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Cry Wolf

Page 38

by Wilbur Smith


  smell of him was like the taste of his mouth. She felt the softness of

  her own body crave the hardness of his and she pressed herself to

  him,

  finding pleasure in the pain of contact, in the bruising pressure of

  his mouth against her lips.

  She knew she was arousing emotions that soon would be beyond either of

  their control, and the knowledge made her reckless and bold.

  The thought occurred to her that she had it in her power to drive him

  demented with passion, and the idea aroused her further, and

  immediately she wanted to exercise that power.

  She heard his breathing roaring in her ears, then realized that it was

  not his it was her own, and each gust of it seemed to swell her chest

  until it must burst.

  It was so cramped in the cockpit of the car, and their movements were

  becoming wild and unrestrained. Vicky felt restricted and itching with

  constraint. She had never known this wildness before, and for a

  fleeting instant she remembered the skilful, gentle minuet of formal

  movements which had been her loving with Gareth Swales, and she

  compared it to this stormy meeting of passions; then the thought was

  borne away on the flood, on the need to be free of confinement.

  Outside the car, the chill of the desert night prickled the skin of her

  back and flanks and thighs, and she felt the fine golden hairs come

  erect on her forearms. He flapped out the bed-roll and spread it on

  the earth. Then he returned to get her, and the heat of his body was a

  physical shock. It seemed to burn with all the pent-up fires of his

  soul, and she pressed herself to it with complete abandon, delighting

  in the contrast of his burning flesh and the cool desert breeze upon

  her bare skin.

  Now at last there was nothing to prevent the range of her hands and she

  knew they were cold as ghost fingers on him, delighting to hear his

  gasp again at their touch. She laughed then, a hoarse throaty

  chuckle.

  "Yes." She laughed again, as he lifted her easily and dropped to his

  knees on the bed-roll, holding her against his chest.

  "Yes, Jake." She let the last restraint fly. "Quickly, quickly my

  darling: It was a raging, a roaring of all her senses. It was an

  aching, tumultuous storm that ended at last and afterwards the vast

  hissing silence of the desert was so frightening that she clung to him

  like a child and found to her amazement that she was weeping. the

  tears scalded her eyes and yet were as icy as the touch of frost upon

  her cheeks.

  General De Bono's first cautious but ponderous thrust across the

  Mareb River, into Ethiopia, met with a success that left him stunned.

  Ras Muguletul the Ethiopian commander in the north, offered only token

  resistance then withdrew his forty thousand men southwards to the

  natural mountain fortress of Ambo Aradam. Unopposed, De Bono drove the

  seventy miles to Adowa and found it deserted. Triumphantly he erected

  the monument to the fallin Italian warriors and thereby expunged the

  stain of defeat from the arms of Italy.

  The great civilizing mission had begun. The savage was being tamed,

  and introduced to the miracles of modern man amongst them the aerial

  bomb.

  The Royal Italian Air Force ranged the skies above the towering

  Ambas, reporting all troop movements and swooping down to bomb and

  machine-gun any concentrations. The Ethiopian forces were confused and

  scattered under their tribal commanders. There were half a dozen

  breaches in their line that a forceful commander could have exploited

  indeed even General De Bono sensed this and made another convulsive

  leap forward as far as Makale. However, here he stopped appalled at

  his own audacity, stunned by his own achievement.

  Ras Muguletu was skulking on Ambo Aradam with his forty thousand,

  while Ras Kassa and Ras Seyoum were struggling to move the great

  unwieldy masses of their two armies through the mountain passes to link

  up with the army of the Emperor on the shores of Lake Tona.

  They were disordered, vulnerable, ripe to be cut down like wheat and

  General De Bono closed his eyes, covered his brow with one hand and

  turned his head aside.

  History would never accuse him of recklessness and impetuosity.

  ROM GENERAL DE BONO COMMANDER OF THE ITALIAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE

  AT MA KALE TO BENITO MUSSOLINI PRIME MINISTER OF ITALY HAVING

  CAPTURED

  ADO WA AND MA KALE I CONSIDER MY IMMEDIATE OBJECTS HAVE BEEN ATTAINED

  STOP IT IS NOW VITALLY NECESSARY TO CONSOLIDATE THESE SUCCESSES' TO

  FORTIFY MY POSITION AGAINST ENEMY COUNTER ATTACK AND TO SECURE MY

  LINES

  OF SUPPLY AND COMMUNICATIONS." ROM BENITO MUSSOLINI PRIME MINISTER

  OF

  ITALY MINISTER OF WAR TO GENERAL DE BONO OFFICER COMMANDING THE

  ITALIAN

  EXPEDITIONARY FORCE IN AFRICA HIS MAJESTY WISHES AND I COMMAND YOU TO

  ADVANCE WITHOUT HESITATION ON AMBA ARA DAM AND BRING THE MAIN BODY OF

  THE ENENMY TO BATTLE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE STOP REPLY TO ME." ROM

  GENERAL DE BONO TO THE PRIME MINISTER OF ITALY GREETINGS AND

  FELICITATIONS I WISH TO POINT OUT TO YOUR EXELLENCY THAT THE

  OBJECTIVE

  AMBA ARA DAM IS TACTICALLY UNDESIRABLE ... THE TERRAIN FAVOURS AMBUSH

  CONDITION OF ROADS VERY POOR ... TRUST MY JUDGEMENT ... URGE YOUR

  EXCELLENCY TO RECONSIDER AND TO TAKE COGNIZANCE OF THE FACT THAT THE

  MILITARY SITUATION MUST TAKE PRECEDENCE OVER ALL POLITICAL

  CONSIDERATION." FROM BENITO MUSSOLINI TO MARSHAL DE BONO PREVIOUSLY

  OFFICER COMMANDING THE ITALIAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE IN AFRICA HIS

  MAJESTY ORDERS ME TO CONVEY HIS FELICITATIONS ON YOUR ELEVATION TO

  THE

  RANK OF MARSHAL OF THE ARMY AND TO THANK YOU FOR THE IMPECCABLE

  EXECUTION OF YOUR DUTY IN RECAPTURING ADO WA STOP WITH THE ATTAINMENT

  OF

  THIS OBJECTIVE I CONSIDER THAT YOUR MISSION IN EASTERN AFRICA HAS

  BEEN

  COMPLETED STOP YOU HAVE EARNED THE GRATITUDE OF THE NATION BY YOUR

  OBVIOUS MERITS AS A SOLDIER AND YOUR STEADFAST DISCHARGE OF YOUR DUTY

  AS A COMMANDER STOP YOU ARE REQUESTED TO HAND OVER YOUR COMMAND TO

  GENERAL PIE TRO BADOGLIO ON HIS IMMINENT ARRIVAL IN AFRICA..

  Marshal De Bono accepted both his promotion and his recall with such

  good grace that it could have been mistaken, by an uninformed observer,

  for profound relief. His departure for Rome was completed with such

  despatch as to avoid by a hair's breadth the semblance of indecorous

  haste.

  General Pietro Badoglio was a fighting soldier. He had staffed the

  headquarters before Adowa, although he had played no part in that

  debacle, and he was a veteran of Caporetto and Vittorio Veneto. He

  believed that the purpose of war was to crush the enemy as swiftly and

  as ruthlessly as was possible, with the use of any weapon at his

  disposal.

  He came ashore at Massawa with a furious impatience, angry with

  everything he found, and impatient of the policies and concepts of his

  predecessor, although in truth seldom had an incoming commander been

  handed such an enviable strategic situation.

  He
inherited a huge, well-equipped army with a buoyant morale, in a

  commanding tactical position and backed by a magnificent network of

  communications and a logistics inventory that was alpine in

  proportions.

  The small but magnificently equipped airforce of the expedition was

  flying unopposed over the Ambo mountains, observing all troop movements

  and pouncing immediately on any Ethiopian concentrations.

  During one of the first dinners at the new headquarters, Lieutenant

  Vittorio Mussolini, the younger of the Duce's two sons, one of the

  dashing Regia Aeronautica aces, regaled his new commander with accounts

  of his sorties over the enemy highlands and Badoglio, who had not had

  close aerial support in any of his previous campaigns, was delighted

  with this new and deadly weapon. He listened transfixed to the young

  flier's descriptions of the effect of aerial bombardment particularly

  an account of an attack on a group of three hundred or more enemy

  horsemen led by a tall, dark-robed figure. The young Mussolini told

  him, "I released a single hundred-kilo bomb from an altitude of less

  than a hundred metres, and it fell precisely in the centre of the

  galloping horsemen. They opened like the petals of a flowering rose,

  and the dark-robed leader was thrown so high by the blast that he

  seemed to almost touch my wing-tip as I passed. It was a spectacle of

  great beauty and magnificence." Badoglio was happy that his new

  command included young men with such fire in their veins, and he leaned

  forward in his seat at the head of the table to peer down over the

  glittering silver and sparkling leaded crystal at the flier in his

  handsome blue uniform. The classical features and dark curly head of

  hair were the artist's conception of young Mars. Then he turned to the

  airforce

  Colonel who sat beside him.

  "Colonel, what is the opinion of your young men in the Regia

  Aeronautica? I have heard much argument for and against but I would be

  interested to have your opinion.

  Should we use the nitrogen mustard?"

  "I think I speak for all my young men." The Colonel sipped his wine

  and glanced for confirmation at the young ace who was not yet twenty

  years of age. "I think the answer must be yes, we must use every

  weapon available to us." Badoglio nodded. The thinking agreed with

  his own, and the next morning he ordered the canisters of mustard gas

  shipped from the warehouses of

  Massawa, where De Bono had been content to let them lie, and despatched

  them to every airfield where flights of the Regia Aeronautica were

  based. Thousands upon thousands of the wild tribesmen of Ethiopia

  would come to know the corrosive dew when later they endured

  bombardment by artillery and aerial attack with a stoicism greater than

  most European troops were able to muster yet they could never come to

  terms with this terrible substance that turned the open pastures of

  their mountain fastness to fields of terror. Barefoot, as most of them

  were, they were pathetically vulnerable to the silent insidious weapon

  that flayed the skin from their bodies, and then stripped the living

  flesh from the bone.

  This single decision was one of many made that day by the new

  commander, and signalled the change from De Bono's humbling, but not

  unkindly civilizing invasion, to the new concept of total war war with

  only one objective.

  MUSSOlini had wanted a hawk, and he had chosen well.

  The hawk stood in the centre of the lofty second-storey headquarters

  office at Asmara, He was too consumed with furious impatience to sit at

  the wide desk, and when he paced the tiled floor,

  his heels cracked on the ceramic like drum beats. The elasticity of

  his stride was that of a man far younger than sixty-five.

  He carried his head low on boxer's shoulders, thrusting his chin

  forward a heavy chin below a big shapeless round nose, a short-cropped

  grey mustache and a wide hard mouth.

  His eyes were deep sunken into dark cavities, like those of a corpse,

  but their glitter was alive and aware as he worked swiftly through the

  lists of his divisional and regimental commanders,

  assessing each by one criterion only, "Is he a fighting man?" Too

  often the answer was "no,", or at the least uncertain, so it was with a

  fierce pleasure that he recognized one who was without question a

  hard-fighting man on whom he could rely.

  "Yes," he nodded vehemently. "He is the only field commander who has

  displayed any initiative, who has made any attempt to come to grips

  with the enemy." He paused to lift his reading glasses to his eyes and

  glance again at the reports he held in his other hand. "He has fought

  one decisive action, inflicting almost thirty thousand casualties

  without loss himself. That in itself is an achievement that seems to

  have gone without suitable recognition. The man should have had a

  decoration, the order of St. Maurice and St. Lazarus at the least.

  Good men must be singled out and rewarded. Look at this this is

  typical!

  When he was aware that the enemy had armoured resources, he was soldier

  enough to lure that armour into a baited trap, to lead it skilfully and

  with cool courage on to his entrenched artillery. It was a bold and

  resourceful stroke for an infantry commander to make and it deserved to

  succeed. If only his artillery commander had been a man of equally

  steely nerves, he would have succeeded in luring the entire enemy

  armoured column to its total destruction. It was no fault of his that

  the artillery lost their nerve and opened fire prematurely." The

  General paused to focus his reading glasses on the large glossy

  photographic print which depicted Colonel Count Aldo Belli standing

  like a successful big game hunter on the carcass of the Hump. The

  shattered hull was pierced by shot and in the background lay half a

  dozen corpses in tattered shammas. These had been collected from the

  battlefield and tastefully arranged by Gino to give the photograph

  authenticity. Against his better judgement and his strong instincts of

  survival, Count Aldo Belli had returned to make these photographic

  records only after Major Castelani had assured him that the enemy had

  deserted the field. The Count had not wasted too much time about it,

  but had his photographs taken, urging Gino to haste, and when it had

  been done he had returned swiftly to his fortified position above the

  Wells of Chaldi and had not moved from there since. However, the

  photographs were an impressive addendum to his official report of the

  action.

  Now Badoglic, growled like an angry old lion. "Despite the

  incompetence of his junior officers, and there my heart aches for

  him,

  this man has wiped out half the enemy armour as well as half the

  opposing army." He hit the report fiercely with his reading glasses.

  "The man's a fire eater no question about it. I know one when I see

  one. A fire-eater. This kind of example must be encouraged good work

  must be rewarded. Send for him. Radio him to come in to headquarters

&nb
sp; immediately." As far as Count Aldo Belli was concerned, the campaign

  had come upon a not unpleasant hiatus.

  The camp at the Wells of Chaldi had been transformed by his engineers

  from an outpost of hell into a rather pleasant refuge, with functional

  amenities, such as ice making machines and a water-borne sewerage

  system. The de fences were now of sufficient strength to give him a

  feeling of security. The engineering as always was of the highest

  quality with extensive covered earthworks, and Castelani had laid out

  carefully over-lapping fields of fire, and barbed-wire de fences in

  depth.

  The hunting in the area was excellent by any standards, with game drawn

  to the water in the Wells from miles around. The sand-grouse in the

  evenings filled the heavens with the whistle of their wings, and

  wheeled in great dark flocks across the setting sun, affording

  magnificent sport.

  The bag was measured in grain bags of dead birds.

  In the midst of this pleasantly relaxed atmosphere, the new commanding

  officer's summons exploded like a 100 kilo aerial bomb.

  General Badoglio's reputation had preceded him. He was a notorious

  martinet, a man who could not be sidetracked from single-minded purpose

  by excuse or fabrication. He was insensitive to political influence or

  power considerations so much so that it was rumoured that he would have

  crushed the very Fascist movement itself with force if the issue had

  been put into his hands back in 1922. He had an almost psychic power

  to detect subterfuge, and to place a finger squarely on malingerers or

  lack-guts.

  They said his justice was swift and merciless.

  The shock to the Count's system was considerable. He had been singled

  out from thousands of brother officers to face this ogre's wrath for he

  could not convince himself that the small deviations from reality, the

  small artistic licences contained in his long,

  illustrated reports to De Bono had not been instantly discovered. He

  felt like a guilty schoolboy summoned to dire retribution behind the

  closed doors of the headmaster's study. The shock hit him squarely in

  the bowels, always his weak spot, bringing on a fresh onslaught of the

  malady first caused by the waters of Chaldi Wells, from which he had

  believed himself completely cured.

  It was twelve hours before he could summon the strength to be helped by

 

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