Death or Glory I: The Last Commando: The Last Commando

by Michael Asher

  It had been Wallace who had decided that enough was enough, taken him firmly by the arm and shown him a space as far away from the door as possible. When the others ganged up on him, Wallace growled that ‘the crow’ had had his ‘christening’, and that anyone messing with Caine in future would first have to deal with him. As he was currently the heavyweight boxing champion of the Commando, no one bothered to take him up on the challenge.

  Wallace had joined the Horse Gunners straight out of school, and was proud to have served with the celebrated ‘Sphinx’ Battery. A born Tommie, he was a good practical soldier, but not the type ever to rise above the hallowed rank of private, which, according to him, was the best rank ever made. He was solid and reliable, but even the army hadn't taught him to curb his violent temper, which, coupled with his physical strength, could make him truly formidable. He had appointed himself Caine's protector, but the tables had turned several times when Caine, with his diplomat's manner, had managed to get Wallace out of hot water. The most notable occasion had been when the Regimental Sergeant Major had shot a dog Wallace had become attached to. The RSM's claim that the dog had rabies hadn't prevented Wallace from knocking him out cold in the NAAFI. It had taken all Caine's rhetoric to save the giant from a court-martial.

  When Harry Copeland had joined the troop from the Royal Army Service Corps later and become friendly with Caine, Wallace had been frankly jealous. Cope was everything the ex-Gunner wasn't – handsome, educated, cultured. He'd taught history at a boys' school and was a superb organizer, with a mind like a seven-carat-diamond drill-bit. Rumour had it that he had turned down a commission because he was a ‘communist’, and although this was absurd, it was true that Copeland despised the callous and unimaginative regulars whom, he thought, had bungled the Great War.

  The thing was, almost everyone agreed with him, even the regulars. Caine, a regular himself, had an axe to grind against the military establishment for its unforgivable slowness in adopting new technology. Wallace explained away Caine's friendship with Copeland as a case of shared hatred for ‘the officer class’. This might have been an exaggeration, but it was a feeling Wallace himself could identify with. He'd seen too many young officers turn up in North Africa with what he called ‘ten-pound-note’ voices and an inflated idea of their own importance. The good ones were, in his opinion, few and far between, and it didn't surprise him that Caine had been ejected from their number. Caine was simply too good to be an officer, Wallace thought.

  For a long time, Copeland and Wallace had loathed each other. Cope felt physically challenged by Wallace and regarded him as a muscle-bound thug. Wallace was the first to admit that he wasn't an educated man, but he resented Cope's insinuation that he was somehow retarded. They had recently reached an uneasy truce, though, under the influence of their mutual loyalty to Caine.

  ‘So who is this tart we're supposed to be snatching from under Rommel's nose?’ Wallace demanded. ‘Seems an awful lot of trouble to go to just for some snooty bint.’

  Even before the words were out, Wallace knew he'd blundered. If there was one thing Caine was touchy about, it was women. Not that he didn't like them, but he never referred to them as ‘bints’, ‘tarts’, ‘judies’ or ‘crumpet’. To him they were always ‘ladies’. One of the few times Wallace had seen him nettled was in a Cairo bar when two drunken Australians had started abusing a young hostess. The girl couldn't have been more than sixteen. Caine had watched them in brooding silence for a minute, then, without any prelude, marched over with his rope-like chest-muscles heaving, and floored both, one after the other, with a volley of snapping knuckle-bones delivered so fast that Wallace remembered only a blur. When the Ozzies had picked themselves up, Caine made them apologize to the young lady before having the doorman kick them out. Wallace had been shocked: he'd been giving Caine the benefit of his protection for months, never dreaming how smartly the ex-Sapper could handle himself – in fact, Wallace had never seen anyone faster in his life. He'd made a mental note that night never to abuse women, even verbally, in Caine's presence. In the heat of the moment, though, he'd forgotten his vow.

  Caine was staring at him, his eyes flecks of mercury in the starlight. ‘There aren't any tarts or bints on this job,’ he said. ‘The woman we're after is an officer of the Royal Navy. Let's just call her Runefish.’

  ‘Right you are,’ Wallace muttered, avoiding his gaze.

  Caine guessed his mate was recalling the fight in the Cairo bar, and regretted it. His reputation as a brawler wasn't something he relished. It brought back too many unpleasant memories of the time he'd broken his stepfather's jaw with a one-two punch in the living room of their cottage in the Lincolnshire Fens. There was no doubt in his mind that the Butcher had had it coming – he'd tormented Caine for four years, and abused both his mother and sister – but it had appalled him to discover that he was capable of such an attack.

  Caine's real father, Frank – a blacksmith – had died when he was twelve, from complications arising out of a kick in the head by a maddened horse. From the time Caine was old enough to lift a hammer, though, he'd been helping his father in the forge, and had developed spectacular shoulders, arms, and chest muscles. Even at twelve, though, he'd been astute enough to realize that horse power would soon be a thing of the past. A year later he'd left school and apprenticed himself at a local garage, where he'd taken to tinkering with motors like a trout to a torrent, awed by the ingenuity and power of the combustion engine. He'd also talked a retired pugilist named Earl Marsh into training him as a boxer. Marsh had noticed and developed his spectacular one-two punch.

  It had been the move he'd relied on the night he'd heard his sister May's terrified screams for the last time. He recalled breaking in on the six-foot, fourteen-stone Butcher, who had pinioned May on the couch and was slobbering drunkenly over her. Though Caine could never remember actually hitting his stepfather, he clearly recalled the snap as his jaw broke.

  The Butcher had vowed to get his own back, and had reported the assault to the police. Caine had been arrested. The charge was a serious one, but the constable assigned to his case grasped the circumstances and was sympathetic. He decided that justice wouldn't be served by Caine going to Borstal, when it was obvious that his stepfather was the more guilty of the two. If Caine agreed to join the army, he said, he would not only keep a careful eye on the Butcher, but would also make sure the assault charge was quietly dropped. Caine felt that he was betraying his mother and sister, but there was nothing else for it. A week later he visited the nearest army recruiting office, lied about his age and enlisted in the Royal Engineers. His mother committed suicide five years later, writing that she could no longer take the Butcher's conduct. Caine was an NCO by that time and loved the army, but his failure to be there, to help her when she most needed him, was something for which he could never forgive himself.

  10

  A torch-beam flashed in their faces, and the three men ducked instinctively. Wallace drew his sawn-off Purdey, cocked a hammer, pointed it at the torch. His black eyes narrowed to pinpricks. ‘Put that bloody light out,’ he boomed.

  The light vanished, and they made out the carp-headed hulk of signaller Taffy Trubman twitching in front of them – a corpulent figure of intersecting ovals, like a dark snowman, his leather jerkin unbuttoned to display a pot belly. Everything about Trubman was overblown, except for his hands, which were as slender and delicate as a girl's. His double-chinned, fish-shaped face was unshaven, his eyes goggling behind thick spectacles. ‘Sorry, boys,’ he stammered.

  ‘You will be next time,’ Wallace grated. ‘You're lucky I didn't put a pound of buckshot through your guts.’

  Caine groaned. ‘When are you going to ditch that weapon, Fred?’

  Wallace eased the shotgun's hammer back, looking surly. ‘Don't say a word against Purdey,’ he grated. ‘She saved your arse when we pulled those boys out.’

  Caine nodded to Trubman, ‘What is it, Taffy? he asked.

  ‘I've calibrat
ed both the No. 11 sets, skipper. We've got comms with Group HQ.’

  ‘Good work.’

  ‘Right you are. The No. 11's a good set – its range is only supposed to be twenty miles, but they've found it can work at a thousand or more. Skywave, see. Bounces sigs off the ionosphere. But bear in mind that the desert plays hell with the links –'specially sandstorms. These are very sensitive transmitters – you've got to nurse them like babies. One bad bump can ruin a set, and without a link, we'll be up the creek without the proverbial…’

  Caine caught the expression on Wallace's face and put a warning hand on his arm in the darkness. ‘Very good,’ he said placidly. ‘I'll remember that. You want to join us for a snort?’

  Trubman shifted, eyeing the rum jar. ‘No thanks. I'm teetotal – good Welsh Presbyterian, see. Anyway, I need to get some kip.’

  ‘All right. Just watch that torch – blackout regs are in force and I don't want you getting nabbed by the Redcaps.’

  As the Welshman trudged back into the shadows, Caine held up his hand to arrest the inevitable rhetoric from Wallace. ‘All right, he's not commando material,’ he said, ‘but he's a volunteer, and I'm damn' grateful to have him. Good signallers are rarer than balls on a she-camel.’

  Wallace grunted and drained the last of his rum. ‘Well, it's about time to hit the sack,’ he said.

  ‘Right,’ Copeland said, stubbing out his Player's Navy Cut carefully in the sand. ‘But Fred's question is still valid, skipper – just why is this Runefish… “lady” so special that they're launching a search-and-rescue op for her? I mean, maybe that joker was right. Maybe she really is Ritchie's sweetheart or something.’

  Wallace chuckled. ‘It's “need to know”, innit?’ he said.

  Caine paused, wondering if he should tell them. He'd already resolved to brief the unit fully once it was on the move. He decided that he could trust Cope and Wallace to keep their mouths shut until they had left base. He explained the details of Assegai as St Aubin had revealed them to him. When he'd finished, he wasn't entirely surprised to find Copeland eyeing him dubiously. ‘Assegai,’ the corporal repeated, as if weighing up the merits of the name. ‘That's a Zulu stabbing-spear. A rum name for a long-distance-missile system.’

  ‘So what?’ Wallace honked. ‘Our top brass ain't exactly famous for its imagination.’

  ‘So why does the whole spiel sound like a fantasy? Remote guidance to long-range targets? That's far in advance of any gear I've ever heard of.’

  Wallace snorted. ‘Perhaps Mr Churchill had so much on his plate he forgot to brief you on the latest top-secret gadgetry. That's a shame – after all, as a corporal you must have been well up on his list.’

  Caine snickered. Cope clunked down his mess tin. ‘All right, Mister Clever Dick,’ he said. ‘If it's top secret, maybe you can explain why St Aubin revealed the details to Tom here just before we set off on a dodgy mission with a fifty-fifty chance of getting bagged. Where's the need to know? None of us need to know – we're buckshee foot-sloggers on a search-and-rescue op. The whole yarn's as full of holes as a tart's knickers – sorry, skipper, but it is. Why would GHQ choose a Wren for the job when there are a thousand pen-pushers of the ‘Barstool Desert Group’ in Cairo that would have done? A bint like that – I mean a girl – would stand out like a sore thumb at a bachelor party. Just what you need if you're carrying top-secret documents, eh? And isn't it a bit late to be ferrying specifications round, anyway? I mean, last time I looked, the Eighth Army was in retreat. The whole story sounds like something out of H. G. Wells.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That science-fiction writer – you know, The Time Machine? War of the Worlds?’

  ‘Never heard of him.’

  ‘Why doesn't that surprise me? Don't suppose they've got past “Jip the cat went up the hill” in Leatherhead.’

  ‘Maybe, but at least we're savvy enough to know that having a corporal's stripes don't make you God's gift. You're so brainy, astonishin' you ain't been invited to join the planning staff by now.’

  Cope's reply was nipped in the bud by a guffaw from Caine. ‘All right, boys,’ he said. ‘I think I've about had it.’ He shook the drops out of his mug and started cleaning it with sand. ‘You're right, Harry – my first reaction was that this was all cock and bull, and as far as I'm concerned the jury's still out. But as I said, we're just cogs in the wheel. We believe what we're told, and we follow orders. The Assegai story might be above board or it might not, but one thing is certain: whatever Runefish knows, it's the real McCoy – so vital that, if we can't get her out, we have to execute her.’

  Leaving the other two staring at him in astonishment, he slid his mug back into its pouch, lurched to his feet and marched off towards his sleeping space.

  11

  Caine had often tried to imagine how big ‘the Blue’ actually was. The part of it that concerned the Eighth Army – the so-called ‘Western Desert’ – was itself as large as the whole of India, and that was only one region of the Sahara. It was an ocean – a sea of undulating rock and gravel and sand that stretched unbroken to the west for an incredible distance of three thousand miles. And, as at sea, you had to navigate by the sun, the stars and the moon across a vista without fixed points.

  Not that the move-out required any navigation at first, because the track leading north-west from Jaghbub was marked with oil drums every half-mile, bobbing in front of the White's windscreen like harbour-buoys. They had a Military Police motorcyclist to pilot them the first ten miles, and Caine watched his red tail-light, almost mesmerized. He'd been impressed to note the quiet sense of purpose about his men when they had mounted the wagons an hour before dawn – the absence of raucous jokes and nervous chatter. It was cold for a June morning, and the commandos were swaddled in coats and stocking-caps, their breath coming out like smoke. Dressed in his officer's duffel coat, Caine had taken the passenger's seat in the White scout-car next to Cope – the designated driver. Wallace shivered over the twin Vickers ‘K’s on the double observation hatch above, crooning a Vera Lynn song in a surprisingly melodic baritone. Trailing the lead vehicle came the Dingo with fitter Wingnut Turner at the controls, and Taffy Trubman doubling as W/T operator and gunner. The six-wheeled Marmon Herrington, Gracie, followed, towing the water-bowser. Marlene, Vera and Judy crawled behind her at well-spaced intervals. The Daimler AFV, crewed by Flash Murray and Shirley Temple, brought up the rear.

  When they reached the ten-mile marker, Copeland stopped and let the engine idle while the Redcap turned his bike around. As he skidded to a halt by the side hatch, they saw a demon mask leering out of the darkness – motorcycle goggles on a face luminous with white dust. ‘That's as far as I go, lads,’ he said. ‘Just stay with the bollards till first light, then you can use your sun-compass. I don't know what crazy mission you're on, but I hope you make it.’

  ‘There goes the only living witness that Operation Runefish ever left base,’ Cope said, teasing the wagon into gear. ‘I notice his nibs wasn't present to see us off.’

  Caine had also noted St Aubin's absence, and it irked him. ‘Not that I missed him personally,’ he told Copeland, ‘but if anything happens to him, no one at GHQ will have a clue where we are, or what our orders were.’

  ‘That happened to a mate of mine on a Jock column,’ Cope grinned. ‘They were up the Blue for a month, covered about two thousand miles – bumped Mekili and bagged God knows how many Axis wagons – even aircraft. When they got back, there was no one left at HQ who remembered them. No mission plan – the movements were all in the head of some half-colonel, who'd copped one and was six feet under. When they whaled into Abbassia barracks, all puffed up with what they'd done, the Adjutant said, “Who the bloody hell are you?”’

  Caine cackled with laughter. ‘I can just see that happening to us.’

  Copeland flashed a quick glance at him. ‘You know, skipper,’ he said, ‘you always look as happy as a pig in shit when you're up the Blue – don't you find all this emptine
ss gives you the willies?’

  Caine shook his head. ‘Nope. The first time I was in the desert, two years back, I had the feeling that I'd returned to a place I'd known long ago. It was as if I'd finally come home.’

  ‘Not surprising in your case,’ Cope snorted. ‘I mean your stomping ground – the Fens – it's not much different, is it? I went there once – desolate, flat land going on mile after mile – you can drive all morning and never see a tree.’

  Caine grinned at him. It wasn't exactly what he'd meant. He wasn't a religious man – as a child Sunday school had been the misery of miseries for him. Yet the desert had a sense about it that he could only describe as holy – a sacredness that had nothing to do with going to church on Sundays. ‘What about you?’ he asked.

  Copeland shrugged, without taking his eyes off the dark piste. ‘Me, I come from a big family – second of five children. We made our own world wherever we were, and I suppose that taught me to feel at home anywhere, as long as I have friends around me. I can see what you mean about the desert, only if I was stranded here on my own, I'd go crazy.’

  Caine nodded. In the desert, panic always lurked close to the surface. That was what desert rules were designed to combat. He'd learned his lesson during an early trip up the Blue, when he'd left his leaguer by night to relieve himself. He'd walked no more than fifty yards from the camp in pitch darkness, but on attempting to return had realized with a surge of alarm, that he wasn't even aware in which direction it lay. He could have shouted to his comrades, but the humiliation would have been unbearable. Instead, he'd decided on a plan. He would walk fifty paces in the most likely direction, marking the way with the shovel he'd brought with him. If he failed to find the leaguer, he would retrace his steps to his start point and take fifty paces in another direction, continuing until all four directions had been covered. Luckily his first choice had been the correct one, but Caine had never forgotten that momentary terror of disorientation, and had resolved that in future he wouldn't make even the shortest journey without knowing exactly where he was.