Dark Vengeance (eBook)

Sand, Blood and Survival - A French Foreign Legion Series in the Sahara, Book 9

Sandbergh Beyers, Pieter Haasbroek (Autoren)

Pieter Haasbroek (Herausgeber)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
113 Seiten
Pieter Haasbroek (Verlag)
978-0-00-082092-1 (ISBN)

Infos

They followed orders and executed a condemned man.

They never imagined his ghost would return in the form of a beautiful, vengeful widow.

And she's merciless and hungry for revenge.

In the blistering heat of a French Moroccan outpost, Legionnaires Basie Beyers and Pete Haver are haunted by a recent execution. Their world is shattered when the dead man's widow appears. A woman with the face of an angel and a heart bent on dark vengeance. A master of sabotage, she unites the desert tribes, igniting a rebellion that traps the entire garrison.

Her demand is simple. Abandon the fort by midnight, or twenty-two innocent civilians will be killed. Trapped and outnumbered, Basie and Pete launch a desperate rescue mission, only to fall into her hands. Now, they are the pawns in her twisted game, destined for an execution designed to break not just their bodies, but the very soul of the Legion.

This explosive military thriller is a relentless tale of honor, survival, and the high price of revenge. Perfect for fans of Alistair MacLean and classic, gritty action-adventure.

Start your unforgettable Sahara adventure now with the ninth ebook in the series!

Textauszug

9. DARK VENGEANCE

Chapter 1

THE EXECUTION

It is now precisely twelve minutes to eight.

Heavens, no! It is now but eleven minutes to eight. The hand of the clock has just moved again.

Legionnaire Kriso Tovak made a wild, desperate calculation. He determined that he still had about six hundred seconds to live. A cigarette lasts longer than that. Thus, if someone were to light a cigarette at this moment, it would still be burning when he, Kriso Tovak, was dead.

Tovak made a strange groaning sound and pressed his sweaty face even tighter against the bars of the cell window. He kept staring at the large clock directly opposite the dormitories. Then he remembered that this clock only struck on the hour, just one mournful chime... clang! Just like that. That was all. Men here in Dini Sadazi always waited for it to strike more, but it never did. It was too old and it no longer cared. It had been there since these barracks were built and it had witnessed too much suffering. So, now it seemed as if the old grandfather clock merely said. “Well, now another hour is behind us. If you want to know which hour has passed, you’ll just have to look at me. I won’t tire myself out talking.”

Would the firing squad act according to the time indicated by the old clock? Would the officer wait until the clock struck before swinging his bared sword? And would he, the notorious Private Tovak, hear that mournful chime one last time before the bullets ripped the life from his trembling body?

Perhaps it would happen just so. The order from the court-martial had been perfectly clear. The presiding officer had read out the sentence as if it gave him great pleasure.

“On the morning of 19 June, at eight o’clock, Private Tovak will be shot by a firing squad in accordance with French Articles of War. His mortal remains will be interred in the military cemetery in Sadazi... his personal belongings will be sent to his next of kin.”

Personal belongings! Tovak’s personal belongings! That was absurd. Unless, of course, they considered a letter from Prague, eleven sous, two cigarette stubs, and a personal photograph as personal belongings. The letter, the money, and the stubs they had already taken from him. They had, however, allowed him to keep the photograph.

Perhaps he should look at it again now, just once more, the last time!

He moved away from the bars that had pressed deep indentations onto his face. He stood rubbing those marks and felt in his pocket for the portrait. But his hands trembled too much. He could not look at it. He laid it down on the wooden bench against the wall and then knelt to see it better.

Annemarie...

It was worth dying for her, but it would surely have been better to have lived.

Kovak’s thoughts swirled back through time.

His thoughts went back to the days when he and Annemarie were married in Prague. It was just before the hell of the war descended upon the world. They were happy, perhaps too happy. He was a clerk in one of the city’s many furniture stores. She, proficient in many languages, was a translator in the office of a large shipping company. They lived relatively comfortably in a small flat above a tobacconist’s shop.

Until the men in jackboots arrived. Until the German language was heard throughout their beautiful and ancient capital.

For a time, they lived on as usual. They tried to believe that the Germans would later be driven away without the assistance of ordinary folk like Anna and Kriso Tovak.

But one evening, Anna said in the little flat. “I have joined the Patriots.”

She said it so coolly.

He was terrified, shocked. He had heard of the Patriots. He had heard what the Nazis did when they caught members of this resistance movement. He tried to reason with her, but in vain. She would not be dissuaded. He had to admit that she was braver and more resolute than he.

Later, he too joined the Patriots.

Anna became an expert with explosives and sabotage. For such work, they would suspect a woman less than a man. The cold indifference with which she could kill people sometimes astounded Kriso Tovak. Anna could hate just as completely as she could love.

Yes, during those torturous months, he lived in constant fear. He feared not only for himself, but also for Anna. If the delicate and beautiful Anna were to fall into the hands of the Gestapo...

Then it happened.

A company of men in black uniforms visited their flat. He tried to stop them so they could not take her away. He threw himself at them. However, they struck him down and kicked him until he was unconscious. When he recovered, he was alone in the flat.

He was not alone for long, however. Shortly thereafter, they came for him and sent him away to the salt mines in Poland, where he had to toil in the brittle salt masses, in the bright glitter of the salt.

Somehow, he survived this torture. The desire to be with Anna again helped him not to die. He refused to assume she was dead. He never believed it until he was finally sent back to Prague at the end of the war. After months of persistent investigation, he ascertained that she had been sent to a concentration camp. Although meticulous records could not be found, he established almost for certain that she had been murdered.

There is the story of Kriso Tovak, the story of him and the woman whose portrait he now stood staring at.

In the rubble of the war, Tovak was alone. He had lost his Anna, he had lost his job, and he no longer wanted to stay in Prague because it held too many painful memories of her for him. For two years, he did all sorts of odd jobs that his hands found to do, but all the while he searched for an opportunity to get away from Prague. By chance, he heard men in a cafe talking about the French Foreign Legion, and then it occurred to him that he had read and heard about the Foreign Legion.

The Foreign Legion is an army for men whom the world no longer wants, is it not? He went and joined the Foreign Legion there and then, and along with other men, he departed from Marseille for Oran. Eventually, he ended up in this little place, Dini Sadazi. This is a stinking little hell, one of the advanced bases of the Foreign Legion here in French Morocco.

And it was here in Sadazi that the letter reached him.

Anna had not died. For two years, she had been held with other prisoners in a concentration camp after the war was over. Later, she returned to Prague where she searched for him. When she found out what had become of him, she went to the French consulate. It was with the help of the consulate that her letter was forwarded to him.

She was waiting for him! Anna was in Prague. She was waiting for him.

That is why he deserted. It was the only hope. It was but a meagre hope, but it was better than doing nothing. He failed dismally. They caught him before he had even left Sadazi.

It was then that he became possessed. He fought with the escort. He fought with the only weapon he had, his knife. That was a sharp knife, and with it, he killed a soldier of the Legion.

There is but one punishment for such actions. The court-martial was nothing more than a tedious formality.

He wanted it over with for good. He wanted this sorrow and this suffering over with for good. When it was still distant, death seemed acceptable, almost desirable, to him, but not now that it stood right at his door.

With her letter, Anna had included a portrait of herself, a portrait recently taken. He now laid his trembling finger on that little portrait and imagined he was touching her living flesh.

She was still beautiful. That bright yellow hair still fell to her shoulders, those eyes still held that chill calm, and that strong mouth still defied the world.

He put the portrait back in his pocket. He would not look at it again, for it added a stab of suffering to his fear.

He walked back to the cell window. It was ten minutes to eight.

Somewhere he heard a muffled voice giving a command. Then there was the soft tread of boots. He did not know where it came from. Perhaps it was the firing squad. They had surely already assembled.

Then there were further footsteps. They were closer now, and there were not many. They were approaching. They were coming closer, in the stone corridor outside his cell, they were arriving. He turned and stared at the door.

Then there was another sound, that of a hand slapped against the lock of a rifle. It must be the guard presenting arms. A muffled voice. Then the key grated in the lock.

The door was opened very slowly. Kovak stood hunched here against the wall. Sweat streamed into his eyes. He could not see clearly. He blinked his eyes to try to see better.

Captain Monclaire stood before him, and behind him, two corporals.

The sight of the company commander made Kovak feel stronger, gave him a strange courage. That was the effect Monclaire usually had on his men.

Monclaire said. “Any requests, private?”

It was a formal question, formally posed.

“Nothing, mon Capitaine.”

Tovak was surprised by his own voice. It was grating and completely unfamiliar. It felt as if a strange, earthy spirit had taken control of his vocal cords.

“Have you no further letters?”

“I wrote my last letter yesterday, mon Capitaine.” It was the letter to Anna, the letter in which he informed her that he would never see her again.

Monclaire nodded. Then he said very softly. “Your hour has struck. It will be much easier for you if you are brave. With courage, all things become easier.”

He hesitated, as if uncertain. This was not...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 9.9.2025
• Übersetzer: Pieter Haasbroek, Ai
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Fantasy
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• ISBN-10: 0-00-082092-X / 000082092X
• ISBN-13: 978-0-00-082092-1 / 9780000820921