Secret Army

by Robert Muchamore

  ‘In six minutes, platform three,’ Rosie shouted, as Marc closed the doors of the van. ‘We can make it if we hurry.’

  PT’s face strained as he started pushing the trolley. It was even heavier with the satchels hanging off and a lot less stable. Marc picked up his own satchel and the sack containing the other pieces of the gun before running after him.

  It took two minutes to reach the station entrance. The cavernous interior was a series of vaults, blackened by years of soot.

  ‘Stand clear,’ Rosie shouted, as she made a path through the crowds for PT and the trolley.

  The train on platform three was an inter-city express, with blackout curtains covering every window of its maroon carriages. The engine was being stoked ready for departure and the last few passengers were running through the ticket barriers as a man walked along from the far end of the platform slamming the doors and ordering passengers to get in the nearest carriage because the train was about to leave.

  ‘We’ll just make it,’ Rosie gasped, as she looked up at the station clock. But as she looked down she saw two police officers approaching the barriers and stopped dead. The heavy trolley had momentum and PT couldn’t stop it from running into Rosie’s ankles. She stifled a yelp as she stumbled forwards.

  ‘Sorry,’ PT said.

  ‘You OK?’ Marc asked.

  The trolley had skinned the back of Rosie’s ankle and it was a couple of seconds before she could speak. ‘Two police,’ she said. ‘One’s stopped by the barrier, the other one is running for the train.’

  ‘Maybe they’re not looking for us,’ Marc said.

  ‘They are,’ Rosie said ferociously, as she spun around and started walking. ‘Turn around before they spot us.’

  Her tone made the two boys snap into line and she explained why she was so certain as she took them back the way they came. ‘There was a guy standing behind the ticket counter and he gave me a weird look while I was paying. He must have thought something was up because the same man was with the two police officers.’

  ‘You’re sure it was him?’

  ‘Completely,’ Rosie said. ‘Why else would he be there with two police, three minutes before the train leaves?’

  ‘Now what the hell do we do?’ PT said, looking around for any sign of more cops as they headed back towards the exit. ‘They must have put out an alert.’

  ‘Why would they look for us here, though?’ Marc asked.

  Rosie put her hands up to her face. ‘I think I know,’ she gasped. ‘When I took the bags in off the factory roof, I said to Marc we’ll have a job getting this lot back to London. That doorman must have heard me.’

  ‘Dammit,’ PT cursed. ‘Why did you say that?’

  ‘I just didn’t think,’ Rosie said. ‘I’m so tired.’

  ‘It’s not her fault,’ Marc said. ‘We should have knocked that doorman out as soon as he started giving us trouble. Henderson wouldn’t have put up with his mucking about for five seconds.’

  ‘So what now?’ PT asked. ‘Do we go back to the van?’

  ‘The police will be looking for it, but we could drive a few miles just to get out of here,’ Rosie suggested.

  ‘Exactly,’ Marc agreed.

  But as PT wheeled the trolley through the station’s side entrance they saw a police car parked at an angle directly in front of the Post Office van. Despite his broken ankle, Joel was being held against the van by a burly officer while his colleague threatened him with a bunched fist.

  Rosie’s mouth dropped open. ‘They’re making him stand on that ankle. He must be in agony.’

  PT felt just as bad, but his attention was turned by a woman in a fur coat getting out of an aged London-style taxi thirty metres in the other direction. He couldn’t move fast with the trolley, so he gave Marc a shove.

  ‘Go get that cab.’

  Marc raced off, then waited anxiously while the posh lady paid her fare.

  ‘Sorry, son,’ the driver said, as he pointed around to the front of the train station. ‘We can’t pick up here. Station passengers have to queue at the rank around the front.’

  By this time Rosie had arrived. ‘We need to get to Stockport station urgently,’ she said, remembering the next stop on the route to London from the timetable she’d looked at a few minutes earlier and waving a pound note. ‘This is your tip if you get us there fast.’

  The driver looked warily towards the police car parked a couple of hundred metres away before responding with a reluctant, ‘Get yourselves in, then.’

  Rosie opened the door of the open-air rear compartment. PT and Marc laid the trolley sideways across the rear seats, and then all three kids squeezed on to a wooden bench which faced the other way.

  Joel was being dragged towards the police car as the taxi swung around and drove past. He recognised the distinctive shape of the gun and trolley, but was mystified as to why they hadn’t made it on to the train.

  Neither of the police officers saw a thing.

  *

  Like all the trainees Lieutenant Tomaszewski had missed a night’s sleep and settled in the bus’s third row of seats. As Wozniak drove through the heavy dockyard traffic and broke out on to the main road towards London, Tomaszewski took off his damp shirt, spread himself over the seats and drifted off to sleep.

  He woke up after twenty minutes, feeling that something was wrong but not knowing what.

  ‘Hello, sleepyhead,’ Luc said in his most cheerful French as he leaned over from the row behind.

  As Tomaszewski sat up he heard the clank of metal chain and saw that his wrist had been cuffed to the metal handrail across the back of his seat. Luc stood up, grabbed a can off the seat beside him and sploshed diesel fuel over the Pole’s hair and chest.

  ‘I’ve got matches,’ Luc announced, as Wozniak glanced backwards. ‘Keep driving, or your lieutenant burns.’

  ‘Do what he says,’ Tomaszewski said anxiously.

  Wozniak looked back again. ‘Are you OK, Lieutenant?’ he asked in Polish.

  ‘And none of that Polish jibber-jabber,’ Luc ordered. ‘Speak in French, or better still, keep your traps shut.’

  Tomaszewski sat up slightly and tried to sound authoritative. ‘Let’s all keep our heads,’ he said. ‘Your name’s Luc, isn’t it?’

  Luc mocked the Pole’s gentle tone. ‘What are you gonna do, try talking me around?’

  Tomaszewski smiled awkwardly. ‘Did you attack the other two?’

  ‘I might have done,’ Luc said, with a wouldn’t-you-like-to-know shrug. ‘I must say I’m proud of the job I did by the pylon. Those teeth went a-flying!’

  Tomaszewski was determined not to show his anger. ‘Maybe we could work together,’ he suggested.

  ‘There’s only one gun on this bus and Walker won’t let us share it,’ Luc sneered, as Wozniak looked back again. ‘Keep your eyes on the road,’ Luc ordered.

  ‘Even if we get to the station, you can’t carry that gun alone,’ Tomaszewski said. ‘Have you thought about that, Luc?’

  Luc twirled a book of matches between his fingertips. ‘I’ll work something out,’ he replied. ‘Punch some woman in the face, throw her baby in the gutter and steal her pram. I got this far by thinking on my feet, so I’m sure I’ll manage.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  ‘Pull up here, please,’ Rosie said, as the cab turned into a side street with the ticket office of Stockport station a few hundred metres ahead.

  ‘You’re the boss,’ the cab driver said, looking baffled as he pulled up at the kerb well short of the station.

  They’d decided to stop short in case they arrived to find platforms crawling with policemen. As PT and Rosie paid the fare and unloaded the cab, Marc hurried off to check out the station.

  He found a dilapidated ticket office with a single platform attached. An island in between railway tracks formed two more platforms and was connected to the main part of the station by a bridge. At the far end of the station was a barrierless level crossing, which led down
to a scrapyard served by its own railway siding.

  Morning rush hour was past, but a good number of people still stood on platform one waiting for the trains into Manchester. Nobody paid Marc any notice as he studied the timetable. The station clock said it was eighteen minutes past nine. It seemed there were three trains an hour to London with the next one at nine thirty-nine.

  ‘The problem is all London trains leave from platform three,’ Marc said, when he got back to PT and Rosie. They’d sat themselves on a wooden bench a hundred metres from the station with the trolley lying flat in the grass beside them. ‘I don’t think we’ll be able to lift that trolley over the bridge. Even if we can, everyone will see us doing it. The only way around it is to go over the level crossing and sneak up the ramp at the end of the platform.’

  ‘What about platform staff?’ PT asked. ‘They’ll nab us if they see us sneaking in.’

  ‘That could be tricky,’ Marc agreed. ‘There’s a local train on platform one in about seven minutes. If we go to the end of the platform we can watch what happens when the train comes in.’

  PT nodded in agreement and stood up. ‘If they are on alert they’ll be looking for two boys and a girl carrying a big gun. It’s better if Rosie stays here with the trolley. We’ll work out the best way to get on platform three and come back before the London train comes in. OK, Rosie?’

  The boys moved swiftly down the narrow access road that led to the level crossing and the scrapyard. The ground was unfinished and heavy vehicles had churned the surface into mud. But they found a dry spot, standing on a rotting railway sleeper behind tangled weeds that gave them a good view along the platforms.

  When the local service to Manchester steamed in, they watched the engine driver step out of his small black locomotive on to a platform less than ten metres away. Also on the platform were two porters, a stationmaster and the train guard.

  As the locomotive’s huge steel wheels squealed against the track and began hauling the carriages, two young workmen sprinted on to the platform. They grabbed a door handle and jumped aboard, despite frantic whistles from the platform attendants.

  PT looked at Marc as the train passed. ‘There’s too many staff on the platform when the train comes in. Our best bet is to get over there now. I’ll hide behind the waiting room with the trolley and put it in the guard’s van when the train arrives. You and Rosie can move along the platform and get in different carriages, so that nobody sees the three of us travelling together.’

  Marc nodded in agreement. ‘Nine twenty-nine,’ he said. ‘That gives us ten minutes.’

  It was a pig of a job getting the trolley down the muddy lane. Rosie had to strip off the bags that were designed to disguise the gun’s shape because it kept overbalancing. After the mud they had to push the trolley over the rails and the only way to do it was for Rosie to hold the gun steady on the trolley and run alongside as PT used all his strength to charge through.

  A couple of people at the end of platform two watched the performance, but with the yard a few hundred metres down the lane, they just thought that the kids were trying to make a few bob selling scrap.

  When they reached the ramp at the end of the island platforms, the level-crossing bell started to chime. In peacetime there would have been flashing lights too, but the bulbs had been removed as part of the blackout.

  ‘Who’s got the other sack?’ Marc asked.

  Rosie raised an eyebrow and spoke with complete certainty. ‘There isn’t another sack.’

  ‘There bloody well is,’ PT said, as he realised Marc was right. ‘The heavy one with the magazine and the gun sight inside.’

  ‘When did we last see it?’ Marc asked, as he glanced anxiously down the tracks to see if the train was in view. ‘We had it at Piccadilly station. Please tell me we didn’t leave it in the taxi.’

  PT shook his head. ‘It was there when we tipped the trolley up behind the bench.’

  ‘Bugger,’ Marc cursed, as he pulled his satchel off his shoulder and threw it at Rosie. ‘I’m faster without that,’ he explained. ‘I’ll go back, you get the other stuff up on the platform.’

  Rosie glanced at the station clock. ‘Six minutes. But it’ll arrive here a couple of minutes before that if it’s on time.’

  Marc wasn’t sure that the level-crossing bells were ringing for the London train, so he looked both ways before belting back across the tracks. He’d walked more than ten miles overnight and his legs were hurting, but he ran flat out, splashing through the centre of muddy puddles that he’d avoided on the way down and squeezing past a horse and cart bringing a load to the junkyard.

  A serviceman now sat on the bench eating a pork pie. He looked mystified as Marc rushed into the overgrown grass and sighed with relief as he grabbed the lumpy sack.

  ‘Thank god,’ he gasped as he snatched the sack off the ground.

  But Marc’s euphoria was short-lived. As he turned around he could see the plume of steam blasting up from the London Express. He tried ignoring the pain as the chunks of metal in the sack bashed against his shoulder blades, but as he turned into the alleyway he was desperate for breath and his vision started to blur.

  Marc staggered to a halt, then swung the sack around so that it was in front of him and moved on at a fast walking pace. By the time he’d caught up with the horse and cart stopped in front of the level crossing, the train wheels were squealing into the platform, while his boots and the bottom of his trousers were thick with mud.

  To complicate matters, a cargo train was dragging half a kilometre of coal trucks in the opposite direction and there was only going to be a short break between the last carriage of the London Express going by in one direction and the coal train coming the other way.

  Normally fifteen seconds would be plenty of time to cut across ten metres of railway tracks, but Marc’s legs felt like tombstones and the sack felt four times heavier than when he’d picked it up from behind the bench less than two minutes earlier.

  The driver of the coal train blasted his steam-powered whistle as Marc set off. He wasn’t sure if it was aimed at him, or just a standard signal to warn passengers to stand away from the edge of platform. He made it over and saw PT standing at the end of the express train looking for him.

  Instead of running up the ramp, Marc took the shortest possible route to the back of the London Express by cutting across the tracks. Standing right behind the train’s rear buffers, he used the last of his strength to lift the bag up on to the platform.

  As the weight of the passing coal train shook the ground, PT grabbed the bag. He then bent forwards to grab Marc, but Marc backed away.

  ‘Get that on the train,’ Marc urged.

  Rosie stood a short distance down the platform, asking the guard complicated questions about the best way to connect with a train that stopped at Watford Junction in a ruse to stop him from seeing what the boys were up to behind his back.

  ‘Can I load this up, boss?’ PT interrupted, as he approached the door of the guard’s van.

  Rosie gave no indication that she knew PT, and hurried towards a ladies-only carriage as the guard went inside and helped PT to lay down the trolley.

  ‘Looks like a bleedin’ gun!’ the guard joked.

  PT practically swallowed his tongue. ‘It’s antique curtain rails,’ he explained. ‘They’re going for auction down in London. We wrapped them up so that nothing broke off.’

  PT wondered if there was such a thing as an antique curtain rail, but the guard seemed to buy the excuse. ‘Very fancy,’ he grinned.

  Outside, Marc had staggered back towards the end of the platform and stepped up on to the ramp. As he stumbled towards the back of the train, leaving muddy bootprints along the platform, he was spotted by a station porter walking briskly in the opposite direction slamming any open doors.

  ‘You!’ he shouted, as he slammed the door of the last carriage. ‘What the ruddy hell are you playing at?’

  The train guard who’d helped PT turned around as
he put one shoe on the platform and raised his green flag. Marc thought about chasing the train, but the gun was what mattered and PT had dealt with that. He considered turning and running away, but his legs ached and he’d bashed his knee as he jumped on to the platform.

  The stationmaster blew his whistle and, as the London Express clanked away from the platform, the young station porter grabbed hold of Marc, swung him around and shoved him against a station sign.

  ‘You’re for it now, lad,’ he warned, as he twisted Marc’s ear. ‘If you haven’t got a ticket you’re trespassing on the property of London Midland and Scottish railway.’

  Marc considered surrender, but Rosie had the satchel with his surrender letter inside. However, he did have the ticket that she’d bought for him in Manchester.

  ‘My ma’s sick in the ’ospital in London,’ Marc said, making his best attempt at a cockney accent. ‘I’ve got me ticket. I just got stuck in the bleedin’ traffic coming down here and missed the train, innit?’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  The train ride from Stockport to London took under three hours, but felt longer. PT wanted to sleep. He found a quiet carriage and spread his long legs, but his damp clothes stuck to his skin and itched like crazy. At every station, he looked anxiously along the platform for any sign of the police.

  If anyone suspected that they were on the train it would only take a phone call to alert the transport police and have the train searched at the next station. PT considered finding Rosie and suggesting that they get off after a couple of stops and switch to a train that hadn’t started in Manchester.

  But exhaustion fogged his mind. Even getting up to use the toilet was a struggle and as much as PT wanted the mission to succeed, he was so tired that part of him was more willing to surrender than to engage his brain in more plots and deception.

  Rosie joined PT as the train slowed for the final stretch into Euston station. She’d done what she could to clean up in the ladies’ toilet but was still quite a sight, with muddy trousers and scarecrow hair. PT was delighted to see her and gave her a long kiss that drew a grunt of disapproval from a chunky woman who’d snored most of the way from Stoke-on-Trent.