Terror under the Stars (eBook)

A South African Hero's Struggle in the French Foreign Legion, Book 22

Meiring Fouche, Pieter Haasbroek (Autoren)

Pieter Haasbroek (Herausgeber)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
100 Seiten
Pieter Haasbroek (Verlag)
978-0-00-077876-5 (ISBN)

Infos

Three strangers stumbled out of the desert.

They were supposed to be a diversion.

Instead, they were a death sentence.

Sahara desert, 1940-1960. Legionnaire Teuns Stegmann, a battle-hardened South African, is suffocating in Fort Laval, a forgotten outpost in the Sahara where the heat is a killer and boredom is a curse. He and his giant friend, Fritz, would give anything for a taste of action to break the soul-crushing monotony.

Their wish is granted in the most brutal way imaginable. The miraculous arrival of three survivors is a lie, a Trojan horse that unleashes hell. Betrayed from within, the fort is overrun by a bloodthirsty army led by a ghost from an officer's past, a man who craves a very specific, very personal revenge.

Forced into a sealed underground armory, the handful of remaining soldiers are trapped in a stinking, airless tomb. As madness takes hold and thirst pushes them to the brink, and their only hope is a desperate escape. But breaking out of their prison means facing an entire army under a merciless sun, with no water, no backup, and nowhere to run.

A relentless, action-packed military thriller that grips you from the first page and doesn't let go. Terror Under the Stars is a must-read for fans of Alistair MacLean, Jack Higgins, and the pulse-pounding tension of a classic survival adventure.

Step into this unforgettable twenty-second Sahara adventure now!

Textauszug

22. TERROR UNDER THE STARS

Chapter 1

THREE STRANGERS

It is mid-afternoon at Fort Laval, the southern stronghold of the French Foreign Legion in the Sahara desert. It is an afternoon like any other afternoon in Laval. The heat hangs like a suffocating miasma over the world. The flies relentlessly torment you, and there is an unbroken silence that makes you feel as if you have suddenly become lost in a warm eternity from which you will never escape for the rest of your days.

Here in the large dormitory of the fortress, there is also near-total silence. It is the time of day when a man lies motionless on his bed because it feels as though even the movement of a hand or a few spoken words would exhaust him mentally and physically. Many of the men are completely naked. A few, at least, wear trousers. One small group sits by a low bed playing cards. Their movements are languid and slow, and their bodies glisten with sweat.

This is almost the only movement here in the dormitory. The slow dealing of cards and the sluggish movements of the players as they shuffle the playing cards. Besides this, there is only one other bit of movement in the dormitory.

A tall, lean, sun-tanned, blond man with clear blue eyes, wearing only trousers, lies on his back on a bed, tossing darts with slow movements towards the dartboard hanging against the wall. When all the darts are thrown, he draws the long knife from the sheath at his side. He flings it swiftly towards the dartboard so that the gleaming blade quivers as it embeds itself. With that, his interest also dies. He simply lacks the energy or the inclination to go and retrieve those darts or the knife from the board. Instead, he turns onto his side and observes the large giant lying on the bed next to him. An amused expression enters the tall man’s eyes. Into the clear blue eyes of Teuns Stegmann, the only South African in the French Foreign Legion. He is a man with the physique of an athlete and the strength of a heavyweight wrestler. Someone whose courage, resourcefulness, and perseverance have often brought him into consideration for officer rank in the Foreign Legion, a privilege he has consistently refused because he belongs to a small, closed circle of friends with a few other men, which he is reluctant to break up in this manner.

And the man at whom he now lies staring is known as the strongest giant in the Foreign Legion. He is the German, Fritz Mundt.

Fritz’s great chest rises and falls slowly. It almost seems as if he is asleep.

“Are you sleeping, old giant?” asks Teuns.

“Who can sleep on an afternoon like this in this perdition!” says Fritz, turning onto his back.

“Do you know what I wish?” says Teuns.

“I can guess,” answers Fritz. “You wish you were in your country by the sea. With a pretty girl and a bottle of beer.”

“No, that’s not what I wish,” answers Teuns. “I wish,” he says, grinding his teeth, “that tomorrow or the day after, such a violent earthquake would come that it levels the walls of Fort Laval with the ground. What a wretched, hellish pit! It seems even the flies are despondent. And to think we must lie here for three months! Three months in this mess without the slightest thing happening. I’m sure in these three months we won’t even see a camel.”

“Yes,” says Fritz with a sigh. “One day, when it is no longer necessary for me to pass through the gate of Fort Laval, that day I will know I am a redeemed man.” Suddenly, Fritz turns onto his side. There is interest in his eyes now. There is an urgency on his face. “Yet,” he says, staring intently at Teuns, “I have a feeling that our stay in Fort Laval this time will not be entirely uneventful. I have a feeling that something is going to happen this time.”

“You should have been a Gypsy,” Teuns mocks him. “You always have some premonition or other, old giant.”

“Tease me if you want,” says Fritz, “but you will see. I don’t like that they divided us this time. Sent you and me here and left Podolski, Petacci, and Jack Ritchie behind in Dini Salam. It’s not good,” says Fritz. “It’s going to break our luck. You’ll see.”

“You are the most superstitious man I’ve ever seen,” says Teuns. “I also don’t like that they broke us up this time, but I’m certainly not prepared to say it will lead to some disaster.”

Fritz turns onto his back again and pushes his large hands under his bare head. “Three months,” he sighs. “Three months of doing nothing and boredom. As far as I’m concerned, the Arabs might just as well attack us, then at least we’d have a diversion.”

Suddenly, it becomes even quieter here in the dormitory. Teuns, who had been fanning himself cool with an old magazine, suddenly stops. The fellows over there shuffling cards fall silent abruptly. They place the cards down in front of them on the bed. Everyone listens. Outside in the blinding sun, in the oppressive heat, an excited conversation has broken out. It fills the men here in the dormitory with interest.

“What’s going on now?” asks Fritz.

“It sounds like a scuffle,” answers Teuns. It is a perfectly natural deduction, because here in Fort Laval, the men’s nerves are tested to such an extent, their tempers so frayed, that fistfights are not at all unusual and are often even overlooked by the officer in command. In this pit, it simply cannot be otherwise.

Their interest piqued, Teuns Stegmann stands up and walks lazily to the large window overlooking the fort’s courtyard. He stops before the heavy iron bars. With his eyes now adjusted to the bright sunlight, he peers outside. Immediately, he feels disappointed. He sees no sign of a scuffle that a man could at least watch. All he sees is that two of the guards have come onto the parapet on the south-east side of the platform and are standing there talking. Their voices sound rather excited. They are talking to the officer of the guard who is standing just in front of the guardroom in the sun. From here, Teuns cannot clearly hear what they are saying, but it does sound to him as if they are talking about a camel. And when one of them gestures with his hand, it becomes clear to the South African that they have apparently seen something in the open desert. He sees the officer of the guard quickly enter the guardroom. Then Teuns turns away from the window and walks back. Sits down on the edge of his bed and casually pulls on his boots.

“And now?” asks Fritz.

“It looks to me like they’ve seen something,” says Teuns. “I imagine they were talking about a camel.”

“Ah!” says Fritz, yawning. “Perhaps we’ll get some diversion in Fort Laval after all. Suppose it’s a beautiful Arab princess lost in the Sahara. And suppose they ask you and me to take her back to her Oasis!”

“Suppose, suppose, suppose,” teases Teuns. “Suppose the sky falls, then we’ll all have blue caps.”

“And where are you going now?” asks Fritz.

“I’m going to see what they see,” answers Teuns.

“For shame,” says Fritz, “one would swear you’ve never seen a camel in your life.”

“In this godforsaken world, even a camel is strange,” answers the South African, pushing his kepi onto his blond head. “For all you know, it’s a camel with five legs.”

Without showing it, Fritz is now also all interest. He knows very well that a camel in this part of the Sahara is something very, very exceptional. Fort Laval is not near any of the major caravan routes. Arabs avoid the fortress as much as they can, and even Arab traders are not very enthusiastic about stopping here because they know that almost no man who usually comes here for relief duty has any money. The men are usually paid in Dini Salam, not in Fort Laval. The men are only temporarily stationed here because no garrison can be expected to sit here for longer than three months. Then they are withdrawn to Dini Salam where they receive their pay in the normal course of events.

Fritz also slides off the bed and pulls on his boots, puts on his kepi.

Then he follows Teuns outside. They move slowly across the courtyard because the heat is so intense that it feels as though your legs could simply buckle under you. At their leisure, they walk up the stairs to the parapet. Then they move along the old, creaking wooden platform to the south-east side where the gate of Fort Laval is also located. The gate secured with the heavy iron-barred portcullis. It looks so absurd. In this wide-open desert, where nothing and nobody is to be seen, it seems so unnecessary to keep the gate of this stone fortress closed. Teuns and Fritz walk to the south-eastern corner of the parapet where four of the regular guards are now gathered, staring out over the desert. When they stop there, an irony enters Teuns’s blue eyes. Mechanically, he looks at Fritz, and the big German looks back at him. Then they look out over the desert again.

There they behold a somewhat singular sight. It is a camel approaching. But the animal moves so peculiarly. Now it walks, then it stops. Then it walks again. It looks as though there is something wrong with its neck because it seems to be straining against something.

It also soon becomes clear that the camel is indeed straining against something, for behind it, it is apparently dragging something. But however much the men concentrate, they cannot make out what is going on. Behind the camel lies a clear drag mark across the sand. And from the camel’s behaviour, it is clear that the animal must be dragging a rather heavy load over the loose sand.

“What is going on?” Teuns asks the guards.

One is a dark Greek. He is the...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 25.8.2025
• Übersetzer: Pieter Haasbroek, Ai
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• ISBN-10: 0-00-077876-1 / 0000778761
• ISBN-13: 978-0-00-077876-5 / 9780000778765