Codename Eagle (18 page)

“Now we get out,” Henri said, lifting his head. “And we pray that they follow.”

The petrol bomb exploded on the far side of the lorry, shattering a side window in the driver’s cab and ripping jagged holes in the canvas covering the back.

As the fuel ignited and the fire blazed, Lau and Steidle instinctively hit the ground, shielding their wounded comrades with their own bodies.

“What the hell is going on?” the officer yelled. “We’re surrounded.”

“Should I go and look?”

“No! We have to get these men back to the house. They need treatment. And where the hell is Werner?”

Werner was in the forest, hunting down the first bomber, knowing that he’d shot him but not knowing if his shot had been a kill. He was treading slowly and cautiously, eyes peeled, his index finger resting on the rifle’s trigger.

He heard the explosion and knew it must have been near the lorry, but he didn’t look back. The others would have to deal with that, Werner was focused on taking out the threat in front of him.

Lau and Steidle moved slowly towards the lorry with one of the wounded men between them. With a great deal of encouragement, he’d managed to stagger to his feet.

Steidle assisted the trembling man to the back of the vehicle while Lau covered them with his raised pistol. The wounded soldier was helped inside and he groaned in pain as his burned limbs made contact with the wooden floor.

“Hold on, Jacob,” Lau told him. “We’ll get you out of here.” He turned to Steidle. “We’ll both have to lift Wilhelm – he’s unconscious.”

“Probably best that he is, sir.”

“We need Werner to cover us. Where is Werner!”

Werner hauled Josette to her feet, ignoring her agonized yell as blood pumped from the wound in her thigh.

The Brandenburger turned the terrified girl around, wrapped one arm around her neck and pulled her close so that his face was against hers. “How many of you?” he hissed into her ear.

Josette could smell the soldier’s sour breath. She said nothing and Werner tightened his grip, squeezing until Josette began to struggle for breath. “How many?”

“Find out,” Josette managed to gasp.

The Brandenburger glanced back at the body sprawled a few metres away and smiled briefly. His shot had been excellent: a kill. The bomber was dead, but he knew there were more involved in the ambush than the dead bomber and this girl. The last explosion on the far side of the lorry confirmed that.

Werner had the rifle in his free hand. He raised the barrel and rested it against Josette’s cheek. “I’ll ask you one final time, how many?”

Josette closed her eyes. She wouldn’t say another word. She felt faint, dizzy from the loss of blood. She was going to die, she knew it, but she would rather die than betray the others. Her thoughts flicked quickly from her father to her mother and then to Didier and Paul.

She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and thought of Paul.

Paul.

And then she heard his voice.

“Drop the rifle! Drop it!”

Josette opened her eyes in the same moment that Werner wheeled around to see three raised shotguns pointing at his head.

Didier and the Noury twins were all staring down the barrels.

Paul stood between them. “I said, drop it!”

Werner was startled but calm. He was a soldier, a crack soldier and he’d spotted instantly that the weapons aimed at him were all shotguns.

He pulled Josette even tighter to his body, using her as a shield; perfectly secure in the knowledge that there was no way even the best marksman in the world could hit just him with a shotgun. The spread of shot from the cartridge would take out Josette as well. For certain.

Werner glared at the twins. “You two, and a couple of kids. You did all this?”

Eddie returned the glare. “We’ve only just joined the party.”

“But we’re glad to be here now,” Gilbert continued.

“Won’t do you any good,” Werner said. “And you won’t shoot: kill me and you’ll kill this one too.” He suddenly squeezed Josette’s neck even tighter, causing her to cough and splutter.

“Let her go!” Paul yelled.

For a moment, Didier feared that Paul was going to try to charge the German. “Paul!” he hissed. “Don’t!”

Werner laughed. “Your little girlfriend, is she? Well, she’s coming with me. We’re leaving, so don’t even think of trying anything, because if you do, she’ll get a bullet in the brain.” He laughed again and smiled at Eddie. “Just like your dog, eh?”

He began to move, edging backwards, dragging the helpless Josette with him.

Paul and Didier and the twins could do nothing but watch.

Alain Noury was totally confused.

He’d heard the explosions and the gunfire and instantly dived for cover. Even armed with a pistol of his own, Alain was no hero. He kept his head down as the battle raged.

In Lavelanet he’d followed Victor and the strangers to Victor’s Peugeot and the twins’ lorry, which was parked behind it. There was no sign of the twins, but when Alain saw the men climb into the vehicles he sprinted to his own van with a good idea of where they would be going.

And he was right. He was on their tail, keeping a very safe distance, before they reached the outskirts of Lavelanet. They were heading for Bélesta, which had to mean they’d continue to the forest and the wood yard. Alain had no need to follow closely.

When he reached the turning, instinct told him not to drive down the track.

He pulled the van off the main road, and as he climbed from the vehicle he heard the dull thud of an explosion and then a shot. He hurtled for cover, like a frightened rabbit.

Since then, hidden in a thicket, he had been vainly trying to work out what was happening. Who were the strangers and who were they fighting? Could it be the twins? And why was Victor Forêt involved?

The fighting had been brief but heavy. Now it had stopped. Completely. There had been no further gunshots or explosions for a full three minutes.

Alain peered nervously from his hiding place.

He waited and watched for movement before finally plucking up the courage to get to his feet and creep on through the trees, staying away from the track.

Soon he glimpsed Victor Forêt’s car standing at the edge of the track. There was no one near it, but as Alain got closer he saw the outline of a figure inside. It was Victor, sitting upright and absolutely still.

Alain grinned. “I see he made sure he kept clear of the fighting,” he whispered, conveniently forgetting his own dive for shelter at the first sign of trouble.

He drew his pistol from a pocket and crept closer to the vehicle, staying low, moving silently until he was no more than two metres from the vehicle.

Victor had not spotted him. He was sitting perfectly still, staring forward through the windscreen, obviously afraid that the battle might still come to him.

Alain’s smile was even broader this time. He would force Victor to tell him exactly what was going on, but first he was going to enjoy giving him the shock of his life.

Pistol raised, Alain leapt forward, grabbed the handle and yanked open the door, ready to thrust the weapon into Victor’s fat, smug face.

“Now, you…!”

Alain stopped mid-sentence and stared.

Victor had not moved. Victor would never move again, at least not by choice. Victor was very obviously dead. His mouth hung open, his staring eyes bulged and one hand rested on his belly just below his heart. It appeared that Victor had suffered a massive heart attack.

“You bastard!” Alain hissed, robbed for good of the pleasure of making Victor squirm in terror. “You bastard!”

His finger tightened on the trigger. It was pointed at Victor’s head and Alain desperately wanted to fire.

“Alain!”

Alain almost dropped the Spanish Colt and collapsed as he heard his name whispered.

He spun around and saw Henri Mazet and another man staring at him from the cover of the trees.

Alain’s mind was in turmoil. Henri Mazet! Him too? Here? What the hell was going on?

“What are you doing here?” Henri hissed.

“I… I…”

“Did you come to help? You heard the gunfire?”

“I… Victor’s dead. A heart attack, I think.”

“Come and take cover, the Germans are bound to come back.”

“Germans? What…?”

Suddenly, the engine of the lorry rumbled into life further up the track.

“Those Germans,” Henri said. “Get in here quickly; they’ll come for the car too.”

Fear more than anything spurred Alain into rushing into the trees to join the man he considered his other bitter enemy, even though Henri knew nothing of that. Alain was only just quick enough.

As the three men watched, Rudi Werner came sprinting down the track. He spotted the open door of the Peugeot and stopped running. Raising his rifle, he approached the vehicle slowly and peered in through the door.

“Oh, wonderful,” he said. “Just what we need.”

Werner slammed the door shut, leapt into the driver’s seat and started the car. As it bumped off down the rutted track, the three men hidden in the trees saw the lifeless body of Victor Forêt topple over to one side.

T
he battle was over, but the war was far from won.

Henri’s battered and weary little army had gathered in a clearing and while one of the twins kept watch, Paul and Didier took stock.

Both sides had suffered casualties and Inigo, fearless but foolhardy, was dead. There were new allies in the twins and, very surprisingly and difficult for Paul and Didier to believe, their cousin, Alain Noury.

Max and Julia Bernard were joyfully reunited. Eddie Noury had quickly fetched Julia from her hiding place once the fighting was over and now the couple were sitting on the ground, holding hands and talking softly, the relief on both their faces plain to see.

But Josette, wounded and afraid, had been taken prisoner.

Henri turned a deathly white when Paul and Didier described how she had been dragged off by the German soldier, bundled into the lorry and driven away to the house. Since then Henri had hardly said a word. He was sitting slumped, head in hands, on a tree stump.

Paul and Didier were trying not to show how frantic with fear they both felt; Paul was wracked with guilt at not getting to Josette sooner. “If I hadn’t insisted we go into the house, we’d have reached her before the German,” he said to Didier so that Henri did not overhear. “I should have guessed that Julia was safe when we saw the window was out.”

“How could you have guessed? No, you were right, we had to go in. And anyway, the German would have picked us all off if we’d come hurtling through the forest armed with nothing more than a few shotguns.”

Paul sighed, unconvinced. “We have to get Josette out, somehow. The wound looked bad.”

Didier nodded. “I’m glad Henri didn’t see it. He looks shattered.”

“But we need his orders. We can’t sit here doing nothing.” Paul turned to Henri and called his name.

Lost in his own anguished thoughts, Henri did not reply.

“Henri?” Paul said again, louder this time.

Henri seemed to barely register their presence as he stared up at them, looking stunned.

“What do we do now, Henri?”

“Rescue my daughter,” Henri said in little more than a frightened whisper. “Do whatever you have to, but please rescue my daughter.”

Paul and Didier exchanged a look; it appeared that tactical decisions would be down to them.

Eddie was standing guard. His brother and their cousin, Alain, who was explaining how he had come to turn up during the fighting, had joined him. And from what Paul and Didier could overhear, it seemed as though Alain had latched on to Henri’s incorrect assumption that he had heard the sounds of battle and bravely rushed in to help his cousins.

“I’d have got to you faster if I’d have known for sure,” they heard him boast. “But when I found Victor dead in the back of the car I didn’t know what to do. Then Henri Mazet turned up, and then one of the Germans.” He lowered his voice to make sure Henri didn’t hear. “I’d have taken him out with my pistol, but Henri wouldn’t let me.”

“He’s got a lot more to say than the last time we saw him,” Didier said to Paul.

“Do you believe all that?” Paul asked.

“Not really; I never did trust Alain.”

They walked over to the twins and their cousin.

“What can you tell us?” Paul asked the twins.

“Everything we know,” Eddie said. “We want to make up for what we’ve done until now.”

“Then start at the beginning,” Didier said.

Taking turns, the Noury brothers explained how they had come to be involved in the plot to seize Max Bernard and spirit him away to northern France.

They left out nothing: the Germans’ arrival on the plateau by parachute, the capture of Julia, the killing of their dog, their imprisonment and eventual escape.

“We did it for the money,” Eddie told them, his face flushed with shame, “and we know it was a stupid mistake. We’re sorry, truly sorry. I know that’s no excuse, but it’s the truth. We never intended to be traitors.”

“We didn’t think it through,” Gilbert added. “We’re not good at thinking at the best of times, but Victor convinced us it was an easy way to make big money.”

“But we’re not blaming Victor,” Eddie said quickly. “It was our decision, no one forced us into it.” He gestured towards Julia. “It was only when she was dragged into the house that we started to realize how stupid we’d been.”

“We’re not collaborators,” Gilbert said, “we’re just stupid. Sometimes I think we don’t have the brains we were born with.”

Paul couldn’t stop himself from smiling at the twins’ honesty.

“And now Victor’s dead; your friend Inigo too,” Eddie said. “I took off his jacket and covered his face when I went to fetch Julia. We’ll make sure he’s buried properly when this is over.”

Paul nodded his thanks; it wasn’t easy to think of the larger-than-life figure of Inigo laying dead and cold on the forest floor.

“Do you know what the Germans are planning now?” Didier asked Gilbert.

“They spoke about getting out tonight. A plane is picking them up from the plateau.”

“Landing on the plateau! Up there!”