Michael spat out a few flies. “The survival manual says the first thing to do is get your head and face covered. Then only to travel at night.”
“The survival manual doesn’t have Dahlasiffa in it,” Gantt replied. Squinting against the midday glare, he looked back the way they’d come. “We’ll keep going for awhile.” As they walked, he opened the canteen and took a quick drink. The disturbed flies buzzed with indignant anger. “Here,” he said. “One swallow only.”
Michael took the offered canteen. The water tasted of his laundry soap. He returned the cap to the canteen and the canteen to Gantt, who returned the strap to his shoulder.
“Keep walking,” Gantt told him, and motioned with the Walther.
“You’re sure you’ll find anything out there?” The out there Michael referred to was the shimmering wasteland that stretched before them, mile upon empty mile.
“I have a very good sense of direction.”
“So do I, but that doesn’t mean you’ll find an outpost before you run out of water.”
The canteen had held maybe enough for each of them to have two or three more swallows. Flies whirled around Michael’s face and darted at his good eye, trying to get the moisture there. He suddenly decided he’d had enough of this, and if the German ace wanted to shoot him it would be a bullet put to good use. He stopped walking.
“Go on! Don’t stop!”
“I’m putting something over my head. And you stop waving that damned gun around. Does it look like I’m in any shape to give you trouble?”
Gantt had lifted the pistol to take aim at Michael’s battered face. Now he slowly lowered it. “No,” he said, with the hint of a smile. “I suppose not.”
Michael put the kitbag down amid the stones and knelt beside it. He found his small bottle of Trumper Lime aftershave, thankfully neither broken by a bullet nor the impact, which had enough alcohol in it to heal small razor cuts. It would do as well as anything on wounds suffered in an aircraft crash. Working with one hand, he got the bottle open and splashed liquid on the cut over his eye. It stung like the devil’s own joyjuice, but surely it would do some good. At least the way the flies buzzed meant they didn’t seem to like the smell. He rubbed more of the liquid all over his face and felt small stings from chin to forehead.
“You English,” said Gantt, with a note of disdain. “That’s why you won’t win this war, you know. You’re too addicted to your comforts and your little…what is that? Aftershave lotion?”
“That’s right.” Michael screwed the small crown cap back on. “Here.” He threw it to Gantt, who caught it by reflex in his left hand. “The alcohol will help.”
“I don’t choose to smell like a small British island in the Caribbean,” Gantt answered, but he didn’t throw it back. “Don’t you people take this war seriously?”
Michael decided to ignore the man. He brought a tan-colored shirt out of the kitbag. Shaking the flies off his wounds, he tore the shirt in a couple of strategic places and began to wrap it around his head and face in his best approximation of a desert tribesman’s keffiyeh. “Take, for example, your tea breaks,” Gantt went on. “Why does everything stop at a certain hour for you people to drink tea? You even stop during an advance to drink tea. Don’t you understand the value of discipline?”
“I don’t stop for tea breaks,” Michael said as he continued to adjust his head covering, “but I think they are a form of discipline.”
“You Englishers are children living in a dream world.”
Michael got the shirt arranged so he had a torn slit he could see through. Otherwise, everything was covered. He tucked in a bit of cloth here and there to make sure it stayed on. “And I suppose you Nazis are living in the real world?”
Gantt frowned, his eyes darkening. “I’m not a Nazi.” He opened the bottle of aftershave with his teeth and splashed some on the flies that feasted at his forehead wound.
They lifted up with a noise like little airplanes and flew wildly in search of another landing strip. Gantt winced at the pain but poured some more of the stuff on for good measure. “Never a Nazi,” he continued, as the liquid ran down his face. He glanced quickly up toward the burning orb of the sun, measuring its force upon his skull and his willpower. The flies were already coming back, one by one. He shrugged off the canteen and the parachute pack.
“What’s your first name?” he asked.
“Michael.”
“All right, Michael. I will shoot you if you move in any way in the next two minutes. The bullet will go into your knee, and it will be a crippling shot because I am a very good shot. Then, though I desire to take you back as my prisoner, I will leave you here to die. Do you understand that?”
Michael nodded. He had no doubt the man would do exactly as he said. It was best to bide his time, to wait for an opportunity, and to seize it when it came. The problem was going to be seizing it with one good arm.
Gantt removed his shirt and pulled his undershirt up over his face. He positioned it so he could see through the neckhole and his head was covered, and then he put his shirt back on and retrieved the other gear. He recapped the Trumper bottle and slid it in his pack. “Very obedient of you,” he said, “and very smart. You’re a major, I see. But you wear no other insignia. What’s your speciality?”
“Reconnaissance.”
“Ah. So you’re used to walking the untrodden path, is that correct?” Gantt motioned with the pistol toward what the Berber tribesmen might call the plain of sorrows. “After you.”
They went on.
The sun was their enemy. Scorpions scuttled amid the stones at their feet. The sky was burned white, and the earth the color of ashes. The land broke into ravines and descended nearer to Hell. Sand began to pull at their boots and the dazzle tortured their eyes. The hot wind came up and tore at their makeshift keffiyehs. As he trudged onward, Michael realized only his physical training—and perhaps his supernatural training—was keeping him on his feet. He thought that Rolfe Gantt must be in excellent physical shape too, or maybe it was the sheer force of will that kept Gantt going.
The wind strengthened and swirled sand before it. Grit stung the eyes like sharp bits of glass. They kept their faces lowered. Michael began to think that the time to act was approaching. One false stumble might do it. One stumble and sidestep and then…what? An elbow to Gantt’s jaw? A knee to the groin? He doubted he would be fast enough to get through the flyer’s guard; after all, Gantt was an expert at recognizing a developing danger, and it was likely he was expecting something right now. But how much longer did Michael dare go before he tried to overpower the man? He didn’t have a lot of strength left and it was ebbing fast in this heat. Damn the arm! he thought angrily.