Kat and the Desert Eagle

by Michael Beals

  She fell silent, and for a while they sat there, waiting for the dawn. Two more vehicles had arrived at the perimeter. Kerosene lamps had been lit and more flashlights were wavering around, people moving in the scrub, as if there might be evidence to indicate who killed the Guards. Surprisingly, there was no one near the hangar, and even from here they could see that the Guards were missing.

  The sliver of pink had widened, and when she glanced at Kelly, she realized that she could see him. With the dawn coming, it was time to go.

  They let Capetti go first. He climbed better than either of them. They could watch the way he climbed the crevice where he placed his feet, how he used his hands and arms. Climbing is all to do with balance, never releasing your grip on one rock until you’d found the next. It looked easy when Capetti did it, even Kelly learned quickly, but for Kat it was a struggle. The footholds seem to disappear when she got there, the handholds just out of reach or difficult to see in the half-light. When she finally reached the top, she let out a sigh of relief and almost laughed when she saw Dore sitting there with a coil of rope.

  “Hey, Kat, you did it,” Kelly said, grinning at her.

  “Just about. You two must be related to mountain goats.”

  Stewart handed them all coffee, which they gratefully gulped. For a time, they sat there, talking about the bomb and watching the dawn, the first rays of golden sunlight backlighting the scrub, long shadows stretching across the plateau.

  She glanced at Dore. “What happened, Jock? You never fired a shot.”

  He grimaced. “We… er… made a wee, tactical error, Lass. You can’t see gun sights in the dark, and while we were doctoring flashlights, so it didn’t blind us…” He shrugged. “You got there before us.”

  “And you did a flaming good job,” Atkins added. “We were watching with field glasses. It was amazing. A head shot at 50 yards… Twice! With a pistol!”

  Dore said. “There’s no sign of the Adler and there probably isn’t going to be, for a while, at least. Knowing the Germans, they’ll put their tests on hold until they know who the killer is. They can’t have a nut case wandering around with Rommel in residence. In the meantime, none of us have slept, so we should take turns to watch the airfield. Two on duty, four off.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Kat said, stretching her exhausted body. “Can I go first?”

  “Absolutely, and take Atkins with you, he looks wasted. I’ll stay here with Harry. If anything happens, we’ll wake you. When we’ve all had some sleep, we can talk about how we’re doing this.”

  Kat put it out of her mind. She felt lightheaded and strangely euphoric as they made their way to the caves in the warmth of the morning sunshine. After everything that happened, the killings, finding the bomb, the tension of breaking into the hangar, the safety of the mountains felt like coming home. Even the ancient rock paintings had a familiarity about them. Unrolling her sleeping bag, she placed it close to Kelly’s. It wasn’t a romantic gesture. She felt uncomfortable in caves, they made her claustrophobic. She’d been right about the fissure in the ceiling letting sunlight in, the ancient rock paintings were almost glowing in the ambiance bouncing off the walls, and they spooked her. The cave felt creepy, as if in the distant past someone had put a curse on it. Possibly it was the accumulation of deaths, year after year, century after century, millennium after millennium, all those corpses lying where she was about to sleep.

  Kelly must have sensed her nervousness, because he smiled and tossed her a rolled-up blanket. “Use it as a pillow. The sleeping bags don’t have them.”

  “Can we put up a tent?”

  He made a puzzled frown. “What, inside a cave. Wouldn’t that be a bit weird?”

  “I suppose it would, but it’s a really creepy cave. I’d feel more comfortable.”

  He gazed at her for a moment. “You don’t like caves?”

  She sniggered, nervously. “No, I don’t. But it’s also the paintings. They’re creeping me out. Would you mind?”

  He continued to gaze at her. “For you and me?”

  “Well… yes. If that’s ok.”

  “Sure. No problem.”

  Standing up, he went over to where the tents had been stacked and pulled one out. “Hey, Atkins! You know there are scorpions in these caves!”

  “What!” Atkins shot back, looking even more nervous than he normally did.

  “Yeah, I’d grab a tent if I were you.”

  “Bugger me,” he grumbled. “No where’s bloody safe in this country.”

  Erecting the tent and using rocks where the pins should have been, they dragged the sleeping bags inside and Kat immediately relaxed. The tent felt cozy and safe.

  Sam said as he unbuttoned his shirt. “He loves you, ya know.”

  Caught a little off Guard, Kat asked, “Who?”

  “Sergeant Major Dore of course.”

  Uncomfortable with his probing, Kat spat back, “What are you trying to get at?”

  “I can only surmise that it’s not reciprocal.” He continued cautiously, “otherwise you would be sharing his tent and not mine.”

  Kat sort of knew where this was going, but she wanted him to sweat. “And?”

  “And… Well… There are two other tents… And you chose mine…”

  Kat crossed her arms and shrugged, “Are you asking me nicely to leave?”

  Kelly’s eyes widened. “NO!” he said a little too loudly. Reducing the volume he said, “no, not at all. I mean… are you here because you want me to protect you from all the cave monsters… or…”

  Kat looked at Sam with batting eyes and a girlish grin. “Or I have some kind of school girl crush on my handsome fighter pilot step cousin, and I’m just waiting for the right time when I can get him alone so I can spank him like the bad boy he is.”

  Kelly heard the sarcasm in her voice but went on, “well, maybe without the spanking. I’m an old fashion kind of guy.”

  Kat dropped to her knees in front of her gear and began digging around. “I know what an Ace Fighter Pilot would find exciting.” Continuing moving items around she said, “Now where’s my whip… Oh, and my handcuffs. Where are those damn handcuffs? That’s OK. If I can’t find them, we can do it the old fashion way… With ropes… Nice and scratchy ropes…”

  Kelly said exasperated, “I give up!”

  Still digging thru her stuff, she said smiling, “That’s the spirit… I knew you were the submissive type.”

  Kelly scrambled into his sleeping bag and said, “That’s not what I meant. I meant for you to forget the whole thing.”

  Kat stopped digging and faked a pout. She also crawled into her sleeping bag and said with disappointment, “Your loss… I was getting wet just thinking about cracking that whip on your naked arse.”

  Kelly slept fitfully that night. He knew she was just chiding him… well… almost sure. Nonetheless, he dozed on and off keeping one eye on Kat as she snored the night away.

  CHAPTER 22

  “Kat! Wake up!”

  She tried to roll over in the sleeping bag, but something pinned her down. The cave felt cool, and she heard someone shouting, but she felt warm and comfortable. She didn’t want to wake.

  “Kat! Sam! Wake up!”

  She opened her eyes. It was Jock’s voice, and it sounded urgent. “What? What’s wrong?”

  The tent flap was pulled back in a rustle of canvas. “The Adler’s out of the hangar. We need to move. Wake Sam up.”

  “Sam,” she said, shaking him. “Wake up. They’re flying the Adler.”

  He groaned and rolled onto his back. “What saddler? You can’t fly a saddler.”r />
  “Not a saddler, you idiot. The Adler. Wake up.”

  He sat bolt upright. “They’re flying the Adler? What time it is?”

  She peered at her watch. “1615. Does it matter?”

  “Yes, it does. We have to be down at runway level and we have to be ready.” He groaned and rubbed his eyes. “We also need to talk about it. We can’t just go rushing down there.” He peered at her.

  She began to roll up her sleeping bag, but he put a restraining hand on her arm. “Don’t bother. We’ll be back here tonight. There’s no way we can board that plane today. We need to think of a plan.”

  He was right, of course. Boarding the Adler wouldn’t be simple. They needed a plan. When she climbed out of the tent and saw Jock pacing back and forth, she smiled at him. “Take it easy, Jock. We’re not going to make it.”

  “I know that, Lass. I wasn’t thinking of boarding the plane, but we need to watch it taking off. Tell Sam to get his skates on.”

  The Adler was taxiing to its takeoff point when they arrived at the cliff, so they lay in the sand and watched it. No vehicles tried to accompany the plane, and the camp looked quiet and uneventful. It was as if the events of last night simply hadn’t happened. They disposed of the bodies and were continuing as normal. Even the Adler seemed to take its time, rolling up to the takeoff point and briefly stopping before turning into the wind.

  Kat watched it through field glasses, silently counting off the seconds they would have before takeoff. She had no idea what was normal for the Adler, but four minutes elapsed before the engines rose to a high scream and the plane surged forward in a deafening roar. The roar grew louder as it picked up speed, almost crackling as the pilot increased power.

  “Holy cow!” Stewart yelled, over the roar of the jets. “The engines are glowing! Is that normal?”

  The Adler continued to climb, banking around and disappearing behind the mountains. A few minutes later, it reappeared much higher, and they watched it as little by little it gained altitude, finally leveling off at what looked like 20,000 feet, its engines now barely audible.

  “This is going to be interesting,” Kelly said.

  “Why?” Kat asked. “We can hardly see it.”

  “I think it’s about to do high-altitude bombing. It’s practicing to drop the nuclear bomb. Why else would it fly so high?”

  She panned her field glasses to the left. Down on the air base, a brigade of officers watched the Adler through field glasses. But one man stood out from all the others. His high desert cap, sunglasses clipped above the peak, were unmistakable. It was Field Marshal Rommel.

  Seconds later, the desert erupted in a blitz of rolling explosions, but precisely where it had been bombed before. It was astonishing. The Adler was so high, they could barely see it, yet it bombed the desert floor with incredible accuracy.

  Lowering his glasses, Atkins in a panic blurted out, “holy crap! London’s going all to pot.”

  “Then we should decide a course of action,” Kat said. “Because stealing that plane’s going to be extremely tricky.”

  “You’ve been inside the Adler. How do we board it?”

  “The best people to ask are Sam, or Sandro. They’re the pilots.”

  Everyone looked at Kelly. It wasn’t that they didn’t respect Capetti, he’d more than proved himself, but there was something very together about Kelly, he thought things through.

  “I studied the landing gear. Its massive, and the inner wheels retract completely into the fuselage. So I looked for hatches in the floor when we boarded the plane. There were two, and I’m pretty sure they access the landing gear, so if we’re quick, we can get in.”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” Stewart said. “I’d hate to leave, holding an empty pot.”

  “The thing is,” Kelly continued, “I think they only open from the inside which means we’d have to shoot the locks out. We’ve got sound suppressors but the pilot would hear the locks blowing apart, so we’d have to put a gun to his head pretty damned quick.”

  “So can we all get in?” Kat asked.

  Kelly sighed and puffed out his cheeks. “I don’t know. There are six of us. There’s no way we can board without being seen. The eyes of the entire camp will be watching that plane. They wouldn’t dare fire on the fuselage, but they might fire at the landing gear, and that’s where we’ll be. Even if the men are told not to fire, with all the noise, most of the men wouldn’t hear the order.”

  “What about cargo doors?” Capetti suggested. “We open them.”

  “They’re too high off the ground. The best way is for three people to board from the left, and three people board from the right. The landing gear would protect the people on the far side of the plane.”

  “Och, Lieutenant, that’s brilliant,” Dore said, clapping him on the shoulder. “An officer that can think. Who’d a thought.”

  Kelly shrugged and cocked his head. “It’s not as simple as that. The people on the far side of the plane should board last. There’ll be an element of surprise on the exposed side, and the time it takes to shoot out the locks means that the last ones boarding the plane will have to wait.”

  Atkins’ hand shot up. “Mortars!” he cried. “The last three people to board the plane can fire mortars. That should keep the Krauts busy.”

  “Might even kill a few,” Stewart commented.

  Dore looked at Atkins with a grin, “Good thinking Laddie. Before we just kept you around to carry the mortars. Now’s your chance to get to use them. Get that Victoria’s Cross you’ve always been dreaming about.”

  “Sarge, I was more thinking of escorting Kat and making sure that she got on the plane safely. Maybe someone with more experience would be better to man the mortars.”

  “Aye, someone will aim them, but it only takes a trained monkey to load them. Now be a good monkey and do as you’re told! Otherwise I’ll shove my pistol so far up your arse, you’ll need to release the safety to take a piss!”

  “The mortars might scare the hell out of the pilot though,” Kelly reasoned, “and unless we already have him at gunpoint, he might takeoff, which would leave half of us behind.”

  “So it’s down to timing,” Kat said, “but we don’t know how long it will take to blow the hatches.”

  Dore closed his eyes, his head bobbing from side to side as he calculated. “Sixty seconds should do it.”

  “That should be fine,” Kat said. “The last time we watched, the Adler sat at the takeoff point for four minutes before it moved. We’ll have three minutes to distract the Germans and climb aboard.”

  “That isn’t the problem,” Kelly said. “We can tell the pilot to takeoff when we want him to. The problem is the Guards. We’re talking about the Waffen-SS, and according to you, Pernass has a crack team with him. There’s about twenty-five of them, and you can’t mortar all of them at once. The first thing they’ll do is take out the mortars. All three of you will die.”

  “All three of you will die! Rather dramatic don’t you think?” Kat said as she rolled her eyes. “We took care of five last night so the odds are getting better. Besides, we’re talking about a few seconds of distraction. We’ll be fine.”

  It was getting dark, and they all agreed there was no point descending the rock face tonight. They may as well eat, get some sleep and climb down to the airfield at first light. So they returned to the caves. Entering the cave, she studied the rock paintings. There was a remarkably accurate painting of men swimming, several ducks and what looked like flamingos, as if there had once been an abundance of water. It was impossible to imagine the Sahara Desert having so much water, and she wondered what caused such a radical change.

  “Can y
ou paint?”

  She turned to find Jock standing behind her with a cup of coffee in his hand. “No, I can’t. I’m not even good at drawing matchstick men.”

  “Me neither. In fact, I’d bet that not one of us can. Thousands of years of progress, and none of us can paint. Some progress.”

  “Is that what you came to ask me, if I could paint?”

  He smiled his awkward Scottish smile. “Not really. I was just noticing that you and the Lieutenant are getting kinda chummy. After all, you did sleep in his tent last night.

  She laughed then kissed his cheek. “My dear Sargent, you know you’re the only man for me.” Shaking her head, she continued, “I spent the night in his tent because you snore and I needed to sleep.”

  “Lass, you’ve been known to blow a bad set of pipes yourself.”

  “Well you see then, neither of us would have gotten any sleep. I did us both a favor by sharing Sam’s tent.”

  He looked suddenly awkward. Dore tried to talk, but nothing would come out. Sergeant Major Dore was not the type to be at a lack for words when speaking to his men or officers, but Kat had always been a different story.

  Watching Dore struggle, Kat asked for him, “Would it be alright if I share your tent tonight?”

  “Aye. I wouldn’t mind.” Dore responded sheepishly.

  “But I swear, if you snore, I’ll shove socks so far down your throat that you will be woken by a mouflon French Kissing You!”

  Jock smiled without acknowledgment. He thought for a moment then said, changing the subject, “I really came to talk about tomorrow.”

  She’d been expecting Jock to say something ever since they’d realized how difficult it would be to board the Adler. He’d always been protective towards her and tomorrow was not going to be easy, not by any stretch of the imagination.

  “What, exactly’s worrying you,” she asked.

  “Kat this is really your mission,” he whispered, glancing at the others. “Commander Fleming gave it to you. He didn’t give it to me and he didn’t give it to Capetti. You’ve been leading this jaunt from the very beginning.”