They returned to the first row of fighters. Davis and Harris were sitting on the ground, back-to-back, eating some chocolate they had found in a cockpit. “Any luck?” Davis asked.
Dunn said: “Two dozen planes in all.”
“And a sentry,” Davis said. “Harris found a sentry.”
“That’s that, then,” Dunn said. “Home for cocoa.”
“What’s the rush?” Lampard asked. “I’ve still got some bombs left.”
The others were shrugging on their rucksacks, ready to go. Lampard took his rucksack off.
“Look, sir: we’ve done the job,” Davis said. “Let’s not push our luck.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, sergeant.” Lampard was counting his bombs. “Two. Anybody else got any leftovers?”
“This place is going to be hopping mad in twenty minutes, Jack,” Dunn said.
“I should hope so. Well?”
“One here,” Pocock said reluctantly.
“I’ve got a couple I was saving to leave in the gap,” Davis said.
“That makes five. Let’s see if we can find some nice big hangars and blow ’em up.”
“There isn’t time, Jack.”
“Then we’d better hurry.” Lampard set off, half-running and half-striding, and the others scrambled to follow before they lost him in the gloom. “This is fucking lunacy,” Davis whispered. Dunn grunted: he knew he needed all his breath to match Lampard’s pace.
Lampard hustled them along for about two minutes, gradually slowed to a walk and finally stopped. “There,” he said. A fine sliver of light appeared, no more than a hairline crack in the blackness. Dunn marveled at Lampard’s night vision while he despaired of his judgment. Light meant people. “Onward,” Lampard murmured.
It was a hangar, a steel shell as big as a bank. Davis pressed his ear against the side. Sometimes a muttering of voices could be heard, and the faint click of metal on metal. “Occupied,” he whispered. Lampard led the patrol around the corner. The sliver of light came from an ill-fitting blackout around a huge sliding door. Lampard peered in, but saw only a pile of paint tins. Using the tips of his fingers, he felt his way across the sliding door until he found a small hinged door set into it, and grunted with satisfaction: hangars were much the same the whole world over. Dunn was beside him, tapping his luminous watch. “Fifteen minutes to detonation,” Dunn whispered. Lampard took a deep breath. The air tasted sweet and exhilarating, delicately laced by some aromatic desert herb. Before his mind made the decision, his fingers had turned the handle. It opened inwards, as he knew it would. He knew everything, and the knowledge made him smile with delight. The enemy was there to be beaten. All it took was nerve and Lampard had nerve galore.
He sneaked a glance around the blackout curtain hanging inside the door and saw bright lights over broken aircraft and deep shadow elsewhere. Lovely. He slipped off his rucksack and primed all the bombs with fifteen-minute fuses. He put three in his tunic, took a bomb in each hand and strolled into the shadows. His rubber soles made no sound on the concrete. For a long moment he watched Germans in white overalls doing things to the guts of the engines of two 109s. In another area, men were fitting a new propeller. They seemed relaxed and happy in their work. He strolled on and came across an aircraft with no wings or wheels, supported on wooden trestles. He left a bomb in its naked engine. Nearby was a stack of wooden crates, each stenciled with MB and a serial number. MB had to mean Mercedes-Benz. He found a gap in the stack and left two bombs deep in the middle. Someone shouted a challenge. Lampard ducked and stopped breathing. Now we fight! he thought; but the shout went on and on and became the opening phrase of a snatch of opera. Other men joined in, until they were all thundering out the Toreador song from Carmen. Lampard planted his last two bombs, one on a mobile generator and one on a tractor, and strolled back through the shadows to the door, pom-pomming along with the singers because he didn’t know the words.
Dunn had the door open, ready for him. “Jerry’s getting jumpy. He had a searchlight on, sweeping the field.”
“We might as well leave, I suppose.”
“Through the gap?”
“Where else?”
“We’ve only got eight minutes.”
“Ample.”
“They’ll see us when the bombs go off.”
“They’ll panic when the bombs go off.”
“You know best, Jack.”
The rest of the men began moving as soon as they saw the officers coming. Lampard used a luminous compass to find a bearing to the gap in the wire. After a hundred yards they reached a tarmac road. “Good,” Lampard said. “This is faster.” His eyes were feeling the strain of looking five ways at once, but his legs and lungs were strong, and he enjoyed marching fast on the smooth surface. He could scarcely hear the faint tread of boots, but he knew exactly where his men were. They were spread behind him in a loose arrowhead. Dunn was on the far left, Davis the far right, Pocock at the rear. Harris was nearest. High time Harris got made sergeant, he decided. A decoration would be wasted on Harris, but he’d like the extra stripe. And the pay. That thought flickered through Lampard’s mind while he glanced at his compass. He reckoned the time remaining on the fuses. He pictured the gap waiting ahead and the steep escarpment of the Jebel. At that point he strode into a dazzle of headlights that stopped him like a blinding brick wall.
For a few seconds the only sound was the panting and heaving of the patrol. Sergeant Davis spat. Faint shreds of mist drifted across the dazzle. Lampard squinted hard and began to make out three sources: probably headlamps and a spotlight. “Good evening, gentlemen,” said someone in a voice that was urbane and confident, like the head waiter at Claridge’s. “Weapons on the ground immediately, please. Then take two paces forward and lie flat.” Nobody moved. Lampard cocked his head. Five hundred miles away an orchestra was playing Mozart. Very faint, but quite unmistakable.
“Naturally you are surrounded.” A tiny click, and Mozart died. “Unless you surrender, I regret that you must be shot where you stand.” The regret sounded formal but genuine, like Claridge’s turning away a gentleman without a necktie.
Still nobody moved. The initial blindness had gone, but the dazzle was painful and it made the surrounding darkness twice as dense.
“I’m going forward,” Lampard announced without turning to the patrol. “If I am fired upon, you will blow this vehicle to bits. Understand? Never mind me. One shot, and you destroy the vehicle totally and immediately.” He had the sensation of being outside himself, watching and hearing these orders being given. He stepped forward and the sensation vanished.
It was an Alfa-Romeo open tourer, very big. A Luftwaffe major sat behind the wheel. Nobody else was in the car. Lampard stood on the running board and looked around. Empty ground. “You don’t half tell whoppers,” he said. “Now kill the lights and jump out.”
The major pressed switches and the night flooded back. “I may take my stick?” he asked.
Lampard opened the door. The major had some difficulty getting out. By now Sergeant Davis and Corporal Pocock had moved out wide to guard the flanks. Harris searched the German for weapons: none. Dunn said: “I make it three minutes, Jack.”
“More than ample. We’ll take this splendid car.”
“We can’t leave him,” Dunn said.
“Let me kill him,” Harris said.
Lampard said: “Yes, why not? Silly sod’s no use to anyone. Completely unreliable.”
“To escape, you need me,” the German said. Harris had his fighting knife ready, its point denting the man’s tunic just below the ribs. “Go without me,” the major said, “and all will be killed by the mines.” His voice was calm and steady, as if to say: Take it or leave it.