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

by Michael Asher

  Caine yelled for Adud, and a moment later the old man moved cautiously into view, his Mannlicher rifle in his hands, his eyes bird-bright. Behind him came his daughter, Layla, and Naiman. Layla was still wearing her black robe, but Caine noticed that she had tied back her glossy dark hair with a leather thong, and now wore a belt at her waist, into which a pistol was stuffed – he recognized the dead Feldwebel's Mauser. ‘Go with Cope,’ Caine said, gesturing. ‘Follow the armoured car. No, not her, just you, Sheikh.’

  Adud gabbled something in Arabic, and Naiman said. ‘He reckons his daughter's a better tracker than he is.’

  Caine hesitated. It went against the grain to expose a girl to danger, but he'd seen the fury of the Bedouin women at Umm 'Aijil, and knew she'd go whether he agreed or not. ‘Whatever,’ he swore irritably. ‘I don't give a toss who goes, just get down there, pronto, or the buggers will be well out of it.’

  Copeland paused to let the Daimler draw alongside, with Murray still peering over the hatch. ‘Go steady,’ Caine told him. ‘Cover the group behind you.’

  ‘Right you are, skipper.’

  ‘And get your nut inside, Flash. These blokes just made a head shot at five hundred yards.’

  The AFV rumbled off, her four balloon-tyres grooving sand, her turret grinding, swivelling left and right. Copeland followed the vehicle at a slow trot, with Wallace, Naiman and the two Senussi close behind him. Caine eased himself up and saw Todd Sweeney hauling Mac's corpse into the cover of the trees, leaving crimson tramlines in the sand. ‘Must have been a dum-dum,’ Sweeney muttered.

  ‘Stay here,’ Caine said.

  He called a couple of the men over to bury the Scotsman's body, remembering guiltily how, only minutes ago, he'd joined the others in poking fun at him. O'Brian, Jackson, MacDonald: all good men. It was too many for one day, and it wasn't over yet. Sour fury and frustration beavered at his chest as he watched them carry away Mac's mutilated body. He wanted to lash out at the nearest target, to tear and rip someone to pieces, to hear them scream. He would rather have taken a hit himself than have MacDonald go down. It was his responsibility to bring his men home safely, a duty he'd already failed in dismally, thanks to his own folly, his own bad judgement. His unit was now down to seventeen men – almost a quarter of its strength gone. The loss of so many good mates weighed on him like a millstone, and he was furious with himself for accepting such a mission, furious with St Aubin for risking these men's lives on a wing and a prayer.

  Caine remembered that Sweeney was still waiting and turned on him with fire in his eyes. ‘I told you to guide O'Brian down,’ he roared. ‘Why did you ditch him?’

  Sweeney bristled, stuck out his chin. ‘He was doing fine until that sniper opened up. Even if I'd been there I couldn't have done much, or are you trying to pin his death on me now?’

  ‘I want to know why you disobeyed orders.’

  ‘I used commando initiative. O'Brian didn't need me, so I decided to let him go it alone. It could just as well have been me hit as him. How was I to know there'd be a contact the minute I left?’

  Caine felt rage sour-mashing his stomach, fought to keep it down. ‘It didn't occur to you that O'Brian was a wounded man and might need some help?’

  ‘Now wait a minute,’ Sweeney gasped. ‘If he was wounded that bad, why did you let him take the wheel? I was designated driver on that rattletrap, not O'Brian. I could have brought her down myself, but you dismissed me last night, in front of all the men. I've got ten years' experience on you, and yet you stood me down, and gave my job to a wounded driver.’

  Caine bit his lip as it dawned on him that Sweeney's action had been a deliberate gesture of contempt. He'd put lives at risk through his own resentment. Caine sucked in breath, tasted hot dust and bile. ‘I stood you down because you're an arrogant bastard, Sweeney. So you've been in the army ten years longer than me? So what? Pity you didn't learn a few things while you were about it. Like how to be a decent soldier. None of us is an expert at everything, not me, not you, nobody. Your trouble is that you think you know it all, even when you know nothing.’

  Sweeney's punch-ball face contorted with rage, his simian arms swinging listlessly, fists clenched as if he wanted to beat Caine to death. ‘That's just it, isn't it, Caine? You think I've never got my knees brown before this stunt. Let me tell you, I was with the minefield pathfinder squad in the MPs. We used to lay out routes through the minefields with red and green lamps, after your Sappers had cleared them. One wrong step and you could kiss your arse goodbye. We lost half the squad with limbs blown away.’

  Caine shook his head, tried to damp down his fury. ‘When will you get it into that fat bloody head that this isn't about you and your ego? Nobody's ever questioned your courage. I don't give a rat's arse what mob you were with, it doesn't qualify you to ignore orders…’

  ‘You're lecturing me on orders. That really takes the biscuit. The Sapper subaltern who lost his commission because he refused an order to clear a minefield. The sergeant who was almost court-martialled for risking his mates' lives to bring in some wounded men he'd been ordered to abandon. I know all about you, Caine, and now you're telling me…’

  ‘You don't know a damn' thing about me, Sweeney, and I don't give a tinker's cuss what you think you know. I'm patrol commander on this jaunt, and if you ever fall short in your job again, I shall personally make sure that you never serve with another special-service unit…’

  Caine's pronouncement was nipped in the bud by the slap of a gunshot from further up the wadi. He turned away sharply, groping in his haversack for binoculars. He brought them out and scanned the area. There was no movement, but he continued to scan for the next few minutes, until he saw the Daimler emerge into view in a bolus of dust. The search party was huddled behind the AFV, and he counted off Adud, Layla, Cope, Naiman and Wallace, dragging along with them two prisoners. Even from this distance, he could tell that they weren't Ities or Jerries. ‘A-rabs,’ Sweeney announced with wonder in his voice. ‘They've bagged a couple of Senussi.’

  They were Bedouin boys named Saalim and Sa'id, aged no more than fourteen or fifteen, clad in sand-hued shifts and baggy trousers, their hair in shoulder-length rat's tails, smeared with what smelled like animal fat. They might have been twins, except that while Saalim sported a thin fluff of whisker on his chin, Sa'id's face was as smooth as a billiard ball. They looked sullen, contemptuous and completely unafraid, and possessed an aura of dignity that was not diminished by their rags, nor by the fact that their hands were bound.

  Copeland shoved them roughly into a sitting position and showed Caine the rifles and cartridge belts he'd taken from them. ‘This one took a pot-shot at me,’ he said, pointing at Saalim. ‘Missed me by a hair. Good job he was running away at the time, or I'd have been dogmeat. See the cartridges? Homemade dum-dums, the lot of them.’

  Caine slipped a cartridge out of one of the belts and examined it – a flat-topped round whose soft head was scored deeply with a cross-cut. On impact it would tumble through the vital organs, mash them up, cause sympathetic fractures, create cavities – that was why MacDonald's exit wound had been so huge. Caine remembered Lt Rowland Green, killed by a dum-dum on the Gazala Line. It hadn't been much more than a week ago, but it might have happened in another life. The boys' rifles were antiques: Martini-Henri breech-loaders of the type issued to British troops fifty years earlier. Caine couldn't believe that these rag-arsed kids had kept such old weapons in such good nick, nor that they were capable of making the deadly long-range shots that had taken out his men.

  ‘You sure it was them?’ he demanded.

  ‘It was them all right,’ Cope said. ‘They admitted it. They told Moshe they thought we were Jerries: said they heard from some Senussi who fled from that village yesterday that the Huns were executing Arabs. They thought we were coming to do them in. It was a mistake.’

  ‘Oh, a mistake,’ crowed Wallace, who until now had been glowering silently at the boys. ‘That's just dandy then, inn
it? Come on, skipper, let's get this over with, or we'll miss Runefish.’ He squared his giant shoulders towards the boys and drew his fanny in a fluid movement.

  ‘Hold it, Fred,’ Caine said, turning to Naiman. ‘Corporal, can you ask the sheikh what Senussi custom is in a case like this?’

  Naiman exchanged words with the old man, then turned back to Caine, his face impassive. ‘He says that the custom is clear. It's an eye for an eye, even if the death was an accident.’

  ‘Hah,’ Wallace said.

  ‘That' not all, though,’ Naiman went on, looking hard at the big gunner. ‘He also said that these boys are his relatives. Their father is… I don't know… his second cousin or something. He says that they're just shepherds, protecting their flocks and families. He asks for clemency.’

  Wallace drew himself up and sheathed his fanny. He pulled out his Colt .45 pistol and cocked the working-parts with a snap. ‘Tell you what,’ he said slowly, ‘I'll give 'em clemency. Same clemency they give Mac and Bubbles and Jacko. I'll shoot 'em in the head.’

  He took a pace towards them, but Adud intercepted him. With the Gunner's long-shanked form towering over him, the old sheikh looked small and brittle, yet his gravel-hewn face was as hard as cut stone.

  ‘Leave it out, Fred,’ Copeland said, assuming his familiar expression of professorial disdain. ‘Is it just possible there might be things you haven't considered?’

  Wallace flared at him. ‘Don't give me none of your school-ma'am bullshit, Harry. The old boy hisself said it's an eye for an eye. It don't matter who they thought we was, they offed three of our mates, and they're going to get what's coming to 'em.’

  ‘I didn't say they don't deserve it,’ Copeland said. ‘I feel the same as you about our mates, but like I said, there are other factors. Whether it was a mistake or not, how do you think the rest of the Senussi are going to feel if you do these lads in? We're in their territory, five hundred miles behind enemy lines. It wouldn't be a great idea to turn them against us now.’

  ‘I'm damned if I come here to worry about a bunch of towel-heads…’ Wallace snarled. He bumped Adud aside like a skittle, only to find that Naiman had taken his place.

  The interpreter put a firm hand on Wallace's hairy, tattooed gun arm. ‘You don't get it, you great dollop,’ he said. Wallace stared at the hand as if it were something dirty, then slapped it away. ‘Who the hell d'you think you are?’ he demanded.

  Naiman didn't blink. ‘Last time I looked,’ he said, ‘I was Lance Corporal Moshe Naiman. In an ordinary unit, you would address me as Corporal, but since we're the commandos, we can let that ride. The point is that this eye-for-an-eye business works both ways. Whether they did it on purpose or not doesn't matter to the Senussi. If you bump off the sheikh's relatives, he'll be forced to declare a vendetta against us, and that will extend to the whole family – scores, maybe hundreds of tribesmen. It's their custom, and it's like a death sentence. None of us will get out of Cyrenaica alive.’

  Wallace scowled, appealing to Caine. ‘Are we going to let this clap-trap stop us?’ he demanded. ‘It should be tit for tat, like the old boy said.’

  Caine thought it over quickly, knowing they hadn't got time for niceties. The easiest solution would have been just to let Wallace have his way, and be done with it. He understood exactly how the big man felt, because it was how he felt. In the end, Wallace wanted desperately to kill someone. It wasn't that he was a mental case or a born murderer, it was just that when you lost your mates it was the most obvious way to relieve the tension.

  Copeland's attitude was cold-cocked, practical. The rights and wrongs of the case didn't matter to Cope: all that mattered was getting the commandos out of this situation intact. Caine had sympathies with both arguments, but he wasn't profoundly moved by either. ‘I don't know these kids from Adam,’ he said, ‘and I'll never know whose side they're really on. Maybe with all the coming and going, they don't know themselves. To me, the only point is that they're kids. They can't be above fourteen years old. I don't care what they did, or what their motives were, there aren't going to be any children executed while I'm in command. If we do them in, we're no better than those Krauts who hanged women and children at the village yesterday. No doubt they thought they had their justifications.’

  Wallace opened his mouth to argue, but Caine locked eyes with him, raised his chin, squared his tank-like torso, clenched his fists. ‘Put it away, Fred,’ he said. ‘Or are you going to shoot me too?’

  Wallace looked outraged. He made a gargling sound, as if he were trying to summon up an argument. Finally, with an expression of utter revulsion, he holstered his pistol, turned and stumped away.

  Adud gestured to the boys to stand up and drew out a small pocket knife to cut their ropes. ‘No,’ Caine said, holding up his hand and darting a look at Naiman. ‘They'll have to stay under restraint until after the engagement, so we can be sure they don't warn anyone we're here.’ He turned to Copeland. ‘Tie them to a couple of trees,’ he said, ‘but don't hurt them, and make sure they're comfortable.’ He unslung his Tommy-gun and cocked the top handle with a crash. ‘That's it for this morning's session, ladies,’ he barked. ‘Put what's left of Gracie's fire out and cover the fragments, then move to your wagons. We've got a date with the Brandenburg Special Duties Regiment.’

  22

  By the time Eisner had arrived at his quay in north Zamalek, the euphoria he'd felt on quitting Sim-Sim's flat had evaporated. The twenty minutes it had taken him to get home would normally have been enough to render the events of the night distant – the actions of a perpetrator only remotely related to himself. This time, though, the girl's words kept drifting back to him like a far-off bugle call: One thing is certain: you're going straight to damnation. He couldn't seem to get that thrilling contralto off his mind.

  The bitch had bled like a stuck sow, and his clothes were spattered with gore. As he parked his car down a side-street, removing his black wig and the rubber pads he used to distort his features, he found that his hands were shaking. He donned a mackintosh, stuffed his knife and .38 pistol into its pockets and slouched the two hundred yards to his houseboat, teetering like a drunk.

  As he crossed the gangplank, he noticed the wine-coloured vein of fire running along the seam of the Muqattam plateau to the east: the air was cool, but already he could feel latent heat promising another sweltering Cairo day. On the sundeck he paused to listen for any sounds that might be out of place, sampling the air for unfamiliar odours. He smelt only the bouquet of jasmine from a nearby garden, heard only the bass honk of bullfrogs, the falsetto rasp of cicadas in the sycamores along the riverbank, the almost indecent suck and squelch of the Nile around the boat's hull. He glanced across the lapping water at the houseboat moored a hundred yards away. No lights were showing, which meant that his friend, Major Beeston, was still in bed. That his neighbour happened to be an officer of GHQ's Inter-Services Liaison Department – a cover name for MI6 – had been one of the main reasons he'd rented this boat. No one would suspect a man living under the nose of a senior British Intelligence officer of being a spy.

  He descended the steps, unlocked the cabin door. As he opened it, he made sure that nothing had disturbed the hairpin he always left underneath. It was still in place, and he closed and bolted the door, satisfied that no one had been inside since he'd been away.

  He walked through the padded passage to the main cabin. The state room was palatial – luxuriously furnished with deep carpets, Kashmir sheepskins, woven drapes showing voluptuous women from the Arabian Nights, soft divans with brocaded silk cushions, intricately carved Arab tables, a large radiogram, a telephone, a refrigerator, a fully stocked bar.

  Eisner went straight through to his bedroom, stripped off his blood-smeared garments and threw them on the bare boards. Standing naked in the bathroom, he cleaned the blood off his knife and hid it behind the cistern, together with his memento: the carefully wrapped piece of Sim-Sim's ear. He doused himself with buckets of cold river
water, and feeling much better, put on a bathrobe, wadded his discarded clothes in newspaper and hurled them through a window into the Nile.

  He considered pouring himself a stiff Scotch but instead decided on coffee. For Eisner, brewing coffee was a soothing ritual – it wasn't the usual ersatz malt muck, nor the newfangled Nescafé, but real mocha bought on the black market. When it was ready, he took the cafetiére through to the main cabin, set it on a low table and sat down on the divan, relaxing on the wonderfully lush cushions. After he'd drunk two cups of coffee and smoked a cigarette, he felt ready to broach the wireless cubicle concealed along the passage.

  The suitcase transmitter was open on the desk, and it only remained for him to connect the battery, the Morse key and the antenna. When that was done, he sat down at the desk with his codebook and encryption pad. He put on the headphones, picked up a pencil, paused, then slapped it down again. He realized that he didn't know what to write.

  At Sim-Sim's he'd been convinced that he'd unearthed a high-level decoy plan – a scheme that had the British Deception Service stamped all over it. Now he was nagged by doubt. Sim-Sim's curse – One thing is certain: you're going straight to damnation – had at first seemed a shot in the dark. Now, he found himself wondering if it might be the key to a secret agenda. Had the girl known something she'd kept hidden from him – something that he hadn't quizzed her about in his zeal to get the goods on Betty? What did he really know about this Runefish operation, anyway? He'd been handed a schedule that mentioned a cyanide pill, and Natalie had talked about a G(R) – Special Operations Executive – officer named Julian Avery, whom she claimed had referred to Winston Churchill. He'd seen a female naval officer in full uniform riding in a GHQ staff car that had ambled along as if its occupant wanted to be shadowed. By an amazing coincidence, the woman in the car had turned out to be about the only person in the world who might be able to identify him as a rapist and murderer. Could that really be random chance?