World War II Thriller Collection (51 page)

The crash of the rifle ended the moment of shocked silence in the square. At the gate, one of the guards cried out and fell, and Flick felt a savage moment of satisfaction: there was one less man to shoot at her comrades. Michel's shot was the signal for everyone else to open fire. On the church porch, young Bertrand squeezed off two shots that sounded like firecrackers. He was too far from the guards for accuracy with a pistol, and he did not hit anyone. Beside him, Albert pulled the ring of a grenade and hurled it high over the railing, to land inside the grounds, where it exploded in the vineyard, uselessly scattering vegetation in the air. Flick wanted to yell angrily at them, “Don't fire for the sake of the noise, you'll just reveal your position!” But only the best and most highly trained troops could exercise restraint once the shooting started. From behind the parked sports car, Geneviève opened up, and the deafening
rattle of her Sten gun filled Flick's ears. Her shooting was more effective, and another guard fell.

At last the Germans began to act. The guards took cover behind the stone pillars, or lay flat, and brought their rifles to bear. The Gestapo major fumbled his pistol out of its holster. The redhead turned and ran, but her sexy shoes slipped on the cobblestones, and she fell. Her man lay on top of her, protecting her with his body, and Flick decided she had been right to suppose he was a soldier, for a civilian would not know that it was safer to lie down than to run.

The sentries opened fire. Almost immediately, Albert was hit. Flick saw him stagger and clutch his throat. A hand grenade he had been about to throw dropped from his grasp. Then a second round hit him, this time in the forehead. He fell like a stone, and Flick thought with sudden grief of the baby girl born this morning who now had no father. Beside Albert, Bertrand saw the turtleshell grenade roll across the age-worn stone step of the church porch. He hurled himself through the doorway as the grenade exploded. Flick waited for him to reappear, but he did not, and she thought with anguished uncertainty that he could be dead, wounded, or just stunned.

In the parking lot, the team from the church stopped running, turned on the remaining six sentries, and opened up. The four guards near the gate were caught in a crossfire, between those inside the grounds and those outside in the square, and they were wiped out in seconds, leaving only the two on the château steps. Michel's plan was working, Flick thought with a surge of hope.

But the enemy troops inside the building had now had time to seize their weapons and rush to the doors and windows, and they began to shoot, changing the odds again. Everything depended on how many of them there were.

For a few moments the bullets poured like rain, and Flick stopped counting. Then she realized with dismay
that there were many more guns in the château than she had expected. Fire seemed to be coming from at least twelve doors and windows. The men from the church, who should by now be inside the building, retreated to take cover behind the vehicles in the parking lot. Antoinette had been right, and MI6 wrong, about the number of troops stationed here. Twelve was the MI6 estimate, yet the Resistance had downed six for certain and there were at least fourteen still firing.

Flick cursed passionately. In a fight like this, the Resistance could win only by sudden, overwhelming violence. If they did not crush the enemy right away, they were in trouble. As the seconds ticked by, army training and discipline began to tell. In the end, regular troops would always prevail in a drawn-out conflict.

On the upper floor of the château, a tall seventeenth-century window was smashed open, and a machine gun began to fire. Because of its high position, it caused horrible carnage among the Resistance in the parking lot. Flick was sickened as, one after another, the men there fell and lay bleeding beside the dry fountain, until there were only two or three still shooting.

It was all over, Flick realized in despair. They were outnumbered and they had failed. The sour taste of defeat rose in her throat.

Michel had been shooting at the machine-gun position. “We can't take out that machine gunner from the ground!” he said. He looked around the square, his gaze flying to the tops of the buildings, the bell tower of the church, and the upper floor of the town hall. “If I could get into the mayor's office, I'd have a clear shot.”

“Wait.” Flick's mouth was dry. She could not stop him risking his life, much as she wanted to. But she could improve the odds. She yelled at the top of her voice, “Geneviève!”

Geneviève turned to look at her.

“Cover Michel!”

Geneviève nodded vigorously, then dashed out from
behind the sports car, spraying bullets at the château windows.

“Thanks,” Michel said to Flick. Then he broke cover and sprinted across the square, heading for the town hall.

Geneviève ran on, heading for the church porch. Her fire distracted the men in the château, giving Michel a chance of crossing the square unscathed. But then there was a flash on Flick's left. She glanced that way and saw the Gestapo major, flattened against the wall of the town hall, aiming his pistol at Michel.

It was hard to hit a moving target with a handgun at anything but close range—but the major might be lucky, Flick thought fearfully. She was under orders to observe and report back, and not to join the fighting under any circumstances, but now she thought: To hell with that. In her shoulder bag she carried her personal weapon, a Browning nine-millimeter automatic, which she preferred to the SOE standard Colt because it had thirteen rounds in the clip instead of seven, and because she could load it with the same nine-millimeter Parabellum rounds used in the Sten submachine gun. She snatched it out of the bag. She released the safety catch, cocked the hammer, extended her arm, and fired two hasty shots at the major.

She missed him, but her bullets chipped fragments of stone from the wall near his face, and he ducked.

Michel ran on.

The major recovered quickly and raised his weapon again.

As Michel approached his destination, he also came closer to the major, shortening the range. Michel fired his rifle in the major's direction, but the shot went wild, and the major kept his head and fired back. This time, Michel went down, and Flick let out a yell of fear.

Michel hit the ground, tried to get up, and collapsed. Flick calmed herself and thought fast. Michel was still alive. Geneviève had reached the church porch, and her submachine gun fire continued to draw the attention of
the enemy inside the château. Flick had a chance of rescuing Michel. It was against her orders, but no orders could make her leave her husband bleeding on the ground. Besides, if she left him there, he would be captured and interrogated. As leader of the Bollinger circuit, Michel knew every name, every address, every code word. His capture would be a catastrophe.

There was no choice.

She shot at the major again. Again she missed, but she pulled the trigger repeatedly, and the steady fire forced the man to retreat along the wall, looking for cover.

She ran out of the bar into the square. From the corner of her eye she saw the owner of the sports car, still protecting his mistress from gunfire by lying on top of her. Flick had forgotten him, she realized with sudden fear. Was he armed? If so, he could shoot her easily. But no bullets came.

She reached the supine Michel and went down on one knee. She turned toward the town hall and fired two wild shots to keep the major busy. Then she looked at her husband.

To her relief she saw that his eyes were open and he was breathing. He seemed to be bleeding from his left buttock. Her fear receded a little. “You got a bullet in your bum,” she said in English.

He replied in French, “It hurts like hell.”

She turned again to the town hall. The major had retreated twenty meters and crossed the narrow street to a shop doorway. This time Flick took a few seconds to aim carefully. She squeezed off four shots. The shop window exploded in a storm of glass, and the major staggered back and fell to the ground.

Flick spoke to Michel in French. “Try to get up,” she said. He rolled over, groaning in pain, and got to one knee, but he could not move his injured leg. “Come on,” she said harshly. “If you stay here, you'll be killed.” She grabbed him by the front of his shirt and heaved him upright with a mighty effort. He stood on his good leg, but he could not bear his own weight, and leaned
heavily against her. She realized that he was not going to be able to walk, and she groaned in despair.

She glanced over to the side of the town hall. The major was getting up. He had blood on his face, but he did not seem badly injured. She guessed that he had been cut superficially by flying glass but might still be capable of shooting.

There was only one thing for it: she would have to pick Michel up and carry him to safety.

She bent in front of him, grasped him around the thighs, and eased him on to her shoulder in the classic fireman's lift. He was tall but thin—most French people were thin, these days. All the same, she thought she would collapse under his weight. She staggered, and felt dizzy for a second, but she stayed upright.

After a moment, she took a step forward.

She lumbered across the cobblestones. She thought the major was shooting at her, but she could not be sure as there was so much gunfire from the château, from Geneviève, and from the Resistance fighters still alive in the parking lot. The fear that a bullet might hit her at any second gave her strength, and she broke into a lurching run. She made for the road leading out of the square to the south, the nearest exit. She passed the German lying on top of the redhead, and for a startled moment she met his eye and saw an expression of surprise and wry admiration. Then she crashed into a café table, sending it flying, and she almost fell, but managed to right herself and run on. A bullet hit the window of the bar, and she saw a cobweb of fracture lines craze the glass. A moment later, she was around the corner and out of the major's line of sight. Alive, she thought gratefully; both of us—for a few more minutes, at least.

Until now she had not thought where to go once she was clear of the battlefield. Two getaway vehicles were waiting a couple of streets away, but she could not carry Michel that far. However, Antoinette Dupert lived on this street, just a few steps farther. Antoinette was not in the Resistance, but she was sympathetic enough to have
provided Michel with a plan of the château. And Michel was her nephew, so she surely would not turn him away.

Anyway, Flick had no alternative.

Antoinette had a ground-floor apartment in a building with a courtyard. Flick came to the open gateway, a few yards along the street from the square, and staggered under the archway. She pushed open a door and lowered Michel to the tiles.

She hammered on Antoinette's door, panting with effort. She heard a frightened voice say, “What is it?” Antoinette had been scared by the gunfire and did not want to open the door.

Breathlessly, Flick said, “Quickly, quickly!” She tried to keep her voice low. Some of the neighbors might be Nazi sympathizers.

The door did not open, but Antoinette's voice came nearer. “Who's there?”

Flick instinctively avoided speaking a name aloud. She replied, “Your nephew is wounded.”

The door opened. Antoinette was a straight-backed woman of fifty wearing a cotton dress that had once been chic and was now faded but crisply pressed. She was pale with fear. “Michel!” she said. She knelt beside him. “Is it serious?”

“It hurts, but I'm not dying,” Michel said through clenched teeth.

“You poor thing.” She brushed his hair off his sweaty forehead with a gesture like a caress.

Flick said impatiently, “Let's get him inside.”

She took Michel's arms and Antoinette lifted him by the knees. He grunted with pain. Together they carried him into the living room and put him down on a faded velvet sofa.

“Take care of him while I fetch the car,” Flick said. She ran back into the street.

The gunfire was dying down. She did not have long. She raced along the street and turned two corners.

Outside a closed bakery, two vehicles were parked with their engines running: one a rusty Renault, the
other a van with a faded sign on the side that had once read
Blanchisserie Bisset
—Bisset's Laundry. The van was borrowed from the father of Bertrand, who was able to get fuel because he washed sheets for hotels used by the Germans. The Renault had been stolen this morning in Châlons, and Michel had changed its license plates. Flick decided to take the car, leaving the van for any survivors who might get away from the carnage in the château grounds.

She spoke briefly to the driver of the van. “Wait here for five minutes, then leave.” She ran to the car, jumped into the passenger seat, and said, “Let's go, quickly!”

At the wheel of the Renault was Gilberte, a nineteen-year-old girl with long dark hair, pretty but stupid. Flick did not know why she was in the Resistance—she was not the usual type. Instead of pulling away, Gilberte said, “Where to?”

“I'll direct you—for the love of Christ, move!”

Gilberte put the car in gear and drove off.

“Left, then right,” Flick said.

In the two minutes of inaction that followed, the full realization of her failure hit her. Most of the Bollinger circuit was wiped out. Albert and others had died. Geneviève, Bertrand, and any others who survived would probably be tortured.