A Good Clean Fight (32 page)

“You found this unfortunate Australian major lying in
a rosebed,” Kerr said. Lampard nodded. “How did you know he had fallen from a balcony?” Kerr asked.

“It was obvious.”

“It was pitch-black.”

Lampard turned his head, deliberately, and looked out of the window.

“All right, let's put that aside for the moment,” Kerr said, “while we take another look at Tony Waterman's death.” That brought Lampard's attention back with a snap. “Refresh my memory,” Kerr said.

“It's all in my report. The Stukas got him.”

“Yes? Describe the scene.”

“Oh, don't be so bloody silly.” Bad move, Lampard realized. He got his temper under control. “They caught us in the open. We did the usual—spread out, dodged about, ran like hell. Most bombs missed. One didn't.”

“A direct hit?”

“Probably. The truck got blown to bits, I know that.”

“Small bits?”

“I didn't measure them.” Lampard was having trouble with his temper again. “Yes, of course small bits.”

“Including Waterman? No point in looking for his body?”

“He was dead. The Stukas were still very lively. If anyone had stopped to poke through the wreckage I'd have court-martialled him.”

“Of course. But next day?”

Lampard sighed. “Nothing worth burying. Maybe the vermin got there first.”

“Ah.” Kerr seemed satisfied at last. He reached into a drawer and placed two small discs on the chalk cross. “Tony Waterman's dog-tags,” he said. “As I believe the Americans call them.”

Lampard examined them. One disc was scorched and twisted, the other was intact. He held the intact disc between finger and thumb, as if it were a rare coin. “Someone
found these lying in the desert?” he said. “That's amazing.”

“No. Someone found them in the cab of a burned-out truck on the edge of Jalo Oasis,” Kerr said. “Which is more than amazing. It's staggering.”

“If true. I don't believe it. Who says he found them?”

“An Italian officer of the Jalo garrison. He sent them to Benghazi. One of our agents there arranged for them to be stolen, and he posted them here via the next Long Range Desert Group patrol, together with an order for a sack of tea. Apparently the Arabs will do anything for tea. Did you know that?”

Lampard carefully replaced the discs on the chalk cross.

“You had no orders to attack Jalo,” Kerr said. “If Tony Waterman died on the edge of Jalo Oasis you have some serious questions to answer. Such as what you were doing there, how it went so sadly wrong, and why you invented a Stuka attack fifty miles away to cover it up. Compared to all that, the violent death of an Australian major is like an overdue library book.”

Lampard said nothing. His eyes had the sullen, uncooperative look that Kerr had seen many times before, the look of someone who had been caught with his hands in the petty cash.

“I don't understand you,” Kerr said. “Why do such a stupid thing? I don't mean the Jalo attack. I mean lying about it. We all make tactical mistakes, we all lose men, nobody gets upset about that, it's war. But a patrol leader who comes back and tells outright, downright lies, who pretends the losses were not his responsibility . . .” Kerr shook his head. “The British army takes a very dim view. That sort of thing simply cannot be ignored. You must know that.”

Lampard mumbled: “I did my best.” His shoulders were hunched defensively. Kerr had the feeling that if he shouted suddenly, Lampard might cry.

“Spare me your self-pity,” he said. “It doesn't suit an officer of this regiment. If you're not strong enough to lead, then resign your commission and let better men lead
you
.” He poked at Waterman's discs with a pencil. “And, who knows, maybe kill you too.”

“Sorry,” Lampard said.

Kerr got up and opened a wall safe, took out a heavily sealed envelope and dropped it in Lampard's lap. “Your orders,” he said. “Open them after Kufra. I wish you a successful patrol. You may need all the success you can get.”

Lampard left.

Kerr picked up the discs and rubbed out the chalk cross. He took a sheet of paper and wrote:

This officer has the potential to be an extremely successful patrol leader. He has already led raids that have inflicted great damage. (His reported score of aircraft destroyed at Barce has been independently confirmed.) He is successful partly because he is skilled and singleminded in attack, and partly because he is often totally lacking in consideration for the safety of others—or indeed himself. If he has a weakness it is that he is so obsessed with achieving success that he cannot tolerate any criticism of his failure, great or small. In future his patrol reports must be carefully scrutinized and doublechecked in every detail. On return from his current patrol the colonel should interview him. Promotion and/or decoration are due, but may not be advisable.

Kerr found Lampard's file, clipped the sheet to it, and tossed the file into his out-tray. On his blotter he scribbled:
Send Lt. Pemberton to interview Mrs. d'Armytage a.s.a.p

An hour and ten minutes later, Lampard led his patrol out of Cairo. They passed the Pyramids, skirted a little hill
called the Gebel el Khashab, and headed into the empty sands. Lampard relaxed: his problems were behind him. The beauty of the Sahara was that you could vanish into it. He began to sing. Corporal Pocock, who was driving the jeep, thought it was something wrong with the transmission at first. Lampard had a truly terrible singing voice.

Fanny Barton had briefed his squadron to strafe the target once only, break left and get out fast and low.

Greek George broke right. Something huge and hot exploded on the ground and its blast blew his Tomahawk squarely to the right. He was dazed; for a second or two the world was black on white. Then he saw the horizon trying to stand on its ear, and so his hands and feet automatically did the right things and the airplane completed its barrel roll. Color leaked back into his eyes. Red and yellow tracer slid past the right wingtip, grew tired, fell away. George discovered that he was holding his breath, a bad habit in battle, so he let it go and filled his lungs a few times. Better, much better. So why was he shaking like a man in a fever?

He took the fighter up a couple of hundred feet and as it climbed he knew that he wasn't shaking. The aircraft was. By the time he leveled off he was sure he knew why. At least one propeller blade was bent or bust. Maybe more than one. He circled and tested all the controls, and they worked, so it had to be the prop. “Fucking prop,” he said in Greek. That was a mistake: a pilot should never insult his aircraft before he has landed. Half a minute later, an angry bang came from the direction of the prop. At once the shaking became much worse. George had been trying to read his compass through the agitated blur of vibration. The frantic judder made it completely useless.

So he was lost. The midday sun cast no shadow. He could be flying east or west, north or south. Meanwhile, his Tomahawk
was shaking itself to death. For all he knew he was hurrying deeper into enemy territory. He might as well get out, before a wing came off. The fighter would not climb, so he couldn't bale out. Too late to use his radio. Anyway, nobody would find him. He switched off the engine.

The racket ceased, the shaking stopped. He slid back the cockpit canopy and tightened his straps. The airstream sang its tuneless song. By now the Tomahawk was seconds away from its last touchdown.

As ever, it led with its chin. The desert came up and hit the gaping shark's teeth so hard that the airplane bounced, twice, and then stuck out a wingtip and, showing a kind of grim, suicidal fury, cartwheeled into a heap of boulders. The last thing George knew was he was hanging upside-down in a fog of petrol fumes. He whacked the strap-release buckle and fell on his head. The day ended.

Butcher Bailey also failed to break left.

He machine-gunned a column of trucks, leaped the column like a show-jumper and felt a massive thump that numbed his arms and hands. Two cannon shells had battered his back armor. The steel kept them out, but his spine felt the shock. For a long while he could not move the control column. The Tomahawk flew itself until life and pain drained back down his arms. By then the rest of the squadron was out of sight.

Butcher experimented. His arms ached as if they had been clubbed and his fingers had precious little grip, but they moved the column. He nudged the Tomahawk up a bit and then left a bit, until he reckoned he was on course for home. The Allison engine roared steadily. For fifteen miles, twenty, thirty, he kept turning his head to make sure nothing was chasing him. While he was doing this he saw his shadow on the sand. A long thin scarf spilled out behind the silhouette. It was coolant. The engine was losing coolant, a lot of it, fast.

The needle on the dial that measured engine temperature
was already edging its way into the red. Butcher put the undercarriage down before the engine boiled dry and seized up solid. The desert looked helpfully flat and there was no lack of it. He switched the engine off as the wheels touched. Immediately, he tried to call LG 181. All he could hear was a thick hum and his ears were manufacturing that. The radio was dead. Killed in action.

The Tomahawk ran and ran until finally its tail sank and it trundled to a halt.

Butcher undid his straps and stood on his seat-parachute. His back felt like a rucksack full of hot rocks. He turned slowly through a full circle and in all that space he saw nothing in the desert except his own wheel-tracks. He heard nothing but the soft sizzle and creak of his engine. He smelled nothing but the friendly, leathery aroma of the cockpit. Everything else, to the horizon and God knew how far beyond, had been baked to death a million times over.

Butcher wiped salt sweat from his eyes. He swore until the futility of his voice depressed him, and then he climbed down and sat under a wing.

*   *   *

Skull debriefed the pilots. Once the strafe had begun, nobody had seen what became of Greek George and Butcher Bailey.

“One is so frightfully busy,” Tiny Lush said. “You know how it is.” Skull cleaned his spectacles. “No, on second thoughts, you don't,” Tiny said.

Hick Hooper was in the mess tent, drinking the remains of somebody else's tepid and dusty tea, when Pinky Dalgleish came in and said, “Your kite's operational, isn't it?”

“Sure. Got a few scratches, that's all.”

“Right. If you're hungry, grab a slice of bully. We're off to look for those two.”

“Good.”

Dalgleish rubbed his eyes and blinked hard. “No, I wouldn't go that far, Hick. Eleven-to-three against is what I'd offer, and that's generous. Either they went down in the target area, or they didn't. If they did, they're in the bag. If they didn't, we've got about five thousand square miles to search. Still, it's worth a try.”

“Suppose we find them. What do we do?”

“Land, if you can. Park the bloke in your lap and take off. He waggles the stick and you work the rudder pedals. Dunno who operates the throttle and the undercarriage. Toss for it, I suppose. Highly uncomfortable, but it's been done.”

“And if we can't get down?”

Dalgleish sighed. “Make a cross on the map and give it to Fanny. He gets paid more than we do. Come on. Sooner we go, sooner we get back.”

*   *   *

Fanny Barton sat in the shade of an awning fixed to his truck and watched his intelligence officer approach. The awning was canvas, so bleached and baked that the next sandstorm would split its fragile seams. Barton hoped that Skull's giant golfing umbrella would go too. He was sick of the sight of it. If Skull's great brain was too sensitive for the sun he shouldn't be here.

“I've debriefed them,” Skull said. “D'you want to tear up my notes now or later?”

“Just tell me.”

“Right. As usual, the significant item of intelligence is what did not happen. No burning vehicles, for instance. Every pilot reported hitting a truck, or several trucks. No pilot saw flames.”

“So what?”

“Well, the target was supposedly a German army vehicle
park. Normally German trucks are fueled-up. When strafed, a fueled-up truck should burn. These didn't.” He twirled his umbrella.

“You're paid to be so bloody clever,” Barton said wearily. “Go on, amaze me.”

“I think the target was phony. All those trucks were cripples, probably British, probably abandoned in the last retreat. There must be a thousand of them scattered about out there. My guess is the Germans collected a couple of hundred, lined them up in a neat square, maybe painted the ones on the outside, planted a few flak batteries all around, and waited.”

Barton thought of the reconnaissance photographs of the target he had studied. No sign of flak batteries on those pictures. He had known then that there must be flak, that it must be hidden, camouflaged, and anyway the recce aircraft was two miles high when it flew over. What he hadn't expected was such a savage barrage of flak. It had totally boxed the squadron and shaken it like soil in a sieve. “Bad luck,” he said.

“I think not,” Skull said. “You have said you will fox the enemy. On this occasion the enemy has foxed you.” Barton was silent. “I take no pleasure in reaching that conclusion,” Skull said. “Butcher Bailey and Greek George are not going to return, are they? Both must be out of fuel long ago.”

“It's a setback,” Barton said. “It's not a defeat.”

*   *   *

Ninety minutes after they had taken off, Dalgleish and Hooper landed. Skull came to the door of his tent and looked. Dalgleish shook his head. Skull went back in.

They ate cold stew in the mess tent. Tiny Lush was there, feeding bits of biscuit to Geraldo. “I'm trying to teach him
to sing ‘Lili Marlene,'” Tiny said, “but he only speaks Greek.”