Assault on Abbeville

by Jack Badelaire

  “What are you saying?” Dumond asked.

  “I’m going to make my way to the railyard,” Gorski explained. “I’ll plant a couple of charges, disable a train or two, make it look like they either missed our explosives, or they didn’t search in time. Otherwise, someone might guess that we’re here for the aerodrome instead.”

  “You can’t go alone,” Dumond shook his head. “I’ll go with you.”

  “It is too risky,” Gorski replied. “Only one of us needs to go. The rest of you, find the couple, then lay low until I return. If I don’t make it back in thirty-six hours, carry out the mission as best you can.”

  “You’re being foolish,” Dumond insisted. “I must go.”

  “No, I’ll go with him,” Verhoeven said, stuffing the small explosive charges into his and Gorski’s rucksacks. “If we don’t return, you’re the only one of us who can pass as a native, and that might be necessary. Besides, I’m faster, and I’ve got this.”

  The Dutchman pulled aside his coat and displayed his Browning automatic, the long suppressor sticking through an opening in the bottom of the shoulder holster. “We may need a quiet gun to get back to you.”

  Gorski opened his mouth to protest, but Verhoeven raised a hand, cutting him off. “We have trained as a team of five for a year, but even a team of two is more than twice as strong as a single man. I can guard while you plant the charges, and I am a better shot than you, anyway.”

  Dumond laughed at that. “He has a point, Bruno.”

  Gorski looked to Johansen, who’d been silent since they’d climbed into the truck.

  “Nothing from you?” he asked the Norwegian.

  Johansen’s lips twitched in a ghost of a smile. “I will not stop you.”

  Gorski chuckled. “Well, it’s settled then. Tell our driver to pull over at the next favorable spot.”

  Dumond went forward and spoke to Lambert through the window into the cab. Gorski couldn’t hear what was being said, but he heard the Belgian’s voice raised in anger and disbelief, before Dumond argued with him. Finally, the truck’s transmission downshifted, and Lambert stopped the vehicle.

  Dumond returned to the back of the cargo bed and offered Gorski his hand.

  “Good luck, Bruno,” he said.

  Gorski shook the Frenchman’s hand, then pulled their mission documents from his coat, handing them over. “Here’s the map and the other information you’ll need if we don’t return. You’re in command until I get back.”

  Verhoeven climbed nimbly over the raised tailgate, then held out his MP-38 to Johansen. “Take it. We have a much better chance of getting out if we look like civilians. If someone sees us with these, we’ll be reported.”

  Johansen looked at Gorski, who nodded, handing over his own machine pistol. “Give us all the grenades,” he ordered, holding out his open musette bag. “That will balance things a little.”

  Dumond and Johansen gave up their remaining Mills bombs, and a pair of German stick grenades taken from the soldiers back at Berger’s house. That done, Gorski climbed over the tailgate and dropped down into the street, then slung his rucksack over his shoulder.

  “Thirty-six hours,” he told Dumond. “Then move your position. Leave directions if you can, but if not, try and leave us a message around the foundation of the old farmhouse. I doubt the Germans will return to search there.”

  Dumond nodded, then gave a last wave before dropping the canvas cover over the tailgate. Gorski heard him shout a muffled command, and the truck accelerated away.

  Gorski turned and saw Verhoeven already in an alleyway. “Come on, we need to move. Someone must have seen this,” the Dutchman said quietly.

  Gorski nodded and followed him into the shadowed alley.

  FIFTEEN

  Gorski and Verhoeven left the alleyway and crossed the next street at an unhurried pace. Their rucksacks were on their backs, and they carried no weapons in their hands, although both men wore their light summer-weight jackets unbuttoned, their pistols easily accessible. As far as anyone else was concerned, the two men were simply going about their business, perhaps buying groceries in town before returning to a more rural residence outside of Abbeville.

  Off in the distance, Gorski heard the sound of alarm bells ringing from the gendarme headquarters, and those few people moving about on the streets quickened their gait, heads on swivels or tucked into their shoulders, hunched and purposeful.

  “Everyone’s getting off the streets,” Gorski said.

  “No one wants to be stopped and interrogated,” Verhoeven replied. “We need to find shelter until it gets dark.”

  They turned down a narrow side-street between two sets of townhouses, and as they emerged at the next block, Gorski spotted a half-demolished brick building not too far up the street. It looked like it had been hit by artillery fire, and was in the process of being torn down, but the first floor was still partially intact, stacks of cracked bricks and shattered timbers sitting on the sidewalk in front of the building in a neat, orderly arrangement.

  “There,” Gorski said, nodding towards the building. “If it has a cellar, that might work.”

  “If we’re found, there’s no escaping a cellar,” Verhoeven reminded him.

  “If we’re found, we’re done for regardless,” Gorski replied. “Besides, they’ve already seen the truck, they knew we were hiding outside of town. I don’t think they’ll expect us to stay so close.”

  Verhoeven looked around, seeing only two other people, moving away from them more than a block distant. “Okay, let’s do it. Within a few minutes, we’ll be the only people on the streets anyhow. Then we’re in real trouble.”

  The two men crossed the street and ducked down another alleyway, approaching the ruined building from behind and out of sight. As they approached Gorski kept his eyes on any windows overlooking the alley, but as far as he could see, no one had noticed their approach. With a final look around to make sure no one was observing them from the alleyway entrance, the two men ducked into the shop’s rear doorway, the door itself gone, presumably taken to be repurposed somewhere else.

  Inside, the building was warm from the day’s sun, the air still. A large portion of the ceiling above was gone, the ground floor open to the sky, with only a few lateral support beams remaining to hold up the brick walls. But, with the afternoon sun so low, they were in complete shadow.

  Verhoeven spotted the open stairwell leading down into the cellar, and they descended the steep wooden steps, Verhoeven illuminating their way with a small pocket flashlight taken from his rucksack. The cellar was large, its footprint almost the same size as the ground floor above, and although whatever goods the store had carried were all gone, there were still shelves built into the foundation on three walls, as well as some broken-up wooden debris, mostly from crates, and a couple pieces of rickety old furniture, consisting of a pair of chairs and a small table.

  A soft hiss came from under the staircase, and Verhoeven swung around the light, revealing a scrawny, ginger-furred cat hunched under the stairs, its eyes glowing in the dark. Not wanting to disturb the creature, the two men quietly moved to the far corner of the cellar, brushing the dust off the chairs before they both sat down. Gorski produced a candle from his rucksack and lit it with his lighter, placing it in the middle of the table. Verhoeven extinguished his flashlight and set it on the table, near at hand.

  “It smells of cat piss down here,” he said.

  “Our flatmate has been here for a while, it seems,” Gorski replied.

  “It’ll be unhappy when the demolition party begins to take apart the floor above us,” Verhoeven said, pointing to the beams over their heads. “He’ll have to find someplace else to sleep.”

  “How do you know it is a he?” Gorski asked. “It could be female.”

  Verhoeven shook his head. “It’s a tomcat - the piss smell is too strong, and its face is too broad.”

  Gorski shrugged. “Well, as long as it doesn’t wail and holler and give us aw
ay, he’s welcome to share the space with us until we depart. Now, let’s have a look at the charges.”

  Each man removed from his pack six quarter-kilogram charges of plastic explosive. They had been specially prepared for use in sabotage, formed into a flat rectangular shape, about the size of two packs of cigarettes laid down next to one another. One side was covered in a strong adhesive, sealed under a sheet of waxed paper that was peeled away before the charge was placed. The other side of the charge had approximately fifty lead buckshot embedded into its surface. Along one of the short edges, a plug of sorts had been fitted, which would hold fast a demolition time pencil or a pull-fuze.

  One of the charges, properly placed, was enough to disable a light aircraft or soft-skinned vehicle, such as a staff car or cargo truck. It also had the punch to do significant damage to a light armored car if used to jam a turret or blow off a wheel. Against anything heavier, the charges would have to be adhered together or used to set off a larger explosive, and while Gorski didn’t foresee the need to demolish a tank, four of the charges together would certainly be enough to blow off the tracks and wreck the bogie wheels of even one of the Char B1 bis heavy tanks the Germans had captured from the French, and repurposed to fortify their occupational forces.

  Next, they unpacked their cases of time pencils. Each thin, hollow rod contained a percussion cap and a capsule of acid, which was crushed when the pencil was inserted into the explosive and the charge placed at the target. As time passed, the acid ate away at a retaining wire, and when the wire broke, the percussion cap was crushed and ignited, setting off the explosive. Although the pencil timers were not perfectly reliable, and the time varied by a certain percentage based on the temperature and other factors, for the mission at hand, they were adequate.

  “What pencils should we need?” Verhoeven asked.

  “Two hour delay should be sufficient, I think,” Gorski replied. “Although keep a couple of ten-minute pencils handy as well, just in case.”

  “Pull fuses?” Verhoeven held one up.

  Gorski shook his head. “Too complicated, and too much of a chance of a civilian setting one off going about their job.”

  Within a few more minutes, the charges had been inspected, the time pencils and crimping pliers set aside. Gorski checked his watch and saw they had at least five hours before it was safe enough to venture outside. Reaching into his rucksack again, he pulled out a small bar of chocolate, a packet of biscuits, a tin of beef, and his water flask.

  “Might as well have a spot to eat now, so we have sufficient time to digest,” he told Verhoeven.

  The other man produced his own meal, and the two sat in candle-lit silence, eating the first meal they’d had since dawn. Within a few minutes there was a soft mewling sound, and Gorski turned to see the ginger cat emerge from his hiding place, body low, advancing towards them warily.

  “He’s hungry,” Verhoeven said. “Must smell the bully beef.”

  Gorski took his remaining biscuits from their package, smoothed it out, and then dug out a portion of his beef and put it on the package, adding a few drops of water from his flask and stirring it with his spoon. Moving slowly, he stood up, causing the cat to scuttle away to the other side of the room under the stairs, but Gorski set the food down by the foot of the staircase, then returned to his seat. In short order, the cat emerged from hiding, and wearily eyeing the two humans, sniffed at the proffered meal for a few seconds, before greedily beginning to eat.

  “You’ve found another ally,” Verhoeven mused.

  “He’s just as much a victim of this war as any of the townsfolk,” Gorski said. “For all we know, this was his home, here in the store. Or perhaps his master was killed in the fighting. It never hurts to offer an innocent creature some kindness.”

  Verhoeven nodded. “We will no doubt do terrible things before this is over. A little work to rebalance the scales is always a good thing.”

  After it finished its meal, the tomcat was a little more friendly, venturing close enough to let Gorski scratch it behind the ears and offer the skinny creature the corner of a biscuit, which it sniffed at some length but didn’t eat until Gorski softened it with a some water from his canteen. Having eaten its desert, the tomcat let out a soft, trilling chirp, then wandered over to one of the lower shelves, where it hopped up and curled into a ball, watching the two humans and emitting a soft purr.

  Gorski turned from the creature and patted his coat, remembering the pistol he’d taken from the gendarme at the roadblock. He produced the MAB automatic from his coat along with its spare magazine. Gorski drew back the slide and performed a brass-check, noting that the chamber was empty. He ejected the magazine and examined the cartridges, thumbing them free one at a time before looking them over and re-loading them. He did the same for the spare magazine, then examined the weapon’s chamber before reloading the pistol and putting it back in his pocket.

  “We killed three gendarmes at the station, Dumond and I,” Verhoeven said, watching Gorski’s actions.

  “I shot one, but he was alive when we left, at least, I think he was,” Gorski replied. “I’d knocked him senseless when we came in, and when we left, he didn’t look as if he’d lost too much blood.”

  “Henri’s shotgun is a blunt instrument,” Verhoeven said. “Might as well throw a grenade at them instead of shooting them with that portable cannon of his. It’s like a charge of grapeshot from some Napoleonic field gun.”

  “And yet, he did not kill the man at the roadblock,” Gorski said. “Although he could have stuck a bayonet in his eye, rather than club him with those brass knuckles.”

  “That gendarme won’t look the same again,” Verhoeven said. “But with luck, he’ll see the end of the war.”

  “We’ve seen to it that a number of Germans won’t, though,” Gorski said. “I’ve killed half a dozen men since coming to France. I still shudder remembering how it felt when that bayonet hit the man’s ribs, at the roadblock. I had to put my weight into it, work at it to drive the point in deep. Then I drew it out, felt the resistance as his body clung to the blade, before I stabbed him in the neck.”

  Verhoeven took a sip from his water flask. “Before we came together last year, I’d only killed two Germans, and both of them were on the other side of a canal, at least a hundred meters away. At least, I told myself I’d killed them. I fired, I saw them fall. But it could have been another’s bullets that took their lives.”

  “And now,” Gorski said. “We’re here.”

  “Yes, and I’ve shot several more men since,” Verhoeven said. “It is strange, because it does not bother me at all. They are dead, and I am alive, and they would have had it the other way around, so I am glad they fell.”

  The two men sat in silence for a long moment, before Verhoeven took another sip from his flask and screwed on the cap. He then stood and pulled his Browning from its holster, checking that the long suppressor tube was still secure.

  “You and Adrien were busy all today, but we spent most of it lounging about that barn, at least, until the Germans arrived, and I’m still fairly fresh. Get some sleep, Bruno, a few hours at least. I’ll keep watch above, and wake you an hour before we must leave.”

  Verhoeven moved to the stairs and ascended them without making a sound. Gorski took another look at his watch, then got up from the chair, adjusted his rucksack on the cold, packed-earth floor of the cellar, and lay down, pistol at hand, to try and get some sleep. A moment later, he heard the soft thump of paws hitting the ground, and felt the warm pressure of the tomcat’s body as it curled up against his calf.

  Listening to the sound of the tomcat’s purring, Gorski was asleep in minutes.

  SIXTEEN

  Gorski and Verhoeven emerged from the cellar and crouched in the shop’s ruins for a full five minutes, listening to the sounds of Abbeville at night. Somewhere nearby, faint music came from a gramophone near an open window. Further on, a voice in German, greeting someone who replied in the same language - no doub
t two patrols passing each other. There were no automobile noises, no sounds of laughter or quarrelling. There was also no artificial light of any kind, the blackout strictly enforced this close to the coast, and with the aerodrome only a couple of kilometers to the north.

  Finally, Gorski turned to Verhoeven and tapped him on the shoulder. The Dutchman was nothing more than a dark blob in the shadowy ruins, even his pale features obscured by charcoal soot picked from a burned timber and applied to hands and face. Gorski was similarly camouflaged, and now, unlike during the day, both men had their pistols in hand.

  Verhoeven led the way. His eyes and ears were keener than Gorski’s, and he was far more quiet. Gorski managed to be stealthy well enough, but when Verhoeven wanted to be silent, a shadow made more noise. It was something that irked Lambert most of all, because before joining the Revenants, the Belgian sniper had been praised for his stealth, learned during several years in the Chasseurs Ardennais. No man earned a sniper’s badge in those elite regiments without possessing sublime skills in navigation, woodcraft, and the ability to move through even the most heavily-wooded forest unseen and unheard.

  Although Gorski had given the map and document packet to Dumond, he’d memorized enough of the details in order to not need it while orienting himself in town. He’d also, the day before, taken the time to briefly sketch a copy of the map, noting any major landmarks and their approximate distances. Gorski knew they were about a kilometer from the railyard to the west of the town, but if they went straight for it, they’d have to pass right through the heart of the town, a route that’d no doubt expose them to an unacceptable degree of danger.

  Instead, before leaving the cellar, Gorski and Verhoeven had agreed to proceed south, then swing west just prior to hitting the roadblocks that would no doubt be sealing off Abbeville from the outside world.