A Good Clean Fight (57 page)

It wasn't the bombing, thank God. It was Colonel von Mansdorf, sipping Hoffmann's coffee and looking more than ever as if he had shrunk a little in the wash and then been immaculately starched and pressed.

“I'm here to apologize, major,” he said. “On behalf of General Schaefer, but also for myself. You were right and we were wrong. I'm sorry.”

Schramm nodded. He wanted to smile with relief, but he made himself look somber.

“Goodbye, Jakowski,” Hoffmann said.

“A couple of his men turned up at Jalo,” von Mansdorf said. “They were the lucky ones: they'd been driving a truck and a water-tanker. The rest seem to have scattered all over the Sahara. We know about the problem with the compasses, but even so . . .” He shrugged. “Africa wins again, I'm afraid.”

“It wasn't Africa that killed Lessing and his men,” Schramm said.

“No. They were overwhelmed by a superior force.”

“Major Schramm has been tracking an incoming SAS patrol,” Hoffmann said.

“I have agents in Cairo and Kufra,” Schramm said. “I know where that patrol was, and when. The timing is right for the attack on Lessing.”

“Of course there's more than one British patrol skulking about,” von Mansdorf said. “A maximum of five or six, so I'm told. Some coming, some going, some just snooping.”

“We have a special interest in this one,” Hoffmann said. “It's that same lot that hit Barce. Led by a man called Lombard.”

“Lampard,” Schramm said. “He's back in the Jebel, I'm sure of it.”

“That's like saying he's in Belgium. The Jebel goes a long way.”

“He'll come here. I know him, I met him, I made a fool of him. He'll come here just to get even.”

“Perhaps you'd like to see our new airfield defense system, colonel,” Hoffmann said. He made a couple of quick phone calls, and they all went downstairs to his car. As they drove around the perimeter, he said, “We began with a trip-wire rigged up to sentries in the cockpits, but our Engineering Officer dreamed up an improvement.” He stopped near a line of 109s. “Here is a bomb.” He handed von Mansdorf a pocket German-Italian dictionary. “You are this British desperado, Lombard. It is black night. Do your worst.”

“Lampard,” Schramm said.

“Relax, Paul. They both look the same in the dark.”

Von Mansdorf walked toward the fighters. Hoffmann and Schramm followed, a short distance behind. “No sentries?” von Mansdorf asked. “No dogs?”

“Not needed,” Schramm said.

“Intriguing.” He was about twenty-five yards from the nearest 109 when a machine gun shattered the quiet with its explosive stutter. Red-and-yellow tracer flicked gracefully in a high arc that cleared the nearest 109 and fell to earth in a deserted part of the airfield. The racket startled von Mansdorf and he jumped back. The gun stopped. “Step forward again,” Hoffmann said. Von Mansdorf did so, cautiously, and the gun barked as if he had stood on its tail. He stepped back. It stopped. Now he could see it,
tucked away behind sandbags. “Infrared beam,” he said. “That's clever.”

“Pure black magic,” Hoffmann said. “It baffles me. Paul understands it, though.”

“We installed a series of beams so that they each made a box round the airplanes,” Schramm said. “Each beam is electrically linked to a machine gun whose line of fire is about a foot above the beam. Break the beam and it shoots you. Fall down and it stops.”

“For demonstration purposes,” Hoffmann said, “the line of fire has been slightly adjusted.”

“I'm grateful. And impressed.”

They strolled back to the car. “It can be switched off during the day,” Schramm said, “so it doesn't interfere with operations. The trouble with the trip-wire was you had to rig it and de-rig it every dusk and dawn. And people kept snapping it.”

“One small point,” von Mansdorf said. “I take it you intend to allow the raiders to approach the aircraft.”

“An airfield is virtually impossible to seal off at night,” Hoffmann said. “It would take a regiment to guard the perimeter. Two regiments. We've never had enough barbed wire. Frankly, I've given up on wire. Since the enemy is going to get in anyway, and since we know his object is to plant bombs on the aircraft, this is a simple way of killing him in the act.”

“I congratulate you.”

They drove von Mansdorf back to Hoffmann's office. While they were waiting for his car to arrive, he said: “By the way: I met a friend of yours last night. Dr. Grandinetti. We were guests at a dinner party.” Schramm said nothing. He flicked at a fly that was annoying him. “A brilliant surgeon, so I'm told,” von Mansdorf remarked.

“She gets results,” Schramm said. “She definitely gets results.”

They watched the car drive away. “Take some leave,
Paul,” Hoffmann said. “It's overdue, you're falling apart, I can get you a place on a plane this afternoon, you'll be skiing in Austria tomorrow. Get out of here.”

“Not now. Too much to do.”

“Says who? Come back in three weeks, nothing will have changed. Believe me.”

Schramm shook his head. “Too much to do,” he said.

*   *   *

Lampard had four hours' sleep and got up at midnight. He left Dunn in charge'and set off with Sergeant Davis in one of the captured trucks. If they failed to return by noon, Dunn was to take command.

Corky Gibbon watched them go. “Let's talk,” he said to Dunn. They went and sat in the station-wagon, with the doors shut. The leather seats were cool and comfortable, there was sand on the floor and the sweet memory of hot diesel in the air. It reminded Dunn of being driven home from the seaside when he was a boy. “Sandiman told me what was in that signal,” Gibbon said.

“Me too.”

“I asked Jack about it.”

“What did he say?”

“Not much. Tried to laugh it off. That bothers me, Mike. It shouldn't be any of my business, so why didn't he tell me to go and run up my thumb? And another thing. The adjutant—”

“Harris and Waterman. I got cross-examined too.”

“Jack's report of that patrol was all balls,” Gibbon said. “You know and I know that Harris got killed because of a cock-up, and as for poor old Waterman . . .”

“God alone knows what Jack thought he was up to then,” Dunn said flatly.

“On the bloody spree, that's what he was up to. On the razzle.”

Dunn was silent. He remembered Lampard on Barce airfield, collecting unused bombs as the pencil-fuses burned, seeking fresh targets, manic, unstoppable, when he should have been leading everyone back to the Jebel at high speed. He'd got away with it then. Jalo had been the same sort of lunacy only far more needless, and in broad daylight too; and Waterman had paid the price.

“Oh well,” he said. “The adj saw through him, didn't he? Clever bloke, the adj. Nothing we can do about it now.” He was feeling sleepy. Gloomy talk usually did that to him.

“It's your neck,” Gibbon said. “It's your funeral.”

“Meaning what?”

“I think the man's an addict. He's got to have his dose of glory. If anything goes wrong, if he cocks it up, he's got to have a double dose. He made a cock-up over Harris and that's why he took us into Jalo, chasing the Luftwaffe, for God's sake.”

“It might have worked.” But there was no passion in Dunn's loyalty.

“So now he's got two cock-ups to make up for. What's worse, he lied about them and he got found out. That's
three
cock-ups. What d'you think he'll do next?”

“Hit Beda Fomm,” Dunn said. “As ordered. What else can he do?” Gibbon merely shook his head. “He's the CO, Corky. What he says, goes.”

“I think his brakes have failed,” Gibbon said. “I think he can't stop himself.”

*   *   *

It was at least fifty kilometers to Beda Fomm and the first twenty-odd would be over twisting, dipping tracks, so Lampard drove with the headlights on. He knew this part of the Jebel fairly well. It was likely that there were enemy patrols about, so the faster he moved, the better. This was
like dashing through a rainstorm to miss the drops: it wasn't logical, it didn't always work, but what was the alternative?

They came out of the last slopes of the Jebel without having alarmed anything more than a couple of herds of goats.

The plain south of Benghazi was crisscrossed with farm tracks and camel trails. Lampard let Davis drive, while he tried to pick out a route toward Beda Fomm. Twice they almost blundered into military camps—first an infantry unit, to judge by the sea of tents, and then a squadron of tanks, black and motionless as cattle—and each time Davis had to back out. An hour of this wandering wore out Lampard's patience. He could hear the rumble of heavy traffic only a few kilometers away. He aimed for the noise.

Davis found the coast road. It was busy. They waited until a long column of supply trucks roared by southbound; then Davis accelerated hard, slammed briskly through the gears, and added himself to the end of the line.

The column drove fast. After seven or eight minutes, Davis shouted and pointed to the right. Lampard saw an Mel 10 dimly illuminated in the shielded lights of a vehicle. Men moved, as flat as shadows. Probably a nightfighter, probably being serviced. “That must be Al Maghrun,” Lampard said. “Beda Fomm's about ten kilometers, on the left.” But as he spoke, the column slowed down. And stopped.

Checkpoint.

Up ahead, flashlights flickered alongside the leading vehicle. Hurricane lamps, striped barriers, machine guns on tripods. Davis began to reverse. “Hang on, hang on,” Lampard said. He jumped down. The truck in front had a red lamp hooked to its tail-gate. He removed it and hooked it on the back of his own truck. “That makes us official,”
he told Davis. “Now let's see if they check everyone or just the leader of the band.”

The column moved off, and it was still picking up speed as the tail-end vehicle went through the checkpoint. Lampard waved slackly at a guard who was counting the trucks. “Pick the bones out of that, Hans,” he said.

Davis saw a turn-off where Beda Fomm ought to be and he drove down it. He parked and killed the engine. A wind had got up, bringing a strange, sharp smell. Davis took a good sniff. “Margate sands,” he said. “Bank holiday.” It was the smell of the sea.

The soil was sandy and it seemed to grow nothing but stunted pines and needle-sharp cactus. Lampard was convinced he knew which way the airfield lay, but after walking for forty minutes the night was still full of pines and cactus; and the slow, shuffling pace of their progress had become wearying. What's more, dawn wasn't far off.

“Stop,” Lampard said. “Chocolate.” He broke off two big chunks and gave one to Davis. As they stood and ate, a double row of warm yellow lights sprang into life and illuminated Beda Fomm. The perimeter was only fifty yards away. It was like a gift from the gods. The lights were runway beacons. After a while a Junkers Tri-Motor dropped out of the darkness and touched down. The beacons went out, but as the Junkers taxied to its arrival area the pilot used a spotlight, and the spotlight swept over a flock of 109s, widely dispersed.

On their way back, the captured truck broke down in the Jebel. Lampard and Davis hid it and walked home. They reached the camp just after eleven a.m., soaked in sweat, and ravenous. “Beda Fomm's on,” Lampard told Dunn. “Briefing at sixteen-thirty, then we eat, then we go.” He looked around. “Where are the prisoners?”

“Gone. Sandy managed to signal an LRDG patrol that's going home and they said they'd take the prisoners provided we threw in a case of tinned pears, so we did.”

“Commercial travelers,” Lampard said. “What else can you expect?”

*   *   *

Fanny Barton surprised Skull by asking him to select an enemy airfield for the next dive-bombing attack.

“Why?” Skull said. “You've always picked your own targets. What's happened? Writer's block? Brewer's droop? Dropped your crayons?”

“I just thought you ought to earn your pay.”

“I see.” Skull searched the CO's face and found nothing but serious intent. “There is no suitable target for three Kittybombers,” he said. “Not unless you count the field at Berka, which is very handy for the British War Cemetery outside Benghazi.”

“You'll find something. If there's nothing suitable, give me the least unsuitable. Teatime OK?”

Skull went off to his tent and fished out his maps. He read all the latest intelligence bumf that had come in on the Bombay. The Luftwaffe had plenty of airfields and thickets of flak batteries around each of them. How could men fly into targets like that? And yet he knew that Pip Patterson and Hick Hooper would follow Barton without hesitation, wherever he led. He knew they were conscious of the danger: he had seen fear in their eyes, during the pre-op briefings. Nevertheless, as combat approached, the pilots became intensely alive in a way that Skull could always recognize but never understand.

The doc appeared in the tent doorway and sat on his haunches. “I'll give you five English pounds for that mawkish bit of sentimental slush,” he said. “This isn't a joke. I don't make jokes on such a lavish scale.”

Skull picked up the gramophone record of “Empty Saddles.” “This?”

“It's rancid. The very words make me retch.”

“I like it. This is the voice of the common man you hear.”

“It's a godawful dirge. We can't avoid the dying but do we have to put up with the dirge?”

“The pilots like it too. Ask them. Ask Fanny.”

The doc's face twisted as if he had toothache. “Play something else, can't you? What's on the other side?”

Skull turned the record over. “‘I'm Headin' For the Last Round-up,'” he said. “Another gem.”

The doc snatched the record from him and smashed it on his knee. “I should have done that long ago,” he said harshly. He turned and walked away.