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

by Michael Asher

  ‘Nope,’ said Sweeney tersely, his eyes falling suddenly on Caine's bandaged hand.

  ‘You all right?’

  Sweeney seemed so interested in his wound that for a minute Caine wondered if he might be estimating grounds for having him declared a casualty.

  ‘Just a graze,’ he said, shrugging it off. He remembered how Bubbles O'Brian's throat had been slashed in the melee. ‘How's O'Brian?’ he enquired.

  ‘He'll be fine,’ Sweeney said. ‘Pickney got a shell-dressing on him before he bled to death, and the wound wasn't that deep. Jackson copped it in the chest, but it's a cushy one. The worst case is Rigby – he's lost a lot of blood, and Pickney doesn't reckon he'll make it.’ He turned his eyes to Caine's hand again: the dressing was already soaked with blood. ‘It's a wonder we didn't have more casualties, though,’ he said.

  Caine was thinking about Rigby and Jackson, whom he suspected had both been hit by fire from the Schmeisser MG30 mounted on the Jerry armoured car. Here were two more things to chastise himself with. How could he have missed that armoured wagon? Why would the Germans hide it when they obviously weren't expecting an attack?

  That thought raised another question. ‘Todd,’ he said, ‘I want you and Harry Copeland to take a detail of four men each and clear all the buildings that aren't yet on fire. God knows what else they might have been concealing.’

  ‘Right,’ Sweeney said, with a perceptible lack of enthusiasm.

  Caine found Wallace and Trubman leaning on the Dingo's hatch sharing a cigarette and conversing amicably. He was mildly surprised: Wallace didn't normally talk to the rotund signaller, and now they looked the best of friends. ‘I heard the Vickers stop,’ he said to Wallace. ‘Thought you'd copped it.’

  A big smile split Wallace's moon-sized face. ‘My mate Taffy here saved my life,’ he said. Caine gave the tubby Welshman the thumbs-up, and Trubman turned pink and averted his gaze. That reminded Caine of how the Free Frenchman, Cavazzi, had saved him from being skewered on a Jerry bayonet. He looked around, wanting to thank him, but Wallace said he'd gone off with Sweeney's clearing party.

  Caine told Wallace to bring the Very pistol out of the armoured car. He jacked in a red flare and fired it off with a pop. The flare would bring in the lorries and alert the cut-off sentries that the action was over. ‘We need to get moving,’ he said. ‘This whole place is giving off smoke signals, and we don't want to get clocked by a shufti-wallah.’ He asked Trubman if he'd tuned into the emergency frequency. The signaller looked worried. ‘I can't get comms, Sergeant,’ he apologized. ‘I've tried both No. 11s. See, it's the mountains – this is signals dead ground.’

  Caine nodded. ‘Have another bash in a few minutes,’ he said. ‘Keep trying.’ His eyes swept the square for Sheikh Adud and his daughter. He saw them conversing with a group of Arabs who were shepherding flocks of goats and sheep, leading a caravan of tired donkeys laden with household goods – pots, waterskins, sacks of grain, string cages of chickens. Caine realized that the Senussi didn't need to be told to evacuate the place – they were doing what he imagined they always did when trouble threatened – running for the hills. He beckoned Naiman and told him to bring Adud and Layla over, setting out wooden petrol cases for them to sit on.

  He offered them water, gave them cigarettes and took from his haversack a photograph and a letter in Arabic. The photo showed the Senussi leader, Grand Senussi Sayid Idriss, now exiled in Egypt, and the letter was a request from him to all Senussi to assist his British allies. These items were standard issue to all Allied units operating in Cyrenaica. Caine gave them to Sheikh Adud, who examined the photo and read the letter with interest. He passed them to Layla.

  Caine pulled off his black beret and scratched his head. ‘Where will your people go now? he enquired.

  Naiman asked the question in Arabic, and listened carefully to the reply.

  ‘The sheikh says they'll go up into the Green Mountains,’ Naiman translated, ‘and stay with relatives till they get on their feet.’

  ‘Why were the Germans doing this to them?’ Caine asked. ‘What had they done?’

  Sheikh Adud had just opened his mouth to answer when there was a crisp detonation from a nearby street, followed by a salvo of gunshots. ‘Grenade!’ Caine gasped, grabbing his Tommy-gun. ‘Fred, Maurice, come with me.’

  17

  All the way there, Caine had a good idea what he'd find. When he, Wallace and Pickney arrived in the adjacent street, they saw Todd Sweeney with three other commandos, squatting over the twitching body of Gian-Carlo Cavazzi. Caine saw at once that he was in a critical condition. His intestines had spilled out and his chest and face were badly charred. He noticed a dead Jerry a few yards away, spreadeagled under an open first-floor window. ‘We were about to clear that house,’ Sweeney said, his voice flat, ‘when the window opens, and this Jerry drops a potato-masher grenade right on top of Janka. Those things usually have an eight-second delay, but it must have been on a short fuse or something, because it went off as soon as it hit him. Whacked his guts right out. We shot the Hun, and the boys searched the house – there wasn't anyone else in there.’

  Caine knelt by the Corsican, who was writhing, moaning and wheezing. ‘Do me in, for Christ's sake,’ he croaked, his breath coming in a rattle. ‘I can't stand it, shoot me, please, finish me off.’

  Caine and Sweeney exchanged glances. Pickney dipped into his chest and began prepping a morphia shot, holding the syringe up to the light and flicking it with his forefinger. When he leaned over Cavazzi, though, the Corsican knocked away the syringe, gasping. ‘Not that. I'm a soldier. Shoot me, you cowards, cazzati English stronsi.’ He launched into a stream of Corsican dialect. Caine scoped around him, and feeling exposed, sent two men off to cover the street, in case they'd missed any other survivors. He motioned to the rest of the group to move out of the wounded man's earshot. ‘He's in a bad way,’ he said to Pickney. ‘Can't you do anything for him, Maurice?’

  The ex-merchant seaman swallowed hard. ‘I'm sorry, skipper,’ he said. ‘Even if we had the services of a field hospital it wouldn't help him. Trouble is, abdominal wounds are excruciating. He's had it, and he's going to die in agony – maybe today, maybe tomorrow, but he's had it all right.’

  ‘We have to put him out of his misery,’ Sweeney said. ‘You couldn't let even a dog die like that.’

  Caine felt suddenly sick. ‘What about an overdose of morphia?’ he asked the orderly.

  Pickney shook his head. ‘I know it's done,’ he said, ‘but I can't do it, Sarn't. It's against my oath, and anyway, you saw how he reacted. I know it sounds like I'm trying to get off the hook, but Janka's an ex-Legionnaire and he wants to die like a soldier.’

  ‘A man ought to be able to go the way he wants to go,’ Sweeney said.

  Caine stared at the ex-MP. ‘All right, Todd,’ he said. ‘Are you ready to do it?’

  Sweeney flushed, his eyes reddening. ‘Me? Why the heck should I do it? You're the one who got us into this. The whole thing was your idea. This had nothing to do with the mission we volunteered for. You wanted to play the big-timer, saving a wog village instead of sticking to our mission. You could of got the whole lot of us killed by not noticing there was an enemy AFV around. We've got four good men down and a lot of walking wounded – including yourself. We'll be lucky if the Boche aren't already on the way here in force. No, this is your doing, Caine. If anyone ought to shoot Janka, it's you.’

  Caine was taken aback by the unexpected onslaught. The worst of it was that almost everything Sweeney had said was true. In attacking the enemy, he'd taken an enormous gamble with other people's lives, without even being sure his intelligence was sound. The basis of every military op was good planning and sound intelligence, and he'd failed on both counts. What if there had been camouflaged pickets out? What if the Jerries had managed to signal their base? What if there had been more than one AFV? It was only a moment's chance – good shooting by Copeland and Murray – that had prevented the battle
from going the enemy's way.

  Caine heard Wallace's thundering voice: it seemed to come from far off. ‘Wait a minute, Todd,’ he was saying. ‘The skipper gave everyone the chance of refusing this job. Why didn't you say what you thought at the time?’

  Sweeney pursed thin lips and made a face. ‘No one could refuse,’ he said. ‘Not without feeling they were letting the side down. All right, it's too late to argue about that, but we need to do something about Janka now, and the patrol commander is the only one who can do it.’

  Caine cast a glance at the other faces, but no one met his eye. He felt suddenly alone. When he looked at Wallace, the big man reacted as if it were an accusation. ‘I'm sorry, skipper,’ he said. ‘Fighting the Jerries is one thing, but I never reckoned on having to shoot a mate. Todd's right about that. You're the boss, and this is down to you.’

  Caine recalled that Cavazzi was married, and that his wife had escaped to London with him when he'd fled occupied France. For a split second he imagined himself ringing her door-bell after the war, explaining that he'd shot her husband dead. He recalled again how Cavazzi had saved his life in the melee, and knew he owed the man an honourable death. He took a deep breath, drew his Colt with his good hand and checked the magazine. He had five rounds left – the last one he'd fired had killed the Feldwebel. He shoved the mag back in and rose to his feet. He realized that he didn't even know the best way to go about this. ‘Where do I shoot him?’ he asked. ‘How can I be certain he'll die?’

  ‘Put the barrel in his mouth,’ Pickney said. ‘Fire upwards into the brain.’

  Caine shuffled over to Cavazzi, who was still writhing madly, swearing to himself. He knelt down, feeling the prick of tears in his eyes. He didn't know the Corsican well, but he knew that he'd fought like a tiger, and that a brave man shouldn't have to die like this. As he was bending over, Cavazzi opened his eyes wide and focused on the pistol. ‘Do it,’ he said urgently.

  Caine took another deep breath. His hands trembling, he grasped the Corsican's nostrils with his injured fingers, wincing in pain. As Cavazzi opened his mouth, he pushed the Colt's barrel inside, squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. To his undying embarrassment, Caine realized that he hadn't cocked the weapon. ‘Stupid bastard!’ Cavazzi whispered. ‘Cazzato, stupido.’

  Tears running down his cheeks now, he withdrew the Colt and cocked it with his bad hand. He saw the strained faces of his comrades staring at him. He grasped the Corsican's nostrils for the second time, shoved the barrel into his mouth. ‘Thanks for saving my life, mate,’ he intoned. ‘If there's a Valhalla, that's where you deserve to be.’ He closed his eyes and pulled the trigger once. He felt the recoil and a lash of blood, and opened his eyes to see that Cavazzi's skull had developed a giant exit wound discharging bits of bone and bloody pulp. He stood up, staggered over to the nearest wall, put his hand against it for support, and was violently sick.

  When his senses came back into focus, Sweeney and Wallace were standing in front of him. ‘It was a brave thing to do,’ Sweeney stammered. ‘I couldn't have…’

  ‘Never mind that now,’ Caine snapped. ‘It's done. I want you to make sure that soldier gets a proper burial – and that's an order. Fred – find Copeland and tell him to RV in the square with his detail. Time's up.’

  Caine got back to the square just as his four lorries were pulling in, and he saw that the cut-off squad had also arrived. He looked around for the sheikh and his daughter, and found them with Naiman, supervising the burial of the dead Senussi in the mosque yard. Todd Sweeney and Mick Oldfield arrived carrying Cavazzi's body between them, and he told them to bury it alongside the Arabs. Then he walked over to the Dingo and found Trubman there. ‘Did you get anything on the emergency net?’ he enquired.

  ‘Sorry, Sarn't. Not a dickeybird. We need to move to higher ground, see.’

  Caine took out two Player's Navy Cut and gave one to the signaller. Trubman's eyes searched his face. ‘What happened?’ he asked gently.

  Caine lit the cigarette with hands that had almost stopped shaking, and took a long swig from his water-bottle. ‘There was a German still alive,’ he said wearily. ‘He's dead now, but he bagged Lance Corporal Cavazzi before they got him.’

  He realized suddenly that he hadn't mentioned anything about shooting his comrade in the mouth. He was rescued by Adud and his daughter, who came over with Naiman. ‘He's asking what to do about the German dead,’ the interpreter said.

  Caine shrugged. On the spur of the moment, he decided not to do anything about the corpses – their murder of civilians disbarred them from an honorable burial. He knew it would be pointless to ask if there were any enemy wounded. As if in confirmation, the tall, tattooed Senussi woman he'd had a tussle with earlier came up and handed him a scrap of paper. He stuck the fag in his mouth, opened the note one-handed, and found that it was an official document, typed in German. He passed it to Naiman, who glanced at it, questioned the woman briefly. ‘She found it on the body of the officer,’ he told Caine. ‘The one you shot.’

  ‘What is it?’

  Naiman perused it again, but before he could answer, a voice yelled, ‘Hey, skipper.’ Caine looked up to see Copeland jogging up, with Wallace and the rest of his detail behind him. His blue eyes were sparkling and his Adam's apple was working overtime. ‘Look at this,’ he said breathlessly. ‘We found it in a house down the street.’ He held out a slim, flat, round box, painted gold.

  Caine took it. ‘What is this?’ he asked. He opened the catch and caught feminine fragrance. Inside were tiny compartments containing different shades of eye-shadow, face powder and a powder-puff. On the back of the lid was a mirror. Caine grinned despite his sombre mood. ‘Just what I needed,’ he said.

  Cope looked irritated. ‘That's a European woman's make-up compact,’ he said sharply. ‘Arab women don't use that stuff. It's new – and we found these.’ He held up a pair of khaki drill trousers, tailored to fit a woman's shape. Inside the band was the familiar British forces ‘arrowhead’ label.

  ‘Runefish?’ Caine said, doubtfully.

  ‘I dunno,’ Cope said, ‘but a European woman was in this village very recently – a woman who wears British khaki drill trousers. How many of those are kicking around Cyrenaica?’

  Caine passed the objects to Sheikh Adud and his daughter. ‘Do you know anything about these?’ he asked. The sheikh examined them, then launched into a long explanation. ‘There was a nasraniyya – a European woman – here until this morning,’ Naiman translated. ‘She was the one who caused all the trouble.’

  Caine looked puzzled. ‘What does that mean?’ he asked.

  ‘He was about to tell you all this when that grenade interrupted,’ Naiman said. ‘The Germans came here looking for her. She arrived day before yesterday in a jeep. There was a man with her – a European. They wanted to stay here, and the Arabs couldn't refuse – for them it's a disgrace to turn away guests. He says they never mentioned why they were here, but he guessed they were hiding from the Jerries. He was right. A Jerry column arrived this morning and searched the place. They found the foreigners, shot the man and took the woman off with their convoy. They left this platoon to punish the village for harbouring them.’

  Cope and Caine exchanged glances. ‘How did the Germans know they were here?’ Cope asked.

  Sheikh Adud couldn't answer that. Neither could he tell them the names of the woman or the man, or which country they came from.

  ‘If this was Runefish, who was the man?’ Copeland asked suddenly. ‘Runefish was alone, wasn't she?’

  ‘Maybe the pilot survived,’ Wallace suggested.

  Caine considered it. The Royal Navy spotter tagging along with Runefish's Bombay had seen the aircraft go down, but it wasn't impossible that the pilot had made it. If so, though, where had they acquired the jeep?

  ‘It's not really important now,’ Caine said. ‘The point is that, whoever was with her, the poor sod's dead.’ He turned back to Naiman. ‘Please ask the sheikh where his b
ody is. It might tell us something.’

  Naiman quizzed the old man, but Caine knew from his expression that there was no joy, even before Naiman said, ‘The Jerries threw it into one of the burning houses.’

  Caine considered it for a moment. ‘Could you ask what the woman looked like, how was she dressed – and what language did she and the man speak?’

  Naiman quizzed the sheikh again. ‘She was blond,’ he said, ‘and pretty. She was young – maybe the age of his daughter. She was dressed military style – in khaki. The man spoke some Arabic, but she didn't – she spoke to the Arabs in Italian.’

  ‘Runefish speaks fluent Italian,’ Caine said, suppressing his excitement. ‘Did the sheikh notice whether she was left-or right-handed?’

  The old man said he thought she was left-handed.

  ‘That clinches it,’ Wallace said. ‘Blond, spoke Italian and left-handed, wearing military rig. Ten bob to a pinch of shit it's her, skipper.’

  Copeland's blue eyes glittered. Caine smiled.

  ‘Before we start celebrating, Sergeant,’ Naiman cut in soberly, ‘I think you should consider this.’ He held up the paper the Arab woman had just given Caine. ‘This is a movement order for a company of the Brandenburg Special Duties Regiment.’

  The others stared at him. ‘You mean the jokers we've been fighting were Brandenburgers?’ Wallace said wonderingly. ‘I thought they was a tough crew.’

  Naiman nodded and turned to Caine. ‘Sergeant,’ he said, ‘didn't you say at the briefing that a company of Brandenburgers had been deployed to hunt down Runefish?’

  ‘Nope. I said there was intelligence that a company had been deployed in our target area,’ Caine corrected him. ‘The idea that it might be searching for Runefish was just speculation.’

  ‘Yes, well, whatever the case, it occurs to me that there isn't much to party about, then. If the lady who was here is Runefish, the Brandenburgers have just pipped us at the post.’