3. THE SCARLET RIDERS-1
“This is utter nonsense,” growls Fritz Mundt, the German, who is also the biggest and strongest man in the French Foreign Legion, while wiping his neck with an enormous red silk handkerchief. He claims he once received this ugly handkerchief from a merry widow in Algiers, who then robbed him of his vacation money after consuming his third bottle of sour wine. “We have to go and deliver a medal to an old yellow beak, and for that, we must trek for miles through the sand and heat. So why could not D’Arlan have taken a horse and delivered the medal himself?”
“You are going to moan yourself to death, old chap!” says Teuns Stegmann, the big blonde South African walking alongside the big German. “On the contrary, you should feel honored that the captain chose us for this mission. This is a special mission, and old El Abbas deserves to receive a medal from the French Government. You do not kick loyal Arabs out from behind every bush, and El Abbas is one of them. He is turning 70 years old tomorrow and has never caused any trouble for the French Foreign Legion. He is a good friend of France, and he deserves this.”
“What about the colonel? He could have taken a horse and delivered it himself.”
“Colonel Le Clerq has other fish to fry, Jack Ritchie,” the Englishman jokingly says. “That is why he sent D’Arlan. The colonel has too much to do. On the other hand, you might meet a beautiful girl at the El Wadak Oasis.”
Fritz sniggers, but it is apparent that this kind of talk does not alleviate his concerns. Silently he plods on through the heat. He notices how the long bill of Captain D’Arlan’s kepi flutters in the wind. He is in the front of the convoy of twenty men marching through the burning sands.
“Take a sip of water, Field Marshall Rommel,” teases the Polish Podolski and hands over his water flask to Fritz. Fritz had finished his water about an hour ago. Fritz takes the flask and takes a deep gulp but starts coughing the next moment because Podolski has added a generous amount of brandy to his water supply. Fritz is coughing and choking, and D’Arlan, a small, swarthy man, turns around to see what is happening, but something else catches his eye…
“Halt!” the captain commands, and with relief, the men come immediately to a standstill. They lean on their long rifles and look up for the first time. The sun sits low above the western horizon.
* * *
A cool breeze has started from the Atlas Mountains that climb up to the right in the blue mist.
“What the hell?” asks D’Arlan and peers through his binoculars. They are standing on a giant sand plateau that is as flat as a tabletop. On the southwestern side lies a tall dune that had formed during last week’s sandstorm. D’Arlan walks forward as if he would be able to see better. He tunes his binoculars. Does he see a mirage, or is he dreaming? It cannot be true! Legion soldiers! What is going on?
The other men can also see them but cannot make out the details so well. Fritz Mundt walks over to the captain and asks.
“Mon Capitaine, what is going on? That is Legion men, and yet…”
MonCapitaine“I wish I knew what is going on. It completely baffles me…”
Now all the men approach, their necks craned forward, and they stand in a semi-circle around their commanding officer. On the tip of the dune, a row of camels with their tails upright comes running along in full flight. To the men, it seems as if the devil himself is chasing the camels. On everyone’s back is a rider and on some, even two. Next came the horse riders, moving in alongside the camels as if to incorporate them.
And then the gunfire starts.
The camels start falling one after the other and slough down in the warm sand and dust.
To D’Arlan it is an enigma. The biggest riddle, though, is those are soldiers of the French Foreign Legion! Yes, those riders are definitely Legion soldiers. It is they that are shooting. They are busy killing the camels!
“Mon Dieu!” sighs D’Arlan, still busy looking through his binoculars. “Do you see what I see?”
Mon Dieu“Oui Capitaine,” chorus the men.
Oui “But there are no Legion soldiers in this region! We are the only patrol currently outside Dini Salam, and the nearest fort is 250 miles away! And yet those are Legion men. Look at the cloaks, the kepi’s… the blue pants…”
“They are, without a doubt, legionnaires,” says Fritz Mundt while taking another sip of Podolski’s firewater.
The shooting has stopped, and the remaining camels have been halted. The horse riders have surrounded the group of roughly fifteen camels. In the light of the late afternoon sun, they can see the flashes and know that those are the Arabs’ curved knives with which they are trying to defend themselves. However, it is over quickly.
* * *
“Forward!” orders D’Arlan and starts running through the thick sand towards this strange tableau. The men match his pace, and although they are tired after this long journey through the heat, they are curious and excited to see what had happened there.
While running, D’Arlan upholsters his big German Luger revolver and shoots three shots into the air. It causes a stir under the party there on the tip of the dune. A few riders leave the group and start approaching D’Arlan and his men. After a while, they halt and return to their group. The next moment there is more movement, and the riders form a circle around the rest of the camels. Then, they start to move back in the direction they came from.
D’Arlan shouts at them to wait and even pulls off another couple of rounds, but this strange caravan ignores him.
Within minutes, they again disappeared behind the tip of the dune.
D’Arlan is out of breath and stops. “What the devil? I have seen a lot of strange things in the Sahara before, but this must be the strangest spectacle I have ever witnessed!”
“Maybe those men are from Fort Metz,” offers Teuns Stegmann.
D’Arlan shakes his head. “No, mon legionnaire, Fort Metz is at least 200 miles to the east, and anyway, what would they be doing here? And even if they are from Fort Metz, they would not venture into this area without telling Colonel Le Clerq about it. After all, this area is under his command.”
mon legionnaire“Yes,” Jack Ritchie interrupts, “if those men were from Fort Metz, why turn tail and run when they see a convoy of the Legion approach?”
“That is the most peculiar of all,” sighs D’Arlan, increasing his pace towards the five camels lying dead on the sand. “Legion men will not run away from fellow legionnaires now, would they?”
“Strange business,” says Fritz Mundt, and he takes a big bite out of a piece of chewing tobacco to try and remove the taste of Podolski’s brandy from his mouth. “Very peculiar indeed, and yet those are Legion men…”
“Five dead camels are on the sand, but no Arabs!” blurts Teuns.
D’Arlan stops at a big pool of blood and follows the path of the drag marks with his eyes. He looks at the footsteps.
He looks up questioningly at Teuns Stegmann.
“That Arab is wounded, mon Capitaine,” says Teuns, “but they took him along, and they were in a hurry…”
mon “Who says it was not one of the horse riders that has fallen here?” asks D’Arlan to test this brave South African’s perceptiveness.
“The marks here show that this man fell off a camel, mon Capitaine, and the marks show that he was then loaded onto a horse,” says the tall, blonde man, while a slight smile forms on his lips.
mon D’Arlan pats him lightly between his shoulder blades and concurs. “You are correct. You should have been in the secret service of the French Foreign Legion, mon ami…”
mon ami“I am quite content in being a soldier serving under you, capitaine D’Arlan,” says Teuns shyly. Then he jumps to the side, bends down, and picks something out of the sand. He looks amazed and stares intently at the item in his hand… an item that the camels and horses have managed to trample into the sand while milling there.
Slowly Teuns approaches D’Arlan. “Mon officier,” he says in a hoarse, soft voice. “Look at this!”
Mon D’Arlan grabs the item out of Teuns’ hand, and suddenly, all the men are standing closer to inspect the item.
“Good grief!” shouts D’Arlan. “What in the blue devil is going on here? This is a Metro, one of the most recent rapid-firing revolvers manufactured. It just came on the market recently. It is said that it shoots like a machine g*n. Look at the magazine… It takes about fifteen small bullets… Three weeks ago, we received some Intel about this little bugger.”
“Where would they have got this, mon Capitaine?” asks Jack Ritchie, and with that question, he articulates everybody’s curiosity.
mon “The devil alone will know,” says D’Arlan, “but of two things, I am certain. First, this weapon has never been issued to the French Foreign Legion, and I cannot see how simple camel drivers like these could have managed to get hold of such a sophisticated weapon as this.”
“It makes the secret so much more interesting,” says Fritz Mundt, and his blue eyes are sparkling. If there is one thing the big German loves, it is a secret.
“I am telling you, men, something is very wrong here.” He walks over to the nearest camel. “Let us open this one backpack,” he orders the men.
Immediately they start to loosen the ropes around the backpack of the dead camel. What they retrieve there confirms D’Arlan’s guess that this was merely a trading caravan that has been stopped. They find dates, sweets, silk, sheets, tobacco, a wineskin, and beads in the bag.
They find nothing special or ominous at all.
They also search the other backpacks, which are precisely the same items. They found only everyday trading goods.
“Hmmm,” says D’Arlan when they had finished, “this caravan was surely on its way to El Abbas at El Wadak. So these items were meant for the festivities with the bestowing of the medal…?”
The captain looks down the high dune and sees the dust column in a southwesterly direction, but the strange riders are nowhere to be seen. Instead, they have gone down the plateau and have disappeared into the smaller dunes.
“If we were just closer,” says D’Arlan, “we could have solved a big riddle today. Let us trek to El Wadak. El Abbas is expecting us. Maybe he can tell us more about these strange happenings.”
D’Arlan turns to the southeast and starts moving forward quickly. He walks with the leanness that his men are so familiar with. He carries the alien weapon in his hand and glances at it occasionally.
Not long after, they reach the southeast side of the plateau, and there underneath them, scarcely a half mile away, lies El Wadak. It is a green salvation in the desolation and vastness of the hot and sandy desert.
