Operation Armageddon

by Richard Freeman

  Gradually the smoothness of the initial stages of the flight gave way to bumping and rocking. The sky became darker. At times the plane lurched from side to side as it passed through squally rain. On and on they flew in the desolation of the empty night sky. After a few hours the plane began to slow. They were turning a lot.

  ‘All okay?’ said Bosanquet.

  ‘Not really. No sign of a light down there. Amateurs!’

  The plane had quietened as it slowed to around 80 miles per hour. Its passage round and round the rendezvous area seemed to Bosanquet to be as leisurely as a pedalo ride round a park lake. The minutes ticked by. Not a word from Allsopp. Nothing but banking to starboard, banking to port … and darkness.

  ‘That’s it then! Times up!’ said Allsopp.

  ‘Wait …’

  ‘Fuel’s short. Sorry. Back to Blighty … just get a fix on the stars.’

  ‘Allsopp, have you no idea how important this mission is? If I don’t make Cap d’Enfer then—’

  ‘Give me a break, Commander! There’s only enough gas to get us home, and that’s that.’

  Allsopp busied himself getting a fix on the stars – his only means of navigating at night. Five minutes later, he called out: ‘Got it! We’re off!’

  The plane turned. Bosanquet felt the thrust of its powerful acceleration and the lift as it climbed higher above the landing area. ‘Damn! Damn! Damn!’ He took one last glance down.

  ‘A light!’ shouted Bosanquet. ‘Two lights! Starboard thirty degrees!’

  ‘You lucky bastard! I’d have been gone five minutes ago if the sky had been clearer.’

  The plane turned again and began to plunge steeply. ‘Hang on! Don’t worry about the bumps. She can take it!’

  The Lysander descended rapidly as Allsopp kept the landing lights in line. This was the real thing at last, thought Bosanquet as his first landing on enemy territory approached. Richard Hannay had stepped out of his block of flats wearing the milkman’s coat and cap to begin his great adventure of The Thirty-Nine Steps. Later, disguised as Cornelis Brandt, he had faced the evil Colonel Ulric von Stumm in his Greenmantle escapade. Where Hannay had led, Bosanquet was now to follow – in a Frenchman’s clothes.

  He had a vague sensation that they were barely skirting the forest and had visions of the plane smashing into the tree tops. What a humiliating end that would be to his adventures, he thought. Then a sharpish drop, a thump, the pull of the brakes, his chest thrown forward against his harness, a juddering halt.

  ‘Now!’

  Bosanquet thrust back the canopy, threw out his rucksack, thumped the release button and fell over the side in his haste to aid Allsopp’s departure. He was barely a few yards from the plane when it tore off into the darkness, roaring away over the surrounding woods. Half a minute later there was a burst of gunfire. The Lysander spluttered. Flames shot out from the fuel tank behind Allsopp, and the plane plunged to earth.

  19

  Marie and her two colleagues had heard the plane when it first reached the landing zone, but they were in no position to guide it down. They had arrived fifteen minutes before the drop was due. Paulette Delacroix and Emmanuelle Gagnier had hammered three landing light posts into the ground and placed a torch on each. Meanwhile Marie, hiding in the undergrowth, kept guard, alert to any sight or sound of an enemy presence.

  Marie delighted in these girls – her two closest conspirators for operations outside the base. They had grown up together, gone to school together and joined the Resistance together. Marie overlooked the danger in this closeness since no two workers understood each other better than these girls. In the dark of a night operation, one glance or a gesture was enough to coordinate their actions. In daily life they shared every confidence, every triumph and every disappointment. Had they been twins they could not have been closer. The only thing that separated them was their occupations: Paulette was a barmaid, while Emmanuelle worked in a boulangerie. When Marie’s dead letter drops had told them of the landing twenty-four hours earlier, each found an excuse to be absent from home that night.

  Everything was ready for the Lysander. The three women retreated into the wood and waited. Paulette was the first to hear the low rumble, a little to the north. She moved as if to run out to switch on the lights. Marie held her back. ‘Wait!’ The noise gradually increased. Now Marie was sure that the plane was near enough to see the lights. ‘Go!’ she cried.

  Paulette and Emmanuelle ran out from under the trees, bending low. The engine noise was now imperiously increasing. Paulette was the first to discover the disaster. She raced back to Marie.

  ‘The lights! They’ve gone!’

  ‘Boche!’ shouted Marie.

  The engine noise was now steady. Marie knew that the pilot would not overstay his drop time by more than ten minutes or so. And all they had between them was a box of matches and some cigarettes.

  ‘Straw!’ whispered Marie. ‘In the barn! Cover us!’

  Marie and Paulette ran down the track towards the small barn. Emmanuelle, listening for the least sound of movement, knelt low in the brushwood and clung to her Sten gun.

  Marie and Paulette ran into the open-doored barn, stacked high with bales of straw.

  ‘A bale each,’ ordered Marie.

  The two women each dragged a bale towards the doorway. They were both struggling. Their arms felt as if they were being pulled from their sockets. Even after a few feet of dragging, they were panting as if they had run a 100-yard race. Neither liked to admit that they had not the strength to drag a bale each. It was Marie who first admitted defeat: ‘Together, then,’ she said as she took one end of Paulette’s bale.

  There was no sign of Emmanuelle at the clearing. Marie dared not stop to investigate. With the bale at the first post, she cut the binding string and the two women pulled off a small heap of straw. Then on to the next post, and the next. Overhead, the plane circled, its deep rumbling engine advertising its presence.

  Marie, kneeling at post three, made a small open pile of straw and put a match to it. It flared up and quickly expired. She needed several attempts to find the right quantity of straw and density of packing to both catch and sustain fire. Meanwhile Paulette ran down to posts two and one to repeat the operation. At first the straw smoked rather than burnt. The two women puffed at the nascent flames on the two end piles. Slowly they brightened. It was this brightening that Bosanquet had spotted. Coughing and choking from the acerbic smoke, Marie and Paulette ran back to the woods for cover. Marie tripped and fell head first onto the sodden woodland floor. She stumbled to her feet, her mouth full of rotting leaves. She had seen Emmanuelle’s body too late to miss it. The lifeless girl lay face up, staring into nothing. A dark stream flowed from her severed throat. Marie was now certain that the Germans were, like her, waiting for the landing.

  Before Marie could react to this terrifying discovery, the plane bounced down onto the grass strip and drew to a halt. A man more or less fell out. And the plane was gone. She rushed forward to reach her visitor. The man was looking around, half-standing. With a sharp blow on the shoulder Marie forced Bosanquet to the ground. At that moment the Lysander exploded and the two of them were floodlit by its fireball.

  ‘Keep down! Boche!’

  Now lying alongside Bosanquet on the ground, Marie pointed to the trees on the other side of the landing strip.

  ‘Run! And wait in the wood.’

  And she was gone.

  Bosanquet picked up his rucksack and, bending low, stumbled over the rough pasture towards the trees. As soon as he entered the wood his pace was slowed by the tangle of undergrowth and dead branches that covered its floor. He was now seriously worried about the scene into which he had dropped. The plane was incinerated. Allsopp was surely dead. And the Germans were chasing a girl around the fields. His drop wasn’t quite how he had imagined it would be. And what if the girl did not come back? London had offered no fall-back plan.

  While Bosanquet was contemplating the thought of havi
ng to find his own way to Cap d’Enfer and somehow make contact with the Resistance, Marie had rendezvoused with Paulette in the wood on the other side of the landing strip.

  ‘Where’s Emmanuelle?’ Paulette asked.

  Marie shrugged her shoulders. It was not the right moment to break the bad news to Paulette. For a moment her anger at the loss of Emmanuelle tempted her to go in search of the Germans and have her revenge. Yet she knew the risk was too great. One or two, she and Paulette could handle. The half-dozen soldiers that the Germans regularly sent on these patrols were another matter. They could only wait for the soldiers to leave. But they didn’t.

  As soon as Marie had reached Paulette, the sound of barking dogs rang out through the woods, accompanied by shouted orders. Marie crept forward through the tangled woodland floor, briars tearing at her clothes, twigs whiplashing her face.

  As she neared the area where the soldiers were concentrated she heard snatches of urgent orders: ‘Over there’ … ‘Search those bushes’ … ‘Cover the exit’. Some orders were noticeably more distant. Just how many searchers were there?

  After ten or fifteen minutes the soldiers came out of the woods and began to inspect the landing strip and the edge of the wood on each side. Marie watched the beams of yellowish light as the soldiers swung their torches from side to side. In the wood beyond the end of the strip the wreckage of the plane was still burning. A couple of soldiers, brightly illuminated by the reds, yellows and oranges of the inferno, stood mesmerised by the flames. A shouted order set them to intensively inspecting the surrounding area. Another shout, this time from a soldier who had discovered Allsopp’s charred remains.

  Marie reckoned that she had counted at least ten soldiers. It would be only a matter of minutes before she and Paulette were found – and their newly landed agent. It was time to make an exit. She crawled back to where she had left her companion.

  ‘We need to go. You go first,’ she whispered to Paulette, ‘and keep off the roads.’

  Paulette hesitated.

  ‘Leave him to me …’ said Marie. ‘Just go!’

  Paulette kissed Marie, saying ‘May God protect you’, and reluctantly left her leader to whatever fate the night might bring. She retrieved her bicycle from the undergrowth near the road and began her return home along byways that she hoped were unknown to the Germans. She was mistaken, though. She never reached home.

  Meanwhile, Marie continued to survey the moves of the Germans. They were still obsessed with the plane and it was some time before the officer called the soldiers away.

  What she saw next filled her with a new terror. An officer, surrounded by half a dozen men, barked out some instructions, and then pointed the men in the general direction of Bosanquet’s hiding place. It wasn’t just the men that alarmed Marie: it was the three snarling dogs, jumping and tugging at their chain leashes. The soldiers left the improvised airstrip and entered the wood on the far side. The excited yelps of the bloodthirsty dogs reverberated through the trees. It was now one woman against six or so men and three rapacious animals.

  As the men entered the wood they were already beginning to fan out. Marie quickly rejected her first plan of rushing the group with her Sten gun blazing. Her second plan of taking them from the rear – all their attention would be focused ahead – was now equally futile. At most, she might fell one or two soldiers and perhaps a dog before the others turned on her. It was at this point that she realised that her boldest plan was also her wisest.

  Marie ran across the strip and made her way towards Bosanquet. She crept forward, stopping every few yards with a ‘Pst!’ to gain his attention. Why didn’t he respond? Was he deaf? Or dead? It was beginning to look like another botched operation. Only when Marie was three yards from Bosanquet did he turn towards her. She signalled ‘keep down’ and came alongside: ‘Boche,’ she said pointing forwards. ‘You stay here. I’ll give them the lesson they deserve.’

  And with that, Marie crawled forward towards the soldiers. She did not have to advance far before her presence was detected. A furious angry barking exploded in the darkness before her. A soldier’s shout unleashed the terror: ‘Voraus!’

  Marie heard the chain fall loose from the soldier’s hand. A roaring, panting animal came leaping towards her. How easy it would be to shoot now, she thought. And how foolish. She had to draw the dog and soldier away from her agent. She was running, stumbling and darting now, leading the dog and his handler further away from Bosanquet. Briars were tearing at her clothing. Twigs were embedding themselves in her hair. The hu … hu … hu … of the dog was ever nearer. The barks were more frequent and more raucous. The snarls ever more menacing. This was more than Marie had bargained for. She stumbled on some fallen branches and came near to plunging into a badger sett. The dog’s panting was even closer now. Impossibly close. It was now or never. She turned sharply towards her ferocious pursuer.

  Bosanquet had heard the barking and the shouting and concluded that the landing had failed. He began to think of how best to escape from the area before it was too late. London had not given a thought as to what he was supposed to do if he did not make contact with the Resistance. He imagined that the Special Operations people thought of that sort of thing. An emergency drop by Naval Intelligence was altogether more amateur. His despondent musings were interrupted by a woman’s voice from the darkness: ‘Vile cur! … Stinking, wretched animal!’

  This was followed by a burst of gunfire and a bloodcurdling yelp. Then a momentary silence. Within seconds there were shouts from the direction in which the woman had gone – they sounded like confused orders. These cries were followed by the noise of someone crashing through the thick undergrowth. Someone within yards of him. He leapt up and turned to run. His flight was cut short when the woman more or less fell out of the obscurity, rolled over, steadied herself on her back, and turned to fire into the darkness.

  ‘Had to do it. Him or me,’ said Marie between gasps for breath. ‘Come on!’

  Marie sprang up, grasped Bosanquet by the hand and pulled him deeper into the wood. Ten minutes later the sound of distant voices and a lorry engine starting up confirmed that the Germans were departing.

  As Marie led Bosanquet away from the wood, she reflected on her position. Lucien beaten near to death; the Boche at the landing site; and Emmanuelle dead. Her network was disintegrating at a terrifying rate.

  As to Bosanquet, he was puzzled. Who was this woman? And where was the leader of the network?

  20

  After an hour of trudging along muddy lanes and across fields, keeping tight up to the hedges, Marie and Bosanquet reached a small farm. Bosanquet followed Marie into a cowshed which faced the farmhouse across the courtyard. Inside, a few cows were standing in stalls, munching hay from wall-mounted racks.

  The two fugitives climbed the ladder up to the loft by the light of Marie’s torch. She lit the storm lantern that was hanging from the rafters, flopped down into the warm, fragrant hay and lay breathing heavily.

  Once she had got her breath back, she sat up and held out her hand: ‘Simone.’

  ‘Raymond.’

  He paused, and then added: ‘…and the others?’

  ‘It’s you and me for now,’ said Marie.

  ‘But—’

  ‘Typical English! You daren’t say it.’

  Bosanquet looked confused.

  ‘Where’s the leader? That’s it, isn’t it?’

  ‘I … well …’

  ‘Stuff the excuses. I’m the leader here. You take your orders from me. Okay?’

  ‘If you say so,’ replied Bosanquet, who had never taken an order from a woman in his life – other than his mother.

  They talked for a while about the inauspicious landing, although Marie made no mention of Emmanuelle’s fate. Tomorrow, when her body was found, her family would draw their own conclusions. Whatever those were, they would keep their silence. And so would Marie. One day, France would be free again. Only then would she tell the world how the brave
Emmanuelle sacrificed herself for France.

  ‘Drink?’ said Marie as she reached into the hay and pulled out a small basket which she had left there earlier that evening. Out came a bottle of local red wine followed by a red and white chequered napkin enclosing bread and sausage. She filled two small tumblers and handed one to Bosanquet:

  ‘Welcome to France,’ she said and raised a toast ‘Vive la France libre!’.

  As they talked, the draughty loft was gently warmed by the cows below. Animal smells mingled with the aroma of the hay. Outside, all was silent other than the occasional shriek of an owl. For both of them it was a dreamy interlude before their adventures to come.

  ‘It’s late,’ said Marie as she snuggled into the hay, her Sten gun at her side and her muddy boots still on her feet. She closed her eyes. In a few minutes her steady breathing told Bosanquet that she was asleep.

  Bosanquet’s own attempts at sleeping were frustrated by his mind turning over his experiences of the day. The drive to the secret air base. The base. The bumpy ride in the Lysander. The dead Allsopp. Hiding in the wood. And being rescued by a hot-shot French girl. It was the life he had so longed for when sitting at his Admiralty desk or when taking his ease in an armchair at his club. For the moment, though, the reality of espionage and resistance was too much for his seething brain.

  The great puzzle for Bosanquet was Simone: a woman who shot dogs and German soldiers, a woman who was now his boss, and a woman who, in the midst of danger, could calmly go to sleep in a hayloft. And this woman was the Allies’ answer to Armageddon? These thoughts were still a jumbled confusion when sleep overcame him in the small hours of the morning.

  ****