Echoes of the Past (eBook)

A South African Hero's Struggle in the French Foreign Legion, Book 25

Meiring Fouche, Pieter Haasbroek (Autoren)

Pieter Haasbroek (Herausgeber)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
99 Seiten
Pieter Haasbroek (Verlag)
978-0-00-077873-4 (ISBN)

Infos

They were ghosts in the sand, a lost patrol swallowed by the Sahara.

But this was no accident.

It was an invitation.

Sahara desert, 1940-1960. When an entire French Foreign Legion patrol vanishes without a trace, the legendary Captain D'Arlan, known as the 'Houdini of the Sahara', is sent to find them. He expects a battle against the unforgiving desert, but instead, he walks into a meticulously laid trap. He isn't the hunter. He's the prey.

Surrounded by a massive army, the ruthless Oerdoe sheikh makes his demand. The lives of two patrols in exchange for one man, Legionnaire Teuns Stegmann. D'Arlan refuses to sacrifice his soldier, but the sheikh's obsession is tied to a dark secret from the past, a whispered legend of a lost Nazi weapons cache, and a beautiful woman who is not what she seems.

With betrayal lurking behind every dune and the executioner's sabre sharpened for dawn, the Legionnaires are trapped and outmaneuvered. They must uncover a deadly conspiracy that could drown the Sahara in blood, or die trying.

A relentless military adventure packed with high-stakes mystery and classic action, Echoes of the Past is a must-read for fans of Alistair MacLean and Wilbur Smith. This gripping thriller will transport you to a world of honor, betrayal, and survival against impossible odds.

Step into this unforgettable twenty-fifth Sahara adventure now!

Textauszug

Chapter 2

SOLITARY WANDERER

It has now been a week since they left Dini-Salaam. It has been a bitter week, for D’Arlan drove them relentlessly, not with orders or threats, but with his own indefatigable example. Almost day and night, he led them across the sandy wasteland. Grinding and crunching through the hot sand. Lost are the nights when the desert wind cooled the sweat on their faces. This is one of the most gruelling treks that even these ten experienced men can recall. Not only was the pace set by D’Arlan deadly, but their packs are also considerably heavier than usual. They brought a large supply of extra ammunition. Each is armed with a small, stub-nosed machine gun. They had to bring an extra supply of water and food.

Therefore, they now lie gratefully, but footsore, body-sore, exhausted to the point of death, on the sand, staring up at the stars. The wind blows strongly tonight. Stronger than usual. It is the kind of Sahara wind that completely erases your tracks just moments after you have imprinted them in the sand. The wind whistles over their backpacks laid down on the sand, around the barrels of the machine guns, and it sends their trouser legs fluttering around their legs. They do not know it, but D’Arlan knows that they have already entered the small circle that Le Clerq drew with his officer’s baton on the map. They are now in the region of the small tribes. It is here that the search for O’Reiley must begin, a search in a sandy desolation where the undulating dunes can conceal so many secrets and where the Sahara wind can obliterate so many clues.

They do not talk much where they lie, only make an occasional necessary remark, for they know that D’Arlan will not let them rest long. He will only give them time for the worst fatigue to drain from their limbs, then he will start trekking with them again across the trackless wilderness of blowing, drifting sand. Of heat and wind. Of desolation and the ever-waiting death. Teuns Stegmann has stretched his long body out on the cool sand, lying with his blond head leaning against his backpack. “I wonder,” he says, “what could have become of O’Reiley and his men.” It’s strange, but on the long journey, not one of them has voiced this question. But it is as if the time has now come to ask that question.

Fritz Mundt’s voice comes crackling and unsteady through the wind in the darkness. “Perhaps,” says Fritz, “O’Reiley got a craving for Irish whiskey and for the pretty lasses of Dublin. Perhaps, who knows, he and his men grew tired of the Sahara, just as tired as I am of this hell at this moment.”

“Your explanation, old giant,” says Podolski, yawning, “is, as usual, unacceptable. O’Reiley is surely the last man who would desert from the Legion.”

Perhaps it is the exhaustion, perhaps it is the intractability of the secret that makes them cease the conversation almost immediately. No one attempts to pursue it further. No one attempts further to offer an explanation for what might have happened to O’Reiley and his men. They just remain silent, stare up at the stars, and try to snatch a little sleep before D’Arlan’s sharp, clear voice calls them once more to proceed on this strange search that seems so impossible, so futile to them all.

Teuns had also just dozed off when D’Arlan’s voice awakens him. “Get up, mes amis!” commands D’Arlan, already on his feet again. “It is time to move.” Standing there in the faint starlight in the strong wind, the little Frenchman looks indestructible at this moment. It seems as though the man simply cannot get tired, as though he simply cannot become disheartened, as though giving up is an expression he has never heard of.

Sighing and groaning, the men get up, stagger on their weary legs, and swing the heavy backpacks over their shoulders with difficulty. Almost reluctantly, they pick up their weapons, and when D’Arlan starts moving through the sand, it is as if they forget their exhaustion and follow him almost blindly, without asking why or where. Because it is D’Arlan, they follow him. Just like slaughter sheep follow a lead goat. And never have a group of men felt more like slaughter sheep than these ten. They haven’t the faintest notion of where they are being led rambling through the desert. And although each constantly tries to banish it from his thoughts, there is not one among them who does not consider the possibility that the same inexplicable, unknown fate that befell O’Reiley and his men could also overtake them.

Dawn usually brings joy to the traveller, but when day broke after the resumption of their journey, there is no joy in the wanderers, for although they do not consciously think about it, they realise in their deepest hearts that dawn brings the sun. The sun brings misery and torment. This had now been their last rest. They know that D’Arlan will let them rest again shortly after sunrise so they can eat and drink water, but that is not rest. The Sahara’s sun does not let you rest. You can sit and you can lie on the hot sand, but it does not refresh you.

The wind has now also subsided, and the desert is still. Still, vast, empty, and here where they are now, it is a broken world with quite a few fairly high dunes. Along sandy ridges, deep plains, and in the cool twilight of dawn, they behold here a strange, forbidding beauty of smooth sand caressed by the hand of nature. Of immensity in which not even a vulture stirs. And this is always depressing for these men. When you are fighting, the Sahara does not come so close to you. It is as if it keeps its distance because your spirit is then occupied with other things. But in all these days of trekking through the desert, nothing has happened yet that has held their attention captive. They haven’t even seen a camel track or a caravan in the distance. Everything is just silent and menacing, and the only thoughts occupying them are thoughts of a better life, of a pure memory, a beautiful woman, or speculation about what fate befell O’Reiley and his patrol.

Therefore, the men are actually grateful when D’Arlan brings them to a halt with a raised hand shortly before sunrise. He stares at the ground before him. Then he looks up, surveying the surroundings with his eyes.

The men shuffle forward, and when they reach their commander, they too see what he has seen.

Through the pristine sand lies a single pathetic line of tracks, already faint because the wind has touched them. Yet also relatively fresh, for otherwise, the night wind would have completely erased them.

“A man walked here,” says D’Arlan as if it were a communication about something the others had not yet noticed. “He came from that direction,” says D’Arlan, gesturing in the direction they are moving. “Here he turned,” says the captain.

But the men know this themselves, for the track clearly comes from the apparent boundless emptiness before them, across the sand to where they now stand, then swings away up the slope of a dune and leads over it, the gods know where.

“This man was lost, Capitaine,” says Teuns Stegmann. “Look how uncertain the direction of this track is.”

“That is correct, Legionnaire,” answers the captain. “That is entirely correct. This man did not have a fixed course.” Then D’Arlan turns and looks at the men. Their eyes look peculiar, and each one suddenly knows that he connects this track in his mind with O’Reiley’s patrol. They get that impression because they all think so too. Each of the ten men immediately associates this track with the lost patrol.

“We shall follow this track, mes amis,” says D’Arlan. “It might possibly lead us to something.”

They immediately begin following the track across the sand. And try as they might to determine who might have made this track, a Legionnaire or an Arab, it is impossible, because under the assault of the night wind, this track consists only of indistinct depressions in the sand.

D’Arlan leads them up dune and down dune along the strange trail that moves so strangely and windingly before them. The further they go, the clearer it becomes, and from this, they deduce that the man moving ahead of them cannot be far ahead, for here he walked after the wind subsided last night. Eventually, they reach a flat plain where the sand is firm. The sun is already up, and they are almost exhausted from scanning ahead to see if they can spot this wanderer.

Now, however, they stop again. Here where the sand is firmer, the track is clearly imprinted. This man took short steps. This man is exhausted, and he staggered, they can see that. The line of tracks tilts back and forth, and from the tip of each track, there is a short line indicating that the man’s feet practically dragged. But that is not all they discern.

“This wanderer is an Arab,” D’Arlan announces while they all stand looking at the track.

“Precisely, Capitaine,” says Teuns Stegmann. “He wears the sandals of an Arab and not the boots of a Legionnaire.”

The men look at each other, disappointed. “Perhaps a herdsman who got lost,” says Fritz Mundt.

“Perhaps,” D’Arlan responds. “We are going to follow this track further. Who knows, perhaps this man can tell us something.”

And it is as they reach the crest of the third dune after establishing that it is an Arab’s track, that they see the solitary wanderer still scrambling up the next dune. Their suspicion is confirmed. It is a tall, slender Arab in his pure white robe, struggling up towards the crest on all fours.

D’Arlan pulls his revolver from its holster and fires two shots in quick succession. The Arab apparently stops in fright, and the next moment the...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 25.8.2025
• Übersetzer: Pieter Haasbroek, Ai
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• ISBN-10: 0-00-077873-7 / 0000778737
• ISBN-13: 978-0-00-077873-4 / 9780000778734