Death or Glory III Read online

  MICHAEL ASHER

  Death or Glory

  PART III

  Highroad to Hell

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  DEATH OR GLORY III

  Highroad to Hell

  Michael Asher has served in the Parachute Regiment and the SAS. With his wife, Arabist and photographer Mariantonietta Peru, he made the first west–east crossing of the Sahara on foot – a distance of 4,500 miles – with camels but without technology or back-up of any kind.

  He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and has won both the Ness Award of the Royal Geographical Society and the Mungo Park Medal of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society for Exploration.

  He has written many books, including The Regiment: The Real Story of the SAS and the first two books in the Death or Glory series, The Last Commando and The Flaming Sword, which are also published by Penguin.

  If you can force your heart, and nerve and sinew,

  To serve their turn long after they are gone,

  And carry on when there is nothing in you,

  Except the will, that says to you, ‘Hold on.’

  If you can fill the unforgiving minute,

  With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

  Then yours is the earth, and everything that’s in it,

  And what is more, you’ll be SAS, my son.

  – SAS selection poem; adapted from ‘If’

  by Rudyard Kipling

  Dispatch

  From: Advanced HQ, First Army, Tunisia

  DMI, Allied Forces HQ, Constantine

  To: MEHQ, Cairo, Egypt

  30 January 1943

  From: 2/Lt. M. Sadler 1st SAS Regiment

  To: OC G(RF) GHQ, Cairo

  Stirling’s and McDermott’s parties attacked by Germans reference Z.0755, 24 January. All jeeps taken & all personnel captured except Sadler, Cooper & Taxis … two men left at Ksar Ghilane 22 January waiting to be picked up. Co-ordinates NE Africa purple grid …

  From: Col. Gen. Erwin Rommel

  GOC Panzer Army

  To: Lucy Rommel

  2 Feb. 1943

  Dearest Lu,

  … At the end of January a number of our AA gunners succeeded in surprising a British column in Tunisia and captured the commander of 1st SAS Regiment, Lieut.-Col. David Stirling. Insufficiently guarded, he managed to escape and made his way to some Arabs, to whom he offered a reward if they would get him back to British lines. But his bid must have been too small, for the Arabs, with their usual eye to business, offered him to us for 11 pounds of tea – a bargain which we soon clinched. Thus the British lost a very able and adaptable commander of the desert group which has caused us more damage than any other British unit of equal strength …

  From: GHQ, Middle East

  RAMC Depot, Cairo

  Medical Centre

  1st Feb. 1943

  Subject: Captain Thomas Edward Caine DCM DSO

  1st SAS Regt

  This officer was evacuated from operations in the Western Desert with a shrapnel wound in the thigh. Last November he suffered severe concussion as a result of a motor accident: the vehicle went out of control while proceeding along the Nile Corniche in darkness, and plunged over the barrier into the river, just short of the MP checkpoint. It is believed that the accident resulted from a struggle between the driver, identified as an enemy agent, and the passengers – the above-named officer, and a female staff officer, Hon/Capt. Elizabeth Nolan, GM and bar, of G(RF). Capt. Caine surfaced after a sharp blow on the head, but continued to dive down into the water in search of his companion until pulled out of the water by the crew of a police patrol boat. The other two occupants of the vehicle are missing, presumed dead.

  Capt. Caine is now physically fit, but still, in my opinion, displaying symptoms of trauma. He has been in action almost continuously since 1941, first with 2 Field Sqn Royal Engineers, then with 52 Middle East Commando, and most recently with 1st SAS Regiment. He has commanded two strategic special operations behind enemy lines, and has been twice decorated for bravery. He has been captured twice, subjected to physical abuse, and escaped both times. He has suffered a total of twenty-six wounds, some of them serious. This incident was particularly disturbing for this officer: his fellow passenger, Capt. Nolan, was the G(R) officer whom he had previously extracted from behind enemy lines, and to whom he had formed an emotional attachment.

  Capt. Caine was prevented from deploying with 1st SAS Regt on recent postings: he remains restless for action. He has asked me repeatedly to pass him fit for active service. This I have refused to do, not because his physical condition is deficient, but because I continue to have doubts about his mental state.

  Signed:

  Dr G. R. Healey Lieut.-Col. RAMC

  1

  They came for Captain Thomas Caine at three o’clock on a Sunday morning, as he lay asleep in his hotel room in Ismaeliyya. Caine heard them coming: he leapt out of bed and flattened two of them with his bare knuckles as they stepped through the door. He’d just had time to register that they were wearing battledress and black berets, when he felt a sharp jab in his right thigh: he collapsed like a limp fish.

  When he came round minutes later he was being hustled into the back of a jeep. He was fully dressed: they’d pulled a sandbag over his head and cuffed his hands behind him. ‘Just sit quiet, Captain,’ a gruff voice said, ‘or we’ll be obliged to use rough stuff.’

  Caine knew better than to ask what it was about. He was aware he’d find out soon enough, and doubted if he’d be surprised. Since he’d lost Betty Nolan, almost five months earlier, nothing much surprised him any more. He couldn’t remember clearly what had happened that night: one minute they’d been sitting in the back seat of the taxi, happy as Larry, the next, Nolan had been struggling with the driver: the car went out of control, crashed through the safety barrier, slamdunked into the Nile. Caine’s head must have hit something hard: he’d been out a few seconds. When he’d come to, the vehicle was still lodged half on the surface: oilcoloured water was gushing in. It was pitch dark, and he couldn’t feel Nolan’s hand.

  He was certain that the driver had been Eisner: the Nazi agent was known to be a dab hand at disguise. They’d thought he was out of the picture since Field Security had chased him from his Cairo base. He must have come back, watched them, planned his move carefully,
waited for his chance. Whatever his plan had been, though, Caine didn’t give a toss any more. Eisner had taken Nolan from him: everything else, even the war, dwindled to insignificance beside that fact.

  The jeep hummed on into the darkness: none of the men spoke. Caine felt groggy: the dope that had knocked him out, whatever it was, had left him with a hangover. He tasted sandbag hemp, heard matches strike, breathed cigarette smoke through the sack. It seemed an age before the wagon crunched to a halt on a gravel drive and they bundled him out. He sensed that it had grown lighter but couldn’t be sure. He was hustled up steps: a door groaned, footsteps rang on flagstones. He smelt incense, heard music from a gramophone far off. They nudged him up a staircase, shoved him through another door, pushed him into a chair. Caine felt fingers working on his handcuffs.

  ‘Not yet,’ a voice said.

  There was a sound like the creak of bicycle spokes: Caine was trying to work out what it was when a fist lumped him hard in the jaw. He gasped, tasted blood.

  ‘I say, steady on, Roger.’

  ‘Piece of dogshit put me in a wheelchair.’

  The hood was whipped off: Caine found himself staring into the indignant face of Captain Roger Glenn, the officer he’d kneecapped during the Sandhog scheme. Glenn’s splitshovel teeth were bared in a snarl. His broad swimmer’s torso seemed to burst out of the wheelchair he was sitting in.

  Next to him stood Major Jasper Maskelyne, Royal Engineers, the ex-stage magician whom Caine had last seen as an ever diminishing dot on the vast canvas of the Sahara. Maskelyne was more neatly dressed than he’d been last time, but his tailored BD suit only emphasized his oddness: snakeskin features, carrot nose, littlebird eyes, hairless skull that seemed attached to his body by a spring.

  A third officer sat in a sagging armchair on Maskelyne’s left: a dwarf of a man with half-colonel’s insignia on his shoulder-straps. He had a head like a cannonball, beady eyes magnified by thick lenses, a barrel-sized mouth and the leathery skin of a Barbary ape. In a competition for peculiarity, Caine thought, the jury was out as to whether Monkeyface or Maskelyne would win first prize.

  He surveyed the room, took in wood panels, patterned carpets, leatherbound books, battered table, shapeless leather armchairs, massive stone fireplace: a blackboard with a sheet over it. There were brass candlesticks on the mantelpiece, an ivory crucifix, paintings of saints with gilt halos. The room was lit by gaslamps: the first glow of dawn was creeping through mullioned windows set deep in stone walls.

  Maskelyne drew a .38 Webley from his holster – an action so deft that Caine hardly caught it. He suddenly recalled the conjuror’s sleight of hand, the deceptive speed and strength of those stickinsect limbs. Maskelyne pointed the pistol at him. ‘I’m going to have them release you,’ he said, ‘but try any funny stuff here, Caine, and I swear I’ll shoot you down. Do I have your word?’

  ‘Let’s see,’ Caine drawled through thick lips. ‘Your men jump me in my hotel room in the early hours, shoot me up with some sort of dope, handcuff me, stick a sandbag over my head and cart me off to some unknown location, and you expect me to give you my word? If you wanted me to join the party, why not send me an invitation? Even a phone call would have done the trick.’

  ‘Same old clever dick,’ Glenn snorted. ‘You don’t look so clever now.’

  ‘What about belting a blindfold man in handcuffs? How clever is that?’

  ‘You deserved it. You shot me in the kneecap.’

  ‘If I remember rightly, you were going for your weapon at the time …’

  ‘That’s enough, gentlemen, please,’ the apefaced colonel cut in. ‘You’ve had your moment, Roger. Let’s put that regrettable incident behind us.’

  Caine squinted at him. ‘There’s still a weapon pointing at me.’

  ‘Give us your word you won’t try anything,’ Maskelyne said.

  ‘All right, you have my word.’

  Maskelyne slid the pistol back into its holster, nodded to the invisible soldier behind Caine, who unlocked the cuffs. Caine massaged his sore wrists, wiped blood from his lips, caught Glenn’s eyes watching him. He detested Glenn, had done ever since the chap had caused the death of his friend in commando training. Still, he wouldn’t have shot him if there’d been a choice.

  ‘Sorry, Roger,’ he said quietly, ‘but my scheme was vital. You and Major Maskelyne were about to compromise it.’

  Maskelyne’s nostrils flared. ‘Compromise? Do you realize how much planning went into Bertram? You might have messed up the whole show.’

  Caine decided not to argue: Bertram was stale news anyway. Montgomery’s advance had succeeded. Tripoli had fallen. Rommel’s Panzer Army had been pushed all the way back into Tunisia, and the Axis was currently threatened by both the Eighth Army in the east, and Anglo-American forces encroaching from the west. The Huns’ days in North Africa were numbered.

  The little colonel faced him. ‘I apologize for the rough treatment, Caine,’ he said in a matchpaper voice.

  ‘What about the dope? How did they do that?’

  Caversham beamed. ‘It’s called a ballistic syringe – a handy little invention of ours. It’s a weapon that shoots a dart with a dose of tranquillizer in it. You got the minimum dose.’

  ‘Am I supposed to be grateful?’

  ‘You have a reputation for truculence, Caine.’ The colonel clucked impatiently. ‘Had our men simply asked you politely, you would probably have kicked them downstairs and crippled them for life. You once killed three Brandenbergers armed only with a rusty blade.’

  ‘That was the enemy.’

  ‘Yes, and we all know what you can do to friends. You knocked down the Deputy Provost Marshal of Cairo. You lost your commission for threatening to shoot the CO of an infantry battalion. You’ re a thug, Caine. An intelligent thug, but a thug all the same …’

  Caine was about to observe that the C-in-C hadn’t seen it that way when he’d pinned the DCM and the DSO on his chest. It occurred to him, though, that General Alexander might have been thinking the same thing.

  ‘… but then, in our line of business,’ the colonel went on, ‘intelligent thugs are just what are required. I am Caversham, by the way, Lieutenant-Colonel. Miles. Our little outfit here is known as MO4. This is our base – St Anthony’s monastery, Sinai. It’s good cover. It has the odour of sanctity, and it keeps us away from the gaberdine swine at GHQ.’

  Caine’s gaze was drawn to an odd painting on the wall behind Caversham’s chair. It showed a saint with a long white beard split into two wearing a monk’s habit, apparently suspended over a pale sea. The monk was being attacked from all sides by spiny fish-like monsters and demons with bats’ wings and chicken feet, some wielding cudgels, others tearing at his clothes. The monk seemed to be trying desperately to remain unperturbed by the assault. Caine knew just how he felt.

  The little colonel caught his glance. ‘The Torment of St Anthony,’ he remarked. ‘St Anthony was a monk who lived in a cave here two thousand years ago. Had regular tussles with demons and monsters, apparently. He was a healer, known for curing a whole bouquet of plagues, collectively called St Anthony’s Fire Anyway, he left his bleached bones in the desert, and later they built this place on top of them.’

  Caine shifted impatiently. ‘Could we get to the point, please, sir? I don’t think you’ve brought me here to discuss ancient history.’

  ‘I say, I do like a man who gets down to business.’

  Caversham lumbered over to the blackboard, whipped off the sheet, revealed a map of Tunisia.

  ‘What I am about to tell you, Caine, is top secret. You will not breathe a word of it to anyone. Is that clear?’

  ‘Crystal, sir.’ Caine was on his guard: just a moment ago they’d been pointing a loaded gun at him: now they were offering him secrets. It wasn’t a healthy combination, he thought.

  Caversham picked up a ruler, tapped the map. ‘In the early hours of this morning, General Montgomery launched a frontal attack on the Mareth Line … Are you
familiar with the Mareth Line, Caine?’

  ‘Not exactly, sir.’

  Caversham turned to face him. ‘It’s an impregnable wall of defences, twenty-two miles in length, guarding the whole eastern approach to Tunisia. It is currently being held by thirty-two Axis infantry battalions and a Panzer division, all of which have been ordered to fight to the death …’

  He paused for dramatic effect, rapped the map again. ‘As I was saying, our assault on the Mareth Line this morning was repulsed with heavy losses – the first reversal we’ve sustained since the breakout from Alamein. The GOC is now stuck. If he keeps throwing his forces at that line, he’s likely to lose thousands. He can’t easily go around, either, because the left flank is protected by the Matmata Hills. The whole area is described on French maps as terrain chaotique – it’s like hell’s back door.’

  He sucked in grizzled cheeks. ‘However, there is a way round. It’s called the Tebaga Gap – a narrow pass on the western side of the hills that gives access all the way through to Gabes. If a large enough force can squeeze through there, Monty can encircle the Mareth Line, and thus avoid what might turn out to be the nastiest punchup of the entire campaign.’

  He rasped a breath: Caine sensed a climax.

  ‘A week ago, Monty dispatched General Freyberg’s New Zealand Corps with orders to breach the Tebaga Gap. Their advance was compromised. Not only have the enemy dug in at the mouth of the gap, but three crack Afrika Korps divisions are also on their way to reinforce the position. When they get there, there’s going to be a hell of a brouhaha.’

  ‘Very interesting, sir,’ Caine said, ‘but what’s it got to do with me?’

  The colonel cleared his throat. ‘Your part in it, Caine, is simple. There’s a disused highroad through the Matmata Hills south of the Tebaga Gap. Only a track, really, but it passes over a bridge at el-Fayya gorge.’ He pointed at the map with a squaretipped finger. ‘Our latest int. is that a reconnaissance battalion of the Totenkopf Division is being detached to cross the el-Fayya gorge, traverse the Matmata Hills by the old highroad, and knife Freyberg from behind. That could put the kibosh on our chances of getting through Tebaga. It would mean Monty getting stuck at Mareth: it could turn the tide of the war, just when things were going so well.’