The Maids of Chateau Vernet

by Steven Landry

  When Hiram opened his eyes again, Danette had joined them, standing behind Deborah. Her smile – Rachel’s smile – was almost too much to bear. Deborah released him and he turned to hug his great-great-grandmother.

  “I never thought I’d see you two again,” he said.

  “After the bomb went off, we thought we’d lost you,” Deborah said.

  “Until we saw the drone in the mountains,” Danette added, Deborah translating.

  Hiram held his right index finger up to his lips, pointed to the two men inside the car. Both Bertrand and Petain now sat in the back seat, each sporting a black hood he had pulled from Jacob’s Mossad-equipped pod. Barbara, Danette, and Deborah moved to surround the car.

  “Who’s this?” Barbara nodded toward the two prisoners. Deborah translated.

  “I’ve got a plan,” Hiram said. “Where’s Maxime?”

  “Asleep in an upstairs bedroom.” Charlotte used her M22 to point to the leftmost window on the second floor of the farmhouse. “I gave her a pretty heavy dose of the sedative in the medkit. Valium, I think.” Deborah repeated her words in Hebrew. “She’ll be out for a while.”

  Hiram opened the right rear door of the sedan and dragged the thinner of his two captives out of the car. He forced Bertrand to his knees facing the house. He wanted to get Bertrand back to Rosette alive. He’d leave it up to her to address his punishment.

  “Papa!” Leverette yelled when Hiram pulled the hood off. Too young to understand his father’s betrayal, he broke loose from his mother’s grip and ran toward his father. Rosette retreated into the house.

  Garon lifted his cuffed hands above the boy to let him in closer. He looked down at the boy and then back at Hiram.

  “Papa, papa.” The boy said a few more words and Garon responded before kissing him on the forehead. Garon acted happy to see his boy.

  Rosette emerged from the house. She addressed Charlotte.

  Charlotte said something to the little boy about a biscuit and he took her hand. They walked away from the house together, the boy jumping over sticks along the way.

  Rosette held a knife. “Down to the root cellar, please.” As she moved closer to the man on the ground, Hiram recognized the military issued can of clotting foam in her other hand.

  Garon caught sight of his wife, began to plead with her.

  Rosette spoke to Garon in a calm, almost motherly tone. Hiram did not understand her words. She was not a murderer, but he supposed for Garon she might make an exception.

  Garon’s pleading had no impact. He looked to the other women, eyes wide and begging for reprieve. When no one stepped up to assist, he tried to calm himself.

  “Shhh,” Rosette put a finger to her lips. “No more worries, my husband. We’re just going to make sure you don’t ever have any more children you’re not prepared to give your life for.”

  Barbara helped the man to his feet. She pointed her M22 toward him.

  Garon’s eyes watered. His lips quivered. Rosette, on the other end of the spectrum, seemed serene.

  Barbara and Rosette disappeared behind the house with Garon between them. A few seconds later Hiram heard the cellar door slam shut.

  Hiram looked away. The man in the cellar screamed. He hoped his other prisoner listened.

  After a few minutes, Danette walked up beside him, said something in French. “What about the other one?” Deborah translated

  “We need him alive for a while longer for my plan to work.”

  “What plan?”

  “The plan to save the families on that train.”

  “Who is he?” she demanded.

  “Pull him out of the car.” He limped after her as she rounded the sedan and opened the left rear door, drew his Taser in case Petain tried to make a run for it.

  Petain climbed out of the car, he stood without moving. Hiram reached out with his free hand and pulled the hood off the man’s head.

  “Capitaine Petain?” Danette said.

  Deborah crossed her arms and leaned back against the car. “How in hell did you capture him?”

  A muffled scream escaped the root cellar. They turned toward the noise. Petain looked from Hiram and around at the other women, worried.

  Hiram slid the hood back on their captive and shoved him into the car. They needed him for a bit longer. Hiram hoped Maxime would get her chance for revenge.

  * * *

  1300 hours, Sunday, August 16, Mamirolle, Doubs Department, Vichy France

  Teams Charlie and Delta arrived and stood guard around the farm. Hiram gathered his surviving team leaders, Barbara, Charlotte, Nora and Irene, in the barn. Deborah and Danette stood with Hiram. Maxime continued to sleep in the upstairs bedroom. He planned to go check on her after the briefing. Denise watched over Petain, ensuring he remained in place in the back seat of Lebeau’s sedan and protected from other members of their party who wished him harm.

  Charlotte walked beside Leverette as he picked wild flowers at the edge of the overgrown field, his occasional laughter a ray of light in the shadow that loomed over the farm. The boy remained oblivious to the well-deserved horrors his father suffered at the hands of his mother. Hiram wondered what Rosette would tell her son when he asked about his father. For now, Garon Bertrand was in the root cellar with his wife, his current status unknown.

  Hiram briefed the team leaders on the events in Lapalisse and the German decision to occupy southern France. The acceleration of the operation put them all in more danger.

  Barbara stared out the open door at the Citroën. Hiram expected her to make quick work of destroying the Police Captain if she wasn’t kept under watch.

  “Listen, we need to focus on getting the families to safety,” he said. Deborah translated. “You can do whatever the hell you want to Petain afterward. We need him alive and cooperating for the next couple of days.”

  “Hiram’s right,” Charlotte said to Barbara.

  “If he can help us save our families, he can draw a few more breaths,” Barbara said. “When it’s done, I plan to gut him like a fish.”

  Deborah translated for Hiram. Part of him wished he didn’t always know what his soldiers said.

  Charlotte turned to Hiram. “What’s your plan?”

  “Thirty trucks have been dispatched from Rivesaltes to Pont-Saint-Vincent to pick up the prisoners and return them to Camp Joffre,” he said. “I don’t think Petain’s communication with his assistant raised any warning. We should expect the trucks to arrive with drivers, but no additional guards.”

  Deborah continued to translate before adding, “How can you be sure?”

  “I can’t, so we’ll take no chances. Teams Charlie and Delta will set up in the hills west of the railyard to provide cover fire if it’s needed.” He called up the overhead drone view of the railyard on his C2ID2 display and pointed out the steep hillside he meant. Several houses rested on the hillside, and along the west side of the railyard, but like almost every other town in the Zone, he assumed they had been abandoned. “It’ll be dark, so be sure to have your NVGs. Petain can get the five of us past the railyard perimeter guard.” He pointed out the guard stations on the display. “We’ll drive to the spur where the train parked. Once we get in position, Petain will gather his men together. We disarm them and herd them into one of the boxcars. Take out anyone who refuses to cooperate.”

  “Do you think he’ll betray his men so easily?” Irene said as she nodded in Petain’s direction.

  “Petain is looking for the best outcome for Petain. If he thinks it’ll save his own hide, he’ll sacrifice theirs.”

  “What happens next?” Irene said.

  “When the trucks arrive, we take the drivers hostage. Take them out if you need to. Then, we load every one of the prisoners up and drive out of there,” said Hiram.

  “Where do we go?” Nora asked.

  “Head back this way. We keep going all the way to the Swiss border. Petain’s credentials should get us as far as Besançon without raising too many questions.
” Hiram pointed out the city ten kilometers north of Mamirolle, at the edge of the mountains. “The border is heavily defended, but if we attack at night, using our night vision scopes, we have a chance. We can arm some of the prisoners on the train as well. And I can jam the guard’s radio transmissions so they can’t call for help.”

  He waited for Deborah to finish translating for the group.

  “Can I make a suggestion?” Charlotte said.

  “Of course.”

  “I noticed an old style-, current style I mean, HF radio in the Citroën. I assume it’s Petain’s?”

  Hiram watched Deborah as she repeated Charlotte’s words. He nodded.

  “Can Petain send his men off on some wild goose chase?” Charlotte said.

  “They think he’s in Vichy, right?” Danette said.

  Deborah interpreted and Hiram nodded again.

  “Petain can order them to join him in Vichy. Tell them they’re getting some type of reward for turning our equipment over to the government.”

  “It might work,” Hiram said.

  “What time do we expect the trucks to arrive?” Deborah asked. “How much time do we have to prepare?”

  Hiram shrugged. “I’m not certain. Petain told his assistant he would call her back this afternoon, once the Commandant at Camp Joffre had time to organize the convoy.”

  “Well, I guess it’s a good thing we didn’t kill him yet,” Barbara said.

  With no further input from his soldiers, Hiram sent them off to prepare for the mission. Deborah lingered behind.

  “We need to cover two hundred kilometers, but the convoy has a lot further to go,” he said. What if we-.” His C2ID2 squawked.

  “Hawk, this is Raven, over.” Three seconds later Sarah’s voice came over the comm.

  “Raven, this is Hawk, over.”

  “Hawk, we’ve been contacted by Falcon.” Falcon was Trembley’s codename and, the last he heard, Trembley was on the train with the rest of the prisoners. “He reports that the train with the prisoners is still in the railyard in Pont-Saint-Vincent with a guard of approximately thirty men, over.”

  “Raven, Falcon was captured. I think you’re being set up, over.”

  “Hawk, the two OSS officers standing here with me say he used all the proper code words. No reason to think he’s under duress. He seems to have made some new friends, over.”

  “Raven, did you say friends? Over.”

  “Local resistance fighters. He’s been in contact using one of their HF radios. Looks legitimate from here, over.”

  “Roger, Raven. Send me Falcon’s operating frequency, over.” Once he had the frequency, Hiram ended the transmission.

  Deborah unbuttoned the top two buttons of her uniform. “You were saying?” He caught a glimpse of the inside edge of her breast.

  “Not here,” Hiram said. Not with the bustle of the camp preparing for battle. “Bit of a buzz kill.”

  “The woods then,” she said. She undid another button, opened her uniform more, before heading toward the woods.

  Hiram started to limp out of the barn after her. She was less than two meters from him, yet he held on to the frame of the barn door afraid he’d collapse if he took another step. He wanted to be with her, to feel her in his arms, to sense the warmth of her skin against his even in the summer heat. His body would not comply. “I can’t. I-”

  “Hiram? What’s wrong?” She turned and walked back to him. “You don’t look so good.” She put an arm around him and guided him to a bench inside the barn.

  “Yesterday, things didn’t go as planned. The pod was the only place I could go. I think I spent too long inside. I need a place to rest, just for a few hours.”

  She nodded. “I know just the place.”

  46

  0300 hours, Monday, August 17, 1942, Pont Saint Vincent, Meurthe-et-Moselle Department, Vichy France

  Hiram, Deborah, and Teams Charlie and Delta arrived in the hills above the railyard with time to spare. Hiram left Danette, Rosette, and Leverette at the abandoned farm in the Jura Mountains, though Danette put up a fuss about being left behind. Hiram insisted he didn’t want the others involved if a firefight developed. “Someone needs to watch over them,” he had told her. He would have left Deborah behind with them as well, but he preferred her translations to the Babel Fish’s and she was the only one he trusted in his current state.

  Deborah, awaiting his return, had found one of Hiram’s blackout tents. She had set the small dome up in the woods behind the house with every intention of providing Hiram a homecoming gift, though she had been the one to come back to him after so long away. Instead, she lay beside him as he drifted off into a near coma. When he had finally woken, nearly seven hours later, she was still there and Hiram told her about Hagar’s Curse.

  Charlotte and Denise moved toward the edge of a stand of trees that stopped atop the crest of the hill. They could observe most of the railyard with their night vision scopes. Nora and Irene launched surveillance drones. Nora’s flew west in search of any approaching threats. Irene sent hers southward along the road toward Dijon and spotted the convoy of trucks from Camp Joffre. Under blackout conditions, the trucks still had more than two hours travel to reach the railyard. Irene brought the drone in as low as she dared, counting heat signatures with the thermal camera. Except for the lead truck, which carried two men, she detected a single occupant in the remaining vehicles. The Commandant had followed Petain’s instructions. Hiram smiled.

  He limped to the edge of the woods, Deborah at his side. They settled in beside Charlotte. He rubbed his sore, swollen ankle. “What do you see?”

  “Five men patrol the train at all times.” Charlotte paused to let Deborah translate. “None of them wearing police uniforms. We counted ten fixed posts around the railyard, including the two men up there.” She pointed to the dispatcher’s tower.

  Satisfied with her assessment, Hiram activated the HF radio and set it to the frequency Sarah had given him.

  “Falcon, this is Hawk, over.”

  “Hawk, this is Falcon, over.”

  “Falcon, what is your location? Over.”

  “Hawk, I’m about two hundred meters up the ridge west of the railyard, over.”

  “Falcon, I’ll join you at your location. Do you need anything? Food? Water? Over.” He gave Trembley one last chance to use one of the duress codes, “doughnut” or “burger.”

  “Negative Hawk. We’ll be expecting you. Falcon out.”

  Hiram led Deborah and Team Delta south toward Trembley’s location, leaving Charlotte, Barbara, and Team Charlie in place to keep an eye on the railyard below. The women carried heavy loads of extra weapons and ammo intended for Trembley’s partisans. They climbed down the wooded hillside, out of sight of the policemen standing guard, in a travelling overwatch formation, trailing team ready to support those in front if Trembley had been compromised. They crossed a stream flanked by heavy brush and climbed the wooded ridge. Everyone on the team panted as they reached the crest, Deborah more than most, as she assisted Hiram and his worsening ankle.

  A familiar, American voice called out “Napoleon.” Hiram almost laughed at the sound of it. He had established the challenge and password before the teams set out for the original attack on the train. It seemed like a lifetime ago. Today’s challenge, he remembered, was Napoleon.

  Hiram responded “Waterloo.”

  Trembley, accompanied by three French Partisan soldiers, emerged from the woods. Hiram observed his slow, painful steps. As he moved closer, the moonlight illuminated his battered and bruised face.

  “Boy am I glad to see you,” Trembley said in English. He greeted Deborah and Team Delta in a similar manner.

  “What happed to your face?” Hiram asked.

  “You should see the other guy,” the American said.

  “We have his boss, about four hundred yards that way. He’s being helpful. Seems to want to save more than just his pretty face.”

  Trembley shrugged it off. �
�I’ll be fine now that I can see out of both eyes again. Could use a couple aspirin, though.”

  Hiram fished two ibuprofen tablets out of his first aid kit and handed them to Trembley.

  “Take these,” Hiram said. “Much more effective than aspirin and they won’t fuzz your thinking like something stronger.”

  “Thanks.” Trembley swallowed the pills with a swig of water from a canteen Nora offered.

  “How did you escape?” Hiram asked.

  “Emma was brought into the passenger car, to be tortured in front of me by DuBois, Petain’s number two. He was the one who roughed me up.” Trembley smiled, revealing the gap where two teeth were missing on the left side of his jaw. “Petain left to find out what the hold-up was. The second Petain stepped onto the ground, Emma kicked DuBois in the family jewels, then broke his neck. Impressive, truly. She freed my restraints, stomped on the dead man’s face and let out a couple god-awful screams. I’m sure Petain thought his henchman was doing his job. We slipped out of the front of the passenger car and into the woods before they sent anyone to check on us. Then we ran into these fine fellows casing the railyard for an attack.” Trembley turned and motioned the partisans forward.

  “Where is Emma now?” asked Hiram.

  “She is monitoring the activity in the rest of the train along with members of the resistance, just in case DuBois’s body is discovered. I fear the other men might decide to start hurting the passengers or the others from our Team.”

  Hiram, Deborah, Nora, Catherine, Pauline, and Simone followed Trembley and the men into the French Partisan encampment. Twelve well-armed men pointed weapons at them until the one Hiram guessed to be the leader approached.

  Trembley touched the man’s shoulder. “Monsieur Rene Donath I’d like you to meet Hiram Halphen.”