But this formed no part of Lloyd’s plan. He did not want the train to be wrecked before it reached the tunnel.
‘Shit,’ he said.
The Tiffy fired a machine-gun burst at the carriages.
Legionnaire said: ‘But what is this?’
Lloyd replied in English: ‘Fucked if I know.’
He could see now that the engine was hauling a mixture of passenger coaches and cattle trucks. However, the cattle trucks probably also contained men.
The plane, travelling faster, strafed the carriages as it overhauled the train. It had four belt-fed 20mm cannon, and they made a fearsome rattling sound that could be heard over the roar of the plane’s engine and the energetic puffing of the train. Lloyd could not help feeling sorry for the trapped soldiers, unable to get out of the way of the lethal hail of bullets. He wondered why the pilot did not fire his rockets. They were highly destructive against trains or cars, though difficult to fire accurately. Perhaps they had been used up in an earlier encounter.
Some of the Germans bravely put their heads out of the windows and fired pistols and rifles at the plane, with no effect.
But Lloyd now saw a light anti-aircraft battery emplaced on a flatbed car immediately behind the engine. Two gunners were hastily deploying the big gun. It swivelled on its base and the barrel lifted to aim at the British plane.
The pilot did not appear to have seen it, for he held his course, rounds from his cannon tearing through the roofs of the carriages as he overhauled them.
The big gun fired and missed.
Lloyd wondered if he knew the flyer. There were only about five thousand pilots on active service in the UK at any one time. Quite a lot of them had been to Daisy’s parties. Lloyd thought of Hubert St John, a brilliant Cambridge graduate with whom he had been reminiscing about student days a few weeks ago; of Dennis Chaucer, a West Indian from Trinidad who complained bitterly about tasteless English food, especially the mashed potatoes that seemed to be served with every meal; and of Brian Mantel, an amiable Australian he had brought across the Pyrenees on his last trip. The brave man in the Tiffy could easily be someone Lloyd had met.
The anti-aircraft gun fired again, and missed again.
Either the pilot still had not seen the gun, or he felt it could not hit him; for he took no evasive action, but continued to fly dangerously low and wreak carnage on the troop train.
The engine was just a few seconds from the tunnel when the plane was hit.
Flame flared from the plane’s engine, and black smoke billowed. Too late, the pilot veered away from the railway track.
The train entered the tunnel, and the carriages flashed past Lloyd’s position. He saw that every one was packed full with dozens, hundreds of German soldiers.
The Tiffy flew directly at Lloyd. For a moment he thought it would crash where he lay. He was already flat on the ground, but he stupidly put his hands over his head, as if that could protect him.
The Tiffy roared by a hundred feet above him.
Then Legionnaire pressed the plunger of the detonator.
There was a roar like thunder inside the tunnel as the track blew up, followed by a terrible screeching of tortured steel as the train crashed.
At first the carriages full of soldiers continued to flash by, but a second later their charge was arrested. The ends of two linked carriages rose in the air, forming an inverted V. Lloyd heard the men inside screaming. All the carriages came off the rails and tumbled like dropped matchsticks around the dark O of the tunnel’s mouth. Iron crumpled like paper, and broken glass rained on the three saboteurs watching from the top of the embankment. They were in danger of being killed by their own explosion, and without a word they all leaped to their feet and ran.
By the time they had reached a safe distance it was all over. Smoke was billowing out of the tunnel: in the unlikely event that any men in there had survived the crash, they would burn to death.
Lloyd’s plan was a success. Not only had he killed hundreds of enemy troops and wrecked a train, he had also blocked a main railway line. Crashes in tunnels took weeks to clear. He had made it much more difficult for the Germans to reinforce their defences in Normandy.
He was horrified.
He had seen death and destruction in Spain, but nothing like this. And he had caused it.
There was another crash, and when he looked in the direction of the sound he saw that the Tiffy had hit the ground. It was burning, but the fuselage had not broken up. The pilot might be alive.
He ran towards the plane, and Cigare and Legionnaire followed.
The downed aircraft lay on its belly. One wing had snapped in half. Smoke came from the single engine. The perspex dome was blackened by soot and Lloyd could not see the pilot.
He stepped on the wing and unfastened the hood catch. Cigare did the same on the other side. Together, they slid the dome back on its rails.
The pilot was unconscious. He wore a helmet and goggles, and an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. Lloyd could not tell whether it was someone he knew.
