A Good Clean Fight by Derek Robinson

nearly slipped away, there, Paul. Try to pay more attention.”
    â€œThey’ll go through the Jalo Gap at midday,” Schramm said.
    â€œFor all you know they’re still hiding in the Jebel.”
    â€œThey’re not hiding in the Jebel.” Schramm’s voice was low but firm. “They’ve used up all their bombs. Soon they’ll be getting low on fuel and food. They want to go home.”
    â€œThey told you all this?”
    â€œThey told me I was on my way to Egypt. And their trucks are half-empty. I could tell that from the suspension. Too much bounce in the springs.”
    â€œI’ve finished stripping the wallpaper,” Max said. “Now I’m going to paint some magic muck on your feet before I bandage them. This may sting a bit.”
    â€œOh Christ,” Schramm said. “I know what that means. Give me something to hang on to.” Hoffmann offered his hands and Schramm gripped his wrists. “We’ve still got that Storch, haven’t we?” Schramm asked. “The one that found me?” Hoffmann nodded. He wished Paul would shut up. The grip on his wrists was tightening and sweat was popping out of Schramm’s forehead like rain on a windscreen. “Give me the Storch,” Schramm said. “I can show the pilot where to look.” Now the sweat was chasing itself down his face. “Nearly done,” Max said. They could hear his fingers slapping on the magic muck. “If I find them,” Schramm said, “you can persuade Operations to send a bomber or two, can’t you?”
    Hoffmann found himself nodding. “This is pure blackmail,” he said.
    â€œDone,” said Max. Schramm’s grip slowly relaxed.
    â€œYou’re not fit to fly,” Max told him.
    â€œHe’s not going to fly,” Hoffmann said. “He’s going to sit beside the pilot and look. He’s fit to look, isn’t he?”
    *   *   *
    Lampard’s patrol was less than halfway to Jalo Oasis when dawn broke. There had been trouble with the trucks: first a puncture, then dust clogging a carburettor, then another puncture. They drove without lights, not knowing who might be out searching for them. It was a moonless night. Once they left the Jebel the country was low-lying desert; neither flat nor hilly, dotted with scrub, very boring; but it was always possible to buckle the steering on a very boring rock. And there was the Tariq el ’Abd to be crossed.
    The Tariq was an ancient camel trail. The Jebel formed part of a great two hundred-mile bulge into the Mediterranean, and the Tariq was a short cut across the base of that bulge. German and Italian generals felt uncomfortable at the thought that anyone could so easily travel so close to their flank, and all along the Tariq they had scattered tens of thousands of “thermos” bombs: anti-personnel bombs designed to look like vacuum flasks. Unscrew the cap and it blew your arms off. Drive over one and it blew your wheel off. Maybe more.
    Lampard halted his patrol a few miles short of the Tariq el ’Abd when he reckoned dawn was still half an hour away. Within a minute, a fire was lit and a dixie of water was set to boil. To brew up in the desert, all you needed was a large tin filled with sand and soaked in petrol. It burned cleanly and steadily, and for a surprisingly long time. Soon bacon was frying alongside the brew-up.
    They had stopped in a hollow. Lampard didn’t care if he was seen by passing aircraft—a fire in the desert wasn’t worth a bomb or even a bullet, there were always Arab fires twinkling on the horizon—but he cared about German armored cars. After all that havoc at Barce the enemymust be out hunting him. Of course the desert was vast, it was easy to vanish into it, but if you were found there was nowhere to run to and nothing to hide behind. In fact you were lucky if you could run. On his first patrol Lampard had