The Caves of Perigord_ A Novel - Martin Walker [61]
It was a very small town, and the station was almost on the outskirts. Frisé took them quickly past darkened houses, over a narrow road, and past a squat war memorial from 1914-18 until they reached the level crossing. The rails and their crucial points spread out in the starlight like a great fan. Manners opened his rucksack, gave each of the Frenchmen two charges, and pushed them toward the rails. Just as he began placing his fourth charge deep into the points, there came the sound of distant gunfire. Automatic bursts, then single shots. It wasn’t McPhee—the wrong direction. The German patrol! But they were still miles away.
“Finish your work,” he snapped at Jean-Claude, who had stood up and was staring around wildly, a charge still in his hand. The Frenchman bent again to his task. Manners had two charges still to place, and then came a flash of red light at the station fifty yards down the line, and the crack of a grenade, then the burst of a Sten as McPhee hit the Milice hut.
“Finished,” called Frisé, shepherding the other young Frenchmen back to the level crossing. Manners scampered across the rails, taking out his shielded red torch to check on each charge. He had placed his own by touch alone. There was more firing from the station. Then from far up the road, the unmistakable ripping sound of a belt-fed MG-34, a German machine gun. François was in trouble. A distant, flat boom. François was using his Gammon grenades, homemade bombs that eked out their pitiful arsenal.
“O.K.” He waved them back to the rails. “Ignition now.” He had given each of them a “Tommy” lighter, more reliable than matches in wind—as long as they could get the petrol. His own sparked and flared. He had six to light, the Frenchmen only two each. He didn’t have enough fuses to link them all together to a single firing point. The fuses caught. They now had just over a minute to get clear. McPhee was on his own. François was on his own. The rule was that they each had to make their own withdrawal to the agreed rendezvous. Back at the level crossing, he slapped the chattering Frenchmen on the back, more to be sure they were all there than from any sense of congratulation. One, two, three.
“Now, move.” He led them back past the war memorial, skirting the main street where they held the market each Friday. No point in cautious creeping. They were running now. He heard windows being opened and furious French whisperings, and the explosions came in sharp, metallic cracks as he pushed the boys up toward the hills that rose above the river. He counted them—ten, eleven—no number twelve. No more firing from the station. McPhee was either dead or escaped. Another explosion. Twelve. All the charges had worked. The French boys had done well. No more sounds from the Belvès road. As he pounded up the frosty hillside, his rucksack felt curiously light.
McPhee and the colonial sergeant were already waiting for them at the rendezvous, a sagging ancient barn in the hills behind the hilltop village of Limeuil. The sergeant was cleaning his Sten carefully. McPhee had taken watch outside, and once he and Manners had exchanged passwords, the American solemnly shook each of the young Frenchmen by the hand.
“I heard all the explosions,” he said. “Well done.”
“Any trouble with the Milice?” Manners asked.
“Piece of cake. I think they were asleep, but then the firing started and as one of them opened the door, I tossed a grenade in. One of them survived long enough to start firing a rifle through the window, but the old guy got him with a Sten burst. We went in, got two Lebel rifles and their ammo, and an old revolver, and ran for it as your charges went off.”
Manners congratulated the old sergeant, and moved to the back of the barn. On an earlier visit, they had found some rusty lengths of corrugated iron, put them together as a low lean-to, to make a place shadowed enough to light a tiny folding Tommy cooker without the light showing. He put some water on to boil and poured in the jar of concentrated