As they became silent again, they grew aware of movement all round them in the dark. They heard engines and brakes again, the murmur of voices and once a sharp tenor laugh that didn’t sound like a British laugh. Then they heard the clatter of dixies, and the clink of bottles, and someone shouted.
‘Guido, i freni sono guasti!’
There was a laugh. ‘Che fortuna. C’è un garage qui vicino.’
‘Italians,’ Dampier murmured. ‘What are they saying?’
‘Something about his brakes not working,’ Rafferty said. ‘The other feller suggested he should take it to a garage. My Italian’s not very good.’
‘It must be a whole column, Mr Rafferty. What should we do? Pity we can’t do them some damage.’
‘Much better to clear off,’ Clutterbuck whined.
Rafferty was silent, listening, then he stared into the darkness again, his whole body alert. He looked like a terrier at a rathole.
‘What’s on your mind, Mr Rafferty?’ Dampier demanded. ‘Something obviously is.’
‘Thought I might just scout round to see what’s goin’ on, sir. Might pick up some information we could take back.’
Dampier stared at him. The urge actually to see the enemy, something which had been plaguing him since the war had started, got the better of him.
‘Two heads are better than one,’ he said. ‘I’ll come with you. I’m an old man and nobody will miss me if anything goes wrong.’
Leaving Clinch and Micklethwaite to make sure Clutterbuck didn’t bolt, they moved off into the darkness, bent double more out of instinct than necessity because it was quite dark. The last of the wind was lifting the sand in little whorls and dragging trails of it across the surface of the road. The hissing of the grit was surprisingly loud now that they were silent, and every now and then they heard the clatter of a parched bush, uprooted by the wind, the creak of branches and the rattling of the dried fronds of the palms. Almost before they realized it, they were blundering into the back of a lorry. The Italian crew, eating their evening meal with the others in some shelter they’d found nearby out of the wind, were nowhere in sight.
‘The buggers sound cheerful,’ Dampier said resentfully.
‘So they should be, sorr. They’ve kicked us out of Zuq.’
Dampier studied the lorry. ‘Can we steal it, Mr Rafferty?’
Rafferty shook his head. ‘No keys, sir.’
‘We could short-circuit the ignition.’
‘Make too much noise, sir. They’d hear us start up.’ Rafferty’s teeth gleamed in the darkness as he smiled. ‘Much better to do a bit of damage and syphon the petrol out. There’s an empty can in here with a tool kit, complete with hammer and screwdriver.’
Reaching into the darkness, he produced the can, clanking it softly against the door as he lifted it out with the hammer and screwdriver, then he moved quietly round the vehicle until he found the petrol tank.
Placing the point of the screwdriver against the tank, he gave the handle a sharp whack with the hammer. The chattering of the Italians, the rattling of the palm fronds and the moving bundles of brushwood drowned the sound. Unscrewing the petrol cap, Rafferty threw it away and they stood for a while in the dark, listening to the petrol running into the can from the hole they’d made.
‘That ought to surprise them when they come to drive it away,’ Dampier murmured delightedly as Rafferty screwed the cap on the full can. ‘Think we could hole another, Mr Rafferty? So they can’t chase us.’
‘Perhaps more than one, sir. The more the merrier, because the Italians make a point of never chasing anyone unless they outnumber ’em five hundred to one.’ Synchronizing their activity with the outbursts of laughter from where the Italians were eating in a group just out of sight among the trees, they managed to puncture three more tanks, lift a couple of rifles and remove the valves from several tyres. The wind and the rattling of dried shrubs drowned the small sounds they made.
‘Terrible careless, thim Italians, sorr,’ Rafferty observed.
Moving towards the tail of the stationary column, Dampier was just beginning to enjoy himself when Rafferty laid a hand on his arm and the two of them sank to the sand. Just ahead they became aware of someone moving and the faint clink of tools. There was no sign of a light.
‘Repairs?’ Dampier said. ‘In the dark?’
Then they heard a quiet voice in the shadows. ‘You’ve dropped the spanner, you silly sod!’
There was no mistaking the Englishness of it and Rafferty lifted his head. Glancing at Dampier, he looked again and raised himself slightly.
‘Who’s there?’ he called softly.
There was an abrupt silence, then the voice spoke again, awed, scared and shaken. ‘Jesus Christ!’ it said.
Rafferty’s teeth showed in the darkness as he grinned. ‘I dare bet it’s not,’ he said. ‘He trained as a carpenter not a motor mechanic, and it wasn’t in this desert He did His forty days and forty nights.’
Chapter 2
There were three men wearing Italian caps and carrying screwdrivers and spanners, and all looking scared.
‘Who in God’s name are you?’ Dampier whispered.
‘Sergeant Clegg,’ one of the shadowy figures said. ‘Corporal Morton. Driver Caccia.’
‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘Come to that,’ Clegg said. ‘What are you?’
‘Just answer the bloody question!’
There was a clipped authoritative note in the words and Clegg decided it might be as well to concede the initiative.
‘We were helping ourselves to one of the Italian number plates. We were going to stick it on our own lorry. We were cut off and thought it would help us get away. Are you cut off, too?’
‘What do you think, man?’ Dampier snapped.
Clegg ignored the rebuke. ‘We’ve seen the Italians using captured British lorries,’ he said. ‘And Morton here – that is, Corporal Morton – speaks the lingo, and he stuck some Italian words on ours to make it look Italian. You know, that thing they paint on walls.’
‘Combattere, obbedire, vincere,’ Morton said. ‘We thought
