Operation: Sahara

-THEN-

The colonel had been most insistent at our briefing. His colour was up, redness at his cheeks and for once it had nothing to do with the claret he’d taken at dinner the night before. We’d lost three men the night before to insurgents that had got into our encampment, slit the sleeping soldiers’ throats in their bunks, then vanished without leaving a trace. He was more than angry. He was furious, taking the deaths as a personal affront to his command.

“Get a squad up into them hills and scout about. We need to know where those buggers are hiding. There will be no repeat of last night’s bloody slaughter. I want them found and I want them dead. Don’t come back until that job is done.”

The buggers were probably Bedouin and more used to hiding in the desert than we were at walking in it but the colonel didn’t give a toss about that. And for once I actually agreed with him—you didn’t murder a Scotsman in his bed and get away with it. Not if there were any other Scotsmen left to avenge them.

So it was late that Saturday that our squad set off—on foot, none of us trusted those bloody camels—for the range of hills in the desert to the south and west of us. The sun was still up as we departed and little of the day’s heat had dissipated. It was hard going. Wearing the kilt meant that at least I had some air around my nethers but the red serge tunic on top felt like a tight corset around my ribs, slowly boiling me from the inside out. What with that and the backpacks—and the Lee Enfields for the men—it was a long tough slog through the sand for all twelve of us. Even our C.O., Lieutenant Timkins—a fresh faced young English gentleman not long out of Sandhurst who hadn’t been here long enough to get leathery like the rest of us—seemed to be sweating and somewhat discomforted although he was too much of an officer to show it.

My old pal, Mac—Private MacLeod—had the worst of it—not only was he carrying the same as the rest of us, along with about a stone of extra fat in his belly, he was further burdened by having to carry the bagpipes in his pack. He had complained bitterly for more than a mile until I told him to put a bung in it.

“It could be worse, Mac,” I said.

“How’s that, Sarge?”

I pointed at our other travelling companion—an old knackered donkey that was being forced to carry our ammo, water and tents.

“I could give you his job if you like?”

“If I can have his todger, I can start now,” Mac replied and the subsequent laughter did much to lift our mood, although we were soon enough back to trudging through the endless sand.

We finally reached the hills and made our camp that first night as the last of the sun went from the sky. The pipes gave out a squeal as Mac dropped his pack at the side of the fire. The men and I ate some dried biscuits and got some tea brewing—the Lieutenant didn’t join us, staying in his tent, where we could see him bent over, writing up his report. The plan was to get a couple of hours sleep then walk up into the hills before the morning sun got too high in the sky but the trouble started almost as soon as we got our heads down after a smoke.

I’d put Jennings on guard—stout lad, never gave me any lip. I’d served with him in the Sudan on two previous campaigns—I’d seen him stand up against arrows, spears, rifle fire and cavalry charges. So I knew there was something far wrong when he screamed—high pitched, like a boy more than a man—full of fear and pain, his terror carrying far over the small camp in the still desert air.

He was still screaming when I got to the spot where he should be—only he wasn’t there—the screams were now coming from higher up in the hills, getting farther away by the second until fading completely somewhere high above us. I tried to make out a landmark we might use to begin a search but there was only a dark, looming cliff face and no distinguishing features.

Even then some of the lads were keen on mounting a search party but the lieutenant put the mockers on that idea.

“Blundering around in the dark isn’t going to get us anywhere. There’ll be a moon in an hour—we’ll go then—and we’ll all go together.”

I was forced to agree with his decision, although that hour, spent as it was breaking camp then smoking round the remnants of the fire, was one of the longest I have ever spent. At every lull in conversation I listened, expecting a cry from a returning Jennings. But all I heard, echoing in my head if nowhere else, was the memory of the screams and the pain I could hear in them.

I’ll give Timkins one thing—he was right about the moon coming up. That was about the last thing he got right that night.

Once there was light, of a sort, we examined the ground where Jennings had been keeping watch. We found his Lee Enfield—bayonet still attached, no blood on the blade and a round in the breech. When they had got him, they’d done it fast. There were only scuffle marks on the sand and surrounding rocks—nothing to indicate the identity of any assailant. All we had was the fact that his screams had faded higher up the hill.

“Right, lads,” Timkins said, taking the lead. “Let’s find our Corporal Jennings.”

At that stage, we were only too happy to comply. We followed—of necessity taking single file due to the almost precarious nature of the cliff path—heading upward, always up.

It proved to be hard going, steep and precipitous in places and it had me wondering just how someone—anyone—could have got Jennings—a big man—up this path while subduing him at the same time. I still hadn’t seen any tracks, nor had I spotted any indication that anyone apart from us had passed this way. Despite the cold desert night, I was starting to work up a sweat and my calf muscles screamed in agony with every step. From a distance the hills hadn’t looked too daunting but now that we were among them I was wishing we were still back on the sand—it might have been soft but at least it was mostly level.

We kept going up, until even the young lieutenant was forced to admit that tiredness was getting the better of him and allowed us a stop on a ledge for a breather and a smoke.

I ended up next to Mac again and he was still complaining.

“What’s that stupid bugger Jennings got himself into this time? Remember when he thought he was in love with that dancing girl in Cairo? Or the lass who turned out to be a boy in Valletta? I’m betting it’s something like that again, just you wait and see.”

I remembered both tales well—and both had ended in raucous laughter, not pained, wild screams. I held my peace—I’d learned early that a sergeant who shared his worries with the men wasn’t much of a sergeant at all. I smoked a Capstan and looked down over the desert—the lights of our encampment in the oasis of Farafra glittered on the horizon—it was what passed for hearth and home during our tour and looked ever more enticing by the minute. It was a struggle to turn back and face the hill—but Jennings was still up there somewhere and we don’t leave our men behind.

We climbed again and as it turned out we were nearer our goal than we might have thought. The trail opened out—I was just behind the lieutenant so was among the first to see it—the path led across a flat area between high cliffs into a long, dark narrow valley. Unlike the sight of our home over the desert sands, this did not look the least bit enticing at all. The hairs at the back of my neck rose in the long familiar tingle of dread—I’d been a soldier long enough to recognize a possible ambush when I saw one.

“We should take this slowly, sir,” I said to the lieutenant, keeping my voice low so the men wouldn’t hear. “I don’t like the look of it at all.”

“Nonsense,” the lieutenant said, loud enough for the men—and anybody else in that damned valley—to hear. “We are on the Queen’s business and we shall do as we damn well please.”

And with no further ado he started to stride away from me along the path and into the valley. I waited for ten seconds to see if anybody would shoot him for me before I followed.

We found the city a minute later.

The moonlight, such as it was, did little to light this end of the valley but it was enough to show us that the buildings that filled the whole west end were of great age—and great magnificence. A crescent outer wall stretched across forty yards of valley floor and was half as high again, with only a single high arched passage as entry. Behind that we saw that a city of high turrets and magnificent balconies marched away upwards the canyon, gaining height until the tallest of them were level with the highest walls at the top of the canyon.

The outer wall was of the same sandstone we were used to seeing on the small local buildings in the towns but these were blocks ten, twelve feet or more square, aligned so seamlessly it was difficult to see where they were joined. The outer surface of the wall was covered, ground to as high as we could see in the gloom, with fine miniature carvings that at first glance seemed to depict scenes of battles of antiquity but would have taken someone with more intellect—and patience—than I to unravel. At that moment I was only interested in getting the squad off the valley floor and under some cover, to a spot where ambush wouldn’t be quite so easily accomplished.

Lieutenant Timkins, seemingly without a care in the world, was already making his way in through the archway. I left two men at the entrance gate—Jock Benson and Andy Hynd, stout lads the both of them and able to keep each other alert—and herded the rest of the squad inside.

The arch was more than fifteen feet tall and the wall through which it passed was about the same thickness, a testament to the solidity of the vast structure. We walked along the short corridor and inside the entranceway to the city itself. Dust lay underfoot—our footprints showed clearly—as did something else—strange scuffed marks, similar to those I had seen at the spot where Jennings had been taken—there were a great many of them, covering all the ground I could see in the dim light.

We found the lieutenant trying to light a wall sconce with his tinderbox. MacLeod managed it rather more quickly, using up half a dozen of his safety matches in the process but finally we had the sconce—and several others on opposite walls-lit, providing more than enough light to illuminate the interior of this entrance hall. A wide left-hand corridor opened out into some kind of temple.

That structure was little more than one large hall with a high vaulted rock roof curving far overhead. The whole thing was supported by twin rows of giant columns that stretched back against the cliff, narrowing where the box canyon into which it was built came to a point until, at the far end some thirty yards and more away, stood a tall, monstrous statue. It was carved of a single slab of black stone that seemed to swallow all light. As we stepped closer, I saw it did not, as I had first thought, depict a man wearing some kind of cape but was in fact a giant beetle, its carapace half-opened, its head raised high to where the single gleaming black pincer seemed to scrape the roof. Behind the statue, going up, high up the sheer rock face, there was a set of stone steps carved into the cliff, steeper than any path we had yet traversed and if there was an end to them, I couldn’t see it in the dark.

We found Jennings—what was left of him—lying at the foot of the statue. His body looked strangely sunken and when I got closer I saw, all too clearly—the reason—the poor chap had been eviscerated—his kilt was in tatters and his serge tunic ripped open—but not as torn as his belly. His flesh had been brutally sundered. His insides—guts, liver, stomach, heart and all were gone, as if scooped out. Then another thought struck me—one that made me glad that I had only partaken of tea and biscuits, although I almost lost both anyway. He looked like he had been eaten—and that he’d been alive for at least some of the time it was happening.

I heard the lieutenant sob at my back and Mac had taken to cursing, none too quietly, his brogue echoing and whispering around us, coming back from above like a chorus of praying monks. I called them both to quiet—I had heard something else, something I couldn’t quite recognize, a high keening drone, almost as if Mac was starting up on the pipes. It was coming from some distance—but it was definitely getting closer.

I peered up to the steps behind the statue—it seemed that I felt fresher air in my face as I did so—but the sound wasn’t coming from there—it was coming from outside, out in the valley. And it was most definitely getting louder.