by Zach Neal
“There.” Daniel’s arm shot out to a spot just off the left wing of the jeep.
“No. Keep an eye out.” Foster kept it going as long as he could, until it was sheer madness.
He slowed right down, as if that would do much to obscure their wheel marks to a determined search from the air. Their dust cloud drifted slowly on the breeze, a hot, dry wind coming off the highlands. There was a clump of thicker brush ahead and he rammed the nose of the jeep right into it.
Foster switched off the engine, which had been getting uncomfortably close to the red zone by the temperature gauge, and heaved a deep sigh.
“Out.”
“Yeah, yeah, you bloody fag.”
“That’s the spirit, laddie.” With another good hard blow on the back, the jeep lurched and then Pat and Daniel were pulling out the scrim nets.
There was the whisper of sound from nearby and then the last engine must have been switched off. The sudden silence was a blessing and a curse, now that they had a minute to think.
It was terribly, terribly quiet. There was only the wind.
Lifting an aching left leg over the side, Foster dismounted.
He spat, and found his small water-bottle on the floor behind the passenger seat.
“Come on, help us out, man.”
Foster shrugged.
“Drink, anyone?”
Unscrewing the cap, he took a good long swig of Navy rum. Foster was not particular and never mind asking where he got that.
Daniel looked over with a grin, as he pulled the netting up and over his prized possessions, two slightly shopworn .303 Brownings.
“Oh. Well. That’s different.”
With a curse, a spit and a grimace, Pat agreed that it was indeed different and after pulling a bedroll and a small ditty bag from the rear of the jeep, he came over to share in what was, after all, small reward for their night’s work.
None of them were in it for the medals, of course.
That would be too much to ask for.
Pat drank.
He nodded and grinned, which was something to see sometimes.
For some reason they were all laughing.
***
They didn’t have long to wait.
“There goes the neighbourhood.”
The tiny pale crosses that were high-flying aircraft loomed larger. They got darker as they came closer. They were making straight for the high end of the wadi, and the place was known to them pretty well—the Italian Auto-Saharan Company had patrolled the area since the thirties. Something up there glinted.
There was a thin, high droning, and the aircraft circled. They would start at the crossing point on the wadi and work their way to the gap, a small patch of hard ground between two of the great sand ergs that dominated so much of the western desert.
Foster got his bag and a few odds and ends. The three men began running, struggling through the soft sand in between clumps of brush and trying to get as far as possible from the jeep. To the southeast, they could see the dark hummocks of the others, sticking out like sore thumbs above the low scrublands. Overhead, a lone bomber, a Ghibli Foster thought, circled lazily as a pair of other aircraft broke off. They flew some ways, going into the sun and then turning. Losing altitude they were lined up on something. The sound of more aero engines came from the northwest. He’d scored very well in aircraft recognition during his training phase.
“Fuck! Come on, Daniel.”
Daniel dropped to his knees. Throwing aside his pack, he pulled out a short shovel and began to pull sand aside.
Pat grabbed his arm and Foster began to run again. Just up ahead was a much thicker patch of weeds, albeit barely eighteen inches tall.
Pat dropped out of the run, staggering off to the right and Foster put a few more yards distance between himself, the jeep and them. They weren’t the dreaded Stukas, far more valuable up north and east where the battle was, but the Italians would certainly be good enough for this little job.
He took a long drink, sticking up head and shoulders above the weeds, and as the two black dots on the horizon zoomed towards them, seemingly coming right at him in particular, he scraped out a quick slit in the ground. Shallow as it was, the ground was a bit cooler in there, and Foster took the canteen and gratefully fell into it.
It was a good ten or twelve seconds before the rattle of machine guns came, indicating that the pilots saw something down there. They were Reggiane fighters, single engine monoplanes.
Whatever they were shooting at was a good ways off. He covered his eyes and watched the lethal shapes as they pulled up again, a half a mile to the north of their position, and arched back into the sky for another look.
They were in for a long day. One must assume there would be ground units sent out after them as well. He lit up his first cigarette in hours, savouring the harsh smoke and thinking of what came next.
There would be no moving by daylight. They were in for a hell of a time. His eyes were burning with the dust, his eyelids were heavy and the time dragged on through intermittent machine gun attacks. He called out, but Pat wasn’t in the mood for talk, apparently. He nibbled away at his rations and did his best to conserve water. The rum helped, and it was good not to have to do anything for a while.
Hard as it might be to believe, with a light ground sheet pulled up over his head to keep the bloody damned flies off, Foster was asleep in a minute, during what must have been a short lull in the action. It was a short nap, but it was something.
Jarred awake by the crump of bombs and the chatter of machine guns, Foster sweat it out through the heat of the day. He might have dozed off once or twice. It was hard to say anymore. He’d felt like hell for a very long time. Columns of greasy black smoke rose from nearby. Their own jeep hadn’t been hit. It was a very small target, although the enemy clearly saw it. Probably visible for fifty or a hundred miles, their location was now marked and that did not bode well for their chances of escape.
Foster wasn’t sure what he feared most, death or the years behind barbed wire.
It should have been an easier choice.
***
The Sergeant Major was reading all the latest memos from head office as the most pompous and trivial ones from the Ministry were called. He put a biscuit in his mouth and it sort of melted there as he chewed thoughtfully. War was long periods of boredom, punctuated by brief moments of pure stark terror and so a biscuit, a piping hot cup of strong tea, one with cream and sugar and a chair and everything, was something to be wrung out for everything it was worth.
A man had a right to be left alone once in a while.
It was a quiet morning and his little cubbyhole was serenity personified—a rare occurrence in his experience. The offensive was going well and the Hun and his wog allies were defeated, bottled up and otherwise heading for Tunisia. Theatre Headquarters was now a very long ways from the front and it showed in people’s relaxed postures and attitudes. This was in stark contrast to just a few short months previously.
There was a familiar rap on his door and an equally familiar Corporal White poked his head in with a bright look.
“Jesus, Christ. You again. What now?”
“Sorry to intrude.” White’s experienced eye took in the kettle, the chipped enamel mug, and the open box of biscuits. “There’s a phone call—and they’re asking specifically for you.”
“Yes, yes, all right.”
“It’s from Stirling’s people.”
“What? Stirling?”
White nodded, and closed the door softly behind him as Bullen sighed, once, and almost gratefully pushed the stack of memos to the far left corner of what would be a decent desk if it wasn’t always so cluttered with official nonsense of the most mundane kind.
He reached for the phone.
“Hello? Sergeant Major Bullen speaking.”
“Ah, yes, Sergeant Major. This is Lieutenant Ian Haldimand with the S.A.S. You were inquiring about a Private Owen Foster.”
“Ah. Yes.
” Sergeant Major Bullen’s heart picked up a beat or two. “Yes, sir.”
“Well. I’m afraid I have rather good news, and bad news for you.”
“And what’s that, sir?”
Some of these junior lieutenants, fresh out from Blighty and stuck on some operational staff somewhere, could be real petty Napoleons. Haldimand’s voice was warm, informal and friendly. They looked after their own, naturally enough.
“Ah. Going by the girl’s description, and the name and the scorpion badge, he’s definitely one of ours.”
There was a pause. They’d already ruled out Private Owen Foster, with an engineering battalion, and another Private Owen Foster, this one with a regiment presently in the front line of battle.
“The trouble is, Sergeant Major. Well. I’m afraid I really don’t have much more information for you…not right now, anyways. Not just yet.”
“I see.” Hmn.
“Yes, well, let’s just say that I might have further information for you in a few days, four or five, possibly. No more. I might even be able to lay my hands on the lad himself.” Pruitt went on a little bit about the need for security, and how phones and wireless were notoriously bad for security…Bullen was reading between the lines fairly well.
Bullen had the picture. Everything was hush-hush and top secret over there, and rightly so.
Private Foster was known to somebody out there—he had quite forgotten the name of the oasis where they habitually headquartered. Foster was presently unavailable.
With the army in general and the S.A.S. in particular, this could only mean one possibility on a very short list of things.
Act Three
The sun had just dropped below the horizon and night was gathering fast.
When they collected themselves, Daniel was nowhere to be found. The jeep was intact, but the one really close impact was between them and the jeep. And there was no Daniel—and no tracks or footprints to suggest where he might have gone otherwise. Pat and Owen cast around in a circle, well away from the splash of discoloured dirt at the centre. They found nothing to suggest there had ever been anyone around there in a slit trench but themselves. They had to accept it, and time was running out.
Not a scrap of fabric, a button, a shoe…nothing.
“Oh, Jesus, fucking Christ.”
Pat and Owen stood looking for a moment at the bomb crater. There was not much to be said. They pulled the nets from the jeep. The faint voices and the sounds of engines revving up not far away was enough to get them moving as Owen repressed a sob. But the conclusions were obvious.
Not even a wet spot.
Oh, God,
Daniel.
Owen Foster dropped to his knees. Water filled his eyes, and he was dry-retching to beat all tomorrow.
They hadn’t eaten in a few hours. Unless he was going to puke up some shit, there was nothing there. The trouble was that he couldn’t stop.
Just a vile acid, rotting the back of his nostrils.
“Oh…oh, God.”
“Come on, Owen. We’d better get going. They’re not likely to hang about.” The bombardment had gone on all afternoon.
Pat hauled him to his feet, still weeping.
Pat was in the same condition, maybe just a bit older, a bit harder.
Maybe it just took a while to sink in. Owen and Danny had been very close, but then, they were all close out here.
For whatever reason, probably because they were so hard-pressed already, the enemy had not sent out any armoured patrols. Not so far, as they had to worry about roving Allied ground attack fighters themselves, fighters that were known to have orders to shoot up anything that moved.
Night was a different story. The odds were, the enemy would show up, sooner rather than later, looking for intelligence, looking for prisoners, looking for not-too-badly wounded men who might be squeezed for a little information.
Owen got her out of the bushes.
They crawled up through brush that was a little taller, the distant shapes of the trucks getting larger, and then they came upon another jeep moving in as well. Owen picked the farthest truck along, and headed for it. The gap was dead ahead, to the southeast more or less.
They pulled up, and waited, as more trucks and jeeps came in, and then switched off as it appeared the L.R.D.G. people wanted to confer with Easton and Scranton. There were three or four others, corporals and sergeants.
One of the corporals looked up, said something to the skipper and then came trotting over to where their two jeeps waited.
“Sorry, boys. This won’t take but a minute. One of the Group’s trucks took a direct hit. Nobody killed or wounded.” He looked serious. “It took a good reserve of gas and water with it, too.”
“Shit.” Pat sat in the passenger seat now. “Danny’s gone.”
The corporal nodded soberly. He turned and walked away.
Owen was still thinking about Daniel, and how young he was.
Snuffed out in an instant. Never even knew what hit him—and what was I doing?
Smoking bad cigarettes, drinking warm rum, and wondering if I should run over and offer him just a wee drop…
He shuddered, and not from the falling temperatures either.
It was just the luck of the draw, he told himself, and Daniel got the short straw.
There was more bad news, although Owen was somewhat insulated from it. One of the trucks had a leaky fuel tank and they didn’t have time to patch it here.
***
It took less than an hour of hard driving, fearful all the way, and then they were at the gap. The tire tracks looked old and wind-blown. This was a good sign. The ruts disappeared entirely for long distances, although they were easy enough to pick up again, even in the darkness. The moon still wasn’t up, but luminous silver bands on the horizon showed it wasn’t far off. The ground rose, getting harder as they went.
There was another quick conference.
They were abandoning all but one truck and four, maybe five jeeps. They would get through the gap and then they would do it.
“Aw, come on.” Owen sat tight.
Let them take someone else’s jeep.
“Out you get, lad.” Pat clambered stiffly out of the jeep and began rummaging in the back end for his personal weapon, his kit, his toothbrush for what it was worth out there in their arid environment.
“For fuck’s sakes, Pat.”
Scranton was well away, his back turned as he broke the news to one or two other lucky sods.
“What do you want me to do about it?”
They just didn’t have the gas and it was going to be a rough go.
By hugging the escarpment and following the terrain, they could move slowly but they just might avoid detection. It wasn’t very likely, but they were doing the best they could under the circumstances.
Owen stubbornly sat in the jeep.
Pat’s cold blue eyes came around and impaled him with an unmistakeable look.
That was the problem with being junior man all the time.
“Just be glad it’s not you back there, Owen—now come on, get a fucking move on. That’s a good lad.” Without another word, Pat shouldered his gear. Going round to the back of the jeep, he began checking all of their water cans. He grappled with two of them, slogging through the pale sand in the general direction of the lead truck.
Sighing deeply, Owen got out and began to check for full water and fuel cans.
***
One of the great contradictions of the desert was the swamps. With a low moon hanging above them, after sticking and unsticking the big Chevrolet from sand trap after sand trap, the driver saw flat and open ground ahead. Like a fool, and seeing his way clear, he tried to make up for lost time.
It was two and a quarter hours before dawn. He’d driven straight into a swamp, meandering watercourses that seemed to spring up from the ground, go a shorter or longer distance and then disappear again.
Once again it was all hands baling off of the vehicles and runn
ing into the stinking muck with cables, sand channels and breaking backs.
Owen was in as bad a shape as anyone. It was like something had gone out of him.
There was Daniel of course, but it had been a long time since he’d felt true despair. These were all ruddy good blokes, but there were times when he wondered if some of them knew what they were doing. His only real beacon was Mariyah.
Her face hung in the latter part of his mind pretty much at all times. It had been like that for a long time. He didn’t have time to figure it out, but there was a before and after date.
It took the combined force of two jeeps pulling, the truck’s own big wheels spinning and a lot of grunting, cursing men being spattered with flying mud before she came out the other side.
It was such a little thing, but it infuriated him. Owen was convinced he could have just driven through it in first gear. What was particularly galling was when Maxwell’s jeep got stuck and he imperiously waved Owen out into the mud to hook on with the cable…
“Pull your finger out, for Christ’s sakes, Jamie.”
Owen turned and sprinted up out of the soggy mess, yelling at the driver of the tow jeep to take it slow but for the love of God get going.
They were only going to get so much time before the planes went up again.
There were many good reasons to live, and no good reasons to die.
***
They were lucky to hole up before dawn in a fissured land, all wadis and twisting valleys coming down from the south and southwest.
The truck was tucked under a near-vertical embankment and their jeeps were well camouflaged under the nets. There were even small, spiny bushes in scattered clumps where the water was close to the surface.
The column was scattered all up and down. They didn’t see an aircraft in the sky, and while others puttered about, keeping under cover as best they could, all Owen wanted to do was to sleep.