Secret Army (25 page)

‘If the so-called genius whacks
me
again he’ll get a punch in the gob,’ Joel said irritably.

‘I barely tapped you,’ Marc said. ‘Ready?’

Marc repeated the hammer and spanner technique and released the other three bolts without further damage to Joel. When the last bolt came out, the gun began sliding off its plinth. It would have hit Marc’s legs if PT hadn’t grabbed the barrel, but in doing this he knocked the gun sideways. The roof creaked as it hit the asphalt with a dull thud. The women working below must have thought the roof was coming in on their heads.

They didn’t need the tools any more, so Marc tipped them out of the sacks and replaced them with the gun sight, magazine and a few other loose pieces. Meantime, PT and Joel strained as they tried lifting the main body of the gun.

‘Christ,’ Joel moaned, as he mopped his sweating brow on to his shirt cuff.

‘Damned sight heavier than I expected,’ PT agreed.

Marc passed the canvas sacks up to Rosie as she leaned out of the office window. When he looked back he saw that the other two were still struggling. They could barely keep the gun off the ground and he jogged back over to help them.

‘I’ll grab the end,’ Marc said.

The boys paused to catch their breath when they finally rested the gun against the side of the office building, with the barrel poking through the window.

‘You OK?’ Rosie asked, as she leaned outside. ‘Somebody walked past the door in here and the doorman’s already spat his gag out twice. We can’t hang around much longer.’

‘This steel’s over an inch thick,’ PT explained. ‘We’ll get it inside, but we’re going to need a trolley or something after that.’

Rosie nodded. ‘I’ll go look.’

The typing pool had three lines of eight small desks, each bearing typewriters with in and out trays stacked alongside. The typist who’d arrived early was a slender, hunched woman with frizzy black hair. She sat behind her typewriter, click-clacking a pair of knitting needles.

Rosie remembered what Henderson had taught her: be confident, put on a front and people will believe what you say.

‘Good morning,’ Rosie said. ‘I’m helping my dad out servicing the gun on the roof and we need to take it downstairs. Is there a trolley or something we can use to wheel it through the office?’

The woman lowered her knitting and looked up. ‘Trolley,’ she said slowly, the pause giving Rosie’s nerves a chance to jangle. ‘I think so.’

The woman dropped her knitting inside a rattan bag, walked to the back of the room and then cut through a swinging door.

The boys whispered curses as the gun passed its centre of gravity. It slid off the windowsill and banged down on the office floor. Rosie wanted to peek inside and see what was going on, but the typist came back with an upright trolley that ran on two sturdy wheels.

‘That looks
perfect
,’ Rosie gushed. But she cut her smile short, realising that she was acting a little too pleased for someone whose motives were supposed to be mundane.

‘We use it to shift boxes of files,’ the typist explained, as Rosie took the handles. ‘You’ll bring it straight back, won’t you?’

‘Absolutely,’ Rosie lied, as she tilted the trolley and wheeled it into the office.

‘Nice one,’ PT said, when he saw it.

Down at floor level, Rosie saw that the doorman was close to spitting his gag out again. She squatted down and crammed the handkerchiefs back in, then picked the wrench off the top of the desk.

‘One sound out of you,’ Rosie said menacingly, then she banged the wrench into her palm to demonstrate. ‘I’m getting
pretty
sick of you.’

PT held the trolley as Marc and Joel manoeuvred the gun on to the platform. The barrel was as tall as the fifteen-year-old. It wouldn’t stay balanced so Marc fixed it to the trolley with a length of rope.

‘I’ll get the lift,’ Rosie said, as she hurried out into the hallway.

The arrival bell dinged as she approached the lift. She watched a man and woman going up through the metal grilles. When the lift came back down, the three boys rolled in the trolley.

‘This thing’s so damned heavy,’ PT said quietly. ‘I thought we’d be able to drag it through the fields out back, but we can’t carry it and this trolley will sink into the mud.’

‘What if we brazen it out?’ Marc asked. ‘Try going straight through the front gate?’

‘They search people going out rather than going in,’ Joel said. ‘Four people our age carrying all this junk, they’ll stop us for sure.’

‘I think I saw another gate for the office car park,’ Rosie noted. ‘It’s nearer as well.’

‘We should have put more thought into this,’ Marc said, as the lift stopped at the ground floor.

‘How could I have known this was going to be so heavy?’ PT asked defensively.

The four youngsters emerged into the lobby. A man in a three-piece suit disappeared on to the stairs as PT juddered the trolley wheels over the gap between the elevator car and the lobby’s marble floor.

‘There’s too many people around for comfort,’ Rosie whispered.

‘Just act confident,’ PT urged, as he started pushing the trolley towards the main entrance.

A pretty young woman stood by the reception desk. She wore a long skirt, light-blue blouse and a Post Office cap.

‘Excuse me, do you work here?’ she asked, standing in PT’s way as he tried to get by. ‘I’ve brought the mail sacks in, but I need Mr Harvey to sign for these telegrams.’

A woman came up the steps and walked by as PT snatched the Post Office clipboard. ‘I can sign for them,’ PT said. ‘Mr Harvey is upstairs, bit of a dickey tummy I think.’

The woman broke into a white-toothed smile that PT would have liked to kiss. ‘Too much brown ale, knowing him,’ she said cheerfully.

While PT focused on the postal officer’s bum as she turned towards the door, Rosie realised that someone delivering sack loads of mail hadn’t arrived on foot.

‘Follow her,’ Rosie whispered, as she jabbed PT urgently in the ribs.

‘What’s your problem?’ PT grinned. ‘I barely looked at her.’

Rosie gave PT a look of utter contempt. ‘I’m not jealous, you
idiot
. She’s driving a van!’

‘Oh,’ PT gasped. ‘Right.’

But there was no quick way to get the trolley down four steps so Marc and Rosie had to run towards the tiny red Post Office van parked directly in front of the entrance.

‘Did you drop this?’ Rosie shouted, as the postwoman opened the driver’s door and threw her clipboard across the passenger seat.

Rosie checked that there was nobody approaching the entrance and as the postwoman turned around she belted her across the temple with the giant wrench. It was a perfect knock-out blow and Marc dived forwards to catch her fall as she splayed against the side of the van.

PT and Joel struggled down the steps with the trolley as Rosie ripped open the van’s back doors.

‘Can we shove her in there?’ Marc asked.

‘It’s stuffed full,’ Rosie said. ‘And there’s four of us.’

The trolley wheels bounced off the bottom step as Rosie reached in the back of the van and began frantically pulling out mailbags and parcels.

‘Can any of us actually drive this thing?’ Marc asked urgently.

Three storeys up, the doorman threw open a window and yelled out. ‘Security, security! Stop those kids.’

While he shouted out, the typist who’d found and untied him was making an urgent call to the security staff on the main gates. Fortunately, the office block car park was unguarded and exited on to the road through an open gate less than twenty metres away.

As Rosie climbed into the front passenger seat, Joel and PT tipped the gun and trolley into the back. The doorman had disappeared from the window, but the bony typist who took his place grabbed a pot plant off the window ledge and flung it down.

‘You wait till they catch you,’ she yelled.

Marc jumped with fright as the pot smashed against the Post Office van, leaving a dent in the roof and sending dry earth and chunks of shattered terracotta through the air.

‘Marc, Joel, get in the back with the gun,’ PT ordered.

Marc didn’t fancy a ride in the back of a van with a dirty great gun crashing about, but at least PT sounded like he had a plan.

‘So you can drive?’ Marc shouted.

‘A bit,’ PT said, as he slammed the back doors of the van. ‘Well, on back roads and stuff.’

It was dark in the back of the van, but Marc and Joel were close enough to exchange anxious glances. The cannon stretched from the back doors and rose at an angle, resting on the edge of Rosie’s seat with the muzzle protruding into the cab and almost touching the windscreen.

‘Keys,’ PT shouted, as he slammed the driver’s door.

‘Already in the ignition,’ Rosie shouted back.

PT felt overwhelmed as he turned the key. His dad had let him practise driving in America, but that was years back and the gears in the little van were in a completely different configuration. He pressed the clutch pedal and started the engine. It wheezed for several seconds before shuddering to life.

Gears crunched horribly as PT threw the selector into reverse. Outside, the giant doorman burst out of the front entrance and took the four steps in one leap. Up ahead, two elderly security men were running breathlessly from the main gate.

‘Why are we still sitting here?’ Rosie yelled anxiously.

The door mirrors were angled for the postwoman, not PT’s lanky frame, so he had no view backwards as he lifted the clutch. He didn’t have the feel for the van, and the engine coughed and very nearly stalled before the back wheels finally turned.

The doorman got his hands on the driver’s side door and ripped it open.

‘Come here, you little Herberts,’ he shouted, as he tried to grab PT’s arm.

As the car shot backwards, the gun rolled off the back of Rosie’s seat and plunged down into a gap. It twisted as it dropped, simultaneously pinning Joel’s ankle to the floor of the van and hitting the gear lever, knocking the car into neutral.

The engine stalled as Joel screamed out in pain. The doorman caught up as PT frantically tried to restart the engine and get the van back in gear. He reached through the still-open door, grabbed PT under the arm and pulled hard.

Marc saw what was happening. He didn’t think he was strong enough to stop the doorman without a weapon and the first thing that came to hand was the small hunting knife in his coat pocket. He clutched the handle tight, reached over the back of PT’s seat and stuck the jagged blade deep into the doorman’s grasping arm.

The big man screamed as Marc tore the knife back towards himself. PT felt a spurt of blood hitting the side of his face, as the engine clattered back into life. The doorman stumbled back and tripped backwards over the mailbags piled on the tarmac.

PT found reverse gear, then leaned forwards to pull the door shut. Up ahead, the two security men almost had their hands on the front wing. Although PT was shaking he got the clutch up properly and the car started rolling backwards.

‘I can’t see,’ PT screamed. ‘Marc, tell me what’s out the back.’

‘I think I broke my foot,’ Joel whimpered.

‘Go back twenty metres,’ Marc shouted. ‘Steer left … no, left. You’re gonna hit the gate. Other way, other way,’

‘You said left,’ PT shouted.

The confusion was caused by the fact that the boys were facing in opposite directions, but PT managed to correct the steering and they narrowly avoided a short ride into a brick gatepost.

‘People?’ PT yelled.

‘It’s all clear. Keep going.’

The little van reversed at speed between two gateposts, then swung into the road that ran along the front of Walden’s factory. PT hit the brake. After a lot of crunching and a couple of seconds studying the little diagram engraved in the metal plate under the gearstick, he selected first gear and juddered away.

‘You’re on the wrong side of the road,’ Rosie warned, as she nudged the steering wheel.

‘Let me drive,’ PT roared furiously, as he nearly swerved into a parked car while staring at the gear knob trying to find second.

‘I can’t see anyone following,’ Marc said, as they began steady progress down a deserted stretch of road.

‘So where do we go now?’ Rosie asked.

Luc watched the Poles through a gap in the bomb-damaged warehouse wall. He didn’t speak Polish so he wouldn’t have understood what they were saying even if he’d been close enough to hear, but their body language conveyed everything he needed to know.

The lanky lieutenant Tomaszewski was in charge. The other man was a hairy private named Wozniak. Wozniak didn’t say much, and Luc knew he wasn’t too bright because he’d let PT fleece him at poker long after the other Poles and Frenchmen gave up.

The Poles lowered the body of the gun on a length of rope, then followed it down with the loose pieces slung in sacks over their back. Luc smiled at their shocked expressions when they reached the ground and found their unconscious comrade, with his leg buckled and his bloody mouth oozing into the snow.

They held a heated discussion: did a fall really cause these injuries? Should they carry on, or concentrate on helping their injured colleague?

Luc backed away as Wozniak clambered away from the rubble mound and grabbed a dock porter with a four-wheeled handcart. The porter’s suspicious nature was allayed by three ten-shilling notes, which made the better part of two days’ wages.

The porter looked agitated and tried to hand the money back when he saw the body in the snow. Lieutenant Tomaszewski got him back on side with a lengthy explanation and more money.

The stricken Pole started to come around as the three men lifted him on to the cart. This made Luc nervous: he might tell Tomaszewski that he’d been attacked rather than fallen from the ladder. But Luc could do nothing to control that part of the situation and it seemed OK as the porter hurried off with the stricken man on his cart, while the two remaining Poles balanced the gun on their shoulders.

They struggled with the weight and Luc saw there was no way he’d be able to carry the body of the gun and the accompanying sack of accessories on his own. He needed the Poles to get the gun to London.