The Desert Raider

by Zach Neal

  “Asshole.”

  There were some near misses, and tracer rounds flashed over their hood from a jeep off to the right. The tracers abruptly stopped when he sounded the horn angrily.

  “Fuck!”

  Everyone was shouting and shooting at once. The German guards were firing back from positions down low on the ground near the open hangars. Something smacked into the left side of the jeep and Foster realized there were enemy soldiers, ones and twos everywhere. They had been walking their little beats no doubt, all around the perimeter, nothing they hadn’t expected.

  The jeeps struggled back into formation, just as Easton, or rather his driver, turned left and the boss-man raked the front of a low block of administration buildings, painted in desert camouflage, but looming white and pale against the dark backdrop of the crystalline sky.

  The lead jeep halted abruptly as Scranton and Easton himself ran to the smashed front windows.

  Other jeeps pulled in around them, firing short bursts in virtually all directions. On a signal, the two men pulled the pins and dropped grenades through the shattered casements into the still-lit rooms inside. Smoke and fired erupted as they huddled at the base of the wall, and then they were sprinting back to their idling jeep as their driver shouted something incomprehensible.

  There was a barracks building and they raced past as men with rifles in their hands spilled from the door, many of them dropping, falling, their grotesque contortions bearing witness to their agony and the impact of a series of heavy slugs.

  His heart pounding in his chest, with one eye on the gauges as the jeep had taken more than one hit, Owen Foster followed the dim shape of the vehicle in front of him as Pat in the rear gave one last forlorn squirt at the receding target area.

  ***

  “Bloody fucking hell.” Easton wasn’t too happy.

  They were at their rendezvous point, a bare ten miles from the aerodrome, and the LRDG, the Long Range Desert Group, wasn’t there. They’d been waiting half an hour already.

  “Shit.”

  The L.R.D.G. was supposed to be there with men picked up twenty miles further west. These were their own chaps who had been on road-watch in the desert for two or three weeks. The area was going to get very hot for a while, and it was best if they all got out together. There was some safety in numbers. Cooperation between the Special Air Service and the L.R.D.G had always been close.

  “We have less than three hours until dawn, Captain.” Mick was right.

  It was sixteen miles to the wadi from here, and then there was the gap after that.

  They were only going to get so much time, and they could only get so far before daybreak and the planes went up. Fresh jeep tracks weren’t that hard to follow and the enemy probably already had a column or two out looking by now.

  Just then came the distant roar of heavy truck motors, from over the rise to the west. There were no lights but the big American engines sounded decidedly familiar. Scranton began flashing his hooded torch in the general direction. Other men cocked their guns and waited to see what was going to happen next.

  A rounded shape came over the top of the rise, as moonlight reflected off the windows. A dim light began flashing back.

  It was the letter G in Morse.

  “Ah. Thank fucking Christ.”

  The shapes of more trucks, laden with men, equipment and weapons of all types came over the rise. They were growling along in first or second gear and making a ton of noise.

  “Dammit! All right, mount up.”

  They scrambled aboard, seventeen men in eleven jeeps. One man would remain here. He was buried at their feet, shot through the heart when their machine was hit.

  Poor Davidson. Sheer back luck, and him with a wife and a new baby on the way back home.

  ***

  You could only drive so fast in the dark.

  They had to make it through the gap before daybreak. The enemy knew there was only one avenue of escape. They were making a beeline to the one place to get down into the Wadi Al-Shalifa. Everything else was too close to the coast road, or simply impassible, or too far away to make it before daybreak. Three of the big L.R.D.G. trucks and the remaining jeeps streamed along as fast as they dared, spread out to avoid the dust of those in front. The gap was eleven miles further on, assuming they could get back up out of the wadi…this was by no means certain.

  Jackson in the lead truck must have seen the dim shape of the enemy vehicles speeding in from their left flank, from the direction of the main coast road to the north. Once you knew they were there, they were trailing quite a dust cloud.

  Their own dust cloud was no doubt a factor in the discovery and interception. Then again, there were only so many places to go.

  The enemy would have liked to have gotten there first.

  When the headlights of the leading Chevrolet one and a half-ton truck snapped on and the machine spurted up into what was a ludicrous speed for this kind of ground, day or night, lights on or off, it was all Foster could do to keep the lighter jeep from falling too far back.

  With their weight and long wheelbase the big trucks handled the uneven ground better. The crew and equipment on the jeeps lurched and rattled from side to side. This was bad enough. On the bigger bumps, coming up off the ground was the worst. This was where jeeps overturned.

  Foster flipped on their own lights. He snapped another switch, one he’d personally wired into the system, and this made sure the tail lights were off. This was a standard modification.

  They were going so fast he could only dodge so many obstacles without rolling her. He drove right over the lighter scrub, jouncing along and across a myriad of converging vehicle ruts, hoping like hell a branch or twig didn’t swipe off his goggles and blind him. He risked a quick look back. It wasn’t much better than what lay before. The goggles cut off a lot of his peripheral vision and he turned to watch in front again.

  There were enemy trucks and what looked like half-tracks behind them. No armoured cars with their big wheels and cannon. He mentally reviewed what he knew of their speed. The half-tracks were impressive. He had no doubt of their effectiveness, with a half inch of armour. The Jerries had the best machine gun in the business, the M.G. 42. On the half-tracks they were mounted well up off the ground. The jeeps with their little Lewis and even the Brownings were no real match. The high-pitched wail of the M.G. was unmistakeable for anything else, although the Italian Breda was very good. It was just too hard keeping ammunition for them. The S.A.S. and L.R.D.G. people would have preferred them—certainly as compared to the clunky old Vickers and not much better Lewis guns.

  In the desert, speed was life, and the small and compact jeep could go where virtually nothing else could. They were in range of the enemy guns. Foster was surprised they had waited so long, but they wanted a killing shot. The horrible wail of the M.G. came from behind. A rooster tail of dust erupted, the slugs barely missing the jeep. He cranked to the right to avoid it, but Foster could only zigzag so much. In their wild pursuit, the enemy was bouncing around as much as they were. It was probably the only thing that saved them as more sand-spurts came to the right now.

  Hopefully Scranton had nailed it. They were driving on a compass bearing and a little moonlight coming from behind thin grey cloud to the southwest. If they missed the place, the only place where they could get a vehicle down into the bottom of the wadi, there was no going left, where the enemy was closing fast. If they had overshot their mark, it was disaster. To go to the right was to climb sooner or later, the ground getting rougher and rougher, eventually to reach the foothills and ravines of the escarpment. There was no way they were getting up that. A moonless night would have been better. The generals had a big push going and they needed pressure mounted on the enemy’s supply lines. To take out enemy planes was to help maintain their own air superiority. Easton had more kills than most R.A.F. aces when you thought about it.

  Foster had ten or twelve of his own.

  All done with me own hands, Mo
ther.

  The enemy opened fire again, and something hit the back end of the jeep. She kept going, but those rounds had to go somewhere…it was all gas and water, and Pat was back there too.

  Pat was still yelling at Daniel and anyone else who had time to listen, so they couldn’t have hit him.

  The wind was bitterly cold in his face and the boys were shouting back and forth and sweat poured down under his bulky sweater. He took a careful grip, the leather gloves as always feeling terribly clumsy and slippery on the slick steering wheel.

  The boys were cocking their machine guns again. The enemy was trying to hit the big trucks, but the firing was still uncomfortably near.

  They must have been eighty or a hundred yards behind the lead, as Foster slowed, waiting to see what would happen next. The vehicles up ahead were bunching up and that was bad news in a running fight. Friendly fire lanced back over their heads and just to their left. What happened next would determine what he, and they, must do.

  He took a quick look.

  The first enemy truck was slowing. They were about a hundred yards off and obviously didn’t want to be first. There would be rifles, a lot of them aboard. Their fellows were coming up in a cloud of dust, hanging in the moonlight and wiping out the stars in the blackest part of the sky.

  They were coming at the wadi on an oblique angle.

  The halftrack was firing again. Tracers ripped into the gaggle of vehicles along the rim. A dozen or more sets of machine guns answered back.

  Daniel worked the mechanism, trying to clear a jammed round and expressing himself in colourful terms. His language was shocking in one so young. There was nothing for him to shoot at, he was facing the wrong way.

  The wadi was a dark slash across the pale sands of the desert, the ground even now slowly sloping up to the right and the real hills. Brake lights flashed on the lead unit, and the thing turned to the right, looking for tire tracks and the gash in the rim that indicated their escape route.

  Pat smacked him on the back of the shoulder. Foster jammed on the brakes as the jeep in front of them slowly passed across their bows.

  Daniel was speaking.

  “Move a bit forward. Turn a bit to the left.”

  Foster did it without thinking, and stopped her again once Dan’s guns could safely bear without taking his head off. He cranked the wheel hard to the left, all set to go. She would turn on a dime and be doing thirty by the time they straightened out. Pointing back more or less where they came from, they had four guns on target.

  The flashes over his head and from beside him were blinding but Pat was hitting him on the back again. Foster revved the engine and dumped the clutch, the roar of guns at his back more than enough incentive to keep going. The ground was oddly lit with a lurid orange light as the German truck took fire and there were hot yellow tracer rounds coming up from behind. Daniel was busy chucking out grenades and they began to go off, sending up flashes, dust and smoke. They zoomed in a little closer to the column, still keeping well off to the right. The illumination dimmed as the enemy’s headlights were obscured. Anything to slow them down.

  If necessary, they would buy a little time for their mates.

  The place they sought couldn’t have been fifty or seventy-five yards off. Scranton really was a marvel. Brake lights flashed up ahead and the first truck spun hard left, presented its side, and then tipped over and disappeared into the welcoming darkness at the bottom of the wadi.

  Pat stopped firing.

  Daniel was shouting.

  “Hold up. Hold up!”

  Foster jammed the brakes and the final jeep, desperately maneuvering to get out of their line of fire, flashed by their nose with the rear guns blazing as Maxwell or somebody coolly engaged the enemy. The other machine stopped. Maxwell was perched atop the seat-back and letting go in short, properly aimed bursts. The air around their heads was cut by hot lead and as usual, Foster’s guts quivered but he’d been lucky so far. He sat and watched. It was all he could do sometimes, not to get out and run.

  It was all you could do, to sit and wait and see what happened.

  Foster flinched when Pat opened up again. The two jeeps sat there, Foster with his head down as far as he could get it and Daniel looking back over his shoulder and through Pat’s legs. They were suddenly alone on the plateau and naked in the moonlight.

  The way down was now clear.

  “Let’s go.”

  The other jeep sat there a bare second. Dirt squirted from its wheels and it followed along.

  They were all yelling and Foster for one was laughing as they plummeted over the brink…

  “Jesus fucking God oh shit!”

  It was the most terrifying thing in the world sometimes, dropping the front wheels and nose of the jeep over that forty or fifty-foot embankment…it was all you could do just to hang on and wait for her to hit the bottom. God must have been with them or something and both jeeps made it down unscathed.

  The jolt would just about crack your spine and knock a few teeth out along with it and then they were turning hard to the right and gearing up again for a switch-back ride along the hard-packed sand of the bottom. A wadi is a dry river-course, no more and no less.

  Tracers lit the sky, well over their heads now. It got a lot quieter with their own guns silent and the Hun on the other side of a big pile of dirt. This was where Foster excelled. He switched off the headlights again, peering through the gloom. He blinked constantly, trying to get his night-vision back. The bottom was dark from stones but the sides were all bleached and pale. The first turn came up and he dropped a gear and picked his way through it about as fast as a blind man ever had. There were two more quick turns and then it widened out again. The jeep flew along at over thirty miles per hour, with Foster riding clutch, brake, throttle and gearbox like few other men could do. It was a simple and rugged machine and he understood and accepted everything about it. It was a machine you could trust.

  It was a machine that would save your ass, time and time again.

  Dawn lay not far off, and the eastern sky above the rim was already beginning to lighten.

  ***

  The last jeep was just topping the rise on the far side of the wadi, a mile and a half away, what would be upstream when the rains came. Foster stopped and waited for Maxwell and his crew. They took a good run at it, only coming in at a wide arc at the last second. Making a flying change into first, the crunch of the metal teeth audible even at this distance, she made it up and they were alone again.

  Foster let out the clutch and gunned her. He attacked that slope, and when they had scrabbled their way up the loose sand, rocks flying and the wheels digging in and the bonnet rising alarmingly, he had to hit the brakes almost immediately.

  The others had stopped for a moment to wait for them.

  Easton was looking at him from twenty feet away.

  “That’s it, sir. No more.”

  Easton took a quick look around and nodded, reassured.

  “Right, lads. Daybreak is in twenty minutes and it’s already pretty light. We can’t make the gap. We’ll stick together as far as possible. We’ll lie up in scrub if we can reach it in time. If we’re attacked in the open, scatter. You’re on your own. Otherwise, just keep moving. That’s all I know. Engines on.”

  The vehicles fired up and they moved out after Easton and more particularly Scranton, said to be the best navigator in the western desert, took one last look at the map.

  Foster had a mental picture of that map in his head, not a very comforting one.

  The enemy would have planes in the air—and Foster knew where all those aerodromes were, a dozen of them within a fifty mile radius. That wasn’t very far in aerial terms. If not, they’d be taking off in the next several minutes—and the enemy did have all those pesky radios.

  It was in these little moments of calm before the storm that his beard itched fiercely and his bladder was about to burst, his guts seemed to have a mind of their own and he wondered if it was
all worth it sometimes.

  It probably was and that was the best answer a person was ever likely to get.

  They had minutes to get away from this place.

  “Hang on, boys.” He stuck it in neutral and left her idling.

  He was lucky, in that he didn’t have to struggle and wait and curse, ultimately to zip up while only half-done, dribbling piss down your leg the whole time. That was the whole problem with tension.

  God, what blessed relief.

  And if the Huns and the Eye-ties don’t like it, piss on them too.

  ***

  It was full daylight and the sun was climbing rapidly. Out of nowhere, probably from somewhere on the vehicle itself, a solitary fly had emerged and it kept buzzing around down by his ankles. It was one of those itches one ached to scratch. Foster had stopped for a single minute by his reckoning, and they had hurriedly doffed the layers. The sun was already burning his cheekbones. Why there and nowhere else had always been a great mystery. Pat and Daniel and many others no doubt, scanned the sky to the north and northwest, looking for the angry black beetles that would be enemy aircraft.

  Foster concentrated on the sky to the south and east and that was his contribution.

  The first few thin wisps of scrub appeared on the horizon and Easton, standing up on the back of the lead jeep, waved them off to the right, and then he signaled to those on the left to disperse in that direction. The three big trucks, still up ahead, kept motoring along, and then as Foster watched, the trio slowly began to spread apart into three distinct dust trails. The sand was a heavy kind here and it didn’t hang in the air too long. This was a bit of a blessing as such things were reckoned.

  He pulled a few degrees to the right, looking for thin spots in the scrub, keeping the throttle pedal nailed to the floor. The engine screamed but he didn’t dare put it in top gear or they would soon bog down…the ground varied between hard-packed reg or gravel, and soft wavelets of sand, wind-blown in ever-changing patterns. His wrists, elbows, shoulders, everything ached.