A Good Clean Fight (6 page)

“Human error.”

“Just as dead.”

Nobody wanted to discuss it. The Rhodesian patrol of the Long Range Desert Group had been driving across a stretch of sand so flat and so wide and so empty that you
could see a lost jerrican at twenty miles, when a pair of RAF Beaufighters found them. There were recognition signals for just such a situation, but the Beaufighters kept attacking despite the recognition signals. Human error. Human dead.

“We bury Harris and then we beat it south,” Lampard said.

*   *   *

Paul Schramm walked all night and reached the top of the escarpment just before dawn. He stopped there and waited for daylight so that he could find a way down to the plain. His entire body ached with fatigue and his feet felt as if they had been tenderized with steak mallets, but he commanded himself to keep moving, to keep limping up and down, to stay awake.

A couple of hours earlier he had paused for a few minutes. He had stretched out on the ground and rested his feet on a bank of earth because he remembered reading somewhere that infantry on the march always did this when they fell out for a break: something to do with letting the blood drain away from the legs. Schramm was not an infantryman. He was a middle-aged intelligence officer with a bad limp, and when he tried to stand, even the limp was a lost skill. His legs were a wash-out: his feet didn't want to take his weight and his knees disowned any responsibility for anything. It took him a long time to persuade the leg joints to bend again and the leg muscles to carry his weary body along the broken tracks of the Jebel.

His legs' readiness to quit surprised him. Thereafter he did not trust them. He kept them working all the way to the edge of the escarpment, and then he refused to sit down, although his knees were wobbly and the soles of his feet were hot with blood.

It had been an interesting walk, probably far longer than it need have been because at first he kept losing his sense of direction in the moonless gloom. The wadis wandered and divided and tried to lead him in circles, so he climbed to the highest spot—a ruined tomb, as it turned out—and tried to identify some stars. While he was at it he decided to dump the grenades, which were heavy and awkward. He left them in the tomb. He set off, looking at the stars but thinking of some inquisitive Arab boy getting blown to bits (or, even worse, half-blown to bits). He went back and retrieved the grenades. For the first time since he had killed him, he thought of Harris.

And with pleasure. Schramm was not a violent man. He rarely allowed himself to lose his temper. Given the chance, he would sidestep to avoid treading on an insect. Yet there was something symbolic about whacking Harris on the head. Harris's weakness had been his brain. His body was splendidly trained to do its job, but his brain was small and weak, too small to consider the possibility that his victim might have the nerve to wait in ambush.

Now, as he trudged away from this high and lonely tomb, wearing Harris's right boot and stuffing Harris's grenades back in the pockets of Harris's tunic, Schramm was amazed at, and appalled by, his own audacity. One attack: one chance. If he had failed, Harris would have caught him in ten seconds and knifed him in twelve. But he hadn't failed! And how many unarmed middle-aged gammy-legged German officers had cracked the skull of a young thug of a Commando? Schramm shivered with pride. Then, almost at once, he sneered at himself for being such a caveman. To celebrate killing Harris was to come down to Harris's level.

Ah, but there was also Captain Lampard. Schramm had made a fool of Lampard, too. Furthermore, he had discovered a few useful things about him. Lampard was quickwitted and intelligent: he had let Schramm run away rather
than alarm the Storch. He was cocky to the point of arrogance: he should have kept Schramm blindfolded or at least shut away in a cave, instead of allowing him to watch the patrol at work. And the decision to send only one man to catch him was significant. It was as if Lampard had been showing off to Schramm, minimizing his escape. Lampard's nerve was strong, but sometimes his judgment was weak. That was worth remembering.

Soon Schramm forgot Harris and Lampard and the rest of them. It took all his attention to concentrate on walking north. He was not convinced that he was steering by the right stars. Then he had a stroke of luck. The British began bombing somewhere—probably another airfield, maybe Benina or Berka, which were near Benghazi; it was unlikely they would go for Barce again so soon—and he saw the wandering stab of searchlights, which he used as a guide. The raid ended; he trudged on and had a stroke of bad luck: he blundered into an Arab camp and set the dogs howling. He backtracked and made a wide detour. Too wide: he roused another camp. The alarm spread and every dog aroused another dog. The night was slashed with howling. Schramm zigzagged miserably through it all, wishing he had a stick to defend himself; Harris's revolver wouldn't be much use if some rabid cur tried to savage his legs. Then, for no reason, someone on a hilltop fired at him. The flash and bang so startled Schramm that he stumbled, fell, and cut his knee. Indignation and pain made a powerful cocktail. He dragged Harris's revolver from its holster and exploded three colossal, deafening shots at the night. He sprawled on the ground and massaged his right wrist, which had suffered from the recoil. The echoes died and even the dogs were silenced by his fit of rage. He crawled away, cursing. But not loudly.

The rest of his trek was a blur of memory. Sometimes he couldn't remember where he was going, sometimes he remembered where but not why. Fatigue fogged his brain
and left his body plodding on in a state of pointless, pigheaded obstinacy. In the end, arrival at the escarpment came as a small shock.

Then dawn, too, came with a speed that surprised him; or perhaps he had dozed off as he ambled up and down. Anyway, there was no sign of a track down the hillside and no sign of Barce airfield below. He was miles and miles off course.

Full daylight arrived before he found a track. Going downhill made his knees ache and cramped his thighs. He told his legs to stop complaining, they should think themselves lucky they weren't going up. Somehow or other he reached the bottom. Feeble and wet with sweat. He knew the sun was shining because he couldn't see it. Already the whole sky was one great roasting dazzle.

The obvious thing to do now was to walk across the plain. Schramm squinted and saw no end to it. His legs got this message and threatened mutiny. Everything he looked at shimmered in the heat. Even he was shimmering; trembling more and more violently.
Come on
, he told himself petulantly,
you are an officer, now demonstrate your powers of leadership, you idiot.
He demonstrated his powers of leadership. He got rid of the hand-grenades. One by one he pulled the pins and flung the grenades quite a long way. They exploded with very impressive cracks and crumps and pillars of smoke.
Total waste of time and effort
, he told himself, by now in a thoroughly bad temper.

As it happened, the grenades did a lot of good. A battalion of infantry, eating breakfast at the roadside a mile away, heard the bangs and sent a squad of men to investigate. They found Schramm trudging unsteadily in the wrong direction. An hour later he was on a bed in the hospital at Barce airfield and a Luftwaffe doctor was extracting bits of sock from the ragged soles of his feet. “How far did you walk?” he asked.

Schramm opened his eyes, then shut them. “Only the
first two meters,” he said. “I skipped the rest.” He groaned as more skin came away.

“See what happens to you when you tell bad jokes,” the doctor said.

The station commander, Oberstleutnant Benno Hoffmann, came in. “Well, I tried,” he said. “They say there isn't a spare airplane within a hundred kilometers.” Hoffmann had a camera. He began taking pictures of the feet.

“What's that for?” Schramm asked.

“Cookhouse. I want it clearly understood that this meat is unfit for human consumption. And even if they had a spare plane they still wouldn't send it. Smile for daddy.” He took a couple of full-length shots.

“Why not?” Schramm asked. Apart from an occasional twitch as the skin came off, he lay as still as a log.

“Oh, lots of reasons,” Hoffmann said. “They're at least a hundred and fifty kilometers from here by now, so they're somewhere in the Sahara, and the Sahara is the size of France, and it's only four trucks and a dozen men, so if you don't know where they are you'll never find them.” He sat at the bedside and felt Schramm's wrist, seeking the pulse. “Forget about them, Paul. Just think about getting your strength back.”

“I know exactly where they are,” Schramm said. “They're driving south, fast as they can. They want to squeeze through the gap between Jalo Oasis and the Calanscio Sand Sea. After that it's wide open desert and they're safe.”

“Radio the garrison at Jalo,” suggested the doctor, whose name was Max.

“Italians,” Hoffmann said.

“Don't we talk to our glorious allies?”

“They don't always listen. They especially don't always listen if it means going out looking for huge, ferocious, British Commandos.”

“Special Air Service,” Schramm corrected.

“Shut up, you, you're dead.” Hoffmann frowned at the doctor. “At least, my bit's dead. How are your bits?” Max left Schramm's feet and repositioned Hoffmann's fingers. “Ah!” Hoffmann said. “You nearly slipped away, there, Paul. Try to pay more attention.”

“They'll go through the Jalo Gap at midday,” Schramm said.

“For all you know they're still hiding in the Jebel.”

“They're not hiding in the Jebel.” Schramm's voice was low but firm. “They've used up all their bombs. Soon they'll be getting low on fuel and food. They want to go home.”

“They told you all this?”

“They told me I was on my way to Egypt. And their trucks are half-empty. I could tell that from the suspension. Too much bounce in the springs.”

“I've finished stripping the wallpaper,” Max said. “Now I'm going to paint some magic muck on your feet before I bandage them. This may sting a bit.”

“Oh Christ,” Schramm said. “I know what that means. Give me something to hang on to.” Hoffmann offered his hands and Schramm gripped his wrists. “We've still got that Storch, haven't we?” Schramm asked. “The one that found me?” Hoffmann nodded. He wished Paul would shut up. The grip on his wrists was tightening and sweat was popping out of Schramm's forehead like rain on a windscreen. “Give me the Storch,” Schramm said. “I can show the pilot where to look.” Now the sweat was chasing itself down his face. “Nearly done,” Max said. They could hear his fingers slapping on the magic muck. “If I find them,” Schramm said, “you can persuade Operations to send a bomber or two, can't you?”

Hoffmann found himself nodding. “This is pure blackmail,” he said.

“Done,” said Max. Schramm's grip slowly relaxed.

“You're not fit to fly,” Max told him.

“He's not going to fly,” Hoffmann said. “He's going to sit beside the pilot and look. He's fit to look, isn't he?”

*   *   *

Lampard's patrol was less than halfway to Jalo Oasis when dawn broke. There had been trouble with the trucks: first a puncture, then dust clogging a carburettor, then another puncture. They drove without lights, not knowing who might be out searching for them. It was a moonless night. Once they left the Jebel the country was low-lying desert; neither flat nor hilly, dotted with scrub, very boring; but it was always possible to buckle the steering on a very boring rock. And there was the Tariq el 'Abd to be crossed.

The Tariq was an ancient camel trail. The Jebel formed part of a great two hundred-mile bulge into the Mediterranean, and the Tariq was a short cut across the base of that bulge. German and Italian generals felt uncomfortable at the thought that anyone could so easily travel so close to their flank, and all along the Tariq they had scattered tens of thousands of “thermos” bombs: anti-personnel bombs designed to look like vacuum flasks. Unscrew the cap and it blew your arms off. Drive over one and it blew your wheel off. Maybe more.

Lampard halted his patrol a few miles short of the Tariq el 'Abd when he reckoned dawn was still half an hour away. Within a minute, a fire was lit and a dixie of water was set to boil. To brew up in the desert, all you needed was a large tin filled with sand and soaked in petrol. It burned cleanly and steadily, and for a surprisingly long time. Soon bacon was frying alongside the brew-up.

They had stopped in a hollow. Lampard didn't care if he was seen by passing aircraft—a fire in the desert wasn't worth a bomb or even a bullet, there were always Arab fires twinkling on the horizon—but he cared about German armored cars. After all that havoc at Barce the enemy
must be out hunting him. Of course the desert was vast, it was easy to vanish into it, but if you were found there was nowhere to run to and nothing to hide behind. In fact you were lucky if you could run. On his first patrol Lampard had discovered what it was like to have to run: they had been chased for an hour, flat out, by vehicles that might have been German armored cars or might have been a roaming unit from the flank of the Eighth Army. Nobody could identify them and nobody wanted to let them get close enough to be identifiable, so the patrol just turned and ran, trying not to think about punctures and hoping that if there were any soft sand about, the other lot would get stuck in it. In the end they out-ran them and never found out whether it was a great escape or all a waste of time. That's what happened when you were lucky. If you were unlucky and they jumped you, it would probably be a very brief fight. In fact it probably wouldn't be any kind of fight, just a sudden storm of heavy machine-gun fire laced with cannon shells, and the patrol vehicles, being soft-skinned, would get torn to bits. What would happen to the members of the patrol, being even more soft-skinned, wasn't worth thinking about.