One Shot Kill

by Robert Muchamore

  ‘This way,’ Justin whispered, giving Rosie a fright as she got within twenty paces of his house.

  ‘Something wrong?’ Rosie asked, as she glanced about suspiciously. ‘Did you get the packet?’

  He nodded. ‘Got ’em fine, but I didn’t realise my mum was off work today. If she sees you she’ll wring my neck.’

  Justin led Rosie up to a battered tin shed in the garden of a cottage two doors from his own.

  ‘Don’t sweat,’ Justin said. ‘People see me here all the time.’

  Rosie understood when Justin opened a tin shed stacked high with sacks of coal.

  ‘I stash the coal here, ’cos it’s the butcher’s house and nobody messes with him,’ Justin explained. ‘He gets free coal and I don’t have to worry about people nicking my stock.’

  ‘Clever,’ Rosie said. ‘You’re quite the businessman. I bet you’re gonna end up running your own factory some day.’

  Justin smiled as he pulled out a sack about one third full. He held it open, showing Rosie the document case inside.

  ‘Just be sure to wipe all the coal dust off before you unzip it. It’s all in there. Fifteen blank forms, and three rubber stamps.’

  ‘Fifteen?’ Rosie said.

  Justin shrugged. ‘Spares I guess, in case you mess one up.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ Rosie said, as she pulled an envelope out of her jacket. ‘Henderson asked me to give you this, in thanks for all you’ve done. It’s a thousand francs, plus two gold ingots.’

  ‘Gold?’ Justin said, as he peeked into the envelope and smiled at the money.

  ‘Currency is nothing more than toilet paper in a crisis,’ Rosie explained. ‘Gold is always worth something, because you can’t make any more of it.’

  Justin smiled as he took the envelope, but his eyes looked sad. ‘You’re sure there’s nothing I can do tonight?’

  ‘You’ve more than done your bit, mate,’ Rosie said. ‘If it wasn’t for you, Edith would be dead. We’d never have met Dr Blanc and found out about the bunker. And you introduced me to Jean and Didier, who’ve been brilliant forest guides.’

  ‘Are those two still going to Paris with you?’

  Rosie nodded. ‘They’re on the run and the forest is likely to be crawling with Germans if the bunker gets blown up. We’ve fixed up new identities and medical exemption certificates so they can’t be sent to Germany.’

  ‘I’ll probably never see you again,’ Justin said, as a tear welled in his eye.

  He was such a smart, resourceful character that you only remembered his age when something like this happened.

  ‘I wish I could carry on helping,’ Justin sniffed. ‘I want to be a proper member of the resistance, like you or Sam.’

  ‘We know where you are if we need you,’ Rosie said. ‘But your real job is to look out for your mum and your sisters. Be careful when you’re crawling around on trains in the dark, and be sensible with that money. People will ask where it came from if you start splashing out, and it’s going to be a long, hungry winter so you have to make it last.’

  ‘I’ll be sensible,’ Justin agreed.

  ‘If tonight’s a success, I’d bet this raid will be world famous,’ Rosie said. ‘They might even pin a medal on you after the war.’

  Justin still felt really sad, but raised one cheeky eyebrow. ‘You try not to get yourself killed.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ Rosie said, as she grabbed the coal sack. ‘See you at the medal ceremony.’

  ‘Buckingham Palace or Château de Versailles?’ Justin asked.

  ‘Both, I reckon,’ Rosie laughed.

  Rosie was glad she’d cheered Justin up, but felt anxious about the mission as she walked away.

  ‘Something the matter?’ Paul asked, catching his sister’s expression when they met up again.

  ‘Did he not get them?’ Edith added.

  ‘It’s all fine,’ Rosie said. ‘I was just thinking about something.’

  ‘Right,’ Edith said, sighing with relief. ‘I’ll walk across to the station. My train to Rennes is due soon. When I make contact, I’ll tell Ghost that we got the documents and everything’s set for tonight.’

  ‘I’ll let everyone back at the house know Justin got the new documents,’ Paul said, as he gave Rosie her pistol back. ‘Goldberg and Luc should be there getting the locator beacon and sniper equipment ready by the time I get back. And you’re sure you don’t fancy popping back to cook our lunch?’

  ‘I’m sure the six of you won’t starve without my cooking for one day,’ Rosie said, narrowing her eyes slightly. Paul regarded his comment as a joke, but Rosie resented the way that she always ended up doing cooking and laundry because she was a girl. ‘I’ll go meet Henderson in the woods and tell him everything’s ready to roll.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  ‘You know your jobs,’ Henderson said, as he looked at his wristwatch.

  They formed a circle of nine, crouching amidst moss and tree roots, three hundred metres from the bunker: Henderson, Goldberg, Rosie, Paul, Marc, Sam, Luc, Jean and Didier. Despite the forecast of clear weather, wispy cloud blotted out the moon and an on-off drizzle would make sniping tricky.

  ‘Let’s synchronise our watches,’ Henderson said. ‘Remember, the bomber crews are at risk while they’re circling and the Germans will smell a rat if they’re up there for too long. We have to keep this on schedule.’

  As everyone pulled up sleeves to expose wristwatches, or took out a pocket watch, Henderson studied the second hand of his own timepiece.

  ‘11:07 dead, on my mark,’ he said. A few seconds later, ‘Mark,’ was followed by clicks as people pushed in their watch crowns to set them running.

  Everyone shook hands with everyone else before they split into teams. Goldberg went left; Sam and Paul headed to a position near the bunker’s front gate; Henderson, Marc and Luc went to the right side. Rosie stayed where she was and had to warm up the homing beacon, while Jean and Didier stayed with her because they had no role in the first phase of the operation.

  It was important that none of the base guards alerted the local garrison, so the first job was cutting communications and fell to Henderson’s team. The trio didn’t speak as they crunched through the woodland, dressed in black commando gear with their faces darkened with coal dust. Marc and Luc had sniper rifles over their shoulders, pistols, knives and grenades hooked to their belts, and backpacks loaded with everything from gas masks to emergency ration packs.

  The bunker was connected by a single telephone line and a radio. Cutting the telephone was easy, because the French had destroyed the underground phone line before abandoning the bunker during the invasion. Rather than dig a new trench through several kilometres of woodland, the Germans had strung their replacement cable through the treetops.

  Luc shimmied up a tree a hundred metres from the perimeter fence, snipped the line with a pair of wire cutters and threw both ends to the ground. While Luc climbed, Marc had unzipped his pack and removed the bulkiest item from it: a battery-powered field telephone that dated back to the Great War. After pulling the line leading into the base out of the branches, Marc squatted by a tree trunk and used a knife to strip insulation from the wires.

  The base radio was harder to get at. While Marc connected the phone up using his pen-knife and a small screwdriver, Luc and Henderson headed for the base perimeter. Rosie had all but confirmed that the perimeter was never patrolled, but they stayed low just in case, as they used giant bolt-cutters to snip the wire fence.

  ‘You crawl, I’ll cover,’ Henderson said, once they had a decent gap.

  While Henderson sat inside the fence with his pistol ready, Luc sprinted fifty metres through the trees towards an aeriel. The thing was rusty and had partly tipped over in the wind.

  The base of the aerial was enclosed in a metal cabinet. Luc had a crowbar ready to break the cabinet open, but all it needed was a good tug and a sweep of his boot to clear away mulch that had built up around the opening since its last se
rvice.

  Once he was in, Luc slid the hooked end of the crowbar behind wires soldered to the aerial’s base and ripped them out.

  ‘All good,’ Luc whispered, when he got back to Henderson.

  Seconds later they were back with Marc, who proudly held the phone up so that Henderson could hear a vague hum on the line.

  ‘I’ll make the call in a couple of minutes,’ Henderson said. ‘Marc, tell the gate team we’re ready for their bit, then circle around and join up with Goldberg.’

  ‘Aye-aye, captain,’ Marc said, before scrambling off.

  *

  While the rest of the team came in combat gear, Sam approached the perimeter gate dressed like a typical French boy and carrying a hunting knife and a blood-stained cloth bag with a dead rabbit poking out of the top.

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ Sam said, sounding meek and anxious as he aimed his voice towards a guard hut. ‘Do you speak a little French?’

  There were two guards in a small wooden hut, set five metres back from the mesh gate.

  ‘Buzz off,’ a man with a cigarette between his lips shouted. ‘If you make me come out there, I’ll arrest you for breaking curfew.’

  Germany didn’t waste good men on remote bunkers. The guard was an elderly fellow, with a platform under one boot to compensate for one leg shorter than the other.

  ‘I’m really sorry, sir,’ Sam continued, as he faked a sniffle. ‘I know I shouldn’t be out this late. But we were hunting. We got lost and my friend hurt his leg. He’s bleeding badly. Please help me.’

  The German didn’t understand much French, but Sam’s boyish face and hysterical tone was enough to send him limping towards the gate. Paul watched through the sight of a sniper rifle from a hundred and ten metres out. This wasn’t his moment to shoot, but it was the first German he’d seen between his crosshairs and the thought of killing an elderly disabled German didn’t fill him with glee.

  Sam kept up the hysterical spiel as he led the German into the woods, towards his imaginary injured friend. The German’s slow walk hadn’t been factored into the plan, and it took Sam twice as long as he’d expected to reach a small clearing seventy metres from the fence.

  ‘What is this?’ the German asked.

  As the guard looked about suspiciously, Sam reached into the fork of a tree and picked out a silenced pistol. He’d played this moment in his head since he’d heard Henderson’s first detailed briefing and it felt dreamlike as he gave a double tap on the trigger, putting one bullet through the German’s head and one through his heart.

  This was Sam’s first mission. He’d not killed before and had to suppress a shaking hand as he pulled up his shirt and tucked the gun into a holster. While the German bled out, Sam grabbed his kitbag from behind the tree. He pulled on a black combat jacket stuffed with grenades and sniper ammunition, before digging his fingertips into the earth and smearing some across his cheeks as camouflage.

  *

  Henderson sat with the field telephone in his lap while Luc kept lookout. When it was time, he pressed the only button to make the phone at the other end of the cable ring.

  ‘Hello,’ someone said.

  ‘This is Beauvais headquarters,’ Henderson said, responding in perfectly-accented German. ‘Are you having difficulty with your aerial? We’ve had no response to our urgent request for an inventory report.’

  The man sounded confused. ‘Our radio is only used in an emergency.’

  ‘It was not your emergency,’ Henderson said irritably. ‘Our telephone system has been sabotaged. An urgent request was sent to you by radio.’

  ‘Err …’ the man said, sounding like someone who wished he’d not picked the phone up. ‘Can I get the base commandant to call you?’

  ‘No,’ Henderson snapped back. ‘Our telephones are still erratic and I am calling from a street telephone. Get someone monitoring your radio transmissions. The signal will be repeated in five minutes and I suggest that you act upon the instructions promptly this time.’

  ‘It takes longer than that to warm the receiver up,’ the guard said.

  ‘Very well, ten minutes. And the group commander expects an immediate acknowledgement of our request.’

  Henderson slammed the phone down, and gave Luc a smile. ‘Now let’s see if they take our bait. Get into your sniping position and be ready to fire on my signal.’

  *

  Henderson’s plan to get as many Germans as possible above ground took a few minutes to start moving. As soon as the radio set had warmed up inside the bunker, its operator realised that the aerial was faulty and two Luftwaffe men came out into the drizzle.

  They soon discovered that the aerial cabinet had been sabotaged and then tracked Luc’s boot prints to the hole in the wire fence. One German stood around looking clueless while his colleague rushed back inside to tell someone senior.

  By this time the guard who’d remained on the gate had grown increasingly suspicious about the prolonged absence of his colleague. He couldn’t leave the main gate unattended, so he used the phone in the guard hut to call up two more men who could help him search.

  Paul watched them emerge from the bunker, knowing that Sam would also be able to see from his shooting position more than a hundred metres west. While those two covered the front of the compound, Marc and Goldberg had excellent firing positions from higher ground to the west, while Luc worked from a position close to Henderson in the east.

  Henderson balanced in a tree to get a better view through his binoculars and was delighted when the base commandant, another Luftwaffe man and an army sergeant came out of the bunker’s only entrance.

  Rosie had estimated that there were twelve Luftwaffe and four army guards manning the base at any one time. Getting nine of them above ground was as good as it was likely to get and now it was time for the snipers to do their stuff.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Henderson unscrewed the silencer from his pistol and dropped it into his pocket before firing two noisy shots into the air.

  ‘Good luck,’ Rosie told Jean and Didier as the double bang sent birds into the sky.

  Sniper shots cracked off as Jean and Didier pulled on gas masks and set off at a run towards the base, with machine guns swinging from their necks and a heavy gas cylinder held between them.

  Luc rattled off two quick kills, getting two men standing by the sabotaged aerial. Marc and Goldberg had to deal with the three moving targets, walking briskly towards the aerial. Two went down with clean headshots, but Marc had to finish the base commander with a shot in the back as he broke into a run.

  In front of the base, a moment’s hesitation from Paul meant that Sam took out the victim in his scope before he’d pulled the trigger. Paul’s next target made a run towards the guard hut. It’s easier to hit a target when they’re still so he turned his aim towards the hut’s door and waited for his victim to get there.

  For all his angst about killing, when the moment came Paul focused his mind as Goldberg had taught and shot beautifully, hitting his man in the back of the head with such force that his body tore the unopened door off its hinges.

  While Paul reloaded, Sam took out the last German standing above ground.

  Henderson surveyed the scene with binoculars before giving a shout of, ‘Clear,’ and beginning to pull on a gas mask.

  The sniping had been crucial in reducing the number of Germans in the bunker, but the next phase of the mission was the most dangerous. They had to storm the bunker entrance and get a team inside before anyone still below ground smelled a rat and shut the blast doors.

  While Paul and Sam stayed back as sniper cover, Jean and Didier charged through the main gate with their gas cylinder. Luc and Henderson reached the bunker entrance a couple of seconds before them, while Marc and Goldberg were well behind, because they had to stop and cut a hole in the fence on their side of the perimeter.

  ‘On go,’ Henderson said, keeping low as he put his hand on the door. ‘Three, two, one, go.’

 
; Luc covered with his gun and Didier had the gas cylinder ready to blast as Henderson charged in first. He kept his back to the wall as he entered and shuffled down a narrow corridor with a short run of metal steps at the far end.

  A pistol shot rang out when Henderson reached the top step. The aim was off, but it hit the wall close to his head and a chunk of flying plaster smashed into his cheek.

  ‘Give me some gas,’ Luc shouted, as he dragged Henderson out of the way.

  As Didier aimed a jet of light blue gas down the staircase, Luc poked his machine gun barrel around the stairs and squeezed off a few shots. When the blast ended there was another sound: the hiss of large hydraulic jacks as the armoured-steel doors closed behind them.

  ‘Sir?’ Luc said, looking to Henderson for orders.

  But Henderson was in a daze, clutching his face with blood spattered across the inside of his visor. The rubble had punched clean through his gas mask and cheek, leaving his mouth filled with tooth splinters and bits of masonry.

  Jean and Didier had little training and no experience, Marc and Goldberg stood no chance of getting inside before the blast doors slammed, so it was all down to Luc.

  ‘Stay close,’ Luc told Didier, as the blast doors made a doom-laden clang.

  The base wasn’t heavily manned so Luc doubted there were any more than one or two bodies near the base of the stairs, but with no route out he had to act fast, because more would arrive and corner him if he gave them time.

  In a normal raid, Luc would have lobbed a grenade down the stairs and backed up, but the stairs led into a garage and for all he knew he’d be setting off an explosion under a truck loaded with bombs.

  Luc’s only realistic option was to jump down the stairs and hope that the gas had either slowed his opponents or forced them to back off. He landed with a clank of metal, and glanced through the window of his gas mask at dim orangey bulbs and a bluish haze.

  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.