‘If we do, it can’t be here.’
Chris squirmed in response, his arms flapping around, blindly searching for something to grab on to.
His ribs exploded with pain as another swift kick landed. ‘Shut up and stop moving, or we will do you right here,’ the younger man hissed. ‘Try the phone again,’ he said. ‘Go over by the window, you might get a signal there.’
Chris heard the older man walk across the room towards the small window and once again he heard the key tones. Whoever it was they were trying to get in touch with would presumably decide his fate right now, one way or the other.
Oh Christ, I’m in deep shit.
He wondered where the hell Mark was. These bastards must have made enough noise to alert him in his room next door. Then he remembered, Mark had said he was taking the Cherokee up the coast to refill the air tanks. But surely he should have been back by now? It was gone nine in the evening.
Or maybe these sons of bitches had been next door dealing with him when Chris had entered his room.
‘No signal again.’
‘We’ll have to take him with us, until we meet up for the briefing tomorrow morning,’ whispered the man holding Chris down.
‘Yeah,’ the older one replied. ‘But it’s getting him out without attracting attention. Shit… maybe if I open the window and lean out — ’
Suddenly, Chris heard the door to the room swing open with a thud, and the sound of three heavy footsteps across the small bedroom followed swiftly by a metallic clang.
The hand that had roughly been holding the back of his head and forcing his face into the quilt went slack, and Chris found he could lift his head up and look to the side.
Just in time to see a lean, middle-aged man, with short, crewcut, greying hair turning round and pulling his gun out. He turned his head to see Mark holding up one of the air cylinders in front of himself.
‘Hit this and we’re all history!’ growled Mark.
Chris could see this stalemate would hold only a second or two. He pushed the unconscious form of the younger man off his back and found another gun lying on the bed beside him. He picked it up and levelled it at the grey-haired man, his hands trembling, fingers fumbling for the trigger.
The older man switched his focus and brought his gun to bear on Chris. ‘Put the gun down, son,’ he said in his calm voice.
Cool under pressure. The thought raced through Chris’s mind. Very bloody cool.
Without warning Mark hurled his cylinder at the man, who swung his aim back around towards him just in time to be knocked off balance by the heavy cylinder.
Chris got to his feet in a second and scrambled for the doorway. As he hurled himself out of the room he felt a hum of hot air whistle past his ear and a window overlooking the seafront in the hallway outside his bedroom exploded.
‘Fuck! He’s shooting!’ Chris heard himself shout as he pounded down the hallway after Mark.
He heard the man tumble out into the hallway after him, thudding against the wall opposite, feet crunching on the broken glass.
Another thread of hot air burned past him and the wall ahead erupted with a shower of plaster dust.
‘Pissing hell! Run faster, Mark!’
Both of them took the stairs down to the lobby four at a time and hurried outside into the night, gasping cold air into their lungs as they ran across the open parking area of the jetty towards the Cherokee parked up next to the two Runcies trucks.
‘Key! You got the key?’ Chris yelled.
‘Yeah I got it, got it. Lemme just find it.’
As Mark fumbled with the keyring, Chris looked back at the motel entrance. There was no sign of the older man just yet.
‘Come on, Mark!’
The door locks on the Cherokee popped, and both men dived in. Chris kept his eyes on the motel entrance as Mark fired it up and spun the vehicle round in a hurried loop so that they were facing the exit leading onto the coast road and out of town. With the tyres spinning, sending a cloud of dust and pebbles up into the air, the Cherokee leaped forward and out of the parking lot just as a silhouette appeared in the doorway of their motel.
Chapter 34
Mission Time: 30 Minutes Elapsed
2.35 a.m., 29 April 1945, outside Nantes
The landing had been a bastard. They had paddled towards the sound of waves breaking only to find the bloody things were breaking on a rocky outcrop. All three dinghies had been punctured in quick succession and Koch and his men had had to swim the last few dozen yards and scramble hastily up the razor-sharp rocks to avoid being punished for their reckless landing by the waves. One of his men had drowned during this mad dash, dragged under by the weight of his thick clothes, and two others had received bad gashes clambering ashore; one of them had a broken shinbone. The wounds were bandaged for now, and the broken leg in a makeshift splint, but the men would require medical treatment soon.
That left him twenty-seven effectives.
Koch was cold, wet from the sea and the spattering of rain, chilled by the sporadically gusting wind blowing in from the Atlantic. He stared at the farmhouse from the cover of an apple orchard less than a hundred yards away. It backed onto the airfield; he suspected it would be warm and dry and there was the possibility of some food inside. It looked like it might offer a few hours of relative comfort for his men before the morning’s fun and games.
He unslung his MP-40 and turned round to face Feldwebel Buller. ‘That looks good for tonight, what do you think?’
The man nodded eagerly. The previous week aboard the U-boat had been a damp and cold hell. A night of dryness and relative comfort sounded like the smartest command decision he’d heard in a long time.
‘Okay, let’s go.’
Buller passed the word on, and moments later the men jogged across the open ground and scrambled over a low stone wall towards the isolated building.
Remi Boulliard enjoyed the sound of an excited sea tumbling onto the rocky shoreline below. There was something quite delightful about savouring the snug warmth of a plump wife under the comforting spread of a goose-feather quilt while outside the elements did their best to beat their way noisily in; although this smug pleasure was lessened somewhat by the clatter of rotten wood on plaster. The wind tonight was playing mischief with the wooden shutters of their bedroom window. It had worked one of them loose, and every few seconds the damn thing was banging irritatingly against the wall outside. The shutters needed replacing, and the fresh sea breeze was gleefully reminding him of that.
Another job to do.
He shrugged, it was a job for the summer, like whitewashing the old plaster walls of the building; it could wait a couple of months.
He listened to the regular, heavy breathing of his wife; it would take a marching brass band to wake her up. He often found the rhythmic ebb and flow of her deep breathing punctuated by the metronome regularity of her nasal click soporific when he was close to sleep. But on a night like this, when sleep seemed such a remote prospect for him, it was irritating. He slid his bony carpenter’s hand under her left shoulder and gently lifted. She obliged automatically in her sleep and rolled onto her side, the nasal clicking stopped.
Remi sighed.
He heard the brittle crash of breaking glass. It sounded as if it had come from the kitchen or the pantry downstairs.
He sat upright in bed, straining to filter the noises from outside the house, to hear only those from inside. He
