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

by Michael Asher

  As he paused under a tree opposite, he became aware that a small party was making its way across the street. Three Brandenburgers, armed with Gewehr 41 semi-automatic rifles and bayonets, were shoving ahead of them a gagged and bound prisoner. Caine realized with a shock that the prisoner was Maddaleine Rose.

  The squad wasn't moving tactically – in fact, the troopers were laughing and joking, subjecting Rose to lewd gestures, whose meaning neither she nor Caine could mistake. The gestures told Caine that she was no longer of use to Rohde: she'd evidently blabbed under interrogation. From what he could see, she looked relatively unharmed, which suggested that she'd caved in easily. Caine didn't want to judge her on that – she was a woman, after all – but he still couldn't get over the fact that she'd betrayed him and Naiman to the Jerries. He'd never be able to forgive her for Naiman's death.

  The moonlight was still strong, but by keeping to the darkest places, crouching in the trees, squatting under walls, Caine was able to follow the group unobserved. The Brandenburgers were obviously so focused on what they intended to do to Rose that they'd thrown all caution to the wind. He didn't know if Rohde had warned them that there might be an enemy raiding unit in the area, or whether the Black Widow had swallowed his story that there had only ever been the two of them. He wondered how he was going to take on three fully armed Jerries with no more than his rusty old blade. He would have to dispose of them swiftly and noiselessly, without allowing them to get off a shot that would alert the rest of the garrison. He put the thought out of his mind, sure that an opportunity would arise, aware that surprise was by far his most powerful tool.

  The party had covered about half a mile when it halted beyond the outskirts of the town, in what Caine saw was an Islamic graveyard: oval plots bordered by rings of stones, interspersed with thorn bushes. Wasting no time, the Jerries immediately tripped Rose over, hurling her on her stomach. While she lay there panting, inert and helpless, they put their bayonets and Gewehr 41s down and began to unclip their webbing. Recognizing that he had only seconds, Caine closed the distance between them rapidly, ducking behind a thorn bush not two yards away from where they had downed their semi-automatics.

  The Brandenburgers were standing over Rose now, unbuttoning their flies, sniggering together like adolescent schoolboys, debating who would go first. Rose lay facedown in the dust. She neither moved nor uttered the slightest sound, as if she were totally resigned to what was happening. Or perhaps she was so dazed after her interrogation that she wasn't even aware of it. Two of the soldiers squatted by her and started pulling down her trousers. Caine saw his chance. He took a quick silent breath, stepped forward, scooped up a discarded Gewehr 41 in one hand and a bayonet in the other, and without even breaking step, swung the rifle like a club. He brought it crashing down on the head of the standing soldier with all the momentum of his body, all the force of his massive torso, all the speed of his unusually fast reflexes. The pent-up rage of Rose's betrayal, Rohde's torture, his ordeal in the well, Naiman's horrific death, found expression in that blow. Caine felt the skull cleave, crack, cave in, felt the rifle-stock snap off.

  The soldier went rigid, poleaxed. As he toppled, Caine hurled the bayonet left-handed at one of the crouching men. It was a throw whose accuracy he could never have hoped for in a less adrenalin-pumped condition: the blade took the man in the neck, the point passing through it and emerging the other side in a spume of blood. The Brandenburger's eyes popped out with astonishment. He swayed, gurgling, spitting gore. The third Jerry wasn't even fully on his feet when Caine attacked him with the mutilated stump of the rifle. The soldier was a red-haired man, bigger and broader even than himself, but there was merciless fury in Caine's onslaught. Before the redhead had time to defend himself, Caine had bashed his pate three times with the blunt stock, twisted the rifle and thrust the muzzle into his mouth: it mashed teeth, pulped his tongue, ruptured his larynx, came to rest half-way down his gullet. The Brandenburger sagged, seething, gagging, croaking on air: Caine put all his weight behind the weapon, thrusting it in deeper until the soldier's windpipe burst. Kicking the fallen man aside, Caine wheeled round, his knife at the ready. Neither of the other two soldiers had risen: the first was clearly dead, the second was moaning and wheezing in the process of bleeding to death.

  Caine decided not to take any chances. He picked up a second sword-bayonet, tested its sharpness against his thumb, crouched down by the wheezing soldier. He grabbed the Jerry's blood-stiff hair, jerked his head back, cut his throat from ear to ear. He felt ragged tissue part, saw the severed gullet and windpipe twitch, saw blood gush. The wheezing stopped. He moved to the Jerry he'd poleaxed, knelt down, did the same. The third Hun was already so disfigured that Caine had to force himself to make the cut. He crouched, jerked the rifle out of the Jerry's mouth, sawed through what was left of his neck. He was half-way through when he became aware of eyes watching him. He glanced sideways, saw Rose lying two feet away, saw her bruised face shocked, saw her gagged mouth working silently, saw deep-green eyes riveted on him, wide with horror. He turned away, finished the job, left the bayonet stuck in the Jerry's gullet. He stood up, panted, lurched, reeled, fought back vomit. He helped himself to another Gewehr 41, slung it over his shoulder, palmed water-bottles from the dead men's webbing, turned his attention to Rose.

  He hauled her to her feet by her own bindings. She turned to face him, her eyes bulging, just as they had a few hours earlier when he'd approached her in the locked room. She mumbled something frantic under her gag, evidently expecting him to remove it. Caine ignored her. ‘Just shut up and do as you're told,’ he growled. He pulled up her trousers, buttoned the waist roughly. Then he seized her by one arm and began to hustle her, still bound, in the direction of the leaguer.

  37

  At sunset on 21 June, Rommel had moved out of the roadhouse, pitching his camp in a little oasis of dense scrub on the plain, where he could enjoy the cool of the moonlit desert night. When von Mellenthin arrived there hot-foot from the signals detachment, he found the general sitting under an awning with a captured British brigadier, his ADC, Captain Heinz Schmidt, and Panzer Group interpreter, Lt Manfred Hoffman, of the German Navy. The four officers were lounging at their ease in camp-chairs around a low table, quaffing mugs of warm beer looted from British stocks in Tobruk. ‘You will find the first days of captivity the worst, General,’ Rommel was advising the prisoner, ‘but you won't be mistreated. My men respect brave soldiers.’

  Mellenthin couldn't suppress a chuckle. There was nothing the GOC liked better than hob-nobbing with captured enemy personnel, sometimes rebuking them paternally for tactical mistakes, as if discussing a friendly football match. Rommel could be as ruthless and calculating as the next general, but despite thirty years of combat experience, he'd never lost his sense of war as a sport: always grim, sometimes foolish, often tragic, but an essentially honorable sport nevertheless. For the general, hatred of or even rude behaviour towards the enemy was normally unthinkable – which was why Mellenthin had found his treatment of Klopper that morning so shocking.

  The intelligence officer saluted, and waited politely for the GOC to conclude his conversation. ‘… all the more deplorable,’ Rommel was continuing, ‘to see, as I have seen, photographs of wounded Italian soldiers dismembered by the enemy after capture. This is the work of beasts, not men.’

  He paused while the interpreter did his job. The brigadier, a craggy-faced man with bushy eyebrows who looked a shade too warm in full battle-dress, grew animated. ‘No British soldiers would have done that,’ he protested. ‘I am certain it was the work of Abyssinian auxiliaries.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Rommel commented after Hoffman had translated. ‘If so, I find it regrettable that you Britishers should employ such savages in a war against white men.’

  He stood up to show that the conversation was at an end, shook hands vigorously with the POW. ‘I hope your captivity will not last long, General,’ he told him. ‘Surely there is room in the world for
both of our nations without fighting?’

  ‘Indeed, General – those are my sentiments entirely.’

  As soon as the others were out of earshot, Rommel gestured Mellenthin to a chair. ‘Well?’ he enquired.

  The IO's smile was triumphant. ‘Field Marshal von Kesselring acknowledges his receipt of the Runefish report,’ he said, ‘and accepts the confirmation of its authenticity from our asset Stürmer, in Cairo. He has agreed not to withdraw his air units, pending approval from OKH/OKW in Berlin.’

  ‘Good,’ Rommel said. His laugh-wrinkles were suddenly prominent, and it seemed to Mellenthin that he was struggling to suppress the urge to jump up and do a jig. ‘What about the Italians?’

  ‘Generals Bastico, Cavallero and Barbasetti have all registered disapproval of your intended actions. So has von Rintelin in Rome, but none of them in strong terms. I think they can be relied on to toe the line.’

  Rommel beamed, his blue-grey eyes twinkled, laugh-lines corrugated his face from the corner of his eyes to the edge of his cheekbones. ‘Signal them that, as from first light tomorrow, I intend to go straight through the Delta, across the Nile, the Suez Canal and the Sinai Desert. I shall not pause until I have reached the Persian Gulf. You may reiterate my invitation, to all of them, to dine with me at Shepheard's Hotel in a week's time.’

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ Mellenthin said, ‘but may I advise you that it would be prudent to wait for official permission before sending such a message?’

  Rommel feigned surprise. ‘No, Major, you may not advise me. Those old women have delayed me long enough already. I lost valuable days over the Gaullist French at Bir Hacheim, and I have no intention of stalling any longer. At dawn my Battle Staff moves to Bardia, and 15th Panzer and the Ariete Divisions will move up to the frontier. By then we should have news from 90th Light on the supply dumps they've been probing for.’

  ‘Very good, sir,’ Mellenthin said. He was about to get up when Rommel continued. ‘I want you to signal Rohde in Biska,’ he said. ‘Tell him he's done a good job, but inform him that I want that woman – Runefish – sent up to the front on the first available aircraft. I want to talk to her personally.’

  A slightly bemused look crossed the IO's face. ‘But, General,’ he protested, ‘you said yourself that there wouldn't be much left of her when that swine had done his business. We both know he doesn't wear velvet gloves.’

  Rommel's expression turned severe, and Mellenthin guessed that he was experiencing a pang of guilt. This Maddaleine Rose might be just a woman, but she was also an enemy officer captured in uniform. She was entitled to the rights of any prisoner-of-war. Rommel deplored cruelty to male prisoners, let alone females, but he'd been too avid for the information she carried to remind Rohde of this earlier. Now he was regretting it, the IO thought.

  ‘Whatever state she's in,’ he snapped. ‘I want her sent here. I do not want her dumped in a shallow grave in the Green Mountains. You tell that… that piece of horse turd… that, grateful as I am for the intelligence he supplied, I am holding him personally responsible for her safety. If Runefish doesn't arrive at my HQ in the next twenty-four hours, I shall want to know the reason why.’

  The three Brandenburger corpses lay in the graveyard at Biska, blanched and glassy-eyed, in ellipses of burgundy-coloured sand rich with their own blood. A clutch of giant Nubian vultures was hovering around the perimeter, and the troops chased them away with stones. When Captain Karl Haller had finished examining the dead soldiers, he stood up and flashed Rohde a grim look. ‘You'd think they'd been hit by a pack of savages, sir,’ he said. ‘One had his skull stoven in, another was asphyxiated by a rifle muzzle being shoved down his gullet, and the third got his own bayonet right through the neck. All three of them have had their throats slit. None was shot, and by the state of their weapons not one of them got a round off, either.’

  ‘Too intent on having a romp with the prisoner,’ Rohde said drily. ‘So this is the standard one can expect from “Special Duties” troops…?’ He stared at the captain with burning eyes. ‘You lost me my prisoner, Haller – a prisoner that General Rommel has asked specifically to see.’

  Haller felt his gorge rising. ‘Sir,’ he said. ‘You told me that the prisoner was of no further use. You announced in front of my men that they could do whatever they wanted with her.’

  Rohde's eyes narrowed hazardously. ‘That's a lie –’ he started, but before he could finish he was interrupted by the arrival of the police tracker – a short, spare Senussi in khakis and a red headcloth. Haller listened to his report and told him in Italian to stand by. ‘He's sure that this was the work of one man,’ he told Rohde. He pointed to a nearby bush. ‘Whoever it was followed the party from the town paused behind that bush and attacked them with their own weapons.’

  ‘One man?’ Rohde snarled. ‘Who?’

  ‘There's only one person it could have been,’ Haller said, feeling a lump in his throat. ‘The sergeant we threw in the well.’

  Rohde looked as if he were about to explode. ‘Caine? Are you telling me you let him escape?’

  ‘I followed your orders to the letter, sir,’ Haller objected. ‘In any case, he was wounded and disoriented from interrogation. I wouldn't have put money on his even surviving the fall, let alone getting out of a well with sheer sides, a hundred feet deep.’ He paused and scanned the three cadavers again as if to make certain that he hadn't been mistaken. ‘By God, that joker's tough,’ he said. ‘Must be a one-man killing machine.’

  ‘He must have had outside help, you mean,’ Rohde snapped, his nostrils flaring. ‘I'll tell you what I am going to do, Haller. I am going to assemble the entire Senussi population of this town, men and women. I'm going to have them shot, one by one, until I find out who helped him.’ He put his face so near to Haller's that the officer could smell his stale breath. ‘As for you, Captain, if you don't get me that cocksucker's balls on a plate, and the Runefish woman back unharmed before noon tomorrow, your next posting will be the Russian Front.’

  38

  Sunrise came upon Caine's small convoy as the wagons crested the head of the last escarpment on the southern side of the Green Mountain. Leaning on the White's observation hatch next to Wallace, Caine caught his breath. The sun lay on the rim of the world, bigger than he'd ever seen it – half a golden galleon upturned along the horizon. New light sketched lines across the landscape, slicing up the night's monolithic solidity into corries, canyons and gorges, in the foothills beneath him. Beyond that tame little garden, though, the wild Sahara was unstitching itself from the cloak of night, an endless, rolling, amber ocean of space, stretching onwards to the ends of the earth. It might be easier to hide in the mountains, but Caine could never rid himself of a sense of claustrophobia there. In the desert, though, he felt as safe and free as a bird breasting a flawless sky. He had, he told himself, at least accomplished his mission, even if not quite in the way he'd envisaged it. The rendez-vous with the LRDG escort – the Muqtal plateau – lay no more than two days' drive away. Now, that place glowed as brightly in his imagination as the promised land.

  The convoy had been moving almost non-stop for seven hours, grating and rattling along precipitous tracks, sweeping down the floors of deep wadis, juddering over the tops of plunging screes. Caine had spent almost the entire journey at the hatch, smoking cigarettes, foiling with inarticulate grunts Wallace's attempts to grill him. For most of that time Maddaleine Rose had been curled up on the hard floor beneath them, still bound and gagged. ‘If you don't give her water soon, skipper, she'll croak,’ Wallace had observed at ever-decreasing intervals, the note of anxiety in his voice growing steadily more shrill. ‘Why don't you untie her? At least take the gag off and let her breathe. I don't remember you sayin' our orders was to bring her back trussed up like a pound of brisket.’

  Finally, tired of pussy-footing, the big gunner had knitted his shaggy eyebrows and glowered at his patrol commander. ‘Why the hell are you tormenting her, Tom? What's up with you?’
/>
  ‘Naiman's dead, that's what's up,’ Caine had growled at him. ‘It's her fault. She ratted on us to the Hun.’

  ‘Jesus, what happened in there?’

  ‘I don't want to talk about it, all right?’

  The only mishap on the descent was a set of burnt-out gear-bands on Vera. Caine told Wingnut Turner to leave the repair job until they halted in cover – dismantling the transmission box would be a long job, and he didn't want to be caught in the open by any shufti-wallahs the enemy might put on their tail at first light.

  As they came down into the labyrinth of dry water-courses in the valley, the sun rotated slowly in a basket of dark sludge, firing off streamers of light like spear-points, searing through the last filaments of night-mist, detonating in small explosions of heat. Rubber tyres scrunched on the hard shingle of a wadi bed – a gravel beach coiling beneath a sheer cliff on one side and along a great plain of wind-graded serir on the other – a plain scattered with free-standing pedestals, narrow at the base and wide at the apex, giving the impression of battalions of petrified Black Gods on parade. Further on, the cliff had in places been eaten away by what might have been giant termites, into grottoes and overhangs, some of them large enough to conceal a vehicle. Caine thought it was the best cover they could expect to find in the circumstances: he had Copeland give the three-honk signal to halt and scrim up.