by Frank Tayell
Three minutes to go.
Raising the binoculars, she scanned the distant rooftops, then the destroyer, then the harbour. There was nothing to see. Nothing at all.
Tuck stiffened, and Locke turned the binoculars back to the damp and near-empty vehicle park where the tank waited, alone. Figures appeared from nowhere. The submariners were already ashore, already in position, ready for the signal which Mills had just given. Spread over a two-hundred-degree arc, seven, then eight, then nine figures sprinted towards the tank.
Just when she thought the tank was unoccupied, broken down, abandoned, the turret began to move. The entire vehicle juddered backwards. It was occupied, and its occupants had probably been asleep. The hatch opened. A figure appeared, and slumped forward, shot.
A sailor jumped up onto the cupola, dragging the dead gangster out of the hatch. A second held the hatch open while a third, as soon as there was space, dived inside head-first. Another sailor followed. Four agonisingly long seconds after that, a figure emerged from the hatch. None of the sailors shot him. They had seized the tank. The first part of the mission was a success.
The other submariners gathered outside the tank, staying on guard, close to the armoured beast as it began to move, and the turret began to turn. Locke turned her glasses on the fraction of the ship she could glimpse between the harbour buildings.
The port shook to the sound of the shell being fired. Anyone not woken by the percussive blast would certainly be woken by the explosion that followed. The tower block rocked, and Locke lost sight of the destroyer. When she found it again, it looked no different from before. She dropped the glasses from her eyes and scanned the harbour, quickly finding the smoke, and in time for the second shell to be fired. Like the first, it landed on-target, engulfing the tank in smoke and flame.
She couldn’t see any of the submariners, though those inside were certainly dead. Those outside… no, there was no chance they would have survived.
Tuck grabbed her arm, hauling her back.
“We have to move,” she signed. “Downstairs. Outside. Away from here.”
“And then what?”
Tuck shrugged. “Plan then. Can’t now.”
Locke nodded, and followed the soldier back to the stairwell, running down the near pitch-dark stairs.
The tank was gone. The submariners were gone. The attack had failed. But she wasn’t going to give up. Not yet. But how were they going to sink that destroyer which, clearly, had working weapons aboard, and people who knew how to fire them?
She had no answer by the time they reached the lobby. Outside, they ran, not back to the ship, but towards the nearest of the stumpy apartment blocks, dropping to cover around the corner.
“Listen,” Tuck signed.
Locke shook her head. “Nothing.”
“Radio,” Tuck signed. “In the tank. They had radio. They radioed the ship as the submariners attacked.”
Locke nodded. “I think you’re right,” she whispered.
Tuck shook her head. “Those people we killed, they had radio.”
“I didn’t see a handset,” Locke said. “But I agree.”
“If we go back to the boat, they’ll follow. The destroyer will leave the harbour. We’ll lead them back to the Courageous, and then to Kenmare.”
“Meaning death for us all,” Locke said. “I don’t mind dying. Well, no. I do mind, but I don’t want to give up. I want to sink that destroyer.”
Tuck nodded. “Me, too.”
“Do you know how?”
“Not yet,” Tuck signed.
Moving quietly, they jogged through the ruins of Calais. Locke summoned memories of her previous trips, but her recollection was tainted by death, horror, and exhaustion. From the maps, she knew they had two bridges to cross. Near the second was a historic lighthouse. She vaguely recalled seeing glimpses of it during her first trip to Calais, so it had to be near the gate leading through the reinforced fence protecting the harbour.
Ahead, a void between the buildings marked the location of the expansive sea-channel. A second later, she saw the bridge. Without slowing, they sprinted across, reaching the other side without seeing any gangsters, without a shot being fired, an alarm being shouted.
Their luck lasted long enough for them to reach a turning, to see the lighthouse squatting at the far end of a long road.
Locke grabbed the soldier, hauling her into the doorway of a dingy apartment block where the landlord must have charged by the week and been surprised anyone stayed longer than a night. Locke raised a finger to her lips before returning that finger to the trigger of the AK-74. Tuck watched Locke as she, in the shadows, listened. There were voices. Angry. Loud. But not urgent. Two voices. French. Shouting at one another. No. There were more than two. Getting nearer. An angry argument about… but before she could work out what they were saying, the voices were replaced by the sound of running feet. Getting nearer. Quickly.
She tightened her grip, held her breath, and leaned back into the shadows as a group of eight ran down the road. Half carried AK-74s. Two wore white. Three, if the dirty grey ski-coat counted as white. One man had grey splotches in his beard, but none were old. And then they were gone, running by without even throwing a glance at the doorway.
Locke let half her breath out, but waited until the footsteps had completely faded before she signed that they were, for now, relatively safe.
“Gone to the apartment block,” Tuck signed. “Keep watch.” The soldier drew her bayonet as she approached the nearest of the thin doors, but the cheap lock could have been broken with a gentle push. As the soldier stepped inside the flat, Locke turned her gaze back to the street, watching, listening, trying not to think about a future that would now be much shorter than she’d expected a few hours ago.
Tuck was only gone a few seconds, returning outside with a few rolls of toilet paper and a trio of small metal bottles.
“You want to start a fire?” Locke asked.
“On the destroyer,” Tuck signed. “On the bridge.”
“We don’t have a fuse,” Locke said.
“No,” Tuck signed.
Locke looked at the bottles of turpentine, oil, and lighter-fluid. “We’ll need more than that to start a real blaze,” she said, opening her pack and emptying it of anything that wouldn’t easily burn.
Two minutes and another trip inside the apartment later, their bags were fuller, though not full enough to satisfy Locke. Opting for caution while they still had a choice, they retreated through the apartment building, finding the alley at the back of the block. Avoiding the main road, they trudged through the sodden half-frozen muck until they caught another glimpse of the lighthouse. As they stopped, Locke again heard voices. Specifically, she heard swearing.
Signalling caution, they moved nearer until they reached a metre-high wall that grew in height as it met a partially demolished house to their right. Beyond in a shadowed plaza were two tanks, both being argued over by a pair of engineers. From what she could hear, what had begun as a race as to who could finish their repairs first had degenerated into a row as to whose machine should be used as spares for the other. Locke counted two others. Guards. Sentries. Indifferent to the argument. Bored of the duty. Closer to sleep than they were to watchfulness.
“Can you fix a tank?” Locke signed.
“Maybe,” Tuck signed.
The plan Mister Mills had devised wasn’t without merits. It had failed once, but the alternative was a running battle through the docks, onto the ship, where they would have to hold the bridge until the fire was burning beyond anyone’s ability to extinguish it. In practical terms, that would be after she and Tuck had burned to death, unless they were shot first. Though not quite as at peace with self-sacrifice as she’d been at the beginning of the year, Locke was still prepared to sacrifice herself to give humanity a chance at survival. Here was a greater chance of success, while leaving open the option of a suicidal scramble onto the ship if all else failed. They had to seize the tank
s. The question wasn’t so much how, but how to communicate the decision to the soldier, but Tuck was already thinking three steps ahead.
The soldier reached into Locke’s bag for a loaded magazine. Then she reached into her own pack for a roll of toilet paper, which she handed to Locke. As Locke frowned, Tuck grinned, ejecting four bullets from the magazine which she rammed into the toilet roll. She returned the magazine to Locke’s bag, took out the quarter-full bottle of lighter fluid and a book of waxed matches, and handed those to Locke, too.
“Count to twenty, light, throw,” Tuck signed. “Understand?”
Locke nodded.
“Throw to the left. Throw to the left, okay?”
Locke nodded.
Tuck grinned back, and disappeared to the right, running low along the wall until she reached the broken-open door of the partially demolished house where she ducked inside.
Mentally, Locke began counting. When she reached ten, she spread lighter-fluid on the toilet roll. Would this work? Presumably the soldier had done it before.
She reached twenty, lit a match, held it to the roll. Orange fire blossomed far quicker than she’d been prepared for. As it spread to her glove, she lobbed the burning roll over the wall, plunging her hand into a muddy puddle to extinguish the lick of flame.
She could smell burning, but that might be her. She listened for the bullets igniting, but heard nothing. Then she heard shouts; a confused alarm in French. The bullets hadn’t been triggered, but the smoke had got their attention, which was the point of the exercise. So now what? She slid the safety off the AK-74, and was about to stand up and open fire when someone else beat her to it. The ground shook as she was thrown sideways, just one more piece of flotsam among the mud, brick, and debris tossed asunder by the tank shell. But they’d fired at the smoking toilet roll, not the wall. Though she was deafened and bruised, she was still alive.
Locke rolled and crawled through the foot-deep mud, away from the wall, away from the ruined house, towards a shattered cafe. Some previous explosion had blown out the glass, scattering it about the now partially flooded piazza. Broken shards snagged at her clothing, caught at her flesh. Bracing herself, she dived for the scant cover of a broken brick pillar. Whatever it had been supporting was now completely gone. What was left would stop a bullet but not a shell. She allowed herself one brief breath, just long enough to conjure an image of a life that would never be, and rose to a kneeling crouch, rifle raised. But no shots came towards her. In fact, after that one shot, the argument around the tank had been renewed with increasing vigour. A mechanic was yelling at a gunner who’d climbed up to the cupola. The cause of the argument was the smoke now drifting up from the rear of the machine. One shell had been too much for that tank. The other engineer stood by the other tank, a pistol drawn. The two sentries were walking towards where the shell had exploded.
Who to shoot? The sentries were nearer, but the tank was the bigger danger. She raised her rifle, but before she could fire, the driver slumped forward. The mechanic swung around before he, too, crumpled to the ground. One of the sentries half-turned towards the sound of the falling body. Locke opened fire, letting rip with half a magazine that tore into the pair of sentries. Even as they crumpled, Locke grinned, congratulating herself on another crisis averted, just in time for a bullet to slam into the brick pillar an inch from her head.
She ducked down, remembering the other mechanic just as another bullet slammed into the fractured pillar.
There was no way of firing without leaving cover, and no way of not getting shot if she moved. But if the mechanic got into that tank, she’d be dead, and so would Tuck, and then so would everyone else. This time, she didn’t give herself even a fraction of a second. Assault rifle raised, she bounded out from behind the partially destroyed column, sprinting across the rubble-strewn piazza. Rifle tracking left and right, searching for a target, her finger itched to depress the trigger. Her body tensed for the bullet she expected to come. But it didn’t. A figure rounded the edge of the tank, but it wasn’t the mechanic, it was Tuck.
“Forget swords into ploughshares,” the soldier signed, stepping over the corpse of the second mechanic, “a tank would make a perfect tractor.”
Locke couldn’t decide whether to laugh or scream, so did neither. She slowed her pace, turning around, scanning for danger. When she turned back to the tanks, she saw Tuck giving the two machines a cursory examination.
“Can you fix one of these tanks?” Locke asked.
Tuck simply shrugged, clambered up onto the nearest tank, and climbed inside.
“And to think,” Locke muttered, “I used to hate how Lisa would only reply to a question with a question of her own. At least she’d reply.” She followed the soldier inside the tank.
Tuck had already clambered into the driver’s seat. “Touch nothing,” the soldier signed.
“I wouldn’t dare,” Locke said, trying to find the least uncomfortable perch inside the cramped cabin. Her experience of the tanks to date had been up-close to confirm they were empty, or distant when they were dropping shells on her. The interior had the crowded efficiency of military design with which she was increasingly familiar, where unused space was confused with profligate luxury. Designed for a crew of three, it was already cramped with only two of them aboard. Everywhere she looked were screens, everywhere she wanted to rest her hands, they found a button, stick, or keyboard. Worried she might accidentally fire the cannon, she opted for the commander’s position above and behind the driver, and wondered how a gunner was supposed to fit into the tank as well.
The monstrous machine shuddered, and she thought they’d been shot, but it was just the gargantuan engines coming to life.
“I suppose this is when I should ask whether there’s a plan?” Locke asked. “Beyond us stealing a tank, I mean?”
Tuck couldn’t see her, but what answer could she provide? They had a tank. They had a target. What more did they need?
Above the engine, she heard a metallic sound with which she’d been barely acquainted a year before. Bullets pinged off the thick armour and the still open hatch. As Locke leaped up to pull the hatch closed, the tank lurched forward. Her shoulder slammed into the side of the opening, but she closed the hatch. A wave of calm washed over the interior. Not silence as such, but focus, as every sense was deprived of input. Tuck had a trio of screens and a rectangular hatch giving her a view outside. Locke supposed the blank screens absurdly close to her eyes would give her a similar view of the world outside, but didn’t dare hunt for the controls. Instead, she revelled in glorious ignorance of the chaos a thickness of armour away as the tank rumbled through the streets of Calais.
“When did you learn to drive a tank?” she asked, knowing she’d get no answer, but wanting to hear something other than the roaring grind of the treads tearing up the road, and the artificially distant sound of machine gun bullets rat-a-tatting against the armour.
“Never a dull moment, though, you were right about that, Lisa,” she said. “Though I might enjoy a dull moment now and again. Just occasionally.”
Tuck turned. “Bridge coming up,” she signed. “Get ready.”
“Ready for what?” Locke asked, but Tuck had already turned around.
Locke checked her looted AK-74 was in reach, and tried to enjoy the ride.
One more bridge, then they’d be close to the fence. In the fence was the gate, though with a tank, they could make their own entrance. Beyond the fence was the harbour, and the ship. Which had already destroyed one tank, of course. As soon as they were able to see the ship, the ship’s crew would see them. Could the ship’s gunners hit a moving target? They wouldn’t have to. There was no way Tuck could fire the gun while driving, and no way Locke could figure out how to do either while they were moving, let alone when they were being shelled. But there was nothing she could do now except hold on. Until the tank came to an abrupt, juddering halt that threw Tuck forward, and nearly threw Locke to the floor.
“W
hat was that?” Locke asked, repeating it a moment later when Tuck turned around.
“The engines,” Tuck signed.
“Can we fix them?”
“From outside,” the soldier signed. She hunched and straightened, angling for the hatch.
Locke pushed her back. “We’re being shot at. Can’t you… of course, no. I can hear the bullets hitting the tank.”
“Small arms?” Tuck asked.
Locke nodded.
“Move,” Tuck signed.
“Why?”
Tuck shook her head, pulled on Locke’s leg to drag her out of the way, and swung the hatch up before moving head and shoulders outside. She turned herself quickly, ducking back down less than a second later.
Locke tried to get out of the soldier’s way as Tuck slid into the gunner’s chair.
Only when the turret began to traverse did Tuck’s shoulders relax, the feral grin returning to her lips.
“You’re not,” Locke whispered. But Tuck was, and did a second later. She fired. Again. Then she turned to Locke.
“Two more rounds pre-loaded,” she signed. “Fire those, then run.”
“Can’t we unload one, take it with us?” Locke asked. “Use it as a mine to blow up the ship?”
“No time. Too far. Too heavy,” Tuck signed. “Back to plan-A.”
“A fire? Understood.”
“Ready to run?” Tuck fired, and again, both mammoth shots coming before Locke had time to prepare herself. She opened the hatch, clambering out, Tuck a step behind.