Death Train Page 5

  “Take me to the bodies of the guerillas shot near here last night, will you?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  The medic led Richter and Piecke into the infirmary, a long narrow building lined with beds on both sides of the aisle. All were filled and jammed together today, doubtless because of the casualties caused by the guerillas last night. The three men marched downstairs, and the medic turned on the light in the operating room. Celestine and Fleury, dressed just as they were found on the road last night, were stretched out on two tables. Mahoney’s tourniquet was still wrapped around Celestine’s leg.

  “Hmmm,” said Richter, gazing at the bodies. “You have a doctor on duty, don’t you?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Get him for me.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  When the medic ran out of the room, Richter looked at Celestine. Her face was pale as chalk and her lips were twisted into a grimace of pain, but Richter could see that she’d once been pretty. She looked rather tiny and frail, almost like a little doll, reminding him a little of that French teacher he used to go with in Paris. Richter turned his gaze at Fleury and noted that he was old, too old to run around at night with a gun. No wonder he’d been shot. Probably couldn’t move quickly enough, and the girl didn’t know what it was to be a soldier. How could she?

  A doctor in a white uniform entered the room. He had close-cropped blond hair and didn’t bother to salute. Richter frowned. Technical personnel somehow thought they weren’t subject to military regulations.

  “Your name?” Richter asked.

  “Captain Otto Sturzer.”

  “Captain Otto Sturzer what?”

  Sturzer blinked. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.”

  Richter’s eyes became cruel. “Haven’t you learned how to say sir yet, Captain?”

  “Oh. Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”

  “That’s better.” Richter looked at the bodies on the tables. “What can you tell me about these criminals, Captain?”

  “What specifically would you like to know, sir?”

  “What specifically can you tell me, Captain?”

  “Well, the woman is about twenty-five years old and the man is around fifty. Both have died from massive hemorrhaging due to bullet wounds. The woman has been bitten on the leg by a dog, as you can see.”

  “Have you found any identification of any kind on their persons?”

  “We haven’t looked, sir. We were leaving that part for you, sir.”

  Richter frowned. “That will be all. You’re dismissed.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Captain Sturzer saluted and left the operating room. Richter turned to Piecke. “Search them.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  While Piecke searched through their garments, Richter sat on a chair against the wall. He took a cigarette out of a silver case embossed with a swastika and lit it with a matching lighter. He looked at the shiny operating room equipment and the bottles of medicine in the cabinets. He’d wanted to be a doctor once, but his parents couldn’t afford to send him to medical school. It was hard to find a job in 1930, so he joined the Nazi Party. He considered it the smartest thing he ever did, but he hadn’t joined solely out of pure opportunism. He really had hated the Jews and still did. Anyone could see that they were trying to take over the world and pollute the pure Aryan race.

  “I can’t find anything,” Piecke said, turning around.

  “You looked in their underclothes, too?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Richter stood up and glanced at the bodies. “Write this down.”

  Piecke whipped out his notebook and pen. “Yes, sir.”

  “I want these two dragged behind a Kubelwagen through all the towns and villages around here as an example to the people.”

  Piecke wrote furiously. “Yes, sir.”

  Richter turned, walked out of the operating room, and climbed the stairs to the main room of the infirmary. He stepped outside into the pouring rain, putting up his collar, and strode purposefully toward his Mercedes-Benz, wondering what he could do to stop the depredations of treasonous French guerillas. There had to be some way! After all, they were nothing but a bunch of criminals and terrorists and you could tell by looking at them that they had inferior racial characteristics.

  Piecke caught up with him and ran ahead to open the rear door of the Mercedes-Benz. Richter got into the back seat and unbuttoned his raincoat. Piecke sat in front beside the driver, who started up the car and backed up in the company area. Then he yanked the steering wheel and headed back toward the road.

  Richter crossed his legs in the back seat and puffed his cigarette, while looking out the window at the rain. What would I do if I were in the Resistance? he asked himself. Where would I strike next? He decided that when he got back to headquarters he’d pore over the big maps and try to pinpoint likely objectives, the ones guerillas would most probably want to destroy to help aid the Allied invasion that should be coming before long.

  Yes, that’s the way to go about it, Richter thought with satisfaction as the car purred through the driving rain.

  Chapter Seven

  One hundred miles away in another car, Mahoney felt revived by the sausage and bread. The bottle of wine hadn’t hurt any either. But Mahoney was in a foul mood anyway. Of the eight guerillas Montegnac had given him, two turned out to be women, and one of them was Odette. She’d gotten herself assigned to the raiding party because most of the men had been engaged elsewhere. Odette claimed that she hadn’t volunteered, and that Montegnac had assigned her out of the blue, but Mahoney didn’t believe her. The other woman was Louise, a twenty-three-year-old who was married to some asshole baker in a village someplace.

  Mahoney didn’t like to go out on operations with women because he tended to worry about them. He didn’t worry about men, because if they didn’t watch their asses it was their own fault, but what did women know about guns and grenades? It was true that any woman, if pushed too far, might slug her husband with a frying pan, but guns and grenades? Mahoney thought about his kid sister Mary Ellen carrying a gun. She wouldn’t last two minutes in a pitched battle, but thank goodness she was back in New York where she wouldn’t have to.

  The night was black as the rear end of an eight-ball, and it was raining as though someone were dumping barrels of water on the car. Mahoney sat in the front seat beside Leduc, who was driving; Cranepool was in the back with two Frenchmen. The two women were in the car behind them, and Mahoney hoped there was no fucking around going on.

  Mahoney patted his pockets and realized he was out of cigars. This was not a good omen for the success of the operation. “Anybody got a cigarette?” he asked.

  “Here, Sarge,” Cranepool said, holding out his pack of French cigarettes.

  Mahoney took one and lit it with a match. The inside of the car was thick with smoke from all the cigarettes, and the partially opened windows didn’t do much except let some of the rain in. Mahoney thought that the war would be easier to fight if it didn’t rain so goddamned much.

  “We’ll be coming to the gorge soon,” Leduc said as the car began to incline upwards.

  Mahoney looked out the front windshield. He couldn’t see anything except five yards of road and raindrops falling in the rays of the headlights. He puffed his cigarette and knew that no matter how things went, it was going to be a horrible night. He turned around and looked at the headlights of the car behind them. Turning forward again, he wondered how many of them would be alive in the morning, and whether he’d be one of the ones who’d made it.

  The cars plowed through the rain and climbed up the mountain. Leduc pointed toward the window next to Mahoney. “The bridge is over there,” he said.

  Mahoney looked. “I can’t see a fucking thing.”

  “There’s a place where we can hide the cars, and we’ll go the rest of the way on foot.”

  “Great,” Mahoney said grumpily. It was going to be wet feet and blisters again.

  The ca
r leveled off and then started to descend the other side of the mountain. At the bottom Leduc flashed his taillights in a signal to the car behind them, and then turned off the road into the woods. The cars rumbled into the forest and came to a stop. The guerillas, dressed in black oilskin ponchos, poured out of the doors and camouflaged the cars with branches, so they couldn’t be seen from the road. Then they assembled behind the vehicles. Mahoney looked at the two women who had on slacks and combat boots, and frowned. They looked back defiantly; they knew he didn’t want them along.

  “All right, let’s saddle up,” Mahoney said. “Baudraye, Cranepool, and Agoult—grab the boxes.”

  The three men went to the back of the cars and took the crates of TNT out. Mahoney had told Montegnac he’d need ten crates, Montegnac had promised him six, and he’d wound up with three. There always were shortages behind the lines, but they had to do their best with what they had.

  In a single file they moved off into the woods, with Leduc leading the way. The rain was coming down unmercifully; you could hear it roar as it struck the trees and the ground. Mahoney promised himself that as soon as he got back to England he’d wrangle a furlough somehow and spend it in a fancy hotel with clean dry sheets and the craziest whore he could find.

  They trudged up hills and across valleys. Occasionally they’d stop and transfer the boxes of TNT from the shoulders of the men who were carrying them to men who were empty-handed. At one of these interludes Odette volunteered to carry one of the boxes but Mahoney told her gruffly to get lost. They continued their long uncomfortable trek through the woods and after a while Leduc held up his hand and then touched his finger to his lips. They all crowded around him.

  “The bridge is over there,” he whispered, pointing straight ahead.

  Mahoney looked but couldn’t see anything. “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  “There may be guards,” Mahoney said. "I'll go forward and take a look. The rest of you can take a break, but don’t make any fuckin’ noise.”

  As they sat on the crates or squatted on their heels, Mahoney moved off into the woods. At Fort Benning they’d had a real Indian from Arizona to teach them how to move quietly in the woods, and Mahoney had learned his lessons well. He raised his feet high and brought them down slowly. It’d take a while for him to get to the bridge, but at least he’d make it in one piece.

  He crept over rocks and made his way through thick bushes, holding his carbine ready. It seemed to take forever, but finally he approached the spot where Leduc had said the bridge would be, and he heard the sound of a footstep. He froze. The foot came down again. Somebody was out there. The footsteps seemed to be moving away from him. Mahoney got down on the ground and crawled forward. Gradually through the rain and darkness he could make out the structure at the bottom of the bridge. Two guards were there, marching round and round with their rifles at sling arms. They weren’t expecting anything and it would be a cinch to wipe them off the face of the earth.

  Mahoney retreated into the woods, then crept back to the others. They got up as he approached.

  “There are two guards,” Mahoney told them. He looked at Cranepool. “Come with me and we’ll take care of them.”

  Cranepool nodded. Mahoney looked at Leduc. “I’ll give you a quick dot with my flashlight when the coast is clear. Then come with the others and the TNT, got it?”

  “Yes, Perroquet."

  Mahoney and Cranepool moved into the woods.

  “You should have taken me with you last time,” Cranepool whispered.

  “Shut your fuckin’ mouth, you asshole.”

  They crept through the woods and soon came to the bridge. Peering through the bushes, they saw the two German soldiers trudging around the spindly steel structure. Dressed in long raincoats and helmets, they were hunched over, obviously miserable in the pouring rain. But they wouldn’t be miserable much longer. Mahoney pointed to the guard he wanted Cranepool to handle.

  “You get that one,” Mahoney whispered. “I’ll go around and get the other. When I come out of the bushes, that’ll be your signal to attack, got it?”

  “Got it.”

  Cranepool took out his commando knife and Mahoney began crawling to the other side of the structure. He made his way slowly, slithering along the muddy ground like a snake. He was soaked to his skin on his legs, but the poncho had kept the top half of him fairly dry so far. Finally, he reached the other side of the bridge, parted two leaves and looked at the guards. Each was halfway around the bridge from the other, and they weren’t expecting anything. A child could knock them off.

  Mahoney took out his commando knife and ran his thumb over the blade. It was razor sharp because he’d honed it only four days ago and hadn’t used it since. As one of the guards was coming around to his side of the bridge, the other approached Cranepool’s side. Mahoney tensed like a wildcat, holding the knife blade up in his right hand. The guard was only about ten yards away, and when he came abreast of him, Mahoney sprang up and streaked toward him. Across the clearing he could see Cranepool charging the guard on his side. Both guards turned toward the sounds and tried to unsling their rifles, but they didn’t have a chance. Mahoney saw the terror on the German’s face as he whacked the rifle aside with his left hand and stabbed the knife into the German’s gut with his right. The German gasped, his eyes bulging with pain. Mahoney yanked out his knife, reared it back, and slashed the German’s throat. Blood foamed out of the man’s nose and mouth as his eyes rolled up into his head and he dropped to the ground.

  Mahoney looked across the clearing and saw the other guard falling at Cranepool’s feet. He returned his gaze to the man he’d killed and noticed something gleaming on his wrist. Bending over, Mahoney saw that the German was wearing a watch that looked like real gold with the name of a famous Swiss watchmaker on its face. Mahoney already had a watch, of course, but he thought he might as well have another one. He unstrapped it from the German’s wrist and put it on his own. Then he noticed that the man was wearing a thick gold wedding band. It occurred to him that this German wasn’t a poor man. He knelt on the ground and tried to pull off the ring, but it wouldn’t come past the man’s knuckle so there was only one thing to do. Mahoney took aim with his knife and chopped the finger off. Then he wiped the blood off the ring and dropped it in his pocket.

  “Whatcha doing, Sarge?” Cranepool asked, as he approached.

  “What the fuck’s it to you?” Mahoney replied. He took out his little flashlight, pointed it toward the spot where Leduc and the others were, and hit the button once. Then he put the flashlight away. He bent over and wiped the knife on the pant leg of the dead German soldier, then jammed it into its scabbard.

  Leduc and the others came through the pouring rain, two of them carrying crates of TNT. Leduc looked down at the dead German. Mahoney looked up at the bridge. He barely could see the top of it.

  “Shit,” Mahoney said.

  “What’s the matter?” Leduc asked.

  “We really don’t have enough explosives to do very much damage to this bridge. We’ll stop the trains for a while, but German engineers should be able to fix everything in a few hours. The problem is that the bridge is constructed like a skeleton. We might blow out a few ribs, but all the others will still be there. With ten crates of TNT I could have demolished the whole fucking thing, but with three crates it’s hardly worth the effort.”

  Leduc shrugged. “Maybe, but orders are orders. We might as well get started.”

  “I have an idea,” said a voice from within the band of guerillas.

  Mahoney looked in the direction of the voice. It was Bixiou, a short roly-poly man around forty years old who wore a gray cap cockily on the side of his head and had a black mustache.

  “What kind of idea?” Mahoney asked impatiently. He was anxious to set the explosives and get the fuck out of there.

  “Well,” Bixiou said, “if you want to blow up the bridge, we don’t have enough explosives to do that w
ell, but if you stop and think for a moment, what is the purpose for blowing up the bridge in the first place?”

  Mahoney frowned. “What are you driving at, asshole?”

  “We want to blow up the bridge so we can stop the train, but maybe we can stop it more effectively with the explosives we’ve got at some other point along its route.”

  Mahoney stopped frowning. “Like where?”

  Bixiou pointed in an easterly direction. “There is a place where the train has to go through a tunnel.” He looked at Leduc. “You know, near Vernisset?”

  “Ah,” said Leduc. “Of course. But if we don’t have enough explosives to blow up this bridge, we certainly won’t have enough to demolish that tunnel.”

  Bixiou bit his lip. “I didn’t think of that.”

  “Asshole,” Mahoney growled. He looked up at the bridge again, to determine where to place the explosives that they had.

  “I have it!” said another voice.

  “Now what?” Mahoney asked.

  This time Agoult stepped forward. “I used to be an engineer on this railroad,” he said, pointing his forefinger at the sky, “and I just had a magnificent idea. I have remembered that there is an old railway garage in St. Jean-de-Daye, and in that railway garage is an old locomotive that they don’t use anymore, because it’s so old, but it still works as far as I know. Maybe we can get the train, drive it into the tunnel, and tie the explosives on the front of it. Then when one of the German trains comes from the other direction, it will go into the tunnel, smash into the old locomotive, and KA-BOOM! There will be such a big mess inside the tunnel that nobody will be able to get through for days!”

  Mahoney thought about the scheme for a few moments. “Hmmm,” he said. “I think Agoult’s got something this time.”

  “But what if we can’t steal the locomotive,” Leduc protested.

  “If we can’t—we can’t, but at least we’ll have the possibility of stopping the train for quite a while. We don’t have that possibility here. I think we ought to do it.”