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

by Michael Asher

  ‘Right, but we'd better make sure the current patrol's gone by first.’

  They began to drag the mewling donkey towards the town hall. Caine felt sorry for the animal, but consoled himself with the thought that its life was being given in a good cause. They were within thirty yards of the shade when the Brandenburger patrol passed between them and the buildings – two men in khaki shirts, shorts and peaked Afrika Korps caps wearing battle order and carrying Gewehr 41s at the ready. They looked alert, their eyes resting for a moment on the two Arabs. They halted, and to Caine's horror, turned and walked over to them. Caine pulled his hood more firmly over his face, keeping his eyes downcast. With his rosy, freckled, English face he'd be lucky to survive a close scrutiny. Naiman stood up to meet the soldiers – he may not have looked much like a German soldier on the road yesterday, Caine thought, but with his tanned face and hooked nose, he certainly passed muster as a Senussi.

  The soldiers halted in front of them, and one – a rangy corporal with a complexion like raw beef – started to speak to Caine in Arabic. His heart thumped – of all the luck, they'd copped for an Arabic-speaking Jerry. He leered stupidly at the soldier, and at that moment Naiman weighed in, gabbling, making gestures towards his mouth and ears. Caine guessed he was explaining to them that his companion was a deaf-mute. Whatever he'd said, it dislodged the soldiers' attention. The German pointed to the donkey, and they exchanged a few words, evidently about the beast's condition. Then the soldier touched the bow slung from Naiman's shoulder, and an intense conversation followed, in which Naiman made emphatic gestures with his hands. Finally, the soldiers turned away and resumed their patrol.

  ‘What was all that about?’ Caine enquired in a whisper when they were out of earshot.

  ‘The sod wanted to buy the bow and arrows as souvenirs,’ Naiman said.

  ‘Come on then, we've only got five minutes till the next lot appears.’

  Seconds later they had dragged the animal into the shade of one of the big trees, only yards from the door. As Naiman drew a knife from under his robes, Caine crouched down, using his body as a screen, and knocked one of Adud's homemade arrows. The arrow had no proper flight or head – its short shaft ended in sharpened wood, hardened in the fire, which had been dipped in Layla's abu na'is concoction: she'd been very specific about not touching the arrowhead as they knocked the shafts. Caine had been a dab hand at archery in his youth and they'd had a few practice shots back at the leaguer, but now, faced with the real thing, the whole idea seemed ludicrous, like facing a charging rhino armed with a fountain pen. He felt encumbered in these Arab robes, with his khaki drills underneath, and he felt naked without his custom-built Tommy-gun. He was so used to carrying it that it seemed a third arm was missing.

  There was a yell from the doorway, and the guard sprang out into the open – a long-legged Arab in carabinieri uniform, complete with scarlet head-cloth, carrying a bolt-action rifle. He advanced towards them, holding his weapon in one hand, gesturing threateningly with the other, shouting in Arabic. Naiman remained poised with his back to the policeman, shielding Caine from view. Caine waited until the guard was no more than six feet away, gradually pulling back the hide bowstring until it was fully extended. He nodded at Naiman, who leapt out of the way just as he released the bowstring, aiming at the enemy's chest. The string twanged, the arrow whooshed, slapped into the policeman's pectoral just above his heart. It fell out almost at once, and for a moment Caine was certain it hadn't even penetrated the clothing. Then the policeman's eyes went out of focus and he dropped like a stone.

  Almost before he'd hit the ground, Caine and Naiman were on him, dragging his body towards the entrance at a run. They were inside the porch, the heavy wooden door arching over them. Caine tried the handle. It was unlocked. He opened the door and they yanked the body inside, closing the door after them.

  They were in a small atrium with a short passage leading off to the right, ending in the open doorway to a room from which came the sound of a voice shouting a name in Arabic. ‘He's calling for the guard,’ Naiman whispered. ‘He heard the door open.’

  ‘Let's do it.’

  They both strung arrows and rushed down the passage, through the open door, coming on two carabinieri in the act of getting up from their chairs – both had rifles in their hands and pistols at their waists, but neither had a chance to use them. Before they had even registered what was happening, two bowstrings sang, two arrows thwacked. Naiman's shot hit his guard in the neck, Caine's took his in the arm. Both policemen slumped instantly, expressions of utter astonishment dying on their faces. Naiman closed and locked the guardroom door, then began to collect the guards' weapons in case they came round unexpectedly. Caine pulled out the spare Arab clothing he was carrying under his robe. He looked around for the ante-room door Adud's friend had described, and located it immediately: it was locked, but the key was still there. He unlocked the door, stepped into the room beyond.

  First Officer Maddaleine Rose was sitting hunched up in a corner, her hands tied behind her back and a gag on her mouth, still dressed in the khaki drills she'd been wearing that morning. She looked filthy, bedraggled and worn out. As Caine stepped into the room her eyes opened wide, and she pushed herself back against the wall, trying to get to her feet, panting with fear. Caine held up a hand. ‘It's all right, ma'am,’ he said in his most soothing voice. ‘You're all right, don't worry. I'm Sergeant Thomas Caine, Middle East Commando, I'm here with a search-and-rescue mission with orders to bring you back safely.’ He was over to her in a bound, his knife in his hand. ‘Please stay quiet, ma'am,’ he said. ‘I'm going to cut your bindings.’ As he cut through the rope, he felt a rush of euphoric satisfaction. He had dreamed of this moment, and after all the doubts, all the tribulations, he'd made it. He'd liberated Runefish.

  He ushered her quickly into the room where he'd left Naiman, hardly noticing that she was struggling against him, choking and spluttering as she wrestled with her gag. She staggered against a desk, finally pulled the gag out of her mouth, let out a hacking, stifled cough. ‘What in the name of hell do you think you're doing, Sergeant?’ she screeched, making no attempt to keep her voice down. Her tone was commanding, stentorian, and it hit Caine like an electric shock. It was the haughty upper-class voice he'd heard so often in the officer's mess but never really grown accustomed to – a voice devoid of human warmth, an artificial voice that seemed unable to address anyone other than in terms of authority. For a split second Cope's words popped in to his head: I hope you're not expecting gratitude… those officer-class bints… wouldn't spit on you if you were on fire.

  Rose surveyed the two of them with contempt in her almost supernaturally green eyes. The eyes were poison, Caine thought: her whole face was a deathmask: haughty, merciless, arrogant. ‘You pair of cretins,’ she snarled. ‘You ignorant half-wits. Leave – now.’

  ‘Shut up, ma'am, for God's sake,’ Naiman whispered. ‘The guards will hear. We'll never get you out.’

  ‘Out? I'm not going anywhere with you, you bloody fools.’

  Naiman shot a terrified glance at Caine: they had considered every possibility but this – that Rose wouldn't want to be liberated. ‘She's delirious,’ he whispered.

  ‘I am not delirious,’ Rose yelled. ‘I am in perfect control of all my faculties. You, on the contrary, are a pair of blundering plebs, who have just about messed up everything. For Christ's sake, get out of here now.’

  ‘Grab her,’ Caine snapped.

  They seized one arm each and began to frog-march her towards the door. Rose shrieked at them, kicking, punching, scratching viciously at their faces. ‘For the last time, ma'am,’ Caine growled, ‘pack it in, and shut up, or so help me, I'll lay you out.’

  She spat in his face.

  Incensed, Caine drew back his fist and was willing himself to hit her with all the force he could muster when there was a thump on the office door, and excited voices in German.

  ‘They're here,’ Naiman said. ‘We've
shot it, skipper.’

  Caine let go of Rose and picked up one of the guards' pistols from the desk where Naiman had laid it – a .38-calibre Beretta. He cocked the mechanism and pointed it at her. ‘You're right, we are bloody fools,’ he croaked bitterly. ‘We risked our lives for this. I wanted to give you a chance, but it seems I made the wrong choice. I have a habit of doing that.’

  Rose looked like a cornered beast, her barbed-wire body under the ragged khakis poised for a fight, her sneering full lips curling back from uneven teeth, her eyes burning gashes. He lifted the weapon, and as she turned to face him, he saw a drop of sweat run down the side of her face, scouring a track through dust and grime.

  ‘Eight of my men are already dead because of you, First Officer Rose,’ Caine said, his voice breaking slightly, ‘and a lot more of them will probably die before we get home. My orders are to bring you back or execute you. Now you've left me no choice.’

  Her expression remained as hard as granite, but twin pearls of tears glistened suddenly and almost imperceptibly in the corners of her eyes. It was the first time she'd shown any real emotion. ‘I don't care what you think you've been ordered to do,’ she hissed, her voice lower but no less harsh, ‘but it's a mistake. If you pull that trigger, I promise you, Sergeant Caine, you will regret it for the rest of your life.’

  ‘Which, thanks to you, may not be very long.’

  He snapped off the safety catch, took the first pressure. Afterwards, he was never quite sure whether he would have squeezed the trigger or not. As it happened he never had the choice, because at that moment the door exploded inwards off its hinges, smashing into him and sending him flying, knocking the weapon out of his hand. He hit the floor winded, and before he could get to his feet German soldiers were swarming around him. A Jerry rabbit-punched his neck, another whacked him in the guts with a rifle butt, a third kicked him in the head as he went down again. Rough hands jerked him up, and he saw that two Brandenburgers had pinioned Rose's arms while another was crushing her breasts in a vice-like grip, making her yelp in pain. Naiman was belly-down on the floor, trying to protect his head, gasping as half a dozen men kicked seven bales out of him, ripping off his Arab robes to reveal the khaki drills underneath. One of the Jerries cut away Caine's own robes with a bayonet, tore them off. The beef-faced corporal who'd spoken to him in the street earlier put a size-twelve boot into his balls: the kick doubled him over, his head reeling, gasping in pain. Another Jerry whacked him in the side with a rifle stock, slamming his bayonet wound. Acid fire erupted, gripping his whole body in a shocking clinch, bringing darkness cascading in scarlet and black.

  He was on his knees now, sucking air desperately, fighting to stay conscious. The big corporal snatched his hair and yanked his head up high enough to see a pair of legs in jodhpurs and jack-boots striding through the doorway. ‘Now, this is a very interesting situation, isn't it?’ a voice said in English – a falsetto voice that seemed to scrape the air like a cannon-shell. The hand on his hair wrenched his head up higher, and Caine found himself looking straight into the arid, adding-machine eyes of Major Heinrich Rohde.

  30

  There was a near-naked body boneless as a rag doll writhing in a chair in a far-away place, and there was a fool who wouldn't stop screeching and bellowing like a bull in his ear. Caine's eyelids flickered: there was the stench of charred meat in his nostrils, fresh vomit on his chin, and it hit him suddenly that the shrieking fool was himself.

  Heinrich Rohde, stripped to shirtsleeves, moved with the ponderous actions of a deep-sea diver. He wasn't exactly smiling: his face was sleek with attention as he applied the red-hot iron once again to Caine's open wound. Pain shot off like a rocket: Caine was rushing down a stream of fire like the clappers of hell, head churning in a carousel that spun off its axis, slingshotting him into wild terra incognita, flipping his mind over in a somersault that made him crash and burn. It was pain as he'd never known it, worse than a bullet, worse than ripping shrapnel, worse than a razor-edge knife. The fool down there whimpered, begging for the pain to stop, spitting, wheezing, drooling vomit. Rohde's scraping voice was in his ear. ‘Why were you ordered to execute Runefish, Sergeant Caine? What does she know that is so important that you would kill one of your own officers? Tell me now and the pain will stop.’

  Rohde lifted the hot iron up to Caine's eyes, flexing his long, spider-like fingers. Caine saw the fingers moving on the rubber handle, caressing it, and the sight nauseated him. He could feel the rod's heat, smell the scorched steel. It was the smell of the forge, he remembered suddenly – burning carbon and burned iron – his father whacking in those impossibly accurate sledgehammer blows, the twelve-year-old Caine playing duet with the smaller hammer, the perfect cadence of the two hammers, like music, the perfect knowledge that not a blow would miss its mark. ‘It's hard, Dad,’ Caine whispered.

  ‘Of course it's hard, son. It's trust. Perfect trust.’

  ‘What?’ Rohde snapped.

  ‘I'll tell you,’ Caine wheezed.

  ‘Don't,’ another voice whined. ‘Don't tell the bastard anything.’

  Caine forced his iced-over eyes wide, to see Naiman, trussed up naked but for his shorts, in a chair not five yards away. He felt a surge of fury seeing his mate helpless like this – anger, not against Rohde or the Germans, but against Maddaleine Rose. She had betrayed them, ratted them to the Nazis. If he ever got out of here he'd teach that bitch, with her snooty ten-pound-note voice. You are a pair of blundering plebs, who have just about messed up everything.’

  ‘It's all right,’ Caine stammered, his voice hollow.

  ‘Don't tell him,’ Naiman whispered again.

  ‘What is it?’ Rohde squeaked. ‘Tell me now.’

  ‘All right, I'll tell you.’ Caine took a deep breath and shivered: despite the atrocious pain in his side, he felt that he was still articulate, could still string together a sentence. ‘Runefish is carrying a secret,’ he panted. ‘British Intelligence… discovered something of immense propaganda value. If known to the world, it… would turn the tide of the war against the Axis…’

  ‘What secret?’ Rohde whispered eagerly. ‘Tell me.’

  Caine drew in a deep breath, formed the words in his head so that he wouldn't stumble over them. ‘It used to be common knowledge that Hitler had only one ball,’ he gasped, ‘but we know now that this is utter nonsense. The truth is that Hitler has no balls – no balls at all.’

  He burst into a paroxysm of crazy laughter that ended abruptly when Rohde, his lips working with wordless rage, jabbed the hot iron again into his wound.

  It took a dousing of cold water to bring him round this time. He came to, cursing Runefish to hell, thinking of that deathmask face, of the good men he'd lost because of her. He wanted this pain to be hers – not the physical pain of torture, but the longer-lasting grief over fallen comrades, and the knowledge that they had been led to their deaths for a worthless cause. There were two people who'd never be forgiven for that: one was Maddaleine Rose, and the other was himself.

  Caine was aware that he'd broken every rule in the commando book about resistance to interrogation. You were supposed to give your name, rank, number and date of birth, and after that nothing, not even a yes or a no. You answered all questions with ‘I'm sorry, I can't answer that question,’ but one thing you never did was antagonize your interrogator – that only made the situation worse. Caine knew he'd messed up, but he didn't care: if he was going to die anyway – and no one looking at Rohde could doubt that was the way this would end – he wanted these Nazi scum to know what he thought of them and their shit.

  The cold water had brought him back to consciousness with a bang, and for the first time he took stock of his surroundings. He couldn't clearly recall what had happened to him after the Brandenburgers had beaten him up. They weren't in the guardroom in the town hall any longer, but in a windowless place – a vault perhaps – and a glance told him that this was Rohde's regular interrogation centre. There was a tab
le on which lay a set of surgical tools, an iron charcoal-brazier, there were hooks hanging from the ceiling, bloodstains on the walls, and a sinister-looking electrical contraption with wires and electrodes. He realized that Rohde was no longer attending to him, though. The major was now standing over Naiman, whose eyes were focused on the sharp little butcher's cleaver Rohde was holding in his right hand. The Abwehr man snapped an order. A pair of raw-boned Brandenburgers brought up a small wooden table, which they set in front of Naiman's chair.

  Rohde wheeled round and faced Caine, still nursing the cleaver. Though Caine fought against it, he could not prevent his eyes from being drawn to the savage little tool. ‘You are a fool, Sergeant,’ Rohde rasped. ‘A pawn to Allied propaganda. Adolf Hitler is a great man, a great leader, and it is an honour to be in his service. He saved the German people from the pits of debility and depression into which we were flung by the November Betrayers, by the Bolsheviks, by the filthy Jews, who sold us out in the Great War…’

  Caine said nothing this time, and Rohde smiled at him – an alligator smile that sent a chill down his spine. ‘You think you can hold out until I kill you, and perhaps you are correct. It does happen. In my experience, though, people will often give information more readily to prevent punishment being meted out to their comrades or loved ones. That is what I intend to do now. I intend to cut off Corporal Hussain's fingers one by one until you tell me what I wish to know.’