Death or Glory I: The Last Commando: The Last Commando

by Michael Asher

  ‘It's not been easy, skipper,’ he sighed. ‘See, it was a sod getting those nine-foot poles set up, and like I said, these sets have been given so much humpty, it's a wonder they work at all.’

  ‘So you didn't get it?’

  Trubman sat back in the seat and pushed his black beret off his forehead. ‘Well,’ he said doubtfully, ‘I've got something, but it's not very accurate. I've only managed to narrow it down to an area of about twelve square feet.’

  ‘Twelve square feet?’ Caine repeated, wondering if he'd heard right. ‘That presents big problems, then.’

  Trubman smiled crookedly, handing Caine a map. ‘I've marked the spot with an x. The signal is coming from a point in a big wadi, about twenty miles from here. I've also marked out a route. I reckon it'll take us no more than an hour to get there.’

  ‘Taffy,’ Caine said, beaming all over his face, ‘you've just saved the mission. You're worth your weight in gold.’

  The plump cheeks pinked out. ‘Only one thing, skipper,’ Trubman said. ‘Runefish has been transmitting non-stop for nearly two hours. If I've been able to locate her position, the Axis will almost certainly have done the same. We have to get there quickly, yes, but let's move in with our eyes open, because there's at least a fifty-fifty chance the Hun will have got there first.’

  26

  Sixty-three minutes later, Caine, Copeland and Wallace lay scrimmed up in dense maquis scrub on a steep hillside overlooking a sandy dry-wash. Below their position, to the right, the wadi became narrower: to the left it disappeared sharply around a bend. Directly beneath them, across the wadi bed, was the narrow opening of a cave. There was no sign of movement there, but a trickle of smoke from the entrance indicated that it was inhabited. The cave lay within the ‘twelve-foot square’ area pinpointed by Trubman, and since the emergency signal had been transmitting up to the time the convoy had arrived, ten minutes earlier, Caine was certain that they had located Runefish at last.

  The morning was stifling hot but overhung with crests of cloud that cast patches of gloomy shade across the hills. The landscape here, nearing the edge of the massif, was ragged and broken – wind-blasted ridges, stunted goat-grass, denuded granite cliffs shattered into a billion segments, thickets of leafless thorn-trees like fractured bones, angular tors rising from hillsides like ancient watch-towers, charred, scoured and dismembered by Greek fire.

  Caine and his mates were wearing overalls, boots, helmets covered with scrim nets and full battle-order, their dress camouflaged with grass and dried leaves taken from the surrounding hillside, their faces blackened with burnt cork. Caine doubted that enemy snoopers – if there were any around – would clock them, even if they were to walk directly past. They had crawled slowly into the OP, having secured a fast line of retreat to the wagons leaguered and scrimmed up below, in case a reception committee should be waiting for them.

  Now, Copeland focused his telescopic sights on the cave, while Caine scanned the area with his binos, looking out for unwelcome surprises. Wallace was proned-out to Caine's right, lining up the sights of the new Bren he'd drawn from the armoury earlier. It was a replacement for the weapon he'd lost the previous morning when he'd dived from Marlene just seconds before she'd been skewered by a shell from the enemy AFV.

  Caine had released Wallace from his cuffs a short way out of the deserters' camp, on receiving his promise that he wouldn't try to escape. This small separation in space and time from the site of last night's orgy appeared to have done the trick: ‘That bloody lobster's got a lot to answer for,’ Wallace had chuntered. While togging up for the current operation, though, Caine thought he'd noticed an intermittent sigh from the giant's direction, and the name Giovanna whispered. Wallace wasn't the only one: there'd been the occasional far-away look on Copeland's face, too.

  They lay there for another five minutes. Nothing stirred. ‘That's it then,’ Caine said, preparing to move out of position. ‘Runefish, here we come.’

  He was halted by the pressure of Wallace's plate-sized hand on his arm. Below them, a German soldier had just emerged from around the bend in the wadi. He was dressed in a tan bush-shirt, khaki leggings, high-laced boots, scrimmed Kaiser helmet and full battle-gear, and carrying a Gewehr 41 semi-auto rifle. He moved cautiously, hugging the cover of the wadi side. As Copeland followed his progress through his telescopic sights, another soldier appeared, then another. They were spaced about three yards apart, moving with stealth, weaving from rock to rock, from crevice to crevice. They looked as if they knew their business, and Caine would have bet money they were Brandenburgers.

  The three Germans took up static positions, crouching down in cover. It was only then that Caine became aware of the deep growl of an engine and the scrape and rattle of iron tracks. As the three of them gaped in surprise, a Mk III Panzer slalomed into view around the wadi bend, a heavy, squat, mottled scarab with a turret like a great iron camel-hump, her 50mm gun raised at an acute angle, her two snubby machine guns wagging from the forward hatches. The commander sat at the turret hatch dressed, like the footsloggers, in brown and khaki but wearing the black side-cap of the DAK Panzer Divisions in place of a helmet. With binos slung round his neck, wireless headphones clamped on his ears, sand-goggles over his eyes and a cigarette drooping from his mouth, he had the immense complacency of a monarch surveying his domain.

  Caine felt a frisson of dread as the tank rumbled at a snail's pace along the wadi directly below him, her small and large flywheels rotating, her tracks ratchetting with the discordant musical clatter Caine had once learned to fear, slapping and compressing the sand like a fast succession of flat steel feet. It was a while since he'd seen a Mark III, but he knew from experience what she was capable of. A trio of HE shells from her 50mm cannon would put paid to his entire column once and for all.

  If Maddaleine Rose was inside the cave, she would have heard the approach of the tank, and would now know that the enemy had found her. He tried not to imagine the terror she must be feeling at that moment, alone, hundreds of miles behind Axis lines, aware that there was no escape, that she was entirely at the mercy of the Hun. The fact that the Jerries had assigned a Panzer to her capture showed the importance they must attach to her. He found himself wondering why Rose had started transmitting on the emergency frequency so suddenly, and why she'd kept it up for so long. She must have realized that the Axis would triangulate her signal. It seemed a kind of suicide, and Caine could only imagine that either she'd grown desperate, or that she'd somehow discovered that his rescue mission was close at hand.

  He thought of the men Michele had sent out the previous night to find news of her. He'd neglected to ask the deserter-in-chief about them in the fracas that morning – he wasn't even certain that Michele had kept his promise. If they had gone out, it was possible that Rose had discovered from them that a British mobile detachment was on her trail. Was that why she'd keyed in the emergency call so abruptly? But then, wouldn't it have been more tactical for her to have returned with them under the cover of darkness? Why risk sending out a signal that was bound to alert the enemy? It occurred to him that she might have been wounded in a contact, injured in the parachute drop. That would explain it: maybe she'd heard news of the commandos' presence but couldn't move. But then why not send Michele's men back with a message instead…?

  The tank passed the mouth of the cave, and creaked to a halt a little further up the wadi, her turret pivoting 360 degrees so that the gun was pointing directly down the watercourse. At the same moment an entire platoon of Brandenburgers advanced around the bend on Caine's left, as immaculately drilled as the scouts who'd preceded them, led by a stringy subaltern and a bull-faced sergeant. They spread out in tactical order, responding to the officer's hand signals with well-oiled discipline. They formed a loose cordon round the cave entrance, some training weapons on the cave, others facing outwards, covering all arcs of fire. It was done as precisely as a silent drill movement on the parade ground, Caine thought. The subaltern detailed f
ive men to accompany him. A second later, the group entered the cave.

  The single gunshot, muffled by the rock walls, almost made Caine jump. He was painfully aware, though, that any surreptitious movement might alert the tank commander, and result in a 50mm shell whaling into his position. He kept his eyes riveted on the cave entrance. Almost at once he saw the bull-faced sergeant emerge, followed by two men dragging a woman by the arms. She was tall and lean, with the kind of build you might find in a runner or a dancer. Her cheeks were sunburned, and she was more than a little mussed-looking, her khaki drills wrinkled, torn and filthy, her dense crop of short corngold hair in matted tufts. The webbing holster she wore at her waist flapped empty, and Caine noted that it was worn reversed on her right for a cross-body draw – indicating that she was left-handed: he guessed that the shot he'd heard was her attempt to fight off the Hun. Caine daren't lift his binos in case the movement was clocked, but even with his naked eye he could make out the light blue WRNS rings of rank she wore on her shoulder straps. ‘Maddy,’ he whispered under his breath.

  The party halted outside the cave, and the woman's captors released her arms. Instantly, she let out a deafening screech and burst into a run. She'd made only two paces before the sergeant blocked her way, smashed her in the face with a closed fist. The blow didn't look very hard, but it was hard enough to send her reeling to her knees. Caine felt the blood pounding in his temples: his trigger finger itched. It was the second time he'd seen a woman knocked down by a man that morning, and he felt no better disposed towards it on this occasion than on the first.

  He forced himself to watch as the Germans hauled the woman up and lashed her hands behind her back with rope. The other three soldiers came out of the cave, and Caine saw that one of them was carrying a small wireless transmitter in a webbing bag. A second trooper hefted a haversack and various items of personal kit, and a third what appeared to be the charred remains of a leather attaché case and bits of blackened paper. This explained the smoke issuing from the cave earlier: Runefish had been destroying her documents. From what he could see, it looked as if she'd pretty much succeeded. The third man showed his prizes to the officer, who examined them briefly, shook his head. He had several of the troopers scour the wooded area around the mouth of the cave, and very soon they returned with a long coil of antenna wire. The officer eyeballed it once, then signalled to the squad to move off.

  Maddaleine walked freely now, prodded occasionally from behind by one of the Brandenburgers. She looked remarkably cool considering her position. Her attempt to escape, while futile, had been plucky. Seizing the right moment just after capture, when her captors weren't quite oriented: the loud, distracting noise, the explosive burst of energy – these were text-book escape tactics. Runefish had been well trained for the job: she was evidently more than just a spare GHQ pen-pusher, Caine thought.

  As the party headed for the bend in the wadi, the rest of the Brandenburgers began to withdraw. The Panzer's motor roared. ‘I can take the shot now, skipper,’ Copeland whispered, still peering through his scope. ‘Once they make the bend, forget it.’

  It took Caine a split second to work out that Cope was talking about execution. With a sinking feeling, he realized that his mate was right: he'd been given the execution order for precisely this situation. Rose had evidently destroyed the documents, but she was still a captive, and the Hun would soon force her to reveal the secrets of Assegai, or whatever it was that she was really carrying in her head. He considered going for the snatch – if Cope could take out the Jerries immediately around her, she might be able to make a break for it – after all, they wouldn't want to kill her just yet. Then he eyeballed the Panzer: any attempt to snatch Runefish would be doomed from the start.

  He found himself casting around for excuses to stop the hit. Wouldn't it be impossible for Cope to take Rose out with that tank down there? Reluctantly, he had to admit that it wouldn't. Copeland was a crack shot: it would only need one round, a head shot, and they could bug out of the OP like greased ball-bearings, down the slope into the leaguer. The Jerry tank-crew would never clock their position that fast. The Mk III was capable of lobbing shells across the escarpment and dropping them on his convoy, but the Jerry gunners didn't know it was there and would be shooting blind. Within seconds of the killing shot, Caine's wagons would be racing back along the wadi they'd come in by. Reluctantly, he had to admit that if Cope took the shot now, they stood every chance of getting away with it. He watched Rose walking gracefully down the wadi and realized that her party was only fifty yards from the bend. In a matter of seconds she'd be out of sight. ‘Skipper?’ Cope hissed.

  Caine heaved a deep breath, closing his eyes. His stomach churned. He felt sick at heart for having to make this life-or-death decision. It had always been on the cards, of course, but he had never really believed it would come to this. Now there was no other choice. He held his breath. ‘All right, Harry,’ he whispered. ‘You can take the shot.’

  Copeland lined up his sights. ‘What a waste,’ he sighed under his breath. ‘She's a real stunner.’

  Caine took a last peek at Maddy Rose – the woman he and his men had gone through hell to rescue, and whom he would now never meet. It appalled him that his commandos had endured so much – prevailed over almost insurmountable obstacles, fought desperate actions, lost so many good men – just to be cheated by fate at this eleventh hour. He tried to put the blame on his men – their bloody-minded reluctance to tear themselves away from the ‘Sirens’, for example. If they'd left the deserters' camp an hour earlier they might have made it. Yet the decision to lay up at Michele's camp had been his – a decision that Harry Copeland, for one, had strongly contested. Cope might have ended up in bed with Angela, and might have been reluctant to leave, but he had warned Caine seriously about going there in the first place. Once again, the blame could be laid at the door of no one but himself.

  He watched Rose walking to a death that lay only seconds away. As Cope had said, she was a ‘stunner’. He felt proud of her dignified demeanour, her refusal to betray the terror she must be feeling. He thought of his mother, lost and alone in her own village, hounded to suicide, unprotected by the son who had arrived too late to save her. How much worse to die here in a foreign land surrounded by enemies, taken out by comrades from the country she had sworn to serve.

  The group was approaching the bend now. He guessed that Cope would wait until the last second, when most of the Germans had their backs to the OP and wouldn't clock the muzzle flash. He heard his mate take a deep breath and retain it – the prelude to the strike. He saw Copeland's muscles tense, and thought of his mother's pale, granite face after death. He hadn't been able to save her, but it wasn't too late for Rose. He was here, now, and he could stop it. Whatever his orders, whatever the outcome, he wasn't going to see a brave woman shot down in cold blood. Copeland took the first pressure on the trigger, eased off the safety catch. Caine had just opened his mouth to say, ‘Don't fire’, when an aero-engine screeched and boomed above them: all three of them ducked.

  She was a Storch spotter-plane and she had poled up from behind them and skimmed the escarpment at about three hundred feet. Caine turned his head slightly to get a look at her, and found that he could see her pilot in the cockpit. She buzzed over them, too fast and too high to see them, and dovetailed down towards the wadi bed, where the Panzer was lumbering forward in a cloud of dust. For a moment it looked as if she might crash, but her nose lifted at the last instant, and she climbed steeply, leap-frogging over the opposite slope. Caine's first thought was that the pilot had spotted the leaguer in the valley behind them. As he watched, though, the aircraft looped west towards Benghazi, making no attempt to come in for a second look. Caine let out a breath and squinted down into the dry-wash channel. The Mark III was trundling towards the bend in the wake of the last Brandenburgers. Maddaleine Rose and her captors had gone.

  27

  Colonel-General Erwin Rommel, General Officer Commanding the
Panzer Group Africa, stood at the door of an abandoned Italian roadhouse, his deep grey-blue eyes taking in smoke rising in black pencil lines from the port of Tobruk. The old wound in his leg was giving him trouble again, and that was never a good sign. The wound was almost thirty years old – acquired when, as a young platoon leader of the 124th Infantry Regiment, at Verdun, he'd suddenly found himself confronted with five French riflemen. He'd shot two and had been in the process of charging the rest, armed with only a bayonet, when he'd taken a wound the size of a fist in his right leg. That had landed him with the Iron Cross (Second Class), and three months in hospital. The scar had vanished years ago, but the phantom wound still gave him trouble when he was under stress.

  He'd entered Tobruk just before dawn that morning, 21 June, to find himself an observer in a scene from Dante's Inferno – bands of ragged, bearded Allied troops, unarmed and aimless, groping like blind men along rubble streets filled with bloody heaps of dead and dying; the blackened hulks of tanks and lorries; the smoking shells of burned-out workshops, plants and warehouses; the ravaged, smouldering hulls of listing Royal Navy vessels in the harbour, sinking to a chorus of shrieks from drowning sailors; filthy, skeletal South Africans covered with desert sores, their faces obscured by shrouds of flies, waving soiled vests on sticks as white flags; almost equally filthy Axis soldiers scuttling like ants around store-dumps, bellowing in glee, carrying off crates of beer and armfuls of boots and brand-new khaki clothing. He had driven four miles along the coast road between walls of flaming vehicles, among tens of thousands of unkempt Allied prisoners who'd stared at him with the stony eyes of cadavers. In the whole of the town there was hardly a single building left upright.

  His capture of the so-called ‘impregnable fortress’ of Tobruk in only twenty-four hours should have been the crowning moment of Rommel's career, yet he felt furious with himself. An hour earlier he'd stalked out of a historic meeting with the defeated fortress-commander, Major General Henry Klopper, beside himself with rage. It had taken the combined efforts of his ADCs, Captain Heinz Schmidt and Lieutenant Alfred Berndt, his intelligence officer, Major Friedrich von Mellenthin, and his devoted batman, Rifleman Alfred Günther, to calm him down.