The Sixteen (23 page)

‘That’s a bloody shame, we could’ve used that truck,’ Chalky said.

‘There’s twenty men on the back of it!’ I exclaimed.

‘Sooo?’ He grinned at me.

At that moment, we heard the sound of another truck approaching from the same direction the other one had taken, just as Spot came out of the reeds a few yards ahead of us and we quickly ran towards him.

‘Where’s Dynamo?’ Chalky asked as the three of us took cover in the scrub.

‘Just ahead of us,’ Spot replied.

It looked as though the truck was going to drive on and, as it passed, I looked out through the bushes and could just make out that it was an army vehicle with a driver and two other soldiers in the back. At which point, Dynamo came crashing out of the bushes bent double as he struggled to pull the smock over his head; it was too small and was stuck on his arms. It appeared as if he hadn’t heard the truck drive past. Just then, it stopped and reversed to within a few yards of him. Dynamo froze for a moment and from where we were, it seemed likely that he was looking through the neck of the smock to see what was going on.

We realised that he had heard the truck and come out of the shrubs on purpose; there was no way he would have just come out into the open with that stupid thing stuck over his head.

‘Hang back a bit,’ Spot whispered to Chalky and, leaving our bags with him, we broke cover and began to make our way towards Dynamo.

The two soldiers had now jumped off the back of the truck and
were casually walking towards him too, as the driver climbed out of the cab and followed them. They were obviously army personnel but it was hard to believe they were soldiers, as they looked so scruffy. Two of them wore berets and the other had on some type of Arab headdress.

One of the men continued to walk towards Dynamo, smiling at his struggle with the smock and calling out in Arabic, although I had no idea what he was saying. The other two changed direction when they saw Spot and me emerge from the reeds and began to walk towards us. Chalky stayed behind as Spot had suggested, hiding in the reeds with the two bags. Spot and I slowly began to move apart in case we had to use our sashes. These were the only weapons we’d be able to use right now, as gunfire would have alerted anyone nearby.

Eventually, Dynamo yanked the smock over his head, straightening up as he dropped it on the ground and grinning at the soldier no more than three feet from him. He touched his left inside elbow joint with his right hand, which was the signal to take these guys out, and we immediately released the safety catches on our sash buckles. We knew then that Dynamo would have already taken the catch off his buckle under the cover of the smock. The soldier stopped smiling and quickly turned to shout a warning to his comrades, while at the same time going for his revolver.

Dynamo reacted instantly and hit his buckle. With a whistling sound the spring on his sash released the weapon so fast and with such power that the man wouldn’t have seen a thing. Dynamo’s first swing severed two of the man’s fingers, which went flying through the air together with the gun he’d been holding, and then, hitting him again on the back swing he took a big chunk out of the man’s leg.

Almost simultaneously, Spot and I released our sashes and
took out the remaining two soldiers, who to begin with had been distracted, and then were immediately rooted to the spot by the swiftness and ferocity of Dynamo’s attack on their colleague.

This was the first time I’d actually hit someone with the sash and on my initial swing, the metal edge buried itself deeply into my target’s neck. Bleeding profusely, the man reached up with both hands to grab it just as I managed to tug it free. His fingers were ripped to shreds by a series of small spiked studs set into the surface of the belt near the buckle as it eventually came loose.

Twisting from right to left, I swung the sash across my body in order to bounce it off my left arm and to propel it forward with extra momentum on the return swing. I aimed for the soldier’s head just above his right ear, the sash made contact with him, and with a crack his skull split open. He went down at once, blood squirting profusely from the deep gaping wound.

As I looked around I could see that Spot had killed the other guy with one blow and his victim was lying in a pool of blood with part of his jaw missing. I seemed to have put a lot more effort into using the sash than the others who, being more experienced, made it look so easy! The soldiers must have got the shock of their lives having approached what to them would have appeared to be three unarmed men.

Chalky emerged from the reeds and came over to us. ‘I’ll take care of the truck and get it out of sight while you clean this mess up,’ he said.

The guy Dynamo hit was now rolling around the ground screaming in agony. Dynamo grabbed hold of him and dragged him into the reeds.

‘Geordie, get a hold of this guy and keep him quiet. We need to get the others out of sight. Here, use this.’ He picked up his discarded smock and threw it towards me and I immediately
stuffed part of it into the terrified man’s mouth to stop him from yelling.

Grabbing the collar of the soldier Spot killed, Dynamo dragged the body towards the top of the embankment.

‘We’ll need their tunics and berets,’ he said, sitting the body up against his knees and yanking off the jacket.

While I was struggling with the hostage in the reeds and trying to prevent him from squealing, Spot went over to the guy I’d killed who was lying on his face and pulled at the dead man’s jacket, which made the arms to come up above the head. Blood was still oozing from the man’s wounds and the collar and lapel of his jacket were saturated.

‘You certainly made sure of this one, Geordie, old boy,’ Spot pointed out. ‘There’s blood all over the front of this tunic. Never mind, I don’t suppose it’ll be noticeable from a distance but I’m not wearing it. It’s your kill and your jacket!’

Dynamo had thrown the other man’s tunic and beret towards the edge of the reeds where Chalky had hidden our bags and now started to drag the body down the embankment. The ground was wet and slippery and the body began to slide, moving faster than he could keep up with. Tripping up, he also began to slide and almost fell into the river, finally ending up with the inert body on top of him. Laughing, he pushed the dead man to one side.

‘You nearly got me, you bastard, you never give up, do you?’ he said, then ran back up the embankment and grabbed the injured man.

‘Geordie, go and see if you can find something to dig a hole for these guys, I’ll look after chummy here,’ he told me. ‘Keep your eyes open, there could be more of these swine about!’

As I moved off towards the cement mixer, Spot spoke to him in a low voice.

‘We could be in a helluva mess, here, Dynamo. There’s bound to be a search party sent out to look for these guys when they don’t turn up.’

‘That’s why I didn’t get rid of him straight away, I want to know where they’re going and what time they were expected,’ Dynamo explained.

As I turned, I noticed a pistol lying on the ground. It was a British service revolver – a finger lay nearby. Oh God, I thought, no wonder the guy’s in agony.

I quickly ran back along the top of the embankment to where the men had been working and looked around. A broken shovel had been thrown under the cement mixer; it was covered with dried up cement and most of the handle was missing but it would do.

Spot and Dynamo were in the bushes kneeling over the soldier and talking to him in Arabic when I got back. Chalky had returned from where he’d hidden the truck behind a small group of nearby trees just off the road and was dragging the other body down the embankment. He called up to me:

‘Oh you’ve found something, good! Come down here, it’s out of the way but it’ll be easier to bury them, the ground’s softer than up there.’

I joined him at the river’s edge where we dug three shallow graves in the soft mud; we couldn’t dump the bodies into the river as we had nothing to weigh them down with and they might pop up somewhere. As I started to make my way back up the embankment Spot and Dynamo dragged the third soldier down by his feet.

‘Geordie, do me a favour will you. There should be a revolver and a couple of fingers lying around up there somewhere, see if you can find them,’ Dynamo said as he passed me.

I went back to the spot where I’d seen the gun and finger earlier and picked them up but couldn’t find the other finger anywhere.
Back down the embankment they were burying the last guy. So I wrapped the gun and his finger in the smock I’d stuffed in his mouth and threw them into the river.

‘Right, let’s get out of here,’ Spot said. ‘We should make good time now we’ve got a truck. That guy told us they were heading to another camp about eighty miles north east of here. If he was telling the truth, it’s going to be a while before anyone realises that they’re missing.’

From the information he and Dynamo had managed to get out of the soldier, we knew that they weren’t expected back at their camp until the following day, that’s if the information was reliable. It meant that we had the truck until daybreak the following morning and by then we should be long gone, if luck was on our side.

Checking the truck out, we discovered four five-gallon drums in the back so we topped up the tank, as we didn’t want to take any chances with the fuel. Luckily the tank was already pretty full, which meant that hopefully we might have enough to be able to use the truck to get back to our pick-up point.

Dynamo, Spot and I put on the three tunics, which were similar to my own khaki uniform; however, they were all a bit on the small side, uncomfortable and tight. Nevertheless, we managed to squeeze into them. None of us wanted to try wearing the headdress but Dynamo and Spot were now both wearing the berets.

As there was only room for three in the cab, someone was going to have to ride on the back of the truck.

‘You look the most like an Arab, Spot,’ Dynamo said. ‘It’ll have to be you. Besides, your beret fits! I’ll drive.’ He jumped into the driver’s seat. ‘Come on you lot, get in, we haven’t got all day.’

As Chalky and I climbed into the cab alongside him, Dynamo crinkled his nose in disgust. ‘What the hell have you been eating, Geordie?’ he laughed.

I searched about in the pockets of the tunic and discovered some disgusting kind of dried meat, which I promptly threw out of the window.

‘You should’ve kept that, it’s probably a local delicacy, grilled camel dung or something,’ Chalky sniggered.

Spot sniffed. ‘Phew! I’ll brave it out on the back and get all the fresh air, then,’ he said and quickly climbed on.

We were making good time, we had roughly five hours and about sixty miles to go but we still had to find the garrison building. Dynamo put his foot down and we shot off.

Spot leant over the cab and poked his head through the gun turret.

‘Take it easy, old boy,’ he said. ‘Have you seen the time? We want to get there for nightfall.’

‘Yes, you’re right. That should give us ample time to locate the garrison,’ Dynamo said and slowed to a steadier speed.

We could see a long way into the distance along the mainly deserted road; most of the activity seemed to be on the other side of the river, in small boats.

As we drove along Chalky and I searched the cab for anything that might come in useful and he discovered a brand new oil filter still in its box under his seat.

‘That’s bound to come in handy,’ he said and stuck it into his holdall

‘What the hell are you going to use that for?’ I asked him.

‘It’s brand new, we could use it as a silencer for our pistols.’

I looked at him and shook my head in disbelief, thinking he was winding me up.

‘Yeah, that’s right, Geordie,’ Dynamo said to my amazement just as Spot stuck his head through the gun turret in the top of the cab.

‘Watch out lads, this could be trouble, there’s a truck full of troops heading straight towards us!’ he said, warning us of the approaching vehicle.

We’d been travelling for approximately an hour and had just climbed a slight rise; Spot being higher than us on the back could obviously see further along the road. We didn’t know what to expect but the truck merely drove straight past us, the driver flashing his lights in acknowledgement.

A couple of miles further along the road and the city skyline became clearly visible on the horizon. I’d thought that Beirut looked big, but it was nothing compared to this place, which looked massive. The outlines of the taller buildings and minarets were strange and wonderful shapes.

We passed an old guy walking along the road towards the city. He was dressed in long dark traditional-style clothes leading a string of several heavily laden camels – the weirdest creatures I’d ever seen. It was like something out of a fairy tale.

The traffic on the road increased now and everything, whether it was a truck, car, bus, scooter, bike or cart, was laden with either goods, packs or people. The whole place was crawling with troops and civilians; people were everywhere you looked, just like a hornet’s nest. The smell was horrendous, a mixture of poor drainage and sewers, rotting vegetation, strange foods and camel dung!

On the outskirts, as in Beirut, a lot of the place looked to have been thrown together but as we drove further many of the streets widened and were lined with well-built and balconied buildings, many of them ornately decorated.

Chalky and I had been studying a map along the way and had marked a bridge across the river that we needed to locate. Once over this we should be only about half a mile away from our target.
Our other landmark was a huge mosque, the Citadel, which was surrounded by a high wall and looked like a fort or castle.

‘We have to find a place to leave the truck as close to the target area as possible, I’ve got a sneaky feeling that we’ll be leaving in a hurry!’ Dynamo wryly commented. ‘We could have half of the Egyptian army chasing us, so we need to get out of the city as quickly as possible. Is there anywhere near the target area where we could leave it?’

We were caught up in the heavy city traffic now and travelling fairly slowly along a wide road running parallel to the river. No one took any notice of us, there were dozens of army lorries around much the same as ours – we were merely one of many.