The Burning Sky

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

In good cover, at no seeming risk and with time to think, Jardine was not impressed with the opposition, or at least not with whoever was in command. First he had allowed his presence to become known; second, he had taken no action following on from the single gunshot fired by Corrie Littleton, which surely indicated an awareness of the threat. He had adopted the fixed tactic of the ambush so that his relative strength would count for more.

Yet if the need was to block the trail, he would have been better to have sealed off the point of entry where, with rifles effective at long range and over a field of fire with no cover, provided he had water — and he had an oasis, albeit a distant one, at his back — he could have sat there for ever while inviting the warriors from the caravan to attack him over open ground.

Another option was to radically alter his dispositions in a set of ravines and a folding gully that obviously extended a long way, by seeking a better, more camouflaged position from which to launch an initial attack, then using a series of short, sharp engagements allied to partial pullbacks to draw his enemy into the kind of sapping and continuous losses necessary to clear the route, which would remain blocked, with the caravan stuck and thirsty for an indefinite amount of time. If that could be extended long enough, they would have to head back for the coast and the job would be done.

Now he was staying put when falling back was a sounder tactic, given the amount of cover available on these boulder-strewn, scrub-covered hillsides, that being the best way to confuse the opposition. All this thinking was predicated on them being Italian, or at least local Somali recruits led by one or more officers of Mussolini’s army, who did not seem too blessed with brains.

The aim was blockage, yet he had elected for carnage, which, while no doubt satisfying, rendered complex what should have been simple. He was now in a firefight with a force greater than his own, in terrain that made them, in effect, equal, albeit the man in command would think they, in the defensive position, had the upper hand.

‘He knew we were coming by this route,’ Ras Kassa said.

‘You came this way with a hundred empty camels and the same number of Shewan warriors, so there is a very high chance you were seen. Word was picked up about the landing of a cargo at Zeila, where this slave route ends. What would an Ethiopian caravan be on its way to collect with an invasion imminent? Sherlock Holmes it’s not.’

‘Ah, the great detective; I had his stories read to me.’

‘Ras, we need half your men to get higher up the hillside unseen, the rest to keep up a slow rate of fire to pin the enemy and keep him thinking we are stuck. I want us above them when that mortar comes into play, ready to inflict casualties when they break cover.’

‘And if they do not?’

‘Then we’ll mortar them till they do.’

‘We are running out of daylight, Captain Jardine, would it not be better just to attack?’

‘Once we have shifted this lot we can go on in starlight, or, if we must, the caravan can camp where they are overnight.’ Jardine looked the older man right in the eye. ‘This is your show, not mine, but I am advising you that exposing your men will get many of them killed, and it is not a course I would recommend.’

‘And if darkness comes and our enemies are still before us?’

‘Then I expect him to withdraw, but I would wait until dawn to find out.’

‘My men are good fighters in the dark.’

‘I don’t doubt it, Ras, but if they are askaris holding the ground before us, they will be that too. Of course, if you order an attack, I am not going to interfere, these are your men.’

‘I will wait till darkness falls, but when that happens, Captain Jardine, I suspect I will have more fighting knowledge than you, and it is I who will personally lead my men using nothing but knives. We will clear the way by stealth.’

‘Your decision.’

The scrabbling sound to their rear showed a Shewan with a skin of water, for which Jardine especially was grateful; he also brought a message for his ras.

‘Your man has set up the mortar on flat ground and needs someone to range for him.’

That was not going to be easy from where he was, and damned difficult if he moved: thanks to those mounds at the entrance, the higher he went the less Vince could see of him; sending messages back and forth was too slow and he was too far away to hear a shout. Mortar fire was most effective when it was quick and continuous, while it was also true it was not the most accurate weapon in creation, that oddly adding to its effect: you never knew where the next incoming round was going to land.

‘I need your red cloak, Ras, or part of it,’ Jardine said, unwrapping his own white headdress. ‘And a stick long enough to signal. The message that should go back to Vince is up fifty for white, drop fifty for red, multiply by times shown, bang on with both, and I still need your men getting elevation to pour in volley fire when they break cover.’

The red cloak came off to be handed over, though finding a stick long enough was harder: not much grew to a height in this barren place. How the ras managed to convey that message to his men he did not know, he could only hope it was done accurately. The sun was dropping and, at the speed it does near the equator, the intense heat easing with it.

Up ahead the enemy commander must be feeling content: his tactics would seem to be producing the intended result, if not in the anticipated manner. The caravan was static, as were those attacking his position, and he could anticipate no change the next day.

Jardine was worried that the sun would disappear before they were ready, because he could not range-find for Vince in the dark, and if they did get some rounds off they were not going to have much time to dislodge the enemy. Finally ready, he raised both colours to tell Vince to commence firing, an act that proved his opponent, whatever else he had, exercised control over his men: there was no useless firing at a flapping cloth.

He was too far off to hear the odd plop a mortar round makes when it is dropped for detonation, but he could imagine Vince, having dropped the shell, sticking his fingers in his ears and ducking to get clear, then he heard the ‘whoosh’ it made as it passed overhead, which required him to time the point at which he must expose himself to observe the fall. Vince had to be careful, had to fire at near maximum range, afraid of being too short and dropping a round on his own side, but in his caution he was excessive.

Set as it was and at low elevation, the round landed way beyond the target, so far that it was a guess how much it had to be reduced, with Jardine jabbing up the red cloak three times, on the last attracting fire, which at least showed how alarmed the enemy was at the introduction of the weapon.

Frustration followed as Vince made the necessary adjustment, sacrificing length of range for increased elevation in a weapon that was short on that anyway, five to six hundred yards being about the limits of effectiveness for a 50 mm model. The second round showed Jardine had overdone his signals: it landed between the enemy position and him, which made very dangerous his looking out from cover to observe, and it was only just in time that he got his head back to avoid a fusillade of dislodged stones and earth.

The white flag went up, with Jardine wondering if those ahead would think he was trying to surrender; what came next disabused them if they thought that. It seemed to Jardine to be right on the button and he raised both signals to a torrent of enemy rifle fire.

Vince was profligate, firing off ten rounds inside two minutes, a measure of drift due to spinning and a bit of breeze ensuring none of the high-explosive shells landed in the same place, and that was how long it took to break the defence, brought home to Jardine as Ras Kassa’s men opened fire from above him, pouring rifle rounds into an enemy forced to make themselves a target in order to retreat.

Both the signals went up again to tell Vince to cease fire, and if the remainder of the Ethiopian warriors did not understand what he shouted out, they knew to follow him once he stood up and rushed forward, his weapon burping in short three-round bursts. Even with the noise of guns going off he could hear the Shewan war cries; high, controlled keening screams designed to strike fear into an enemy heart. Magazine empty, Jardine stopped to reload, which let those following him pass. By the time he made the enemy position it was overrun, and lacking bayonets or more ammunition, rifle butts were raining down on the heads of what were, by their greenish uniforms, Italian askaris.

Not being understood now was again a problem: he wanted people to interrogate, he needed information on how much was known about the caravan and the weapons he was carrying, but all his commands to halt the killing were ignored. He actually had to stand over one wounded man and protect him from what was a massacre as the Shewan clubbed their enemies to death.

The light was going now, the sun hitting the edge of the earth, but enough was left to show the broken, blood-covered body of an Italian officer, a lieutenant by his rank badges. He had been hit by mortar fire and there would be no questioning him.

And then it was over, the bodies were being stripped, the knives were out to mutilate them, and he was shouting at Ras Kassa to stop the mayhem and not having much effect. The older man’s eyes were afire with as much bloodlust as those he led and he had thrown his head back to start calling out in that high-pitched voice what Jardine could only think was a victory chant.

Between Jardine’s spread legs was a man whimpering in terror, and more than once he was obliged to deflect a Shewan who wanted to kill him.

Alverson brought his camera up to view the field of conflict at dawn, as below the caravan was being loaded, prior to moving on. There were few trees of any height but one bore the body of the Italian officer, though the American only knew what it was because Jardine had told him. Hanging by its feet, the naked cadaver swung above a dark patch of earth, which had been a pool of black blood where it had drained from the myriad cuts inflicted on the dead body.

Overnight, hyenas had torn at the head and torso, turning it to a bloody pulp with bones exposed where their massive jaws had crunched and stripped them of flesh, but they had been given so many bodies to feed on they had not finished the task. Now, with the morning heating up, the site was beginning to attract flies in the hundreds, soon to be thousands. What was left would be picked at by carrion throughout the day and the sun would do its work, so that by the time night came again only bones would be left.

He trained the lens of his Leica on what had been a battlefield. If there had been emotion for such a sight, the man had seen too much to be affected by it now; it was news and his job was to show the world what war really meant.

‘Jesus Christ!’

‘Corrie, what the hell are you doing here?’

‘I had to come and look.’

‘Did you?’ She nodded, her hand to her mouth. ‘Happy now?’

‘Is this what this war is going to be like?’

‘Honey, this is what all wars are like.’

‘They should be buried, not just left.’

Tyler Alverson sighed. ‘They don’t care anymore and neither do the ras and his boys.’

‘What do you think happened to that Somali kid after Jardine finished questioning him?’

‘Take it to the limits of your imagination, Corrie, then go a little further.’

‘Why didn’t Jardine intervene?’

‘Why didn’t I? Why didn’t you?’ Alverson asked as he clicked the camera. ‘Because you don’t; you just accept these people have their ways, and if the tables were turned the same would happen, and the best thing to do is pray, when it’s you, you’re already dead.’

‘They’re savages.’

‘Who, when I left, were saying their prayers to a God they have worshipped for two thousand years.’

‘Will they print those at home?’

‘No. These are for the exhibition I will hold one day, photographs at which our fellow Americans will look with deep fascination. That is if I can find somebody to develop the damned things.’ Looking over her shoulder Alverson jerked his head. ‘Caravan’s moving, time to rejoin them.’

‘His name was Alberto Soradino and he commanded the garrison at Assab, which is on the southern border of Italian and French Somaliland. Soradino was a lieutenant in the 3^rd Bersaglieri Regiment, stuck in a dead-end spot, and I should think going mad, while up north all his regimental friends were getting ready for a glorious invasion.’

Jardine passed over his wallet, which Corrie Littleton took off him.

‘There’s a photograph in there, I think of his mother.’

‘God!’

‘No good asking for his help, is there? Alberto believed in him and look where it got him.’

‘What will she be told, his mother?’

‘Missing in action, presumed dead.’

‘No body?’ she asked, handing back the wallet, which Jardine put in his kitbag.

‘No, but if I get a chance I will somehow see this gets to Italy. I met too many people after the Great War who still hoped their presumed dead would show up one day. The really important thing is, as far as the man I questioned knew, he acted without telling his superiors, setting off to cross French territory as soon as he got wind of this caravan. Just breaching the border is grounds for a court martial, never mind setting off on a wild goose chase without telling anyone and leaving his mortar and machine gun sections behind. Alberto was searching for glory and he was not the brightest star in the firmament.’

‘You can’t say that about a man you don’t know.’

‘I can about a man I fought, and look what Ras Kassa is riding now.’

‘So he’s riding the poor bastard’s horse, so what?’

The Ethiopian leader was also sporting the Italian lieutenant’s hat, decorated with black capercaillie feathers.

‘Look where we are, in the middle of a waterless wilderness, and he’s on his horse like he’s Caesar! This is not horse terrain, because a horse needs eight gallons of water a day and feed. Do you know how much eight gallons of water weighs?’

‘Do you?’

‘A lot, and some poor bastard has to carry it.’

‘That was the second horse, the pack animal, the one they roasted and we ate last night. It doesn’t make him stupid.’

‘Alberto gets news about a shipment being unloaded at Zeila and information comes in, I am guessing here, of a caravan with unloaded camels seen heading along the old slave route, or maybe he just figured out it was the only way the return could be made. He does not pass this news up the chain of command. Instead Alberto mounts his trusty steed, lines up his askaris and heads out into the wilds. To get here, he crossed a border he should not, dreaming that on the return he would be able to tell his superiors how he magnificently stopped weapons getting into enemy territory; he may even have hoped to have them to show, with prisoners as well. He can feel the medals on his chest, he can imagine old Fatso Mussolini shaking his hand.’

Jardine’s voice had been rising as he spoke, getting more and more irritated, the narrowness of the trail and the closeness of the enclosing hillsides amplifying it.

‘Why are you so upset? You won.’

‘I’m upset because he got thirty men killed, which was probably his entire rifle platoon. That photograph of his mother, who thought her darling son was the best thing on God’s earth, distresses me. I’m upset because there will be Somali widows who will never know what became of their husbands, and children who will never know what happened to their fathers. I’m upset that Alberto was an idiot and even more upset he had to cross our path.’

‘I think you are in the wrong game, buster.’

‘Maybe you’re right.’

‘He’s always like that, miss,’ Vince said. ‘We call it the “black dog”, an’ it was made a lot harder by the way they took out that wounded geezer he was questioning to have a bit of sport.’

‘Folk think soldiers are made of stone, honey,’ Alverson added, ‘and they ain’t.’

‘Is he married, Vince?’

‘Down, girl,’ Alverson barked.

‘It’s only a question.’

‘One you’ll have to ask the guv, miss. I don’t talk about things he don’t want talked about.’

‘So he is married. Any kids?’

‘Honey, you should have been a reporter like me.’

‘Jaundiced, cynical, overweight, drinks too much, smokes cigars and can photograph mutilated bodies without turning a hair.’

‘I can’t wait till you get to my bad points.’

‘Oasis,’ cried Vince, pointing ahead to the first hint of greenery, glad to get off the subject.

The Ethiopians were sat in a wide circle, those with rifles cleaning their weapons, while the camels, who had now been let loose to forage, crunched at the tough thorny foliage that surrounded an aquifer-fed waterhole. The ammunition was on the inside of the pile of crates, those around it protecting it from the fires they had lit as much to ward off animals as to keep them warm, for if they needed water, so did the wildlife.

Jardine and Vince, having set the task of cleaning and oiling in motion, had reconnoitred the waterhole, staying well away from the mud-churned area where animals fed: water buffalo, wild asses, antelopes, and sometimes, no doubt, elephants. Some of these being prey, at night there would be lions and hyenas, which worried Vince.

‘These people we are with live here; if they are not frightened we shouldn’t be either.’

‘I’m more used to mice and the occasional rat, guv, and the biggest cat I’ve seen is a neighbour’s moggie.’

‘People pay good money for this. A night on the savannah and big beasts to hunt during the day.’

‘That,’ Vince replied emphatically, ‘do not make them sensible.’

‘Snakes are more of a problem, mind. Sometimes they like to snuggle up to a warm body at night.’

‘Thanks for that, I’ll sleep much easier now.’

‘Then you won’t mind being awake half the night, will you?’

‘Not sentry duty, guv?’

’I’m only joking. Ras Kassa’s men can do the sentinel job and we can sleep undisturbed.’

Tyler Alverson had purchased half a dozen oil lamps — he had given one to Jardine — and the remainder were illuminating his tent and that of Corrie Littleton, where they had set up flimsy metal and canvas beds. The Ethiopians were round the fire saying evening prayers again, they being a pious lot, and all around the sounds of the African night were emerging: deep-throated toads, barking creatures and laughing hyenas — seemingly magnified by the vastness of the landscape. When the first lion roared — there would always be a pride close to a waterhole — the Ethiopians looked engrossed.

‘Have you ever killed a lion, Captain Jardine?’ Ras Kassa enquired. ‘I did as a young man, with nothing but a spear, which elevated me among my tribe. It is the aim of every one of our warriors to do the same.’

Jardine had a vision of the warriors and half his camel drovers rushing about trying to spear a lion. ‘Tell them they will have to put it aside, we have more important things to worry about.’

It was not Jardine’s place to set the pickets but he did look over the arrangements and was satisfied. He and Vince, by the limited light from their lantern, laid out their bedrolls on the weapon crates, wondering if in doing so they were being watched. Not that they had seen or heard anything, but people who were born into this kind of land could move about with an assurance denied to Europeans, and that applied as much to their drovers as anyone out in the bush-like landscape. If there were nomads about they might seek to sneak inside the ring of sentinels, perhaps just to steal what they could, perhaps to see what there was worth stealing.

‘As long as they don’t have knives, guv. It always worried me in Mesopotamia that some Arab would slit my throat in the night.’

‘You still got that sod of a knife you bought in Brussels?’

‘I have.’

‘Well, sleep with it by your side.’

‘What about you?’

Jardine raised his sub-machine gun. ‘For anything that wakes me up.’

‘Christ, I hope you’re not upset by snoring.’

‘Mind if I join you, gentlemen?’

Visually all they could see was a silhouette and the end of a glowing cigar; it was the deep voice and drawl that identified Tyler Alverson.

‘This club is not exclusive,’ Jardine replied. ‘Anyone can join.’

‘Good, I brought us a little nightcap.’ As he moved into the circle of light the proffered square bottle of Johnnie Walker Scotch Whisky became visible, the golden liquid picking up the lantern glow. ‘Your national drink, Jardine.’

Drinking whisky in the middle of Africa was not the same as at home — water that had been in a flask all day and warm did nothing for the purity of flavour — but it was welcome nonetheless.

‘I was wondering,’ the American said, after a quick toast, ‘what you guys are planning to do after this little job is completed.’

‘Goin’ home, I hope,’ Vince Castellano said.

‘Not your style, Jardine, from what I recall. Strikes me you are the kinda guy that gets involved in a fracas like this one.’ Met with a non-committal look on Jardine’s face and a ‘here we go again’ look on that of Vince, Alverson continued, ‘I have always found that having along a man who knows his way around a battlefield is a real help when it comes to understanding what is going on.’

‘From what I have gathered you have been round a few yourself.’

‘With nothing but a camera.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Get to where the action is — what else, it’s my job? — and that means a trip to the Eritrean borderlands. I have promised Corrie Littleton that I will help her get to where her mother is doing her stuff, but after that I need to make sense of the campaign. I was wondering if a tour of the probable battle area might interest you?’

‘It’s a thought.’

‘Guv!’ Vince protested.

‘Good,’ the American said, unscrewing the bottle cap again.

Vince Castellano had no idea of how close he came to dying that night: with his well-hit boxer’s nose and full of Alverson’s whisky, he was noisy enough with his snores to frighten off any curious lions, which gave Cal Jardine a disturbed night.