of ’oodlums.’

  Taylor’s phlegmy chuckle came again. ‘That we are, me old chummy. Why, what was you doin’? Thought you was in for a bit of nookies with this lady, did yer? Touch of the old how’s yer father?’

  ‘She ain’t no lady,’ Davis said bitterly.

  Taylor’s crosshatched face buckled, his good eye flashed: he bared crooked teeth, jabbed the pistol into Davis’s ribs. ‘Watch yer mouth, mate. Any more lip like that and they’ll be scrapin’ yer off the bleedin’ road tomorra. Now, put ’er in gear and let’s get off. We ain’t got all flamin’ night, yer know.’

  The lorry ramped bluewashed sidestreets, rolled between buttes of tottering tenements where gaslamps flickered: Davis kept silent, followed Taylor’s directions. Maddy felt the weight of the pistol in her hand, stared out at the guncotton night, sank into a haze. Nothing was real: she was living in a violent fantasy from which she couldn’t wake up. She did not recall her name: she’d told Taylor it was Maddy, but she knew it wasn’t. In fact, she didn’t remember much before she’d been pulled off the street by his deserter gang – only a fuzzy nightmare of floundering in dark water, of being dragged down, of coming up with lungs bursting, of striking out for the bank. There was another nagging, misty image of a man with Herculean shoulders, stonecoloured eyes and a freckled face, but she had no idea who he was or what he’d meant to her.

  Her life with the deserters over the past months had become her world: hijacking vehicles by night in Cairo streets, the battle of wits with Field Security, the near misses, the times they’d had to hide in hovels and basements, running the gauntlet of MP patrols, racing back to their hideout in a stolen vehicle: the feasts, the drinking, the music, the dancing. Sometimes the revels would erupt into wild orgies, but Maddy had remained aloof from the louche promiscuity. She knew that Taylor wanted her desperately, that he considered her almost his property, yet she had never given in to his advances, no matter how violent he had become. For all his roughness, though, Maddy felt a certain loyalty to him: his ferocity had at least kept other men off her back.

  Dark hulls of streets fell behind them: the 3-tonner pounded past barbwire thorntrees, driedout palms, through straggling villages redolent of dung and dogpiss, where dark phantoms lurked in huddles in the light of smoky braziers, where fagends winked like alligator eyes, where thin goats and chickens prowled junkheaps, or mooched along the garbage-littered verge. The fineshaved moon was still up, the night flocked with the quicksilver peelings of stars.

  ‘’Ere, where you takin’ me?’ Davis enquired abruptly.

  ‘Shut yer trap,’ barked Taylor. ‘Keep drivin’’

  Maddy knew they were only a couple of miles from the RV, where Mitch Jizzard would be waiting. They would transfer the stores to an unmarked lorry, tie the driver in the cab. He’d have descriptions of them, but he wouldn’t know who they were. Taylor wasn’t Taylor any more than Maddy was Maddy: she didn’t know his real name and had never asked. Tracing them in the deserter community of the Delta would be like looking for a sandgrain in the Sahara: there were so many fugitives scattered in towns, villages and hamlets from Cairo to Alex that they called themselves the lost division. Now the war had moved far from Egypt to the Tunisian frontier, they’d begun to get organized into smuggling and hijack gangs: there were rumours that their operations were co-ordinated by a new big man at the top. Nobody knew who he was: Maddy doubted that he even existed. The Redcaps occasionally collared a few of them, but to bag them all would have taken a massive manhunt. At this stage of the war no one was going to spare big efforts to mop up people who’d refused to fight.

  Maddy had no memory of serving in the forces, but her skill at weapon-handling told her she might have. She also knew songs and dance steps, and had a notion that she
might once have been an entertainer. She’d sometimes walked around Cairo streets, rubbed shoulders with off-duty Tommies, seen sights that had given her a thrill of recognition. She’d felt drawn to some of those places, but had stopped going when she’d started to sense that she was being watched. A couple of times she’d had the impression that she’d been photographed from parked cars: then, at the beginning of February, there was the chap in civvies who’d asked her to pose with a newspaper, had taken a snap of her holding it. When she’d told Taylor about it, he’d called her a stupid cow.

  The 3-tonner trawled the bluepaddled night: they were on a dirt-track, sawing through cultivated fields, through plots of wasteland with tattered datepalms, rashes of goatgrass, saltbush thickets. They came to an illegible signpost, twisted, bent, riddled with bulletholes.

  ‘This is it,’ Taylor croaked. ‘Pull off the road, matey.’

  They could see the RV from here – a battered Marmon-Harrington lorry parked in the scrub. They were within a hundred yards of it when Taylor said, ‘Stop.’

  Davis brought the 3-tonner to a standstill, cut out the motor, peeked at his captor. ‘What you goin’ …’

  Taylor shushed him with a muzzleprod in the ribs, surveyed the scene intently.

  ‘Where’s the bleedin’ fire?’ he gurned. ‘Mitch always lights a fire …’

  At that moment, Davis cracked the door, rolled out of the cab, landed on all fours, hared off into the thorns, boots scuffing hardpack earth. Taylor roared, leapt down after him, levelled the Colt at his retreating back.

  ‘Don’t shoot him!’ Maddy screeched.

  Taylor let the weapon fall, swivelled to scan the RV, saw no sign of movement. He sifted the night. ‘He’ll bring the rozzers,’ he growled.

  Maddy dropped down from the cab, slung her cape and handbag, covered an arc with her revolver. Taylor was stalking towards her when the first gunshots lashed out of the darkness – bayowww, bayowww, bayowww: bullets squiffed air, thwocked space, droned past Maddy’s head. Taylor hunkered, fired a volley in the direction of the Marmon-Harrington. Maddy heard the grump, grump, grump of his pistol, heard air hooosh, saw a balloon tyre rupture, saw the 3-tonner list. She pumped two shots starwards, saw smoke luft, ate sourgas reek. A motor groused, a jeep belted towards them, headlights flared. Maddy was caught in the beams: Taylor clutched her, heaved her down, came back up into a crouch, popgunned a broadside straight into the blinding lights. Maddy heard crumps, heard ragged howls, saw the jeep stall, heard the engine sputter. Taylor was already dashing into the headlights, wild hair flying. ‘Come on,’ he crowed.

  Maddy bolted after him in hurdler strides, reached the jeep, found him shifting the body of a slim young sergeant off the passenger seat. The NCO had copped a round in the chest: his BD blouse was a bloody pulp. On Maddy’s side a woman subaltern with a bush of flaming red hair was draped over the steering wheel, clutching at a throatwound with redslicked fingers, bubbling at the mouth.

  Taylor dumped the sergeant, leapt into his seat. ‘Get in,’ he stormed. ‘Can’t drive at night one-eyed.’

  Maddy hesitated. ‘She’s badly hurt,’ she said. She scrabbled in her handbag, found a field dressing, ripped it open with her teeth. She pulled the woman out of the jeep, laid her in the dirt, pressed the dressing on her wound. The girl’s dovecoloured eyes stared at her blankly: blood trickled from her nostrils.

  ‘Leave her,’ Taylor weazled. ‘Get in, for fuck’s …’

  ‘Hey, you there, stop,’ a voice cripped. ‘Military police.’

  Taylor ranged the Colt, lowballed barbs of fire. He was answered by the booomfff, booomff, booomff of .303 rifles. Maddy heard air slashed, ducked, clamped the redhead’s hand over the dressing. ‘Just keep it there, love. You’ll be fine.’ The girl’s eyes were still fixed on Maddy’s face, but there was recognition in them now. Her cracked lips worked. Maddy was about to pull away when the girl grasped her wrist feebly. ‘Betty,’ she spluttered. ‘Betty Nolan.’

  The words hit Maddy like a punch: she staggered backwards, wrenched her hand away. Booommfff, boummfff, boummff. Rounds whined past her ear, kicked up dirt. ‘Come on,’ Taylor bawled.

  Maddy sprang behind the wheel, shifted the gearstick, hit the starter, heard the motor fire. She engaged gear, wrenched the hand throttle: the engine blared, the jeep beetled out into the night, scooted away through a gauntlet of fire.

  16

  It was full dark when Caine’s crew got back to the el-Fayya bridge. Caine called a halt, instructed Copeland and Wallace to check the parapet for recent disturbance, told Trubman and Fiske to set up a tripflare on a wire stretched across the road: it would give them early warning if Jerry tried to sneak across in the dark. He carried his Thompson fifteen paces back along the track, stood stock still, strained his ears for the rumble of Hun vehicles creeping up the track. He heard nothing but the seashell vacancy of the night. He was satisfied the enemy wasn’t following closely: after the ambush, they’d be wary of getting bumped again. If they wanted the black box as desperately as they seemed to, though, they’d be here sooner or later.

  He took in the great bowl of darkness beyond the ridge, the threequarter moon riding the reaches of space, skimming the lustre from a million pinwheel stars. Far away, beyond invisible hills, he clocked a lash of dry lightning – a burst of bright filaments like clutching tentacles etched for an instant behind his eyes.

  He paced back to the jeeps: the bridge lay basking in moonshine – limestone blocks, spandrels, arches, like the relic of some ancient empire. Vast dark wedges of escarpment closed in from either side. The blockhouse was folded into blacker shadows beyond, skulking between alternating slabs of silvered light. He stepped carefully over Trubman’s tripwire, got the thumbs-up from Copeland and Wallace. ‘OK, ladies,’ he said. ‘Let’s leaguer up in the old place, get a brew on. After that we’ll blow the bridge.’

  They recrossed the bridge, drove through the gap guarded by the gunpit, drew the wagons into the tamarix grove beneath the blockhouse. They jumped down, stretched, pissed, smoked cigarettes cupped in palms. The thrill of the contact had receded, leaving only a bonedeep weariness: they were dead on their feet. Caine moved to the edge of the grove, squatted among buckbush and boulders like medicine balls, studied the night. He called Jizzard, ordered him to watch. Back at his jeep, Quinnell and Fiske were standing with big Wallace: the giant was holding the black box over his head like a barbell, his teeth a mouthful of white light. ‘See that, skipper,’ he rumbled. ‘Don’t weigh no more’n a feather now. You never see nothin’ so rum in yer life.’

  He lowered the box, set it at Caine’s feet like an offering, slipped out his bayonet, pressed the blade against the top, where the legend ‘STENDEC’ was stencilled. The blade didn’t stick – the magnetic field had gone. Caine knelt down, ran a calloused hand along one side of the box. Like the derelict’s fuselage, he’d have sworn it wasn’t metal – but if so, how come it had magnetic properties? How could a magnetic field come and go? What about the heat the box had generated after they’d taken it from the aircraft? He thumped it lightly with the side of his fist. Trubman had talked about resin: this might be some oilbased substance like Bakelite, though without its smoothness. He rubbed his hand back and forth vigorously, held his fingers up to his nostrils: you could tell Bakelite from the oily smell, but this stuff seemed odourless. He shook his head. Wallace was right again – it was the oddest thing he’d ever seen. The whole episode – the unmarked aircraft, the nonexistent crew, Pickney’s ghost, the black box – had left him with a sense of disquiet, as if he’d crossed some forbidden boundary, transgressed some unwritten law.

  Copeland gave him a cigarette: Caine lit it with his Zippo. ‘I thought the magnetic field might affect the motor,’ Cope said. ‘I was waiting for her to conk any second.’

  Caine palmed his fag, pouted smoke, scanned the leaguered jeeps, took in Trubman at the tailboard of the W/T wagon, working the No. 19 set. Quinnell and Wallace were still examining the bo
x: Fiske stood looking on from a distance, smoking his pipe. ‘The big question,’ Caine sniffed, ‘is what we’re going to do with it.’

  Trubman tramped up to him, M1 carbine crooked in an elbow, his face gruelcoloured in the ambient light. ‘No comms, skipper,’ he announced. ‘No response from Captain Fraser.’

  Caine swore. He’d been hoping for Fraser’s advice on what to do with the box. He hadn’t compromised Nighthawk, not yet – there was still time to blow the bridge – but at least Fraser might have taken this other responsibility off his hands.

  Copeland blew a jet of smoke. ‘Dump it, skipper,’ he said. ‘Whatever it is, it’s not what we came for.’

  Don’t touch the black box. Leave it where it is.

  No, he had never heard those words: Maurice Pickney was six feet under. He shivered, realized the night had turned chill. Part of him wanted to jettison the box. On the other hand, if the Hun had sent a column to salvage it, it must be important. There was a third, hazier feeling, he realized: that the black box was special – almost a hallowed object: to abandon it would be sacrilege.

  ‘I say we open it,’ Wallace boomed. He held up a hammer he’d retrieved from the toolbox, his face an ogremask. ‘I betcha it ain’t that tough. Few strokes of Bessie here will do the trick.’

  ‘You’re bloody joking,’ Copeland stormed. ‘You’ll get us blown to kingdom come.’

  He appealed to Caine. ‘We haven’t got time for this nonsense, skipper. Let’s get on with the job.’

  Caine knew he was right: Whatever you do, skipper, don’t touch the black box … Those words again: Caine was tempted to smash the box open just to prove to himself that he couldn’t have heard them. Despite his eery feeling that the box was somehow sacred, the evidence that it might be dangerous, he felt an almost overpowering lust to know what was inside. That would be enough, he thought: just a dekko at what it contained, then they’d bury it somewhere.