The Burning Sky Read Online Free PDF

sanguine, and Callum Jardine furious enough to eventually resign his commission.
    ‘Why we did not crush these Hun buggers when we had them on the floor, I still do not comprehend, Cal. Their army was totally beaten in 1918 and now they tell us they were stabbed in the back by their own bloody politicos.’
    ‘You trying to remind me I was wrong about that, Peter?’
    ‘Only in a roundabout way, old boy, but I do recall you saying that there was every reason to grant the Hunan armistice instead of killing several thousand more, whereas I was all for pushing on and burning Berlin. Come to think of it, I’d still happily go to Holland and shoot the Kaiser.’
    ‘I was concerned about more of us dying for no purpose, not least myself, and I am sure you can remember the losses we suffered as well as I can. But I’m doing my best to make up for not agreeing with you here and now.’
    ‘And to quote that fine comedian, Mr Oliver Hardy, this is another fine mess you have got me into.’
    ‘Not that again!’
    Iraq had been Mesopotamia when they first served there and it had been hell: hot enough to fry an egg on the toe of your boot, dusty, flyblown and deadly. The army of which they had been a part had artillery, trucks, armoured cars and aircraft; the Arabs old pattern rifles, guile and, sometimes, suicidal bravery, which made patrolling extremely risky.
    Lanchester was of the opinion that shooting first and asking questions after was sound military sense; Jardine, marginally senior by date of his commission, was not, and in employing his tactics he had got two infantry half-companies trapped in an Iraqi village of mud huts and narrow streets, totally outnumbered and with no means of calling for support.
    ‘I got you out, didn’t I?’
    ‘Only by my crawling on my belly for several hours along a dry watercourse! Christ, I am still picking the sand out of my teeth. If you’d heard some of the names my chaps were calling you …’
    ‘Don’t worry, Peter, my lads were using the same language and it was we who provided the rearguard and took the casualties.’
    ‘Justice and no more, old fruit, and thank the Lord no one died. But the question is, if we are in the soup now, which I rather suspect you think the case, how are we to get out of it?’
    That got a wave of the Jardine’s Mauser. ‘I don’t think we can shoot our way out.’
    ‘Nor, I suspect, will you think of sacrificing your …’ Lanchester paused then to choose his word carefully ‘… refugees?’
    Jardine went back to his bag and opened it again, taking out a folder of papers. ‘These are their travel documents, Peter, tickets from the Hook of Holland to Harwich, as well as the names of their British sponsors, with supporting letters. Without someone to vouch for them and feed them they will be turned away.’
    ‘Money?’
    ‘They will have their own, at least in highly saleable commodities, which was what we were arguing about in that apartment. I was telling them to take those and abandon everything else.’
    That got a loud and disapproving sniff, to which Jardine responded with a bored look. He moved to the large cupboard, opening both the doors and reaching inside. Unable to see, Lanchester heard a series of wooden clicks. Then his companion emerged, closed the doors and soundlessly moved the cupboard to one side, revealing a square hole in the floor.
    ‘This is the tunnel. It takes you into the docks, and if you walk directly down to the quayside and turn left you can’t miss the Den Haag .’ There was no need to say that was the Dutch ship by which they were to depart. ‘The captain has been paid.’
    ‘Risky.’
    ‘No, he has helped before and I trust him.’
    ‘It does not strike you that the Hun have knowledge of this tunnel?’
    ‘That depends on whether you have told me everything you know, Peter.’
    ‘I would have to be stupid to hold back on anything now, would I not?’
    ‘It’s possible they know, but unlikely, Peter,