Authors: Robert Muchamore
Secret Army (30 page)
Marc threw down his oar and reached around to grab an old paint tin used for bailing out. He’d been soaked down one side when the wave came in and the pool in the hull now topped his canvas plíímsolls.
Directly behind, Henderson tried pushing the boat off the rocks with his oar. The back end drifted out, but the bow was impaled on something. Marc bailed speedily, but the water kept rising. As no more had come over the side it could only mean one thing.
‘Hull’s torn,’ Marc said, alarmed, but still having the wits to keep his voice low.
Henderson stood up. As he jumped on to the rocks the back of the boat rose up. He’d hoped taking his weight out might save the canoe, but the shift of balance set all the water running towards Marc at the front. The heavy case with the radio inside whacked Marc’s back as the Atlantic engulfed his legs.
As the bow dived, a sharpened metal prong shot through the breach in the hull. Marc clambered up the tilting boat as she hit sand a metre and a half below the surface. Shallow water meant land was close, but Marc’s relief didn’t last. As he kicked to stay afloat his foot snared a coil of barbed wire.
Marc squeezed his face, stifling a howl. Henderson had pulled two floating suitcases and a backpack on to the rocks before realising his companion was in trouble. He recognised the metal spearing the upright canoe as the leg of a tank trap. These criss-crossed metal tripods were designed to prevent tanks and amphibious vehicles driving up beaches.
Their presence was mystifying: Henderson had targeted a landing beach with cliffs beyond the sand. Tanks didn’t do cliffs, so either the Germans had installed tank traps for no reason or they’d come ashore in the wrong spot.
But that concern was for later. Right now, Marc was stuck and kept himself afloat by locking his arms around the tank trap. In sheer frustration, he yanked his leg upwards, but the result was excruciating pain as a barb punched through his plimsoll into the top of his foot.
‘For
Christ’s
sake be gentle,’ Henderson warned, as he knelt on the slippery rocks and leaned out. ‘What if they’re rigged?’
It hadn’t occurred to Marc that the wire might be linked to an explosive. ‘Eh?’ he gasped. ‘Do they do that?’
‘Look on the bright side,’ Henderson said. ‘If you
have
snagged an anti-tank mine, neither of us will ever know much about it. Now pull your ankle up
gently
. High as you can without straining the wire.’
They’d expected wire, and Henderson had a pair of snips clipped to his belt, alongside his gun, holster and torch. As Marc pulled his knee towards his chest, Henderson felt blindly underwater, running a hand down the boy’s leg until he reached the wire, and cut one side.
Marc expected the wire to peel away, but with barbs stuck in his flesh Henderson had to cut the other side and bring him up with a short length of wire still embedded. Henderson dragged Marc on to a flattish section of rock. The boy lay on his elbows and took three gulps of air, before rolling on to his back and studying the length of wire, with two barbs in his ankle and one in the top of his foot.
‘You weigh enough,’ Henderson said breathlessly.
Marc went up on one knee, braced for pain and ripped out the wire. As blood pooled into his sock he put some weight down on his bad foot.
‘Think it’s up to much?’ Henderson asked.
‘Hurts, but I’ll manage.’
Henderson began lifting the empty canoe clear of the tank trap. Simultaneously a wave swept over the rocks, floating one of the rescued suitcases. Marc scrambled on all fours, grabbing the case handle as it teetered, but when he looked back he realised that one case was already missing.
‘Where’s the transmitter?’
‘Six feet under,’ Henderson said.
‘Is it worth pulling up?’
‘Not after a soaking,’ Henderson said, as he threw loose rocks into the back of the canoe. ‘I’ll weight the boat down. The Germans will spot her when the tide goes out, but we’ll be long gone, provided your leg holds out.’
The plan was to land on a lightly defended beach, bury the canoe and reclaim it for the return trip, but that wouldn’t be happening now.
‘Looks like these rocks form a natural jetty back to dry land,’ Henderson said, as he handed Marc the snips. ‘You start moving. Take one case and keep an eye out for more wires.’
Marc’s wounds were excruciating, but Instructor Takada had taught techniques for managing pain. People calmly endured surgery in the days before anaesthetic and what were a few gouges compared to that?
In places the barnacled rocks dipped below the water and Marc had to paddle, though never above his knee. He held the case in front of himself, because that would hit any coils of wire before his legs did.
When the rocks ended his plimsoll squelched into mushy sand. There was a chance of buried mines, but it was too dark to deal with them, so the only strategy was to hope for the best.
‘Keep low,’ Henderson warned, when he stepped up behind, carrying the backpack and the other suitcase.
A shelf in the beach offered limited cover and the pair nestled down. Henderson took a moment to find a small pair of binoculars and used them to scan the landscape.
‘Anything?’ Marc asked.
‘Too bloody dark,’ Henderson said. ‘Though if we can’t see them, they can’t see us.’
The sea brought in a strong breeze, which rustled through reed beds beyond the sand. When the wind stopped, they heard noise coming from not far beyond. It was the sound of men in good spirits.
‘Shall we move?’ Marc asked impatiently.
Henderson traced the line of the horizon with his finger. ‘If they’ve put all those tank traps on the beach, there
has
to be defensive positions along there. I’m not moving until I know where they are.’
It made sense, but Marc was cold and bloody. After four minutes of fear and pain, he broke silence with a childish whine.
‘Come on, let’s
go
.’
Henderson looked cross. ‘It doesn’t get light for six hours, but sooner or later we’ll hear a door clank, or someone will step outside for a smoke. Until then …’
Henderson cut himself off because they’d been blessed with light. It came from a road beyond the reeds. The wavering front lamp of a bicycle was enough to make out silhouettes and, as Henderson had predicted, two pill-shaped bunkers bulged out of the reeds like frog’s eyeballs.
