Scorched Earth (16 page)

The Mustang’s wings skimmed treetops as Marc floored the brake pedal and swerved off-road. The plane was doing over 200 kph, so the four machine guns had less than a second on their target. Most bullets just chewed up the road, but there were some horrible noises as ricochets pelted the truck’s underside.

A big chunk of tree fell into the road ahead as the plane roared up in a wide loop, preparing for a second attack run. Marc’s neck jerked painfully as he rolled the truck through a roadside ditch and banged to a stop against a large oak.

As Marc bailed, the plane was skimming treetops again. This second attack mainly ripped off branches. Luc had jumped out the back of the truck and shot wildly into the air with his pistol.

PT wrenched his firing arm. ‘What are you doing, he’s on our side!’

‘Shoot at me, I’ll shoot at you,’ Luc roared furiously. ‘We’re the good guys, Yankee bastard!’

‘We’re in a German truck, in German uniform.’

As PT and Luc squabbled, Marc chased Edith, Michel and Daniel on a mad scramble through a copse of trees. As the plane arced around they reached a field and dived forward into waist-height barley.

Marc rolled on to his back to see if the plane was coming around for a third run, but it kept on climbing.

‘I scared him off!’ Luc shouted.

‘I doubt he even saw you,’ PT said.

They’d only driven a couple of kilometres from the bridge. It was well out of sight, but the Germans must have seen the plane and would probably work out that it was their truck being attacked.

‘He’s gone,’ Marc said, as he sprang up. ‘All aboard!’

But while there’d been no dramatic explosions, one of the truck’s rear tyres was flat and fuel was draining into the road. PT crawled under the chassis to inspect the gas tank. He hoped he’d be able to stop the leak by plugging a hole, but the fuel dribbled from a long crack.

‘We’re going nowhere in this,’ PT declared. ‘I hope the bikes are OK.’

The news was better inside the truck. Edith’s backpack had taken two bullets, but the grenades and ammunition inside it were intact. Another shot had splintered the stock of PT’s rifle, but everything else, including the bicycles, was OK.

‘We won’t be mounting any more attacks,’ PT said. ‘But there’s enough stuff to defend ourselves and we’ll hide the fuel cans in the field in case we find a use for them. Grab what you can carry. Hopefully we’ll pick up a track and we can ride cross-country.’

‘I’ll rig the truck with a couple of booby traps,’ Luc said. ‘Should blast a couple of limbs off, with any luck.’

The others didn’t share Luc’s enthusiasm for blowing off limbs, but booby traps were a common resistance tactic. The rest of the team let Luc do his worst as they unloaded the bikes and sorted out what they could carry on their backs.

*

Henderson would have liked to take the precaution of killing Gaspard, or at least tying him up. But he needed the little train driver’s influence to get back across the railway bridge. They parted awkwardly, on open ground next to one of the railway bridge’s brick pylons.

Henderson broke into a run, made painful by stiff new boots. His pack was stuffed with explosives, detonators and ammunition, but he still had no civilian ID.

Gaspard hurried back towards the railway guards. Henderson suspected he’d walk the tracks back to the Gare de Rouen. Once there, he’d tell his communist buddies that they’d been ripped off by a British officer, who’d ensure that they never got another equipment drop if he made it out of town alive.

Paul, Joel and Sam were waiting close to Rouen Cathedral. They’d hunted down food, but their stolen ration cards could only buy black bread. After they’d all used a tap over a horse trough to rinse the sweat and grime from their skin, Joel had cut the back out of a spare shirt and used it to bandage the gash on Sam’s arm.

They’d arranged to meet Henderson on a set of steps close to the cathedral. Instead of speaking to the boys, Henderson stopped a couple of paces away and spoke while faking a coughing fit.

‘See if I’m being followed.’

The boys let Henderson go 20 metres before standing up, then they moved off once he’d turned a corner.

‘Something must have gone wrong,’ Sam said.

They were all tense, but Paul managed a smirk. ‘You think, Sherlock?’

It was around 10 a.m. The streets were quieter than they’d been an hour earlier, but still busy enough to make it hard to see if Henderson was being followed. Joel stayed 10 metres back as Henderson walked briskly, heading away from the cathedral into a maze of back streets. Paul and Sam held back even further, hoping to identify any tail and take him from behind.

There was no tail, but Gaspard’s men had phoned around with Henderson’s description. As Henderson stepped through a brick archway, two men ran out of an apartment entrance. The older of the pair pulled a gun, but Henderson elbowed him in the face before he could shoot. Joel broke into a sprint, barging the younger man to the ground as Henderson ripped the revolver out of his attacker’s hand.

By the time Paul and Sam raced in, both attackers were on the ground. Henderson pulled his silenced pistol and shot the older man in the head. The second, much younger man gasped with terror as Henderson rammed the gun in his face.

‘On your feet,’ Henderson ordered. ‘Walk with us.’

It had all happened so fast that they only got a decent look at the young attacker as Henderson began marching him off. The lad wore a white shirt, navy railway worker’s trousers and looked no older than fifteen.

‘You live near here?’ Henderson asked.

The lad nodded.

‘Who do you live with?’

‘Two sisters, my mother. Plus my aunt’s family.’

‘That’s no good,’ Henderson grunted. ‘You know anyone near here who lives alone? A friend, an elderly person?’

The kid stuttered. ‘I …’

Henderson punched the kid’s kidney so hard that he sobbed with pain.

‘We need a spot to hide for a few hours,’ Henderson explained menacingly. ‘Pick a good place, because you’re gonna hide there with us. If anyone finds us, the first thing I’ll do is shoot you in the head. Clear?’

The kid nodded. He paused to snivel, but spoke rapidly when Henderson threatened another punch. ‘There’s a house down the road. The woman hid two Jewish kids there until the Milice took them all away.’

‘Nobody else has moved in?’

‘It just happened, like ten days ago.’

‘How long to walk?’

It was only a couple of minutes. The small detached house still had a big Milice boot-print on the front door. The lock was busted and people had stripped the place, ripping out wood for cooking fires and mindlessly smashing what the Milice hadn’t bothered to steal.

‘Joel, Sam,’ Henderson said, boots crunching broken glass as he threw the trembling railway worker to the floor. ‘Check out every room, then I need your eyes front and back until we’re sure nobody saw us come in.’

‘So what happened?’ Paul asked, as Sam thumped up the stairs.

‘Well, I won’t be exchanging Christmas cards with the local communists,’ Henderson explained. ‘So far I’ve killed three of them, held their leader hostage and ripped off their armoury. Hopefully they’ll stop searching if we hole up here for a few hours.’

‘Wouldn’t we be better off trying to get out of town?’ Paul asked.

Henderson shook his head. ‘The communists are based at the railway station and I’ve got no civilian ID to board a train. Major roads in and out of town are for Germans only until the 108th blows through, and in case you’ve forgotten, we’re still supposed to be stopping the 108th.’

‘So what’s our plan?’

‘Haven’t got one, yet,’ Henderson said. ‘But our snivelling friend down there on the floor is about to start telling us everything he knows about Rouen and his resistance friends.’

Team A was shaken and tired as they carried their bikes through fields of barley, being careful not to leave obvious tracks behind them. Half a kilometre from the truck, Luc stripped his mechanic’s overall, while PT and Marc switched 108th uniforms for civilian gear.

‘We’ve got two days of rations,’ PT said. ‘We blew almost all of our explosives back at the bridge. So, I say we ride a few kilometres to put space between ourselves and the Germans, then find a decent place to hide. Hopefully we can grab some sleep and move on once the rest of the 108th has passed through.’

Marc nodded in agreement. ‘Paris is about ninety kilometres. We can stick to small roads and tracks and ride through the night. Even if we don’t push hard, we should make Paris by late tomorrow morning.’

They were about to resume walking when a swarm of Tempests dropped out of the clouds. It was unlikely the rocket-firing fighter planes would come after a group dressed like regular teenagers, but it seemed best not to take chances with 500-kph rocket-firing planes so they took cover at the edge of a field and watched the action through branches.

The German anti-aircraft gun protecting the second tank convoy started the battle, but a single British pilot swooped in on a curving course and used two of his eight rockets to destroy the gun. Once this cannon was out of action the Germans’ only defence was to drive under trees, or abandon their vehicles. Over the following three minutes the Tempests took turns, making sweeping runs and firing rockets.

Team A had no view of the bridge, but they could see the planes dive and hear the distinct whoosh of rockets firing. Based on the explosions they heard, most of the first dozen rockets hit something, but the pickings got slimmer on their second and third attack runs.

‘I counted eleven big explosions,’ PT said, as the RAF’s finest shrank into summer haze.

‘They’ll want an accurate report when we get to Paris,’ Marc said. ‘If we head for higher ground, we can send Daniel up a tree.’

They headed north-east across gently sloping fields and eventually found a footpath they could ride bikes on. It was tough to ride fast because the day was getting warm, and even though they were a couple of kilometres from the bridge there was a smell of burnt fuel that made it hard to breathe.

Daniel was always eager to prove his worth, so he was disappointed when a vista opened up, showing the bridge and its surroundings without any need for his climbing skills. The bridge itself had now completely given way. The scene on the near side was more or less how they’d left it, with one Tiger, the truck and the command tank out of action.

The Tempests had done all their work across the water. By the time the aerial attack started, the Germans had planned their diversion and turned their vehicles around. What remained of the first group and the whole of the second had been caught on open road that offered little cover.

Much of the view was obscured by smoke, but Luc raised his binoculars and reported what he saw between gusts of smoke.

‘They’ve lined about ten dead up by the road,’ Luc said. ‘There’s at least two dozen in the field getting medical treatment.’

‘What about vehicles?’ PT asked.

‘Looks like the planes hit four Tigers, two motorised artillery and wrecked at least ten trucks or cars. There might be another Tiger. It looks like a busted track sticking out of a ditch.’

PT took the binoculars to confirm Luc’s estimates.

‘So four or five Tigers,’ PT said happily, ‘added to the one on our side and the one that tipped over when we blew the bridge. If they started with fifty-four, they’re now down to forty-seven or forty-eight.’

‘Almost fifteen per cent of the 108th’s heavy tanks,’ Marc noted. ‘And Henderson’s team might do more damage in Rouen.’

‘Not bad for a few kids setting off on bikes with no plan and a couple of bags of explosive,’ Michel said proudly.

But the mood was less triumphant once they’d all looked through the binoculars. Edith passed them on after the briefest glance and retched on an empty stomach.

‘What’s the matter?’ Marc asked.

Edith smudged a tear. ‘There’s a guy down there with half his face hanging off,’ she said. ‘He’s no older than PT.’

‘Screw him,’ Luc said forcefully. ‘I hope he’s in as much pain as my brother was when the Nazis killed him. If I thought I could pull it off, I’d sneak down there and lob a couple of grenades at the wounded.’

Edith sobbed as Marc spoke furiously. ‘Luc, for once in your life can’t you shut up? We’ve
all
lost people we love. Your brother isn’t an excuse for you to act like an arsehole.’

Marc and Luc had a long history of kicking off, so PT forced himself between them. Before he could say anything, a boom echoed from the direction they’d just walked.

‘Bet that’s our truck,’ Daniel said. ‘Someone found Luc’s booby trap.’

PT looked alarmed. ‘That means the 108th sent men after us before the Tempests blew the bridge, or the local garrison has been called out from Gournay-en-Bray. Whichever it is, I want as much distance between us and them as possible. So let’s stop the bickering and start pedalling.’

*

The fifteen-year-old railway worker was called Xavier. He was no hard-core communist, just a kid who wanted to fight with his local resistance group. He looked desperate as Henderson grabbed him by the throat and thrust him backwards into a chair.

‘We’re gonna be here for at least a couple of hours,’ Henderson said. ‘If you answer my questions like a good boy it might not be so bad. If you mess me around it’ll get painful, and you’ll still answer my questions in the end.’

To make his point, Henderson ripped a jagged-toothed hunting knife from a sheath clipped to his belt.

‘I don’t like all this,’ Xavier blurted, as his hands trembled. ‘Why do resisters fight each other, instead of the Germans?’

‘Good question,’ Henderson said, giving a smile. ‘You hungry? I’ve got some chocolate.’

Xavier shuddered at the thought. ‘I’m more likely to puke right now.’

‘Forgive me if I lack sympathy,’ Henderson said. ‘But you and your pal tried to shoot my brains out. So what do you work at on the railway?’

‘Station porter,’ Xavier said.

‘You must see a lot of comings and goings, with Gaspard and his friends?’

‘A bit,’ Xavier agreed. ‘But they’re careful. I’m only ever told what I
need
to know, and usually that’s not much.’