Scorched Earth

by Robert Muchamore

  The soldier nodded. ‘How come you speak like a frog?’

  ‘French mother,’ Marc explained, disappointed that strenuous efforts hadn’t disguised his accent.

  The only things Luc knew about fixing trucks were a few tips he’d picked up while learning vehicle sabotage during his espionage training. He squeezed between the trucks, carrying a random tool pouch he’d found inside.

  The broken-down vehicle’s radiator had overheated and the hood had already been loosened to let out steam. As Luc balanced on the front bumper making thoughtful noises, Edith stepped over the little artillery piece and crept in the back.

  Shooting the young German would have been easy, but Marc didn’t like the idea of revenge-happy troops finding a blood-spattered truck outside the farm where his girlfriend lived.

  Edith crawled over boxes of 37.5-mm artillery shells. When she got behind the German’s seat she swung a cosh, cobbled together using a sock filled with metal sockets from the mechanic’s chest aboard their truck. It was meant to belt the German in the temple and knock him cold, but he glanced around at the last second and it smacked the bridge of his nose.

  Luc had been waiting for Edith’s blow and he jumped off the bumper and opened the driver’s door. As Edith knocked the soldier out with a second coshing, Luc grabbed his boots and yanked him into the road.

  Luc looked happy as he put the unconscious soldier in choke hold and throttled him. As the German breathed his last, Marc hopped around the back and inspected the artillery piece.

  ‘Reckon we could use this?’ Marc asked, as he looked across to confirm that their truck had a suitable towing bar.

  ‘Do you know how to use artillery?’ Michel asked.

  Marc shrugged. ‘It’s basically a gun with massive bullets. How hard can it be?’

  As Luc dragged his kill through the roadside hedge and deep into one of Morel’s fields, Marc and Michel unhooked the artillery piece and attached it to their truck, along with several crates of small shells.

  Edith searched the truck’s cab and found a road map. It had a route marked all the way from Beauvais to Caen in Normandy, passing through Rouen as Henderson had predicted. Edith didn’t read German well, so she passed the map to Marc.

  ‘PT,’ Marc shouted, as he ran back to the cab. ‘This map has got everything: routes, alternative routes, diversions, weak bridges.’

  PT didn’t quite believe it when he saw the map. It was a standard German-language road map that had been carefully adulterated with dozens of hand-stamped symbols, which were explained in a separate key typed on waxy paper.

  ‘They wouldn’t give a map this detailed to every driver,’ PT said.

  Marc thought for a moment before replying. ‘I guess they have to give it to some of them. With air attacks and resistance raids, the 108th will move in smallish groups. And there’s a big risk of getting separated or lost in the dark.’

  By this time, Luc was back from hiding the body, while Edith and Michel had transferred a can of fuel and anything else worth having from the broken-down truck.

  ‘I say we use this map,’ PT said, ‘find a weak spot on the 108th’s route and sabotage as many tanks as we can.’

  Edith looked wary. ‘Henderson said—’

  PT interrupted. ‘Henderson thought we were gonna be riding bicycles, harassing stragglers and broken-down tanks at the rear. But our truck can cruise three times as fast as the tanks and we’ve got a map that shows us where they’re heading.’

  ‘We don’t wanna fall too far behind,’ Marc said. ‘Luc can ride up front for a bit. I’ve got the best German, so I’ll study the map in the back and try to find their weak spot.’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Thursday 16 June 1944

  A hundred kilometres separated Beauvais from Rouen. It was a seven-hour ride for a Tiger tank that couldn’t risk breaking its drive shaft, but even with a couple of diversions to avoid tank columns and Maquis-infested forests, Henderson’s OT truck reached Rouen’s outskirts in two hours. He’d driven fast and Paul, Joel and Sam were thoroughly shaken in the rear.

  Rouen’s half-million population was divided by the River Seine. The main German fuel depot was in an industrial area south of the city. Heavy bombing had damaged the only bridge here and nothing heavier than a motorbike was allowed across.

  Instead, the 108th’s advance party had put up signs with directions into the city and Henderson crossed the Seine in the heart of Rouen, before taking a tortuous route south through narrow city streets. Each sign was guarded, lest some mischievous resistance member decided to meddle with it.

  ‘What’s the plan, boss?’ Paul asked, as he stuck his head through the canvas flaps behind Henderson’s seat.

  Henderson tapped the fuel gauge. ‘Running on fumes,’ he explained. ‘So we’ll try and kill two birds with one stone. I’ll follow the signs to the depot, get a fresh tank of diesel and a good look around. Hopefully we’ll be able to work out a way to come back and do some damage before the Tigers get here.’

  The French had built the depot close to the river so that supplies could be brought in by tanker. There were three large cylindrical fuel tanks above ground, but these were neglected and Henderson immediately realised that the Germans kept their precious supplies in newer tanks, dug into the ground and shielded by metre-thick concrete.

  As the Allied planes now dominated the skies, it was important that the 108th made as much ground as possible under cover of darkness. While the first Tigers wouldn’t arrive for at least five hours, many support vehicles due to reach the depot before sunrise had done so. Henderson found himself in a queue of trucks, Kübelwagens, motorised artillery and half-tracked troop carriers.

  While he waited, a team pushed bulky handcarts down the line, passing out bread and sausage, pouring coffee into soldiers’ enamel mugs and refilling canteens by dunking them into a barrel. Henderson passed out his canteen, but the man cutting off chunks of sausage baulked when he saw his brown uniform.

  ‘OT?’ he said, glancing at his colleague.

  The colleague shrugged like he didn’t care and Henderson got fed. Henderson would have liked to wear a 108th uniform, but it was too risky because he’d been seen around the bars in Beauvais dressed as OT.

  ‘Anyone want this?’ Henderson asked, as he passed the sausage back through the canvas.

  Sam was hungry. He split it with his older brother Joel, but gobbed it into his hand when he tasted the mouthful of fat and gristle.

  ‘That’s vile!’ Sam gasped, as he unscrewed the top of his canteen to rinse his mouth.

  ‘Look on the bright side,’ Joel said, as he tried swallowing his piece. ‘Eating this muck can’t be good for German morale.’

  Paul couldn’t help smirking as Henderson rolled the truck a couple of places further towards the refuelling pumps. ‘Good for my morale though. Your faces are a picture.’

  But Henderson darkened the mood when he turned back and spoke through the canvas. ‘You boys be ready. I don’t like what I’m seeing.’

  ‘Ready for what?’ Joel asked.

  ‘Keep weapons and grenades to hand,’ Henderson warned. ‘If you have to run, go left and try getting between the fuel tanks. They’re shielded, but hopefully they still won’t want to fire bullets towards their precious fuel.’

  There was no way to look out of the canvas awning without being spotted by someone in the truck behind.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ Paul asked.

  ‘We’re up to sixth in the queue,’ Henderson said. ‘There’s three pumps and a private with a clipboard is checking everyone off against a list.’

  With fuel in such huge demand it was no surprise that security was high, and ticking off vehicles was a standard procedure used to track progress during the movement of a large battalion. Henderson hoped he could bluff a tank of fuel, but didn’t feel optimistic as he rolled up to a slim private.

  ‘Vehicle number,’ the private asked.

  ‘OT seven-five-six-two,’ He
nderson said, figuring there was no point lying because of his uniform and the vehicle ID painted on the door.

  ‘Not the 108th?’ the man asked.

  ‘I have to get west,’ Henderson said. ‘I’m part of a survey team.’

  ‘I don’t care if you’ve got Adolf Hitler in your passenger seat,’ the private said. ‘Our allocation is short. Every drip is earmarked for the 108th and you’re not even supposed to be on the road until the 108th has cleared the area.’

  ‘Is there anywhere I can get fuel in town?’ Henderson asked.

  The soldier laughed. ‘Can’t miss it, bright red sign. All the fuel you want, all the food you can eat and all the whores have three tits.’

  Henderson smiled at the joke, after which the soldier showed more sympathy.

  ‘There’s an OT office in town,’ he said. ‘Drive back the way you came and get them to write up a fuel requisition slip. But I still can’t supply you until the entire 108th has passed through.’

  ‘Blast it,’ Henderson said, as he looked at his fuel gauge and guessed that he had 10 kilometres’ range if he was gentle on the throttle.

  ‘I’d help if I could,’ the private said.

  ‘Rules are rules, I guess,’ Henderson said, making like he wasn’t too bothered. ‘I’ll head back towards town.’

  The concrete refuelling courtyard was wide enough to turn the truck around in a single arc. The private made an absurd show of self-importance as he gave a halt signal for the vehicle behind Henderson’s truck, followed by grand sweeping gestures to indicate that Henderson was about to turn back towards the city.

  ‘Could have been worse,’ Henderson told the boys, as he drove slowly past the queue that he’d wasted the last hour in. ‘Can’t see us damaging those buried fuel tanks with our sticks of plastic, but we could hold things up a good while by destroying the refuelling pumps.’

  The road into the fuel depot narrowed as it neared the point where it met the highway. Henderson had to stop to let the men dishing out food and water wheel their carts out of his way. It wasn’t much of a hold-up, but before he could set off, a man wearing the heavy silver neck chain of a German military police officer stepped from between two queuing trucks making a halt gesture.

  ‘Out of the vehicle,’ the man said. ‘Present your documentation.’

  Henderson thought about hitting the gas and flattening him. But his forged paperwork and spoken German were perfect, so he decided to chance it. As Henderson stepped down into the dark, Paul peeked through a tear in the canvas awning.

  ‘I recall you drinking with some of my officers, in Beauvais,’ the policeman said suspiciously, as Henderson noted that he wore the stripes of a Hauptmann, which was equivalent to his own rank of Captain. ‘You seemed interested in the men of the 108th, and now I find you here.’

  Henderson didn’t like where this was going. Regular military policemen spent their time breaking up fights, charging drunks and running down deserters. But this guy was a senior officer who clearly packed a decent brain.

  ‘OT seven-five-six-two,’ the policeman said, placing one hand on his holstered pistol as he ran his fingertips across the number stencilled on the truck’s door. ‘OT one-five-six-seven was reported stolen after a Maquis ambush north of Beauvais. A few careful brush strokes would change one to the other, I think.’

  The officer was clearly proud of his detective job, but as he was alone he ought to have put his suspect in cuffs before bragging about it.

  ‘Turn and place your hands on the side of the truck,’ the policeman said, as he pointed his gun at Henderson’s chest. Then the officer turned to a group of troops sitting in one of the trucks waiting to refuel.

  ‘Secure this vehicle immediately,’ he ordered. ‘Make sure there’s nobody hiding in the back.’

  The policeman had to take a step back to enable the other troops to see him. Henderson planned to use this half-second to kick him in the groin and try grabbing the pistol, but Sam had snatched up a pistol and crawled into the truck’s cab. His bullet flew out of a side window, hitting the policeman in the head.

  At the same instant, Paul leaped into the driving seat, grateful for the fact that the engine was still running. He drove a few metres forward, knocking down the first soldiers reacting to the policeman’s final order.

  Sam threw open the canvas flap at the back of the truck and yelled at Henderson, ‘Get in!’

  As Henderson jumped aboard, Paul realised he had a problem. One side of the road was lined with trucks and the way forward was blocked by two serving carts and a giant-wheeled water barrel. There was a chance he could smash them out of the way, but they could easily end up beaching the truck, so he didn’t fancy his chances.

  ‘Backing up,’ Paul shouted to the others, as he struggled to find reverse gear.

  Fortunately it was dark and the soldiers in the surrounding vehicles were half asleep. The truck’s transmission whined as Paul reversed 100 metres towards the three fuelling pumps.

  ‘I need grenades,’ Henderson shouted, as he scrambled around in the back. ‘Where have you hidden them?’

  Paul was driving an unfamiliar vehicle backwards in the dark, seeing nothing but black shapes in his side mirrors.

  ‘Can anyone see?’ he shouted. ‘Where the hell am I going?’

  Joel and Sam had grabbed weapons and grenades while Henderson had been at the roadside. Sam decided that anything that took attention away from them was a good thing and lobbed several grenades out of the side window towards queuing trucks.

  Henderson looked out the back and yelled at Paul. ‘Turn hard right. Everyone brace!’

  There were a couple of gloomy electric lights in the refuelling area and Paul saw that he’d backed up to the broad concourse on which Henderson had turned two minutes earlier. He swung the steering wheel, half expecting the truck to roll.

  The first grenades went off under the waiting trucks as Paul hit the brake. A bullet smashed the windscreen as he crunched first gear and set off towards the fuelling rigs. He thought about ramming one of them, but his main concern was getting away so he aimed between two trucks in the middle of refuelling.

  The gap was barely wide enough. Side mirrors broke off and the canvas awning got ripped. They had enough plastic explosive to blow the refuelling rigs, but there wasn’t time to set detonators, so Henderson could only lob out grenades while Joel shot up the refuelling crews with a machine gun.

  The fuel depot’s exit was up a slight ramp, 50 metres ahead. An arrow pointed left towards a wooded area further south where the 108th would hide its vehicles, waiting for the big tanks to catch up before setting off on the second half of the journey to Normandy at nightfall.

  Paul had no idea where a right turn would take him, but he figured it was better to move away from the 108th’s freshly-fuelled vehicles than towards them. The road was slightly uphill, passing a boatyard with the River Seine at its far edge.

  As Paul accelerated, the steering wheel almost ripped his hand off and he realised he had a front puncture. He veered out of control towards tatty pleasure boats and river barges standing on their keels. A large explosion in the refuelling area coincided with the point where a lot of angry soldiers had their weapons ready and had finally worked out who they were supposed to be shooting at.

  ‘It’s dying on me,’ Paul shouted, as the engine stalled.

  He forgot to apply the handbrake and the truck began a slow roll downhill as he dived for the driver’s door. But as Paul grabbed the handle, it felt like a thousand machine-gun bullets simultaneously hit the side of the truck.

  The vehicle picked up momentum as Paul scrambled out. Sam kicked him in the face as they hit the road on top of each other. Henderson and Joel had already jumped through the torn canvas. As Joel vaulted a low fence into the boatyard and bullets tore up the road, Henderson helped Paul and Sam to their feet.

  ‘You hurt?’ Henderson asked.

  Sam and Paul both felt OK as they scrambled away from the rolling truck.
They’d all made it into a gloomy channel between two beached coal-barges when a light tank annihilated Henderson’s truck with a single shell.

  Nobody was injured, but Joel had the only gun and they knew next to nothing about their surroundings.

  ‘Shit, shit, shit!’ Henderson gasped. ‘It’ll be a bloody miracle if we make it out of here alive.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  While the fuel depot burned, Daniel and the rest of Team A were 40 kilometres east. Daniel had just reached the top of a large tree, with first light coming over the horizon behind him. He held up Luc’s binoculars and saw the murky outline of a 30-metre-long road bridge. There were guards at either end and a tow-truck on standby.

  Marc had carefully studied the German road map, looking for vulnerable points: tunnels to block, bridges to blast or steep-sided valleys from which you could stage an ambush. But the land between Beauvais and Rouen was flat and the only bridges crossed tributaries of the Seine narrow enough to be bridged at every hamlet. Blowing one of these up would only divert the tank columns a couple of kilometres to the next bridge.

  However, the 60-tonne weight of a Tiger tank did create difficulties for the Germans. Many bridges on the map were marked with a cross, which the key translated as Bridge uncrossable by tanks, or a cross with a circle which meant Light vehicles only.

  After careful study, Marc found several points where blowing a strong bridge would add significant time to the tanks’ journey to Rouen. The best of these was just past the intersection of three roads on the edge of a small town named Gournay-en-Bray.

  Taking out the bridge here would add sixty to ninety minutes to a tank’s journey time. It wasn’t much, but Marc hoped it would give extra time for Henderson to set up a sabotage operation in Rouen, and the longer the tanks spent on the road in daylight the greater the chance that they’d be located and destroyed by the RAF’s rocket-firing Tempest bombers.

  ‘What’s it like?’ PT asked, reaching up to grab Daniel as his legs dangled overhead.

  The whole of Team A were huddled 200 metres west of the bridge, with their truck hidden between two dilapidated barns.