Tramp in Armour (40 page)

It was a terrible struggle to recover quickly, to get his choking breath back to normal, to push under the blinding waves of pain, but two things stimulated his recovery - the rush of fresh
air and the insistent shrieking of the horn which continually
alerted him of the imminent danger. Telling Jacques to keep
flat he forced himself up on his knees, scooping up a ridge of
tarpaulin to conceal his position. Then he extracted two spare
magazines from his pockets, rested them behind the ridge and lowered himself flat, the machine-pistol next to his shoulder.
Clubbing his fist he gave the agreed signal, banging three
times on the rear of the cab.

The transporter stopped weaving and pulled over to the
right side of the road, still moving at high speed, allowing free
access for the truck to pass. I've got to get this just right,
Barnes told himself. Head down until the exact moment when the covered part of the truck is alongside us - the part which
sheltered the troops inside. No need to fire at the driver at
once -I want to get the lot - and they won't shoot at Reynolds from their own cab for fear he swerves into them. He kept his head down and heard the truck coming up as Reynolds drove well into his own lane. The truck was coming up with a roar.
He felt the transporter lift slightly as they started going uphill.
Now! He flattened the canvas ridge with the gun muzzle and his heart sank - the truck was much farther past than he had
expected, the cab already beyond Reynolds, the covered side
spread out in front of him. Pressing the trigger he swivelled
the gun methodically low down along the canvas wall, just above the wooden side, sweeping the muzzle in slow arcs.
Empty! He was ramming in a fresh magazine when Jacques
called out: a German soldier peered round the end of the
truck, machine-pistol aimed. Barnes fired, the man fell into
the road as Barnes swivelled the muzzle back again, his finger pressing steadily on the trigger, a stream of bullets ripping and
tearing through the canvas along one continuous strip. At that moment Reynolds took a hand.

The road was climbing an embankment up to a bridge and
the driver gave the pre-arranged signal, two long blasts on his
own horn. Barnes shouted to Jacques to hold on tight and
braced himself for the impact as the transporter began to speed up and edge across the road, moving ahead of the truck as it
shifted its course to hit the truck broadside on. They were
close to the summit when the German driver lost his nerve,
swerving away when the colossus was only inches from him.

Lifting his head Barnes saw the truck spin over sideways,
falling from view. As they went over the bridge he heard a
muffled thump, a boom, and then flames flared in the night
behind them. The petrol tank had gone. The next thing he
heard was a terrifying shriek of brakes, the transporter's
brakes.

The view from the cab was frightening. Reynolds had heard
the stutter of Barnes' gun, had concentrated half his attention
on that final manoeuvre which had destroyed the truck, then he
was sweeping over the bridge at high speed. The road was
going down now and he saw what faced him in a flash. Head-, lights blazed on a stone wall dead ahead, a right-hand turn at
the bottom. Then the headlights were swinging wildly as he
desperately tried to negotiate the unexpected hazard, brak
ing, turning, going straight through the wall with a tremendous
smash, the immense weight of the vehicle piercing the wall
like butter. The whole transporter shuddered, knocking aside a
small tree, skidded across the garden, then it stopped.

Barnes lay still for a moment, collecting himself, still clutching the machine-pistol. He had been warned by the
shriek of brakes and he had been saved by the pillow of spare
canvas between himself and the rear of the cab, and his own
body had saved Jacques when the lad was thrown against him.
They got up cautiously, like men expecting a limb to fall off, and Colburn was waiting for them at the foot of the open cab door, his pistol under his arm, blood oozing from a cut on his forehead and gash on the back of his left hand. He said they
were little more than scratches.

'Is Reynolds all right?' asked Barnes.

'Reynolds is all right,' said Reynolds from the cab. 'I don't know why, but he's all right. Probably only because he was
inside this brute - we went through that wall like going
through paper. I'm sorry, Sergeant,' he added, 'but I was con
centrating on the truck and when we got over the bridge the wall was on top of me. And by the way, this job,' he banged the wheel, 'is a write-off. So it's back to Bert now.'

'You did damned well. No one could have survived in that
. truck - I riddled it before you bounced it over the edge and
then the petrol went up - but I'll go back and make sure in a
minute. It's a good job you braked when you did - we
wouldn't have gone through that like paper.'

He pointed to the house. Barely six feet beyond where the
transporter had pulled up stood an ancient three-storey man
sion. All the windows were broken, a wall creeper almost
covered the front door, and the garden in which the transporter
rested was knee-deep in weeds. No one had lived there for a
long time, which was probably just as well: opening the front
door to find a tank transporter in the garden could be a disconcerting experience. Reynolds tried the engine several times but
it refused to function, and while Barnes went back over the bridge Colburn and Jacques helped the driver to pull the tar
paulin off Bert.

Barnes approached the bridge with caution. Reaching the
top he crouched behind the wall and peered over the edge to
where the wrecked truck was still on fire. There was no sign of
life but there was every sign of death. The vehicle had landed
with its wheels in the air and by the light of the flames he saw
huddled shapes lying in the grass, but the only thing which
moved was the flames. Few of the men in the back could have survived the murderous fire of his machine-pistol, and any who
did would have perished when the truck tumbled down the
steep embankment. He doubted whether anyone was alive
when the petrol tank blew. When he turned round to walk back
he froze, his taut nerves trying to cope with the fact that a new crisis was at hand.

Headlights were coming down the road from the opposite
direction. They were still some distance away but he gained
the impression that they were approaching at speed. Running
down the slope he heard the welcome sound of Bert's engines
starting up, but they still had to lower the ramp and bring Bert down it, and he knew there wouldn't be time to do that before the oncoming vehicle arrived. Colburn must have seen something in his face because he asked the question immediately.

'More trouble?'

'I'm not sure. There's something coming down the road from the north - on its own.'

'We'd better set up an ambush. I'll take the other side of the
road...'

'No, stick with me - otherwise we may end up shooting each
other. Jacques, tell Reynolds to switch off his engine and sit tight. You get behind the end wall of the house and stay there.
Come on, Colburn...'

The vehicle was quite close now and it sounded like a car, but it was still hidden by the bend in the road, and it was still
travelling at high speed. They ran a short distance into the
garden, stopping at a point where an undamaged section of the
wall was shoulder-high. Peering over the wall-top beyond the
bend Barnes saw that the headlights were quite close. He
ducked out of sight and heard the car begin to lose speed as the
headlights reached the bend. Well, they wouldn't get far once
they turned the corner and found half the wall strewn in their
path. He looked back and wasn't too happy to see that the glow
of fire beyond the bridge clearly silhouetted the transporter with a British tank nestling on its deck.

'I think it's stopping,' Colburn whispered.

'It's bloody well going to have to.'

'It may be a civilian.'

'Only people like Jacques are mad enough to drive about in
battle zones.'

He timed it carefully, keeping low as the car crawled round
the bend and then pulled up, its engine still ticking over. As he
lifted his head he heard a clash of gears and the car began to
reverse back round the bend. He had a quick impression -
a black Mercedes staff car, the hood back, a German soldier driving and beside him an officer in a peaked cap clutching something to his chest. It was almost beyond the bend now, reversing rapidly. He lifted the machine-pistol, cradled it into
his. shoulder, and rested the barrel on the wall-top. Aiming about two feet above the headlights he fired. One long burst.
He heard a brief shatter of breaking glass and the car went crazy, still reversing but snaking from side to side. He fired
again, arcing the gun. The car swung wildly sideways, crashed
its rear into the wall and halted, its headlights shining on the opposite wall. The engine had stopped.

The driver was hunched over the wheel, head and shoulders
drenched in blood. The passenger-seat door was open and the
officer lay in the roadway on his back, capless, arms out
stretched, staring up at the stars. A few feet from his right
hand lay a half-open briefcase, the case he had clutched so
firmly to his chest when the emergency had arisen. Barnes
checked the officer, whose chest was torn with the bullets
where the arc had moved across him and lifted one shoulder.
He was a major, a dead major. Picking up the briefcase, Barnes took out a paper while Colburn examined the rear
seat; holding the paper in front of the headlights he grunted.

'This is your pigeon. You said you could speak German,
Colburn, can you read it as well? This looks as though it could
be interesting.'

'Let me have a look.'

He scanned the lines briefly and then looked up, his face
very serious.

'This is interesting. It's a battle order and this copy is for
some Advanced Headquarters. Let me check it again to make
sure I've got it right.'

'This staff car can tell us something;' said Barnes thought
fully. 'They can't possibly be expecting anyone coming up
from this direction or else it wouldn't be travelling without escort. We may surprise the bastards yet.'

'This document* is going to surprise you, Barnes. The German 14th Panzer Division is going to attack Dunkirk at
dawn. They've found some secret road to the port just under
the water - the whole area must be flooded along that part of
the front as far as I can gather. Apparently this road is built
up from the surrounding countryside so it's only a few inches
under the floods.'

'Does it give the start-line for the attack?'

* Not only sergeants are lucky with documents. Twenty-four hours
earlier, Lt-Gen Sir Alan Brooke, commander 11 Corps BEF, was
handed a battle order captured from a German staff car which
warned of an imminent offensive by Gen von Bock's Army Group B - just in time for him to move more troops into the threatened
area.

'Yes, the funny thing is it's Jacques' home town - the attack is being launched from Lemont at 04.00 hours.'

Barnes knew that at the eleventh hour he had found his
worthwhile objective. He checked his watch. 12.25
am.