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

by Michael Asher

  A Jerry coalsacked, his throat torn out by a snub-nosed slug from a Tommy-gun. Another brought up his semi-auto and found himself looking into the nostrils of Wallace's sawn-off. A twin blast of buckshot peeled his face, cratered his scalp, sent him arching five yards through the air. The last three Jerries reeled, crimped together back to back: Caine, Copeland and Wallace crashed into them, Colt .45s crackpotting, fannies carving meat. Wallace brought his blade down with all the force he had left in him on a Hun's chest, stoving in his ribs, piercing his heart. Copeland shot a Jerry in the mouth point-blank, saw his teeth mince, his nose vanish. Caine snatched a Jerry's rifle, stuck his fanny into his carotid. The Jerry sawed air, streaked blood spritzes. Wallace shot him in the head for good measure as he dry-swam the ground.

  At last, there was silence. Fred Wallace's tank-like bulk swayed dangerously. Caine put a strong arm round his waist to steady him. Nobody spoke. They studied the charnel house around them – the dead on the escarpment, the retreating Jerries, the burning AFVs, the smouldering wagons down in the wadi bed. It felt as though they'd just walked into hell and back. Caine glanced at his watch: the battle had lasted just half an hour.

  45

  Caine didn't kid himself that they'd won anything. The Jerries would be back, and there was no way his little band would succeed in fighting them off a second time. He resigned himself to the inevitable, reflecting that his mission would go down in history as the worst ever cock-up behind enemy lines. Seventeen good men killed in action. He didn't feel sorry for himself so much as for them: the steady, brave, loyal troops whom he'd squandered to a chain of inept decisions. He knew there'd only been a fifty-fifty chance of success from the start, but if he'd done things differently, they might have succeeded. After all, despite all the odds, they'd snatched Maddy Rose. It was galling to have come so near, and yet still be so far.

  There were only five of them left now – six if you counted Rose. Trubman and Pickney both had chest wounds: neither could stand properly, but both insisted they could still shoot. Graveman and Temple had been taken out by mortar bombs. Temple was bulldogged out in his sangar, steak tartare where his face should have been, half of his brain smeared across the stones. Graveman wasn't a pleasant sight either: his limbs had been scissored off in the blast: he'd bled to death. The weird thing was that his marble-white, bearded features were tranquil in repose, resembling more than ever those of the Players' Navy Cut sailor. Raker had been scattergunned with MG30 rounds in the chest and thighs, and had died from multiple lung-punctures. When Caine peered into Rose's sangar, he found her grinning back at him: the only parts of her body that weren't blood-stippled were her white teeth and her ocean-green eyes. Caine supposed he should have felt resentful that she'd come through when all but four of his boys had got scragged, but somehow he was very glad that she was there.

  Not that she, or any of them, was likely to be there much longer. They were alone in the desert, wagons gone, stores and gear barbecued, no water, rations or ammo, except what they carried. The Vickers were all write-offs and there were no bombs for the two-inch mortars. They had a Bren each, a few mags, some grenades, their personal weapons. They had no means of contacting friendly forces, and they were wounded. They didn't have the energy to escape on foot.

  The sun was low, a molten slingshot suspended on a sky networked with cream veins. The intense heat of the day had been skimmed off, leaving a dark residue among the rocks, elastic shadows across the gold crust of the wadi bed. Squeezing into the shade of a broken crag, they studied each other's wounds, knowing that they could not survive another assault, knowing that they would not run nor surrender, knowing it was too late for that. Caine nodded towards the top of the ridge. ‘I think we should move up there,’ he said. ‘That's where we'll make our stand.’

  Wallace smirked at the word ‘stand’, but was too weak to make any rejoinder. Neither Rose nor Copeland said anything: Pickney and Trubman needed all their strength just to stay conscious. The others carried them to the top of the ridge, and set them up in a sangar with water, chocolate, Brens and grenades. Then they went back for their weapons and kit, brought them up to the new position, sat down behind rocks and boulders to wait for the final act.

  Trubman and Pickney's sangar lay on the left flank, with Caine and Rose ten yards away in the centre, and Cope and Wallace on the right. Wallace's shoulder had been mushed by the low-velocity round, his shoulder-bone and clavicle fractured: the bullet that had shaved his right hand had knapped his liverwurst fingers down to knuckle-bone. Copeland's left hand was swatched in blood-soaked dressings, and his scalp was a scab of dried gore from the graze. Rose had flesh wounds in the neck and wrist, Caine in the shoulder. They cleaned and patched up each other's injuries with iodine, shell-dressings, butterfly wraps. They glugged water; they snarfed down chocolate and ship's biscuits; they sucked on cigarettes.

  Caine couldn't take his eyes off Rose. Despite the mess on her face, despite her wounds, she still had that elfin look he'd first noticed the day Wallace had cut her free. He felt a reprise of guilt at the way he'd treated her. He'd kept her trussed and gagged for seven hours: he'd accused her of blabbing to the Hun, called her a non-combatant. He knew now that no man could have fought better. ‘I'm sorry…’ he started, but Rose put a slender, iodine-stained finger on his lips. ‘Don't,’ she said softly. ‘You did everything you could, Tom. Don't apologize.’

  ‘I didn't do enough. My mission failed.’

  Rose took a deep breath, her brilliant eyes soft with emotion, pricked with tears like tiny quartz crystals. She blew out a stream of smoke. ‘Your mission didn't fail,’ she said. ‘It succeeded more than you will ever know.’

  Caine, nodded, humouring her, taking her words for soothing consolation. Before he could speak, though, she oared in again. ‘ I wanted to tell you before, but I couldn't. Now we're finished, and there's no point me holding back.’ She stubbed out her cigarette, and when she looked at him again, her expression was vulnerable. Caine couldn't help putting his arms round her. When she'd held him before, he'd felt overwhelmed with desire, but it wasn't like that any longer. Now, he was content just to hold her. He felt her body responding, melting into his hard contours. ‘These last few days have changed me,’ she whispered. ‘I never thought I'd find anyone like you. I wanted to die, to be with Peter. Now I've found you, Tom…’ She chuckled bitterly. ‘Funny, isn't it? You want to end it all, and then the minute it looks like curtains, you find a reason to live, and someone to live for. I just wish… I wish things had been different, so that we could have got to know each other…’

  ‘Shsh,’ Caine said. ‘I know all I need to know about you…’

  When he kissed her it wasn't with the death-defying lust he'd felt before: it was as if time had stopped, as if this was all there ever could be in the universe. The kiss went on and on – the most satisfying, most passionate kiss of his life. When their lips parted, it seemed to Caine that the world really had changed: they were going to die – in an hour, in a day, in a lifetime – but this one eternal, priceless moment had been worth all their blood, toil and sorrow.

  Suddenly, Rose let go of him and rocked back. To his surprise, Caine saw tears tracking down her blood-smeared face. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘You said you know all you need to know about me…’

  ‘I do…’

  ‘No you don't. You don't know anything about me. You snatched a Wren officer called Maddaleine Rose from the Nazis, but I'm not her. My name is Betty Nolan, and I'm an actress. I was trained as an agent by G(R) – the Cairo Division of the Special Operations Executive. Trained for the Runefish mission. Maddy Rose is a character I created… me and the planners of the “A” Force Deception Service – it was all dreamed up by them.’

  For a moment, Caine thought she was joking. ‘You're having me on, aren't you?’ he said. Before the words were out, though, the pieces fell into place with an almost audible clang: the mysteries, the paradoxes, her unusual skills, her three-
hour SOS transmission, her unexplained behaviour. It seemed to him suddenly that it wasn't a surprise, that somehow he'd known it all along.

  ‘The way you behaved at Biska,’ he said slowly. ‘Turning us in, giving the griff to Rohde… that was all part of a decoy, wasn't it? None of the things you've told me up to now was true.’

  Betty Nolan smiled crookedly. ‘No, it was all lies. I mean, it was true that I was carrying a dispatch reporting that Eighth Army was on the point of collapse, but that message was disinformation. It wasn't intended for Mr Churchill at all, but for Rommel.’

  Caine's mouth goldfished: he strove to grasp implications. ‘You mean you were dropped behind Axis lines on purpose…’

  ‘Yep,’ she sniffed. ‘We made sure that Axis agents in Cairo would find out about Runefish, and that the Axis would track my plane and shoot it down. My pilot – Pete Orton – was sick. He only had months to live, and he volunteered for the job knowing he'd be killed. In Cairo, we had to play it dead straight, because GHQ is riddled with moles and informers. But I was never really meant to go to London at all – my objective was always Cyrenaica.

  ‘When I bailed out the Senussi helped me. They showed me a cave in the Green Mountains, looked after me. I was sure one of them would snitch – I didn't make much effort to conceal myself, but it couldn't be obvious, either. When the Huns didn't come for me, I got worried that they weren't going to pick me up. That's why I sent that three-hour long SOS transmission. It wasn't meant for you. I just had to make sure the Jerries found out I was there, and I knew they'd triangulate my signal.’

  Caine sat up straight, stared at her aghast. ‘Do you know how close we came to taking you out? We were there, at the cave. We saw you captured. Harry Copeland had you in his cross-hairs. Surely that wasn't meant to happen?’

  It was Nolan's turn to look astonished. ‘You were well hidden. I'd no idea you were there.’

  Caine shook his head, struggling for comprehension. ‘I had orders to snatch you or execute you…’

  Nolan released a chortle, flat and hard, as if cutting off a sob. ‘But you didn't execute me, Tom. I told you – all right, I don't know this for certain, but I believe they chose you because they knew that, when it came down to brass tacks, you would go against orders. You'd refuse to kill a woman in cold blood.’

  Caine was confused again. ‘Then why the heck did they order me to do it in the first place?’

  ‘Look, Tom,’ Nolan said, touching his arm with light fingers. ‘Let me start at the beginning.’ She took a breath, her tarnished green eyes locked on his. ‘The Runefish mission was a classic disinformation stunt. It was designed to influence strategy. The morale of the Eighth Army wasn't shattered at Gazala. There haven't been any near-mutinies or desertions. That was all disinformation. By now, Eighth Army will already have rallied: it will have been reinforced by divisions from Palestine. Claude Auchinleck will already be preparing to give Rommel the shock of his life. Eighth Army is strong, but the object of Runefish was to convince the enemy that it was weak, so that Rommel would be drawn into invading Egypt. He'll be defeated there. He's walking into a trap.’

  Caine's mouth groped for words. ‘But surely,’ he said, ‘Rommel would have done that anyway, without any help from you?’

  Rose dimpled a smile, her beautiful overlapping teeth bone-white against the gore-dark face. ‘No,’ she said. ‘The long-term strategy of Axis High Command was to take Tobruk, then invade Malta. Only after that, after they'd secured their supply base, would they go for Egypt. We had to make sure they went for Egypt first. Of course, Rommel might have wanted to invade Egypt all along. That's in his character, but he isn't top dog, he's under the orders of Axis High Command…’

  Caine screwed up his face. ‘I don't get it. Wouldn't the Auk have been happy if the Axis had gone for Malta first? Wouldn't it have taken the pressure off the Eighth Army?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Nolan said. She blinked and leaned forward, her face taking on the fervent expression of an evangelist. ‘Tom, the North Africa campaign is a campaign of logistics. It'll be won, not by bravery or aggression, but by supplies. Auchinleck knows that. Malta is the key to the campaign, because from Malta our RAF boys can block Axis supply-lines, sinking their convoys at will. While we hold Malta, Rommel can't ever be sure of his supplies or reinforcements, and without them, he's done for. His strategy depends on external supply.’

  Caine surveyed her silently, beginning to glimpse, at last, the far-away shadow of the truth.

  ‘The Panzer Army was badly weakened by the Gazala battles. Rommel's in a bad way. He's down to a single infantry brigade and a handful of tanks. He's short of supplies, and as long as we hang on to Malta, he'll stay that way. The Axis can't invade both Malta and Egypt at once, because they don't have the air power. They can only do one or the other, and whatever happened, they had to be deterred from attacking Malta. The only way of doing it was to make Rommel think that he could take Egypt despite his weakened condition – that Eighth Army was in such a chaotic state that his few men and tanks would be able to swat us aside like flies. Yes, Claude Auchinleck guessed that Rommel would want to advance, even against the orders of his High Command. Our task was to encourage his recklessness. The Runefish mission furnished him with intelligence that would help him convince his top brass that they could get away with it.’

  Caine saw a distant, almost euphoric look in her eyes. ‘I was ready to die, Tom,’ she said. ‘The only thing I had left in life was to get back at the Hun for what they did to Peter, not just by bumping off a few Jerry soldiers, but by something big, something that would upset the whole Nazi applecart. “A” Force had the plan, but they needed someone to bring it off – someone who'd be conspicuous. A female courier would stand out like a lighthouse in a sea-storm. They needed someone convincing, who could play the role of a snooty British officer. I volunteered, and I got the part. I'm an actress, Tom. Before I came to Cairo and worked in a cabaret, I had some good parts – I've played Shakespeare. I knew I probably wouldn't survive the mission, but I didn't care. My life in exchange for scuppering the whole Nazi war effort in North Africa? After what those bastards did to Peter? It was a small price to pay. Of course, I didn't really know about you… about the side mission…’

  ‘Side mission?’ Caine gasped, shuffling backwards. ‘What the hell do you mean you didn't really know? I was sent to rescue you or take you out…’

  Nolan pursed her lips. ‘No, Tom, that wasn't your real objective. They didn't want me taken out – at least, not before I passed my message to the Boche – and to rescue me wasn't part of the plan. You were sent to make it look more… more authentic. When the Hun clicked that GHQ had dispatched a unit to snatch me or silence me, it would make what I had to say valuable, don't you see? Your mission was a decoy: it was all part of the shill.’

  Caine's eyes bugged out. ‘Of course…’ he said, like a man noticing the dawn for the first time. ‘That's why you couldn't come with me at Biska – you still hadn't passed on the intelligence. If we'd snatched you then, you'd have failed…’

  ‘You've got it,’ Nolan smiled apologetically. ‘I had no choice but to put you off. You see, I didn't know that anyone was coming for me. A decoy search-and-rescue op was broached as a possibility during my briefing, yes, but the idea was put up only as a means of upping the ante, not a genuine rescue-attempt. You were fed the Assegai story as a fragile cover.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Look, Tom, I wasn't privy to this – I'm just speculating. A fragile cover is one that's meant to be broken – what the “A”-Force boys call a “shill”. If you or any of your group talked under interrogation, the weakness of your cover story would be so glaring that it would look like it was attempting to conceal the real story. It would make my story look more bona fide. The “A” Force planners thought that a search-and-rescue unit would be wiped out or captured within a couple of days. No one ever expected a small outfit like yours to get through. The odds were about 5 pe
r cent. What you achieved was incredible, Tom. It was against all the odds. When you walked into my cell at Biska, I just couldn't believe it. I was shocked. Maybe I over-reacted. Maybe I could have got you out before Rohde arrived, but I doubt it, and anyway, if he'd noticed, it would have looked suspicious. What else could I do? My job wasn't done. I had to make sure you didn't pull me out, not at any price.’

  Caine saw that her eyes were heavy with tears again. When she touched him, it was electric. ‘I'm sorry about your friend at Biska, I really am,’ she said. ‘I'm sorry about all your men, but be certain of two things, Tom: their lives weren't sacrificed for nothing, and you didn't fail…’

  Nolan felt for his hand, gazed into his face, her eyes green fire. ‘I know it might have been wrong that you weren't given the choice – that you and your men were considered expendable. Maybe your brass should have told you, but I suppose they thought the less you knew, the more convincing it would seem. None of us is going to get out of this alive now, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that we did it, Tom. We brought it off. Rommel is going for Egypt, and he'll never get out in one piece. Rommel's an egotist when it comes to strategy, and we used his greatest flaw against him. He was sucked in by his own rashness, goaded into making the worst mistake of his career. Together, you, me, all of us, we've helped change the course of the campaign. We might even have changed the world.’