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  “I like it, sir,” Maj. Corrigan said.

  “Likewise,” Maj. Pelham-Davies said. “Taylor and I can benefit professionally from the change, sir. I’ve been wanting a chance to spend time in the field on extended gun jeep patrol.”

  “Sea duty sounds attractive to me, sir,” Maj. Corrigan said, “provided I am not expected to spend much time on the bloody King Duck.”

  “ENEMY AIRCRAFT ELEVEN O’CLOCK,” ex-Lieutenant Billy Jack Jaxx sang out from his position on a slight rise where he was standing air guard.

  Col. Randal ran out from under the netting in time to see a bi-wing Italian Imam Ro.37 reconnaissance airplane make a slow circuit of the tent city. Then the Italian pilot rolled in for a closer look. Just because it was a reconnaissance airplane did not mean it lacked teeth—two forward-firing 7.7mm machine guns and four 100-pound bombs.

  There was a mad dash all over the area for Raiders to take up their fighting positions. No one had expected the bad guys to show up this fast. They did not know that the speed of the Regia Aeronautica’s response had been assisted, in no small part, by Colonel Dudley Clarke broadcasting their exact location in the certain knowledge the German Listening Service would pick it up.

  The A-Force commander operated on the principle that the only reason to conduct a deception was to get the enemy to do something. And the best way to accomplish that was to tell him where and what it was you wanted him to do. No sense making the other side guess—they might get it wrong.

  The little airplane seemed to single out ex-Lt. Jaxx as its target. It toggled a pair of bombs that fell wide and detonated, causing no damage, but they were LOUD! Then the pilot came in for the kill, firing his pair of 7.7mm machine guns.

  While everyone watched in horror, the MG bullets stitched the desert floor, kicking up a double line of tufts straight toward ex-Lt. Jaxx, who was standing his ground. He muscled the big drum-fed Vickers K machine gun to his shoulder, took dead aim and blasted the airplane out of the sky. His first burst spider-webbed the windscreen, killing the pilot. Jack Cool.

  The Ro.37 crashed headfirst into the ground, with its tail sticking up in the air like an upside down wine glass—right in the middle of their position.

  Everything happened so fast that no one else even got off a round. Men all around the perimeter were cheering, pumping their weapons in the air and waving their hats.

  They did not have long to celebrate. A pair of Macchi C-200s armed with twin 12.7mm (.50 caliber) machine guns and 100-pound bombs arrived within minutes. They streaked over, observed the funeral pyre of their reconnaissance element smoldering on the ground, and the fight was on.

  Tracers crisscrossed the sky. More than eighty Vickers K machine guns or Bren automatic rifles manned by Raiding Forces and the SDF truck drivers, plus the Lewis guns dismounted from the LRDG trucks, were firing on the enemy air, and all were loaded with tracer ammunition every other round, interspaced with incendiary and armor piercing to make it look like three times the number of guns actually firing—normally tracers are loaded one round in six.

  “Guns,” the RNPS ace gunner who had volunteered for Desert Patrol because he had been on multiple ships sunk by U-boats and did not believe there would be “any submarines in the Great Sand Sea,” had his twin 20mm Oerlikons mounted on a pedestal in the back of a Chevrolet truck—the only weapon to remain mounted on a vehicle. He hit one of the Macchis on its second pass. It flew off, trailing smoke.

  Col. Randal immediately whipped out the compass he carried around his neck on a cord, tucked into the breast pocket of his bush jacket, and took an azimuth on the plane.

  “King—two-seven-zero,” he called out. “You and Jack take a jeep, go get the pilot.”

  Captain “Geronimo” Joe McKoy ran over, “I need a Bren gun, John. This Vickers K don’t let me get on target fast enough—can’t swing through my bird.”

  “Take mine, Captain,” Col. Randal said. “Here he comes.”

  Col. Randal had abandoned his Vickers K in favor of his beautifully balanced Beretta MAB-38A submachine gun. He was not hoping for a shoot-down, but 9mm hits could cause enough damage for a plane to have to return to base—all he wanted.

  The surviving Macchi made another pass, but by now everyone was getting into the rhythm of shooting at fast-moving attack aircraft, and the pilot flew into a maelstrom of automatic weapons fire. His plane flamed. He pulled straight up, trailing smoke, in an attempt to gain enough altitude so his parachute would deploy.

  The pilot rolled the Macchi over on its back and was trying to bail out of the cockpit when the plane exploded.

  Meanwhile, Ensign Teddy Hamilton was shouting orders to Raiders and SDF men who were standing by to set off smoke pots and other pyrotechnic devices on command when they were not firing at incoming enemy aircraft.

  Some of the devices were command detonated. Those could be set off from a switchboard system Captain “Pyro” Percy Stirling had set up. The Great Teddy wanted to create the illusion that there was a huge British armored force in place. The plan was to have a lot of different things going on all at once. And that was definitely happening.

  Then all was quiet. The sky was brilliant blue. It was hot.

  Men were hurriedly reloading magazines. Everyone shifted position. Raiding Forces and the SDF were ready—well, almost. No one had anticipated a fight this intense.

  The Ford truck where Guns had his twin 20mm Oerlikons mounted was moved to a new location. All the trucks from the convoy driven by the SDF drivers, now disguised as tanks, were shifted to new positions to include the five Ens. Hamilton had hidden with the jeeps. Y-Patrol decided it had business elsewhere and departed the area for parts unknown.

  The LRDG had seen enough action for one day.

  Waldo handed Col. Randal one of his thin cigars. He stuck it between his front teeth as he surveyed the frenzied activity taking place all around.

  “Now, that’s what I call a turkey shoot,” Capt. McKoy said, cramming rounds into the Bren’s magazine.

  Waldo said, “Them turkeys was shootin’ back, Joe.”

  “Here they come, boys,” Capt. McKoy shouted, as he was in the process of slamming the freshly-topped off magazine into his Bren automatic rifle. Like the gunfighter he was, he kept his head up, scanning the horizon while reloading—never taking his eyes off the business of looking for who or what to shoot next.

  Just off the deck, a second pair of Macchi fighters screamed in at zero altitude, blowing up giant swirling dust devils in their wake. The pilots engaged immediately.

  Both Macchis were gunning for the Arab tents where they had reason to believe the tanks were concealed. That was fortunate. The 12.7mm MGs they carried were devastating in the ground attack mode and nobody wanted to get shot with one.

  A terrific barrage of return fire greeted the intruders.

  Col. Randal emptied his submachine gun at the pair as they thundered past.

  The low-level run against highly trained, extremely motivated men armed to the teeth with Vickers K machine guns and Bren automatic rifles was not the wisest choice the Italian aviators could have made. Both planes took hits on the flyover.

  Gun’s twin 20mm Oerlikon was going POCKA, POCKA, POCKA. Tracers the size of flaming onions chased the two intruders as they egressed.

  One Macchi banked away, trailing smoke—flying back in the direction from which it had come. The other—either because it had been hit or the pilot misjudged his altitude—bounced off the desert floor, tumbled, and exploded on the far side of the perimeter. It almost took out ex-Lt. Jaxx and King’s jeep as they were returning with the captured Italian pilot the two had been chasing.

  Maj. Corrigan shouted orders for everyone to spread out even farther. “Do not bunch up. They will be coming back.”

  Capt. Stirling rounded up a detail of four SDF men and went around putting out more smoke pots and small explosive devices.

  One of the tents was on fire. They let it burn. With all the smoke, crashed aircraft, truck
s disguised as tanks, and Arab tents scattered around the perimeter, it was beginning to take on the appearance of a genuine armored column under attack—even from up close on the ground.

  The first round of the fight went to Raiding Forces and the SDF.

  An hour went by before the next wave of enemy aircraft returned. This time the Luftwaffe decided to show the Regia Aeronautica how it was done. A flight of four JU-87 Stukas appeared overhead, high in the sky—so far up they looked like little black dots.

  Col. Randal knew from experience gained during his Swamp Fox Force days in France that the price of poker was getting ready to go up. Stukas were pinpoint dive bombers. When attacking tanks—like the Germans thought they were doing today—they were armed with a pair of 1,000-kilogram tank-busting panzerbombe cylindriseche. He did the math. Nearly 18,000 pounds of bombs was coming straight at them—fast.

  “Guns,” Col. Randal shouted over to the RNPS ace gunner, “don’t fire until all four planes are committed to their attack.”

  That was a wasted order. Guns was a veteran of more high-level Stuka dive-bombing runs at sea than he could remember. That’s where he earned his nickname—shooting them down. The RNPS sailor-turned-Raiding Forces Commando had no intention of giving away his position until the Nazis were in a vertical position where they could not do anything about it.

  The JU-87s dived down almost straight. The Stukas were terror weapons. Each one carried a dive siren, and they were screaming. If the Germans were hoping to scare the troops on the ground, it was working.

  “Uh-oh!” ex-Lt. Jaxx said.

  The captured Italian pilot looked up, saw the Stukas, and panicked. He jumped out of the jeep and crawled under it. His bad day had taken a turn for the worse.

  “You think that’s gonna’ work, dumbass?” Waldo said to the Italian, never taking his eyes off the Stukas.

  “We didn’t have any a’ those kinda buzzards in Abyssinia, Colonel.”

  “Lucky us,” Col. Randal said.

  When the flight was screaming down in line formation, one following the other, noses pointed straight at their target—the Arab tents—Col. Randal raised his Vickers K, having switched back to it the minute the JU-87s arrived, and loosed off a burst. The Vickers K had such a high cyclic rate that it was not possible to fire the school solution burst of six. One touch of the trigger and ten to twelve rounds were on the way in an instant.

  That was the signal. Every man present opened immediately. A blizzard of tracers streaked skyward. Guns was working his Oerlokin. . . POKKA, POKKA, POKKA . . .

  The German pilots paid not the least bit of attention to the intense wall of fire they had to fly through, though they had to be shocked by it. Down they came, dive sirens screaming louder the lower they flew. Little black dots turned into great big black dots that became really ugly airplanes.

  The Nazi flying lead toggled his pair of bombs when he was low enough. It seemed possible to reach up and touch his aircraft. Then the pilot pulled up, barely avoiding crashing into the ground, which is a hazard all dive bombers face when pressing home their attacks—fixating on the target. When the Stuka pulled out of the dive, tracers converged on its exposed belly.

  The JU-87 started trailing smoke, but the pilot managed to regain altitude and made a long, circling turn northwest, back toward his base.

  The second Stuka pilot misjudged, got his nose over too far and flew into the ground, almost catching up with the leader’s bombs. It slammed into one of the Arab tents. Over 8,500 pounds of bombs exploding almost simultaneously right in the middle of the perimeter knocked most of the Raiders off their feet.

  The thunderclap of the detonation felt like a body slam. The sound was incredibly loud. It did not seem possible a noise could be that loud. For a moment, Col. Randal found it hard to breathe.

  The other two Stukas dropped their bombs. They both hit tents, causing no real damage except to blow two of The Great Teddy’s inflatables to smithereens. Still, another 8,500-plus pounds of aerial bombs landing inside the tent city was nothing to celebrate.

  A fusillade of tracers fired by angry Raiders chased the last two Stukas as they completed their bombing run, pulled out of their dives, turned and headed for home.

  Round two also went to Raiding Forces—but not decisively. The troops were not as jubilant as before. The Raiders were mentally digging in for a prolonged fight.

  “Gettin’ shot at don’t make a man smart,” Capt. McKoy said, “but it sure does make you introspective.”

  “You got that right, Joe,” Waldo said.

  “Affirmative,” ex-Lt. Jaxx said.

  “You reckon we got ole’ Rommel fooled, John?” Capt. McKoy asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  • • •

  An hour before sunset, the two Hudsons flew over, making a low-level pass, rocking their wings as they went by. Squadron Leader Paddy Wilcox and Lieutenant Pamala Plum-Martin were flying lead with Wing Commander Ronnie Gordon, aka “Flash Bang” Gordon, piloting the trail plane in line astern.

  The aircraft were en route to make the fake airborne drop within sight of the Italian fort twenty miles west of the tent city perimeter. Onboard the two planes were blocks of ice strapped to the unserviceable parachutes from RAF Habbaniya—worn out chutes would work fine for this mission.

  Door kickers would put them out. The blocks of ice would be heavy enough to cause the canopies to deploy. The Italians would see parachutists descending. The blocks of ice would melt overnight and the next morning, if anyone from the fort went out to check, they would find only empty parachutes—provided desert nomads had not already stolen them.

  The Vargas Girl-looking Royal Marine flying in the lead Hudson’s left seat said, “Looks like a full-blown war zone, Paddy.”

  “That was the purpose of the exercise,” Sqn. Ldr. Wilcox said. “Quite the deception, what!”

  “Let’s not mention,” Lt. Plum-Martin said, “all those bomb craters, crashed airplanes and burning trucks to Lady Jane.”

  “Wilco.”

  • • •

  There had not been a third round. Raiding Forces and the SDF troopers made camp for the night. Incredibly, no one had been killed or wounded seriously, though everyone felt battered from the bomb blasts. After pulling weapons maintenance, there was not a lot to do when the evening meal was finished. So naturally, what happened was inevitable—around the command post campfire, the stories started. The first liar never had a chance.

  Captain “Geronimo” Joe McKoy said, “There’s always been a hot debate over which is the best stopper—.45 ACP or 9mm. Now the .45 makes a bigger hole and its proponents claim that’s the deciding factor right there.

  “On the other side, the 9mm men argue you can carry more rounds in your magazine because the bullet is smaller, gets deeper penetration with less recoil, which means that you can shoot more accurately—shot placement, they say, being the most important aspect of all when it comes to shootin’ bad guys.”

  “Now, from my own personal experience,” Capt. McKoy said, “having carried and used ’em both in close encounters—I can tell you that the story you can knock a man down with a .45 if you hit him in the little finger just ain’t true boys—it’s a myth.

  “Shot placement is the thing that counts. The size of the bullet hole not being nearly as important as the where the bullet hole is.

  “To prove my point, I knowed a man saved himself from a grizzly bear that was chasing him and his wife by firing one single well-placed round from his wife’s puny little .25 pocket pistol she always carried in her purse—judicious shot placement.”

  “The couple was out hiking and got chased by a great big grizzly. The man shouted at his wife to chunk him her purse. He caught it in mid-stride, pulled out the .25, kneecapped his wife with one shot—and made it out of there alive.

  “You see, boys,” Capt. McKoy said, “when you’re gettin’ chased by a grizzly, it ain’t necessary to outrun the bear—you just have to outrun your huntin�
�� buddy.”

  After the laughter died down, ex-Lieutenant Billy Jack Jaxx said, “Mr. Treywick, I’ve always wanted to hear the story about how Miss UCLA factored into a battle plan you and the Colonel concocted when you were behind the lines in Abyssinia.”

  “So have I,” King said.

  “Well,” Waldo said, “on the first day when the colonel jumped in, only he was a major then, a brigadier a little after that—the only radio he had got smashed into a million pieces when its parachute malfunctioned. We had to raise us an army, with no communications to the outside world to send us guns and money. So, we had to do it from scratch on pure guts and know-how.

  “To befriend those miserable shifta trash who populated the countryside, we had to, as the colonel said, ‘win their hearts and minds,’ which is hard to do with indigenous lowlifes that ain’t got one and the other is the size of a pea,” Waldo said.

  “So, there was me, Butch Hoolihan, Rita and Lana, a handful of untrained recruits, their wives, slaves, servants and some camp followers—that was our rag-tag army to start with. So the colonel decided what we’d do is shoot bad cat—meaning man-eaters—at ever’ village we come to. The idea was that it would endear us to the local big shot. The deal was—which we cut out front—he’d let us recruit some-a’ his men to join our army if we killed the man-eatin’ lion in the neighborhood.

  “We did, though that was about the worst plan in history. Raidin’ Forces ain’t seen no combat yet as dangerous as tacklin’ them big hungry kitty cats who had grown used to feastin’ on all the dead bodies left layin’ around the countryside by the Italians. Sometimes those Abyssinian lions hunted people in packs in broad daylight.

  “And to tell the truth, the colonel, well, he didn’t display no real aptitude at lion huntin’, at least not right at first—how he got that scar on his face. Hand-to-hand combat with a monster cat that nearly munched him,” Waldo said.

  “What happened was, about the second village we come to, I cut a deal with the local big shot to the effect that if we took care of his bad cat problem he’d let us recruit some-a’ his men. So we went out and capped ’em.