Gavin Lyall - The Secret Servant

He aimed low at the figure hauling on the right-hand gate and squeezed the trigger, letting the gun track upwards with the recoil. The man collapsed like a burst balloon, and de Carette felt a surge of relief that was almost a sexual climax. He could do it, he had done it, and if he died now, the score was at least level.

He stepped back against the wall to reach into his haversack for another magazine, thumb the old one out, let it drop, push the new one into place. They ran forward.

One of the men on the left of the gate was still moving. Tyler fired two shots into him. De Carette took his own victim by the feet and dragged him clear of the gateway, which was still open wide enough to take a jeep.

He would like to have known the man's name.

The jeep charged past on the moonlight plain, and Tyler flashed his torch at it. It swung in and ran up to them.

Lecat was sitting up in the back of it, holding a rifle.

"Why the hell did you bring him?" Tyler asked Gunner, who was driving, with Yorkie at the guns.

"You try making him stay behind, Skip. He's like a fuckin' dog."

"I explained to him," de Carette began.

"Never mind," Tyler said. "We've knocked off three and there might be only one left. Follow us."

"I did explain to him, John," de Carette muttered, as they moved out ahead.

"I heard you. I forgot what I had said yesterday: he has found a new mother. He isn't going to be alone again."

They went about twenty yards ahead of the blacked-out jeep that purred gently on the downhill slope. There might be no more than one man down there. The Volkswagen only held four; it was smaller than a jeep. But that, de Carette thought uneasily, meant that it could hardly carry any supplies as well. That didn't sound like the desert.

He thumbed the safety catch on the Tommy-gun for the thousandth time, which was silly because none of them ever put it on when carrying the gun. It was too stiff and awkward, and the trigger pull was heavy enough for safety anyway…

A second engine roared, dropped to a rumble, then in a blaze of headlights the cubist shape of a scout car came up the slope from its hiding place in the piazza stables.

De Carette darted forward into the mouth of an alley, then lifted the gun.

"Grenades!" Tyler roared.

Of course. He reached into his haversack. Pull out the pin, glance around the corner, toss it down the lane as the lever whanged away.

The grenades went off almost simultaneously, the blast bouncing off the close walls and hitting de Carette like a slap on the ears. A cloud of dust erupted in the narrow lane, but through it he saw the flare of the scout car's twenty-millimetre. The K guns hammered back, and screaming nails of light bounced every way off the scout car, jamming the narrow lane with noise, flashes, dust and madness.

The undamaged scout car ground past the alley, the jeep's engine revved furiously, and the two vehicles charged into each other head-on with a noise like a gigantic gong. Or maybe he was only remembering it that way, because it signalled' the end of all the other noises.

In the silence, Tyler ran forward and dropped a grenade into the open turret of the scout car. Somebody in there screamed and heaved into view, then the grenade went off beneath him with a hollow bang, and he collapsed out of the turret and slid down into the lane. He didn't need shooting.

Neither did Gunner. At the last instant, the last shot from the scout car had exploded in his chest. He was a shrunken, shortened object wrapped around the steering-wheel by the impact, and de Carette was glad that the starlight made him colourless.

The jeep wasn't going to move again, its bonnet steaming and crumpled.

"Right," Tyler said. "Yorkie and Lecat get the stuff unloaded. Henri, down to the stables with me."

There might have been a clever back way to the piazza, down through the alleyways, but they hadn't time to find it. War is not having time to be clever, being forced to meet things head on. As Gunner had.

The Volkswagen was still in place, and nothing moved. Tyler ran around the left-hand side, between the palms and the pond, and fired a short burst against the stable wall, just to provoke a reaction. Nothing reacted. And there was no radio in the stables.

"Damn," Tyler said. "All for not much. I'd rather have Gunner than… Damn."

"Listen," de Carette said, and Tyler became very still. At first there was just a whimpering sound from one of the windows around the piazza, the first reminder that this was a living village, and certainly no longer a sleeping one. But the villagers were letting the Europeans settle their quarrels by themselves. At the end of it, there would always be some loot.

Then Tyler heard the distant sound of motors.

Yorkie came staggering into the piazza, supporting Lecat with one hand and dragging a load of haversacks, water-bottles and gear with the other.

"They're coming back, Skipper. I could see flights."

"How many?"

"There's two of'em."

One vehicle they might ambush, but two… particularly if it was a truck of infantry.

"Over the wall." Tyler decided. "And no shooting. You know the way, Henri."

As de Carette helped Lecat back towards the alley, Tyler opened the engine of the Volks and yanked out the whole handful of high-tension leads, then threw them in the pond. When he joined them at the wall itself, he was carrying a heavy Jerry-can marked with a white cross, the sign for drinking water.

They lowered Lecat over the wall and dropped down beside him. The vehicle lights were just coming out of the track onto the flat plain around the village. A scout car and a truck, which stopped well before the gate, obviously suspicious.

Yorkie simply lifted Lecat onto his back and started running. De Carette and Tyler snatched up all the rest and followed. They dodged behind the village and into the soft dunes. There they collapsed, panting.

After a few minutes there was a burst of firing, somebody shooting at a villager or just a ghost. Some shouting, then silence.

"Nobody's going to come looking for us in the dark," Tyler said. "Back around to the other jeep."

They had less than two hours to dawn and took most of it in helping Lecat through the tangle of hummocks and dunes. They had to bring him to the jeep, not vice versa; it was parked at what they believed was just out of hearing of the village – a long way on a desert night – they daren't bring it closer.

It was also parked rather carelessly, close to the track, because they had assumed they'd be back to it well before dawn. They were almost there when they heard it drive away.

For a moment, de Carette feared Tyler was thinking of a second attack on the village. But then they staggered back into the dunes, away from where the jeep had been parked because that would be the first place the Germans would come looking in daylight.

The day began with a pale light, like the first jet of a gas burner flaring across the stars. Streamers of red appeared overhead and then the bloodshot sun itself, bringing light but no warmth. They felt safe to light cigarettes and Tyler poured out one cup of water for each, in turn. They only had one cup with them.

"We're going to have to do some walking," he said.

"To Zella?" That must be 600 miles, more than the depth of France from the Channel to the Riviera.

"No. We'll head north."

"John, in the north is Rommel."

"We won't go that far. If we can get around west of the salt marsh, to Nefta, we'll find something. There was a rumour 1st Army had got as far as Tozeur, so they could be further by now. That's only about a hundred and twenty miles."

Instinctively, de Carette's mind began breaking the distance down into day's marches: rations, water, bivouac times… and it was all meaningless.