Take or Destroy! Read Online Free

at Bardia and Mersa Matruh for the next sweep forward.’
    The general frowned. ‘There’ll be no sweep anywhere if I have anything to do with it,’ he observed acidly. ‘The only sweeping that’s going to be done will be done by me.’ He stood for a moment with his hands behind his back, his sharp nose thrust forward, then he looked up again. ‘So perhaps we’d better set something up, if only to make them think we’re coming in by the back door. And you’d better handle it yourself since you know where everything is. It’ll take about a week to organize, I imagine, and that’ll work out just about right, because I’ll be ready around the night of 23 October.’
    He stared thoughtfully at his feet. ‘You must accept that we’re a bit stretched at the moment,’ he went on. ‘And there are one or two other things to take into consideration, too, because in early November I gather we’re going into Morocco, Tunis and Algeria.’ He turned to one of the officers behind him, a thin good-looking man in shorts. ‘Freddie, see that he gets full authority for this thing and have the navy and the RAF warned that he’s coming.’ He swung back to Hockold, lean, tense, and excited by his own imaginings. ‘We’ve got to pull it off this time, Hockold, but I think we shall do it all right. I think we shall. We’re going to knock him clean out of Africa this time, so that there can be no coming back for more. Get him down to Gorton, Freddie. He’ll fix him up.’
     
    As it happened, however, when Hockold arrived in Cairo General Gorton was in no position to fix anybody up. He had been whipped off half an hour before to hospital with an agonizing ear infection he’d been fighting for days, and in his place was an entirely different officer who was still a little lost in his new job. He didn’t seem very willing to make decisions and Hockold had a suspicion he wouldn’t last long under the new regime.
    ‘Go and see General Pierson,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell him you’re coming.’
    General Pierson, however, was busy near Ismailia, and Hockold was shunted through several officers with Baden-Powell shorts and chests like the contents of a paint box to see a Major-General Murray, a heavy-featured man with a bulldog jaw and a hostile frown who stared at him discouragingly as he entered. ‘Qaba,’ he said at once. ‘They tell me you’re going to put on a bit of a show there. Do a bit of damage and all that.’
    Hockold swallowed. There was always an enervating lassitude over Cairo; the tropical rain from the highlands of Ethiopia and the swamps of Uganda swept down to distribute the muddy water in a thousand and one canals across the Delta, so that out of the steamy soil the foetid heat intensified in a pall of dust and filth that lay over the streets of the city. The dirt was persistent and Cairo -- corrupt, lackadaisical, easy-going and flashily romantic at night, despite the war only a hundred miles away -- showed no sign of a spartan warrior existence. Too many battles had already been lost there, too many plans ruined, and Hockold, still only a lieutenant-colonel, felt he had to come to the point quickly.
    ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘please don’t pass me on again. This operation’s been authorized by the army commander himself and I’ve only just over a week to set it up.’
    Murray scowled back at him under his heavy eyebrows; then a sudden unexpected smile changed his whole face.
    ‘Better sit down and tell me what you want,’ he said.
    Hockold drew a deep breath. ‘I want transport -’ he began.
    ‘Lorries?’
    ‘No, sir. We’re going by sea.’
    ‘Can’t be done!’ Murray sat up briskly. ‘The navy’s got nothing to spare.’
    ‘It’s the only way it can be done, sir.’
    Murray’s smile came again. ‘Well, we’ll leave that for the moment,’ he said. ‘What else?’
    ‘Men, sir.’
    ‘How many?’
    ‘Five hundred, sir. Trained men. Not people who’ve just arrived.’
    The frown