Assault on Abbeville

by Jack Badelaire

  Next to Gorski, Dumond blasted two Germans into oblivion with his sawn-off shotgun, the first spray of buckshot nearly decapitating one man as it tore through his throat, while the second punched a hole in another man’s chest. His shotgun empty, Dumond drew his revolver left-handed from its holster while his right thumb tripped the shotgun’s latch, dropping the barrels and kicking the spent shells over Dumond’s shoulder. The Frenchman raised his revolver and pulled the trigger as the sights lined up on the face of a third man. The large-framed Smith & Wesson boomed, and a .45 caliber slug punched through the man’s eye socket, blowing a fist-sized hole out the back of his head. Dumond shifted aim, then double-actioned another round into the upper chest of the last man at his table, knocking the man out of his chair. Dumond took a step forward, then fired again into the side of the man’s head as the German sprawled onto the floor.

  The first eight Germans were dead in seconds, and the two Revenants hadn’t even finished their work before three short bursts from a machine pistol signaled the deaths of the three drivers outside the tavern, each of them cut down by Johansen. The four Germans still alive at the center table had enough time to slide back their chairs and throw themselves at the nearest cover, but it was a completely futile gesture. Only one of the pilots had the impulse to claw at the buckled holster at his waist, and he was the first to die. Not bothering to reload his MP-38, Gorski drew his automatic and shot the man three times, twice in the chest and once in the head for good measure. The pilot spasmed and died with his service weapon still holstered.

  Gorski let the smoking machine pistol hang from its strap around his neck, and he drew the .32 automatic he’d taken from the gendarme at the checkpoint. Stepping around the table, he kicked aside an overturned chair, and as Dumond executed another German crawling for cover, Gorski stood over the last two Germans as the men threw chairs aside and tried to overturn their table for protection. A pistol in each hand, Gorski emptied the weapons into the backs of the two men, knocking them flat on their faces. Dumond approached, sliding two shells into the shotgun’s breech, then snapping the weapon closed as he kicked over one of the men Gorski had just shot. The dying German, his chest sodden with blood from the 9mm slugs that’d passed clear through his body, wore the insignia of a Hauptman, and an Iron Cross hung at his throat.

  It was Kohl. The ace fighter pilot’s eyes rolled and he coughed up a spray of bright red blood. He turned his head slowly, as Dumond lowered the twin muzzles of his shotgun.

  “Do it,” Gorski ordered.

  Dumond fired both barrels at point-blank range, and Kohl’s head vanished, spraying everything within a meter in an explosion of gore. Pocketing the .32 automatic, Gorski reached down and tore the Iron Cross from Kohl’s headless corpse.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The front door of The Red Hen slammed open, and Gorski stepped out, sweeping the muzzle of his reloaded MP-38 from side to side, searching for targets. Dumond followed, his shotgun at the ready, but there was no opposition, only Johansen, cutting the magazine pouches from one of the dead drivers and throwing them through the open window of the nearest Renault sedan. Gorski saw Johansen had already used his bayonet on the tires of the other two sedans.

  A whistle came from the east, and Gorski turned, seeing Verhoeven and Lambert running towards them. There was the roar of an automobile engine, and a Kübelwagen sped around the corner a block behind the two men. Gorski saw the shape of a man leaning out the passenger-side window holding a weapon that sent a long burst of slugs over the Revenants’ heads, and Lambert dropped to his knee, raised his Swedish Mauser and took only a split second to aim before he fired. Gorski saw the flashing muzzle of the German’s machine pistol drop downwards, firing wildly into the street for a moment before the weapon tumbled from the dead man’s hands. Next to Lambert, Verhoeven shouldered his MP-38 and emptied its 32-round magazine into the oncoming Kübelwagen, and the little automobile swerved and slammed into the side of a storefront thirty meters away.

  In moments, the five men were together again. Dumond took the driver’s seat, while Gorski sat next to him and the other three men piled into the back. Before the sedan’s doors were even closed, Dumond had the engine started and the transmission in first gear, the Renault’s big engine growling as he stomped on the accelerator. Gorski and the men in the back lowered the sedan’s windows and poked the muzzles of their machines pistols outside. Somewhere in the town, the air raid siren was howling in alarm.

  “Report,” Gorski ordered, not taking his gaze from the street even for a moment.

  “Not as successful as we had hoped,” Verhoeven replied. “I wasn’t able to get near the tank, but I was able to plant a pair of charges on the belly of the Panhard. When they blew, Adrien threw that improved grenade into the hotel lobby after I took care of the two guards. I tossed a grenade onto one of the tank’s treads, but I have no idea if that did anything or not. Maybe it cracked the linking pin, or a track link, but that would be it. A well-trained crew could fix-”

  “Yes, I know,” Gorski cut him off. “Did you encounter any other resistance?”

  “Just the Kübelwagen,” Lambert spoke up.

  “We’re getting near a checkpoint!” Dumond shouted.

  Gorski peered into the darkness, and saw a German with a flashlight signalling him, while two others lifted their weapons. They stood next to a flatbed truck with a pintle-mounted MG-34 fixed to the back. A fourth man was trying to climb up onto the truck’s tailgate to reach the machine gun.

  “Lambert, say something to them!” Gorski ordered.

  The Belgian was seated between Johansen and Verhoeven, and he leaned past the Dutchman and stuck his head out the sedan’s window.

  “Make way!” he shouted in German. “Hauptmann Kohl has been wounded! Make way, you idiots!”

  The Germans all looked at each other in confusion as Dumond slowed the Renault, then brought it around in a sharp turn before slamming on the brakes, stopping the sedan with the passenger-side door towards the Germans. Without hesitation, Gorski and Verhoeven thrust their MP-38s forward and emptied the weapons into the guards. Gorski raked the man with the electric torch from groin to helmet, before shifting his aim and walking his fire across the bed of the truck and into the machine-gunner, who had just reached his weapon. The man jerked and stumbled back off the flatbed as the 9mm slugs tore through his guts. Verhoeven’s fusillade of auto-fire sawed back and forth across the two remaining guards, riddling each man with a half-dozen bullets and sending them sprawling.

  Gorski took a moment to jump out of the sedan and pull a stick grenade from the belt of the man who’d been holding the torch. He twisted off the buttcap and yanked on the ignition cord, then tossed the grenade onto the flatbed before he stepped back inside the sedan, slapped the dashboard and shouted, “Go, go, go!” The sedan was a dozen meters away when the grenade blew, and Gorski looked back to see the wrecked MG-34 spin through the air. A few seconds later, they passed the last of Abbeville’s buildings, and left the town behind.

  “Goddamn it,” Gorski muttered. “We could’ve really used that machine gun.”

  “We don’t have the time,” Verhoeven reminded him. “Besides, it is a little cramped back here already.”

  “Ammunition count?” Gorski asked his men.

  They took a moment to tally up magazines and grenades. Between the five of them, they had four Mills bombs and about four magazines apiece for the MP-38s. Dumond and Lambert had plenty for their own long guns, and everyone had sufficient ammunition for their sidearms. In addition, they still had a half-dozen explosive charges, although they were limited in their means of setting them off, only having pencil timers and pull-fuzes that detonated immediately. Gorski made a mental note that, if they ever got out of this alive, he’d add grenade-type fuze detonators to their demolition kits, so they could use the charges as improvised grenades.

  Setting such thoughts aside, Gorski pulled the regional map from his coat, and with Lambert leaning forward in
his seat holding a small, red-lensed flashlight, Gorski traced the road they were on with his finger.

  “There’s going to be a left-hand turn in a couple of kilometers,” he told Dumond. “That should take us west. We follow that road for five more kilometers, then turn north, towards the coast.”

  “What time is it?” Dumond asked, not wanting to take his eyes from the road. He was doing an admirable job of driving in the dark without using his headlights, but it took all of his concentration.

  Gorski looked at his wristwatch. “Just past 2300 hours.”

  Dumond grunted with displeasure. “We’re not expecting the boat until at least midnight, yes?”

  “We can’t even be certain it will be there at all,” Gorski replied. “But yes, that’s the arranged hour.”

  When the mission was being planned, it had been decided it was too risky for the recovery craft to return to the French coastline every twenty-four hours. Instead, they agreed that the motor gunboat would sit a few kilometers off shore every other night between the hours of midnight and four in the morning, to ensure it made it back into friendly waters before sunrise.

  “At this speed, we’ll be at the coast in twenty minutes,” Dumond said. “Half an hour is a long time to stand in the surf letting your feet get wet, while the Boche close in on us.”

  “There’s nothing we can do about the timetable,” Gorski snapped. “Here it is, take the turn. Go about twenty meters in and then stop. We’re going to wire charges across this road and the next.”

  Dumond slowed the sedan and took the left-hand turn, then pulled off onto the side of the narrow road shortly after. Gorski stepped out of the sedan and grabbed his rucksack.

  “Verhoeven, you take Johansen and guard the road back to Abbeville,” Gorski ordered. “Lambert, come with me. Dumond, keep the engine running.”

  Gorski and the three other Revenants jogged back to the intersection. It was dark and there were no signs of any homes nearby, and all was quiet except for the continuing wail of the air raid siren off in the distance. When they reached the intersection, Gorski looked left and right, alert for any signs of pursuit, but there was nothing. As Lambert and Johansen continued south and got into position, Gorski pointed to two trees on opposite sides of the road.

  “I’ll run wires between these,” he said. “ Do the same about twenty meters after the turn. We’ll use a doubled charge on each. Make sure the fragmentation facing is pointed at the road.”

  “We’ve practiced this a time or two, you know,” Verhoeven said. “I think I know what to do.”

  “Yes, of course. Quickly, now,” Gorski answered.

  They worked in the dark, performing their tasks largely by feel and the memories of many nights of field exercises back in Scotland. Gorski took two charges from his bag and bound them, one right above the other, to the trunk of a tree a couple of meters off the road. He fitted the pull-fuze igniter to the top charge, and tied wire to the pull-ring. Reaching up, he ran the wire over the top of a low branch, and then walked across the road, careful to not put too much tension on the wire. On the other side of the road, Gorski carefully tied the wire around the trunk of a young sapling. Anything that hit the wire would pull on it, using the branch above the pull-fuze to turn horizontal motion into vertical and pull the ring from the igniter. The first charge’s blast would sympathetically detonate the second charge, and the buckshot imbedded in the explosives would shred anything in the road between the two trees.

  As he finished, Gorski heard the faint sounds of engines coming from the south, towards Abbeville. Shouldering his rucksack, he readied his machine pistol and jogged up the road towards Lambert and Johansen. The two men were prone along the side of the road, their weapons pointed towards the oncoming vehicles. Gorski saw the first gleam of light from the headlights several hundred meters away and raised his binoculars to get a better view. The two vehicles - one sedan and one open-topped flatbed transport - were risking the light from their headlights because they were driving at breakneck speed.

  “Fall back towards the car,” Gorski told the two men. “But get ready. The lead car will trip the wire, but we don’t want to be anywhere near the blast when those hundred buckshot go flying.”

  The men fell back through the woods towards the Renault on the other road. Gorski ran up to the driver’s window, motioning for Dumond to drive on.

  “Continue on a hundred meters, then wait for us. Those oncoming Germans are going to hit the first charge in a few seconds, and we’ll mop up after.”

  Dumond nodded and shifted into gear, motoring away. The four remaining men dropped down into the cover of the forest on the side of the west-bound road opposite the oncoming vehicles.

  “Lambert, you’ll stay here and pick off anyone who tries to come this way,” Gorski said. “We’ll advance once the charges blow and engage the survivors.”

  By now, the two vehicles were plainly visible, and Gorski was even able to make out the man standing behind the truck’s cab, manning the MG-34. If that German was paying attention and didn’t let himself get distracted, he could make the Revenant’s lives very difficult.

  The sedan - a gendarme vehicle by its markings - hit the tripwire at close to forty kilometers an hour. However, the speed at which military-grade explosive detonates made the vehicle’s speed irrelevant. The half-kilogram charge alone would have been enough to incapacitate the sedan, but it was the one hundred buckshot, moving far faster than any shotgun blast would normally send them, that really did the damage. A cloud of broken glass sprayed meters away from the opposite side of the vehicle, and the Renault rocked over, two wheels lifting off the ground for a moment before slamming back down onto the road. The sedan swerved, fishtailed, and spun almost halfway around, coming to rest just before the flatbed transport plowed into it at nearly full speed, the driver having only enough time to slam on the brakes the instant before impact.

  Although the cargo truck was sturdy enough to not be completely destroyed by the collision, the men sitting in the cargo bed were not so fortunate. Gorski saw the machine-gunner somersault over the top of the cab, arms flailing, then bounce off the wreckage of the sedan before finally sliding off the car’s bonnet and landing, face-first, in the road. None of the others fell out of the truck, but Gorski imagined they’d all smashed into a great twitching heap against the back of the truck’s cab, rifle barrels and helmets and all other manner of weapons and equipment jabbing and slamming into tender, unprepared flesh. Gorski wouldn’t have been surprised if the impact alone hadn’t killed one or two of the men in the back of the truck, and seriously injured several others.

  But the Revenants weren’t going to wait around before finding out. Gorski, Verhoeven, and Johansen rose up and moved forward at a crouch, weapons up, as they shook out into a three-man skirmish line. They shifted over to the western side of the road, approaching the two vehicles from the right. Verhoeven drew his suppressed .32 automatic, and with a single muffled shot, ended the life of the twitching German machine-gunner who, although broken and bloodied, was still alive when they reached him. As they passed along the side of the crumpled Renault, Gorski caught a glimpse of moonlit gendarmerie insignia on the nearly-decapitated driver’s blood-soaked uniform. One look past the driver and into the shredded cab of the sedan told Gorski no one else in the vehicle was alive, never mind a threat. The explosive-driven buckshot had riddled the sedan with holes from bumper to bumper, turning the entire body into one gigantic sieve, and the three other men in the sedan had been reduced to mincemeat, the inside of the vehicle thickly painted in blood and bits of tissue.

  The cries of pain and confusion from the back of the transport reminded Gorski that their job wasn’t done yet. He used hand signals to get Johansen’s attention, and the Norwegian reached into his musette bag and produced one of their few remaining Mills bombs. Pulling the pin, Johansen used a soft underhand throw, lobbing the grenade into the cab of the truck. There was a shout, and a second later, the crack of the gr
enade. Glass and unrecognizable human remains sprayed out of the cab’s windows, and Gorski felt something wet hit his face. Using a gesture, he had the men fan out, and bringing up their MP-38s, they cut loose on the back of the transport, chopping up wounded and struggling men with short, precise bursts of automatic fire. One German managed to make it over the other side of the flatbed, but Verhoeven dropped to his belly and killed the escapee before he crawled more than a meter.

  When the slaughter was over, Gorski sent Johansen and Verhoeven up onto the flatbed to collect any grenades or MP-38 magazines, while he stood watch, eying the road back to Abbeville. His ears were too abused by the explosions and gunfire to hear anything, but he saw no glimmer of headlights. With luck, the Germans would pause at the ambush site long enough to give them the time they needed to escape.

  “Johansen!” Gorski called up to the Norwegian on the back of the truck.

  “Almost done,” Johansen replied.

  “Not yet,” Gorski said. “We need to leave a message.”

  “Yes?” Johansen asked.

  “Take out your butcher’s blade,” Gorski answered, “and cut off a few heads.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  “Flash the signal again.”

  Gorski scanned the dark horizon of the Channel waters with his binoculars, searching for any acknowledging signal from the recovery boat, but even as his eyes strained to penetrate the darkness, he saw nothing.

  “Are you sure we’re at the right spot?” Dumond asked, his tone nervous. The big Frenchman crouched next to Gorski, facing inland, the buttstock of his shotgun tucked into his shoulder.

  “I triple-checked the location on the map,” Gorski answered. “We’re half a kilometer north-west of that turn, and that puts us right where we should be waiting.”

  “Even if we were several hundred meters in error along the beach in one direction or another,” Lambert added, “the boat should be far enough out to see us regardless. When you’re five kilometers from shore, a half-kilometer in either direction along the beach is negligible. If they’re looking for us, they’d see us.”