The '44 Vintage

not too badly damaged. Make a useful hostage, apparently.'

'Okay, Lieutenant.' Winston nodded. 'For him, we'll aim low.'

'No.' Audley shook his head quickly. 'We don't shoot at all, unless we absolutely have to. The French have got it all worked out, they've done it before on this very spot. The only difference is that this time they're going to try to keep the vehicles unmarked so we can use them afterwards.'

'You mean ... we just sit and watch?'

'Not quite. They do the shooting. But in return for the staff car—or the Kubel if we prefer it—we take the prisoner for them.'

'Oh, just great! They sit behind their trees and pick the bastards off, and we take the risks!' Winston grunted scornfully. 'You sure drive a hard bargain, Lieutenant—or they do.'

'They'll be taking risks too, don't you worry, Sergeant,' snapped Audley. 'And if you thought for a moment instead of bellyaching you'd realise it makes sense, our trying for the general or whoever he is.

These Frenchmen aren't choosy about taking prisoners—I think this lot are all Communists and they're settling old scores. And if the general knows that, which he certainly will know, then he'll fight like the rest of them. But if he sees our uniforms then there's a good chance he'll surrender—that's the whole bloody point.'

'Huh!' Winston subsided. 'Okay, Lieutenant.'

Audley looked at Butler. 'Any questions, Corporal?'

Butler thought for a moment. 'How do the French know so much about the Germans, sir—how do they know they're coming this way, even?'

The corner of Audley's mouth twisted. 'They've got it all organised as I said. They come from a village down the road, and they wait until one or two German vehicles come through on their own—they let the bigger convoys through. But when something like this lot comes along they put up a sign on the main road—a sign in German, a proper Wehrmacht diversion sign—saying the bridge farther along is down.

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

And they've got one of their own chaps in Milice uniform who offers to take the Germans round a back road which is safe. . . . You just wait and see, anyway.'

'Seems a lot of trouble. Why don't they deal with them there and then?' murmured Winston, staring down at the road.

'Because they're scared stiff of reprisals. It seems the SS wiped out a village down south where one of their divisions was held up . . .'

'Wiped out?'

'That's what they say. So the stragglers they cut off have to disappear completely—that's what we found back there'—Audley nodded in the direction they'd come—'the evidence, you might say.'

'The smell is what I remember,' said Winston.

Audley stood up, and incredibly he was grinning. 'Yes, the smell. . .' He looked at his watch. 'Three minutes . . . Yes, they killed the poor devils. But they did bury them.'

Winston frowned, first at Butler, then at Audley. 'Huh?'

Audley looked from one to the other. 'The first time they were after weapons and ammunition—in the lorry. But they were unlucky.'

'Unlucky?'

Audley started to move. 'Yes. They captured a ton of overripe cheese,' he said over his shoulder.

Butler watched him move to a nearby tree.

'Cheese,' whispered Winston. He stared past Butler towards Audley. 'Now . . . there goes a genuine one- hundred-per-cent hard-nosed sonofabitch.' He looked at Butler. 'We've got to watch ourselves, you and me, Jack— like the young guy in Stagecoach had to watch the sheriff.'

'What d'you mean?' asked Butler.

The American continued to look at him. 'Yeah ... I didn't finish, did I? They were down to their last bullet when the cavalry arrived and killed off the Indians. And then when they got to town the sheriff let the young guy go and settle up with the bad guys—he even offered him some more ammunition. So he was okay—the sheriff was.'

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

'Yes?'

Winston looked again towards Audley. 'I just don't know about the lieutenant . . .' He turned towards Butler. 'But then the young guy took off his hat—and you know what there was in it?'

'No?'

'Three bullets. And you know ... I think we'd better keep a couple of bullets too, just in case.'

Cheese.

Butler lowered his head until his chin was touching the leaves. There was a one-inch gap between them and the fallen tree trunk behind which he'd settled in preference to his original position. As a firing position it was too low and narrow to be any use, but it was a perfect observation slit, giving him a clear view of the road, and if he wasn't going to be able to take part in the ambush, he was determined to watch.

Well, it hadn't smelt like any cheese he'd ever smelt; at least, not like the soapy mousetrap Cheddar favoured by the Army, which sweated and grew grey-green hairy mould in its old age but didn't smell much. But then he'd never been close to a ton of it; and French cheese was obviously very different from English—that smell had been a fearful, liquid-putrescent one.

Now he could hear the distant sound of engines—