Authors: Robert Muchamore
Six days later
.
At the green light Charles Henderson pushed off through the hole in Fat Patty’s fuselage. While the American bomber flew slow and steady, he was followed at three-second intervals by Marc, Paul, Sam, Luc, Sergeant Goldberg and four chutes attached to aluminium equipment canisters.
Eugene and Rosie’s near miss with a Gestapo reception committee was on everyone’s mind as they plunged through moonlight. Henderson touched down first, making a perfect landing on overgrown farmland. After releasing his chute he grabbed the compact M3 machine gun strapped to his thigh and glanced about until he was sure he didn’t have company.
The latest parachutes used by special operations units were dyed dark grey, which was near invisible in moonlight. Henderson had a tough time spotting his companions, but he could hear wind catching someone’s chute behind a clump of trees less than thirty metres away.
‘Marc?’ Henderson asked, knowing that he’d been next to jump.
‘I nearly landed on top of you,’ Marc said, as he came out of the dark, dragging billowing silk behind him. ‘Ground feels soft. Shall I start digging a hole for the chutes while you find the others?’
‘Makes sense,’ Henderson said.
Parachuting in darkness carries risks, from bad landings to the pilot dropping you in the wrong place, but within ten minutes of touchdown Henderson was satisfied that the two abandoned houses on the brow of the next hill were the ones he’d seen in aerial surveillance photos, and injuries could have been far worse than Sam bending his fingers back and Goldberg bashing his leg on an abandoned horseshoe.
‘Patty was flying into a headwind the whole way, so we’re tight on time,’ Henderson told them. ‘Sam, help Marc bury the rest of the chutes. Paul, Luc, we need to fan out and head south. We need all four equipment drops, or we’ll be stuck until we’re resupplied.’
Paul found the first equipment chute two fields over. The aluminium canister was two metres long and had landed nose first, ploughing a long track in the soft ground. He bunched up the chute, then tugged at the ropes, but he couldn’t raise it out of the mud and had to call Luc over.
‘This must be canister one,’ Luc said. ‘Henderson and Goldberg sighted two and three. They’re just moving on further, trying to hunt down number four.’
As Luc wound the parachute ropes around his wrist and yanked the big canister out of the mud, Paul stared at a house across the field.
‘Get round the other side and help me,’ Luc said angrily.
‘There’s washing out behind that cottage,’ Paul said. ‘And it looks like a vegetable plot. Anyone in there
must
have heard this lot crash down.’
‘I don’t care,’ Luc said, as the canister finally came out of the mud with a big sucking noise.
‘I thought this was the coastal exclusion zone,’ Paul said. ‘There’s not supposed to be anyone around.’
‘People avoiding labour service, or German deserters,’ Luc said dismissively, as he went down on one knee. ‘If they were gonna come out shooting they’d have jumped us already and we’ll be long gone before they can mouth off.’
The long canister was an ingenious design. As Paul wound ropes around the parachute canopy, Luc used a T-shaped tool to break the canister down into four pieces. The nose and tail were hollow aluminium designed as shock absorbers that crumpled on impact, while the two cargo-packed central sections had hooks and straps.
They could be carried as a backpack when filled with lightweight items, but canister one contained sniper equipment and ammunition, while most of canister two was filled with a state-of-the-art radio-location device designed to guide bombers to a target. To move this heavy load, Luc and Paul each grabbed a set of small-spoked pram wheels from the nose piece and slid axles through holes in the base of the cargo sections.
‘Take this one, it’s lighter,’ Luc said.
As Paul set off, with the weight of the trolley straining his arms and the narrow wheels carving ruts in the soft ground, Luc stayed back to throw the nose and tail sections in the ditch at the fields’ edge.
If the mission had been near to the drop zone they’d have been more thorough about hiding evidence of their landing, but they were over a hundred kilometres from Rennes so it was a question of not leaving anything that might be sighted before sunrise.
As he was about to lob the metal, Luc was startled by a girl squatting in the base of the ditch, less than four metres away. Her age hadn’t reached double figures and she was unarmed, but Luc instantly ripped a jagged knife from his belt holster and lunged towards her.
‘What did you see?’ Luc growled as he held the blade to her throat.
The girl’s nightdress was ripped and she looked like she hadn’t washed in a month.
‘I heard the bang,’ she said, in a voice barely above a squeak. ‘I got out of bed to peek.’
‘You saw
nothing
,’ Luc said firmly. ‘Say it.’
‘Nothing,’ the girl said, as she nodded frantically. ‘I won’t even tell my brothers.’
‘If you do, I’ll come back another night,’ Luc said.
He toyed with the idea of stabbing the girl, but her family would be angry when they found her dead and might alert the Germans, so he went down his jacket and threw her a small paper twist containing four lemon sherbets.
‘Here,’ he grunted, as he pushed his knife back into its sheath.
‘Vive la France,’ the girl whispered, as Luc grabbed the rope handle of his wheeled canister and set off to catch Paul.
*
Once all the parachutes were rolled up and buried in Marc’s hole, or packed away under bushes, they jogged east on a deserted country track. The four equipment chutes had dropped eight canisters in total, so Henderson and Goldberg had to carry two while the boys had one each.
It was a muggy night and they all dripped sweat by the time they sighted their target: a single railway track, winding up a steep hill. Henderson and Marc spun and cocked guns as something crashed through branches behind them, but when they turned it was a boy with his hands held high.
‘Don’t shoot,’ the scared-looking ten-year-old blurted. ‘The weather has been good, I’m here hunting squirrels.’
Henderson half smiled as he lowered his weapon. It was a prepared phrase: if the boy had said he was hunting rabbits it would have meant that he’d been captured by the Germans and they’d walked into a trap.
‘You must be Justin,’ Henderson said. ‘I thought we were meeting by the tracks.’
‘The coal train went out early tonight and you’re late,’ Justin explained. ‘I climbed up to see if I could spot you.’
‘How long have we got?’ Henderson asked, as Justin shook his hand, then Goldberg’s.
‘Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes if we’re lucky,’ Justin said.
‘Any sign of Germans?’ Luc asked.
Justin shook his head. ‘Been coming out this way for two years. Never seen a German yet, but we’re a good ten minutes’ walk from the track, so we need to shift.’
Paul was struggling with the combination of the cargo canister and the weight of his own gear, so Justin took his backpack as they set off at a jog.
‘In a way it’s good that the train is early,’ Justin explained. ‘If there’s no delays we should get back to my house before daylight.’
The coal train was rumbling somewhere out of sight as they approached the tracks. They’d have to throw the heavy canisters up into the coal wagons and they didn’t want to risk smashing the wheels, so there was a mild panic as everyone knelt at the trackside dismantling them.
Henderson and Luc were tallest, so they stood close to the tracks and jointly lobbed the heaviest aluminium canisters up into the coal wagons as they trundled past at walking pace. There was a phenomenal boom as each one landed in an empty metal skip, but Justin reassured them that the driver and guard never heard anything from their positions at opposite ends of the kilometre-long train.
Marc and Goldberg threw the lighter canisters aboard, apart from the one containing the delicate radio beacon which Henderson strapped to his back. Once everyone had boarded, Justin gathered them into a single coal skip, where he gave a quick lesson on dealing with the swirling coal dust when going through tunnels.
‘It should be obvious when we arrive at the water tower,’ Justin said. ‘But I’ll whistle just in case.’
As the train crested the steep hill and began picking up speed, everyone moved up the train to reunite with their canisters. Marc found himself sharing the dusty skip with two canisters and Paul.
‘You OK?’ Marc asked, as train wheels clattered beneath them.
‘Eyes full of coal dust and my arms hurt from dragging all that stuff, but so far so good, eh?’ Paul said.
The train was lit by a purple and orange sunset as it halted. Marc bobbed his head over the end of the coal skip and saw the water tower up by the head of the train.
‘Our stop,’ Marc told Paul, as he gave him a gentle kick.
After a glance either side to make sure there were no guards or railway workers close to the train, Marc put his palms behind his canister, pushed it up the sloping metal side of the skip, and let it drop down into the gravel alongside the tracks.
There were several similar crashes as everyone threw their canisters out, then they climbed the metal access ladders to leave the skips. As Marc crunched down into the trackside, he saw Justin belting towards him from the front of the train.
‘Hurry up,’ he ordered. ‘I was up front when we stopped. There’s two railway cops strolling our way. Get everyone to go down the embankment fast and I’ll try and deal with them.’
Justin sprinted off before Marc got a chance to ask how the untrained ten-year-old planned to fend off two policemen.
‘Is he OK?’ Paul asked, looking along the tracks at Justin running off, as the rest of the team set off down the embankment.
‘I don’t know,’ Marc said.
Paul was behind Sam as the younger boy lost his footing on the steep embankment. Paul’s leading foot hit Sam’s container, his back foot slipped in the mud and he began ploughing downhill dragged by the weight of his own canister.
There was no major damage, but Paul found himself sprawled in a puddle with the muddy sole of Sam’s boot pressed against the back of his neck.
‘Nice entrance, little brother,’ Rosie said.
Brown water dribbled down Paul’s collar as Rosie helped him to his feet. He felt like giving his sister a hug, but she was in a light cotton dress and he was muddy from the embankment and black with coal dust.
‘The house is about fifty metres away, through the bushes and to the left,’ Rosie explained. ‘There’s soap and hot water waiting. You need to wash and change quickly, so we can move you to a safe house.’
‘Rosie, can you deal with my canister?’ Marc asked urgently, as he made a more co-ordinated descent of the hill. ‘I need to speak to Henderson.’
‘He’s already on his way to the house,’ Rosie said. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Justin said he saw railway cops and was going off to deal with them, but I’m not sure what he means by that.’
‘They hassle him all the time,’ Rosie said. ‘I expect he’ll tease them into chasing him in the other direction.’
Marc nodded. ‘But he’s only little. Shouldn’t we at least check that he’s OK?’
Rosie had a lot of faith in Justin, and it took an outsider’s perspective to remind her that he was a young boy with no espionage training.
‘Maybe we should,’ she agreed, before turning to face Luc and Goldberg, who’d both just arrived at the bottom of the hill.
Goldberg had also seen Justin running off and took charge. ‘Luc, use those big muscles and help Rosie get all the canisters out of sight,’ he ordered. ‘Marc, you’re with me.’
Goldberg led Marc back up the embankment. There was no sign of Justin so they crept along the trackside, keeping as low as they could. By the time they’d walked fifty metres, the air was full of steam and the empty coal trucks had begun to move.
When the embankment ended the pair found themselves crossing a bridge, with less than half a metre between a low brick wall and the side of the accelerating train. As the wagons rattled past and the steam cleared, Marc and Goldberg peered around the end of the wall.
There were a couple of railway workers at the water tower seventy metres ahead, but they were more interested in voices they could hear out of sight, behind a disused signal box. Goldberg pointed at himself, then at the near side of the box.
‘I’ll go there,’ he whispered. ‘You go around the other end.’
After a glance to make completely sure there was nobody sitting up high in the signal box, Marc dashed over a stretch of dandelions and loose pebbles. Marc heard Justin yelp as he crouched down with his left shoulder against the wooden building.
The voice that came from behind the signal box had the tone of a schoolyard bully. ‘We’ve warned you, Justin. Maybe we should arrest you this time.’
‘Remember the first time we put you in our cell?’ a different voice with the same tone asked. ‘Crying for your mummy when I dunked your head in the toilet bowl?’
Marc peered around the side of the hut for a proper look. The two bullies were thick-set men, dressed in red-piped Railway Police uniform. One was bald, nearing sixty, while the other looked fortyish and must have barely escaped being drafted into the French army before the war.
‘Why are you so mean?’ Justin asked, as he looked up at his tormentors. ‘I give you plenty of coal, don’t I?’
The older guard laughed as he shoved Justin up against the box and gave him a punch in the ribs. It wasn’t as hard as it could have been, but it was enough to hurt a ten-year-old.
‘Your mum must earn plenty scrubbing Boche skid marks,’ the older guard said. ‘I don’t need much coal at this time of year, but I’d better see five francs next time I see you, or you’ll get locked up.’
‘Might find yourself slipping under a wagon and getting your legs mangled,’ the younger one added menacingly, as the older cop gave Justin another slam against the hut.
Marc shook his head as a passenger train whooshed by, tilting him off balance. Justin’s situation was rotten, but he couldn’t get involved in anything that didn’t directly affect the mission.