Death or Glory III

by Michael Asher

  ‘Tom … you must be a bit giddy …’

  Caine shrugged off Cope’s helping hands. ‘You ever heard of Holy Fire, Harry?’

  Copeland considered it a moment, frowned. ‘Holy Fire is what they used to call some types of plague in the Middle Ages.’ His eyes were wary. He picked up his rifle, brushed dust off the stock. ‘Also known as St Anthony’s Fire. Why?’

  ‘That’s what’s in the black box. Holy Fire, or some modern version of it. Whoever opens it is going to release a plague. It’ll spread like wildfire, kill everyone, Axis and Allies alike.’

  Cope’s jaw dropped: he looked as if Caine had just punched him. ‘You mean like germ warfare?’

  ‘Think of it – the mother of all booby traps. A weapon that can kill more people than the biggest bomb ever made, and you can carry it in a box.’

  Copeland took a deep breath. ‘Germ warfare’s as old as the hills, Tom. They reckon the ancient Babylonians used to lob diseased bodies at their enemies. The Mongols would catapult infected corpses over the walls of enemy towns. Krauts tried using anthrax in the Great War … it’s against the Geneva Convention, though.’

  ‘What did you say about the Axis playing by different rules?’

  Copeland cracked his knuckles. ‘OK, I’m not saying it’s impossible. What I don’t get is … how do you know?’

  Caine considered it for a moment. ‘Remember I told you I had this … dream … of Maurice Pickney … ?’

  ‘Oh yeah – the chap who’s been in the ground nigh on half a year. You’ve been through a lot, mate. I wouldn’t blame you if –’

  ‘I know it sounds crazy. I told you I thought there was a message for me, and this is it. I know dreams are only in your head, Harry: I’m not nuts. It might be the after-effects of Olzon-13, it might be shellshock, it might be battle fatigue, or just a bolt out of the blue. Thing is, I’m certain it’s true. We’ve got to stop them opening the black box.’

  ‘Who, the Jerries?’

  ‘Fiske, the Jerries … anybody.’ A new thought occurred to him. ‘What if it’s already on its way to Egypt? What if they open it there? It’d be like the Black Death all over again.’

  Cope gazed around uncertainly.

  ‘Trust me, Harry.’

  ‘We’d better head for Allied lines, warn them.’

  ‘Too far. The RV’s only a couple of miles away. We’ll be there in under an hour.’

  ‘How are we going to take on that lot? Must be two dozen of ’em. You haven’t even got your weapon.’

  Caine recalled that he’d seen Lohman hefting his Thompson: that hadn’t been a dream. ‘No,’ he said, ‘but I know who has.’

  They found the old Arab and the girl still tied up in one of the shacks, cut them loose, made signs at them to leave quickly. They stared at the two SAS men coldly: Caine wouldn’t have blamed them if they’d wanted to throttle him. He’d brought the Germans here, caused the death of one of their family. He wanted to apologize, but it wouldn’t have meant much to them, and he didn’t have the language to do it anyway. They filled their waterbottles from the earthenware pot, gulped down what was left, swallowed their last Bennies. Caine no longer had his compass, but the Hun vehicle tracks weren’t hard to follow.

  They staggered painfully after them towards the distant brokenbacked hills, pink-rimmed now from the light of the lowering sun. The plain was a carpet of laddered patterns – stepfaults and soft clay ridges, long beaches peppered with sculpted rocks on pedestals, like huge petrified artichokes. They trogged across atolls of flat sand, climbed convex inclines, crossed shallow arroyos of fine-veined clay, where olive-coloured thornscrub bloomed, and swordgrass grew in clumps.

  It was slow going: Caine’s body was wracked with pain. His neck chafed: he felt as if he’d aged fifty years. He was glad of the Bennies, though.

  They’d been walking about half an hour when they spotted a wagon lying in the bed of a wadi. Cope identified her through his binos as a German light car. They approached her cautiously, creeping from rock to rock. She was deserted: the sandy floor around her was greasy with oil, disturbed by footmarks. Caine examined the car for booby traps. ‘Don’t suppose they bothered,’ he told Copeland. ‘Weren’t expecting pursuit.’

  Cope searched his face. ‘Couldn’t you … you know …’

  ‘Fix her up?’ Caine shrugged wearily. ‘I can’t work miracles, Harry.’

  He had a gander under her chassis, found what he’d been expecting: a fractured camshaft. ‘No way to repair it short of a field-workshop.’

  He got to his feet, found Copeland grinning at him. ‘What’d you just say about miracles?’

  ‘What the …’

  Cope held up Caine’s Tommy-gun, complete with the bloated 100-round magazine he’d left for Quinnell. ‘It was in the back. And that’s not all Santa left.’ He showed Caine Fred Wallace’s sawnoff Purdey.

  Caine took the shotgun, broke it, found two cartridges in the breech. He shut it, smiled at it sadly: Fred Wallace had saved his life with this weapon more than once. That made him think about what Lohman had said. ‘The Jerries knew about Fiske,’ he said. ‘That means at least one of our lads must be alive …’

  ‘Save it, mate.’ Cope held out Caine’s Tommy. ‘We haven’t got time.’

  Caine stuffed the shotgun into his haversack, took the Thompson. He angled it to one side, removed the magazine, checked it: the mag was about half full. ‘Quinnell must have bought one before he ran out of ammo,’ he said. He worked the bolt three or four times, left it cocked, thumbed the safety. He fitted the mag back in place, made sure there was no play.

  ‘Come on, let’s …’

  The flat thwwwommmpppp of a detonation came from behind the nearest ridges. The bang was muffled by the rock walls, but Caine knew by experience it was a demolition charge – a big one.

  He locked eyes with Copeland. ‘That’s Fiske.’

  ‘Now we know what happened to our Nobel 808.’

  They heard the sprazzle of sub-machine carbines, the pop and thump of rifles: a heavy machine-gun jiggered out in slowtime spurts.

  ‘Vickers “K”,’ Cope said. ‘The blighter’s holding out.’

  Caine nodded. ‘Then we can still bag that box.’

  They moved towards stone outcroppings, wove into a defile where water had carved its way through strata of chocolate and vanilla, like creamcake layers. They climbed carefully up the cluttered scoria at the far end, snaked through the last few yards of scree to the skyline. They found themselves looking over a concave valley the colour of tobacco, sloping down to the Bir Souffra hattia – an outpost of desiccated palms, drab underbrush, the ruins of mud huts and irrigated plots. Beyond it, low sunlight was hanging on the razored peaks of the distant spurs, picking out bronze walls like knotted gristle.

  A drub-drub-drub of Vickers-fire came from the outpost: Jerry rounds yipped. Caine took a shufti through Copeland’s glasses, saw that the gunfire was emanating from behind a dilapidated mud wall, fortified with boulders: Fiske had taken some trouble to dig in, he thought. Shifting the binos, he clocked a dozen or more fieldgrey figures crawling towards the outpost across sawgrass, scrub and barren gravel. There wasn’t much cover for the attackers, but the defensive fire was too feeble to keep them off for long: in any case, Caine could see from the stobbed-up dust that the shots were falling low, as if the gunner had messed up his sight-setting. He shook his head. Fiske was commando-trained: he should have known better than that.

  He scoped the palm-groves looking for the jeep, but couldn’t find her: Fiske must have cammed her up well. On the far side of the outpost, he noticed the airfield marked on the map as LG120 – a strip of hardcore desert cleared of stones, delineated by white-painted boulders: he made out the purple gash of ground-recognition panels laid out on the strip.

  ‘There’s a plane coming in,’ he said. ‘If Fiske gets on that, the black box will be in Cairo or Constantine before you can say Jack Robinson.’

  Copeland gave him a doubtf
ul glance. ‘He’s going to have a job on, with all those Jerries on his back.’

  Caine followed Cope’s line of sight back to the Totenkopf attackers: a few of them were on their feet now, skirmishing towards Fiske’s position. There was a shuddering bawoooommmmpph: the ground in front of them heaved up in a swelling firebubble, spikehorned streamers of flame and flying grit: two Jerries cartwheeled, flew somersaults through lilac nebulas of smoke and dust.

  ‘See that,’ Cope said. ‘Fiske’s covered his perimeter with fused charges. Knows his business after all.’

  ‘He can’t keep it up, though.’

  ‘What we need to do is draw them off, get round behind him.’

  Copeland tipped his head, indicating the ground immediately below. Caine lowered the glasses, squinted raweyed, clocked what Cope had seen. The Huns’ Gaz lorries were leaguered amid low rockpiles and sand-drifts not thirty paces from the foot of their ridge: a pair of mottleskinned 3-tonners with canvas backs, balloon tyres, long-snouted prows. Caine clocked a Totenkopf man on stag there, a brawnbacked trooper in full battlekit and coalscuttle, carrying a Gewehr rifle, with two stick grenades in his webbing. Caine gave him the onceover through the glasses, recognized the wide nose and blunt mouth: one of the boys who’d relieved him of his belongings back at the Arab camp. The Jerry wasn’t paying much attention to his surroundings: he was straining to see what was happening further on.

  Copeland studied the lorries. ‘If we hit the wagons, it’ll make ’em sit up. It’s a long hike back.’

  ‘Good one, Harry. We’ll blow them, wait till we see the Krauts coming, then scoot round Fiske’s flank.’

  ‘We’ll need a big bang. Reckon that chap might give us his spudmashers … if we ask politely, that is.’

  They crawled back from the skyline, clambered down the scoria to the floor of the defile. Copeland slid out his bayonet: Caine shook his head, pointed to his Tommy-gun. They moved with agonizing slowness: Caine’s wounds had made him clumsy. They’d crept to within ten yards of the sentry when his foot scuffed a stone. Caine froze: the Jerry whirled, rifle at the shoulder. Before he’d completed the spin, Caine was up, his Thompson locked in low-hip position: he blowtorched .45 calibre slugs, felt them slam the Jerry’s chest, saw red squills bud. The Jerry fell over on his back: his limbs spasmed: he coughed blood. Copeland sprinted over to him, pistol drawn, ready to drill another round into his head. The Jerry vomited gore, tremored, lay still. Copeland detached the two stick-grenades from his belt: Caine rifled through the dead-man’s pouches and pockets. Copeland primed one of the grenades. ‘Come on, Tom. No time for stripping corpses.’

  Caine came up grinning, holding his precious Zippo lighter, still in its protective condom. ‘My good-luck charm,’ he said.

  He slung his Tommy, took the second grenade, primed it: they slipped over to the wagons.

  ‘Under the bonnets,’ said Caine.

  He chose the first truck, let Copeland move to the second before he felt for the release catch, lifted the bonnet, stood it on its prop. He pulled the pin on the stick-bomb, planted it on top of the engine-block, closed the bonnet. He dekkoed Cope, exchanged thumbs-up. They ran for the nearest sandpile, threw themselves down, pressed their faces against the sand. ‘Five-six-seven,’

  Cope counted.

  They felt the earth deepdump, felt a kettledrum boom in their ears, felt deadweight on their chests: they heard sheetiron rupture, heard the craunch of engine parts torn to pieces with the ease of cardboard, heard glass cubes crepitate, heard shrapnel squib. They tasted carbongas, heard the wagons backslam on broken wheels, heard canvas whoosh and crackle like a bonfire. They peeked over the dune to see iron frames blazing, lofting claws of flame, whoffs of inkblack smoke.

  Copeland crouched ready to move. Caine had to drag himself up: he felt shattered, his neck stung, his joints ached, his head was full of pain and fire. A stunt like this would have been hard at peak fitness, let alone in his condition. He told himself it was the last round: the next few minutes would be make or break. He got to his feet, braced his Thompson, took in the blazing lorries, felt oily heat on his face. He made a sign to Copeland: they backed away from the burning vehicles, took up positions behind low outcrops, five yards apart. It wasn’t tactical enough, Caine knew, but if they were going to do this, they were going to do it side by side.

  Lohman’s platoon had crawled to within a hundred yards of the Bir Souffra outpost. Defensive fire had dwindled, then stopped: Lohman’s battle-sense told him the gunner had been hit. Or perhaps he’d been wounded before they’d started: from the beginning the fire had seemed laboured: the shots had continually fallen low. The only casualties he’d taken had been the two men injured by those damn’ hidden charges. That had been a clever touch for a one-man defence, but he doubted there would be any more.

  It was now or never. Lohman had seen the purple recognition panels laid out on the landing ground: an aircraft was expected, and he guessed she’d be here before sunset. He didn’t want to have to take her on, or to come up on the radar of the Desert Air Force: he wanted to get the black box and get out sharp. He didn’t relish the idea of being stranded behind enemy lines with no aircover. That reminded him of another reason they had to overrun the enemy position.

  They’d located fresh jeep tracks threading this way: they could do with that vehicle to replace the damaged light car they’d lost on the way from the Arab camp.

  Lohman sucked a breath, stuck his head up: nothing happened. He gave the order advance to contact. The Totenkopf men rose like shadows out of their niggard cover, charged the outpost in a long roll, spanging off rounds as they ran. They came in through the ragged palms, encircled the machine-gun position: Lohman was the first through a gap in the wall. He saw that he was in a broken enclosure around a disused wellshaft, now filled with sand. The Vickers was still standing on its tripod with a pan attached: it was surrounded by a litter of ammunition boxes, spent cases, charge igniters, safety-fuse. The black box lay on the opposite side of the circle: Lohman saw that it was open, and that a khaki-clad body was slumped next to it, face down.

  He signalled to a couple of his men: the three of them approached warily. Lohman was relieved to have found the black box at last, but concerned that it had been opened: he crouched, peered into it, saw that the interior was almost entirely taken up with a maze of tubing: fans like multiple sets of tiny organ pipes, intricately connected and seeming to grow out of each other like the roots of a plant: the tubing looked like a smaller version of the strange protrusions he’d seen inside the fuselage of the derelict aircraft. Inset in this organic mass was a shallow, flat-bottomed glass petridish with a shattered cover: the petridish seemed to contain some kind of greengrey mildew. Lohman stepped back, mystified, wondered what all the fuss had been about. He had to admit, though, that there was a sinister aura around the box: it gave him a distinct feeling of unease. He flipped the lid: it closed with an almost inaudible sucking sound: he read the word STENDEC on top.

  He turned his attention to the dead Tommy – at least, he assumed he was dead. From the back, he appeared to be a tall, unusually wiry soldier, with spindle legs and spidery arms. He was wearing a stocking-cap, and the same kind of hooded, sand-coloured smock that Caine and the other British commandos had been wearing. So this was the man who’d cleverly set the hidden charges, but had been too weak or wounded to use the machine-gun effectively. The odd thing was that he didn’t seem to be wounded: there was no trace of blood.

  The Totenkopf men had checked the face-down body for booby traps: now they were turning him over. Lohman squatted, interested to see the man the plump Tommy POW had called a deserter. He looked down, almost fell over in shock. The face: he’d never seen anything like it in all his years of combat. It was bloated and carbuncular, fungus-coloured skin split into a network of cracks like old porcelain. The eyeballs were popping out: the mouth was a swollen, gangrenous cavity: wormhole nostrils suppurated bile. The eyes, nose and mouth were distorted by tran
sparent blisters like mouldering jellies – the blisters seemed to be swelling visibly. Some of them erupted as he watched, emitted a rotten-egg odour, squirted his men with viscid pus. Lohman staggered back in horror, saw that the Tommy’s hands were covered in the same vomit-hued pustules: the joints between his long fingers festered with slime-green rot.

  ‘Get back,’ Lohman snapped: his men were already backing off with cries of disgust, frantically wiping stinking pus off their faces with bare hands. More Totenkopf men gathered round, drawn by the commotion. ‘Get away,’ the Sturmscharführer repeated. ‘Don’t go near it.’ At that moment the corpse moved: the fester of a mouth gaped, a putrefying tongue flopped out. Lohman saw the decayed lips working, heard a deathlike rattle in the man’s throat. ‘The black box,’ the Tommy croaked. ‘The … black … box.’

  Lohman cast a frightened glance at the box: had the soldier’s horrific sickness come out of it? He shuddered, dekkoed his hands, noticed that there was a smear of pus on his knuckles. Just then, he heard the rumbling doooommmmpppp of a detonation from the direction of their leaguer. He swivelled round, craned his neck towards the higher ground, clocked fire and black smoke.

  ‘That’s our transport,’ someone bawled.

  43

  From their position, Caine and Copeland couldn’t see the Bir Souffra outpost: it was hidden from view by flaky grey protrusions of outcrop that pressed through the surface like dark vertebrae, alternating with open stretches, running in a broken curve towards the palm thickets. They were aware that shooting from that direction had stopped: Caine put it down to the fact that the Totenkopf men had broken off the attack. They waited five minutes before the Death’s Head boys came into view, jogging in loose formation, chasing elastic shadows through the scrub.

  There was a frenzied quality about their movements, Caine thought, as if they were being chased. He popped goosebumps. ‘Wait till they’re within a hundred yards,’ he said.