Dennis Wheatley - The Secret War

`It seems years since we crashed in the plane, but it can't be midday yet. That means we've got a long while to wait until sundown.'

Christopher stretched his bruised arms, clasping and unclasping his stiff fingers. Their captors had not troubled to bind them. The ghastly thought had come to him that, since his gun had gone, he had better strangle Valerie, because he loved her. As he moved she spoke again, deliberately and bitterly.

'I wish some of the people who want to go to war to save the Abyssinians were in our place now. They don't understand they can't. These brutes are worse than animals worse than reptiles even a snake doesn't bite you unless you provoke it in some way. I've never seen such fiendish cruelty as stared at me out of the eyes of these loathsome creatures when they dragged us here, and the women who met us looked even more ferocious than the men. They're not human, but soulless devils incarnate whose one delight is inflicting pain.

Her voice rose to a shrill note of hysteria.. 'I don't care any more for ideals and all the senseless nonsense that is talked about Leagues and Covenants and Treaties. I hope the Italians win! I hope they wipe these people out, man, woman and child. Destroy them and blast them limb from limb until there's not a single one of them left to pollute the decent earth they tread on.`

As she ceased speaking the first bomb fell,

18

Dolomenchi of the Death Squadron

The explosion occurred with such frightful suddenness that for a second they did not grasp what was happening. The ground they lay on shuddered under the impact, a shower of dried mud rattled down from the unseen walls and roof of the hut, the hot dark air quivered, and the crash nearly burst their ear drums. There came another before the echoing reverberations of the first, thrown back from the cliff face, had subsided.

'Bombs!' yelled Lovelace, staggering to his feet. 'Quick we must get out of this!'

He kicked aside the wicket covering the entrance to the hut, and with the others hard on his heels, dashed into the open. Any guards who might have been keeping watch a moment earlier had disappeared. In the blinding sunlight a ghastly spectacle lay before them.

A third of the village had been blown to fragments. Men, women and children shrieked and screamed a; they fled in all directions; here and there brown figures lay in terribly distorted attitudes, some deadly still in pools of glistening blood, others contorted into fantastic shapes by an agony of pain.

Valerie glimpsed one headless body and another with both legs blown away as Lovelace, gripping her by the arm, raced her across the tough grass out into the open,

Another bomb burst behind them. It was not big stuff, Lovelace knew, otherwise there would have been only great craters where the village stood, but extremely deadly, nevertheless. The attacker was using light bombs with instantaneous fuses specially designed for spreading their metal laterally and causing casualties to

troops rather than wrecking buildings. Tiny pieces of jagged steel, capable of inflicting frightful wounds, sang past them as they ran.

Three hundred yards from the wreck of the village he pulled up for a second. Christopher was close behind. They halted, gasping for breath after their desperate race.

An intensely bright light that was almost unbearable to look upon suddenly appeared on the edge of the remaining huts. Instantly the whole lot burst into flames like a stand of matches upon which the end of a lighted cigarette has been dropped.

A pitiful whimper in the tall grass near by caused Valerie to switch round just as Lovelace was urging her on again. It came from a naked child, about three years old who had been scampering away in front of them. A large piece of the last explosive bomb had taken off his right foot, severing it at the ankle, so that it now hung from the leg by only a shred of skin.

She ran to him and snatched him up, regardless of the blood which poured over her soiled skirt. The others seized her by the arms and forced her on while the child struggled wildly in her fierce grip; more terrified to find itself clutched to the breast of a white woman than at the pain of its shattered limb.

The bombing had ceased and they eased their pace after they had covered another hundred yards. Valerie sank down exhausted with her quivering burden. As she fell she burst into a passionate flood of tears.

`The brutes!' she sobbed. `The fiends! how could they? Oh, my lamb, my lamb, what have they done to you?'

Christopher bent over her. The old fanatic gleam had come back into his dark eyes. `This is war,' he muttered. `War! The curse of humanity. The horror we're out to stop. Can you ever doubt again that the Millers of God are right? Oh, how I wish I'd killed that devil Zirrif when I had the chance.'

'He's coming down.' Lovelace was staring upward into the fierce blue sky where a single Italian war plane circled gracefully above their heads. 'Look! he's coming down.'

The village was now only a smouldering pile of ruins; the surviving Danakils had disappeared as though by magic. As they watched the plane circled lower, seeking an even stretch of the coarse grass on which to land. It came to earth a few hundred yards away.

A man got out of it and walked over to a hummock on which he halted to scan the surrounding country.

Christopher waved, the man waved back, and they started to run towards him, Valerie still clutching the child whose moans had grown more feeble now.

As they approached they saw that the man was lithe and dark and handsome. He wore a pair of beautifully cut breeches, field boots that shone with the reflection of the sun, an open necked sleeveless shirt, and an air helmet. He was smoking a cigarette with quiet enjoyment.

A rifle cracked and the bullet sent up a little spurt of dust just to his left; another zipped a rock in the rear. Some of the Danakils who had managed to retain their weapons had now regained their courage. He lifted the hand that held his cigarette; a machine gun on the plane began to sweep a rocky patch where the survivors of the massacre had taken refuge, and the feeble attempt at retaliation was silenced.

The dark man smiled as the dishevelled fugitives came panting up to him; bringing his heels together, he gave the Fascist salute as he introduced himself. 'Lieutenant Count Giulio Dolomenchi.'

Still sobbing, Valerie held out the child towards him. 'Look!' she gasped. 'Look what you've done! How could you?'

He made a little gesture of distress and spoke in Italian. 'Signorina, we are at war. Think, too, of what these barbarous people would have done to you had

I not seen the wreckage of your plane. I risked the lives of my men and myself to land here in the chance that I might be in time to save white airmen from mutilation.'

She knew enough Italian to catch the drift of what he said, and felt that his argument was unanswerable. Her pity for the child fought with her gratitude at the thought of the inexpressible horrors from which Lieutenant Count Dolomenchi had rescued them.

Lovelace was already stammering their thanks and the Lieutenant glanced at him quickly. `You are English are you not? but you can tell me about yourselves later. Into the plane, please, now. They will be shooting at us again and we shall get sunstroke if we remain here much longer. Signorina, that child is dead, I fear, so you had better leave it.'

It was true. The little Danakil had ceased to moan and struggle. Its life blood had drained from it and the small body now lay limp in Valerie's arms. She laid it down in the grass and, after a last sorrowful glance, turned towards the war plane.

The crew of Italian airmen helped them up into the narrow cabin. Lieutenant Count Dolomenchi mounted to the pilot's seat; the machine taxied forward, bumped a little, and they were in the air again. The desert was still and lifeless below them as they climbed. Where the village had been there was now only a pile of blackened ash with a few wisps of smoke curling up from it.