Death Train Page 6

  Leduc shrugged. “It’s worth a try, I suppose.”

  Mahoney looked at Agoult. “Why didn’t you think of this before we came all the way in here?”

  “How should I know?” Agoult said.

  “Asshole.” Mahoney looked at the dead German sprawled on the ground. “Strip the uniforms and weapons off the guards, because they might come in handy.”

  Two guerillas ran out and quickly undressed the Germans. When they finished the Germans’ bare skin looked white and ghostly against the dark mud.

  Mahoney picked up one of the crates and heaved it onto his shoulder. “Back to the cars,” he said.

  Cranepool lifted the second crate, and Leduc got the third. In a long line the guerillas followed Mahoney through the rain.

  Chapter Eight

  It was four o’clock on the morning of June 5. In the ports of southern England, four thousand transport ships and eight hundred warships were gathered for the Normandy Invasion. Ashore behind barbed wire were five American combat divisions and five British divisions, packed cheek by jowl in tents, waiting for orders to board the ships and sail to France. The men had not been allowed to leave their encampment or even send letters to loved ones. Tension was high, tempers were short, and the food was even worse than what they ordinarily were accustomed to. Rain poured down on the soldiers, and they wished the invasion would get underway.

  At SHAEF Headquarters at Bushy Park, Ike had called a meeting of all the top commanders. They stood around the map table as gale winds lashed the windows with rain. Ike had intended to begin the invasion today, and in fact some men already had boarded their ships, but he’d cancelled it due to the weather.

  Group Captain Stagg of the Meteorological Staff stood with his hands clasped tightly behind his back. “Our calculations lead us to believe that present weather conditions will prevail for the remainder of the day,” he said.

  Field Marshal Montgomery groaned, for he and his British divisions were anxious to get into battle. Yesterday he’d actually argued that the June 5 invasion should take place as scheduled, despite the weather forecast and the prediction that a major disaster would have resulted.

  “However,” Group Captain Stagg continued, “it is anticipated that a brief period of relatively fair weather will begin tomorrow morning and last approximately thirty-six hours. Then the severely bad weather will resume.”

  Ike scratched his cheek and appeared calm, but inwardly he was wrestling with the decision only he could make. It he staged the invasion tomorrow, the first units might get ashore successfully, but then it might become impossible to land more men and tanks. On the other hand, if he postponed the invasions again, he didn’t know when the weather would clear. It might not be feasible to invade France for several more days, and he doubted that his men could remain in a high pitch of combat readiness for that length of time.

  He looked at the map. There were so many imponderables. An intelligence report had stated that the German 352nd Infantry Division was on a training exercise somewhere near Utah Beach. There were other reports that Hitler’s V-l rockets would be flying soon. And there was that damned railroad down there that could funnel large numbers of German troops to the beaches quickly. He looked up at General Bradley.

  “You get any word on this bridge yet, Brad?” Ike asked, pointing to it on the map.

  “Not yet, sir.”

  “Can you inquire about what progress is being made?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Let me know by 1200 hours, will you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ike looked at the map again. He decided that if the weather would clear tomorrow, he might as well take advantage of it. He couldn’t keep postponing the invasion forever. It was now or never.

  He looked up from the map and into the faces of his commanders. “The invasion will take place tomorrow,” he said. “I want the paratroopers to land at 0100 hours, and the first assault troops to hit the beaches at 0600 hours. Are there any questions?”

  No one said anything; the details of the invasion had been chewed over too many times already.

  “Return to your units and prepare for battle,” Ike said.

  Chapter Nine

  At that moment, in a mansion at La Roche-Guyon, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the renowned Desert Fox of the famed Afrika Corps, was humming a song and shaving in front of a mirror. He wore a towel wrapped around his lean waist, and he was in a good mood. In a few hours he would be off to Paris to buy his wife a pair of fancy French shoes, and then he’d continue on to Ulm in Germany, to celebrate his wife’s birthday on June 6.

  He’d thought it quite a coincidence when he’d learned that one of his subordinates, General Erich Marcks, commander of the LXXXIV Corps, which was responsible for the defense of the Normandy coast between Caen and Cherbourg, would also celebrate his birthday on June 6. However the great Field Marshal had no way of knowing that another significant event also was going to take place on June 6.

  In fact, he’d met yesterday with his weather advisor who’d told him that there would be no good invasion tides until June 20. The weather man thought this because he believed the Allies would attempt to invade only in the morning during a high tide. It was incomprehensible to him that the Allies would attempt such a dangerous landing during low tide.

  Anyway, Rommel felt safe to be leaving his post for a few days. He was commander-in-chief of the defense against the Allied attack, and had been personally appointed to this position by Adolf Hitler himself. He believed that his defensive measures were proceeding rather well, although, as the result of the intricacies of the German General Staff procedures, he didn’t have clear-cut command of the Panzer forces in his sector, or the Waffen SS. And Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, who was commander-in-chief of Army Group West, could cancel any of Rommel’s orders that he wished, since Rommel technically was subordinate to him.

  Rommel intended to talk with Hitler about these matters after his wife’s birthday celebration. Hitler liked Rommel and Rommel was sure he could convince Hitler to let him have command of the Panzers, and permit him to operate clear from the authority of von Rundstedt, who was living in Marie Antoinette’s Fontainebleau Palace near Paris, far from the realities of the Atlantic Wall.

  Rommel finished shaving and dried off his face. He was a short man covered with scars, for he’d been fighting since the early days of World War I and had been wounded numerous times. But his deepest wound was an unseen one in the depths of his heart, for he still was angry and confused by Hitler’s abandonment of the Afrika Corps in the second battle of El Alamein. Rommel had wanted reinforcements and permission to fall back for a shorter battle line. Hitler said no retreat and no reinforcements. That had been the end of the Afrika Corps, a splendid organization of fighting men, and Rommel had been flown back to Germany just before the front collapsed.

  There were those on the German General Staff who said Rommel was finished. They said he didn’t deserve to be a Field Marshal because he’d never commanded a unit larger than a division. They said that his defeat at El Alamein had broken his will, that he’d become a defeatist, that he was incapable of devising the brilliant strategies that had made him famous throughout the Reich and respected even among the Allies.

  Rommel put on his green field uniform. His field marshal’s baton lay on his bed. Around his neck, was the medal called the Pour le Merite, which he’d won as a young lieutenant in the First World War. It had been Germany’s highest honor for heroism.

  Rommel was determined to prove to everybody that he wasn’t finished, as they had thought. He was determined to crush the Allied invasion on the beaches. He’d get control of those Panzers somehow and run them right through the Allied beachhead just the way he’d run them through the British lines at Tobruk. He’d rip apart the landing armies and grind them into the sand. Then the second battle of El Alamein would be forgotten, and he’d be a hero to the German people once again.

  The telephone next to the bed rang. Ro
mmel picked it up. “Rommel here,” he said in his clipped military manner.

  “Your car is ready, sir,” said the voice on the other end.

  “I’ll be down in five minutes.” Rommel said.

  “Very good, sir.”

  Rommel hung up the phone and stood in front of the mirror, placing his visored hat squarely on his head. How can anyone doubt me, he wondered, after all I have done? I’ll show them who Germany’s greatest military field commander is. And then after that, who knows? Hitler won’t live forever, and his successor might very well be a military man, one who has proven himself in the cauldron of frontline combat.

  But Rommel knew that the key to victory over the Allied invasion armies was the ability to move men and material to the beaches quickly. He decided to draft a directive before he left that would order all local commanders to exert every effort to guard and clear transportation networks in their districts.

  Returning to his telephone, he lifted the receiver and dialed the number of his adjutant.

  Chapter Ten

  While General Eisenhower was holding his four a.m. conference at SHAEF Headquarters at Bushy Park, and Field Marshal Rommel was dictating orders to his adjutant at La Roche-Guyon, two old Renaults were driving through the deserted streets of St. Jean-de-Daye. The wind howled around the cars and the rain was falling almost horizontally in the rays of the headlamps.

  In the front car, Cranepool and Baudraye were dressed in the uniforms of the German guards killed at the bridge. Mahoney sat in the front seat, smoking a cigarette, and Leduc was driving. They were approaching the huge railroad complex where the old locomotive was supposed to be.

  Leduc turned onto a narrow side street and then into an alley. He stopped the car and the second car stopped behind him. The guerillas got out, unloaded the crates of TNT, hid their weapons under their ponchos and raincoats, and then lined up. Mahoney, Cerizet, and Sommervieux picked up the crates and shouldered them, forming a single file, with Cranepool and Baudraye on either side. Baudraye was from Alsace and spoke German perfectly. He would be the mouthpiece for all of them, and if there was any trouble they’d have to rely on their guns.

  They marched out of the alley and down the street. Mahoney hoped they looked like a standard French work detail guarded by two stalwart German soldiers. Now he was glad that it was raining, because under the raincoats you couldn’t see how badly the uniforms fitted Cranepool and Baudraye, and the rain had washed away most of the blood.

  Mahoney looked at both his watches. It was four-fifteen. He hoped they could get inside that train garage before daybreak. He realized that ever since he’d been parachuted into France he’d been running from the daylight. He was starting to feel like Count Dracula.

  They turned a corner and straight ahead was the huge railway terminal complex. It was surrounded by barbed wire, and through the rain and darkness you could see lights shining in some of the buildings.

  They approached on a street that led directly to a gate in the barbed wire fence. At the gate were two German guards in a little guardhouse. One of them came out as the column approached.

  Baudraye told the column to stop, then turned to the guard. “Work detail,” he said.

  “What kind of work detail?” the guard asked.

  “Repair work.”

  “Where are your papers?”

  “What papers?” demanded Baudraye, highly indignant. “I don’t need any papers to get in here!”

  “Oh yes you do!” insisted the guard.

  “Oh no I don’t!”

  Mahoney glanced around. There were no German soldiers in sight and he stepped out of line and brought the crate of TNT down hard on the German’s helmet. The German was stunned; his knees buckled and before he could straighten them up again Leduc’s commando knife was streaking toward the German’s jugular vein, while Baudraye calmly placed his hand over the German’s mouth. As the German shouted into Baudraye’s hand, his throat was torn in half. He fell to the ground and meanwhile Cranepool was charging the other guard coming out of the guardhouse. The German raised his rifle to aim a shot but he was too slow for Cranepool, who was a crackerjack killer with rifle and bayonet. Cranepool whammed the man in the face with his rifle butt, and the German saw stars. That would be the last thing he’d ever see, because on his way to the ground he received Cranepool’s bayonet in his heart.

  The guerillas broke ranks and quickly dragged both German soldiers into the guardhouse. They propped one up near the window so that it appeared he was alert, and lay the other on the floor. Mahoney was pleased with his little band of fighters, because he didn’t have to tell them to do it. They were experienced veterans of behind-the-lines combat and knew what to do without being told.

  Mahoney, standing at the door of the guardhouse, noticed that one of the Germans had a nice gold wrist watch. He was about to take it when Baudraye snatched it from the German’s wrist in a movement so fast it was a blur.

  “All right, let’s get moving,” Mahoney growled.

  They returned to their formation and Baudraye opened the gate. They marched inside the railway terminal complex and Cranepool closed it behind them. Agoult led them in the direction of the old railway barn, and Mahoney hoped no one would find those dead German guards for a long time. Once more he was glad for the storm and rain. It would inhibit people from snooping around, and make it difficult to see very far.

  They marched through the railroad yard, seeing the various huts and hopping over tracks. No one else was outside because of the terrific downpour. They passed some parts of the yard that had been bombed recently, and Mahoney’s heart sank as he thought that damaged tracks might prevent them from getting out of the yard. In the distance he heard the long mournful whistle of a train, and imagined they might even have a collision before getting out of the yard. He began to wonder whether he should have simply blown up the bridge as he’d been ordered and returned to St. Pierre for some screwing around with Odette. But no, he told himself, that wouldn’t have accomplished anything; somehow he had to fuck up the railroad more permanently.

  They came to a building that looked like a huge barn in need of paint and repair, leaning like the tower of Pisa. Mahoney thought it might collapse at any moment and hoped that didn’t happen while they were inside. He looked around; there were no guards in sight.

  “I know the way in,” said Agoult authoritatively.

  He led them to a side door and turned the knob. The door didn’t open. Evidently it was locked.

  “Get out of the way,” Mahoney said.

  Everyone parted in front of the door and he took a few steps backwards. Then he lunged forward and dug his shoulder in. The door shattered easily and he went flying into the musty old railroad barn. It smelled of grease; rain dripped through holes in the roof. In the darkness he could see the shapes of old railroad cars that reminded him of ancient prehistoric beasts.

  The others followed him into the barn.

  ‘The engine’s over here,” Agoult said, moving into the shadows. “Or at least it was last time I was here.”

  Agoult led them into the barn. They had to watch the ground carefully so they wouldn’t trip over the tracks. The scurrying of rats and mice was the only sound they heard. Finally they approached a huge rusting hulk of machinery in a far corner.

  “This is it,” Agoult said proudly.

  Mahoney looked at it, and doubted that it could move. “You mean this piece of shit?”

  “Yup.”

  Mahoney kicked it, and a piece of metal fell off the side of the engine and fell to the ground.

  “What the hell was that?” Mahoney asked, looking down on it.

  “Just a useless piece of metal.” Agoult climbed up to the cab, brushing cobwebs out of the way. “It’s a beautiful machine,” he said. “A little old, but still beautiful.

  Mahoney wiped his finger against the engine and it came back caked with rust. “This thing’s all rusted up. I don’t think it’ll be able to move.”

&n
bsp; “It’s not rusted inside.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because it told me so.”

  “It told you so?”

  Agoult touched his ear. He was thirty years old and had a long jaw covered with gray stubble. “They talk to me,” he said.

  “How come I can’t hear anything?”

  “Because you’re not a railroad engineer, and I am. Or at least I was before I joined the Resistance.”

  They all climbed into the cab. Agoult stood before the dials and worked the levers and wheels. “This machine’s just fine,” he said. He wiped off the dials with his sleeve. “Looks good.”

  Mahoney sniffed the rust and oil that hung in the air like fog. He was beginning to doubt the success of this operation. He thought he should have blown up the bridge while he had the chance. This fucking piece of junk didn’t look like it was going anywhere.

  “A fine machine,” said Agoult.

  “A fine machine where?” asked Mahoney.

  Leduc nudged Mahoney in the ribs. “Leave him alone. He knows what he’s doing.”

  Agoult looked in the coal burner and checked the water. He worked the levers and pressed some buttons. Jumping to the ground, he walked along the side of the engine and examined fittings and connections. Then he climbed up to the cab again where the others were.

  “All we have to do is get some coal and water,” he said. “Everybody come with me.”

  They jumped down from the engine and Agoult led them to the back of the barn, where the coal was kept in bins and there was a tank of water. He told them to fill hods with coal and pails with water and carry them back to the engine. They did this while Agoult supervised the pouring of water into the boiler and coal onto the floor of the cab. He told Cranepool to get some wood and the others to keep bringing water and coal.

  Agoult started a fire in the boiler with the wood Cranepool tore out of the wall of the barn, and then shoveled on the coal. Mahoney smiled when he saw the flames crackling inside the furnace. Maybe something was going to happen after all.