A Good Clean Fight (49 page)

“Please start the truck,” di Marco said to Voss.

The engine roared and the compass trembled. Di Marco took the wheel and carefully turned the truck until it was pointing north and south. North on the compass disc was exactly in line with the radiator cap. “Now we need a marker fifty meters to the north of here and another marker five meters to the south,” he said.

Two jerricans were produced and placed as he asked.

Di Marco turned the truck to the left, stopped, and backed it until it stood on the same spot, but at a right angle to its previous position. He checked the compass. “North has apparently moved approximately fifteen degrees to the west,” he said. “May we have another marker, please?”

In order of rank, starting with Oberstleutnant Hoffmann, they got into the cab and peered at the compass. North no longer pointed at the first jerrican. That jerrican was now a long way to its right.

“Ha!” Schramm exclaimed. Somebody had to say something.

The new marker was put in place. “Now we move in the opposite direction,” di Marco said. He turned the truck through a half-circle to the right and maneuvered it onto its original spot. “North is now fifteen degrees to the east,” he said. “Or, if you compare it with the second bearing,
thirty
degrees to the east.”

Sergeant Voss hurried off to place another marker.

“So north is there, or there, or there,” Lessing said. “Every time you move the compass it changes its mind.”

“Every time you move
the truck
the compass changes its mind,” di Marco said. “If I might have, say, four or five heavy machine guns?”

The weapons were brought. Di Marco leaned them against the center of the dashboard. The compass jumped as if it had been stung.

“North has gone west,” Schramm said.

“Wait a minute,” Hoffmann said. “We have the same sort of problem in our aircraft, don't we? Things like chunks of metal and electrical circuits attract the compass needle, they pull it sideways and give you a false reading. You've got to adjust the compass to compensate.”

“Not all metals,” di Marco said. “Not aluminum, for instance, and aircraft contain a lot of aluminum. But iron or steel will disturb a magnetic compass, and this truck is made largely of iron and steel.”

“Especially the engine,” Sergeant Voss said before he remembered to shut up.

“The compass is immediately behind the engine,” di Marco said. “Point the truck north and the engine attracts the compass needle forward, so we get an accurate reading, more or less. Point the truck west and the engine is now to the left, so it pulls the compass needle left. Point the truck east, it pulls it right.”

“Simple as that,” Lessing said emptily.

Schramm saw di Marco hesitate. “There's more?” he asked.

“The load also may exert a magnetic effect,” di Marco said. “Different engine speeds can make a difference too. And if another truck is driving alongside, or just ahead . . .” He shrugged one shoulder.

“So the compass is good after all,” Lieutenant Fleischmann said.

“The compass is excellent,” di Marco told him. “It is useless, but apart from that, quite excellent.”

They went back to the canvas shade. Schramm felt limp from the heat, and Hoffmann's shirt was soaked in sweat to a deep chestnut brown. Di Marco, Schramm noticed with weary envy, seemed quite comfortable, but then di Marco had once made his home in this dreadful place.

Each man got a mug of lime juice and water, and a mess tin of dates. There was a bowl of salt for anyone who felt the need.

“That explains it,” Lessing said. “That explains why we've been zigzagging all over the damn desert.”

“How do the British do it?” Schramm demanded. “They travel about the Sahara as if they were taking a taxi across London. How do they do it?”

“I suppose a magnetic compass is reliable if it's not in a truck,” Lieutenant Fleischmann suggested. “Take it, say, twenty or thirty meters away and—”

“Stop-start, stop-start. I can't see an SAS patrol jumping out every five minutes to check its bearings. Can you?”

Benno Hoffmann took a fat pinch of salt and washed it down. “Captain di Marco knows,” he said.

“The sun compass is what you should have,” di Marco said courteously. “It is the reverse of a sundial. A sundial tells you the time according to the position of the sun. A sun compass tells you the position of the sun according to the time. If you know the time, you can very quickly find north.”

There was silence while they got their minds around this idea.

“Sorry,” Captain Lessing said. “I don't follow that last bit.”

Di Marco took a pencil, drew a circle on a sheet of paper, and marked north, south, east and west. “Imagine that this is a compass face, divided into 360 degrees,” he said. He stood the pencil upright in the center. “The sun makes a shadow which is always moving. We know the exact angle of the sun for every hour of the day, every day of the year.”

“Do we?” Lessing said. “I don't.”

“There are tables which give this information. Using these tables, we find the known angle—the azimuth, as it is properly called—for the present time and we rotate the compass, so, until the shadow falls on the given bearing. The compass is now set. Its north points to true north. You can navigate accurately anywhere at any time of day. Except noon, when there is no shadow.”

“Has the enemy got sun compasses?” Lessing asked.

“Yes,” di Marco said.

“And no problems with magnetism,” Fleischmann said.

“No.”

It was time to think about getting airborne. Hoffmann had no authority over Lessing, but his advice was to pack up and go home immediately. Jakowski was almost certainly lost and incapable of making the rendezvous. He was two days overdue already and his radio truck was silent. It would be suicidal to send men into the Sand Sea to look for him. Lessing's best course now was to cut his losses and get out before his water supply ran dangerously low.

Lessing listened in silence and said he was staying. He had his orders. Major Jakowski might turn up at any time, might be just over the horizon at this very minute, might arrive needing help, water, firepower, who knew what? Lessing couldn't leave. Not yet.

“If you wish,” di Marco said, “we could carry out a
reconnaissance, now. We could fly halfway to the edge of the Calanscio and then make a wide circle around this position. If Major Jakowski and his men have left the Calanscio, we should be able to see them.” Lessing accepted the offer.

“I'm not sure what the fuel consumption of this machine is,” Hoffmann told him, “and I don't want to take any chances. So unless we have some news for you, don't expect us to come back.”

The yellow Lysander took off. They reached five thousand feet and searched in every direction and found nothing. Captain di Marco gave Hoffmann the course for home. When they were still a long way south of Jalo they saw two vehicles that might have been the pair that Jakowski had ordered to rendezvous with the water-tanker. On the other hand, they might not. The war had left plenty of broken vehicles scattered about the desert. Hoffmann circled, going lower and lower until finally he buzzed the trucks, but nobody emerged to wave. Schramm thought he saw a body lying in deep shadow. He said nothing. The ground was thickly dotted with boulders. No place for a landing.

Back at Barce, what everyone wanted was beer, chilled beer. They drank, and ate salt peanuts, and ordered more beer.

“He took a mobile bakery,” di Marco said. “Did you see it? A mobile bakery in the Sahara.”

“In the last war the French had mobile brothels,” Hoffmann remarked. “Or so my father claimed.”

“The British had mobile cinemas,” Schramm said. “Join the army and see Charlie Chaplin.”

“I haven't thanked you for all your help,” Hoffmann said.

“My pleasure,” di Marco told him.

“God help me, I believe you. You actually
like
it down there, don't you?”

“The Sahara is clean and strong and very beautiful, yes.”

“It's the asshole of Africa,” Schramm muttered.

“Even the asshole is beautiful in God's eyes,” di Marco said. “Try living without one and I am sure you would soon come to desire it keenly.”

“Not stuffed with sand, I wouldn't.”

The mess windows vibrated as a 109 pilot tested his engine.

“Look: you're better qualified than either of us to make a judgment,” Hoffmann said. “What do you reckon Jakowski's chances are?”

Di Marco sucked beer from his upper lip. “Surely you mean Lessing's chances.”

“No. Lessing? We just saw Lessing. I mean Jakowski.”

“Jakowski is dead.”

“You can't possibly know that.”

“I have met him. He was as brave as a lion and he did not believe in the possibility of failure. To survive in the desert one must always believe in every possibility of failure. Courage is not enough. There are no lions in the desert.”

“Lessing believes Jakowski will turn up.”

“Yes, well . . .” For once, di Marco was slightly uncomfortable. He watched the 109 take off, climb and bank toward the sea. “Of course it is easy for me to talk. Jakowski's operation is not my responsibility. I can offer an objective view, an informed opinion. I may be wrong. Even if I am right, it is you Germans who must make the difficult decisions.”

“Go ahead,” Hoffmann said. “We'd like to hear what you think.”

“Very well. If you will forgive me: Lessing is a good German soldier. He is like the Roman sentry who stayed at his post when the volcano erupted and poured lava over him. Lessing will go on finding reasons not to disobey Jakowski's order, even though he knows that Jakowski led
his men into the Sand Sea with insufficient water, faulty navigation and no expert knowledge of the most difficult and dangerous part of the Sahara. Let us be optimistic and say that Jakowski has one chance in ten thousand of surviving. Captain Lessing's chances?” He thought as he finished his beer. “Less than fifty-fifty.”

Schramm said goodbye; he had to check any signals that might have come in during his absence. As he sat at his desk, flicking through pieces of paper, it suddenly struck him that Jakowski really was dead. That bustling, hustling, ambitious man who never listened and never gave up was now stiff and silent and still. In fact, half his force were probably dead and the rest were facing death. For a moment Schramm could not swallow and his heart began to race. Death in battle he could understand and accept, but this was just wastage, pointless random wastage, and that he could not accept. He walked up and down the room a few times, sucked in some deep breaths and felt strong enough to put through a call to the hospital. Amazingly, she answered after the first ring. “Ah,” she said. “I have been thinking of you.”

“I've got a problem,” he said.

“So have I, alas. Three problems, and they are all shaved and prepared and waiting to be operated on, now.”

“Blast,”
he said furiously, and heard her laugh. “I can't compete with that, can I?”

“No,” she said. “You can't. Goodbye.” And she hung up.

An old, broken-backed Hurricane sat on the edge of LG 250. Its propeller blades had been peeled back like dying petals, its wings showed ragged holes where the machine guns used to be, and its rudder wagged sadly whenever the wind caught it.

Ostanisczkowski tried first. He fell from the formation and was still picking up speed as he crossed the opposite edge of the landing-ground, fifty feet above the sand and nose-down. Tiny corrections brought the target into the center of his prop-disc. He leveled out at twenty feet, released his bomb and simultaneously pulled up hard and right as if the bomb had weighed a ton. In fact it was a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound dummy.

The adjutant, the doctor and the intelligence officer sat and watched from a safe distance. The dummy bomb bounced twice and went high over the Hurricane. “No coconut for Sneezy,” Skull said. Uncle made a note. The bomb slid to a distant halt. An inevitable rush of dust marked its end.

Kit Carson tried next. He came in even faster, dropped his bomb earlier, and was wide by three lengths. Again, it skidded far into the desert. “Just like playing ducks and drakes,” the doc said.

Pip Patterson, circling with Hooper and the CO, had watched these failures. He made his approach very low and left his release very late, the instant before he lost sight of the wreck. But the Kittyhawk had a long wedge of an engine that blocked the pilot's forward view. Pip's dummy
bomb fell short, bounced high, and flew with the fighter over its target. “God Almighty!” Kellaway breathed.

“No, he's last,” Skull said.

Hick Hooper's attack was much steeper than anybody else's. He bombed half a second before he pulled out, at three hundred feet, and missed by a lot.

“Target's in the wrong place,” the doc said. “Obviously.”

Fanny Barton had his own idea. He swung across the LG in a high-speed curve, his Kittyhawk steeply banked so that he could always see the ruined Hurricane ahead, right up to the final moment when he flattened out and bombed, and missed.

“Nearly hit my cookhouse!” Skull complained. “Damned hooligans.”

“Put your cookhouse in the Hurricane, Skull,” the doc said. “You'll be safe there.”

There were no jokes when the pilots met beside Barton's machine. Bombing from a fighter was a completely new technique to them. The Kittyhawk had been adapted to carry bombs, but that didn't make it a bomber. If they approached the target at height they couldn't see it when they were over it: the Kittyhawk's wings stuck out on each side of the cockpit. Bombing became guesswork. If they came in low they could see the target ahead, but the bomb was traveling at the same speed as the Kitty, and it bounced and skipped far past the target. A slow approach would reduce the skip-factor, but nobody suggested flying slowly over an enemy airfield.