The Afrika Reich Page 3

  On the veranda the night was still; the sound of the gunshot obviously hadn’t carried. Burton was grateful for that. He lowered himself over the side and shinned down one of the supporting posts, his feet finding the nameless skulls below. Inside his boots his soles arched as though he were barefoot in an abattoir.

  Burton marched out into the square. The searchlights moved idly; the Doberman patrol at the far end walking away from him. If the rest of his team had been captured, or if Dolan was still nursing his grudge and chose not to hit the detonator, this might be the shortest walk of his life. A ten-second stroll through a firing range.

  He headed towards the far gate, resisted the urge to sprint. For some reason an old barrack-room tune sprang into his head:

  Went to war for the Poles, the Frenchies and Slovaks

  What for, Winston?

  Dead chums and kingdom come

  We ain’t fighting for no blacks—

  An alarm began to sound. A wailing, mechanised klaxon.

  The searchlights froze, then began to scour the square. They both found Burton. Ahead he saw the Doberman patrol halt and turn in his direction. The dog growled.

  Burton motioned impatiently towards the guard towers, a gesture that said get that fucking thing out of my eyes or you’ll be on punishment detail for a month. He hoped they wouldn’t be able to make out the bloodstains on his face and hands.

  A voice cried out from the darkness: ‘Apologies, Sturmbannführer. Is it a drill?’

  Another alarm started up.

  Through the cyan-white glare Burton made out two guards in each tower, one with the light, the other pointing an MG48 machine gun, enough to turn a man to bonemeal in seconds. ‘Search the perimeter,’ Burton shouted at them. ‘Then stand down.’

  The lights did as they were told. Burton continued towards the exit.

  ‘There!’ came a voice from behind him.

  He spun round to look back at the veranda. Standing on the balcony was a Leibwache, arm rigid in his direction. ‘Stop him. Fire!’

  Burton ran.

  Immediately the lights were back on him. The ground erupted in bullets, fragments of skull bursting upwards. Burton zigzagged wildly, lurching to the left, next second doubling back on himself. Anything to avoid the onslaught.

  Where was Patrick? Where was that damn explosion?

  There was a crackle of gunfire from the balcony. Another from the nearest guard tower, close enough to singe the leather of his jackboots this time. The light was relentless.

  Burton slipped, his hands flailing. He imagined the guard in the tower seizing his chance. Burton had done it enough times himself. Wait for the target to stumble, line up the sights and squeeze the trigger: an easy kill-shot.

  At least I got Hochburg, he thought. I’ll be able to look Father in the eye – before St Peter turns me away.

  Then the searchlight was gone. Burton squinted into the darkness. The beam was pointing upwards, vanishing into the sky. The tower empty.

  Across the square, the other tower aimed its light at him before it too jerked away. Burton could make out a guard gripping the MG48, aiming it at him. Suddenly he snapped back in the shape of a starfish. Dead.

  Not for the first time Burton whispered a thank you to Patrick Whaler and his sniper rifle.

  The two guards and the Doberman were now belting towards him. There was another silent blast from the darkness and the guard with the dog stumbled. He unleashed the animal and encouraged it on with the cry, ‘Angriff!’ The Doberman galloped forward, fangs snarling.

  Another shot, then another. Both guards dropped.

  Fuck the handlers, thought Burton, shoot the dog!

  The ground splintered and spat near the Doberman – but the animal was moving too fast for Patrick.

  Burton came to a halt, concentrated on the dog. In his mind he was back at Bel Abbès, the Legion fort where he’d trained as a soldier. A sous-officier was pointing at a blackboard; afterwards they’d practised on crude models made from jute and straw.

  Patrick fired another shot. It clipped the Doberman’s tail, stoked its ferocity.

  The dog was no more than ten yards away.

  Burton crouched low like a sprinter at the start of a race. His chest was straining, the roof of his mouth dry. He was dimly aware of more alarms ringing, more gunshots from the balcony.

  At the last moment – just as the dog leapt to attack – Burton sprang upwards and grabbed the animal’s front legs. Teeth gnashed inches from his face. With a single, vicious movement he wrenched its limbs apart.

  There was a crack as the breastbone broke, then Burton flung the Doberman away. He forced himself not to hear its whimpering.

  Another torrent of bullets – from behind this time.

  Burton turned to see several Leibwache gathered on the balcony shooting at him. He fired off several rounds from his Luger, none of them finding their target but enough to make the guards duck out of sight. Then he ran again, sprinting to the gatehouse.

  The barrier was down but there were no guards. As Burton approached he saw them slumped on the ground, haloes of blood pooling around their heads. The window of the gatehouse had a single bullet hole in it; inside, another guard looking into distant space. Whatever else might have happened to Patrick his aim was as straight as ever.

  The gunfire continued remorselessly. There was a heavy-calibre retort mixed into it now. The Nazis were coming to full alert: another thirty seconds and he’d never get away.

  Burton dived to the ground and crawled round the edge of the gatehouse. The window above him exploded, showered him with glass. Looking back across the square – through the bursts of machine guns – he saw an open-backed lorry roaring towards him, laden with Waffen-SS troops. There were more men behind it on foot. Enough firepower to quell an uprising.

  Burton struggled to move forward, using the corpses around him as sandbags. At that moment he’d have signed away the entire farm for a single hand grenade.

  The headlights of the lorry shattered. Then the windscreen. The driver slumped forward, the vehicle twisting to a halt. Troops immediately poured off it. Fifteen, twenty of them. More than a match for Burton’s pistol, more than even Patrick could take out.

  He fired off the final shots in the Luger, scrambled up and ran. Gunfire streaked around him like angry red hornets.

  The troops were closing in. Oh, Maddie, he thought.

  Burton was knocked off his feet. It felt as if a huge, hot fist had slammed against his back. The skin on his scalp contracted and stung.

  A fireball rose into the sky. A gulp of night air – and then another, even bigger blast.

  Debris rained down on the Schädelplatz: burning lumps of metal, oil drums that landed with hollow booms. At the front of the complex a crane toppled over. The troops darted for cover, turning their weapons in the direction of the explosion. From the opposite side of the square came a sputter of phosphorous blobs. It sounded as if an entire regiment were attacking the camp: Dolan, and his ‘box of tricks’. Burton almost grinned. The phosphorous fell to the ground igniting everything it touched. The stench of tarred wood swirled round the square.

  Burton got back on his feet, a few sporadic shots whistling in his direction. Among the dead guards he spied the distinctive shape of a BK44 rifle. He scooped it up and ducked below the barrier that separated the camp from the jungle road beyond. It was lit for a couple of hundred yards before being reclaimed by the darkness; three hundred miles later it reached the Doruma garrison and the border with Anglo-Sudan.

  Still running, Burton searched for a sign of the others. Nothing. He tried to visualise the direction Patrick’s shots had come from. There was another explosion behind him. The lights along the road flickered – buzzed – and died. An instant later the entire camp was extinguished.

  ‘Fuck it,’ snarled Burton. ‘Patrick?’ he called out. ‘Patrick?’

  Only the chaos behind him answered.

  Burton kept pushing forward, moving at
an unsteady trot. The tarmac beneath his feet shimmered with a fiery light but the trees either side remained black.

  ‘Patrick?’ he called again. This was absurd! He hadn’t survived everything to get lost in the dark.

  Somewhere to the left the undergrowth shook. Burton stumbled in its direction. An engine fired up, high-powered and urgent. Seconds later a vehicle roared forward. It executed a sharp U-turn and ground to a halt.

  It was a Ziege jeep, the Nazis’ workhorse in this part of the world, built at the Volkswagen factory in Stanleystadt. On its bodywork was the skull and palm tree insignia of the SS in Africa.

  Burton raised his rifle, flicked off the safety.

  Then a voice: ‘Major. Get in.’

  It wasn’t Patrick – but it would do.

  01:25

  ‘WHERE’S Patrick?’ shouted Burton. The gearbox was howling. ‘Where’s Patrick?’

  They were reversing down the road, back towards the camp, Lapinski gripping the wheel as if he would strangle it. His eyes gleamed in the darkness like a cat’s. They drove without lights.

  The Ziege screeched to a halt. There was a thump as something landed on the roof. Lapinski hit the throttle again. They lurched forward, rapidly picking up speed. Burton turned round in the passenger seat, his rifle drawn. A figure manoeuvred itself from the roof into the back of the jeep. It was dressed in a suit sewn with leaves, on its head a bulky brass helmet and goggles encrusted with tubes: night-vision equipment. Beneath the contraption Burton could just perceive the face. Lean and wrinkled; smears of camouflage paint; a sharp nose that had once been broken and now twisted to the left.

  It was Patrick Whaler.

  ‘I’m too old for climbing trees.’ He rubbed the small of his back, winced, then jerked his head upwards. ‘But the line of fire was better up there.’ In his other hand was a customised rifle with oversized butt, silenced muzzle and telescopic sight the size of an artillery shell. Carved on to the stock were the words, für Hannah.

  ‘You’re still the best shot I know,’ said Burton.

  ‘I missed the dog,’ replied Patrick. His voice was Boston Irish churned with two decades of French desert. ‘Once I wouldn’t.’

  ‘I got out, didn’t I? Relax, the hard part’s over. We’re almost home.’

  ‘That’s what you said at Dunkirk.’

  Patrick was one of the few conditions Burton had insisted on with Ackerman. He needed someone he could trust completely on the mission. The two of them had known each other for twenty years, back since their days in the French Foreign Legion when Burton had been an angry teenage volunteer, Patrick his commanding officer. He wasn’t the man he’d been though. Prison had changed him – as if something grey had been mixed into his blood.

  Burton turned to face the front. They were hurtling through the jungle, Lapinski leaning over the wheel, face set into the gloom.

  ‘I can’t see nothing,’ said the driver.

  ‘No lights,’ said Burton. He flicked a look in the wing mirror: plumes of fire were reaching into the sky. ‘We’re still too close.’

  ‘We’ll miss the turning.’ Lapinski’s nose was almost touching the windscreen.

  Patrick’s head appeared between them. With the night-vision equipment he resembled a gigantic fly. ‘There!’ he said. ‘On the left.’

  Lapinski squeezed the brakes and turned sharply. They crashed through thick foliage – then a rotting wooden barrier – before joining another road parallel to the one they had left. This was the dirt highway from when Belgium had been the colonial power. Neglected since the Nazis conquered Kongo, it was now hidden from pursuing eyes by a canopy of vegetation. Vines clawed against the jeep.

  ‘Lights?’ said Lapinski.

  The jeep was bouncing up and down like a rowing-boat in an Atlantic squall. Burton felt his brain bash against his skull. ‘We can risk it.’

  Lapinski flicked a switch, headlights illuminating the way in front. They were in a tunnel of trees – green, grey, black – the road as potholed as a lunar surface.

  Burton felt a hand on his shoulder, Patrick motioned at the track behind. He turned to see another pair of headlights following them. The lights were closing in. Patrick reached for his rifle.

  ‘Wait!’ said Burton. ‘It might be Dolan. Signal first.’

  Patrick grabbed his torch and began flashing letters in Morse code. V-R-A-N-J-A. Vranja, the quince variety in the main orchard back home. Burton could see them now, the fruits already fat and yellow. He hoped to make a good living out of them one day – it had to be better than all this! The first thing he’d do when he got back home would be to go with Madeleine and pick one. Inhale its perfume.

  No reply came from the other vehicle.

  ‘What if their torch got broken?’ said Lapinski.

  Patrick shouldered his weapon. ‘What if they’re about to blow us off the road?’ He put his eye to the scope.

  The jeep hit a pothole, jolting the vehicle. The muzzle of Patrick’s rifle flayed in the darkness.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ he growled. ‘Can’t you keep this thing straight?’

  Lapinski snapped back: ‘Any time you want the wheel—’

  ‘They’re flashing their headlights,’ said Burton. ‘W-A-L-L-O … Wallop.’ Dolan’s call-sign. ‘Everyone just relax and we’re out of here.’

  Patrick grunted.

  Burton settled back into his seat. It was only then that he realised he was gripping the stock of his BK44. Gripping it so hard his wrist stung.

  It took them forty minutes to reach Mupe, exactly as they had planned. Burton spent the time wiping sweat from his eyes, trying not to think of the tears he had shed in Hochburg’s study. He kept glancing in the rear mirror, but there was no swarm of German lights. Lapinski remained hunched over the wheel. With his thin moustache and slick hair he could have been a spiv’s apprentice. Like all the team he was wearing an SS uniform, the cloth clearly distasteful to him. Every now and then he muttered something in Polish. Prayers or complaints, Burton couldn’t tell.

  Mupe was a disused airstrip on the flight path from Stanleystadt to Irumu in the east. When SABENA, Congo’s original airline, had set up its network of airfields in the 1920s it also built emergency landing-grounds dotted through the jungle. These were now shrinking back into the trees, ideal for covert extractions. The Nazis had abandoned most of the old Belgian infrastructure to construct bigger, better facilities: monuments to conquest. A network of airports connected the six colonies of German Africa, with hubs linking the continent to the Fatherland. In the Schädelplatz region every aerodrome was now redundant to the new international terminal at Kondolele that could accommodate military aircraft and the latest Lufthansa Junkers. Private jets also used the tarmac, whisking in SS dignitaries who marvelled at Hochburg’s square before flying out again vowing never to return to the squalid heat of Africa. Burton had flown into Kondolele earlier that evening; already it seemed a lifetime ago.

  ‘Keep the engine running,’ said Burton when they reached the airfield. He slipped out of the jeep, Patrick following, his face still obscured by his insect-head. The two of them jogged to the tree line.

  Behind them, Dolan’s vehicle ground to a halt. At the wheel was Vacher – the fifth member of the team, a Rhodesian. Burton motioned to both of them to stay put. Dolan threw up his hands in exasperation.

  ‘Looks smalty enough,’ said Patrick, scanning the silent perimeter of the airfield. ‘How long?’

  Burton glanced at his watch, struggling to read the dials in the swamped light. Their plane was scheduled to touch down at 02:20. ‘Another ten minutes.’

  ‘Assuming they even left.’

  ‘Ackerman wouldn’t dare,’ replied Burton, trying to reassure himself as much as Patrick. ‘I’m going to check out that building. You keep the others here. I don’t want Dolan thundering around.’ He left the cover of the trees.

  ‘Wait!’ said Patrick, fishing inside his pocket. ‘You might need this.’ He tossed something t
owards him. Burton caught it. It was his Browning, still warm from Patrick’s body.

  Burton nodded, then put the pistol into his waistband. With the BK44 in the other hand, he crouched down and moved silently to a caved-in building on the far side of the airfield. It reminded him of the apple store back on the farm.

  There was no door, just a frame. Inside it smelt of orchids and wet plaster; cockroaches teemed on the floor. Everything of value had long since been stolen. Screwed to the wall was a portrait of Leopold III of Belgium, former ruler of the colony. Someone had added a toothbrush moustache and engorged penis to the picture; another, a hangman’s noose. There were swastikas daubed on all the walls, but crudely as if drawn by children.

  Burton moved to what was once the control room. Broken windows looked out on a runway of compacted dirt. They’d need to light some markers for the pilots. Even with night-vision sights a landing like this was fraught with—

  A noise.

  Burton strained to hear it. For an instant his spine turned to ice. It sounded like Hochburg. The gait of his step as he strode in for dinner. Then it came again, something much more earthly: the clink of webbing. Burton pushed himself hard against the wall. Raised his hand, ready to swipe any intruder off his feet and slam the hard bone of his wrist on to their neck. The hannu was as effective as a club.

  A footfall. Then another. And a broad figure lumbered into the room. Burton had him on the floor faster than a heartbeat, raised his hand to strike.

  ‘It’s me!’

  He recognised the booming Welsh voice at once. ‘You were supposed to stay with the others.’

  ‘Bah! That’s what the old man said.’ Dolan had developed a wary lexicon of contempt for Patrick: old man, Yank, (if he was out of earshot) chickenshit-bollocksucker. Their dislike had been instant and mutual, the type of animosity that only kindred spirits can find. That America had stayed out of the war seemed to affront Dolan further, as if Patrick were personally responsible.

  Burton helped him off the floor. Even in the darkness, even with his face covered in camouflage cream Dolan still looked ruddy. ‘Keep your voice down! Major Whaler was acting under my instructions.’