The Challenging Heights (11 page)

As the days passed, there was no sign of the raiders but somehow Tafas had acquired the information that they were led by Kerim Fatah Agha, who was not only noted as a vicious, merciless killer but was also related to him and considered Tafas had usurped his rights to the leadership of the northern tribes.

The days grew colder, then, on the day that definite news of the raiders appeared in camp, a signal arrived. Hatto sent an aeroplane for Dicken and, handing him the signal across the folding table that did duty for his desk, he sat back.

‘We’re moving,’ he said.

‘Who are?’

‘You are. I am. The flight. The armoured cars. We’re going to the landing field at Shemshemal on the Persian border south of Sulamainiyah.’

‘In winter?’ Dicken’s eyebrows rose. ‘That field closes down at the end of the summer.’

‘This year it doesn’t. They say that Kerim Fatah Agha’s up there trying to get across the border.’

‘He can’t be up there! He’s here. Just to the north of Kerchian. Tafas has never been wrong yet.’ Dicken’s eyes narrowed. ‘Whose doing is this?’ he demanded. ‘Parasol Bloody Percy’s?’

‘It is.’

Dicken glared. ‘Well, what the hell are you going to do? Sit there and let him get away with it?’

Hatto sounded weary. ‘Look, old fruit, I know what you feel. I know what I feel. There’s nothing we can do about it.’

‘You haven’t even tried!’

Hatto jumped to his feet and slammed his hand down on the table to send papers flying. ‘Yes, I damn well have!’ he snapped. ‘So you can take that back.’

Dicken shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, Willie. I ought to have known. It was a damn silly thing to say.’

‘Forget it!’ Hatto growled. ‘That bastard, Diplock, gets us all on edge. I sent a signal insisting that Kerim’s here, but it came back signed by that bastard, St Aubyn. We can’t fight both the bastards. Want to see his reply? It says that we leave at once – repeat at once.’

‘And Tafas? What happens to him?’

Hatto gestured wearily. ‘Christ knows.’

‘You know what it’s all about, don’t you?’ Dicken said. ‘It’s because I shook the bastard up on that flight to Hinaidi. It scared him rotten and when he’s scared he bites like a weasel. He’s sending us up there because it’s the coldest, most uncomfortable bloody place he can find. You and I, Willie, old lad, are going to spend the rest of our careers fending this bugger off.’

‘What concerns me more at the moment,’ Hatto growled, ‘is that before long Tafas is going to be fending off Kerim Fatah Agha. And that won’t work, because Tafas has only a couple of hundred men and KFA’s got a couple of thousand.’

In the hope of proving themselves wrong, Hatto flew north to the border and Dicken pushed the cars forward into the wilderness. All the signs were that Kerim Fatah Agha was near and Hatto came back to report the wadis to the north of the border where they couldn’t touch them were full of men, horses and camels.

Another signal was sent to headquarters but the reply was exactly the same. They passed on the news to Tafas, trying to convince him it was none of their doing. The old man was fatalistic and, though some of his young men went in for angry murmurings, he showed no sign of bitterness towards them, asking only that they would give him and his small son a final ride in the machine like a bird.

They took coffee with him and shared the ceremonial
mansef,
and this time Dicken managed to down the sheep’s eyeball without a shudder because his thoughts were concerned with the old man’s safety. A tent was offered them for the night but they slept alongside the aircraft and the cars. Lying under the cold stars in the silence of the desert night, Dicken found himself reflecting that despite his dirty clothes and vermin, and the hardships of his life, Tafas Hashim Fitna had a finer code of honour than a few white men he knew.

They left for the south at dawn, having first turned over every scrap of ammunition they could get away with, despite the fact that it all had to be accounted for. Dicken even handed over a loaded revolver, putting it down as lost due to enemy action. The old man took it gravely, then looked at his small son. Dicken knew what he was thinking. Rather than let Kerim Fatah Agha get him, he was prepared to shoot him himself.

On the southward trips towards civilisation they normally talked of meals and hot baths but this time there was no talking. A surprising rapport had grown up between the car crews and the Shammar tribesmen, and they were all well aware that if Tafas Hashim Fitna had his messengers going south, Kerim Fatah Agha had his spies who would even now be going north.

Shemshemal was a cheerless place surrounded by hills. The land itself was stony, metallic and brittle, thorn bushes sprouting from every scrap of soft sand with stout sword-like blades of grass like marram grass, straw-coloured and knee-high. The cars arrived in a storm to find Hatto already there with the aeroplanes pegged down and shuddering in the bitter wind. With the fitful sun vanished in the rags of yellow air, a brown wall of cloud came down from the hills and wrapped a blanket of bitter stinging dust round them as they fought to get the covers over the engines of the cars. Whorls of sand enveloped them and torn-up bushes clattered and banged against them, and just as they were completely smothered in dust the rain came in torrents to mould their dusty clothes to their body in layers of yellow mud.

The area was one of low ridges covered with slivers of sandstone and slate, ugly, bare, cheerless and inhabited by puff-adders. The local cure was to bind the bite with a plaster and read the Koran to the victim until he died.

The search for Kerim Fatah Agha started at once. Because of the weather, there was little flying but the armoured cars were constantly moving among the rocky hills, slipping and sliding, their crews cold, wet and cursing. As they had expected, there was no sign of the raiders.

In the evenings, there was nothing to do but read, talk, play cards or look at the mist rising from the plain as the sun sank out of sight in a splash of cold fire in a grey-purple sky. Then for three successive days the air was icy enough to freeze them while the wind never let up, flapping their coats and bellying the cloaks of the local inhabitants. The sleet it carried plastered them with mud and when the sun finally appeared there was a white dome of snow on the hills.

‘The mountains wear their skull caps,’ the locals said, as the camels bent their long necks to sniff at the strange whiteness that covered the ground.

The misty valleys were sluggish streams of melting snow when they heard that Kerim Fatah Agha had finally descended on Kerchian. The whole village had been put to the sword and flame, and Tafas and his sons, even the smallest, were among the dead.

‘Just so that bastard, Diplock, could get a little revenge on us!’ Dicken snarled. ‘It makes you ashamed to be British!’

Soon afterwards a signal came, ordering the cars back to the Kerchian area and the aircraft to Hinaidi. It was signed by the Air Officer Commanding and despite the formal wording had a note of anger in it.

Kerchian was a ruin of shattered houses and collapsed roofs, silent under the scattered ash that lay over it like snow. Among the ruins were silent heaps clutching the ground. A solitary living thing was a small girl who ran from among the ruins, her clothing stained red. The arrival of the cars had frightened her and, as she collapsed, the Arab interpreter, choking with rage, scooped her up and held her to him. Tafas lay sprawled in the charred ruins of his home with all his family, his smallest son held close to his side, and Dicken stood staring down at them, aware of real hatred for the first time in his life.

They buried the dead and left the place for the south. Hatto met them as they arrived, his face grim.

‘The AOC’s been,’ he said. ‘He wants to know why we abandoned Tafas and accused me of disobeying orders. Diplock and that bastard, St Aubyn, had got in first with their story, but I’d saved copies of the signals they sent and the signals we sent – complete with times and dates. The AOC didn’t say anything but I reckon that Parasol Percy and his pal have put up a bloody great black.’

‘Not for the first time,’ Dicken growled.

‘No,’ Hatto said. ‘But this time it showed.’

The only satisfaction that came out of the episode was that Group Captain St Aubyn disappeared hurriedly back to England – it was made to look as though he’d been given another command but they knew very well that he hadn’t – and soon afterwards Diplock handed over to a man from headquarters and also disappeared.

‘To Hong Kong,’ Hatto said. ‘Nearly off the map.’

It didn’t bring back Tafas and his sons but it gave them a small measure of satisfaction, particularly when Dicken was instructed to hand over his armoured cars and take up his temporary position once more with Hatto’s flight, now at Kirkuk and working with the Iraqi army.

Kirkuk was to the north of Baghdad at the end of a wide plain and at the base of the foothills that led to the mountainous country of Kurdistan. Their duties consisted of continuing the harassment of Kerim Fatah Agha’s tribesmen, and aircraft took off almost daily in flights of three and five to search them out and drop bombs on the fringes of their column to frighten them over the border.

It was a time when things were beginning to change. The Arab army, its units started by the new King Feisal, Lawrence’s comrade in the Arab revolt against the Turks, was beginning to show its strength. It had already occupied Tektak, Sheikh Mahmoud’s HQ, and was now set to occupy El Runu from where Kerim Fatah Agha was operating, and aircraft had been busy escorting the columns through the ranges of hills where snipers could have held up an army for days.

Because of the temporary nature of the posting, the squadron was living in tents round the edge of the field, an uncomfortable business when the wind blew because blankets, bedding and clothes became covered with dust and there was grit over everything they ate or drank. As the winter passed the weather grew warmer and eventually a hot dry spell left them fighting for breath.

Lying on his bed, gasping in the heat with nothing on but a towel, Dicken stared at the latest letter from Zoë. As usual, it was brief and hurried and seemed totally devoid of affection, a duty letter and no more. She now had five garages along the south coast of England and had appointed a manager to run them for her so that she had more time for flying. At the moment, she was in the States engaged on some project in Baltimore, and was not only doing more flying than he was but was also flying now with an Irishman called Spud Murphy, who because of the insistence on licences and safety factors in Europe, had moved to the States where there was more freedom.

‘Over here freelance fliers are playing a valuable part in furthering airmindedness,’ she wrote. ‘Something that the stuffy people in England don’t seem to realise.’

Perhaps they were, Dicken thought. But most air circuses, like the late Charley Wright’s, were run on a shoestring and there had been a few avoidable accidents which had given flying a bad name. Standing on the wings of an aeroplane – with or without a harness – wasn’t flying. In his youth, he had often been tempted himself to fly under bridges – one RAF pilot had flown through the Arch of Ctesiphon and a Frenchman had flown through the Arc de Triomphe – but that sort of thing didn’t advance flying, it merely indicated a man’s skill.

Zoë, however, seemed eager to be where not only the excitement but the money was and flying was beginning to get off the ground in a big way in the States. Because of the size of the country, people were realising it was the only quick way of moving about it, and Zoë was anxious to get in on the ground floor of what could only be an expanding industry. Dicken hadn’t been slow to notice in the flying magazines that littered the mess the references to Harmer Aircraft Incorporated of St Louis. Obviously Casey Harmer was forging ahead, too, as she had always said he would and he wondered more than once if she had bothered to look him up.

Certainly her letter contained no indication that she was pining for Dicken. Indeed, there were references to men she met, casual references as though she had done no more than take a meal with them, but he continued to suspect that she and Casey Harmer had been lovers during the war even while she was professing to be in love with Dicken, and now that Casey Harmer was back in circulation her visit to the States seemed highly suspicious.

He was still frowning, the letter a damp sheet in his fingers, the ink on it smeared by the sweat from his hand, when Hatto appeared in the doorway. Somehow, Hatto always managed to look cool when everybody else looked roasted.

‘It’s the blue blood,’ he explained. ‘Takes longer to come to the boil.’ He sat in the camp chair. ‘I’ve got news, old son. We’ve passed the exam for Staff College and eventually we’ll be going. God knows when, of course, but I understand the AOC took rather a shine to the way we stood up to Parasol Percy and that bastard, St Aubyn.’ As he talked he became aware of the stuffy heat. ‘Hotter than usual, don’t you think?’ he commented.

Somewhere in the camp a dog howled, followed immediately by another, then another. A mule brayed, then another, followed by a donkey, then the birds started filling the air with an agitated twittering. Hatto’s head turned and Dicken sat up, conscious of something strange happening and they had just started for the door when the ground suddenly started to move beneath their feet. As they stared at each other, a dog passed the door, bolting for safety in a wobbly run as if its legs were weak.

‘Good God,’ Hatto yelled. ‘It’s an earthquake!’

The whole area of the Middle East, in particular Turkey just to the north, was a place where failures in the earth’s crust often led to minor earthquakes, but it had never occurred to anyone that they might be involved in one.

As they burst outside and stood staring about them, nearby buildings seemed to be quivering, so that their outline looked blurred, and they saw cracks running crazily up the walls and the earth moving beneath their feet.

The shock stopped almost before they had become aware of it but the air was filled with yellow dust like a fog. A roll call was ordered at once and the station commander began to check his buildings, many of which were already being evacuated. Nobody had been hurt and no machines damaged but it was clear that many of the buildings would have to be pulled down and rebuilt. They were just offering up thanks for not being hurt when all aircrews were summoned to the hangars.