Dannecker was already running for the door.
The Bear vaulted the dusty reception desk, slid across its wide surface, then dropped to the other side in one fluid movement. He kept on running, heading toward the huge green-and-gold-painted swing doors at the back of the reception area.
He hit them hard.
They were locked.
He bounced off, stumbled backward, and looked around for Jimmy and Rossett. Jimmy was lifting the flap on the counter, but Rossett followed the Bear’s lead and skidded over the counter surface holding the .303 high.
Rossett landed and worked the bolt as he ran.
The Bear stepped to the side a half second before Rossett fired a shot into the lock. The big .303 round punched the lock barrel straight through the thick wooden doors and six feet into the next room. Rossett kicked the doors open on the run. What remained of the lock splintered, and he was through and still running before the doors had fully swung open.
They were now through to a darkened atrium, which was lit by dim emergency lighting and nothing else. Concentric circles of dusty desks spun out around a raised central dais, and as Rossett and the Bear ran past them, leaves of paper whipped and whirled in their wake. At the far wall they stopped at another two doors, exactly the same as the set they had passed through on entering the room.
This time they waited for Jimmy to catch up.
The Bear gave Rossett a broad smile. “This is living, Lion, finally. This is what people like us are bred for.”
Rossett had to stop himself from smiling back.
This was living.
The fire in his belly was lit again. His heart was pounding, and his veins crackled with adrenaline.
The fast flick of the rifle bolt had been a muscle memory, but the kick of the rifle in his hands as he’d fired was more than that.
It was a part of him.
He hated himself for it, but he felt alive.
Jimmy wheezed to a halt next to them. He adjusted the bag on his shoulder and shifted the weight of his rifle as he leaned forward and snatched short breaths.
“You okay?” Rossett tried to not sound as concerned as he was.
“Yeah.”
“He’s not okay,” said the Bear. “He’s old and out of shape. We should leave him.”
“Fuck.” Jimmy took a breath. “Off.” The old policeman straightened a little and adjusted his tunic. “I’m all right,” he told Rossett. “I can keep up.”
“Stand back from the door.” Rossett fired a round through the lock.
This time it took a couple of shoves to get the doors to open as the lock struggled to hold on. Rossett gestured that Jimmy should lead the way, then looked at the Bear.
“He won’t make it.” The German nodded his head toward Jimmy as he moved into the building.
“Just keep moving.”
“Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” The Bear headed off.
Rossett checked over his shoulder, then followed them.
Jimmy had his lighter out.
There was no emergency lighting. They were walking down what looked like a service corridor, and the contrast with the dark wood and high ceiling of the atrium was stark. Utilitarian floor tiles and matte cream walls crowded them in with the flicker of the lighter’s flame.
They dropped down a short flight of stairs, took a right, then a left, and emerged at a metal shuttered door chained and locked. Rossett stepped to the side of the shutters and smashed the padlock off the chain.
Jimmy pulled on the chain and noisily lifted the shutter a few feet off the ground.
Rossett pushed the Bear through the gap, then ducked under himself. Jimmy followed, still holding the end of the chain, then released it so that the shutter fell to the ground with a crash.
They were outside. A soft drizzle of rain had started to fall. Rossett felt a breeze brush his cheek, and it made him look into the air and then around.
An empty yard, brick walled, maybe twenty feet long by sixty feet wide. At the center of the far wall was a set of padlocked iron gates. The three of them jogged toward the gates, and Rossett used another round to pop off the padlock.
“Do you just use that to open doors?” The Bear watched as Rossett loaded another stripper clip into the magazine.
Rossett drove home the bolt, then looked back at him.
“Keep asking questions and you’ll find out.”
Iris sipped cold tea and looked up at where the glass roof of Lime Street station had once been. One of the million pigeons that flittered and fluttered in the darkness softly cooed to her from seventy feet above as rain fell silently and dusted her face.
The station felt like dinosaur bones in a desert. A relic, left lying there to serve as a reminder of the majesty that had gone before.
Iris looked toward the old ticket office. A sign, held up by one remaining chain, swung loose like a hanged man. It twisted in the breeze, edges burned by the blasts that had half destroyed the station and reduced it to its current state of dereliction.
“Did you know this was once the biggest train station in the world?”
Iris looked at Cavanagh.
“W-what?”
“This.” He pointed up into the darkness and drew his hand in a wide arc above his head. “This was the biggest iron and glass roof in the world.”
The oil lamp at his feet popped, then flickered in the silence between them.
“I just thought it was interesting, that’s all.” Cavanagh shrugged, then looked off down the platform toward the tunnels that had once taken trains away from the station and off across the British Empire.
Iris didn’t reply, but she did follow his gaze toward the three tunnels. In the mouth of the center tunnel was a group of eighteen men and women. They were standing around a small campfire made on the tracks. The darkness of the tunnel rose above them like a serpent’s mouth waiting to swallow them up. They looked tiny, easy prey to the blackness as their shadows danced on the walls.
She watched them awhile. A silhouette passed in front of the fire and blocked it from her view. She heard a laugh, then a shush, and then someone threw on some more wood. The fire belched and sparked, then lit the area like a flare before it faded back to a glow again.
“I’ll go tell them to keep it down.” Cavanagh made to stand.
“They’re okay. Nobody is h-hunting us tonight.”
Cavanagh slumped back onto the seat.
“Do you want a blanket?”
“No.”
“Let me know if you do.”
Silence.
They stared straight ahead like strangers waiting for a train that was never going to come. Above them, another pigeon took to the air, giving itself a round of applause as it flew across the glass roof and up into the night sky.
“My f-father used to bring me here.”
“What?” Cavanagh looked at Iris.
“I used to like the trains. He u-used to buy a platform ticket, then take me out of my chair and make me walk to see the engines at the far end of the trains.”
More sparks belched from the campfire as something popped in its depths, and Iris imagined she saw the soot, steam, and sparks of a straining phantom steam train.
“It was the only way he c-could get me to walk and talk.” Iris smiled at Cavanagh, all lopsided beautiful shadows.
“You were a train spotter?”
She laughed. “I was a cripple.”
Cavanagh smiled, then brushed a hand over the Thompson in his lap to wipe off the spots of drizzle.
Iris was enjoying the rain. She gave a thin smile as she lifted her chin to the night.
“I don’t have l-long left.”
“What?”
“They w-will come for people like me soon.”
“We can hide you.”
“I’m not a mouse. I’ll not hide.”
“I won’t let them take you.”
“You can’t stop an army.”
“You could leave,” Cavanagh
said quietly. “Go to America with the gold.”
She lifted her chin again and stared up to the roof, where the pigeons were cooing.
“I know,” she said quietly.
The message was brought to them by a young girl wearing a torn raincoat tied with string. She had skidded the last few feet on the dust and fallen glass from the roof, then stamped her feet to attention and hooked one thumb into the string that was holding her coat closed.
“There’s Jerries shooting up Hope Street police station.”
“Which ones?” Cavanagh waved his hand to the resistance down by the tunnel entrance and beckoned them closer.
“Dannecker’s lot.” The girl had been running, and her breath hadn’t yet caught up with her. “There were three fellas who they were shootin’ at. They legged it, though.”
“Who ran?”
“An old copper, and two blokes in suits. One of the blokes in a suit was wearin’ cuffs.” The girl held up her hands and mimed handcuffs. “And the other one looked like that hard copper from London.”
“R-Rossett?” Iris leaned forward a little.
“Yeah.”
“Which way did they run?” Cavanagh glanced at the fire again.
“To the building across the road.”
“And then?”
“Out the back. Then up to Crown Street.”
“You’re sure?”
“I ran behind where the Jerries were.” The girl snatched another breath. “And then along the alley. I heard a shot, and then another one. I reckon it was the gate at the back. All the places are locked round there.”
“Did you see what the Germans did?”
“No.”
“They’ll chase them.” Cavanagh looked at Iris.
“W-which way, though?”
The kid answered the question. “If we get chased round there by the coppers, we leg it toward the old coal yard.”
“Crown Street Goods Yard?”
The kid nodded.
Iris nodded.
Cavanagh stood up and shouted to the group making their way toward them up the platform.
“Crown Street, go!”
They stopped, spun, and ran past the open fire and off down the tunnel.
The one that led to Crown Street.
Chapter 24
Flanked by tall Georgian townhouses, Rossett, the Bear, and Jimmy ran along tramlines set into the cobbles. All the streetlamps were out, and not one light shone in the windows of the four- and five-story buildings on either side of them.
Jimmy missed a step and stumbled onto the cobbles. His .303 rattled ahead of him and the spare clips spewed out of his canvas bag and onto the cobbles. Rossett stopped, grabbed the Bear’s arm, and dragged him back to Jimmy, who was still on the floor.
“Bullets,” Rossett said to the Bear, who in turn crouched and started collecting the clips and placing them in the bag.
Jimmy rolled onto his back. “I’m knackered.” He was gasping for air.
Rossett looked at where they had come from, then over his shoulder at where they were going.
“We should leave him.” The Bear placed the last of the rounds into the satchel, then placed it around his own neck.
Rossett picked up Jimmy’s .303.
“How far is the goods yard?”
“Quarter of a mile?” Jimmy pointed down the street. “Maybe less?”
“Get up.” Rossett slung the rifle over his shoulder.
“Honestly, I’m finished.” Jimmy remained on his back, oblivious to the water on the ground that was soaking through his police tunic.
Rossett leaned down and dragged him up.
“We have to keep moving.”
“I can hide.” Jimmy pointed to the house closest to him, then dropped both hands to his knees as he started to cough.
Rossett started to pull him down the street. “If Dannecker decides to start searching houses, do you want the family who sheltered you killed?”
Jimmy stumbled, then straightened a little as he snatched another breath. He took a few more steps, pushed away Rossett’s hand, and broke into a jog so slow that it was almost a walk.
Rossett heard the engines coming from a few streets away.
Trucks. Probably the ones that had held the men from the Pier Head shooting the day before, getting closer, engines racing, coming fast.
“How much farther to the yard?” he shouted to Jimmy, who had now dropped back a little again.
“Around the corner, one minute.”
Rossett could hear the trucks clearly now; they sounded no more than one street away. He slowed, grabbed Jimmy’s sleeve, then started dragging him along as fast as he could.
They turned the final corner and saw a dirty painted sign: crown street goods yard.
Rossett pulled Jimmy’s arm in the other direction to stop him from running across the wide, empty street toward the gate. The old sergeant’s momentum spun him around.
“What?”
“Wait,” Rossett whispered as he noticed the Bear was already crouching in the shadows to his right.
“What for?”
“I don’t know, which is why we wait.”
One spotlight shone over a pair of rusted wrought-iron gates, which would have been wide enough for three trucks to pass through had they been open. But they were chained and blocked from behind by what looked like twisted iron tank traps dumped behind them.
To the right of the gates, just inside the wall, was a watchman’s hut, with its windows smashed and door missing.
“What do they use this place for?” Rossett whispered.
“Cargo from the port on its way in and out of the south docks passes through here, but it doesn’t stop anymore,” Jimmy said. “They used to store coal here, but because there’s no surplus and everything goes straight for export, it’s pretty much unused.”
“Isn’t it guarded?”
“Not really.” Jimmy was wheezing, his buzz-saw breath coming in snatches. “The resistance leaves it alone because whenever they used to sabotage it, the Germans came down heavy on the locals. The locals got sick of it and withdrew support for the resistance and—”
“So it’s empty?” Rossett cut Jimmy off.
“Probably.” Jimmy coughed. “And if not, it’ll only be a watchman, and I’ll know him if it is. There’s a hole in the wall, just around the corner, where the kids get in when they’re looking for bits of coal that have fell off the trains as they pass through. We can get in through that.”
They were halfway across the street when the Opel Blitz turned the corner, seventy yards away on their right-hand side. At first Rossett could only see the headlamps cutting through the drizzle, but after a moment he saw the first of the soldiers fanned out behind the slow-moving truck.
Rossett figured they would make it into the yard unseen.
Rossett figured wrong.
Voices shouted. The truck engine roared, but Rossett didn’t shoot. He dropped his head and raced for the cover of the yard wall. He got there before Jimmy and the Bear, dropped to one knee, then fired a covering shot toward the truck’s windscreen.
Barely a second later he fired another round at the same spot.
The headlamps bobbed as the driver jabbed the brake and stopped the truck.
As the Bear and Jimmy made their way around the corner of the yard, Rossett tried to see past the headlamps through the sights of the rifle. He drifted to the left searching for a target, keeping his aim low in case the men had made a dive for the ground.
Nothing.
He scanned back, this time a little quicker. The driver’s door of the cab was open. They were either trying to get him out because he was injured, or trying to force him to stay in because he wasn’t. Either way, Rossett could see pairs of legs poking out from under it.
He shot at the door, then saw someone drop. The Lee-Enfield’s heavy round had punched through the thin steel and then through the man standing behind it.
He heard more shouting, then fire
d two rounds into the engine of the truck.
That was enough to keep them low and get them guessing. Rossett rose and followed the line of the wall until he came to a gap in the concrete, the result of a bomb blast.
It was fifteen feet wide and had been covered with a chain-link fence. At first the wire looked intact all the way across. Rossett felt a mild panic in the pit of his stomach as he pulled and pushed against the wire looking for the hole that Jimmy and the Bear had used to get in.
He stepped back, studying the fence as the sound of shouting around the corner got louder. At the far end, finally, close to the ground, he saw in the shadows that the wire was folded back, and held up by a short piece of timber. Rossett dropped to his stomach to squeeze through the space and felt the wire catch on the strap of the canvas ammo bag. He twisted and pulled at the bag to free it from behind him and then froze.
A scuffle of feet in the darkness, ahead of him in the yard.
Jimmy and the Bear.
Rossett yanked at the bag and dragged himself forward, pushing the .303 out from under him as he went.
He was through.
The spotlight over by the gates barely cast enough light to see fifteen feet in front of him. He looked left and right, then crouched down to see straight ahead. Outside, the Germans were shouting on the other side of the wall.
They wouldn’t be long.
The scuffle again, somewhere ahead.
Rossett moved slowly, keeping low, eyes wide to capture as much light as possible. The yard was a maze of shadows and shapes. Rossett could make out the odd pile of bricks and rubble. Over on the far side, a line of bombed-out, half-demolished offices and warehouses loomed out of the night. Here and there on track sidings sat empty train cars, including the occasional burned-out passenger coach.
At the end of the yard, farthest from the road, Rossett had seen a line of train tunnel entrances, set into what looked like a bluff limestone cliff face.
There was a strong smell of coal, and even the puddles on the ground sounded dirty when Rossett stepped in them.
The German voices were getting closer.
He didn’t have much time.
The dull knife edge of panic he’d felt at the fence started to sharpen itself in his chest as he moved at a crouch. His pace increased as he flicked his head left and right.
An Army of One: A John Rossett Novel Page 31