Code of Combat

by Michael Asher

  Caine didn’t notice: he was already bracing his weapon towards the stretcher-bearers in midstream and the leader on the other side. The bearers teetered: Caine saw them overbalance, drop the stretcher, saw the bulky casualty tip into the water, saw the stretcher-men crash headlong into the stream. On the far side of the torrent, the leader had gone into a crouch with his SMG poised, about to fire. Caine hit him with a five-round stitcher that drew a track of purple blisters upwards from groin to guts to chest to neck, passed out between his shoulder blades in a flush of mangled crud. The man tottered forward, fell across the gravel: his helmet hit the water, his blood streaked away in the current.

  Little and Large were eating dirt: the stretcher-men were floundering waist-deep, trying to bring their weapons to bear. They were too far apart for a single burst. Caine chose the nearest, pulled a crisp double-tap, punched a twin crater into his chest, bulldozed his heart. As the Jerry went down, his comrade came up like a counterweight. Caine saw fight in his dripping face, saw his SMG-muzzle jut forward, pulled iron, felt his working parts thunk on an empty chamber. There was a fraction of a second’s hiatus: Caine tensed himself for shots that never came. At that instant a sub-machine gun gavotted behind him: he felt the rounds swarm past on a raft of hot air, saw the Jerry’s eye implode, saw the black cavity that appeared like a new eye in the centre of his Kaiser hat, saw gore froth from his nose and mouth. The man was hurled backwards, struck the water with a splash.

  Caine glanced over his shoulder, clocked Emilia frozen in an awkward firing stance with a dead soldier’s Schmeisser still smoking in her hands: her face was drained, her hair loose and blowing across her shoulders in glossy skeins.

  ‘Check the civvies!’ Caine snapped. He dashed across the stepping stones, found the Jerry leader, made sure he was dead, relieved him of his Schmeisser and ammo-box. He stood up, turned to survey the water. The stretcher-men had been carried downstream: only the tops of their helmets showed above the surface. Caine saw Emilia getting Little and Large to their feet: he skipped back across the stones towards them, saw the big man stand fully upright, realized for the first time how truly gigantic he was – taller than almost any man Caine had ever known: shoulders wide as a door, a chest like a sheer rock-face, hands like chamber-pots, legs like stone pillars. There was only one man Caine knew with a physique like that: he had left that man in a gunpit in Tunisia, at the mercy of the Hun.

  He scrambled over the granite slabs on the opposite side, saw Emilia fumble with the big man’s bindings, saw that his shirt cuffs had ridden up, spotted on one of his exposed, hairy forearms the lower part of a tattoo. It was a Sphinx: Caine recognized it at once – the insignia of the Sphinx Battery, Royal Horse Artillery. He knew a giant who’d once served in that unit . . . but it can’t be him. It can’t be . . .

  ‘For Christ’s sake, will yer get this bleedin’ sack off me ’ead!’

  The voice roared like a foghorn in Caine’s ears: he was dreaming, of course: it’s not possible, it can’t be.

  He reached up, yanked off the sack: found himself looking at a creased and weathered face: ogre features notched and scarred, a bristle-brush beard, a forehead like a tent-flap, black-pearl eyes set in dark-caverned sockets, a riotous tangle of gypsy hair. The small black eyes met his, the monument of a face sagged in surprise: for an instant they stared at each other. A watery haze whorled in Caine’s head. He staggered back: the big man caught him, enveloped him with his great arms, crushed him in a bearhug. ‘Tom? I don’t believe it. What about this for an ’ow’s yer father?’

  Caine felt tears in his eyes, felt his hands gripping back-muscles like taut cables. ‘Fred? You’re alive? How the hell did you get out of that gunpit?’

  ‘Don’t rightly remember . . . woke up in a Kraut stretcher, an’ –’

  ‘Hey come on, boys, lemme loose!’ another voice piped up.

  Caine had almost forgotten the other prisoner: he saw Emilia untying the man’s bonds, realized that he knew this figure, too: the short, rounded body was leaner than he remembered, but the W/T operator’s delicate hands were the same. He broke away from Wallace, pulled the sack off the man’s head. ‘Taffy Trubman. For Jesus’ sake, you’re here, too.’

  Trubman blinked dozily, adjusted his glasses: his eyes, magnified by the lenses, were enormous: he fidgeted on his feet, rubbed vigorously at his sore wrists. Caine grasped the signaller’s hand in both of his, shook it hard. Trubman gaped at him: rose-madder tints flushed his cheeks. ‘Tom? I heard your voice . . . thought I must be dead. It’s really you, skipper? After all this, you’re here?’

  ‘I never thought I’d see you – either of you – again.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we get moving?’ Emilia cut in. ‘Someone might have heard the shooting.’

  Caine remembered Emilia’s existence.

  ‘Fred Wallace, Taff Trubman, this is Countess Emilia Falcone. Emilia, these two are old comrades of mine.’

  Emilia shook hands hastily, gave her Schmeisser to Wallace. ‘You might need this.’

  Wallace checked the weapon, ejected a case, cocked the works, set the safety. Wot about you?’ he growled.

  ‘I’m handier with a rifle – there’s at least one spare.’

  Wallace gazed around keenly. ‘’Ere, what about Butterfield? What ’appened to ’im?’

  ‘Butterfield?’ Caine wasn’t sure he’d heard right.

  ‘Yeah, Major Butterfield – 2nd SAS, Assistant IO. That was ’im on the stretcher. Where’d ’e get to?’

  For an instant, Caine was too dumbfounded to speak.

  ‘He fell in,’ Emilia answered for him. ‘They dropped the stretcher in the stream.’

  Caine was already moving. ‘I’ll have a dekko,’ he said. ‘You get those weapons.’

  He hurried back to the stepping-stones, scanned the current, spotted the stretcher almost at once: it was caught between sharp rocks downstream, one set of handles protruding, foam tipping it forward and back like a seesaw. Not far away, where the gravel beach gave way to reed-beds, he clocked a dome-shaped bald head on a pair of rounded shoulders. It was Butterfield, and it looked as though he might be alive. Caine crossed the stones, jumped the gap, ran along the gravel beach to the reed-beds: it wasn’t until he had crouched down by the globular head that he was certain. Bunny Butterfeld, large as life.

  He slung his weapon, got his hands under Butterfield’s armpits, heaved him out of the water, laid the pear-shaped body on the beach. The major’s face was lank and pallid: the pattern of old cuts and bruises stood out on the skin like a dark frieze. If the head-wound he’d sustained had ever been dressed, the dressing was gone now: the graze bulged from his skull in a livid red hogsback. He was certainly alive, though: Caine felt a pulse at his temple, heard ragged stirrings of breath. He was about to turn him over in case his lungs were waterlogged when Butterfield’s eyes guttered: he took a whopping breath, launched into a paroxysm of raking coughs: his eyes streamed, his nose ran.

  Caine glanced across the stream, signalled the others. He watched Wallace and Trubman troop across the stepping-stones, with Emilia bringing up the rear. His old chums looked business-like now they had Jerry weapons in their hands and ammo-boxes draped across their bodies: he couldn’t miss the fact that Wallace dragged one leg slightly, though, or that Trubman hobbled.

  They hurried up, knelt down by Butterfield.

  ‘Is he OK?’ Wallace boomed.

  Before Caine could answer, Butterfield’s eyes widened, fixed on his face in horror. ‘Don’t let him near me!’ he shrieked. He was suddenly up on his elbows, trying to crawl away backwards. ‘Caine’s a dirty traitor. Sold his soul to the devil. Don’t let him near you – he’ll kill you all!’

  Emilia shot an anxious glance at Caine. ‘Delirious,’ she said.

  Caine peeked at Wallace, found the big gunner focused on something else: his head raised, a hand cocked to his ear.

  ‘Dogs,’ he rumbled.

  Caine listened, caught a far-off baying, the murmu
r of voices. ‘Not dogs,’ he spat. ‘One dog. A tracker.’ He glanced back at Butterfield: the major was still shaking his head. ‘We’ll have to carry him. Come on, let’s go.’

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  They struggled through the green passage along the foot of the grassy bank: Wallace and Trubman supported Butterfield between them: he was no lightweight, and it was slow going. Caine knew they didn’t stand a chance of evading the dog. It would have been all right if they could have ditched Butterfield, perhaps, but whatever else the major might be, he was Regiment, and the Regiment looked after its own. The best way to confuse the dog would have been to split up, but that was out of the question: he wasn’t going to part with Wallace and Trubman now he’d found them: he wasn’t going to desert Emilia, either. He still wasn’t sure about the hypnotism stuff, but now he’d got her out, she was his responsibility. In any case, he felt he owed her: her encouragement during that horrific moment in the shaft had saved his life.

  By the time they’d reached the place where they’d first spotted the Jerries, Wallace was swearing. He shoved Trubman aside, bent his knees, hoisted Butterfield on his shoulder in a power-lift, held him there like a sack. ‘That’s better,’ he declared. ‘Just ’ope I don’t have to flamin’ run.’

  Trubman directed them off the track to the old partisan camp: Caine was astonished to see the scattered equipment, the remains of shelters, the excavated store-pits.

  ‘Don’t touch nothink,’ Wallace told him. ‘Don’t go near nothink, neither. Fritz ’as prob’ly booby-trapped the lot.’

  ‘The partisans cleared out pretty sharpish,’ Caine commented. ‘Must have been tipped off.’

  ‘Yep, but why the ’eck did they leave Butterfield?’ Day before yesterday they stick their flamin’ necks out to snatch ’im: today they drop ’im without so much as a by yer leave.’

  ‘What about us, then?’ Trubman cut in. ‘Why did Savarin send us to get water an hour away when we could have gone to the stream where the skipper bumped the Jerries? Don’t tell me he didn’t know it was there.’

  ‘I was thinkin’ that meself,’ Wallace agreed. ‘It’s almost like ’e wanted us out of the way.’

  ‘But why?’ Emilia asked.

  ‘I dunno, but we did get nabbed by the Krauts, di’n’t we?’

  ‘You’re not saying it was deliberate?’

  ‘I’m not sayin’ nothink. Fishy though, innit?’

  Wallace paused, listening: they heard the yapping of a dog, not too far distant. ‘Fritz is on to us,’ he croaked.

  They boxed hastily around the camp, cut out into the forest, plunged through galleries of changing light, through broad sprays of sunbeams like spills of golden liquid. Emilia and Wallace went ahead with Butterfield still balanced on the giant’s battering-ram shoulders, while Caine and Trubman struck out at acute angles, circled round, retraced their steps, laid false trails to confuse the dog. ‘It won’t stop it,’ Caine said. ‘But it might slow the handler down.’

  The forest opened into broad avenues of beeches where the trees stood like the warped and fluted grey pillars of lost temples, with roots like giants’ down-covered feet and great lateral boughs that hooked around each other to form a canopy like a timbered roof. Sunlight slatted through the branches in glittering tumbles. Wallace stopped suddenly, cast around him. ‘’Ere, Taff,’ he said. ‘I recognize this . . .’

  ‘You’re right, boy,’ Trubman said. ‘This is near where they scragged the lads.’

  ‘Us too, nearly. I came through ’ere on the run.’

  Caine stared at Wallace. ‘Of course, it was you, wasn’t it? Butterfield said there were two men from 1st Regiment, captured in Tunisia, sent for special handling with his own crew. I thought about you, but then dismissed it as impossible.’ Five sacred ibises in the forest: five, not seven. ‘So it’s true about the 2nd Regiment lads, then? They’re all dead?’

  ‘As flamin’ doornails, mate. They was –’

  Emilia screamed shrilly. ‘There’s a foot here. A man’s foot.’

  Caine hurried over to her, clocked a place between two big trees where humus and turf had been disturbed: a human foot, swollen and mould-yellow, protruded from the earth.

  Wallace and Trubman mooched over: Wallace let Butterfield down, sat him against a tree-trunk. The major moaned: his eyelids fluttered. Trubman stared at the exposed foot, rubbed his glasses as if he might recognize it. ‘It’s one of the 2nd Reg. lads,’ he said. ‘This is where they buried ’em. Shallow grave, see.’

  Five dandelion seeds buried in the forest, Caine thought.

  ‘Bastards,’ Wallace rasped: he shuffled over to Trubman. ‘You an’ me woulda bin ’ere too, mate, if we ’adn’t ’ooked it.’

  ‘We don’t have time for this, Fred,’ Caine said urgently. ‘Fritz is right behind us.’

  Wallace’s gunbore gaze didn’t flinch. ‘We got to be sure, skipper. That blinkin’ dog is goin’ to catch up with us sooner or later, anyway.’

  Caine shrugged, knowing he was right. Wallace and Trubman squatted, began to clear away the spoil with their hands. Caine jogged further along the avenue of beeches, with Emilia behind him. They found the second shallow grave not ten paces away: an oblong patch where the bare soil was visible among the grass and dead leaves. The third and fourth graves lay close together by a thicket of thorny bush: the fifth a short distance away. They scouted further, found no more graves. They were about to turn back when Caine noticed a letter cut into the bark of a medium-sized beech tree nearby. From a distance it looked like an ‘O’, but closer up he saw that it was a ‘B’, badly carved, recent enough for the white core of the trunk to show through.

  ‘What is it?’ Emilia asked.

  ‘The place marked “B”,’ Caine said uneasily. ‘Five dandelion seeds buried in the forest, at the place marked “B”.’

  Emilia knotted her brow. ‘What? Did you mention that before . . .?’

  ‘It was another thing you told me in the dream.’

  ‘I told you? But how could I –’

  A dog howled. Caine’s mouth tightened: it couldn’t be more than two hundred yards away. ‘They’re almost here,’ he said. ‘Take cover in the trees, I’ll –’

  ‘I’m not hiding.’ She slapped the rifle slung on her shoulder.

  Caine nodded reluctantly.

  They legged it back to Wallace and Trubman, found that they had given up on the cadaver’s torso, had exposed only the head. They were holding their noses: the smell hit Caine like a mouldering blanket. The corpse’s head was bloated, the skin bluish, mottled with discoloured patches, thin as parchment: the eyes were slits – there seemed to be no pupils: the nose was a shapeless carbuncle: the mouth flopped open to reveal blackened stumps of teeth.

  Caine pulled them both well away from the corpse. ‘You identify him, then?’

  ‘Buggers stripped ’im, didn’t they?’ Wallace rumbled. ‘But I recognized ’im anyway. It’s Bob Cameron.’ His tone was reverent: he stood up straighter, as if giving the dead man a mental salute. ‘Sergeant Robert Cameron, 2nd SAS Regiment: Black Watch was ‘is parent unit. I knew ’im for a month at Jesi. Good bloke ’e was. Married. ’Ad a kid.’

  ‘It’s Bob all right,’ Trubman nodded. ‘I saw them shoot him . . . In the guts . . .’ He lowered the chub-shaped head, gagged, spat saliva.

  The howl came again, much louder this time. As if in answer, Butterfield let out a wail: Emilia shrieked. Caine wheeled round, clocked a huge animal belting towards them out of the trees – a beast so wild and savage-looking that for an instant he was sure it was a wolf. It was a German shepherd, of course: an enormous black-and-tan animal with an ebony face, eyes pale as glass, ears up like daggers, teeth bared in a vicious snarl, feet pattering the turf in leaping bounds. Trubman gasped, fell flat. Caine unslung his Schmeisser: Wallace beat him to it, planted his SMG-stock in his belly, leaned forward, aligned the barrel. He fired three crisp single shots: Boommffff. Boommffff. Boommffff. The dog’s yelp sounded almos
t human: Caine saw crimson bloom on its chest, saw gore streak dark fur, saw it lose its footing, saw it crash to the earth, roll over.

  ‘Good shooting, mate.’

  ‘Christ!’ Wallace swore. ‘Had to be a poor, dumb beast. I’d rather ’ave shot a Kraut.’

  ‘Not so dumb as all that.’

  A salvo of automatic fire wefted out: racka-tacka-tack. Rounds flicked out of the undergrowth, tattered leaves, squibbed up tiny explosions of smoke and humus, went splick off trunks.

  ‘Take cover!’ Caine yelled.

  Field-grey men were visible now, working through the underbrush towards them. Trubman had his rifle at the shoulder: he let rip with a controlled volley: booommffff, booommffff, booommffff, booommffff. ‘Go on, boys. I’ll hold ’em.’

  Caine slid out his last stick-grenade, laid it beside the Welshman.

  ‘Two minutes, Taff. Then pull the string in the handle, lob it, run like the devil. More than five seconds, you’re batshit.’

  ‘Got it, skipper.’

  Bayowww. Bayowww. Wheeeuuuuuww. Hun fire was dropping closer: Caine ducked, felt a ricochet frazzle air. Trubman pulled iron, fired measured shots. Booommffff. Booommffff. Booommffff.

  Caine slapped Wallace’s arm, jerked his chin towards Butterfield. They ran over to him: the major was conscious, his eyes rolling like hollowed-out marbles. When he clocked Caine his mouth contorted with fear. ‘Stay away,’ he spluttered.

  ‘It’s ’im or the Nazis, sir,’ Wallace blared. ‘Come on, get up, you great bloop.’

  They hoisted him up between them: he shivered but didn’t resist A deafening bashaaaawww from nearby seared Caine’s eardrums: he clocked Emilia crouching behind a rifle three yards away, her face veiled by the morass of her dark hair falling around the stock. ‘Come on!’ he bawled at her. ‘Trubman’s covering.’

  They moved fast into the denser brush beyond the great beech avenues, pulling Butterfield between them so that only his toe-caps dragged. Emilia followed close behind. Caine counted off the seconds, heard Hun weapons rump and spattle, heard Trubman’s steady crunch of covering fire. Come on, Taff. Hit ’em with the spudmasher. They stumbled down a leafy bank, collapsed in a heap at the bottom: Emilia slid after them. Caine disentangled himself from Butterfield, monkey-ran back up the slope, paused at the top. ‘Where the heck is –’