Guy Saville - The Afrika Reich

Burton struggled to move forward, using the corpses around him as sandbags. At that moment he’d have signed away the entire farm for a single hand grenade.

The headlights of the lorry shattered. Then the windscreen. The driver slumped forward, the vehicle twisting to a halt. Troops immediately poured off it. Fifteen, twenty of them. More than a match for Burton’s pistol, more than even Patrick could take out.

He fired off the final shots in the Luger, scrambled up and ran. Gunfire streaked around him like angry red hornets.

The troops were closing in. Oh, Maddie , he thought.

Burton was knocked off his feet. It felt as if a huge, hot fist had slammed against his back. The skin on his scalp contracted and stung.

A fireball rose into the sky. A gulp of night air – and then another, even bigger blast.

Debris rained down on the Schädelplatz: burning lumps of metal, oil drums that landed with hollow booms. At the front of the complex a crane toppled over. The troops darted for cover, turning their weapons in the direction of the explosion. From the opposite side of the square came a sputter of phosphorous blobs. It sounded as if an entire regiment were attacking the camp: Dolan, and his ‘box of tricks’. Burton almost grinned. The phosphorous fell to the ground igniting everything it touched. The stench of tarred wood swirled round the square.

Burton got back on his feet, a few sporadic shots whistling in his direction. Among the dead guards he spied the distinctive shape of a BK44 rifle. He scooped it up and ducked below the barrier that separated the camp from the jungle road beyond. It was lit for a couple of hundred yards before being reclaimed by the darkness; three hundred miles later it reached the Doruma garrison and the border with Anglo-Sudan.

Still running, Burton searched for a sign of the others. Nothing. He tried to visualise the direction Patrick’s shots had come from. There was another explosion behind him. The lights along the road flickered – buzzed – and died. An instant later the entire camp was extinguished.

‘Fuck it,’ snarled Burton. ‘Patrick?’ he called out. ‘Patrick?’

Only the chaos behind him answered.

Burton kept pushing forward, moving at an unsteady trot. The tarmac beneath his feet shimmered with a fiery light but the trees either side remained black.

‘Patrick?’ he called again. This was absurd! He hadn’t survived everything to get lost in the dark.

Somewhere to the left the undergrowth shook. Burton stumbled in its direction. An engine fired up, high-powered and urgent. Seconds later a vehicle roared forward. It executed a sharp U-turn and ground to a halt.

It was a Ziege jeep, the Nazis’ workhorse in this part of the world, built at the Volkswagen factory in Stanleystadt. On its bodywork was the skull and palm tree insignia of the SS in Africa.

Burton raised his rifle, flicked off the safety.

Then a voice: ‘Major. Get in.’

It wasn’t Patrick – but it would do.

01:25

‘WHERE’S Patrick?’ shouted Burton. The gearbox was howling. ‘Where’s Patrick?’

They were reversing down the road, back towards the camp, Lapinski gripping the wheel as if he would strangle it. His eyes gleamed in the darkness like a cat’s. They drove without lights.

The Ziege screeched to a halt. There was a thump as something landed on the roof. Lapinski hit the throttle again. They lurched forward, rapidly picking up speed. Burton turned round in the passenger seat, his rifle drawn. A figure manoeuvred itself from the roof into the back of the jeep. It was dressed in a suit sewn with leaves, on its head a bulky brass helmet and goggles encrusted with tubes: night-vision equipment. Beneath the contraption Burton could just perceive the face. Lean and wrinkled; smears of camouflage paint; a sharp nose that had once been broken and now twisted to the left.

It was Patrick Whaler.

‘I’m too old for climbing trees.’ He rubbed the small of his back, winced, then jerked his head upwards. ‘But the line of fire was better up there.’ In his other hand was a customised rifle with oversized butt, silenced muzzle and telescopic sight the size of an artillery shell. Carved on to the stock were the words, für Hannah .

‘You’re still the best shot I know,’ said Burton.

‘I missed the dog,’ replied Patrick. His voice was Boston Irish churned with two decades of French desert. ‘Once I wouldn’t.’

‘I got out, didn’t I? Relax, the hard part’s over. We’re almost home.’

‘That’s what you said at Dunkirk.’

Patrick was one of the few conditions Burton had insisted on with Ackerman. He needed someone he could trust completely on the mission. The two of them had known each other for twenty years, back since their days in the French Foreign Legion when Burton had been an angry teenage volunteer, Patrick his commanding officer. He wasn’t the man he’d been though. Prison had changed him – as if something grey had been mixed into his blood.

Burton turned to face the front. They were hurtling through the jungle, Lapinski leaning over the wheel, face set into the gloom.

‘I can’t see nothing,’ said the driver.

‘No lights,’ said Burton. He flicked a look in the wing mirror: plumes of fire were reaching into the sky. ‘We’re still too close.’

‘We’ll miss the turning.’ Lapinski’s nose was almost touching the windscreen.

Patrick’s head appeared between them. With the night-vision equipment he resembled a gigantic fly. ‘There!’ he said. ‘On the left.’

Lapinski squeezed the brakes and turned sharply. They crashed through thick foliage – then a rotting wooden barrier – before joining another road parallel to the one they had left. This was the dirt highway from when Belgium had been the colonial power. Neglected since the Nazis conquered Kongo, it was now hidden from pursuing eyes by a canopy of vegetation. Vines clawed against the jeep.

‘Lights?’ said Lapinski.

The jeep was bouncing up and down like a rowing-boat in an Atlantic squall. Burton felt his brain bash against his skull. ‘We can risk it.’

Lapinski flicked a switch, headlights illuminating the way in front. They were in a tunnel of trees – green, grey, black – the road as potholed as a lunar surface.

Burton felt a hand on his shoulder, Patrick motioned at the track behind. He turned to see another pair of headlights following them. The lights were closing in. Patrick reached for his rifle.

‘Wait!’ said Burton. ‘It might be Dolan. Signal first.’

Patrick grabbed his torch and began flashing letters in Morse code. V-R-A-N-J-A. Vranja, the quince variety in the main orchard back home. Burton could see them now, the fruits already fat and yellow. He hoped to make a good living out of them one day – it had to be better than all this! The first thing he’d do when he got back home would be to go with Madeleine and pick one. Inhale its perfume.

No reply came from the other vehicle.

‘What if their torch got broken?’ said Lapinski.

Patrick shouldered his weapon. ‘What if they’re about to blow us off the road?’ He put his eye to the scope.

The jeep hit a pothole, jolting the vehicle. The muzzle of Patrick’s rifle flayed in the darkness.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ he growled. ‘Can’t you keep this thing straight?’

Lapinski snapped back: ‘Any time you want the wheel—’

‘They’re flashing their headlights,’ said Burton. ‘W-A-L-L-O… Wallop.’ Dolan’s call-sign. ‘Everyone just relax and we’re out of here.’