Waging War (32 page)

“She’ll be fine, Devereux,” she said as it
slammed. “Watch the door.”

I wrenched my arm out of her surprisingly
strong grip. “Seriously? You didn’t need to grab me.” I’d had time
to work up to this level of mad. Pretty much since I’d known Nancy,
I’d been working up to it, and I wasn’t letting it go easily, no
matter how much she yelled at me.

She laughed at me like I was an annoying,
naïve child. “I must’ve left my manners in Marseilles where the
Gestapo tortured my husband to death.”

Just like that, my indignation burst like a
balloon, and I felt, in the pit of my stomach, what it would be
like if it were me talking about Archer. Nancy must have seen the
pain in my face because the edges she wore like armor softened a
little.

She sat on the bed and I leaned against the
dresser. She looked tired, and about ten years older than she was.
“It’s hard to be so strong, you know, love?”

I didn’t say anything. Her question didn’t
seem to need an answer, and she finally met my eyes. “I was in
Marseilles in 1940 when the Germans invaded. I got busy making life
hell for them right away, and my husband’s money protected us for a
while, but when I joined up with the resistance to get people out
of France, they finally figured out who I was. We were mostly just
getting English pilots over the mountains into Spain, but they
couldn’t catch me, and it made them angry. The White Mouse, the
Gestapo called me, because I slipped through their traps every
time.” Nancy’s expression was more grimace than smile. “I used to
dust a little powder on, have a drink, and walk right past their
checkpoints with a pretty smile, daring them to search me. God,
what a flirtatious little bastard I was.”

She leaned back against the headboard and
studied me. “I left Marseilles in 1943. They were getting too close
and I thought if I was gone, they’d leave Henri alone. It took me
six tries to cross the Pyrenees into Spain, and I had no idea
they’d already brought him in for questioning. They thought he knew
where I was, see?” Her gaze drifted to the far wall, but she was
staring at nothing in particular. “The Germans tortured him for
three months before he died.”

The words trailed off, and finally she took
a breath and re-focused on me. “Do you know, I never broke down.
Not even when they did capture me, then let me go when a friend
lied for me, or when I rode a bicycle five hundred kilometers to
replace codes my operator had been forced to destroy, or when I had
to kill an SS sentry during a raid so he wouldn’t raise the alarm.
I’ve always been the strong one, even when I found out about
Henri.”

She pulled a small gold band out of her
pocket and slipped it on her ring finger, holding her hand up to
admire the wedding ring. “Henri took care of me. He protected me so
I could protect all the other people who needed me. He
fueled
my strength with his own.”

She stroked the ring gently, lost in
thought, then finally slipped it off her finger and put it back in
her pocket. “I pretend he’s still alive, you know, still waiting
for me to come home. Because frankly love, without someone like
him, someone strong and capable for me to lean on, I’m almost all
used up.”

I waited for the punchline, something to
explain why she had shared so much with me – a stranger.

She exhaled and jerked her head toward the
door. “They don’t know about Henri. They don’t know I pretend he’ll
be there when this is done. They don’t know anything that would
loosen my grip or call my leadership into question.”

She stood up and straightened the buttons on
her blouse. “There’s room for both of us, Elian, but don’t
challenge my authority in front of the Maquis. Behind closed doors
is fine, but not in front of men who expect a woman to be weak. In
this world, neither of us can afford that.”

I finally found the strength in my voice to
speak. “I’m sorry for your loss, Nancy. Actually, those words don’t
even begin to cover how deeply sorry I am.”

Her eyes held mine, and then she nodded once
as if to say,
it’s done
. But I wasn’t done yet.

“You’re right, I’m just here for the
Englishman, and you’re the one who’s been fighting the war. And
yeah, it might be stupid to care about keeping two jerks alive just
for the information they have. But finding the spy will
save
lives
. You may not care so much about one guy when you’re
planning to blow up a whole train, but isn’t that the point of this
whole thing? Some of those train passengers might not be soldiers,
and might not even be German. If you’re not protecting those people
– the ones living their lives, just trying to survive this war –
then what are you all fighting for?”

She held my gaze for a long time without a
word before she finally opened the door. Archer stood outside
wearing a worried expression as he searched my face.

“I don’t envy you, Devereux.” Nancy pushed
past him down the hall of the farmhouse.

“Is everything okay?” he asked me
quietly.

“I don’t know.”

We had reached the main room where Ringo
waited for us. He shot me a raised eyebrow and a quick smile. I
sent the same thing back to him.

Nancy stopped and turned to me. “You can
come tonight. And I’ll try not to kill your snipers on
purpose.”

That startled me, but I kept the surprise
off my face and composed myself enough to ask, “Do we go in a
vehicle or on foot?”

Something in her tone had shifted. The
intensity was gone and had been replaced with her characteristic
ease and confidence. The switch unsettled me with its speed, but if
she could let it go, I could too.

“We travel by bicycle. You do ride, don’t
you?” She wore the hint of a teasing smile.

I had a sudden mental snapshot of the old
banana-seat bicycle my mom found in a thrift store when I was about
six. She tied a piece of plastic onto the right handlebar to teach
me my left from my right, then ran alongside me, holding the seat
while I got my balance. I didn’t even know she had let go when I
finally got it, and for a long time after that, I used to picture
those handlebars in order to choose the right direction.

“Yes, I ride.” I didn’t miss Ringo’s tension
though. “But it’s been a long time. Can I have ten minutes on a
bike to practice?”

Nancy said something to one of the young
Maquis fighters and he indicated I should follow him. I caught
Ringo’s eye and he left the room with me. Archer might have gone
with us, but Nancy called out to him from the map table. “Devereux,
I need you.” He winced just enough to make me smile, then joined
her at the table.

The young Maquis wheeled an old-fashioned
bicycle out of a shed and brought it to me with a smirk. I thanked
him in French and he stood, arms crossed, waiting to see me make a
fool of myself. So I shot him my best arched-eyebrow glare and he
finally got the hint that I didn’t want an audience.

Ringo and I walked around to the back of the
barn with the bicycle, and he murmured under his breath, “Tell me
about Nancy.”

“She’s pretty badass,” I murmured back, “but
I’m still not sure I like her.”

“Yeah, sometimes ye badass people are ‘ard
to like.”

He got an elbow to the ribs for that one,
and when we turned the corner I whispered to him. “You’ve never
ridden a bicycle, I take it?”

“Ye’d be right at that.”

“Okay. I’ll show you.” I got on the bike and
did a quick pedal around the yard. The frame was made of solid
steel and it felt like a beach cruiser with skinny tires and an
uncomfortably hard leather seat. The only brake was a single hand
grip, so stopping was sketchy, but putting my feet down helped.

“I’ll hold on until you get your balance,” I
said quietly. Ringo nodded and got on, and for about fifteen feet I
walked next to him, holding the seat like my mom had done for
me.

“Okay, let go,” he murmured, and only
wobbled a little when I did. He bit his lip in concentration as he
pedaled, but within one lap around the yard, the intensity had been
replaced by a grin that lit up the night.

Archer found us there about ten minutes
later, and immediately caught on to what had just happened. He
stood next to me and said quietly, “He didn’t know how to
ride?”

“He does now,” I said proudly. We watched
Ringo do a figure eight maneuver around a barrel and then come to a
running stop in front of us. His face was flushed with
pleasure.

“Well, why didn’t ye tell me ridin’ was such
fun?”

“Wait until you try a mountain bike.”

The look of astonishment on his face was
awesome. “There’s one of these built for mountains?”

Archer grinned at his enthusiasm, but his
smile slipped when he turned to me. “Nancy and two of her men are
ready to leave. If we are going with them, we need to get
moving.”

I suddenly felt woefully unprepared to face
the two snipers I’d hidden from just a few hours before. The only
thing I had with me were my daggers, which I wore in small nylon
and Velcro holsters strapped to my calves, because I didn’t like
guns and wouldn’t have taken one if it were offered. I didn’t think
Ringo was armed, although he could have been packing a sonic
screwdriver for all I knew. And Archer certainly didn’t need the
pistol he carried tucked into the back of his waistband. It was
probably more for show than because he’d actually use it. People
might have wondered why a guy would go around unarmed in a war.

Nancy’s bicycle had a basket on the front,
and she saw my questioning glance into it. “Supplies,” she said
cryptically. Two other bikes were parked there waiting for us, and
the two men with Nancy gave us twin looks of boredom as we mounted
up. The basket had made me think of Toto’s prison on Miss Gulch’s
bicycle in
The Wizard of Oz
, so the taller guy became Tin
Man, and the short, skinny one became Scarecrow. They must have
understood English because Nancy didn’t bother to speak French as
she gave us quick directions. According to my gut, neither of the
two Maquis with us seemed to be Mongers, so at least they had that
going for them.

The quiet clatter of pedals was the only
noise on the road as we cycled past the fields of the occasional
farm. The night was moonless, which would work to our advantage
when we got in range of hiding snipers, but wasn’t great in
unfamiliar landscape. Nancy knew her way though, and we followed
behind her like ducklings.

After about twenty minutes, Nancy pulled her
bicycle over to the side of the road, and we all coasted to a stop
near her. She spoke quietly to her Maquis, and they pulled their
bikes off the road and melted into the woods in about a minute.
Then she turned to the three of us.

“The bridge is about a kilometer ahead. My
men will fan out to approach from either side, so I suggest we stay
here, on the north side.”

Ringo and I both looked up at the same time.
In our experience, no one else ever did, so up we would go to
scout. There was a tall tree about twenty feet away from us, and
another one about twice that distance away on the other side of the
road. I looked at him. “Right tree or left?”

“You should take left. It looks an easier
climb,” he smirked

“None of your sass, Mister. You owe me for
the riding lesson.”

He grinned at me, then turned to Nancy. “Do
ye ‘ave binoculars among yer
supplies
?”

I was surprised he thought to ask. His
reading about technology must have been pretty extensive. Nancy
raised an eyebrow at his emphasis on her supplies but handed over a
compact pair. “I take it you’re planning to scout?” she asked.

Ringo nodded. “Seems a smart thing to do.”
He slung the binoculars around his neck as she moved away to give
the Maquis her instructions. I was about to protest, but he cut me
off. “Ye ‘ave cat eyes. Ye don’t need these.”

He was right, of course. My own vision was
sharper than most, and if I really needed cat eyes, I could Shift
and borrow my Cougar’s long-distance vision. It wasn’t a bad idea
for scouting in general, and I tucked it away for
consideration.

Ringo took off for the far tree, and I sent
Archer a quick smile before I scrambled up the closer one. It was
fairly densely-branched and easy enough to climb, but there were
only a couple of spots that gave me a good view of the valley
ahead. I was about twenty feet off the ground when I finally laid
myself out along a nearly horizontal limb and settled in to scan
the forest.

I could see the train trestle bridge in the
distance. If I ran it, I could probably get there in about ten
minutes, and faster still on a bicycle. When I twisted around to
see what was behind my tree, I could see the dark outlines of
Archer and Nancy by the side of the road. She was using hand
gestures to show him where her guys had gone, and I could just make
them out as they lurked through the forest toward the bridge.

I studied the horizon for the high points
where the snipers might be hiding. Several of the trees just north
of the bridge looked promising. The southern ones were tall, but
the topography of the valley put them lower than the bridge. The
train the Maquis intended to blow would be coming from the south,
which might also argue for the northern trees. I thought if I were
going to set charges on a bridge, I’d set them on the northern side
so more of the train was already on it before it exploded and
collapsed. It was a little scary that I was trying to think like a
terrorist, and scarier still that it seemed so easy to do.

I focused my attention on a stand of trees
about halfway between the one I was in and the bridge. It’s where I
would have set up camp if I’d wanted to keep an eye on the northern
approach to the trestle. I couldn’t see real detail in the trees,
and the branches were fairly thick, so I doubted I’d even be able
to see in daylight.