ETERNAL NIGHT
A RYAN MITCHELL THRILLER
BY RICHARD TURNER
Copyright © Richard Turner
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Smashwords Edition
Table of Contents
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1
Sudan
January 26th, 1885
In the cold gray light of dawn, a lone piper walked behind the massed ranks playing “Scotland the Brave”. Lieutenant McRoberts drew his claymore from its sheath and looked toward the east. A dust cloud rose from the ground, blanketing the horde of the Mahdi’s Dervishes charging toward the British square. Some were on foot, and some rode camels, but all had one thought in mind: kill the unbelievers. McRoberts’ father had carried the same sword during his thirty years in the army, from the Crimea to India and China. Now, young Angus McRoberts held it tight in his hand. He looked skyward and said a silent prayer to calm his shaky nerves.
“Volley fire—at two hundred—present!” ordered McRoberts’ company commander.
As if on parade, the soldiers of Charlie Company of the Seaforth Highlanders brought up their rifles to their shoulders and took aim. The ground beneath McRoberts’ feet shook as two thousand bloodthirsty warriors closed in on the four hundred Scotsmen waiting calmly to meet them. The front row of soldiers knelt on the ground with the long bayonets of their rifles forming a wall of steel, while the remainder of the men stood ready to fire.
A sergeant with a long walrus mustache looked over at McRoberts. “Don’t worry lad, there are not enough heathens on God’s Earth to break a British square.”
McRoberts’ mouth was drier than the desert he found himself in. Fear filled the young officer’s heart. Only nineteen years old, McRoberts had never been in combat before. He couldn’t decide what troubled his mind more: the fear of dying, the fear of not doing the right thing, or, more importantly, the fear of bringing shame to a family that had served the British crown for generations.
“Fire!” cried the company commander.
With a loud crash, the soldiers of Charlie Company calmly fired as one. Through the haze, McRoberts watched an entire rank of warriors crumple to the ground. It wasn’t enough by far to slow the tidal wave of dervishes growing closer by the second. They came on, thirsty for blood. McRoberts glanced over at the corner of the square, where a Gatling gun crewed by men from the Naval Brigade stood waiting to fire. On command, a sailor turned the hand crank on the back of the gun, sending a steady stream of lead bullets into the mob of warriors.
The sound of volleys fired from all sides of the square was deafening. Dust and smoke filled the air, making it hard to see. McRoberts stepped back slightly from his platoon’s rear rank, to see if he could see what was happening outside of the square. It was no good. He could barely see fifty feet.
All of a sudden, the Gatling gun stopped firing. A broad-shouldered Petty Officer yanked the gunner away from the weapon and hurried to get the gun operational. Sensing something wrong, the dervishes rushed the jammed machine gun. In seconds, all of the sailors were hacked to death. Blood covered the sand. The warriors let out a triumphant cheer and burst into the square, attacking everyone in their path.
McRoberts licked his chapped lips. If the hole wasn’t plugged right away, the square was doomed. He drew his pistol with his left hand and flipped off the safety. “Rear rank, number one platoon, with me!” ordered the young officer.
Sergeant Picton grabbed the soldiers closest to him and spun them around. “You heard the officer. Follow him!”
“For Queen and Country!” yelled McRoberts, raising his claymore above his head and waving it around in the air. With a cry from deep in his chest, he charged at the dervishes. Sergeant Picton and fifteen highlanders saw their officer bring down a dervish warrior armed with a sword and a shield, and rushed to join him in the swirling mêlée. To those watching the fight, it was as if McRoberts was possessed. He slashed at the dervishes with his sword, or shot them down where they stood. Any warrior who got within arm’s reach died. The bodies of his dead and dying enemies carpeted the blood-soaked ground. Step by step, McRoberts and his men pushed the white-coated dervishes back.
“Help them!” called out the company commander.
A handful of men waiting in reserve saw the fight and hurried over.
The muscles in McRoberts’ sword arm burned. Sweat ran like a river down his face onto his khaki uniform tunic. With no more warriors in sight, he paused for a moment to catch his breath.
Sergeant Picton stepped over the bloodied remains of the naval gun crew, calmly removed the jammed magazine, and inserted a new one. With a sharp tug on the hand crank, the Gatling gun once more spewed death into the retiring dervishes.
From behind McRoberts, a man cried, “All ahu Akbar!”
He spun around just as a man emerged out of a dust cloud, holding a sword above his head. McRoberts turned his body slightly to the left as the dervish warrior swung his blade down, missing his head by mere inches. He brought up his claymore and slashed at his opponent’s exposed midsection. The man, a skilled fighter, saw the move coming, and blocked the strike with his sword. With a twist of his wrist, the warrior thrust his blade toward McRoberts’ sword arm. McRoberts grimaced in pain as the sword cut a bloody groove through his tunic. He let go of his claymore, turned his pistol hand, and aimed at the fighter’s stomach. McRoberts saw his opponent’s eyes widen just before he fired off two shots, sending the dervish warrior to his knees. The doomed man said something McRoberts couldn’t understand, before falling face first onto the dusty ground.
“Where the hell did he come from, sir?” asked a soldier, thrusting his bayonet into the warrior to finish him off.
“I have no idea,” replied McRoberts, removing his pith helmet. He took in a couple of deep breaths to calm his ragged breathing. McRoberts wiped away the sweat from his face with the back of his hand, before placing his helmet back on his head.
The soldier nudged the warrior with his foot. “Do you think he may have been playing dead, sir? The dervishes like to do that. I once saw one pretend to be dead. After one of our boys rode past him, he jumped up and stabbed his horse in the leg, bringing it and the rider down. Luckily, another bloke happened to be nearby, and ran the bugger though with his lance.”
McRoberts didn’t care.
He was just relieved to still be alive. He bent down and picked up the dead warrior’s sword. It was slightly curved, with some gold inlaid on the handle. McRoberts noticed that there was Arabic writing on the blade. He wiped off some blood and read the inscription—Sword of the Prophet. In this part of the world, that could mean anything, thought the young officer. He slid the sword into his belt, intent on keeping it as a souvenir of his first action in the army.
The battle faded away. For the loss of less than thirty dead and wounded, the British had inflicted ten times that number on their enemy. Free to continue their advance, the Scots linked up with the rest of the desert column, marching south across the searing-hot desert plain. Unfortunately, they arrived too late to save Charles Gordon and the thousands of people trapped in Khartoum.
McRoberts arrived home in Scotland a year later as a captain, and as a recipient of the Victoria Cross for his actions in the Sudan. With his father’s health failing, McRoberts retired from the army to look after his family estate. Until the day he died, McRoberts always thought of that brave dervish warrior and his sword. There was something about it that tugged at McRoberts’ mind. Handed down from generation to generation, it became a family heirloom, until fate called for it to come out of the shadows.
2
Dutch East Indies
March 8th, 1942
Time was slipping away.
Captain Julius Dorn glanced down at his watch and swore. His shore party was almost twenty minutes overdue. The flashes of light on the horizon, and the rumble from the guns pounding what was left of the Dutch positions, told him the enemy would soon be there. He looked up at the night sky and was thankful that the moon was just a sliver, otherwise his submarine, resting on the ink-black waters of a crescent-shaped bay, would have stood out for all to see. He stood silently on his boat’s conning tower, brought up his binoculars to his eyes, and scanned the jungle for any sign of his people.
“Anything, sir?” asked Lieutenant Tripp, the sub’s executive officer.
“Nothing,” replied Dorn glumly, lowering his binos.
Tripp looked down at his watch. “Captain, how much longer are we going to wait for them?”
“I’ll give them another hour. After that, I’m afraid we’ll have to leave them behind.”
“Aye, sir.”
Dorn took in a deep breath of salty air. His mind trailed off. It had been almost two years since the Nazis had invaded Holland. Dorn hadn’t received a single letter from his wife since the fateful day the Luftwaffe had bombed Rotterdam to the ground. He never said so around his fellow officers, but in his heart, he knew she was dead.
A bust of automatic gunfire in the darkened forest foretold the approach of the Japanese.
“Get the sub ready to depart,” said Dorn to his XO.
Tripp hurried below.
Dorn brought his glasses over and spotted the muzzle flashes from several men firing their weapons in the dark. He banged his hand hard against the steel outer casing of the tower. Below, on the deck, the gun crew looked up at their captain.
“Target that firing!” ordered Dorn.
“Aye, sir,” replied the gun chief.
One of the men opened the breach while his partner rammed home a 40 mm high-explosive shell before slamming it shut. The cannon’s gunner turned the hand cranks over as fast as he could, until the weapon faced the jungle.
“Wait for the order to fire,” cautioned Dorn. “We don’t want to hit any of our own people.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” replied the gun chief.
From inside the jungle, a flare shot up into the night. Seconds later, it popped open. A bright-white light lit up the bay. Out on the water, men packed into two rubber dinghies rowed as fast as they could for the submarine. A squad of Japanese soldiers ran out into the open, spotted the boats, and opened fire. Tracers from a light machine gun flew across the water at the dinghies, like a swarm of enraged fireflies.
“Kill those bastards!” yelled Dorn.
The deck gun roared to life. The shell struck the sand right in front of the soldiers, killing four and sending the rest flying off their feet.
“Hit them again!” commanded Dorn.
The instant the gun was loaded, the gun chief fired the weapon. Flames leaped from the muzzle of the cannon, as the shell shot toward the beach. With a thunderous boom, the high-explosive projectile detonated.
Dorn scanned the shore. He didn’t see any survivors and was glad they were all dead. War had turned his heart to stone.
The dinghies were soon only a few meters from the sub. Dorn could see several of the sailors were in a bad way. “Hurry! Help those men onboard,” he ordered.
A petty officer threw out a rope to the closest boat and hauled it to the side of the submarine. A couple of sailors ran over and helped the wounded up onto the hull.
“What happened?” Dorn asked Lieutenant de Vries, the shore party commander.
The teenage officer wiped the mud and sweat from his face. “Sir, we were almost at the beach when we ran into a Japanese patrol. I lost one man before we even got into our boats. Two others are badly wounded and in urgent need of medical attention.”
“Did you get what you were after?”
“Yes, sir,” replied de Vries, pointing to two men in civilian clothing climbing out of the last dingy.
Dorn didn’t recognize either man. One had a solid build with a bull neck, who Dorn took to be a soldier in civilian clothing, while the other was a white-haired man who moved slowly. In the man’s arms was locked box.
“Mister de Vries, get a move on, and get your men below where they can get medical attention,” said Dorn.
“Aye, sir. What shall I do with our two passengers?”
“For now, have them bunk in the forward torpedo room.”
“Captain, it’s imperative that I speak with you,” said the soldier in Dutch with an English accent.
“Make it quick,” replied Dorn, indicating to the handholds on the side of the tower. Anxious to get away in the dark, Dorn had no time for idle chatter. He waved at the deck gun crew to get below.
The man climbed up and joined Dorn on the conning tower and held out his hand in greeting. “Captain, am I ever glad to meet you. My name is Darcy Wright, and up until a few hours ago I was the special representative to the British Ambassador.”
Dorn shook the man’s hand. Wright’s grip was tight and rough. He stepped close and took in Wright’s rugged face. The man was used to working outdoors, hardly what one would expect to see from an office worker. “Mister Wright, what it is you wish to talk to me about?”
“Your orders, Captain.”
“What about my orders? I was instructed to pick you up at this location, and escort you to safety. At no time was I ever informed that you were bringing another man with you.”
“Captain, that man and what he’s carrying are more important to the war effort than you, me, and all of the men under your command. Now, I suggest we get moving as soon as possible, there’s at least a company of Japanese soldiers combing the jungle for us.”
Dorn’s back bristled. He disliked being told what to do by people he didn’t know, especially while there was a war on. “Now, just a minute, Mister Wright.”
Wright smiled and raised a hand. “Captain, let’s not waste any more of one another’s time. I think it’s plain to see that I’m not what I claim to be. Your government in exile agreed to this operation, so, what I need you to do is get your submarine ready to dive, there’s a Japanese warship on the prowl for us.”
Dorn’s blood turned cold. “Where was this ship last sighted?”
“It left Jakarta around the same time we did. By now, it could be sitting outside of the bay waiting for us to leave.”
“Bloody hell,” muttered the captain.
Another flare burst open, illuminating the submarine.
“Time to go,” said Wright, scrambling down the conning tower ladder into the cramped control room below the conning tower.
“Full speed ahead!” yelled Dorn down to the men in the control room.
The submarine’s propellers spun, churning the water behind it as it slowly moved forward. Two mortar bombs whistled through the air before landing harmlessly behind the boat, sending tall plumes of water into the air.
“I need to know the depth at the mouth of the bay!” yelled Dorn. “And be damned quick about it.”
Below, his executive officer grabbed a nautical chart and hurried to find the recorded depth. “Five-five meters,” shouted Lieutenant Tripp.
In his mind, Dorn calculated the height of his submarine against the draught a Japanese cruiser would have in the water. Two more bombs splashed down on either side of the sub.
They’re getting too close, thought Dorn. The land at the entrance of the bay opened up. Ahead, lay the open water of the Indian Ocean. Silhouetted against the horizon was a Japanese warship. Dorn recognized it as a heavy cruiser with three turrets, each equipped with two 7.9-inch guns. He knew they had one chance and only one chance to escape. He tapped his foot on the metal deck, waiting until the last possible moment. One of the cruiser’s aft turrets turned toward the sub and opened fire. The shells landed directly in the path of the submarine. A wall of water washed over Dorn, soaking him. Dorn dropped to one knee and yelled to his crew, “Steer one-five degrees, and prepare for an emergency dive!”
Tripp instantly repeated his captain’s order.
As they sailed ever closer to the Japanese warship, Dorn’s stomach knotted. Now, thought the captain. At the top of his lungs, he yelled, “Emergency dive! Make our depth five-zero meters!”
Like a runner hearing the starter’s pistol, every crewman not on duty ran toward the aft torpedo room adding their weight to the nose of the boat as it hurriedly submerged. Dorn scrambled down the conning tower, sealing the outer and inner pressure hatches as he went. By the time he reached the control room, the sub was listing downward. Dorn’s men hung onto whatever they could as the sub plummeted to the bottom of the bay. Every sailor in the control room knew that if the charts were off by even only a couple meters, their submarine would smash into the rocky floor and be destroyed.
Eternal Night Page 1