The Goras Bloodbath (eBook)

A South African Hero's Struggle in the French Foreign Legion, Book 39

Meiring Fouche, Pieter Haasbroek (Autoren)

Pieter Haasbroek (Herausgeber)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
110 Seiten
Pieter Haasbroek (Verlag)
978-0-00-077976-2 (ISBN)

Infos

Four lives hang in the balance.

His choice will either save them or condemn them all.

Sahara desert, 1940-1960. Teuns Stegmann, a battle-hardened South African in the French Foreign Legion, leads his small patrol on a routine trek through the desolate Sahara. Their mission twists into a nightmare when they stumble upon a scene of unimaginable horror. An entire oasis massacred with its people slaughtered without mercy. The killers are not random bandits, but a disciplined commando led by the ruthless Igor Berthold, a man carving a bloody path for a secret army.

Outnumbered and relentlessly hunted across the merciless dunes, Stegmann and his men are thrust into a desperate fight for survival. When they are captured, Stegmann is faced with an unthinkable ultimatum. Betray his country and help the enemy capture a vital fortress, or watch his brothers be executed one by one. Trapped between loyalty and survival, he must outwit a sadistic mastermind in a deadly game where any mistake means a gruesome end.

A gritty, high-octane blend of classic adventure and riveting military thriller, The Goras Bloodbath is a relentless page-turner packed with raw action and impossible odds. Perfect for fans of Alistair MacLean and Lee Child.

Step into this unforgettable thirty-ninth Sahara adventure now!

Textauszug

39. THE GORAS BLOODBATH

Chapter 1

The rather short, speckled snake is so enraged that it stands half-erect in the sand, striking blindly left and right. It is a Sahara adder, and it is lethally venomous. It doesn’t know itself what is happening to it, for it is encircled. Now a heavy boot is thrust towards it, now a hand is held tauntingly a short distance before it. It strikes furiously at them. Occasionally, its sharp fangs strike with a snap against the thick sole of a boot, but these hands it can never reach. Just as it strikes, they are swiftly snatched away.

The Sahara adder does not realize that a patrol of the French Foreign Legion, having marched through the desert for eight days, has finally grown bored and seeks amusement in this manner during a trek that has truly yielded nothing thus far. A trek on which the men have barely seen a vulture. Furthermore, they have encountered no other living creature.

They now find themselves high on the crest of a dune from where they survey the world. It is here they discovered the Sahara adder half-buried beneath the sand. It had struck at one of the men at the very last moment, and therefore they decided to have a little sport with this inhabitant of the desolate wasteland.

The most daring one in this game with the adder is Private Petacci, the Italian in the French Foreign Legion. He is as nimble as the day is long, and occasionally he ventures to bring his hand dangerously close to the enraged snake. When the adder strikes, it strikes empty air.

“You might as well let it bite you, Petacci,” says the big German, Fritz Mundt. “Nothing will happen to you, but I’m sure the adder will peg out.”

Petacci pays him no heed. And Jack Ritchie, the Englishman, once again thrusts his boot towards the snake. And so it continues. A few men around a furious Sahara adder.

Only one of the small group does not participate in this dangerous sport. He sits a few paces from the others, binoculars pressed to his eyes. He is a large, strong man with blond hair and piercing blue eyes. He has broad shoulders, strong legs, and his entire appearance is that of a reckless leader. He pays no attention whatsoever to the antics with the snake. He simply surveys the Sahara through his binoculars. The Sahara here is savage. It is just a chaotic tumble of immense sand dunes with ravines, heights, and depths almost like mountains. A dangerous part of the Sahara, this. Perhaps that is precisely why they were sent here. The five of them. Teuns Stegmann, the South African in the Foreign Legion and the man currently sitting and observing through the binoculars. Then the rest, Fritz Mundt, Petacci. Ritchie, and the Pole, Podolski. The five of them do everything together. The command at Fort Tetain knows this too. That is why they were sent out as a team on this patrol. That is why they were sent to this dangerous region. They know the Sahara and its dangers like the back of their hands. They have much experience, and they have often seen death stalking through the Sahara.

This is again the season for patrols, for the high command of the Foreign Legion expects eruptions to occur somewhere. The whole of Algeria is in turmoil due to the actions of the Secret Army Organisation, which is fighting tooth and nail against the independence to be granted to Algeria. These few men have heard of the bloodshed underway in Algiers, where the Secret Army Organisation wages a reckless guerilla war against the Mohammedans. There is fear that the large Arab tribes in the interior might rise in revolt and possibly launch a full-scale campaign against the remote forts of the French Foreign Legion. And heaven knows, Fort Tetain is one of the most remote. It lies far in the southwestern part of Algeria, in the perilous heart of the Sahara. It is cut off from everything and everyone. No one knows precisely why they built a fort there where Tetain stands. Perhaps it is because some clever individual discovered there was water. Perhaps it is because the place is so well situated in a round depression in the Sahara.

Teuns Stegmann, the South African, no longer moves his binoculars. He has already surveyed the entire horizon in the distance before them, but now he gazes at just one spot. He looks at a spot almost directly to the south...

Fritz Mundt, the bull-necked German, the man regarded as the strongest fellow in the entire Foreign Legion, has tired of the game with the Sahara adder. Therefore, he ambles over to Teuns. He sits down flat in the sand beside the South African. There is a special bond between Fritz and Teuns. They are close comrades. The two of them, probably more than any other two men in the Foreign Legion, have endured the deadliest dangers together.

Fritz lets out a long yawn. Then he stretches himself out on the sand. He closes his eyes against the harsh sunlight.

“What are you still looking at?” he asks Teuns. “There’s nothing to see, surely.” This must be the most uninteresting patrol I’ve ever participated in. It seems to me the entire Sahara is dead. One doesn’t even see a sand rat move. It seems even the vultures have died out here.”

“Take a look here,” says Teuns. Fritz slowly sits up, rubs his eyes, and takes the binoculars from Teuns.

“What should I look at?” asks the German.

Teuns Stegmann extends his long arm and indicates a spot southwards with his index finger. “Look there,” he says, “and tell me what you make of it.”

The German raises the binoculars to his eyes. He searches briefly, and then he sees it. Then he knows that the vultures of the Sahara have not died out. What he sees are vultures in motion. They move apparently low over the sand. They wheel and climb and descend, and some even land on the sand. Then fly up again and circle once more.

“Do you see it?” asks Teuns.

“I see it, mon ami.”

“What do you make of it?” asks Teuns.

“Well, I don’t know,” answers Fritz. “It looks as though those vultures are after something. But, if I had to guess, their prey is still alive. They’re following it until it drops.”

“That’s exactly it,” answers Teuns. “Vultures acting like that are waiting for their prey to lie still.”

“And the prey?” asks Fritz. “What do you think the prey is?”

“I wish I knew,” answers the South African. “Yes, I wish I knew.” He takes the binoculars from Fritz, brings them to his eyes, and looks again. But the circling vultures have now disappeared down the slope of a dune, and apparently they have now reached one of the deep hollows one so often finds hereabouts in the Sahara. A deep, round hollow between the dunes.

“Shall we go take a look?” asks Fritz.

“We most certainly shall,” answers Teuns, immediately standing up. As acting sergeant, he is the leader of this patrol.

He walks over to the other pair still amusing themselves with the sand adder.

“Alright then,” says Teuns. “The fair’s over. Kill the snake, Petacci. We need to move out.”

“Move out?” asks Podolski. “Move out where? Still further south?”

“There’s something on the dunes ahead of us,” answers Teuns.

“Aha,” says Ritchie. “Finally, a bit of excitement. Arabs?”

“No, not Arabs,” answers Teuns. “I don’t know what it is. The vultures are driving something, or someone.”

“How interesting,” says Petacci as he gives the sand adder a hefty kick with his boot. “Perhaps it’s a lost Arabian beauty with blue-black hair and jet-black eyes and a veil over her lips. A beauty with tanned hips and the most exquisite legs in a translucent, gossamer silk skirt. How does that appeal to you, Ritchie?”

“Stop talking about women and stomp the adder dead,” Ritchie warns Petacci.

“Come on, Petacci,” warns Teuns. “I don’t want to be saddled with a man bitten by a sand adder. Kill the snake.”

Petacci turns away, fetches a bayonet, comes back, rakes at the snake, and when the reptile lifts its head again, Petacci slices the head clean off with the bayonet.

And a few moments later, they slide down the slope of a dune, pass through a deep hollow, climb out on the other side, and move slowly in the direction where the vultures were last seen.

The silence in the Sahara is peculiar. It is so intense. Everything is so motionless. Not even a shadow moves, except their own. The men have also fallen silent. They have learned that when the Sahara is at its quietest, it can sometimes be at its most dangerous. Each is occupied with his own thoughts. There could be many reasons why the vultures are moving like that. Perhaps it’s a colony of desert rats. Perhaps a stray goat, which one sometimes finds here. Or perhaps some injured bird fighting for its life against the birds of prey.

Thus they try to dismiss it. But they know that this is likely not the case. If it is an injured bird of prey, the vultures will attack it. If it is a colony of desert rats, they will attack them. If it is an injured or starving goat, they will descend upon it.

No, it is probably, very probably, a human being.

While walking, Teuns Stegmann consults the map he carries. In this part of the Sahara, a man must be very careful what he does. Even a man with intimate experience of this impossible terrain can sometimes get lost here, ending up nowhere. That is why a map is so essential. Teuns knows they must be in the vicinity of an oasis named Goras. While walking, he determines their position and calculates that they cannot be more than about a day’s march from the oasis. Perhaps a little more. A day and a half, or two days.

Goras is inhabited by a relatively...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 25.8.2025
• Übersetzer: Pieter Haasbroek, Ai
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• ISBN-10: 0-00-077976-8 / 0000779768
• ISBN-13: 978-0-00-077976-2 / 9780000779762