Scorched Earth

by Robert Muchamore

  ‘Things could certainly be worse,’ Henderson said. ‘But when the Germans surround buildings with tanks, the resistance is helpless and there have been significant casualties. Putting two and two together, it’s not difficult to conclude that we should be using the torpedo explosives we seized last night to target tanks.’

  ‘I said we should blow up the bridge—’ Sam blurted.

  Henderson cut him off. ‘Blowing up bridges suits retreating armies far more than advancing armies. And the more bridges that get destroyed, the more likely it is that Paris will get drawn into a siege.

  ‘Most of the Paris Garrison’s tanks are being kept in city parks. I’ve been told that one of the largest tank facilities is just across the river, in Bois de Boulogne. German vehicles are distributed throughout the park, and camouflaged to avoid attacks from the air. The Germans have no reliable way of bringing more fuel or spares into the city so we’ll be targeting a refuelling and maintenance depot.’

  ‘Who’s we?’ Edith asked.

  ‘It’s a simple blast and run operation,’ Henderson said. ‘So it’ll be me, and I’ll take Marc because he speaks the best German. We’ll only need about half of the explosives, so we’ll leave the rest behind for a rainy day.

  ‘While I’m gone, I want PT to take overall charge. Luc and Joel can run the ambush points. Sam, Paul and Edith concentrate on the barricades. Questions?’

  ‘What if you get blown up?’ Luc asked sarcastically.

  Henderson looked irritated. ‘You’re all trained. You know how to contact the Ghost Circuit if needs be.’

  *

  The truck’s windscreen had been shattered by Marc’s bullets, but not so badly that Henderson couldn’t see where he was driving. He wore the dead SS officer’s uniform. Marc sat next to him, dressed in a beige mechanic’s overall. He’d tried putting on the dead Pole’s jacket, but it was absurdly small.

  ‘Like old times,’ Marc said, as they set off.

  Marc was thinking back to the weeks after the Nazi invasion when he’d first met Henderson in Paris. They’d depended on each other and Henderson felt like the father-figure Marc, as a twelve-year-old orphan, had always craved. But nostalgia could only take Marc so far. He was now old enough to see Henderson’s flaws, and his heart belonged to Jae.

  Paris wasn’t much like old times either. They got over the bridge with no bother, but after that every street was dead. They imagined resistance snipers looking at their German truck from rooftops and balconies. There were fewer barricades than they’d expected and many of the ones they did see were unmanned and looked like a good stiff breeze would flatten them.

  Henderson drove flat out, but the truck still caught a couple of bullets as it pulled on to a large crossroads. A German motorbike messenger had crashed some hours earlier, possibly after being shot at. The bloody rider lay unattended at the kerb, covered with flies as documents from his attaché case caught the wind.

  The journey was less than 3 kilometres and, given their explosive cargo, Henderson was relieved to reach parkland where there was far less chance of getting shot at.

  The tank park was blocked off with coils of barbed wire. The wooden security booth was burned out and a sturdier entry gate had been built further back, using sandbags and ribbed steel plates which were usually laid flat to help vehicle convoys cross boggy ground.

  ‘Special destruction unit,’ Henderson told a guard, as he flashed the dead SS officer’s military ID papers, on to which he’d skilfully grafted his own photograph.

  The guard looked baffled.

  ‘I’m carrying demolition explosives,’ Henderson explained. ‘I can’t get into the city centre, so I have orders to transfer my cargo to an armoured vehicle.’

  The elderly German guard walked cautiously around the vehicle and peered in the back.

  ‘Strange explosives,’ he said.

  Henderson spoke in his most irritable, pompous German, as two small Panzers drove out of the compound in the opposite lane. ‘This has all been cleared in advance. I was told a vehicle was being prepared for me in the refuelling area.’

  The guard shrugged. ‘Nobody tells me anything, sir. You need to drive six hundred metres. Branch left when you see a turnoff to your right, after the two felled trees. You’ll see the maintenance and refuelling sheds right in front of you.’

  Henderson and Marc exchanged relieved smiles as they set off through the gate. Most of the park was woodland, but there were also areas of grass. These were beyond the shooting range of any resistance sniper and they drove past German soldiers sunbathing or playing football.

  As Henderson drove slowly, Marc stepped into the truck’s rear compartment. He grabbed a bunch of pre-wired detonators and began pushing them into the sockets on twelve drums of torpedo explosive.

  There was no additional security around the maintenance and refuelling compound and nobody paid attention as Henderson parked up in front of a 50-metre-long canopy. The corrugated metal roof was covered in camouflage netting and teams worked in the shade beneath, performing routine maintenance on a selection of aged Panzer tanks.

  ‘I count sixteen tanks in blast range,’ Henderson said, as Marc passed him a pair of trigger wires.

  ‘All connected up,’ Marc said.

  Henderson plugged the wires into a simple clockwork timer. ‘I reckon eight minutes.’

  Marc looked surprised. ‘It’s quite a walk, and then we’ve got to find a way through the perimeter.’

  ‘Change of plan,’ Henderson said. ‘I fancy a quick tan and a chance to see how it goes off.’

  As Marc jumped out and walked to the back, he jammed his hunting knife in one of the rear tyres, in case someone tried to move the truck. Henderson moved quickly, but not so fast that anyone would pay attention.

  Henderson walked past the fallen trees and started unbuttoning his shirt as he crossed the road and headed towards shouts coming from a football game.

  ‘Reckon this is far enough?’ Marc asked.

  ‘Plenty,’ Henderson said, as he glanced at his watch. ‘Just open your mouth in four minutes and fifty seconds, so that your eardrums don’t pop.’

  They found a spot in the shade. Marc peeled his overall down, exposing a well-muscled chest, while Henderson rolled up his blazer and tucked it under his head.

  ‘When the bomb goes—’

  Henderson paused as a tatty football rolled their way. Marc kicked it back at a lanky German who gave him a thank-you wave.

  ‘Everyone will duck,’ Henderson said. ‘Then they’ll move towards the explosion to see what’s happening. While everyone’s distracted we’ll back into the trees and cut our way through the wire.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ Marc said. Then after a pause, ‘How many people do you reckon will die?’

  ‘If we put those tanks out of action, we’ll save more than we kill,’ Henderson said.

  ‘You know, I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve killed,’ Marc said solemnly. ‘When did we get so cold-blooded?’

  ‘War’s shit,’ Henderson said, as the sun broke between clouds and made him squint. ‘People do what they have to.’

  ‘I just hope it ends soon,’ Marc said.

  ‘It will,’ Henderson said firmly. ‘And you’ve got your whole future. Don’t waste it torturing yourself over the past.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Wednesday 23 August 1944–Thursday 24 August 1944

  Marc didn’t sleep that night. He thought about the truck exploding. Men not much older than himself grabbed their shirts off the grass and ran towards other men not much older than himself who’d just been killed or had bits of their bodies blown off.

  Part of what troubled Marc was how easy it had all been. Finding the explosives was a stroke of luck. There’d been no problem getting into the compound. The escape was uneventful and once they’d switched to civilian clothes, the walk back to Saint Cloud was no bother either.

  Marc thought about Jae and got scared. What if she was caugh
t up in a battle near the farm? What if he got trapped inside Paris, or died somehow before he ever saw her again? Most of his stuff was already packed in a bag on the bedroom floor. There were bikes downstairs and if he rode off now he’d be with Jae by sunrise. And if anything went wrong, they’d at least die in the same place …

  Paul spoke softly from his mattress down on the floor. ‘Are you OK, mate?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘I can hear you sniffling. What’s the matter?’

  ‘I’m just sick of everything,’ Marc said. ‘The sniper scope, plastic explosive, grenades, petrol bombs, trucks, dead bodies. And Henderson.’

  Paul was surprised. ‘You’ve always been his favourite.’

  Marc felt guilty as Paul sat on the corner of his bed and put a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Look at me crying,’ Marc said. ‘You’re the one who lost everyone. Your mum, your dad … Rosie.’

  ‘You never had family in the first place,’ Paul said, feeling tears well up. ‘I’m not sure if that’s better or worse. I keep remembering one time. Me and Rosie were really little. Playing in the bath, and my mum sitting in a chair laughing at us. The memory hurts, but at least I lived it.’

  ‘I wanna make new memories with Jae,’ Marc said, choking back a sob. ‘The only ones in my head are shit.’

  *

  Marc was still depressed when he wandered down to the barricades on Thursday morning. His mood wasn’t helped by sickening tension in a community that didn’t know which to fear more: sudden death, or slow starvation.

  Not long after sunrise there was a series of blasts across the river. A woman who usually walked over the bridge with communist news sheets came today in tears with a party of refugees.

  Eighty Germans had been killed in the blast at the tank park. As day broke, tanks had poured on to the streets across the river, seeking revenge. Tanks smashed through homes, apartment blocks were set ablaze with flamethrowers and anyone who tried escaping the burning buildings had been shot at or beaten up.

  Thick black smoke billowed across the river. Plenty of people around the neighbourhood knew that the explosives had been ambushed nearby and that Henderson was responsible for the attack on the tank park.

  Besides grieving for people across the river, there was a terrible fear that the Germans would come here seeking revenge if they found out the truth. Henderson’s status as neighbourhood leader evaporated just as rapidly as it had taken hold a few days earlier. Nobody bothered manning the barricades or ambush points and Henderson found people looking away, or taking cover indoors when he approached.

  He called a meeting of his own people in the apartment and gave a blunt assessment. ‘I have no vehicles apart from bikes. Guns and ammunition are critically short. Worst of all, half the neighbourhood knows I’m here and that I’m behind the blast at the tank park. The Germans are weak, but there’s still a chance they could send in a snatch squad to arrest us.’

  ‘That’s if the locals don’t shoot us first,’ Luc added.

  Henderson continued. ‘Our only realistic option is to leave the area and head towards Beauvais. We’ll get food there and we left a significant amount of equipment with the Maquis in the woods. Assuming that our set is intact, we’ll also be able to re-establish direct radio contact with campus.’

  ‘Err, pardon me,’ Joel said. ‘But didn’t we leave Beauvais when the Maquis were under heavy shelling? Jean and his men aren’t exactly going to welcome us back with open arms.’

  ‘It could be delicate,’ Henderson admitted. ‘But there’s a lot of room in the woods and it’ll certainly be a lot less precarious than it is here.’

  Edith looked at Marc. ‘You’ve been back to Beauvais – what do you reckon?’

  ‘The Milice are still in the woods. Jean’s only interest is in keeping the boys alive and I’ve not heard of any trouble.’

  Luc felt miserable because the move would take him away from Laure, but he tried to hide his emotions. ‘When are we leaving?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s less conspicuous if we travel in two or three groups,’ Henderson said.

  Marc nodded. ‘Everyone knows us here and things could turn nasty if they see us making a run for it.’

  ‘We’ll wait until darkness,’ Henderson agreed.

  ‘What about the curfew?’ Paul asked.

  ‘What curfew?’ Marc said. ‘Germans are way too scared to stand out in the open at checkpoints now. If anything we’re more likely to get stopped and harassed in daylight.’

  Henderson spent a few seconds thinking. ‘Don’t tell anyone we’re leaving. We’ll keep showing our faces around the neighbourhood and act like we’re trying to get people back behind the barricades.’

  Marc was longing to get back to Jae and cheered up knowing they’d soon be close. Henderson sent Luc and Edith down to the barricades, but everyone was indoors and even the Maquis had vanished.

  Not long after 2 p.m., a German convoy crossed the bridge from the city. Twenty tanks thundered west towards the front lines, followed by half-tracks, motorised artillery and two dozen open-sided trucks crammed with soldiers.

  Jean-Claude knocked on the apartment door just before 7 p.m. When he stepped inside, it was clear that Henderson’s team was preparing to leave.

  ‘I wanted to listen to the BBC,’ he said.

  Everyone gathered around the radio, apart from Luc, who was downstairs enjoying a final chance to spend time with Laure. The broadcast mentioned that British troops had reached Rouen, while the Americans were across the Seine at Fontainebleau. Paris didn’t get a mention.

  ‘I’m sorry you’re leaving,’ Jean-Claude said. ‘At least you have the balls to fight.’

  ‘You’ll have to stay here now you’ve seen us packing,’ Henderson said, as he reached for a key off the table and held it up. ‘But it’s a decent apartment – you might as well make use of it once we’ve gone.’

  ‘Your radio?’ Jean-Claude asked.

  ‘It came with the apartment,’ Henderson said. ‘It’s staying here.’

  As Henderson passed the apartment key to Jean-Claude, an American spotter plane skimmed noisily overhead.

  ‘Jesus,’ Paul gasped. ‘That practically stripped tiles off the roof.’

  Marc and Edith watched out of the window as the aircraft turned, using moonlight reflecting off the Seine to navigate towards the city centre.

  ‘Bye-bye, Paris,’ Edith said gently. ‘I just hope the Germans don’t blow you up before I get to come back and see you properly.’

  *

  It was a quarter past one on Thursday morning as Marc’s bike led Edith’s and Joel’s away from the apartment. He had a pistol and knife on his belt and a few pieces of clothing in his backpack, along with his disassembled sniper rifle.

  Marc led the group because he knew the route to Beauvais better than anyone. The plan was for Paul to follow twenty minutes later with Sam, then Henderson, Luc and PT would leave half an hour after that.

  Marc was keen to get back to Jae, but he always got a tiny bit sad when he left somewhere. The hot weather had finally started to break. The cobbles were slippery under his slim tyres and there was a gentle drizzle in the air as he pumped his legs up the steep hill.

  He had to dismount and lift the bike over the unmanned barricade at the top. After checking behind to make sure Edith and Joel were keeping up, he rolled left and started down a gentle slope.

  The cobbles made things rough, but there was childish pleasure to be had from the shuddering handlebars and the drizzle felt refreshing after so many hot days.

  Marc picked up more speed than he should have and the brakes squealed as he neared the bottom of the hill. The narrow road turned in a gentle arc, but he was shocked by a vehicle shooting out of a side-turning less than 20 metres ahead. Its headlamps were on full beam, which broke every German regulation, and the compact, open-topped vehicle was something he’d seen before but didn’t instantly identify.

  Marc’s first instinct was fear but, a
s he braked hard, aiming to turn around and make a fast getaway, he worked out that it was a Jeep like the ones American aircrews used on the roads near CHERUB campus.

  But what was a Jeep doing here?

  As the bike stopped, Marc raised a hand to shield his eyes from the beam of light. A tall man stood up on the passenger side, looking downhill through binoculars. Edith had joined the dots much faster and rolled right into the light.

  ‘Are you Americans?’ she squealed, grinning helplessly. ‘Tom and Jerry? Mickey Mouse? Bugs Bunny?’

  While Edith was reduced to spluttering the names of cartoon characters, Marc trembled and spoke half-reasonable English.

  ‘Do you need any help, sir?’

  The tall man lowered his binoculars and was clearly surprised to hear English. ‘How’s the bridge down the hill?’

  ‘Intact,’ Marc said. Since it was dark and the headlight beams were blinding him, the scene felt a lot like a dream. ‘You’ve got a clear run down the bridge from here.’

  ‘What about Krauts?’

  ‘Not in this neighbourhood,’ Marc said. ‘It’s all residential. Turn left on to the bridge and it’s pretty much a straight ride to the city centre from there.’

  The American gave Marc a little salute. ‘You might want to step off your bikes. This road’s about to get busy.’

  As the tall American sat down, his driver spoke into a radio microphone. ‘Pathfinder six reporting. Bridge fifty-four is clear to go. Repeat, fifty-four clear to go. Over and out.’

  Marc, Edith and Joel exchanged wary smiles as they stood astride their bikes.

  ‘Do we keep riding, or what?’ Joel asked.

  ‘In pitch dark, with a convoy on the way?’ Marc said. ‘We need to go back and warn the others.’

  They’d been pacing themselves for a four-hour ride to Beauvais, but Joel had no need to hold back as he led the return, pedalling as fast as he could and almost losing it on the damp cobbles. When they got to the apartment, they bolted up to the third floor and encountered Paul and Sam coming downstairs with their luggage.

  ‘Nobody’s riding anywhere tonight,’ Joel said.