JACK HIGGINS
The Khufra Run
In memory of George Robert Limón
Contents
The Khufra Run
Chapter 1 - Night Flight
Chapter 2 - The Love Goddess
Chapter 3 - The Jesus Reredos
Chapter 4 - The Gate of Fear
Chapter 5 - Action by Night
Chapter 6 - The Children of Light
Chapter 7 - Dark Passage
Chapter 8 - Coast of Danger
Chapter 9 - The Pot of Gold
Chapter 10 - The Wild Horsemen
Chapter 11 - Zarza
Chapter 12 - A Sound of Thunder
Chapter 13 - Rough Weather
Chapter 14 - A Dying Fall
About the Author
Also by Jack Higgins
Copyright
About the Publisher
THE KHUFRA RUN
Jack Higgins lived in Belfast till the age of twelve. Leaving school at fifteen, he spent three years with the Royal Horse Guards, serving on the East German border during the Cold War. His subsequent employment included occupations as diverse as circus roustabout, truck driver, clerk and, after taking an honours degree in sociology and social psychology, teacher and university lecturer.
The Eagle Has Landed turned him into an international bestselling author, and his novels have since sold over 250 million copies and have been translated into fifty-five languages. Many of them have also been made into successful films. His recent bestselling novels include, Bad Company, A Fine Night for Dying, Dark Justice, Toll for the Brave, Without Mercy and The Valhalla Exchange.
In 1995 Jack Higgins was awarded an honorary doctorate by Leeds Metropolitan University. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and an expert scuba diver and marksman. He lives on Jersey.
1 Night Flight
It was late evening when they brought the coffin down to the lower quay in Cartagenas outer harbour. There were no family mourners as far as I could see, just four men from the undertakers in the hearse, a customs officer in a Land-Rover bringing up the rear.
One useful extra that comes with an Otter Amphibian is the fact that you can drop wheels beneath the floats and taxi out of the water on to dry land if it suits your purpose. This was exactly what Id done now, running up on to the concrete slipway at the bottom of the steps which would certainly make loading the coffin easier.
Two or three seamen leaned against the sea wall watching, attracted by the novelty of the floatplane as much as anything else, an exotic enough item to find down there among the fishing boats and yachts.
The hearse braked to a halt, three of the men inside got out and went round to the rear to deal with the coffin. The fourth moved to join me.
Undertakers are the same the world over and Jiminez was no exception, a tall, cadaverous creature in a double-breasted black overcoat who seemed to exist in a permanent state of mourning. He raised his Homburg briefly and held out two fingers for the good and sufficient reason that this was all he had left on his right hand. Ah, Senor Nelson, we meet again. A melancholy business.
He produced a small silver box, inhaled a pinch of snuff vigorously then shook his head, an expression of settled gloom on his face so that one might have been excused for imagining the deceased to have been a very old and dear friend.
I know, I said, but the rest of us just have to keep on going somehow.
True, he said, very true, and he took a sheaf of documents from his inside breast pocket as the customs officer got out of his Land-Rover and joined us.
Senor Nelson. He held out his hand with the usual Spanish courtesy. At your orders.
At yours, Senor, I replied.
And how is Ibiza these days?
Fine, I said, or otherwise, depending on how the charters go.
He examined the papers briefly. Juan Pasco, aged eighteen. So young?
He glanced at Jiminez who shrugged. Killed in a car crash. A university student. You know how it is. The parents wish him to be laid to rest in the family vault back home in Ibiza.
Naturally The customs man nodded. The other three men shuffled by with the coffin on a trestle and he held out a hand to arrest them. Gentlemen, it pains me to have to ask, but I must look inside, simply to see that all is as it should be. I have my orders, you understand?
It was a ritual we had gone through on the four previous occasions Id been engaged in the same line of work, and to be expected. Coffins had, after all, been known to contain other things than bodies and with Ibiza a part of metropolitan Spain, the flight from Cartagena counted as an internal one with no customs inspection at the other end.
But of course, Senor, Jiminez told him gravely. You must do your duty
He waved a hand, the coffin was set down, the gilt handles unscrewed quickly, the lid removed.
Some people appear to shrink in death. Certainly the boy in the coffin seemed no more than thirteen, although the face had been so heavily made up with cosmetics that he resembled a waxworks dummy. Nothing human about him at all. I presumed that most of the damage was covered by the stiff blue suit.
Jiminez took another pinch of snuff. The skull was crushed and the flesh completely removed from the left cheek by the impact. One would never guess now, of course.
The customs officer crossed himself. Amazing. You are a true artist, Senor Jiminez, nothing less.
One must think of the parents, Jiminez nodded to his underlings who replaced the lid, raised the coffin once more on the trestle and took it down the steps to the Otter.
The customs officer handed me the documents. All would appear to be in order, Senor Nelson. I wish you a safe flight.
He saluted and moved away and Jiminez glanced up at the sky. A perfect night for it if the weather forecast is anything to go by
Lets hope so. I zipped up my flying jacket. I wouldnt like my passenger to have an uncomfortable ride.
He permitted himself one of those brief graveyard smiles of his. You know, I like you, my friend. You have a sense of humour where death is concerned. Not many people do.
It takes practice, I said. Lots of practice. Ill be in touch.
I went down the steps to the Otter where his men had just finished stowing the coffin. I climbed into the cockpit, did the usual routine check, started the engine and ran her down into the water. I took up the wheels and taxied down-wind, leaning out of the side window, checking the channel for boats before making my run.
When the moment came, she lifted like a bird as usual, everything suddenly light and effortless and as I stamped on the right rudder bar and swung out across the quay, Jiminez was still standing down there in the fading light staring up at me. Id first flown the Otter for a film company who were doing all their location work in Almeria on the Spanish Mediterranean coast for the good and sufficient reason that its a hell of a sight cheaper than Hollywood these days.
When the film was completed they decided it wasnt worth the expense of having the Otter shipped back to the States. As it became reasonably obvious that no one in the Mediterranean area seemed particularly anxious to buy a floatplane specifically designed to stand the rigours of the Canadian north, they let me have her cheap.
Most people thought I was crazy, but there was money to be made island-hopping in the Balearics. Ibiza, Majorca, Minorca, Formentera. At least I got by, especially in the season and there were always the extras to help things along, like this present trip, for instance.
It was a fine night, as Jiminez had predicted, with very little cloud and a full moon, stars strung away to the horizon. All very pleasant, but I had more pressing matters on my mind, switched over to automatic pilot and took another look at the chart.
There was no wind to speak of, certainly not more than five knots and Id allowed for that in my original calculation. There was really very little to be done except to check my figures, which I did, then poured a cup of coffee from a flask and smoked a cigarette.
Thirty-eight minutes out of Cartagena, I took over manual control and went down to two thousand feet. Exactly three minutes later I got my signal right on the button, a blue light followed by a red, flashed half-a-dozen times, some private joke of Turks who swore it was taken from the old China Coast signal book and meant I have women on board.
I went down fast and banked across the boat, a forty-foot diesel yacht from Oran to the best of my knowledge, although the background details were not really my affair. The red light flashed again and I turned away into the wind, eased back on the throttle and started down.
The sea was calm enough and visibility excellent thanks to that full moon. A final burst of power to level out in the descent and I splashed down. I kept the engine ticking over and opened the side door. The motor yacht was already moving towards me. When it was twenty or thirty yards away, it slowed appreciably. I counted four men on deck as usual with another in the wheelhouse. I could see them quite clearly in the moonlight. A rubber dinghy was already in the water by the starboard rail, two of them dropped into it and paddled across.
They drifted in under the port wing and a tall, bearded man in yellow oilskins stepped on to the float, clutching a bulky package against his chest with both hands. He steadied himself for a moment then passed it up to me. As I took it from him, he dropped back into the dinghy without a word and they paddled back to the boat.
I took off again immediately and as I drifted into the air, the boat was already moving away in the general direction of the North African coast. Five minutes later and I was back at three thousand feet and dead on course for Ibiza.
As Turk had said, easy as falling off a log, and each time I repeated the performance we shared two thousand good tax free American dollars.
When I first met Harry Turk he was tied hand and foot to a tree on the edge of a small clearing in the jungle which was being used as a base camp by North Vietnamese regular troops operating behind the American lines. It was raining at the time, which was hardly surprising, as it was the middle of the monsoon season, but in spite of his incredibly filthy condition, I was able to make out that he was a Marine Corps sergeant, as they trussed me up beside him.
Before walking away one of the guards booted me in the side with enough force to crack two ribs, as I later discovered and I writhed around in the mud for a while. I had thought Turk asleep, but now he opened one eye and stared at me unwinkingly.
Whats your story, General?
I said, Youve got it wrong. Squadron Leader. What youd call a major.
He opened the other eye at that. Heh, since when have the British been in this war?
They havent, I said. I did pilot training on a short service commission with the R.A.F. then transferred to the Royal Australian Air Force a couple of years back. This is my second tour out here.
What happened?
I was hitching a lift on a Medivac helicopter to Saigon out of Din To when we came across a wrecked Huey in the corner of a paddy field with what looked like a survivor waving beside it.
So you went down on your errand of mercy and discovered youd made a big mistake.
We were caught in the crossfire of two heavy machine guns. I was the only one who got out in one piece.
He nodded gravely. Well, as my old grannie used to say, youve got to look on the bright side, General, and thank the good Lord. If youd been taken by the Viet Cong instead of these regular troops theyd have strung you up by your ankles and cut your throat.
I think it was that remarkable composure of his which impressed me most from the start, for when he closed his eye and went back to sleep, his face, which I could see clearly pillowed on his right arm against the tree trunk, was as serene and untroubled as any childs.
I fell asleep myself in the end in spite of the torrential rain and the cold and awakened again at around three oclock in the morning to find a hand over my mouth, Turk whispering in my ear as he cut through my bonds. By some means known only to himself, he had managed to break free and had used his belt to garotte the sentry, which gave us an AK assault rifle and a machete between us when we made a run for it.
They were hot on our heels within a matter of hours which was only to be expected and in a brush with a fourman patrol, I took a bullet through the right leg, making me something of a liability from then on. Not that Turk would leave me, even when I did the gallant thing and ordered him to. Not then nor during the five days of hide and seek that followed, until the afternoon we were spotted in a clearing by a Medivac helicopter and winched to safety.
He visited me a couple of times in hospital, but then I was flown back to Australia for treatment. I took my discharge six months later when it became obvious to all concerned that I was going to be left with a permanent limp.
As for Turk, there was a brief period when his face seemed to stare out at me from every magazine and newspaper I bought which was right after hed been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for leading a party of frogmen into Haiphong harbour to blow up four torpedo boats. I wrote, care of Corps Headquarters in San Diego, but after a while, my letter came back with a note to say hed taken his discharge and they didnt have any forwarding address.