As they stepped out of the house, Carrel’s son René volunteered to go along, and Logan gladly accepted the offer. An extra pair of hands might come in handy with Nat if they ran into any problems.
They climbed into the van and set out for the airfield, a seven mile jaunt from the farm. A full moon shone on a clear summer’s night, perfectly conducive for a Lysander landing. Logan was glad they had the boy along, for without the luxury of the van’s headlamps, due to the blackout, he would have been hard put to find his way on the unfamiliar roads, even in the moonlight.
After ten minutes Logan said, “I thought it was only about seven kilometers from your place to the airfield,” worried that he had not yet seen any familiar landmarks indicating they were approaching their destination.
“Perhaps as the crow flies,” said the lad. “But the road veers quite a bit to the north before it meets the airport road that you probably took out of town.”
“I must have misread my map,” said Logan. “We don’t have time for delays!” It was not quite nine-thirty, but Logan was worried that he was cutting it too close. Though the plane could be several hours later, he didn’t want to take any chances of Nat’s not getting on board. “Is there a shorter way?” he asked after a moment’s thought.
“There is an old dirt road up ahead,” replied René, “not much more than a path, actually. It cuts through the woods and is very rough. But before the war it was not unknown for a young man to take his sweetheart down it in whatever vehicle he could get.”
“Is it wide enough for the van?”
“Oh, oui! You should have seen some of the trucks that got through!”
“How much will it save us?”
“I don’t know exactly—three or four kilometers perhaps. It’s maybe three kilometers through the woods, and the airfield can’t be but another kilometer or two beyond that. But the road, I would guess, is eight or nine kilometers still to go.”
“We’ll chance it! Where is the turnoff?”
“It should be coming up . . . there it is!”
His hand shot out the open window. Logan braked, and swung the van hard to the right and into the densely wooded area.
The road was exactly as René had described it—perhaps worse. It was soon obvious to Logan that they would probably save no time at all. But by the time the realization came they had gone too far to turn back. He therefore continued to push hard, determined to save every minute possible. He knew he had no one to blame for his poor decision other than himself.
The old van bumped and rattled along, now in nearly pitch darkness on account of the forest. Occasionally Logan heard muffled gasps from Nat. Still he drove on, squinting to see the road in the scant rays of moonlight that reached the ground.
Suddenly the sound he dreaded most to hear, next to the report of a Gestapo pistol, came unmistakably through to his ear—the sickening hiss of a tire breathing its last. He slammed on the brakes with disgust. He would now have to pay twenty minutes for the ten he had hoped to save! He climbed out of the van and walked around to the back to get the spare. With incredulity a moment later he opened the tool compartment to see nothing but emptiness!
With tires as old and threadbare as the van’s, it seemed incredible that anyone would have driven it without a spare, even despite rubber rationing. But what was most disturbing of all was that he had not checked out this detail in advance. How stupid of me! he thought.
Sulkily, he informed his companions of their plight.
“It can’t be more than two or three kilometers to go,” offered René hopefully.
Logan climbed back in, seemed to debate with himself for a moment, then started the engine.
“There’s no sense worrying about this wheel now,” he muttered. “We may as well just see if we can push it through!”
He shifted down into first and lurched forward.
Now the ruts and potholes and deeply worn tracks of the road were next to impossible to negotiate, steering a tire with no rubber. In less than two hundred yards Logan was sweating freely with the effort of trying to control the wheel, which behaved as if it had a mind of its own. In the darkness he could not even see the rock, much less try to avoid it. Suddenly Logan’s arms were wrenched from the steering wheel and the van careened into the ditch at the side of the road.
“It’s my fault,” groaned Logan. “I’m sorry, mates.” Glancing at his watch, he saw they would never make it by ten. At least they had not yet heard the sounds of approaching aircraft.
Slowly Logan opened the door and got out. The night was still and quiet. Had there not been a war on, René’s observation was probably most apt—this would be a romantic place. But what was he to do now?
“Let’s strike oot on foot,” said Nat cheerfully.
“How could you possibly make it?” asked Logan.
“I got this far, didna I? Dinna forget, that plane’s my ticket home. I’ll make it, I tell ye!”
“If you’re up to it.”
“’Tisna but a wee bit o’ a walk,” said Nat encouragingly. “Wi’ the two o’ ye to help me, we’ll get there.”
“Let’s just pray that the plane doesn’t set down at ten and want to be back in the sky by five after.”
“Aye!”
The going was painfully slow, but they moved doggedly ahead. In eleven or twelve minutes they had covered about a kilometer and the forest had begun to thin somewhat, offering more light for their path as they advanced. Nat was braced between Logan and René, and Logan was heartened with their progress when suddenly he stopped and signalled them both to be quiet.
“Did you hear that?” he whispered.
The others shook their heads. They were, however, not inclined to argue when Logan silently led them off the path into the deeper cover of the pine wood. Crouching down behind an old tree stump, with held breath they waited to see what would come of whatever sound Logan had heard.
“Monsieur,” breathed René.
Logan kept his eyes toward the road, but indicated silence by raising his finger to his mouth.
“Monsieur,” repeated René in a scarcely audible whisper, handing something to Logan.
“What’s this?” said Logan as he took the object. As soon as his hands closed around it, he knew the answer to his own question.
“My father saw that you carried no weapon,” explained René, “so he gave this to me. But I do not know how to use it.”
“Well, I doubt we’ll have need of it,” replied Logan, reluctantly jamming the Webley revolver into his belt. “Let’s go . . . I think my imagination is too active tonight.”
They arose from their hiding place, inched their way forward back to the widened path, and continued on their way. In another ten minutes they had cleared the woods. The ground appeared to level out before them and the road widened perceptibly. The going had been rough for poor Nat, but now Logan hoisted him a little more strongly upon his shoulder and whispered whatever encouragement he could think of to keep his spirits up. In the distance he was sure he could make out the vague shapes of buildings.
The airfield!
“Come on, Nat!” he said, “we’re almost there!”
Suddenly the disaster every agent fears struck without warning.
As if springing up from the earth itself, two German soldiers loomed up before them, blocking their way. The next instant a flash of brilliant light blinded Logan’s eyes, accompanied by the sharp commands of German voices. Instantly Logan knew that all the wit in the world would not avail him this time, for he could never explain away the weapon in his belt, much less his limping, red-headed companion who carried no papers, making for a deserted airport in the middle of the night.
50
Tragedy
Lise looked toward the road for the tenth time in the last half hour.
Since Logan had the van and she and Claude only bicycles, she had fully anticipated Logan to arrive at the airfield at nearly the same time as they, despite his detour to the farm. But sh
e and Claude had already been there thirty minutes and still there had been no sign of the van.
She strode over to the runway where Claude was busy clearing away scattered brush and rock from the airstrip.
He glanced up as she approached. “We should have come out here days ago to do this,” he grunted.
“Michel didn’t want to draw unnecessary attention, either to us or to this place.” She bent over, picked up a branch and flung it away. “It’s not so bad, and we still have time.” She could hardly believe the condition of the landing surface was Claude’s only concern. “Aren’t you worried?” she finally asked.
“Yes, I’m worried,” he answered coldly. “We are going to have a job of it signaling the plane with only two of us.”
“Claude!” exclaimed Lise angrily. “Don’t you care what happens to Michel? What if he’s lying dead in some ditch!”
“It is one less pair of Anglais boots to lick.”
“He has never lorded it over any of us—especially you!”
“I’m going to pace off the lamp positions,” he said, ignoring Lise’s words. “It’s nearly ten.”
“You plan to do nothing about Michel?”
“I am going to do what has to be done, what we came here to do.”
“And what makes you think we can go ahead and signal the plane without knowing what trouble there may be out there?”
“The stupid Anglais is probably just lost.”
Lise grabbed up a large rock from the ground and hefted it in her hands with fire in her dark eyes. Even Claude might have felt some trepidation at that moment had there been daylight to reveal the flash from those angry orbs. But it was dark, and an instant later she heaved the rock in the air and well away from him.
“I’m going out to look for Michel,” she said resolutely.
“Don’t be foolish. You have no idea where he might be.”
“If something happened he would try to make it here however he could—even on foot if necessary. If the road was blocked, he would go out across country, maybe through the woods. Nothing would stop him except a German patrol.”
“And there are none in this area. He said that, remember?”
“Things can change. The Germans know this airfield is here, too. They have maps. Who knows but that they might keep it under watch? Michel may have missed something. I just know I don’t like the delay.”
She turned and walked off, intent on skirting the circumference of the old airport.
“You could never hope to find him out there!” called Claude after her. “It’s a foolhardy attempt.”
“You are the fool, Claude,” she spat back as she wheeled around. “You revel in killing your Germans, but when the war is over, what will it all be for? Friends? Country? Ideals? You don’t care about any of that. It’s all for hatred. And when the last Boche is dead, what will you have gained in return? They will be dead, but you will still be carrying your hatred with you. I do not intend to turn out that way. I won’t!”
She turned again and started off, but Claude threw down the armload of branches he held and called out for her to stop.
“Pace off the lamp positions,” he ordered. “I’ll look for your Anglais.” He grabbed up the rucksack that held his Sten sub-machine gun and stalked away. But before he had gone ten paces, he stopped and turned back momentarily to face Lise. “But you are wrong. You will end up like me—all of you will if you want to survive. There is no other way.”
Then he tramped off into the night, not realizing the stark contradiction between his present action and his words of hopelessness.
Lise watched him as he disappeared into the field that surrounded the airstrip on all sides. Was it possible that her words had actually penetrated? He didn’t have to go. Had she just witnessed a genuine act of selflessness on the part of the seemingly unfeeling Frenchman? Maybe Claude was human, after all.
She shook her head at the unlikely notion. He had probably done it just to shut her up!
With a sigh, Lise returned to the task at hand. They might not have need of the lights, but they had to be ready nonetheless. She tilted her eyes up toward the star-studded sky, then back to the woods that fringed the fields in the distance. It would be just like the Germans, she thought, to keep a patrol out there—invisible, just inside the trees, waiting, watching, trying to lure the Resistance into using what appeared to be nothing but a long-forgotten and abandoned strip of concrete.
Please, she silently cried in her heart—please, let everything turn out all right!
———
“Your weapons!” ordered one of the soldiers.
Logan took the small pistol out of his belt and threw it into the dirt.
The soldier pointed his rifle at Nat and René. “Weapons!” he repeated.
“They’re not armed,” said Logan in his inept German.
Keeping his rifle roving between the three and his eyes glaring at them for any sudden movements, the soldier nodded to his partner.
Logan squinted into the spotlight still pointed directly into his face to see if he could determine anything about their plight, but he could see nothing. A moment later he felt hands frisking him. The second soldier then moved on to Nat and René. When he was satisfied that they had been armed only with the handgun, he stepped back with his rifle.
“What are you doing here?” demanded the first soldier.
The question seemed oddly inappropriate to Logan. Why not just haul them into Vouziers, or to their commanding officer and let Intelligence handle the questioning? But something about these two seemed peculiar . . . hesitant.
If he could just stall them somehow, thought Logan. The longer he could keep them from taking action, the more time he had to figure out something.
“My name is Michel Tanant,” said Logan. “From Paris. I have travel papers.”
“And do you have papers for that?” The soldier cocked his head toward the Webley. “I’ve seen no such weapons except what we’ve confiscated from the underground.”
“This is all a mistake,” Logan went on, hardly thinking about what he said, just trying to buy some time. “We found it along the road. We were coming to turn it in.”
The young soldier smiled. Not a cruel smile, but rather one displaying profound amusement at the audacious attempt at such a ridiculous lie. The two soldiers exchanged meaningful looks from which Logan was at last able to guess what was troubling these two.
Could they be lost? he thought to himself.
Here they were, with three prisoners of war, and yet with no idea how to get them back to their unit.
“And your friend there?” asked the Nazi, indicating Nat. “He’s just out for a stroll in these deserted woods, with a bad wound like he’s got?”
“He’s my brother-in-law,” replied Logan, the truth spilling out without his even pausing to think about it. “Yes, you’re right, he’s wounded. Got into a scuffle with a Resistance agent. I was trying to get him into town, but our van broke down and we lost our way.”
“Why are you not on the main road?”
“Because if those Free France maniacs get hold of us, they’ll slit our throats. You know how they are. It’s just lucky we ran into you two! Can you help us into—”
But before he could say anything further, the blinding light which the German had trained on his face was suddenly extinguished, seemingly from the sharp blast of rifle that echoed through the night.
Logan dropped to the ground. More gunfire exploded all around him. Voices shouted out in a multitude of languages. In the confusion he could understand none of it.
He scrambled around, trying to locate his gun where it had fallen. “Nat!” he called. “Nat . . . where are you?”
The only answer that met his ears was more gunfire, this time from close by. The two Germans were firing, but not at him, it seemed. More volleys sounded, this time from farther away, toward the airfield.
Logan heard a scream. It sounded like René, but he could not be sure. H
e still had heard nothing from Nat, but then Nat was already weak and was probably trying to conserve his strength.
More gunshots, explosive bursts of fire lighting the night, followed by blackness. Another scream of pain, followed by the throaty cursing of a German voice.
Out of the corner of his eye, Logan suddenly saw a figure spring forward. It was Nat, lurching toward one of the German soldiers who had the sights of his gun leveled directly at Logan’s head. He hardly heard the quick succession of shots that followed.
Indistinctly aware of the danger he was in, Logan rolled, his fingers closing around the Webley as he did so. Another bullet whizzed within a fraction of an inch from his head. Another quickly followed, spraying dirt at his shoulder. He spun around, trying to make out Nat’s form, and while dirt and grass were still spattering up into Logan’s face from a third shot, he fired the revolver almost blindly in the direction of the other soldier. Even as he squeezed the trigger, something in his confused brain expected his wild shot to be followed immediately by a fatal slug from one of the Nazis which would end this sudden nightmare.
But no shot came. Everything suddenly fell silent.
Logan pulled himself to his knees, gripping the pistol in one hand and rubbing the dirt from his eyes with the other.
As his vision cleared and the moonlight brought the battlefield into focus at his feet, his whole body convulsed with the sight that met his eyes.
Three bodies bloodied the ground around him.
51
The Landing
I should never have made Claude go, thought Lise frantically to herself. Now they were all separated, perhaps all in danger. What was worse: Lise was now stuck at the airfield alone. She did not dare leave it to search on her own, lest they return and find her missing.
What could have happened to Michel . . . to Claude? Was it merely some silly miscommunication they would all laugh about later? Something inside told her otherwise.
Lise paced back and forth, every now and then glancing up into the sky. At least the plane had not yet come. She was concerned for Michel’s friend. Who could tell when another chance like this would come for him to get out of France so easily? His wound would make any other route impossible, even fatal.
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