Death or Glory III

by Michael Asher

  ‘Don’t waste your energy, mate.’ Copeland’s scoff came out of the darkness. ‘You won’t break ’em by brute strength.’

  ‘Why, what you goin’ to do, yer majesty?’ Wallace grouched. ‘Work it out by arithmetic? Or mebbe you want to lie here like a pound of rottin’ haddock, till them Death’s Head blighters stick a bayonet up yer arse.’

  ‘I reckon mine are loose, boys,’ Trubman gasped from Wallace’s right. ‘I got small hands, see.’

  ‘Better get on with it then,’ Cope cackled bitterly. ‘It’s a long walk back to Fraser’s lines.’

  ‘Belt up a minute,’ Wallace shushed him. ‘I heard sommat.’

  Caine lifted his head, cocked his ears. The night was crisp and silent, the sky a leadgrey dome with pigtails of stars looped in shadowed recesses, lapped across by the gossamer trails of the Milky Way. Nobody spoke. Caine heard the scuff of movement, the chink of disturbed stones: someone was moving towards their position furtively in the darkness, he was sure of it – creeping up on them in fits and starts. His jaw tightened: his fingers itched for a weapon. His first notion was that Fiske’s crew had come back, his second that it was Arabs intent on looting. His blood pounded, neckhairs twinged: he’d never felt so vulnerable. He tried to turn over, made a futile attempt to scrabble to his feet, heard more footsounds, wondered if it could be an animal. No, but not Arabs either: they went barefoot, silent as spirits. He tilted his head back, heard the scufflings clearly, saw smokeshadows coalesce into closer densities of darkness: not an animal, but men – a pair of them. His heart whomped, his muscles tensed, his breath stabbed. An aching anticipation filled him: he waited for the click of a bolt that never came.

  ‘Cap’n Caine?’ a hollow voice rasped. ‘That you?’

  Even before the men had separated from the anonymity of the darkness, he knew who it was: Cutler – Mike Cutler, Lancejack, ex-Scots Borderers, a limber youth who’d been in his ‘A’ Squadron troop in the Western Desert. An instant later Cutler stood unsteadily over them in the milklight, tall, emaciated, lankhaired, bearded and filthy, his BD in tatters, his eyes craters in a bleachedout face. With him was another SAS soldier Caine recognized, Trooper Shorty Grimshaw, a stumpy man with shotputter’s shoulders and a sedgebush beard. Grimshaw, too, was ragged, pale and twitchy: neither of them carried kit or weapons other than bayonets, Caine noticed. What really amazed him, though, was that they were here at all. They’d both been listed as captured with David Stirling’s party back in January.

  ‘What the blazes are you doing here?’ Caine growled at them. ‘I thought you were nabbed with Stirling.’

  ‘Not quite …’ Cutler began.

  ‘What you waiting for, the bleedin’ Armistice?’ Wallace roared. ‘Cut us free, you bloody great bloops.’

  Caine was amazed to find that the damage to the jeeps was slight. The deserters had disconnected the camshaft arms, ripped out sparkplug connections: it seemed that their hearts hadn’t been in it. He inspected the motors, ran his hands from part to part, built up a mental picture of the damage: both motors were reparable, he thought. He glanced up to see Trubman’s bulk hunched over the No. 19 set on the rear ramp. The signaller’s eyes were invisible behind lenses that held dim miniatures of the moon. ‘They did a good job on the wireless, skipper,’ he said morosely.

  ‘Can you fix it, Taff ?’

  ‘I dunno. These sets are very sensitive, see, and –’

  ‘Just do your best, mate,’ Caine cut him off.

  It was painstaking work, even with the assistance of the whole crew. Often, Caine forced himself to stop, took half a dozen breaths, reminded himself that you couldn’t rush a job like this. What was needed was clear thinking: a methodical approach. His fingers worked deftly, connecting camshaft arms, reconstructing torn cable, reconnecting tubes. When the motors finally flared into life, there was a subdued round of cheers.

  Wallace tooled Cutler and Grimshaw up with grenades and spare weapons: Grimshaw got Fiske’s ditched Bren gun. The giant was about to hand Cutler a .303, when he hesitated, considered the weapon as if he were having second thoughts ‘You sure you remember how to use a rifle, Corp?’ he said teasingly. Cutler snatched the .303 from his big paw, slid out the magazine, clicked the bolt, checked the breach, snapped the mag back on. He held up the Lee-Enfield with one hand, clamped the other hand over his balls, recited:

  ‘This is my rifle,

  This is my gun,

  This one’s for fighting

  And this one’s for fun.’

  Wallace hawed with laughter, clapped the youth on the shoulder, tipped his shaggy head to one side. ‘You sure you ain’t forgot ’ow to use yer gun, an’ all?’

  The SAS men slumped down under the trees. Caine lit a cigarette, pondered a question that had been bothering him: why hadn’t Caversham tasked him to retrieve the black box and blow the bridge? Either he hadn’t wanted him and his mates blabbing about the box once they got back, or he’d done some deal to scrag the four of them out of pure spite. Or maybe Caversham himself had been on the level, and Fiske was working for someone else. At least, thanks to unexpected qualms of conscience from Jizzard and Quinnell, they were still alive.

  Copeland treated Caine’s ropeburns with salve from the medical kit, doled out Benzedrine tablets to the crew. Wallace broke out a flagon of Wood’s Rocketfuel brandy, boiled water on a Tommy-cooker. He handed out mugs of tea, thick with sugar, Carnation milk, generous lashings of Wood’s. The big man racked up a grin, a starlit glimpse of chipped incisors, lips swollen the size of frankfurters. ‘This’ll perk you up, lads,’ he told Grimshaw and Cutler, who were sprawling close together in the darkness. ‘Don’t knock it all back at once, mind. The shock to yer insides’ll make yer puke.’

  ‘That’s an everyday hazard with your tea, mate,’ Copeland smirked.

  Caine wiped motor-oil off his hands with a rag. Wallace thrust a mug in his direction, towering over him like a dark chess piece, eyeballs bleached in the creamcake light. Caine took the mug, gulped at the mixture, felt the rocketfuel scour his palate, coughed. ‘That’s damn’ good,’ he declared hoarsely. ‘Blimey, I needed that.’ He lifted the mug, saluted the newcomers. ‘You saved our necks, lads. We owe you.’

  ‘Shame you didn’t get here a bit more sharpish, though, innit?’ Wallace humphed. ‘Before Fiske got away with the demolition kit.’

  Cutler took a swipe of tea, swilled it round, swallowed. He gasped, examined the milky liquid with startled eyes. He was one of the youngest men in the regiment, Caine recalled – last time they’d met he’d looked about sixteen. Now, though, he had to search Cutler’s features hard to find the relics of that youth, concealed under the ingrained dirt, the ragged beard, the sunravaged flesh. ‘We heard our booby trap go off hours ago,’ Cutler said. His voice was boyish, frayed at the edges. ‘That’s why we came to the bridge.’

  ‘Your booby trap,’ Wallace howled. ‘Gimme that tea back now. You fuckin’ arseholes. It was you as rigged up that pressure-release wire?’ You nearly did for me, you … you …’ He pointed dumbly to the wound on his neck, realized for the first time that the dressing had gone.

  ‘Lay off the agony, Fred,’ Grimshaw cackled. ‘You’re still ’ere, aintcha? Our last bit of 808 that was.’

  ‘There was a twenty-second delay,’ Cutler cut in. ‘It wasn’t meant to kill anyone. Just a warning for us.’

  ‘We was up on the escarpment when it blew,’ Grimshaw explained. ‘Saw you trottin’ off, like. Mike thought ’e recognized yer – couldn’t miss Big Fred there, anyway.’

  He burst into a paroxysm of coughing, slopped tea, steadied his mug with his left hand. He must have been about five years older than Cutler, Caine reckoned, squat with bandy legs, beerkeg chest, boarish head, split lips beneath the shaggy beard, eyes like marbles bulging from sagging eyepits. He didn’t look much like a cavalryman, but Caine recalled he was Yeomanry: he’d worked as a coal delivery-boy before the war.

  ‘We thought we’d missed the boat,
’ Cutler went on. ‘Then we heard a hell of a firefight going on down in the valley. We thought you might have been slaughtered, the lot of you, but after dark, we heard your jeeps coming back. We knew you’d leaguered up here: we were coming in then, but there was a gunshot. A bit later a jeep took off – we didn’t know what to make of it.’

  ‘That was Fiske,’ Wallace spat, ‘and his two pet worms.’

  ‘Who’s Fiske? Never heard of a Fiske in “A” Squadron.’

  Caine shook his head. ‘He’s not “A” Squadron, Mike. Not even SAS. It’s a long story. Anyway, there was a bit of a barney. Fiske and two other lads buggered off with the explosives.’

  Cutler eyed him incredulously. ‘A barney about what?’

  ‘It were that bleedin’ black box, wannit?’ Wallace boomed.

  Cutler and Grimshaw froze; ghosted eyes pinned Caine.

  ‘Black box,’ Cutler repeated. ‘Don’t tell me you were sent after it, too?’

  ‘What do you mean, too?’ Copeland demanded.

  ‘That were our objective, weren’t it?’ Grimshaw chortled. ‘I mean, the boss’s – Stirlin’’s – that was why he come on the scheme. I mean, you don’t need a half-colonel for a demolition job, do you?’

  An icy finger walked Caine’s spine: his napehair tingled. He took a shufti at Copeland: his mate’s face was grave. All Caine knew about Stirling’s mission back in January was that the patrol had entered Tunisia not long after Tripoli had fallen, with six jeeps and fourteen men. They’d made a bold rush through the coastal bottleneck known as the Gabes Gap, planning to hit the Sousse railway the same night. They’d lain up by day in a wadi, been spotted, boxed and bagged by the Hun. According to Johnny Cooper, only he, Mike Sadler and the Frenchman, Taxis, had got away. Cooper obviously hadn’t realized that Cutler and Grimshaw had also escaped. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘You’re telling me that Stirling wasn’t planning to blow the railway?’

  ‘Nope, I’m not saying that, sir. The railway job was a sort of cover. Mr Stirling had special orders on top of that: to locate a derelict aircraft, and to salvage a black box. Only we never got that far.’

  There was a loaded silence while Caine wrestled with the revelation. Stirling had come for the black box – the box that the Jerries had tried to bargain for, the box that Fiske and the others had mutinied to acquire, the box that had caused all the grief. He fumbled for words: Copeland beat him to it. ‘I talked to Cooper,’ he said suspiciously. ‘How come he never mentioned a black box?’

  ‘You mean Johnny got back?’ Cutler asked in a wondering voice. ‘How the heck did he manage it?’

  ‘He and Sadler and a Frenchman … Taxis, I think his name was …’

  ‘Freddie?’ Grimshaw gasped. ‘He made it too?’

  ‘Yep. They reached French lines at … I forget where it was. They made contact with the First Army, anyway. After a while they were flown back to Cairo.’

  ‘Good lads,’ Grimshaw said.

  ‘Yes, but why didn’t Johnny tell me about the black box?’

  ‘Wouldn’t have, would he?’ Cutler retorted. ‘Strictly speaking, I shouldn’t have let the cat out of the bag either. After what you said about Fiske doing a bunk, though, I thought you needed to know.’

  ‘Damn’ right,’ Caine said.

  Copeland wasn’t to be appeased. ‘How come you weren’t bagged with Stirling?’

  ‘Steady on, Harry,’ said Caine.

  ‘No, it’s all right,’ Grimshaw said. ‘We made a break for it, sir, hid out in the hills. Musta tabbed forty miles, right across these hills. We used that twin-peak – the one with two chimneys, Jebel Halluf – as a reference point.’

  ‘Halluf?’ Copeland said. ‘I spotted it this afternoon. Johnny Cooper described it to me.’

  ‘Anyway, we finally found the blockhouse here. Didn’t seem to be frequented, so we used it as a base.’

  ‘That explains the sign Quinnell and Jizzard clocked,’ Caine commented.

  ‘But Stirling was captured seven weeks ago,’ Copeland cut in. ‘How did you survive for seven weeks?’

  Cutler sighed. ‘Hares, birds, grasshoppers, berries, nettles, you name it, sir. We liberated some compo rations – that kept us going for a while. Begged stuff off A-rabs. It wasn’t exactly a picnic.’

  Caine was going to ask why they hadn’t headed for a French outpost like Cooper and the others, when Cope butted in again. ‘No one back in Egypt could credit Stirling’s capture. Everyone thought he was invincible.’

  ‘Maybe started to believe it hisself,’ Wallace commented. ‘Got sloppy.’

  Cutler sipped tea, sniffed thoughtfully. ‘I tell you what, sir, it was dead fishy. Take that laying-up place in the wadi, for instance. I’d swear Mr Stirling didn’t pick it at random – I think he was looking for it …’

  ‘Yeah,’ Grimshaw nodded. ‘It was like he knew where to go.’

  Caine pulled on his chinstubble. ‘A pre-arranged RV? He’d agreed to meet someone, maybe? A local guide?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Cutler shrugged. ‘Only he never said so. Then there was the Hun unit that nabbed us – skyblue uniforms we’d never seen before. You’ve seen these hills, sir – there’s a million wadis like the one we were in. Yet they homed in on us like bugs on a stinkpile – like they were expecting to find us there.’

  ‘It felt like a trap,’ Grimshaw nodded.

  Caine considered it, wondered if it could be true. Only this morning, Copeland had said that Johnny Cooper had claimed the same thing. Grimshaw and Cutler looked worn out, but their minds seemed sharp enough. He told them about the STENDEC Mayday signal, the derelict aircraft, the box’s bizarre qualities, the Death’s Head unit sent to retrieve it, how Fiske and the others had cleared out. ‘We came here to do a job on the bridge,’ he concluded. ‘Fiske and his pals were marching to a different tune. Christ knows who put ’em up to it. Now they’ve run out with our demolition charges as well as the box: we’re about a million miles up the creek without a paddle.’

  Caine cleaned his mug grimly with a handful of sand, returned it to his knapsack. ‘Whoever ordered Fiske to get that box has put the mockers on the whole campaign,’ he said. ‘Not only were they ready to condone mutiny, they were also prepared to let the Krauts encircle Freyberg. There’s one thing for certain: that box must be something special – or, at least, somebody thinks so.’

  For a moment nobody spoke: it was Cutler who broke the silence. ‘Don’t you reckon we should get after those chaps right away, sir? They can’t have more than a couple of hours on us, and there’s no way they can go but the old highroad. Maybe we can’t call in support, but we could head ’em off. You’ll get your demolition charges back as well as the box.’

  ‘It makes sense,’ Cope agreed.

  Caine dekkoed his watch: another three hours till first light. If he knew anything about the Krauts, they’d show up right on the dot. He lit another fag, took long pulls: it felt like the last cigarette of a condemned man.

  He glanced around at the shadowed faces, more animated now the Benzedrine had set in. He could feel the drug coursing through his body like a piledriver, shearing away fatigue, buffing his mind clean. He was tempted to agree with Cutler: the knowledge that Stirling himself had been after the black box made it even more intriguing, even more mysterious. It had to be the key to something big, and Caine felt an almost ravenous yearning to know what it was. On the other hand, once he’d committed himself to going after Fiske, Freyberg’s flank would be wide open.

  He stamped out the fag, spat into the sand, squared stiff shoulders. He looked straight at Cope, saw blue moonglow in his eyes. ‘Even if we do get the explosives back, it’ll be too late,’ he said. ‘The Krauts will have taken the bridge. Game over.’

  ‘You ain’t thinkin’ of holdin’ it?’ Grimshaw shivered. ‘’Scuse me, sir, but maybe you ain’t noticed, there’s only six of us ’ere. No ’eavy weapons, no air support.’

  ‘We’re SAS, though, ain’t we?’ Wallace crooned.

>   ‘Does that make us bulletproof?’ Cope said. ‘The Jerries outnumber us a hundred to one, Fred. Blowing the bridge is one thing: making a stand against odds like that is another.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Grimshaw cut in. ‘It’s blinkin’ suicide, that’s what it is.’

  They were right, Caine thought – a six-man crew against a motorized recce battalion – let alone an armoured division – would be a kamikaze action. The sick thing was that he was to blame for this: if he’d stuck to orders instead of gallivanting off after some phantom signal, the bridge would be down, the black box would still be where it belonged, and they’d be on their way back to Fraser’s lines. And then what? A life without Betty Nolan? Is that something I really look forward to?

  Whoever was behind this, they had scuppered him all right, but he wasn’t yet finished. His duty was clear. It was to defend Freyberg’s rear so the Kiwis could penetrate the Tebaga Gap – so Monty’s push could succeed. To hell with the black box: his first concern was the fate of the Eighth Army. Whatever happened, he was not going down in history as the officer whose negligence had knackered the Tunisian offensive. He couldn’t live with that.

  ‘The skipper’s right,’ Big Wallace rumbled. ‘We can’t go after the box and hold the bridge. Anyway, if we clear off now they’ll say we was ratshit.’ He stuck out his kerbstone chin. ‘There ain’t no yeller stripe down my back.’

  ‘Yellow and stupid are two different things,’ Cutler wheezed. ‘Isn’t that what Stirling always reckoned? SAS don’t take on big battalions. SAS don’t fight dingdongs. SAS aren’t cannon fodder. Maybe it’d be all right if we’d got an icebucket’s chance in hellfire of lasting more than five seconds, but we haven’t.’

  ‘That’s not entirely true,’ Copeland cut in musingly, as if analysing a proposition in a scientific debate. ‘This place is an outstanding defensive position. The Hun can’t go round: the only way they can approach is across that bridge.’