The Caves of Périgord (20 page)

“So perhaps you aren’t the best chap for the job.”

“They don’t like British imperialists either. Maybe McPhee is the one to send. We must discuss this with my brother. But there’ll be plenty of work here. Tonight’s work will bring new recruits to train. And a lot of angry Germans to make us keep moving.”

“I want to keep hitting their railways, taking out the points network. That’s their Achilles’ heel,” Manners insisted. “Take out the points on the east-west line and they can only run one train a day. Take them out on the north-south lines and we close down half of southwestern France. Now the boys know what to do, I think we can use them to set off the charges as a train is coming, so we get the derailment as well as the track.”

“They are local boys. They won’t do that to passenger trains.”

“I’d rather derail freight trains. They are tougher to move. They have to bring a mobile crane in to clear it, and there can’t be too many of those on the French rail system.”

Late in the morning, a sweating Berger came into view with a young woman, gray-eyed and with wind-blown blond hair, whose arrival made the men fall silent and pick up their already clean guns to tend them again. The two of them were wearing trousers and anoraks and carrying rucksacks, as if out for a hike. Their rucksacks were full of wine and food and Caporal cigarettes. The woman went straight to the old man, asleep and pale on his stretcher.

“She’s a doctor,” said Berger, straightening his back. “Well, almost as good. She’s a vet. I thought you might need one. How is he?”

“In shock, lost a lot of blood. I don’t think the bone was hit but there are two entry wounds and only one exit. One bullet’s still in there,” said McPhee. “I dusted the wounds with sulfa powder—it’s the best we’ve got.”

“What’s the news from le Buisson?” asked François, through a mouthful of bread.

“Good, very good,” Berger said as the Maquis gathered around him for the news. “It was a great job, boys. All the tracks and points are gone. One of the railway men told me it will take two weeks to repair, even if they can get the new points. With the Allied bombing in the north, they can’t cast new points fast enough. The Boches took all the French stocks last year, because of the bombing of their rail network. The bad news is that two companies of Boches have arrived and commandeered a house beside the station. It looks like they will put a permanent guard there.”

“Are they taking reprisals?” asked Frisé. “I have family in le Buisson. So does Lespinasse.”

“Nothing yet, but they beat up a few people when they did their search. A new squad of Milice is on the way with some Gestapo, according to the railway men, and apparently they are bastards. Le
Buisson is in for a rough time. The priest told me that ten guys have taken off for the hills already.”

“Do we know where they are?”

“Up somewhere in those woods above the Gouffre, the big cave. There are some remote farms up there, sheep and cattle. They’ll be all right. One of our emergency camps is nearby, where we have a small arms dump. Frisé, you’ll know some of them. If you go across the river tonight, find the guys, and we’ll meet you at that camp near Audrix tomorrow evening.”

“Did the railway men know where the rail repair train would come from?” asked Manners. Back in England they had been told that the French railroad workers, traditionally left wing and with a strong trade union, would be their most useful informants.

“Due from Bergerac tomorrow. Why?”

“That means it will come through le Bugue?”

“Of course, but why?”

“I’d rather derail one of those than almost anything else. Are there any good ambush points?”

“There’s the bridge over the Vézère, but that will be guarded,” said Berger. “Then the track runs along the road by the river, with a steep wooded hill on one side. There would be places there, but it’s close to le Buisson, and the Boches would be there within ten minutes, unless they are already patrolling the line.”

“We have not told you of our new secret weapon,” said François. He lifted the tarpaulin off the Spandau. “The Germans are in soft-topped trucks. So we ambush the repair train, and when the Boches come along the road to the rescue, we ambush them from the far side of the river. This gun is accurate up to a kilometer. We’ll do a lot of damage.”

“Do we have time to set all this up?” interjected McPhee.

“I have to go back to the dump to get some more explosives, which means crossing the river. And I’ll need the electric detonator,” said
Manners. “And then find an ambush point. We have to move now, and find a good firing point for the Spandau, then pick a rendezvous point. We also need to be sure that the Spandau is firing accurately from the moment it opens up—so has anybody ever used one, apart from me?”

“Of course,” said François. “We used them whenever we could capture one in the desert—much better than those little Bren guns you British gave us.” He looked down at the coiled bandoliers. “I have more than enough ammo, but I’ll need two men to carry it. I’ll take the Marine and the sergeant. They can both use a rifle.”

“We rendezvous at the Gouffre—it’s about two miles through the hills from that stretch of rail track,” said Berger. “François, you had better go with Manners to agree about your firing point and his ambush point. Manners, you’ll need some men to give you covering fire after you blow the train. McPhee, you go back with the rest of the men to the Audrix camp.”

“What about him?” McPhee jerked his thumb at the wounded veteran, who was swigging wine from the bottle Berger had brought. The vet patiently took the bottle from him, and finished bandaging the leg.

“Sybille?” called Berger. “
Comment va-t-il?
How is he?”

“He’ll have to stay here, unless there is a warm place nearby where he can go. I’ll have to take the bullet out today, and I’ll need boiling water,” she said.

“O.K. There is old Boridot’s farm in the next valley. He’s a taciturn old buzzard, but he fought in the Great War. He’ll help, but I will have to come along to talk to him. McPhee, you and your men come with me and the vet to carry him, and then you head off for Audrix. All agreed? Any questions? Right, leave that food here for another time, pack up those guns, and let’s get moving.”

There were no points along the stretch of single-track line, only culverts. It took five pounds of plastic to blow a culvert, and Manners
couldn’t spare them. So he used the culvert as cover and decided on a simple charge to blow the track. He only had fifty meters of detonator cord and one detonator box. He tested the box, leaning down hard on the handle, and the little clockwork dynamo produced a spark. That would do. He took a handful of icy mud from the bottom of the culvert, and smeared it over his charge. The fumes of the 808 explosive had started his headache again.

He felt terribly exposed. The railway ran alongside the road, and three times he had to duck into the culvert when traffic came by. There was a priest on a bicycle, then a German truck preceding a staff car, and then a gasogene, one of the civilian cars converted to run on gas generated by charcoal because of the petrol shortages. The gas bag was draped over the roof, and the things were so underpowered that they had to be pushed up steep hills. But for wartime France, it was often the only civilian transport on offer.

He checked his watch. Almost four, and the sun was going down. He put his ear against the rail—no sound of a train yet. He peeked over the rails at the road. It was clear in both directions. He looked back up the hill and waved to where the three boys were installed, ready to give him covering fire if he needed it. His detonation point was as well concealed as he could make it, behind a big tree and a fallen log. He took the metal mirror from his shirt pocket and flashed it over toward the copse where François waited with the Spandau. He got an answering flash, and then sent the quick burst of Morse to say that he was ready. God knows what they would do for signals when there was no sun.

His head was almost bursting with pain. He darted across to the road on top of the riverbank, and clambered down to dunk his head into the icy water. He held it below the surface, counted to ten, and came out gasping. That was better. The road was still clear. One last quick check of his charge, and he tidied the site, smoothing out the hollow in the gravel where he had knelt. So much easier to work in daylight. He put his ear to the rail again. Still nothing. No, perhaps a faint vibration
somewhere deep in his head. He lifted his head, shook it to clear the water from his ears, and lowered it again. Yes, definitely a vibration. He clambered back up the hill to his detonating point and squatted behind the old log, smoothing his wet hair back with his hands. That was a foolish indulgence. He’d probably catch a cold, and he had nothing to use to dry his hair. He took off his leather jacket and used its woolen lining to soak up the worst of the water. That was better, and the warmth of his body would soon dry out the lining. Now he could hear the train.

It took a very long time in coming along the level track, but the sound of the laboring steam engine was bounced back from the slope of the hillside. Certainly a freight, and heavily loaded. It must be the repair train, and if it weren’t, it would still block the line until they could get a crane in.

He saw the smoke first, and then something came into sight. Not a locomotive, but a flatcar, piled high with sandbags protecting a machine gun post. Then the locomotive, and the gantry behind it for the big winch and pulleys. That was the repair train, and the poor undertrained fools were so unaccustomed to ambush that they didn’t know that they had played into his hands. Thank God they weren’t veterans from the Eastern Front battles against the partisans. The timing was always tricky when trying to derail a train with a single charge. But now he could detonate it beneath the flatcar, and the sandbags would contain part of the force of the explosion to rip an even bigger gap in the rail. And take care of the machine gunners. But what if they had another machine gun car at the rear? Oh Christ, he hadn’t thought of that. But no time for that now, and he pressed down on the detonator handle just as the flatcar reached his charge, and ducked his face deep into the leaves.

The explosion was a hugely satisfying thud that sent the fallen log trembling, but when he raised his head to look, he couldn’t see a thing. Sand everywhere, falling into his damp hair, getting into his eyes, drifting down through the savagely shorn trees. It formed a great dust cloud
made thicker by deep gouts of black smoke from the stricken locomotive and the sharp hiss of escaping steam mixed with the terrible scream of grinding metal as the rest of the train derailed.

Slowly his vision cleared, as he heard his Maquis shrieking with joy from above. There was no sign of the machine gun or the soldiers, and the flatcar was folded almost in two where the locomotive had pushed it against the trees as it slumped from the gapped rail and toppled sideways to plow along the hillside. The repair train itself had jerked the other way, off the rails and across the road, and the gantry with the pulleys and the flatcars with their spare rails and the freight cars with their precious spare points had all toppled down the bank of the river where he had bathed his head only minutes beforehand. Down the track, two more freight cars lay on their side, but the last one was still on the rails. No sign of more Germans. Movement below him, where the driver was clambering out of the side of his wrecked train and bending to help haul something out. The fireman … Christ.

“There may be some Germans left. Keep a watch here and at the far end of the train,” he called up the hill to his men, and he slid and staggered down and around the front of the train to help the engine driver. The steam was coming out so fast that he felt sure the boiler wouldn’t burst, but the smoke was everywhere, and the side of the engine was too hot to touch. His pulled his hand inside his leather sleeve, used that to get a purchase, and then he could put his hand under the fireman’s armpit and haul. They got him out and onto the road. The driver was too dazed to do anything but fall to his knees and vomit copiously. Manners went back to the crushed flatcar. No sign of the machine gun, and only the naked trunk of a single German soldier, his helmet still on his head but his legs gone. Then he saw another German, a bundle of clothing that had been blown into the cutting. Almost unconsciously, he tugged at the buttons on the blouse, pulled out a pay book and a wallet. It should tell him what units the Germans were using, he thought, stuffing them into his blouse.