Death or Glory II: The Flaming Sword: The Flaming Sword

by Michael Asher

  Late in the morning, the sandsheet petered out, giving way to windgraded serir – long beaches of fine volcanic gravel with pools of sand – and gypsum flats that glistened like ice. Here, at least, were features for the eye’s focus – notched ridges like the backs of halfburied dragons, interlocking rubblestone escarpments with slopes of ivory sand lying against them like skirts. Far away to his left, Caine could see gauze rippling along the wall of a low inselberg and, beyond that, the edge of a dunefield that seemed to run along the entire length of the southern horizon. At first sight the dunes stood out like the sails of golden galleons riding the sea winds, but they deflated as the sun rose higher, until they were no more than gentle swellings along the edge of the world. At last Caine saw what he’d been looking for – a single crooked finger of rock that seemed to beckon to him from a skyline where haze billowed like shreds of tattered cloth. It was the RV point: the Ship’s Bell. At the base of this chimney, they were to meet the LRDG.

  He pointed it out to Harry Copeland, who had been guiding the jeep Doris moodily, a cigarette stuck to his heatsplit lips, the throttle open, one hand on the steering wheel, his ostrich legs draped across the folded aeroscreen. Cope sucked in smoke, tossed away the butt, lowered his legs and gripped the wheel with both hands. The tone of the tyres beneath them had changed from the soothing mesmeric hiss of rubber on sand to the new, more businesslike crunch of windbrushed stone. Caine roused himself for a shufti at the other wagons. The 3-tonner they’d christened Veronica lay on his left. She was being driven by the grizzlefaced Gibson, with his oppo, Rossi, in the co-driver’s seat and Dumper at the Bren-gun on the observation hatch. To Caine’s right lay the other lorry, Glenda, with Netanya at the wheel, Pickney co-driver, Taff Trubman on the gun. To her right, slightly to the rear, came the second jeep, Dorothy, carrying Audley and Larousse. The men, even those inside the covered cabs, were grey with dust, looking like strange, pale, upright insects in their huge dust-goggles. The wagons’ shadows were tight, directly beneath their bodies, and the leached-out sun stood high, like a hole in glass. Caine didn’t need a watch to tell him noon was approaching. When the sun reached its zenith, the suncompass would become temporarily useless to them. If they were to make the RV before the halt, he reckoned they had fifty minutes tops.

  Caine watched the gilded stylus of the Ship’s Bell dip above the ridges and instructed Copeland to adjust his course. Cope was just easing down on the throttle when Wallace laid a skillet-like hand on Caine’s shoulder. ‘There, skipper,’ he said softly. ‘Dustcloud – left, two o’clock.’

  Caine sat up, pushed back his goggles, strained his naked eyes at the place Wallace pointed. A pall of dust was rising between them and the hogsback ridge and the faroff edge of the dunefield, standing out above the sparkling mirage like distant shipsmoke. Caine had Copeland give the three-honk signal for general halt. When Doris scorched to a stop, he stood up, trained his glasses on the dustcloud. ‘It’s a column,’ he said. ‘Not large, but moving fast.’

  ‘Could be the LRDG,’ Cope suggested.

  That was always the big question, Caine thought: friend or foe? He’d been caught on the hop more than once by Boche masquerading as friendlies. He’d even been shot up by RAF aircraft who’d mistaken his convoy for Jerry. When in doubt, all actions had to be regarded as hostile.

  ‘It’s the Hun,’ Wallace rasped, probing the distance with his own binos. ‘I’d stake my arse on it. See the way the wagons are bunched? That’s not LRDG, it’s Jerry. Huns huddle tight.’ Caine heard the conviction in his gruff voice.

  There was a pregnant pause while the big gunner continued to dekko the approaching convoy. ‘Those ain’t stripped-down LRDG Chevvies, neither,’ he commented at last. ‘Axis wagons. Five of ’em, all soft skins – two Merc 3-tonners and three Breda sixwheelers. The leading wagon’s a Breda, and she’s porteeing an ackack gun on the back, ready to fire from the wheels. Probably twenty mil.’

  Marvelling that anyone’s eyesight could be that acute, Caine took another squint through his glasses. He could distinguish the five vehicles now, and Wallace was right – everything about their disposition screamed aggressive action. There was no doubt that the enemy had spotted them, but there was more: Caine had the inexplicable intuition that the Boche hadn’t come across them by accident – they’d been waiting to banjo them. It was just a feeling, but the nagging question that kept on popping up in his mind like a No. 12 target was: What happened to the LRDG? LRDG patrols had vedettes out constantly: they would never have missed enemy movement from a leaguer just a few miles off.

  The other vehicles had skewed to a standstill behind Caine’s jeep, Doris. Caine lowered his glasses, spat out dry saliva, took deep breaths to steady his bumping heart. He’d broached the possibility of meeting enemy patrols in the briefing but he hadn’t really expected it to happen this far behind their own lines. He’d chosen this course and this RV because it was far off the barrel-routes, where even friendly forces rarely trod.

  He had Wallace pass him the bullhorn he kept in his kitbag behind. ‘We’ve got a Hun column at two o’clock,’ he bawled through the mouthpiece, keeping his voice casual. ‘Moving up fast on a collision course. I’d say we’ve got ten minutes max. No time to scratch your arses, ladies. Action stations.’

  There was a scramble of activity on the wagons as gunners and co-drivers swapped places or divested weapons of dustproof quilts, loaded, locked and readied them in an industrial symphony of metallic snaps, scrapes, cracks and rattles. Caine spied Dumper behind the Bren on Veronica’s cab, taking a last-minute glug from his waterbottle. He lifted the bullhorn. ‘Sam,’ he bellowed. ‘Get that stovepipe jacked up, now.’ He dropped his gaze to the open window on the driver’s side, where the cowboy sat placidly at the wheel, his dark goggles giving him the look of a hoarheaded old spider. ‘Gibbo,’ he roared. ‘Get three or four antitank rockets, arm them, join Sam on the cab. Rossi’s to take your place as driver. There’s a mounted ackack gun on the way – the first wagon in the column. As soon as you get in range, whack it out.’

  The cowboy flashed grityellowed teeth and gave him thumbs up. Dumper had already vanished from the hatch. A moment later both their heads bobbed up again. Dumper held the rocket launcher clamped to his shoulder while Gibson rammed home a rocket, wrapped his arms round Dumper to steady him. Caine sat down, stripped the dustcover off the big halfinch Browning mounted on the dash, braced it, cocked it, peered through the sights. The enemy column was still there and getting closer by the second.

  There was a scrunch of gravel as Dorothy drew up alongside him in a nimbus of dust, Audley in the driver’s seat, Larousse manning the twin Vickers in the back. The bowshouldered Canuck was standing very still, braced over his machine-guns like a big cat poised to pounce, his fingers steady on the triggerguards, his eyes soldered to the encroaching column. Audley’s fingers twitched on the steering wheel. His face had a greyish tinge: his blue eyes glittered like tarnished jewels against his dustcaked face but the gleaming Hollywood grin was nowhere to be seen. ‘You aren’t really going through with this, are you, old boy?’ he demanded unhappily. ‘Only you know what David drummed into us about avoiding dingdongs. Wouldn’t it be better just to run for it?’

  ‘It would,’ Caine sighed, ‘but it’s too late. They’re here.’

  For a second, his stoneglazed eyes focused on the dark torpedoes breaking the light, gliding towards them on the mercury tide. They were closer now, and the distortions of light, distance and speed gave the illusion that they were several times larger than he knew they really were. ‘All right,’ he said, glancing back at Audley, ‘here’s what we do. We move in fast, hit the column with everything we’ve got. While they’re reeling, we head for that ridge.’ He pointed left towards the single hogsback lying to the south, between them and the faraway dunes. ‘From there we make for the sandsea. If we give them enough of a drubbing, we can easily outrun them that far. Once we get into the dunefield, they won’t follow.’

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nbsp; ‘The dunefield?’ Audley repeated. ‘Hold your horses, old boy. I mean, how the devil do we get through it ourselves?’

  ‘Got a better idea?’ Caine enquired, his eyes rippling. ‘Maybe you think we ought to run back to Cairo, and to hell with Lightfoot. Let the blighters sort it out themselves, what?’

  Audley’s face went taut. ‘Now look here, old chap, er … I didn’t mean …’

  ‘Then just follow my lead, and stick together. We’ll get through it all right.’

  The sky was azulene blue without a blemish, the white sun oozing heat like dripping fat. Moving fast in the wagons, they hadn’t felt it, but sitting still was like being barbecued. Gasping, Caine drew his Tommy-gun from the seatbrace, finding the stock almost too hot to touch. He yanked back the tophandle, shunted a round up the spout. In the driver’s seat, Copeland was working the chamber of his Lee-Enfield sniper’s rifle, a last cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He replaced the weapon in the brace and checked his Browning .45. Behind them, Wallace peeled the quilts off the twin Vickers ‘K’s, eyeballed belts and feedpans, hefted iron, fed rounds into twin breeches with a double chunk. He swivelled the guns left and right to make sure they traversed smoothly on their pintlemounts. Caine replaced his Thompson in the seatbrace and measured the enemy’s distance with his eyes. He took one last dekko at his column to make sure everyone was ready.

  ‘Go!’ he roared.

  Motors snarled, wheels ground gravel. As the wagons rocketed forward, spumesurfing dust, Caine experienced a surge of dazzling clarity. The light seemed to double in intensity, objects in his purview became inexplicably vivid, as if a world he’d been seeing from behind a veil had suddenly flipped into brilliant focus: the Jerry wagons reaming towards them, the first Breda with the 20mm gun on her back, the four-man crew at the ready, the gun manoeuvring, the caravan of trucks behind, the Mercs swaying stiffly, the Bredas’ independently sprung wheels rumpling with the desert surface. He could see men in the cabs – keen, bright eyes, desert-scoured faces, mirror images of his own boys. He could see machine-gunners at the observation hatches on the Breda trucks – men with bare torsos and peaked caps, traversing Schmeisser MG30s.

  Caine’s wagons were closing on the enemy, scraping up dirt at forty miles an hour. The SAS men went dead quiet, their eyes fixed on the Axis wagons, dashing nearer and nearer. Suddenly, the German ackack detonated. Caine clocked the cottonwool wreath of smoke hanging from its muzzle, heard the whooomph of exploding gas, saw the two-pound tracer shrilling air, tacking straight at him. He ducked, felt the air twang, heard the ripping paper roar as the round slavered overhead, felt the rockwave as it ramped the desert skin behind Doris raising a ten-yard-high totem pole of burning dust.

  The Jerry gunners were just shoving another round in the breach when the bazooka belched fire from Veronica’s cab. Caine heard the rocket’s belly-sickening creak like a broken saw on metal, heard it grate air, spunk the Breda with a sound like a gigantic handslap. He saw the truck volcano apart in a scarlet-and-brown supernova, arraying the air in chains of fire-ripples, showering blood, bone, nerve fibre, mangled iron, jangled steel. He just had time to register the shock on the faces of the two Huns in the cab when the fuel tank went up with a secondary baroooomfh. What was left of the Breda rose raggedly, four feet in the air, burst apart in a heartstomping fireflash as bright as the sun.

  The SAS men ducked the flying debris; their wagons nosed on through cloying wraps of smoke and dust. ‘Fire,’ Caine bawled. He pulled metal, felt the Browning buck on its mount, saw linesqualls of tracer curve into the smog. From behind him, two sets of twin Vickers shuddered and bullroared, gunnysacked cartridge cases, snickered out snaketongues of flame, snagged at the half-invisible Jerry trucks like electric whips. Wallace and Larousse bent their backs into the work, swivelled barrels, tugged steel. From the cabs of Veronica and Glenda, Trubman and Dumper tackatacked supporting fire.

  The second Breda cannoned at Doris head-on through the spall, the machine-gunner on her cab lickettyspitting fire. Schmeisser MG30 rounds slingshotted, peeshashed past Caine’s ear, corked Doris’s radiator. Caine sighted up, cranked iron, yoiked a delta of halfinch slugs that ripped up the truck’s windscreen, blinded the driver and his mate, minced the cab roof, sent the gunner toppling backwards with ruby notches in his shoulder and thigh.

  Straddling the bucking Doris, Wallace rattled bright-yellow javelins of incendiary, ball and tracer at the oncoming truck, thundered, ‘Choke on this, you bastards.’ His rounds chunked the Breda’s fuel tank, diced up her front tyres. Caine saw her list to one side, blubbing oilsmoke from the tank on the other. The Breda limped to a halt. The lefthand cab door cracked, two Huns dropped out, bronzed chests and faces glass-lacerated, clad in shorts, one hefting a 9mm Schmeisser SMG, the other a Gewehr 41 semiauto. They crouched down, they sighted up, they broadsided fire.

  Hun rounds whooffed, skewbladed air, grazed Doris’s bodywork, chewed a tyre. Cope felt her heave and sag under him like a dying horse, felt a bat’s wing tickle his scalp, felt warm blood seeping, fought to right the reeling, swerving wagon. Caine fingered iron, felt the Browning’s mechanism chomp, heard it misfire. In the split instant it took him to click that she’d jammed, he was out of the wagon with his pregnant Tommy-gun blockshouldered, juggernauting straight at the Jerry drivers, mouth set in an ‘O’-shaped scream.

  He snaredrummed slugs at the first driver, cratered a line of red furuncles across his bare chest. A bullet took the second in the eye socket, squidged fluid, blowfished out from the back of his skull in a splotch of brains and bone chips. The Jerries slumped against the truck, leaving squigs of gore dripping off her chassis. Traileyed, Caine saw Cope shooting Grant Taylor-style, his .45 pistol in his hand, his face powdersmeared, goreblack from the graze on his head. ‘No, no,’ yelled Caine. ‘Get back to the wagon, mate.’

  Wallace was still on the jeep, raking the second Jerry truck with long sweeps of fire. Then the Vickers jammed. Wallace tore at the working parts furiously as if determined to rip the iron apart with his bare hands. He shoved the guns away in disgust, yanked his Bren from her brace, leapt out of the jeep. He hurtled up the field behind Caine, boosting tracer from the hip.

  Germans hurdled out of the back of the third lorry – four-five-six of them cradling Gewehr 41s and SMGs. The last two trucks were grinding up in support, the MG30s on their cabs burping and clattering through smog and dust. Caine heard ricochets, felt lead saw air, clocked a squat Jerry bracing a rifle. He boned shots, saw the man’s hip detonate, clocked jagwhite bone sticking out, saw black blood spritz. A skittleheaded Jerry beaded him with a 9mm Luger, hefted steel. Caine felt the parabellum round zizz past, squeezed metal, felt his breech block clump on a vacant chamber. He heard a deafening whomp, snorted carbon residue, saw the Jerry’s head raddled like a sieve, the body flicked back five yards by an invisible force.

  He wheeled, clocked towering Fred Wallace, Bren shoulderslung, sawnoff twelvebore smouldering in his big mitt. They heard Copeland throatwarble, saw him gripped in a headlock by a blond Hercules who was forcing a razor-sharp sword bayonet into his face. Cope’s right hand was closed round the Jerry’s thick wrist as he struggled madly to deflect the blade. ‘Shoot the cunt,’ Copeland shrieked. Caine fumbled for his pistol, had just snapped the weapon into his hand when buckshot snaffled meat with a smack like a shovel flatsiding mud. He saw the pelt of the Jerry’s chest peeled back like butcherpaper, glimpsed white ribs and red organs pumping. Hercules’ body rumpled and collapsed. Caine snatched a No. 36 grenade from his front pouch, pinned it with his teeth, tossed it among the enemy group, yorped, ‘Four seconds,’ hit the deck. From under his elbow, he had time to see a bald, thickset German sergeant shrieking and dancing a rumba from a Garand M2 round that had just drilled through his arse when the No. 36 bomb krummhorned, burnished air, swatted the Jerries down like bluebottles.

  Caine peered up at jerking, maimed bodies, saw a Jerry with his leg dangling off, another with tassels of re
d meat where his arm should have been. At that moment the cab of the third Breda burst apart with an earsplitting whaummff, forming a multipointed star of white light that sucked in the surrounding air in one gigantic intake, spewed it out in a fifty-foot geyser of dirtgrey smoke, ochre flame, roiling iron shards. Caine was knocked off his feet again by the blast.

  He dragged himself up. Through the whorls of smoke dust he saw Jerries jumping out of the intact trucks. He eyeswept the area for Copeland and Wallace but couldn’t see them in the billowing smoke. Instead, he clocked Larousse, Pickney, Gibson and Rossi flitting in through the fog like spectres, snapshooting Garands, putting up an impenetrable wall of fire, holding back the debussing Huns. Caine heard the ping of ejected clips and smiled grimly – the Garand might be noisy, but its firepower had certainly paid off. Pickney’s driedprune face loomed out of the miasma of sandmist and smoke. ‘Skipper,’ he hissed urgently, ‘there’s another Axis convoy coming up behind us. We’ll never take them on too.’

  Caine’s pulse flipped. He already knew he’d made a tactical mistake – the plan had been to hit and run, not to debus and get drawn into close-quarter combat. They’d been outnumbered to start with, and now the Boche had reinforcements on the way. ‘Pull out,’ he croaked. ‘Back to the wagons.’

  They made a tactical withdrawal in pairs, working the buddy-buddy system, one covering, the other moving, making use of the dense smoke and the superior shooting of the Garands. Doris was almost hidden by dustcloud, and when Caine got back to her he found Dumper proned out by the front leftside wheel. The fitter had just managed to change the punctured tyre singlehanded under enemy fire, breaking off every few minutes to blaze off full clips, keeping Hun heads down. Caine threw himself next to him just as he pulled out the jack.