by Leo Kessler
Now all was silent save the squeak of the armoured-car turret being swung to left and right, the heavy breathing of the waiting men and the slither of the Germans advancing stolidly, purposefully, like a line of automatons, through the sand.
"Two hundred yards..." McLeod started to count off the distance between his own position and the German line, squinting against the sun, the sweat streaming down his brick-red face. "One hundred and seventy..." Now he could see the strained individual faces beneath the coal-scuttle helmets. They were kids really, he told himself, but vicious hard-boiled kids with murder in their hearts. "One hundred and fifty yards..." That was far enough.
He raised himself above cover and in a voice that surprised him because of its vigour and strength, cried, "Fire, lads... Fire at will!"
They needed no urging. The tension snapped at last. The little position erupted in a burst of vicious fire. The slaughter had commenced.
CHAPTER 21
"Fart cannon!" Schulze sneered, as Capitaine Herresbach strode across the baked white parade ground of the Legion's barracks, slapping his swagger stick against the side of his highly polished riding boot.
Max, as tough as he was, looked worried. "Watch it, Schulzi, you big ox, you don't play games with that Alsatian bugger. He can sniff out yer thoughts even before yer can think them."
Schulze pulled a face. "He can sniff up my hairy ass, as far as I'm concerned." Then he dismissed the tough French officer. "What's the score?" he asked.
"They're with us, even the two Yids. They've had enough of the Legion and Captain Herresbach."
Schulze guffawed and gave Matz a tremendous dig which nearly sent the smaller man flying. "Did you hear, you perverted banana-sucker. We're gonna have German Yids on our side. Think o' that! Yids as honorary members of the SS."
Matz was not impressed. "You're gonna be minus one genuine German SS man, comrade, if you keep knocking him about like that. You don't know yer own frigging strength." He rubbed his bruised ribs, counting them to see if they were all intact.
Schulze ignored the comment, as the three continued walking and plotting in the afternoon shade of the Legion barracks. "That means we've got about fifty effectives," he said. "That should be enough to tackle the lock-up and get the CO out."
"Einverstanden," the red-bearded Legionnaire agreed. "But the problem is what are we gonna do next after we've got your officer out? Herresbach'll rouse the whole garrison, knowing him. Then the question is where do we go? Deeper into Syria?"
Schulze pondered the questions for some moments, while Matz picked his nose, listening to the wail of the Mullah calling the faithful to prayers in the village. "What about back to Iraq?" he suggested. "After all, the dump is supposed to be on our side."
Schulze scratched his shaven head. "All this thinking isn't good for me," he complained. "Thinking should be left to officers and gents. They get paid to do it."
"Well, we ain't got no officers and gents," Matz said firmly. "So we've got to think this out now by ourselves. The CO probably won't like it, but I say we should go back to Iraq. Perhaps we can contact our own people there, and they'll get us away from this dump. I've had enough of the exotic east to last me a lifetime. Besides, Herresbach perhaps won't be expecting to go east instead of west. After all, we were running away to Syria when that arse-with-ears nabbed us."
Max looked from the one to the other, knowing that his own fate was linked to their decision. He knew he didn't want to stay in Syria much longer, but at the same time he didn't want these SS types to talk him into going back to the Fatherland. It'd be good to see his old dad again after so many years in exile. But the Gestapo'd soon have him back behind the Swedish curtains again, and this time he'd not come out. He said, as the two others still had not made up their minds, "Well, come on you two, piss or get off the pot!"
"All right, once we get the CO out, we head into Syria. That's it. Now, how do we go about getting him out? I mean," Schulze added swiftly, "we can't trust any of the other rabble here in the barracks, and there'll be fifty of us leaving the dump, all armed. It's bound to be noticed."
"Not tomorrow at dawn," Max cut in swiftly. "Number One Company is off on a punishment march. Thirty kilometres in full field marching order, with their packs filled with rocks. It's Herresbach's orders. He didn't like their turnout the other morning."
"But how can that be cover for us, Max?" Matz asked.
"We join 'em. I'll bribe the sergeant-major. We'll bring up the rear. As soon as we're in the town, we do a bunk."
"But can you trust the sergeant-major?" Schulze queried. "There'll be questions asked afterwards and Herresbach is no dummy. He hasn't fallen on his mouth. If he finds out about the sergeant-major – "
Max held up his big dirty hand for silence. "He's got the hots for the Druse girl in the Legion's bar down-town. The one with the tits like silken pillows. I swear I'd give my own left ball to get my piece of salami up her knickers. Well, all he needs is this." He made the continental gesture of counting money with his finger and thumb. "Once she sees that, it'll be an instant love-match and she'll have her drawers down in zero comma nothing seconds. The lucky bastard." He licked his abruptly dry lips.
"I know the feeling," Schulze said. "If this goes on, I'll be impotent before the frigging week's out."
"Get on with it," Matz urged. "Looks as if we've got visitors." He jerked his head to the right.
The other two stared for a moment. It was Lieutenant Singh on one of his usual walks around the barracks, for Herresbach had been uncertain what to do with this strange educated Indian in the uniform of a German officer. In the end, he had paroled him to the barracks and one kilometre around the place. So it was that, apart from taking his meals at the barracks – and even then he was not admitted to the French officers' mess – he was on his own with no duties to carry out save to prowl around the camp, eyes everywhere, as if he were looking for something specific, though Matz and Schulze, who disliked the Indian officer, could not fathom what it was. All the same, the two old comrades were certain Singh was up to no good, and tended to avoid him whenever they could.
Matz nudged the big sergeant. "Come on, Schulzi – and you too, Max, let's go to the canteen. You can buy us a rouge, Max."
Max made a rude gesture with a middle finger that looked like a fat hairy pork sausage. Matz ignored it and together the three of them headed for the wet canteen, deep in conversation, watched by a Lieutenant Singh who was stroking his chin thoughtfully.
It seemed to a bored, impatient von Dodenburg that the handsome boy had been watching him day and night without respite. All he appeared to do was to sit on the edge of his bunk, swinging his legs back and forth, occasionally sucking his thumb like a much smaller child (though he did it in a way that von Dodenburg couldn't help thinking was sexually provocative), and staring at him with an inane smile on his pretty face. Why? Kuno asked himself time and time again – and to what purpose had this kid, who didn't speak a word of German and only poor French, been placed in a cell with an adult like himself? There were many questions and few answers.
The one thing that Kuno von Dodenburg was certain about was that the boy was a creature of Capitaine Herresbach. At regular intervals during the day, the Alsatian officer, bearing gifts for the boy, came bustling in, all smiles, his usual hard face benign and, Kuno couldn't help thinking, almost loving. For a few moments the two of them would chat animatedly together in one of the native languages of Syria, and Kuno could have sworn that, if he hadn't been there, Herresbach would have kissed the boy when their heads were together whispering some secret or other.
For a while Kuno dismissed the boy and concentrated on his own problem. It was clear to him that Herresbach had taken the law into his own hands, which he could, being the virtual master of this remote border outpost. His fate, and the fate of his men, lay in the Alsatian's hands. But Herresbach couldn't seem to understand that he, Kuno, had lost all contact with the Vulture and the rest of SS Assault Battalion Wo
tan. What could he know about the battalion's present position? All the same, Herresbach was going to keep him imprisoned like this, and his men in a kind of open arrest in the Legion's barracks until he revealed the information that he didn't have.
Now everything, therefore, depended upon Schulze and the old hares of Wotan. He knew by now that Schulze was going to attempt to rescue him from the prison, and it wouldn't be too difficult, providing his men were well armed. The warders, mostly middle-aged Frenchmen serving out their time until they received their pension, were no match for his SS troopers. But, as with every solution, there was a new problem. What was he going to do when his men did rescue him? He had no desire to go back to Iraq. For him that country was finished; it was not worth the life of a single Wotan trooper. Yet undoubtedly Herresbach would alert the whole of the Iraq-Syrian border area once they had escaped – and, he guessed, the French authorities wouldn't take too kindly to Germans escaping from one of their prisons, especially if French were killed or injured in the breakout.
"Tu?" The boy's oddly feminine voice broke into his reverie. He looked up sharply. "Tu veux?" The boy was holding his limp little penis in his hand suggestively.
Von Dodenburg blushed in spite of himself. He had seen a lot of things in these years of war since 1939, but nothing as disgustingly provocative as this pretty boy offering his body so unashamedly.
The boy jerked his flaccid organ up and down, smiling winningly all the time, mouth slightly open, licking his wet, red lips with his cunning little pink tongue. It was too much for Kuno. "Why, you little swine!" he gasped. Without thinking of the consequences, he stepped forward and slapped the boy so hard that his head jerked to one side, his face flushing an immediate deep red where he had been slapped. Next moment he started to wail, tears of pain running down his cheeks.
Kuno von Dodenburg towered above the weeping boy, fists clenched, as if he were restraining himself by a sheer effort of will power from striking the perverted child once again.
But that wasn't to be. The boy's cry of pain had alerted someone further down the prison passage. There was the sound of heavy boots running along the flags. A jingle of keys. The heavy door was flung open with a rusty creak. Next instant half a dozen warders fell on Kuno von Dodenburg and started beating him with boot and fist. He fell to the floor, curled up like a ball. To no avail. A boot thudded into his groin. He yelled in agony, a yell that was cut when the vomit filled his mouth. A moment later another boot slammed into the side of his head and he blacked out.
He came to, crumpled in the foetal position on the floor, his head in a mess of his own vomit. The cell was silent now. The warders who had assailed him had gone back to the daily routine of smoking and playing cards and the odd swig at their bottles of Raki. For that he was grateful; he wanted time to recover.
Still, the rage that burned within him made him forget his aches and pains; and it was a rage that was inspired not only by the cruel treatment he had just received, but also by the mission and these countries in which that mission was to be carried out. They were, it seemed to him, infinitely corrupt and decadent. They were not worth conquering or liberating, whichever way one looked at it. The sooner he and his men were out of them the better.
For he knew his torturers would be back. Herresbach's tame little male whore had failed to seduce him into talking; now they would use strong-arm treatment on him, and he had no illusions about his ability to withstand long-time torture.
Now, as he forgot the pain and tried to repress his forebodings about what his captors might do to him – and, after the handsome boy prostitute, he felt they'd use sexual means of some kind to extract the information they felt he knew – he tried too to visualize how Schulze and the rest would attempt to free him.
He knew that Schulze, like he would himself, would try to avoid casualties. Over the years, he had attempted to knock that precept into the minds of his company at all levels. Train hard, fight easy had been his motto. So how would they attempt to free him without too many casualties? Was there some way for them to get within the prison without a fight, and then deal with the handful – probably – of warders on duty? That would mean, he told himself, that their best time for the rescue attempt would be at night, when the number of people on duty would be lower. Would they use a bluff to get inside the prison? If they had recruited some of Max's Legionnaires to help them, they might well be able to do so; for Max and his fellow Legionnaires spoke French as well as their native German. What then?
But, try as he might, von Dodenburg could not make his tired mind go any further. It simply refused to work on the problem any more. So, lying there on the hard concrete floor, his nostrils assailed by the stink of his own vomit, Kuno began to drift off into an uneasy sleep.
He awoke with a start, wondering where he was, and then, when he realised he was in his cell, what had awakened him. A moment later another burst of the drunken familiar chorus told him more than what had startled him out of his sleep. It was that old Swabian ditty, sung in dialect, which military bands always played when soldiers left a garrison. How often had he warbled it himself over these last years, standing on some chill lonely station at midnight or marching through the cheering streets with the kids waving flags and the excited womenfolk pelting the grinning singing troops with flowers.
It was Muss i denn, muss i denn. zum Städele hinaus. But there was something strange about this rendition of the sentimental Swabian song. After each chorus, a collection of bass voices yelled "Boom... boom... boom!" They did it several times, and each time the 'booms' came in threes, until finally they disappeared into the distance, heading probably for the Legion's barracks, and the song died away with them.
Suddenly he had it. He sat up with a start. "Must I leave the town?", were the words of the ditty. Who? He, Kuno von Dodenburg, of course. And the 'boom... boom... boom', always three times. His battered face lit up. Of course, Schulze and his pals were coming to get him out at three this very morning. If he had been a praying man, the arrogant young SS officer would have been on his knees praying that moment. But he had long given up religion in favour of the new one taught by the God of the SS, Adolf Hitler. So, instead he contented himself with preparing for the escape to come.
CHAPTER 22
There were three of them left now. The rest were dead, spread out in the desert at extravagant angles like thrown-away broken dolls. All the armoured cars had been hit and there was no chance of escape with the vehicles. Still they fought on, encouraged by McLeod, his arm hanging shattered at his side, the blood streaming down from it in torrents.
By now the Germans had them surrounded. Yet they seemed scared to press home their final attack, on account of the armoured car armed with the two-pounder cannon. They didn't know, of course, that McLeod and his two companions had only armour-piercing shells left; not of much use against infantry.
Still McLeod, feeling, at times, he might faint at any moment due to the loss of blood, was grateful for the 'pea-shooter', as they had called the ineffectual weapon contemptuously. It gave them time to try to raise the base and give the location of the Germans. Perhaps Jeeves might be able to spare one of his obsolete planes to attack them, though McLeod doubted it. He knew just how short both pilots and petrol were at the Habbaniyah Base. Still, he could try.
Now, as the sweating radio operator with the bloodstained bandage wrapped round his head tried to raise Habbaniyah, McLeod waited for the Germans to attack again. He knew they would. The Germans never gave up; they were almost as fanatical as the Japs. That's why they had to be defeated. If Iraq fell into their hands, Persia would follow, and eventually the whole of the Muslim Middle East. If the Japs attacked in the East, as everyone expected them to do sooner or later, and started to march westwards, India would go over to them, they'd link up with the Germans in the Middle East, and that would mean the end of the British Empire. Not that he was a one hundred per cent advocate of the Empire – it had its defects. But it was a damned sight better and clea
ner than the Jap and Jerry empires, or any other one that would follow it.
"Sir." It was the gunner manning the two-pounder who broke urgently into his reverie. "Here the friggers come again, sir." He pressed the trigger of the co-axial Vickers machine gun and sent a burst of tracer winging in the direction of the SS, who had risen from their positions to the left and were stumbling forward in a kind of awkward run in the deep sand.
Abruptly the front rank of the slow figures was galvanized into violent action. They danced, waved their hands and were bowled over, howling with pain, like a bunch of puppets at the hands of a puppet master who had suddenly gone crazy. Still the next rank came on, stumbling and falling over the writhing bodies of their dying comrades, advancing with deadly purpose, and McLeod knew they'd keep coming like this until they killed their enemies or were killed themselves. This was the last German assault. "Use the popgun – anything. Radio operator, man your weapon." He picked up the Tommy gun he had chosen for himself and, standing upright in the turret of the damaged armoured car, loosed off a violent blast.
"Tommies!" Dietz gasped, as the firing erupted once again and his grenadiers began falling all around him. "Don't the tea-drinking swine know when to give up, blast their eyes!"
It was obvious to him and the Vulture, ready to lead the second stage of the final attack on the other flank, that they didn't. They'd stand and fight to the bitter end, and the Vulture knew he couldn't waste too many men on this handful of stubborn Tommies. The Führer would never forgive him if he allowed his Fire Brigade, SS Assault Battalion Wotan, to be wiped out in this godforsaken place to no real purpose.
He cursed as yet another half a dozen of Dietz's grenadiers went down under the fire from the embattled little position on the top of the hill. This couldn't go on, he cursed again. He had to do something, something drastic to finish off the buck-teethed Tommies once and for all.