Perigord, May 1944
The ambush site was not perfect, but it was the best Manners could do. They were far enough from a road or track to delay any counterattack from the armored cars. And McPhee was stationed at the only possible approach route with ten men, three Bren guns, and enough Gammon grenades to fashion a mine that could blow the wheels or tracks from any vehicle that tried to use it. Manners had left him checking the rag stoppings in the Molotov cocktails.
The cutting was old and shallow, and ended in a curve that ran alongside a stand of old timber. Some of the oaks were fifty feet high, and the woodmen had sawn their trunks more than half through, supported the gaps with wedges, and pushed mud into the fresh scars in the trees to disguise them. Lacking water, they had all pissed into the earth to make the mud. Manners had rigged belts of plastique around each trunk. Once the armored train had passed, he intended to blow the trees to prevent it from coming back to bring its guns into the fight. He had placed another camouflaged charge at the entrance to the cutting, to prevent the target train from reversing out of danger. The escape routes were planned, the ammunition was checked, the Mills grenades had their fuses in place. And on the far side of the cutting, Malrand’s Spandau was well dug in and carefully camouflaged. Manners had walked the cutting twice, his foot sore but just about healed, to check if the ambush could be seen.
He was more than nervous. This was the most ambitious operation they had tried. Sixty men and four trucks hidden in the woods, two of them on loan from Soleil. If this went wrong, it would undo almost all that his team had achieved since they landed, and cripple the Resistance in this part of France. But it was worth the risk, and not just because of the importance of the target. This was an operation that had Berger’s Gaullists working hand in hand with Marat’s Communists of the FTP. Getting those two to put aside their differences and work together was a crucial part of his mission. And crippling the Brehmer Division before it became operational made military sense. He bit down the thought that the reprisals against the local civilians would be savage. If half of what Marat said about the Brehmer troops was true, they’d be burning and killing their way across Perigord whether he fought them or not.
And when the armored train came into view at last, he understood just how viciously the Brehmer Division intended to fight this war. The first thing he saw, being pushed along in front of the locomotive, was a flatcar loaded with French civilians. God, they had children there, too, with machine guns trained on them! No Frenchman would be able to detonate a mine under the front of that train. Thank the Lord his plan didn’t call for that.
The armored train passed slowly, that dreadful flatcar, then the locomotive, the coal tender, and the steel boxes with loopholes on each side. Then the sandbagged flatcar with the twin 37mm antiaircraft cannons, and another steel box. Then the gap, and the second locomotive came into the head of the cutting, one of the familiar local trains with a long line of passenger carriages, the usual sandbagged machine gun posts at front and rear.
The timing would be crucial now. The armored train began to take the bend, picking up speed as it left the cutting, the antiaircraft guns about to disappear around the curve when he fired the detonator. The five explosions came almost as one, a long, deafening ripple, and the great oaks jerked and began to lean. Oh, Christ, that first one was falling to the side where it would block the others. No, the second one swayed slowly, ponderously into it and gathering speed they both crashed down the slope and onto the antiaircraft gun and the last armored carriage of the locomotive. There was the deep, clanging sound of a great bell being rung, and as the dust rose he saw a great heaving barrier of wood and boughs and leaves that were still whipping back and forth. And the Spandau began ripping at the thin wooden sides of the passenger cars on the second train.
The noise was deafening as the Bren and and Sten guns joined in from his side of the cutting, and Manners watched the sparks rising frantically from the locked wheels of the second train as it tried to brake. But with slow, inevitable grace, it ground on, thrusting the sandbagged flatcar before it into the tangle of fallen trees. Soldiers jumped and scrambled from doors and windows as the flatcar upended and twisted to one side and the locomotive plunged like a blind bull into the crushed ruin of what had been the last carriage of the armored train.
The shriek of escaping steam almost drowned out the sounds of firing and Manners saw rather than heard the flashes of grenades being tossed down onto the train as its carriages seemed to bounce and then sag their way off the tracks. But the Germans were fighting back, the machine gun post at the rear of the train spraying the ridge of the cutting through the great spray of sand and dust that showed Malrand’s Spandau was trying to suppress their fire. More grenades dropped, and Manner’s saw one of Marat’s men beside him tumbled back with his jaw torn away by a bullet, the moistened towel around his Sten suddenly soaking bright with blood.
Manners ducked beneath the skyline and darted along to the trench where Lespinasse and three of Berger’s men were waiting to ambush any flank attack that might come from the troops who had been in the front of the armored train. The fools, they were out of the trench and over by the tree stumps, craning their necks to see the damage. He pushed them angrily back into position behind the Bren. He had to be sure this flank was secure.
Back to what was now a firefight, and it was getting time to leave. Earth was kicking up constantly from the edge of the cutting as the Germans began to reorganize, and there was too much dust to see where the third train might be. He looked around desperately for his detonator boxes. The ground that had come to seem so familiar in the hours of waiting was now unrecognizable after the disappearance of those landmark trees. He clenched his eyes shut and concentrated. The tree stumps were there, so he had been here. He edged to his right and looked again. He was on the lip of the little hollow where he had waited. The boxes were less than a yard from his hand. He scurried down and pressed the handle on the second detonator to fire the charge that would blow the tracks behind the ambush, half expecting a failure. Any stray bullet or excited boot could have cut the wire. But no, a crashing explosion that even his ringing ears could hear.
He took the whistle from his pocket and began blowing long, regular-blasts, the signal to disengage. No firing from Lespinasse’s team on the right. No sounds of battle from McPhee’s post back at the track half a mile behind him. Still blowing his whistle, he bent to the crumpled man with the shattered jaw whose hand clutched at his throat, trying vainly to stop the pumping jets of blood from his artery as he stared in dying desperation at the English captain. Manners turned away and trudged along the line, blowing his whistle and telling his men to pull back and disperse. He could count on Malrand’s Spandau to hold off any counterattack from the third train. He could always count on Francois.
Sybille’s gramophone served the useful purpose of blanketing the sound of the radio, when he listened to the personal messages that were read over the French service of the BBC. And at six-thirty one evening, as he strained to hear over the sound of Maurice Chevalier’s “Valentine” from the parlor, Manner’s heard the alert message. “La fee a un beau sourire.” The fairy has a lovely smile. He smiled and forced himself to listen to the mystifying remainder about the panda being a bear and the camel being hairy and the carrots being ready to cook, and then leaped in the air, turned off the radio, and spun Sybille into a brief, twirling dance.
“The invasion. It’s coming,” he said, beaming at her and kissing her boisterously. “That’s our alert.”
“What? Tonight?” she gasped, squeezed too tightly in his arms.
“A week, ten days. But it’s coming. They’re on their way.” He threw his head back and closed his eyes, hardly aware of her stiffening.
“If they are on their way, then so will you be,” she said quietly, not looking at him. Her eyes were shadowed with tiredness. Up half the night at Boridot’s farm for a dying sow, and then out again to St-Alvere tending two boys with stomach wounds who had been shot when the Germans raided a training camp. She looked as if she had not slept for days.
“I suppose I should thank you,” she said, almost angrily. “I am out of my hibernation, out of my little sheltered space where I could tell myself there was no war, no Germans, no great drama sweeping us all away into causes and passions. You pulled me back to this anguish we call living, living for the moment.”
“Berger pulled you back, Sybille. I only met you when the war had already pulled you back to life,” he said in a tone so reasonable that he knew it was a mistake as soon as he spoke. Her eyes blazed and she pulled back her hand as if to slap him, then her shoulders slumped and she seemed to soften, turning the threatened blow into a nervous plucking at his arm, and then lifted her hand to stroke his cheek.
“Soon you will go,” she said dully, and came into his arms.
“But then will come the Liberation, and I’ll be back,” he said. He looked at the room, the heavy furniture and faded carpet, a little Godin stove that glowed almost red in winter, the chaise longue where they had made urgent love when Francois brought him back from the kennels. The scent of lavender was familiar to him now, mixed with the antiseptic from her surgery. And he wondered whether he would see it all with the same fond eyes after the war.
“Another soldier promised me that he would come back,” she said against his chest. “In this very room. I don’t want to lose a second man. I have given enough to this war already.”
“It’s almost over, Sybille. The invasion is coming. The war will be over by Christmas.”
“They said that in 1939. And they said it in 1914. They always say it and it’s never true. Your invasion could be thrown back, or frozen in four more years of trench warfare.”
“That’s why I have to go now. Down here in Perigord, all over France, people like us listened to the radio tonight and are getting ready to make sure the invasion doesn’t fail. The more Germans we fight here, the fewer there will be on the beaches.”
Dry-eyed and unsmiling, she took him up the stairs to her bed and took off her clothes as if she were undressing for a bath. He watched her fold them carefully and lay them on a chair. And then with more determination than passion, she took him to her, and for once her eyes remained closed throughout. With so little response from her, he felt wooden and almost mechanical, his flesh urgent and pumping but his mind remote and concerned. He slowed and kissed her neck, her cheek, her closed eyelids.
“I cannot leave you like this, Sybille, but I cannot stay,” he murmured.
“Don’t go,” she said, her arms tightening around him, and she began to move beneath him, her hips rising gently to press him in a rhythm that she controlled. It was slow and insistent, like the rocking of a boat in the tug of the tide, and it surprised him with her strength. A part of his mind was still detached, observing, as she seemed to make love to him and to pleasure herself by an act of pure will. Her urgency released a great wave of tenderness in him that swept him almost peacefully away, until his breathing slowed again and the room came back into focus and he saw that her face was wet with tears.
“I’ll come back, Sybille,” he said. “I’ll always come back. This is my home now, with you.” With a final, lingering kiss, he rose and dressed and was washing his face at the kitchen sink when the soft rapping came at the back door.
It was Lespinasse, looking grim and frightened. “There’s bad trouble at Terrasson,” he said. “Young Francois has a car.”
This was a strange new period for Resistance work, both safer and more dangerous at the same time. The Germans and the Vichy forces had both started concentrating their troops in order to mount big sweeps and searches to attack the growing numbers of Maquis bands. But it meant they had withdrawn posts from the smaller towns, and there were hardly any small patrols, so it was safer for the Resistance to move around and to steal and requisition cars and trucks. The gendarmes who remained at their small local posts were siding, more or less openly, with the Resistance. So Manners, who had started on foot and then progressed to a bicycle, was now accustomed to racing around the countryside by car. If they did meet the enemy by accident, it probably spelled disaster because the Germans now traveled in big and well-armed columns. And there were no more soft targets on the rail networks.
“It’s that bastard Marat with those guns you let him have,” Francois spat, when Manners joined him on the road above the cemetery. “He took his men into Terrasson last night, probably with the agreement of the gendarmes. He blew down their door, took their pistols and rifles, robbed the post office, and then shot the local legion chief and some woman they accused of informing.”
“So?” said Manners. “This must be the ninth or tenth time he’s pulled something like this. That’s the FTP strategy. What’s the fuss? And did you hear the message from London, the alert?”
“Yes, I heard about the invasion. I’ll believe it when I see it. But I’m angry because Marat told the townspeople that he was acting on your orders, and the English capitaine and the Gaullists had guaranteed that there would be no reprisals. Terrasson is supposed to be under your and my personal protection.”
“Will they believe that?”
“They believe the fact that McPhee was with him. Everybody in Perigord knows about the Red Indian from America. McPhee is the living proof that Marat is obeying our orders, and McPhee is fool enough not to stop him. And they’ll believe the fact that he didn’t shoot the gendarmes. Don’t you see what Marat is trying to do, the trap he is laying for us? He tells the people that he’s acting under our orders and that we will protect them, and then we fail, and what’s left of the town turns Communist because they’ll never trust us again. This is what I warned you he would do all along. It’s the Communist way,” Francois said urgently.
“And another thing. That alert message, the fairy’s beautiful smile. There was no confirmation of that from our Bureau Central, nothing from General Koenig in the Gaullist broadcast. Whatever alert signal is coming from London is from you and the Americans-not from Free France.”
“I have to follow orders, Francois. You know that. I’ve had the Plan Vert signal, which means an all-out attack on the rail network. I’m sorry about Terrasson but there’s nothing I can do.”
“I have friends in Terrasson. So do you-people who’ve fed you when their own kids were hungry.”
“The sooner the invasion succeeds, the sooner they’ll eat. You know that.”
Francois stared at him fiercely. “So we don’t lay an ambush on the Terrasson road?”
“What with? Bren guns and Gammon bombs, against the panzers and the artillery they’ll send out from Perigueux? As soon as they hear our bullets tapping on their frontal armor they’ll hit us with howitzers and mortars. We’d be wiped out.”
“So we let the bastards get away with it, haul our friends back to the Gestapo dungeons?”
“Francois, we carry on doing our job, which is keeping as many Germans as we can tied up down here for as long as we can. And if we have to stage suicide attacks, it will be for a better target than a reprisal column on Terrasson.” He knew Francois well enough to understand that the only way to get him off this track was to focus his quick intelligence onto something else.
“SS Das Reich, you mean.”
“That’s what Plan Vert means to me. We blow the rails so the Das Reich can’t use them. But then we have to stop an entire armored division coming up from the south by road. That’s why we still need Marat and his boys. I don’t care if they are Communists or Martians. We’ll need every man and every gun in Perigord because we can only hope to slow the Das Reich down with cannon fodder. We can’t destroy the tanks, so we have to use every bridge and every village, every bend in the road to lay ambushes on their infantry and their trucks. If we can’t stop the tanks, we can shoot up their fuel trucks. It’s the only thing we can do. If you have a better idea, Francois, then for God’s sake tell me.”
“Even with bazookas, it’s a suicide mission,” said Francois. “And we haven’t even got bazookas.”
The parachute drops were becoming routine, and despite the reprisals the Maquis morale was sky-high after the success of the ambush. But Manners told himself not to get overconfident as he carefully approached the rendezvous point by the water tower at Cumont. He felt edgy, that visceral knot of warning that he had learned in the desert never to ignore. The moon was rising, and Berger was already waiting. Francois had the laundry truck waiting at a farm in the valley. It amused him to use petrol the Germans had allocated to get their uniforms picked up and cleaned.
“I could only get one tractor. A couple of farm carts and trolleys,” said Berger. “It should be enough. The fires are ready. Here.” He passed to Manners the inevitable flask of brandy, although the nights were warm now.
“We’re starting to lose some men, you know. They’re leaving the Armee Secrete and joining the FTP. The Communists are saying the Allies will never invade and the Red Army is doing all the fighting.”
“We’ve lost nobody. We get more all the time.”
“Not in our group, no. But in Perigueux and Brive and Bergerac, it’s all FTP. They even claim Soleil is one of theirs. Round here, it’s different. We have the reputation, after that attack on the Brehmer Division. But Marat has been claiming the credit for his own group, with you and the American. The way Marat tells it, we might not even have been there. Our lads know better, but all those new recruits coming into the Maquis, they want to join the FTP Commies and have a crack at the Boches.”
“It’s all the same to me, Berger,” said Manners. “FTP or Armee Secrete or even Soleil’s lot. You know London’s policy. We don’t care who gets the recruits as long as they get results.”
“You’ve seen this?” Berger handed him a small, single-sheet newspaper. “Marat has a printing press somewhere that’s turning this out. He calls it ‘Audace,’ and to read it you’d think only the Reds were doing any fighting. He says the Germans call this region ‘Little Russia.’ Can you get me a printing press by parachute?”
Somewhere far off, an engine backfired in the night. Too far to worry about. And Berger was experienced. He’d have sentries on the approach roads. Manners checked his watch. Any time now. Moonlight and scudding clouds, the scent of fresh horse dung mixed with Berger’s cigarette. He was taking another swig of brandy when he heard footsteps coming, and a whispered “Laval.” It was young Daunier, with someone behind him.
“Good evening, comrades.” It was Marat.
“What in the devil’s name are you doing here?” said Berger grimly. “And you, Daunier, back to your post.”
“Come for my share. We can’t leave my lads defenseless,” Marat said. “I’ve got enough to make two more battalions of franc-tireurs, but I need arms. Come, Capitaine, you’re a reasonable man. Tell this Gaullist we’re supposed to be allies.”
“We are allies,” said Manners tiredly. “But how did you learn about tonight’s drop? I’m more worried about security than the guns.”
“Some of your men are not so greedy as Berger here. At least they understand we’re on the same side.”
“You two sort it out between you. I’m going to check the sentries and the fires. The plane will be here anytime now.” Manners shouldered his Sten, checked the spare magazines in his pouches, and left them to it, angry at the endless politicking. He wondered if it would be the same in an England under occupation, different organizations for the conservatives and the socialists, and another lot for the liberals. And probably some more for different football clubs and county cricket teams. But there’d be no parachute drops for a British resistance, not with Canada and the U.S.A. so far away. They wouldn’t even be able to communicate by radio. Unless there were submarines offshore …
The sound of aircraft engines stopped his wandering thoughts. Close enough. He lit the first signal fire, saw the next ones ignite, and as the roar of the bomber on its first reconnaissance run drowned out everything else, he waited for the plane to make its turn into the wind and for the parachutes to start spilling down. There was always a marker assigned to each container, and Berger had them posted downwind, where the parachutes invariably dropped. As the first one tumbled from the belly of the lumbering Halifax, whipping as the canopy opened, he began kicking the loose earth over his fire. They always made him nervous, these telltale beacons. A good even drop, holding steady as the plane’s momentum died, they began to drift downwind, one after the other. The markers were running, and he heard the engine of the tractor cough as it began to lumber down toward the containers …
That was no tractor! Even before the thudding of the cannon began he knew the German armored cars had caught them. Running instinctively toward two of his men who seemed frozen in surprise he pushed them down and got them firing. They just needed telling what to do. There was only one German cannon firing so far, and no flashes of gunfire from infantry. The cars had raced in too fast for their support troops. Crouching and running toward the village he ran, literally, into Albert. He knew horses.
“Get the carts loaded and get those guns down to young Francois. Cut the horses loose if they’re shot and push the buggers. Get the others moving. We can still get those guns. I’ll take care of the armored car.”
Firing short bursts from his Sten as he ran, as much to identify himself to his men as for any good it might do, he sprinted and rolled to his left, where a Bren was firing in steady, controlled bursts. That was Lespinasse, a trained man who’d been in the Alpine troops. He wouldn’t need telling to cover the withdrawal. He was changing barrels when Manners flung himself beside him, and shouted, “Covering fire-I’ll go in from the left.”
“Here-you’ll need this.” Lespinasse took a Gammon bomb from the haversack at his side. Manners clutched it to his chest, tried to control his breathing, counted to five as Lespinasse shifted position and locked in a new magazine, and began his sprint as the Bren opened up again, sounding puny against the bark of the cannon. Still no German infantry, the fools. They’d sprung the trap too soon.
The armored car was moving cautiously out of the village, one of its crew squatting on the rear deck, braced against the curling stanchion that held the aerial, and firing a Schmeisser in random bursts at the gaps between the houses. Two small fires still burned where some of the boys had tried using Molotovs. The Gammon was awkward to throw, four pounds of plastic wrapped in tarpaulin and attached to an impact fuse. He sprayed the back of the car with his Sten, saw the crew man fall, set his gun down, and took the Gammon in the palm of his hand. Think cricket, he told himself, a long throw to the wicket keeper to stop that third run. It doesn’t have to hit the stumps; it’s a big target. He threw it hard but even as it left his hand he knew it was falling short. He picked up his gun and ran out of the village, fumbling for a new magazine as the German infantry turned up, and the first crump of mortar shells began falling between him and the drop zone.
There were two sounds from the desert war that he’d never forget. There was the whip-crack of the high-velocity 88 cannon, which came with the instant relief that if you could hear it, your tank had not been hit. But you had no more than five seconds to get under cover before the next round. The other sound was the mortars. The Sobbing Sisters were the worst, six-barreled beasts that moaned eerily as they fell. They could demolish a platoon or even a tank squadron if they caught the men outside the tanks and in laager. But any mortar was bad, a closerange mobile artillery that every German infantry company seemed to carry with it as a matter of course. And they got them firing so fast. Just as soon as the machine guns made you take cover, the mortars blew you out of it. It was like being sniped with high explosive.
He reached the trees, running wide to avoid the mortars. German machine guns were firing steadily, but from a long distance. Another armored car had joined the first, and was firing steadily as crew members milled about forming into a line. He saw the glint of a towing hawser in the moonlight. His Gammon must have hit a wheel. The mortars were increasing their range, stalking their way across the field, and he saw the old tractor wrecked and burning. Then he saw movement, a jolting, jerking movement and an appalling noise of pain. An old farm horse, its haunches on the ground, was trying to haul itself away from the madness by its two front legs, its neigh a scream as the weight of the cart kept it flailing uselessly. The cart must be loaded.
He told himself it was the horse that made him do it, running out from his cover toward the cart, and firing a short burst into the poor beast’s pitching head. But he’d already thought it through. The cart had to be still for what he wanted to do. There was no possibility of saving the guns; they had to be destroyed. He took the first Mills bomb from his pouch. No, there was a better way. He removed the pin, keeping tight hold of the lever, and felt into the back of the cart. He jammed the grenade between two of the parachuted containers. He managed to push the second bomb between a container and the cart’s side.
Then he turned and half-fled, half-fell down the slope into the woods, his gun held high before his face to protect him from the branches, until he slammed into a tree and seemed to bounce dazedly off it down the hillside. Tumbling and disoriented, when he finally came to rest his mouth was full of blood and he had lost his gun. He groped vainly in the dark until the mortar shells seemed to be hunting at random down the slope toward him, and he was nearer to panic than he had been since he came to France. The sickening sense of defeat and disaster unmanned him. He had no idea where he was, where his men were, how many were left nor where the rendezvous point might be. And the Germans were not finished yet. He heard himself sobbing as he scrambled like an animal to get away from the still-searching mortars, wondering how many men they’d lost, and which of them was the informer.
When his boots felt the crunch of the road, Manners began to come back to his senses. He took out his knife and made two diagonal slashes into the bark of the nearest sapling to mark the spot. Then he stepped forward out of the tree cover, and into the faint lightness of the stars. Just enough light to see the blazes he had made in the tree. The moon was down, but there was the blessed, familiar Plow, with its two stars of the blade pointing forever north to Polaris. His sense of direction came back. The slope had brought him down to the Rouffignac road, which wound its way uphill all the way to the ridge above Savignac. Knowing he’d be safer in the hills than taking the road down to the river valley, he moved to the soft verge and began to trudge uphill. He paused every few moments to listen for the inevitable German patrols that would soon be sweeping this and all the other roads around the drop zone.
The mortaring had stopped, but odd shots still thumped faintly in the distance, and then came one bigger, rippling explosion followed by an endless crackling of gunfire. He began to move again when it stopped, but had gone no more than five yards when a whispered “Laval” came from behind him.
“Putain,” he replied automatically. And stood still, his arms by his sides.
“Capitaine?” It was Lespinasse, his whisper urgent. Thank God the lad had made it.
“This way, Capitaine.” His arm was grabbed and he was pulled off the road and felt the loom of rock, the movements of other people. “Were you hit?”
“No, no, I’m O.K. Just stunned by a fall.”
Berger and Francois were suddenly at his side, putting a flask to his mouth. He gagged, the spirit stinging on his torn lip. He tasted blood and brandy, and then the stars seemed to swirl and he blacked out. When he came to, he was sitting on the ground. He pulled himself to his knees. Then, gingerly, he stood up.
“Where are the guns?” he asked.
“Here. We saved two carts,” said Francois. “Six containers. The lads did well.”
“Here? Right by the road? They’ll be sending patrols any minute.”
“The carts are empty. Little Jeannot has gone for a couple of horses. The containers are under cover. It’s the best we can do.”
“Is anybody at the rendezvous point in case of stragglers?”
“That was Lespinasse. That’s where he found you. He’s gone back.”
“How many of us here?”
“Just six,” said Berger. “Us three, Florien and Pierrot. And Lespinasse, when he gets back. Albert has gone back up to the plateau to look around. Marat was here with Carlos but they thought they’d better try for le Bugue when the mortars hit the truck.”
“Six? We had nearly thirty at the drop zone.”
“Most of them scattered. There wasn’t much of a pursuit after you got the armored car, except for the mortars. Then the cart blew up. Lespinasse said that was your doing.”
“What’s your plan?”
“Wait for Jeannot and the horses, then he and Florien take the empty carts back to the farm at dawn. The rest of us go up this gully and over the ridge toward Rhode. Then we scatter, lie up for the day, and head for Rouffignac. We’ll come back for the containers with a truck when the Germans move on.”
Manners looked around, trying to get a sense of the place. He felt smooth rock to one side, and open ground on the other. He paced the distance to the road. Five meters to a thin fringe of saplings and bushes. Jesus, this wouldn’t do. He followed the line of the rock, under a steep overhang, and his boot hit one of the containers.
“We can’t leave these here. It’s too near the road. We’d come back to find an ambush or a booby trap.”
“There’s nowhere else, not without transport and we dare not use the road. And we can’t get them up the gully. And besides, the sign makes it so obvious the Germans probably won’t give it a second glance.”
“What bloody sign?”
“La Ferrassie. The big sign for the national monument,” said Francois. “It’s an old caveman burial site or something. There was a big archaeological dig here, back at the start of the century.”
“I may have something better. Get Lespinasse back here on the double.” Manners considered. Only six men, and each container weighed well over a hundred fifty pounds. Three men to each container. Three trips. It could be done. He went across to the first cart. The long leather straps they used to lift the containers were still there. That made it easier.
It had been the bloody mortars that had done it, the first thing he ever had to thank them for. Plunging down onto the slope to explode in the trees and blast lethal wood and metal splinters everywhere. Except this one had landed at the base of an old tree and blown a crater that sent the tree toppling sideways down the slope, levering out a great chunk of earth with its wrenched roots. It was the tangle of roots that had stopped Manners’s plunge down the slope, and as he tried to get to his feet the earth had given way beneath him and he had slid down farther. That was where he discovered that he had lost his gun, had begun groping with his hands and found the smooth rock on both sides and then curving to meet above his head. The air had been cool and dry, the ground smooth and gently sloping uphill, but almost level underfoot as he crept in farther, his outstretched hand following the line of the rock. Turning, he looked back to see the slightly fainter darkness of the night through the hole. The roots of the fallen tree made a kind of natural ladder that he was able to scramble up, back to the open air.
He had turned back into the cave, thinking that the tree must have grown at the very entrance, its roots distorted and forced to the downhill side of the slope by the rock. With all its roots on one side, the tree had been too precariously embedded to resist the force of the mortar blast. He went further into the cave, down what seemed to be a tunnel, high enough for him to walk without bending, and not quite two arms-widths wide. The tunnel went for about ten meters, still sloping gently uphill, and then widened again. It was pitch black and utterly quiet. Safe, he had said to himself. Safe. And slumped down to wait the night out.
It was duty that called him back to himself. Or at least that part of it which was composed of guilt. Even as he thought of safety, he thought of his men, wounded and frightened and scurrying through the night with Germans on their heels. His men weren’t safe. And every code he had lived by, every lesson he had learned in eight years as an officer and nearly five years of war, warned that he had no right being safe when his men were in danger and demoralized without him. Alone in the blackness, he confronted himself and rolled to his feet, stretched his hand out to the rock and directed his feet firmly downhill through the tunnel to the tangled roots that made it so easy to climb back into his duty and his war.
“Here’s Lespinasse,” said Francois, his voice wary and uncertain.
“Right, Lespinasse. Any other men turn up? No? Very well. Take me back to the spot where you first saw me. The exact spot, mind you. And then we creep slowly downhill, looking at every single tree for two knife slashes I made. Understand? Francois, Berger, you get those containers loaded into a cart. That will make it easier. When we come back, I’ll lead you to the best hiding place in France. Then we go and look for our wounded.”
He followed Lespinasse back down the road, the trudge farther than he had thought. Afraid of speaking, Lespinasse clutched him and pointed to himself and the spot where he had been waiting. Then he led Manners to the place he had first seen him. Manners nodded, stayed on the same southerly side of the road and began walking slowly, scrutinizing each tree. Ten meters, twenty, fifty, a hundred. His eyes were seeing spots with strain when Lespinasse tapped his shoulder. Manners looked back. There were his blazes on the tree. He had missed them. He slapped Lespinasse on the back and told him to stay right there.
Into the trees and up the slope, as straight as he could, trying to remember how far it had been. It would be the very devil to haul those containers up here. But they had men enough and straps, and necessity to spur them. He felt supremely confident that he would find it again, as if repeated bouts of terror at the hands of German mortars was finally being repaid by this one that had resolved to serve his purpose. Again, the fallen tree came to his aid, as he had been sure it would, and he blundered into the thin leaves and branches of its toppled crown. He skirted it, following the trunk until he came to the giant clod of earth and the knotted roots, and there was his hole.
Back down to Lespinasse, telling him to stay exactly there, moving not one inch. He strode with increasing vigor back up the road to la Ferrassie, turned in at the bloody silly sign, and found them loading the fifth container onto the cart. He helped them with the sixth. Six men, it was easy.
“Follow me,” he said. No further explanation seemed necessary. He picked up one of the shafts, put his weight into it, and felt it start to move as the others joined him. “Francois, get a bough to brake the wheels,” he said over his shoulder, and led them out onto the road, sublimely convinced that there would be no patrols to interrupt them.
It took them until almost dawn, heaving those heavy containers up the hill, the leather straps knifing into their shoulders as their hands groped for trees and branches and even spiked brambles as they fought to stay upright and maneuver the damn things through the undergrowth. The others cursed and groaned and sobbed with effort but never complained, carried along by the sheer assurance of his will. It seemed an inevitable part of the way his luck had turned that just as they laid the last container beside the tangle of roots, they heard the plod of horses’ hooves and there was Little Jeannot, in perfect time to take the empty cart back to the barn.
He went down first with Francois. The others took the straps from their aching shoulders and spat on their hands to take the straps in a firm grip and ease the containers down the sloping ramp of earth as if they were so many coffins being lowered gently into a grave. Pierrot and Florien came down to help them haul the containers up the tunnel. As the sky lightened and the first birds began to sing, Manners looked at the last container and stared for the first time at the stenciled markings on its side.
“Load D,” he breathed, as if in the presence of a miracle. Load D, the rarest and most marvelous of gifts. Load D, with its four bazookas and twenty-four rockets for each one. And 154 pounds of plastic explosive, 8 Bren guns, 10,000 rounds of ammo, and 234 field dressings with medical kit. He had six containers, which meant half a load. It was still a miracle. He opened the first container, took out the medical kit, and went off to look for his wounded.