Take or Destroy! Read Online Free Page A

returned to Murray’s face. ‘General Montgomery got rid of all specialist sub-units,’ he pointed out. ‘And we’re already scraping the gutters for his battle. Every decent outfit we could find’s already moved up into the blue.’ He paused, his face thoughtful. ‘You’ll have to rehearse. Where are you going to do it?’
    ‘Gott el Scouab. There are ravines there, one of them steep like the Shariah Jedid at Qaba.’
    ‘Gould you do it in a week?’
    ‘If they’re the right chaps, sir.’
    ‘I’ll see what I can do. Go on.’
    ‘What about naval support fire, sir?’
    ‘Not a chance.’
    ‘The general said there had to be no mistake, sir.’
    Murray’s heavy body sagged. ‘Unfortunately, Monty’s not an admiral.’
    ‘Sir, there are three 47s guarding the harbour.’
    Murray wrote something on a pad. ‘Well, we won’t start shouting “Abandon ship” till the bloody thing goes down,’ he said. ‘Anything else?’
    ‘Signallers. Medical people. Demolition experts.’
    Murray thought for a moment then he gave an unexpected grin and tapped Hockold’s plan. ‘Sounds all rather worthwhile,’ he said. ‘I’m told you’ve been behind Jerry’s lines for three months.’
    ‘Four, sir.’
    ‘Well, you can’t sit around with your thumb in your bum till I’ve talked to everybody. How’d you like to nip out for a drink with my planning officer? I’d laid it on to go myself but I suspect now I’m going to be busy for an hour or two.’
    Hockold smiled, grateful that out of all Cairo’s armchair warriors he’d found one who was prepared to forsake his evening gin to do some work. ‘I’ve a little drinking to catch up with, sir,’ he admitted.
    Murray nodded. ‘Good. My planning officer’s got transport. Sound operator. B.A., Aberdeen. But see you’re back by seven o’clock because I suspect we shall be whipping you off to see the Navy or somebody.’
    He pressed a bell and an ATS officer appeared. She had a splendid figure and Hockold was quietly admiring it when Murray gestured. ‘Kirstie,’ he said. ‘This is Colonel Hockold. Hockold, this is my niece and my planning officer - Kirstie McRuer.’
     
     

3
    It was decided the attack should involve all three services and take the form of a Combined Operations raid.
     
    Kirstie McRuer was twenty-five, tall and straight-backed, with green eyes and thick chestnut hair. She had been in the Middle East for eighteen months and was wary of predatory officers.
    ‘Because I’m with the army,’ she explained, ‘most of them seem to think I’m a sort of camp-follower. In fact, quite a lot of us are in Planning now and doing very well at it, too.’
    They were sitting on the terrace of the officers’ club, and in the odd moments of silence they could hear the grumble of the guns to the west. It seemed a strange sound in the light-hearted atmosphere about them, which was like that of an expensive Thames-side pub on a Sunday morning in peacetime. There was even a Cairo tennis professional in white flannels watching a group round the pool where a few Egyptian girls smiled, beautifully dressed and poised. Kirstie wondered how much they detested the British.
    She was unobtrusively studying Hockold as they chatted over their drinks. He had sat in silence as they had driven from Murray’s office through endless lines of ammunition trucks -- even a column of German prisoners, singing the song that every army in North Africa sang.
    ‘Deine Schritte kennt sie, deinen zieren Gang,
Alle Abend brennt sie, doch mich vergass sie lang.. .’
    At the club Hockold had helped her from the jeep with an old-fashioned solemnity which was strange in Cairo where everybody accepted women officers as equals. It told her he’d been a long time away from female company and was faintly embarrassed by it.
    Nearby, two cavalrymen in faded drill were playing table tennis as if the result of the war were at stake. They were both burned black and looked as though