by Dana Fredsti
After a moment’s debate, she hiked up her broadcloth dress in order to remove her bloomers. Her chemise would be more than sufficient to serve as an undergarment. The discarded drawers bunched around her ankles, and as she struggled to kick them off, an unfamiliar rumbling sounded from behind her.
Straightening, she turned, shading her eyes again. Off in the distance to the southwest, a vehicle roared toward her.
33
Somewhere in the Western Desert, Egypt
Seven days after the Event
It all happened so quickly. One instant, seated on the bridge with his hands up, ready to take a crossbow bolt meant for his master. The next, a brief flash of movement—then, somehow, completely immersed in black velvet, removed from sight or sound.
Just as he was acclimatizing himself to death—light again.
Blake extricated himself from the egg-shaped capsule that had apparently saved his life. It had peeled open to let him out, after which it began to dissolve into liquid, pouring itself away like living trails of candlewax. He paid it no mind, having only one thought—find Mehta.
Climbing to his feet, he slowly scanned the horizon, stopping when he saw distant flames and smoke to the northwest. Part of him realized he was looking at the Vanuatu—he had seen his share of crash sites before. The same part noted that there was an excellent chance Mehta was dead. It changed nothing. He began marching toward the flames.
The waves of heat and the chalky, rock-strewn wasteland prompted a sense of déjà vu in him. He actually had been here before, in this very place, and not that many years ago. This bare, haunted landscape was where he had fought some of the toughest skirmishes of his life. He’d seen horrible things here. He’d lost comrades here.
He’d killed a lot of men here.
The emotionless part of him did some cold calculations. Walking in the open North African sun without water or protection was a death sentence. In this sun-baked environment, his hypnosis-driven directive would kill him. If he didn’t find Mehta, he only had hours to live.
Maybe I’ve returned here to die. The small part of him that could still think freely thought there was something fitting about it all.
* * *
Blake walked unceasingly, with the grace of a robot and the fixedness of a dead man. A fat little scorpion crossed his path, slightly larger than his outstretched palm and the color of a half-healed scab. He kicked out at it at once, pinning it to the rocky ground as it struggled to sting him.
Steering it with a careful movement of his foot, he let it sink its deadly stinger deep into his boot heel. He quickly pulled out his Fairbairn–Sykes knife and cut that off, then bit off both its claws and spat them out. Pausing only long enough to blow the desert dust off its body, he popped the whole thing into his mouth, angry thrashing tail and all. It felt and tasted like a giant burst of pus, but it was pure protein. Culinary abomination or no, he had acquired a taste for scorpion during his time here.
A familiar mechanical rumbling sound caught his ear. Again, old instincts kicked in and he dove to the ground. At first, he could only make out wavy heat mirages, bands of water and dark illusionary shapes on the horizon, but he didn’t need to see the source. He recognized the sound perfectly well. It was the engine of a German Zündapp KS 750 motorcycle.
Quickly peeling off his shirt, he waited.
He didn’t have to wait long. It was heading straight toward the crash site, no doubt to check out the fire and smoke. Stretched out on the blistering hot gravel, his beret and pullover bundled up like a pillow beneath his head, he palmed his knife and sized the situation up through slit eyes.
One soldier on the bike, a second in the sidecar manning a mounted MG 34. Both in all too-familiar tan uniforms, sweat-stained scarves and dust-flecked goggles beneath their Deutsches Afrikakorps caps.
Showtime.
“Jürgen!” Blake cried out, waving his arm feebly. “Jürgen, bist du das, du kleine Kotzbrocken?” Jürgen, is that you, you little puke?
He grimaced and moaned, clutching his side.
The driver pulled to a stop. “Ach du Scheiße…” he exclaimed, pulling up his goggles. He hopped off and ran over to have a look. Blake noted that the trooper in the sidecar was covering him with the machine gun.
“Verdammt!” Blake cried out again. “Die scheiß Tommys haben mich am Arsch!”
“Lass mich sehen,” the soldier said, kneeling at his side and leaning in. Let me see.
“Siehst du?” Blake responded. See? He grabbed the man’s collar with one hand and, with the other, slipped his commando knife up into the startled man’s chin. The man died instantly and soundlessly.
Propping his victim’s head upright with the blade, he blocked the view of the other soldier while he reached over and slipped the German’s Luger from its holster. Using the dead man’s body as cover, he sat up and squeezed off two shots at the machine gunner’s head, dropping him instantly. The entire exchange took less than twenty seconds.
Blake wasted no time getting to his feet and searching the two dead troopers for anything useful before mounting the bike and setting off for the crash site. Even under the control of Mehta’s serum, the real Blake felt something hard to describe deep inside.
Killing men here felt like coming home.
* * *
Mortified, Nellie gasped when she saw the vehicle approaching, hastily pulling down her skirts and redoubling her efforts to kick off the bloomers that clung around her feet. She smoothed her dress down, then remembered her top, untying it from around her waist and pulling it back on. While she fumbled to button up with one hand, she waved down the mechanical transport with the other.
It seemed to be some kind of chunky, mechanized bicycle or velocipede—something like Merlin’s floating hoverbike, only noisier, ground-locked, and not nearly as streamlined. It trailed smoke and carried a wheeled passenger compartment alongside. The road engine pulled up, shut off, and its driver dismounted.
He wore a drab cotton shirt and cap, in an unfamiliar military style, with imposing goggles and a scarf that covered his face, lending him a worrisome air, as of a bandit or highwayman. Perhaps she should have hidden instead.
Then again, the man had two canteens of water slung over his shoulder. She eyed them hopefully, realizing how dry her throat had become.
“Oh, sir,” she began as the man dismounted. “I’m so glad to see you. There’s been a dreadful crash—” She stopped as he strode up to her, lifting his goggles and removing the scarf. With a shock, she saw it was Blake. She backed away from him, stumbling.
“You need to help me find Mehta,” he said flatly.
“I certainly will not!”
“Suit yourself,” he shot back. “You’re coming back with me all the same.” Seizing her arm before she could run, he tossed her over one shoulder as a butcher might tote a side of beef, nimbly crouching down to pick up her bloomers before carting his prize back to the vehicle just like some Roman bravo in The Rape of the Sabine Women. While she yelped in protest, he planted her in the passenger seat.
To add insult to injury, he proceeded to tear her bloomers into strips, using them to first tie up her wrists, and then her arms and torso, securing her to the seat with a loop in the back for good measure. At this final indignity, Nellie hurled several colorful curses. He remained unmoved.
“Do I need to tie your ankles, as well?”
She stopped her thrashing. “No.”
With an unexpectedly gallant touch, he produced a pair of goggles and cap, and gently fitted them on her face before taking his seat and restarting the engine. Nellie remained still as the vehicle set off. Not because he had won her submission—quite the opposite. She knew something he did not.
Quietly and unobtrusively, she raised her bound hands to her chest. The restraint across her torso restricted her movement, but not enough to prevent her plans. If she contorted her wrists slightly, she could undo first one, then a second button. She peered sidelong at Blake. His goggled
eyes were preoccupied with searching the landscape.
All the better.
Slipping two fingers past the unbuttoned fabric of her dress into her chemise, she plucked out a white disk about the size of a quarter and palmed it.
“Sgt. Blake?” she called out as demurely as she could manage and still be heard over the roar of the engine.
“What?” he responded brusquely.
“I’m terribly thirsty.” True enough. “Do you have any water?” Without turning he unslung one of the canteens and unscrewed the cap. Keeping one hand on the handlebars, he handed it back to her, still keeping his eyes straight ahead.
“I’m sorry, please, I can’t quite reach,” Nellie said as piteously as possible. Heaving an impatient sigh, he pulled to a stop and turned to face her. She looked up at him, playing her eyes like an instrument, keeping her hands close to her chest, as though the restraint binding her upper body simply couldn’t allow her to raise them any higher.
“Here,” he said gruffly, holding it close to her lips. Nellie leaned forward and let him pour from the canteen, drinking the water eagerly until she had her fill.
“Had enough?” he asked.
“Yes, thank you.” She smiled—and then clamped her bound hands on his wrist. Jerking his arm free from her grasp, Blake stared at the small white disk now stuck to his skin.
“What the devil?” He tried tearing it off, but whatever material the tablet was made of, it was already dissolving into his skin. Blake stiffened as if poisoned, eyes rolling back in his head. As limp as a dead fish, he slid off the seat and hit the ground.
“Blake!” Nellie cried, trying to twist out of her restraints in earnest. “Are you alright?” She pulled at the strip tethering her to the sidecar, and bit the knots at her wrists. Before she could free herself, Blake got to his feet, a knife in one hand.
“Blake…?” Nellie said uncertainly.
“I owe you for that.”
Nellie’s heart skipped a beat as he approached the sidecar, taking her bound wrists in one hand. Before she could beg for her life, he cut her ties with a single clean slice.
Nellie beamed. “Oh, Blake, you’re back!”
“Yes I am,” he replied. “And next time I see Mehta, this knife is going right into his guts.” He quickly finished cutting her free. “Good trick, slipping me that little wafer. How did you manage to get the antidote?”
“The ship gave it to us.” Nellie replied. “It took some doing, but it finally cooked up a counteractive agent. We were just about to administer it to you aboard the Vanuatu when…” Her voice trailed off.
“When the ship was destroyed.” Blake finished.
“Do you think the others were saved as well?”
Blake had no answer.
* * *
Sitting up, Harcourt steadied his hat. The egg-shaped capsule peeled away until it was just a bowl of the endlessly malleable ship-stuff. The bowl gently rocked him back and forth—because it was now a boat, and he was bobbing in the ocean.
Terror seized him as he scanned the dark water. He knew all too well what could be lurking below.
“Oh dear. Oh no, no, no,” he whimpered, wishing more than anything for a bottle of his patented nerve elixir.
* * *
Mehta emerged from his capsule, holding up a hand to shade his eyes from the desert sun as he stepped out onto the stony ground, the egg dissolving behind him. He regarded his audience—a column of tanks and scores of German infantryman, all with weapons trained on him. The lines of tanks stretched back for a considerable distance.
It was the vanguard of an army.
Mehta lay a hand over his slim medical satchel and smiled at the swastikas and iron crosses.
I can work with this.
34
Northeast of Point 44, Tel el Aqqaqir, Egypt
Second Battle of El Alamein
November 2, 1942, 0359 hours
6.75 hours before the Event
The barrage began five minutes past 0100 hours, just as the moon rose. Though the waning lunar sliver provided no light to speak of, the constant drumming rain of twenty-five-pounder shells and the accompanying explosions lit up the night sky.
Every night now, thought Oberleutnant Behrendt. The artillery barrages and the aerial bombings never stopped.
This night was exceptionally cold. When he blew on his hands to warm them, Behrendt could see his own misty breath. Outside, each pounding roar shattered the silence of the night, shaking the earth beneath the twenty-three-tonne bulk of their Panzer III.
He looked down at their gunner, Siegmund. The back of the man’s sandy-haired head rested against the cold steel wall of the turret. After ten solid days of fighting, it no longer amazed Behrendt how easy it was for any of his crew to snatch a few minutes of sleep inside a tank, even through the Sturm und Drang of an incoming barrage.
Rest now while you can, he thought. The gunner would be busy enough before the sun rose.
Their current position, Aqqaqir Ridge, was barely worthy of the name. Like most of the features on the battle maps of the region, it scarcely rose above the relentless flatness so prevalent in the desert. The only trace of any identifying mark was the crumbled stones of an ancient well, dried up since Roman times.
For three hours he watched the exchange of fire. Then increasingly, a new sound caught his ear—not the earth-pounding cannonade of the dueling artillery, but something softer, an eerie keening echoing in the distance, growing inexorably closer. Metzinger, the crew’s ammo loader, looked up with a puzzled frown.
“Is that screeching racket what I think it is?”
Behrendt nodded. That hair-raising noise was unmistakable—the skirling of bagpipes. The 51st Highlander infantry was advancing.
“Genau,” he replied. “The Ladies from Hell are coming round for tea.”
If the Scots were moving forward, they wouldn’t be alone. The New Zealanders, including a battalion of their dark-skinned tattooed Maori savages, were waiting on their flank, and the Allied armored units wouldn’t be far behind. The wedge Monty was driving through their lines was coming point first. Straight at them.
“Sie da, wake up Sig,” he called down to their loader. “Time to go collect more notches on our barrel.” Orders to the line had been very specific. To preserve their precious ammo, they would not open fire until the Brit armor units were between eight and twelve hundred meters away.
“SWORD ONE, SWORD TWO, this is Sword Leader,” Behrendt said into his microphone, calling out to the only other tanks left in their squadron. “Here they come. Hold your fire until my signal.”
0709 hours
Approximately 3.5 hours before the Event
The rising morning heat brought the familiar smell of hot engine oil and sweat. In the front of the claustrophobic interior, their loader worked his usual double time, readying the heavy shells with every shot of the big gun, and serving the ammo to the machine guns.
It was a dangerous job, the recoil slamming back within inches of his face each time. The empty shell holder soon overflowed, and the hot casings tumbled to the floor, making a clanking racket and crowding the deck as they rolled around like discarded wine bottles at a drunken party.
Behrendt spoke rapidly into his microphone, steering his men toward their targets.
“Noch einmal!” he called out. The loader rushed to slam another shell into the breech, and they fired again. This time the armor-piercing round punched through its target and a plume of high-octane petrol burst up in the morning air. Smoke and flame poured out from the hatches, and the Tommies inside leapt out, rolling in the hot sand to put out their burning clothes. That made them easy targets for their machine guns.
Can’t afford to have pity—can’t be soft, Behrendt told himself as he watched men die. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand and cranked open the cupola’s hatch for a better look at the battlefield. Outside felt like a filthy, murky oven. Under the vaguely copper-colored sky, reddish explosions and str
eams of tracer bullets cut through thick clouds of dust obscuring the sight of dozens of enemy tanks and armored cars strewn about as far as he could see, wrecked or burning. One tank lay a mere twenty meters away, hit with such force it had been bowled over onto its side.
Another Crusader emerged from the smoke and dust. A direct hit had set it on fire. Although only dead and dying men could still be inside, it continued to lumber toward them like a Viking funeral, some dead man’s foot still on the accelerator. He watched the ghost tank with morbid fascination, a funeral pyre propelling itself across the hellish landscape.
A shell exploded uncomfortably near, sending white-hot scraps of shrapnel screaming past him and snapping him out of his daydream. More tanks were coming.
Many more.
0959 hours
Forty-five minutes before the Event
“Kommandant, this is Sword Leader,” Behrendt reported in to his division commander. “We are observing an unidentified tank design in the British advance. They appear to be well armored, and are armed with a large-bore gun, I estimate seventy-five-millimeter.” Better than ours, he thought. “They are moving very fast.”
“We read you, Sword Leader. Continue to engage from your current position.”
“Jawohl, Sword out.”
Yet another pair of British fighter planes buzzed overhead, chasing a fleeing Stuka. The Oberleutnant shook his head. The ground was shaking worse than before. Though their field guns and the 88s were still eliminating tank after tank, there were simply too many. The tide of British tanks was coming inexorably closer, close enough to count the rivets on their armor plating. Both sides were firing at point-blank range now.
And then they were upon the line.
Just down-ridge from their tank, the closest German 88 gun opened fire on a charging Crusader from only a handful of meters away. The blast tore the top half of the tank clean off, nearly flipping the vehicle back end over end. It was their last shot. The next Brit tank roared up, driving straight for them, crushing the gunpit and the gunners alike beneath its grinding treads.