Assault on Abbeville

by Jack Badelaire

  “He made trouble,” Johansen said, giving a small shrug. Berger shot his tormentor a look that implied otherwise.

  Gorski sighed, then turned to Dumond and Lambert. “Loot the bodies, and grab whatever food you can from the house. We leave in five minutes.”

  Dumond glanced at the gendarme. “Perhaps I should -”

  “No,” Gorski cut him off. “Gather the weapons. Go now.”

  Dumond’s lips drew together in a thin line, then he looked to Lambert and jerked his head in the direction of the dead German soldiers. The two men walked away, but not before Lambert gave Gorski an unreadable look.

  “And now, it is time, yes?” the gendarme asked.

  Gorski turned back to look at the Frenchman, who was in the process of trying to light a match, a cigarette in his mouth, but his hands were trembling, making it difficult. Gorski pulled a brass lighter from his pocket and flicked the striker with his thumb, igniting the wick. He touched the flame to the cigarette for a moment, letting it catch, and the Frenchman drew in deeply, nodding.

  Gorski put the lighter away. “I am sorry.”

  The Frenchman blew smoke out of his nostrils, then made a sideways nod with his head. “If you left me alive, the Boche would just assume I assisted you in some way. I would share in your eventual fate. It is better this way, I think. I would not want to suffer through what they will inflict on me.”

  “If you had been given the chance,” Gorski replied, “you would have arrested us, sent us to that fate. You would have even used this,” he patted the revolver in his pocket.

  The Frenchman drew on his cigarette again and nodded. “Yes, of course. I am a police officer. It is my duty. I have worn this uniform for twenty-two years, and before that, I wore a different uniform for three years, until a German bullet put me in a hospital for eight months.”

  “Then why do you help them?” Gorski asked, desperate anger in his voice.

  “I do not help them, I do what I can to keep the peace,” the Frenchman answered vehemently, eyes narrowed in anger. “I arrest the collaborators and the trouble-makers, lock up the drunks who say things that should not be overheard, stand in to the crowds as the Boche pass by so the people will remain meek and bow their heads, rather than do something that will get their families lined up against walls and shot.”

  “That is a nice speech,” Gorski snapped back. “But nothing you do helps pry the boot from the throats of our countries. I am Polish. My people have lived under the rule of these monsters for almost two years. Life in my homeland has not become better after the invasion, it has only gotten worse. Hitler will never ease his grip, he will only squeeze, and squeeze, until we are all bled dry!”

  The Frenchman looked at him for a long moment, then slowly nodded. Taking one last, long draw from the stub of his cigarette, he took it from his lips, licked his finger, then snuffed the lit end before crumbling the rest between his fingers, letting the remnants drift away on the breeze.

  “May I make a request?” he asked.

  “You can ask,” Gorski replied.

  The Frenchman gestured towards Gorski’s pocket. “I have carried that revolver since I was nineteen years old. I would like it back.”

  Gorski thought for a long moment. He turned, and saw the other Revenants standing together, perhaps thirty meters away, in the direction of the road. Next to Johansen stood Berger, dabbing at his nose with a stained handkerchief. Dumond watched Gorski, his arms crossed over his chest, shotgun slung over his shoulder. No one else looked in Gorski’s direction.

  Reaching into his coat pocket, Gorski pulled out the Chamelot-Delvigne revolver. It was an obsolete weapon firing a weak cartridge, but it was also a venerable service arm, its delicate lines giving it an elegant look. Gorski turned it in his hand until the butt settled into his palm, ready to fire, and he pointed it in the direction of the woodpile where he and Lambert had hidden. Gorski pulled the stiff double-action trigger six times, emptying the revolver, watching splinters fly as the slugs tore through the wood.

  Gorski handed the weapon, empty and smoking, to the gendarme, who smiled. “I wish I had been the last one to fire her. But thank you for returning to me some small portion of my honor.”

  The gendarme drew his shoulders back and raised up his chin, then tugged at his uniform, straightening it. “At least I did not grow old and fat. That would have been intolerable.”

  Gorski found he could only nod. He raised his pistol and shot the gendarme between the eyes. The body crumpled to the ground, the revolver tumbling away. Gorski bent down and put the butt of the revolver back in its owner’s hand, then stood and looked to his men.

  “Let’s go.”

  SEVEN

  With Berger again behind the wheel, they drove south-east for several kilometers before arriving at an intersection and turning almost due north, towards their destination. All of the Revenants rode in the back of the truck again, with Gorski and Verhoeven sitting closest to the truck’s cab, covering Berger. Dumond and Johansen sat near the tailgate, with Lambert in the middle. Although Dumond retained his shotgun, Johansen now held one of the Germans’ MP-38s across his knees, as did Verhoeven. Gorski had the Gestapo agent’s Luger in his coat pocket, along with his other weapons, and a Mauser rifle leaning against the bench next to him. They’d taken all of the Germans’ weapons and ammunition, including a couple of stick grenades, and the .32 caliber pistol carried by the gendarme shot by Johansen.

  The only weapon they didn’t take with them was the older gendarme’s revolver.

  One part of Gorski’s mind played the morning’s violence over and over, analyzing it to find any flaws in his plan, any places where his tactics could have been improved. The most important thing was that all five of them had made it through the encounter unharmed. They all knew the odds of their survival were slim, but it was one thing to understand the odds, and another to face the reality of how utterly alone they were at the moment, here in occupied territory, their only contact a man who tried to sell them out as soon as he found a free minute to drive to the nearest police station.

  The other part of Gorski’s mind contemplated the killing. Although he’d never told any of the other Revenants, Gorski had never killed a man in face-to-face combat until this morning. He was fairly certain he’d wounded or perhaps killed men before, firing the heavy weapons of the armored cars he’d commanded in both ‘39 and ‘40, but all the fighting had been relatively distant, sending bursts of machine gun fire at scuttling infantry, or a cannon shell against a panzer’s hull. The distance and chaos of open warfare gave the violence a certain impartiality which distanced him from his actions.

  But today, there had been no escaping the violence. He’d seen where every bullet went, the blooms of blood upon the clothing of the Feldwebel he’d shot, the ruin of the Gestapo agent’s face, and the neat, round hole his pistol bullet had made in the forehead of the gendarme. Were Gorski to live a hundred years, he knew those sights would never leave him - especially the death of the Frenchman, for really, it was debateable as to whether he and Gorski were even on opposing sides. And while the reality of it was that the man would have arrested - or even shot - Gorski if he’d been given a chance, his aims were ultimately noble, his actions only meant to save the lives of the people he was sworn to protect. Gorski hoped that if he’d been in the man’s place, he would have accepted his fate with such dignity.

  The more Gorski pondered that last thought, however, the more it soured on him. No, he realized, he hoped nothing of the sort - he hoped he would have never been so stupid as to find himself in such a situation in the first place. The man didn’t even have his weapon at the ready! He counted on a mere six German infantrymen to approach a potential ambush position where five armed enemies were going to resist - perhaps to the death - at the first sign of their discovery. The Germans should have brought at least twice as many men, and the damn gendarmes should have brought more men of their own, and carried carbines as well.

  The
thought of the two gendarmes brought to mind Johansen. Gorski glanced towards the rear of the truck, where the Norwegian sat, peering out through a thin slit in the canvas cover hanging above the tailgate. Gorski caught Verhoeven’s attention and leaned forward, waiting until the Dutchman did the same before speaking.

  “At the road,” Gorski whispered, “did the gendarme go for his weapon?”

  Verhoeven’s lips turned into a thin line for a moment. “When we came out of the woods from the other side of the road, the gendarme turned and dropped his hand to his gun. But, his holster flap was still buckled. The motion was obviously just a reflex.”

  “And Johansen shot him anyway,” Gorski said.

  “It was ruthless, yes, but does it matter?” Verhoeven replied, giving a small shrug. “We both know there was no other way, in the end. Johansen just got it over with quickly.”

  “I am still concerned about what he did to Berger.” Gorski said. “He knows better. One look at that man’s face, and there will be questions we don’t need.”

  “What is done is done. You know what has to happen anyway, and soon,” Verhoeven said, glancing towards the truck’s cab.

  “As long as his usefulness outweighs his deceit, he lives. But not one moment longer,” Gorski replied.

  Verhoeven nodded, then leaned back. After a moment, he took an apple from his pocket and bit into it.

  Gorski sat upright, turning to look through the small window and out the truck’s windscreen. It appeared they were approaching their destination, the town of Abbeville. From where he sat, Gorski could see the red welt on the side of Berger’s face, where Johansen had hit him. Despite Verhoeven’s dismissal of the incident, it troubled Gorski, because it was the first time one of the men had directly disobeyed one of his orders. He’d made it clear that Berger was to remain unharmed until the second phase of their operation was underway, and Johansen’s actions might have doomed them all.

  The taciturn Norwegian had always been a bit of an outsider. He was the only one among them who didn’t know even a little French when the Revenants formed last year, and he’d needed to work hard to become even marginally conversant. Johansen had known some English, and both Dumond and Verhoeven spoke a little as well, so Johansen hadn’t been without a way to communicate with the others, but Gorski suspected that the inability to converse easily in the team’s chosen language had kept the man from bonding with the rest of them as strongly as he should have.

  But as Verhoeven had said a moment ago, what was done was done. Gorski would just have to keep an eye on Johansen from now on, and hope for the best. In a team this small, a rogue element would - never mind could - be fatal to them all.

  Berger rapped his knuckles against the back window and got Gorski’s attention. “We’ve got to pass through town, so I can give the signals. Make sure you are unseen.”

  “And you be sure to do nothing to attract undue attention,” Gorski warned.

  Berger swallowed and nodded, a bead of perspiration rolling down the side of his face. “Yes, of course. It is early enough, there shouldn’t be many people on the streets.”

  Gorski nodded and passed the warning on to the others, who made sure they kept away from any gaps in the canvas cover. Satisfied they were all hidden, Gorski lowered himself so that he wouldn’t be seen if someone looked into the truck’s cab. Across from him, Verhoeven drew back the bolt of his MP-38, pointing the muzzle towards Berger’s seat. Gorski nodded. If things went sour, at least the French turncoat wouldn’t escape alive.

  From his position, Gorski was able to see through a small portion of the truck’s driver-side windscreen, and he watched the buildings go by as they entered Abbeville. The town had been shelled and bombed by both sides last year, although it hadn’t suffered as much destruction as some cities, such as Calais. Still, as they progressed down the street, Gorski saw shattered walls with wooden support structures around them, gaps along the street where buildings too badly damaged to be repaired had been demolished, and smaller signs of battle, like the occasional pockmarked brick or plaster wall showing where machine gun fire had knocked fist-sized pits in the buildings’ exteriors. Gorski imagined that most of the towns of any appreciable size in northern France looked much the same.

  The truck’s transmission snarled, and the vehicle lurched, slowing down and turning sharply before coming to a sudden stop. Gorski peered out the window and saw Berger looking back at him. Beyond the windscreen, Gorski saw they were tucked into a narrow alleyway.

  “This is the first stop. It will only take a moment. You must all be silent.”

  Without waiting for a reply, the Frenchman exited the truck and disappeared from view. Gorski drew his Vis 9mm and cocked back the hammer, then angled his head so he could peek out through the windscreen.

  Several minutes passed. Dumond shifted nervously, and the truck’s suspension squeaked in protest.

  “Don’t move, you great ox!” Verhoeven whispered, staring daggers at his teammate.

  “I had to pass gas,” Dumond replied, apologetically.

  “Shut. Up. Now!” Gorski growled, as he heard several people walk past the rear of the truck speaking French.

  After what seemed like an eternity, Berger climbed back into the truck, put it in gear, and backed out into the street before turning and continuing on.

  “It is done,” he said. “I’ve left the signal for a meeting tonight at the usual place.”

  “No other visits,” Gorski replied. “Every minute we’re in the open is a risk.”

  “Trust me,” Berger whined. “I don’t want to be found any more than you do!”

  “Good!” Gorski snapped at him. “Remember that. You’re complicit in everything that happened this morning. Your old life is finished. Your name and face will be all over the region soon, and if anyone sees you doing anything, suspicious or not, they’ll send an entire company of German soldiers after you. Here in France, you are a dead man.”

  Berger looked straight ahead and said nothing for a minute, until Gorski saw the man’s shoulders shaking, and realized Berger was sobbing.

  “Enough of that,” he scolded. “Compose yourself. Your life depends on you retaining your wits.”

  Berger nodded, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket and wiping at his face. “I...apologize for my weakness this morning,” he finally said. “I am not a brave man. I thought if I gave you to the authorities, my own transgressions would be forgiven.”

  “How did they catch you?” Gorski asked.

  “Selling black market pornography,” Berger replied, sounding sheepish. “Pornographic playing cards, actually. A German soldier was caught with them, and admitted to his superiors he bought them from me.”

  “Surely that is not a crime so grievous as to be worth risking your life by admitting you’re working for the British,” Gorski said.

  Berger shook his head. “One of the German officers recognized the style of cards as being of a kind made by the English. Said he’d seen them looted from dead soldiers last year. They demanded to know how I had acquired newly-printed English pornography.”

  Gorski said nothing, he just shook his head. All of this morning’s death and violence, brought about by the sale of a few dirty pictures. Gorski didn’t regret what happened - save the deaths of the gendarmes - but it did put them all on much more precarious footing. They’d arrived in France working under the suspicion that their contact might not be completely loyal, but while they’d prepared for the worst, Gorski had still hoped for the best. Unfortunately, as so often happens in war, the worst was what came to pass.

  Berger drove them out of town and back into the countryside. By now it was seven o’clock in the morning, and Gorski was getting nervous. Someone would be expecting the capture party to return or report in by now, and a smart garrison commander would have already sent an element out to Berger’s house to find out what happened, preferably a scout car with a wireless set. If that was the case, news of the ambush might already have reached A
bbeville, meaning Berger’s truck needed to get off the road as soon as possible.

  Eventually, Gorski felt the truck begin to decelerate, and he saw a decrepit-looking barn or warehouse tucked just off the road and shaded by a stand of trees. Berger dropped the transmission into first gear and turned off the road, then drove around back behind the building. There, he finally stopped and shut off the truck’s engine. The silence was broken by the squeaking of the truck’s suspension as Dumond shifted in his seat again.

  Berger turned around and looked through the little window.

  “We have arrived,” he said.

  EIGHT

  It only took a few minutes for the six men to unload their packs and captured weapons from the truck and move everything into the old barn. Enough sunlight leaked through the cracks in the walls to allow Berger to find a lantern, and in moments they were able to see the barn’s interior. Instead of stalls and hay, the old barn was filled with wood - stacks and stacks of planks, boards, dowels, blocks, beams, and more. Here and there a half-finished piece of furniture stood in the midst of sawdust and wood shavings. Tools ranging from axes and saws to chisels, rasps, planes, awls, and others hung from the walls.

  “Paquet, one of the other members, he owns this. It is his workshop,” Berger told the Revenants as they looked around.

  “Why is there a barn here?” Dumond asked. “There is no farmhouse nearby.”

  Berger gestured back, away from the road. “The foundation is still intact, but the farmhouse is gone. It was destroyed in the last war, the family killed or moved away. The barn survived, and some of the land was bought by a neighbor, but the barn was sold on a separate plot, and Paquet bought it. He owns a furniture and woodcrafts store in town, but it doesn’t have the space necessary for all of this, so he works here and hires me now and then to bring the finished products into town.”

  “So, that is how you know him?” Gorski asked.

  Berger nodded. “We’ve known each other for a few years. After the invasion, we were silent for months, afraid to broach the subject, but he began to make hints, to seek my opinion on what to do about the Germans. This was after it was clear there would be no invasion of England, that the English had stopped the Germans from crossing the Channel. Once that was clear, we began to talk in earnest.”