Henderson's Boys: One Shot Kill: One Shot Kill

by Robert Muchamore

  He tiptoed around the garage. It was big enough for six trucks but currently only held two, plus a tatty car up on jacks. As he kept his back to the wall, Luc looked for any sign of movement under the parked trucks. It was close range and his machine gun was an indiscriminate weapon, so he pulled his silenced pistol from a belt holster as he watched shadows.

  He’d reached the cab of the last truck when he heard a coughing sound close by. He spun and dived behind the truck as a man took aim from the other end of the garage. Luc hit the floor, flat on his chest. He took aim between the tyres and shot the German in the ankle.

  As the German yelled, Luc crawled rapidly under the truck and finished him off with a shot through the chest.

  ‘Jean, Didier,’ he yelled. ‘Get down here and cover me.’

  Luc studied the dead German. The gas cylinder contained water, concentrated pepper oil and ether. The mixture was supposed to cause breathing difficulties and drowsiness, but judging by the man’s horribly swollen eyes the cocktail was more potent than the way Henderson had described it during the detailed briefing.

  ‘Try to find some controls,’ Luc said, as he approached a winding staircase. ‘Levers, buttons, whatever. Get those blast doors back open or we’re shit out of luck.’

  As Jean and Didier hunted, Luc moved towards a spiral staircase which ran around the outside of a cargo lift. According to the French draughtsman that Henderson had tracked down, the bunker was designed as a place to store weapons, safe from the threat of German bombs. The design was quick-and-cheap, with one entrance, one lift and one set of stairs leading down to a cavernous storage area.

  ‘Zweig, why have you closed the door?’ someone down below shouted in German. ‘Don’t you know the commandant is still out there?’

  Luc’s German was far from perfect, but his accent was passable and he hoped that the echo on the stairs might hide the fact that he wasn’t Zweig. ‘The commandant wants everyone out searching.’

  As Luc said this, Jean pulled on a lever and the doors started opening again.

  Marc was first in, and was shocked by the sight of Henderson slumped against the narrow corridor wall, almost unconscious. But before he could worry about that he heard Luc’s pathetic attempts to lure more Germans up the stairs.

  Marc’s German was excellent and he rushed towards the stairs and shouted authoritatively. ‘The commandant is going ballistic,’ Marc shouted. ‘I’ve just reopened the doors. He wants every free man up here searching the woods.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ the man at the bottom shouted.

  Marc deliberately didn’t reply. There was no sound of footsteps on the stairs, but just as Marc and Luc started to assume that the Germans down below were suspicious, the lift began moving upwards.

  ‘Henderson should survive, but he’s away with the fairies at the moment,’ Goldberg said. He stared aghast at the lift. ‘Are they really that stupid?’

  ‘I reckon Luc’s number one man for massacring Germans coming out of a lift,’ Marc said. ‘Shall we go down and flush the rest out?’

  ‘You bet,’ Goldberg said. ‘Didier, we might need gas. Come with us.’

  The lift was designed for strength not speed, and Marc watched its rusty drive cable shudder inside the wire cage as he raced down ninety stairs behind Goldberg.

  ‘Hello, boys,’ Luc said, when the lift juddered to a halt in front of him.

  The front of the lift was a folding metal gate, so the men inside could see Luc as he pushed the muzzle of his gun between the bars. He swelled with joy as five desperate Germans either lunged for their own weapons or tried shoving another man in front of them.

  ‘This one’s for my parents,’ Luc stated.

  Luc squeezed his machine gun trigger, spraying rounds from point blank range until there was nothing but dead bodies and a stream of blood draining from one corner and spattering the floor of the lift shaft twenty metres below.

  Luc was clutching his fists and grinning madly as he backed away, dropping his clip and fitting on a fresh one. Jean looked completely horrified.

  ‘No mercy for Nazi scum,’ Luc told Jean, as he slapped him on the back. ‘Signal the boys out front, then deal with the trucks. Make sure the engines run. Make sure the tanks are full and clear out any junk in the back. I’m going downstairs to back up the others.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Paul and Sam had watched from their sniping positions in front of the base as the huge blast doors closed and reopened. Handheld radios were too bulky and highly vulnerable to German interception, so the pair had no way of knowing what the situation was below ground until Jean came out and signalled with a torch.

  Two flashes would have meant that the bunker had been secured, but he gave a single which meant it was safe to move in, but that the operation was still underway.

  Paul slung his rifle over his shoulder, leaving Sam as the last sniper to cover any surprise movements on the base. After jogging to Sam’s position and checking that he was OK, Paul ran a couple of hundred metres back to Rosie in the clearing.

  She’d taken the locator beacon out of her pack, connected the battery and switched it into the warm-up position. The device was the size of a couple of loaves of bread. It contained two transmitters, with a rotating dish aerial on top and a package of high-explosive booby traps at the bottom to destroy the top-secret device if a bomb didn’t get it first.

  Once activated the first transmitter would send a radio pulse which could be picked up from over fifty kilometres away. The second short-range transmitter sent out a series of directional radio beams. A bomber fitted with a compatible receiver unit could fly along the path of these beams, and receive precise information on their distance to the target.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Rosie asked, when Paul got close.

  ‘It’s as clear as mud,’ Paul said. ‘But we got the single flash from Jean, so they must be making progress.’

  ‘I know we had it working earlier at the house,’ Rosie said, as she stared at the contraption anxiously. ‘But the pounding it’s taken must have knocked a connection loose. It’s switched out of warm-up mode twice already.’

  ‘Too late to start tinkering with it now,’ Paul said, as he stared at the transmitter’s army-green casing. ‘It’ll either work or it won’t.’

  ‘I don’t want it to get bumped,’ Rosie said. ‘I’ll carry the transmitter. You take my backpack and gun.’

  *

  Marc did sums as he crept down the spiral stairs behind Didier and Goldberg. He hadn’t seen every kill, but reckoned they’d sniped eight to ten Germans above ground, Sam had taken one out in the forest and there’d been a few more in the lift.

  ‘Can’t be more than three bad guys left down here,’ Marc whispered.

  ‘Sounds right,’ Goldberg agreed. ‘I’ll lead. Marc, cover my back with the silenced pistol. Didier, keep the gas ready.’

  The stairs ended at a broad corridor, with a pair of battered miniature forklift trucks parked at the far end. Rooms branched off on either side, each with doors wide enough for cargo pallets, while the air was heavy with aromas of bad plumbing and cigarettes.

  There was no sign of life, but most of the doors did have small portholes. Dr Blanc had told them that she’d treated the suicidal scientist in the penultimate room on the right-hand side of the corridor, and had briefly glanced into the laboratory directly opposite.

  Within seconds of Marc reaching the bunker floor, Luc had caught up.

  ‘Got five of ’em,’ he said proudly.

  Goldberg ordered Luc to stand by the lift shaft, covering the length of the corridor while he and Marc walked down, peering into the rooms on each side as they passed.

  The rooms seemed more like tunnels. Each went back more than sixty metres and was ten metres wide, with the only light coming from a line of bare bulbs strung down the centre.

  The first room Marc peered into was full of metal crates filled with fighter-plane ammo, his next had sinister-looking racks containi
ng hundreds of bombs and the third was crammed with all the junk the French had left behind, from waterproof ponchos to ancient wooden-handled grenades.

  Goldberg had reached the dorm and laboratory when a bolt snapped on a much smaller door directly behind him. Cigarette smoke billowed as an elderly man strolled out, adjusting braces attached to drab green army trousers.

  By the time Goldberg had turned to face the door, Marc had shot the man through the chest. The pudgy figure stumbled back into the toilet, clattering into a bucket filled with brooms and mops.

  The range was nothing, but aiming wasn’t easy with gas masks on and Goldberg nodded appreciatively.

  As Goldberg approached the scientists’ dorm, Marc looked into the laboratory. The main lights were off, but there were several indicator lights and the glow of valves visible through the grilles of electrical equipment.

  ‘Get ready,’ Goldberg said, as he made a come here sign in Didier’s direction. ‘Have the gas ready, just in case, but try and avoid using it. We don’t want to have to carry these scientists out on our backs.’

  Goldberg pushed the door handle down, and booted it inwards before spinning out and pressing his back to the corridor wall. He’d expected a blast of gunfire or some heroic German charge, but all he got was a strong whiff of body odour and a couple of sleepy moans about making less noise.

  Marc reached around the doorway and flipped light switches when his hand found them. The men inside were on metal-framed bunks and began yawning and shielding their eyes. Goldberg charged in with his machine gun ready, but there was no sign of soldiers or Luftwaffe.

  Goldberg pulled up his gas mask. ‘Where are the Germans?’ he shouted.

  A man in the top bunk nearest the door stared at Goldberg’s commando gear as he felt about for a set of wire-rimmed glasses.

  ‘I think the Boche all went up top for something,’ the man said. ‘Something connected to your presence, I’d imagine.’

  Goldberg looked surprised, as Marc made sure there were no Nazis under the beds, or hiding behind the lockers at the end of the room.

  ‘They left you completely unguarded?’ Goldberg asked.

  The man with the glasses nodded as he swung his feet over the side of the bed. ‘We don’t give the Germans any trouble,’ he explained. ‘Best not to mess with men armed with machine guns, don’t you think?’

  The plan had been for Henderson to tell the scientists what would happen next, but he was up top with a mouthful of busted teeth. As French wasn’t Goldberg’s first language, the job fell to Marc.

  ‘Listen up,’ Marc said, clapping his hands to fix everyone’s attention as he put down his backpack.

  ‘Have the Americans landed?’ a fat man rolling off one of the rear bunks asked.

  ‘No such luck,’ Marc said, as he realised that the men down here probably didn’t get much news. ‘We’re part of a resistance group. You need to listen carefully. The base guards are either dead or hiding out in one of the other rooms. We have high-quality false documentation that will enable you to travel to Paris, disguised as a team of labourers. Once there you’ll be split into pairs and you’ll begin carefully planned journeys to Allied territory.

  ‘I need you to move quickly and quietly. Pack a few personal belongings, but nothing that contains your real identity. You can also go—’

  Marc was interrupted by the sound of a bullet ricocheting off bricks. Goldberg looked out and saw that Luc had shot a Luftwaffe officer who’d been hiding in the laboratory.

  Boo and Joyce had dug up pictures of many of the scientists named in the notebook, mostly from the group photographs traditionally taken at the end of big scientific conferences. Luc recognised his victim as the German project director, Dr Hans Lutz.

  ‘Got another Nazi!’ Luc shouted cheerfully. ‘Guess the big boss didn’t want to go upstairs and get his hands dirty.’

  ‘When we’re certain it’s safe, you can also go across the hall to the laboratory,’ Marc continued, trying to assert himself above an atmosphere of fear and shock. ‘You can each take a small quantity of scientific notes, along with any equipment that you feel is of high value. But we only have two trucks and whatever you take, you’ve got to be able to carry by yourselves. I also need to take up-to-date photographs of each of you, which I’ll develop en route and attach to the blank documentation.’

  ‘Are you here because Jaulin passed his notebook to that fat doctor?’ a lanky man dressed in socks and undershorts asked. It was understandable that the scientists had mixed feelings about the sudden shocking arrival of the resistance, but this fellow sounded outright hostile.

  ‘Yes, we got the notebook,’ Marc said. ‘We’ll have plenty of time to explain when we’re on the road. What matters now is that you pack up and leave as quickly as possible.’

  ‘Escaping sounds damned dangerous to me,’ the lanky man said. ‘What if we don’t want to leave?’

  Goldberg didn’t like the man’s tone and spoke angrily. ‘We’re here because we were led to believe that you’re French scientists being forced to work on a German military project. If you want to stay here and continue working for the Nazis, that makes you traitors and war criminals and I’ll have no option but to execute you.’

  Another man nodded in agreement with lanky, but most of the others were either neutral or stared at him in disbelief.

  ‘What right have you to do this?’ the lanky man ranted furiously. ‘You’re American. Are you working with the authority of the French government in exile, or for American imperialist ends?’

  ‘What about our families?’ another man asked. ‘If we escape they could be persecuted.’

  Marc had a lot more sympathy with this last question. ‘We’re going to set this place to blow before we leave. Shortly after that, twenty-five American bombers will wipe this place off the face of earth. Nobody will come looking because the Germans will think you’re all dead.’

  ‘So our families will think we’re dead?’

  ‘Possibly,’ Marc said. ‘But think how happy they’ll be when they find you’re not.’

  Some of the scientists laughed nervously.

  ‘We’ve put our lives on the line to save you,’ Goldberg added indignantly. ‘If it wasn’t for what’s in your big brains you’d die down here, like other Nazi prisoners who die every night in Allied bombing raids.’

  But the lanky man still wasn’t having it. ‘You have no legitimacy,’ he said, as he got right in Goldberg’s face. ‘You Americans want to steal our technology. You’re no better than the Germans.’

  Goldberg wasn’t a big man, but he was tough and his patience had run out. He stepped forward and smashed the skinny Frenchman in the mouth with the metal butt of his machine gun, then floored him with a knockout punch to the temple.

  ‘He stays here and he’ll be dead in an hour,’ Goldberg told the others. ‘Now start packing. This is a war and I’m not your mother, so no more shit from any of you.’

  If anyone still had doubts, none of the scientists dared show them as they started getting dressed and packing up. Marc had taken a pocket camera and a pack of flashbulbs out of his pack, and began taking identity photographs with each man standing in front of a bare wall.

  ‘We’re glad you’re here,’ one man said, as Marc lined him up in a wire-frame viewfinder. ‘What we do here has been eating me up. Jaulin spent weeks drawing and hiding that notebook. He’ll be over the moon when he gets back from the toilet.’

  Another man laughed before butting in. ‘Old Jaulin can spend half a day in that toilet. I don’t know how he stands the smell.’

  Marc’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Jaulin’s not here?’ he asked, as he did a quick count and realised that there were ten men moving and one unconscious.

  Jaulin was a brilliant scientist. Joyce had found pictures of him, but Marc only now made a connection between the grey-haired scientist in a spotted bow tie he’d seen in a photo on campus and the man in German army trousers who he’d shot emerging from the toilet
.

  Marc felt like spewing, but before he could tell anyone what had happened, he heard Luc shout from the base of the stairs.

  ‘Rosie and stick-boy have arrived with the beacon.’

  Goldberg let three scientists cross the hall into the laboratory to pick up their research notes before turning to Marc.

  ‘How long do you need down here?’ Goldberg asked, as the next man in the photo queue stepped up to the wall.

  ‘Only a couple of minutes for the pictures,’ Marc said. ‘Lift’s a bloody mess and some of the guys are pretty old, so it’s gonna take a while to get them up the stairs.’

  ‘Fifteen minutes sound about right?’ Goldberg said.

  ‘Should be plenty of time,’ Marc said.

  Goldberg shouted down the hallway. ‘Luc, tell them to turn the beacon on in twelve minutes. We should be at least a mile from here before the bombers arrive.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The scientists’ fake identity documents had to be ready for the first German checkpoint they encountered, so as soon as the photographs were done Marc pulled the film from the camera and worked with his hands in a light-proof bag, unravelling the film from its roll before dropping it into an insulated metal pot filled with warm developing fluid.

  It would take seventeen minutes for the film negatives to develop, after which the canister would be flushed with distilled water. Then he’d add a bleaching agent for a few minutes, flush the canister again and finally add a fixing chemical to stop the negatives from fading.

  To make photos from these negatives Marc would then have to make contact prints on to light-sensitive paper using a handheld enlarger and repeat the develop/bleach/fix process on the paper itself. It was a process he’d practised dozens of times in the campus darkroom, but never with the added stress of a mission going on in the background.

  While Marc concentrated on photographs, Didier helped two exuberant Jewish scientists carry a chunky wooden mock-up of an FZG-76 nose cone, fitted with the latest prototype of its guidance system, up the spiral stairs.