At the Narrow Passage Page 6

  The other German spotlight went out.

  We dropped our rifles, all of us in the three remaining boats, grabbed our paddles and began paddling like mad up the river. We had only a few minutes of darkness, at best, before the Imperials brought up another light. We all knew that we'd better make the most of it.

  It was still totally dark in the river and I'm sure that the Germans on the bank couldn't see us, but they could hear us, and they could fire in our direction. I just hoped that their hearing wasn't good enough to pinpoint us all, and I thought that echoes from the buildings along the river would aid us. My main fear was that one of our own men would be foolish enough to fire back, revealing our positions with the flashing of his weapon. I should have known better. All these men were experienced mercenaries -- not heroes.

  The river curved slightly, carrying us away from the spot where the machine gun was set up, though it continued to fire into the water around us until we finally got out of its range. The rifles, however, moved along as easily as we did and continued to pelt the river around us. More than once I heard the whistle of a bullet that missed my head only by inches.

  "Ach!" came a sudden expletive from directly behind me. "Bloody hell!" It was Sir Gerald's voice.

  "What is it?" I asked, hoarsely whispering.

  "I'm hit," Sir Gerald said weakly.

  "Where? How badly?"

  "Right thigh," he gasped. "Don't know how bad. Really doesn't hurt much yet."

  "Give it time," I said. "Is the bone broken?"

  "Don't know."

  "Kearns," I whispered, "see about it."

  I heard movement behind me, Kearns slipping into position to investigate the general's wound with the tips of his fingers. Now I had to paddle the boat alone.

  "Not too bad," Kearns' voice said a few moments later. "It's going to hurt him, but I don't think it got the bone."

  "Can he walk on it?" I asked.

  "If he has to."

  "My God, man," Sir Gerald gasped, "I don't even know . . ."

  "If you have to, you'll walk on it, sir," Kearns said slowly, bitterly. "Or I'll blow your bloody head off."

  "What are you saying?" Sir Gerald asked in a pained voice.

  "I'm saying you're not going to slow us down when we hit the ground," Kearns said as if speaking to a child. "Mathers?"

  "Yes?"

  Kearns was silent.

  "Oh!" I said, realizing what he meant. "I'm sorry, Sir Gerald, but you'll have to walk on that leg or surrender yourself to the Imperials."

  That was enough for Sir Gerald; he said nothing more.

  "Kearns, help me. I can't handle this boat alone."

  But already I heard the splash of Kearns' paddle in the water.

  By now the city was thinning, gaps appearing between the lower, smaller buildings and the light of the burning portions of the city was beginning to play on the water. In a few more moments the riflemen on the shore would be able to see us.

  "Right," I whispered to Kears. "Head for the right bank."

  We began to cut toward the center of the river, out to where we stood a better chance of being seen, but I figured that it was a chance we had to take.

  The men in the boats following us must have been able to see us well enough to realize what I had in mind, for they began cutting out toward the middle of the river and then toward the right bank.

  My boat had passed the midpoint of the river and was nearing the darkness of the right bank, Tracy's boat was now no more than a yard or two behind mine, and the final boat was very close to his, though I could barely see it. The Imperials on the left bank had momentarily lost us in the confusion, and we dipped our paddles silently, carefully, to try to avoid detection.

  Then a brilliant explosion from the burning portion of the city lighted the river, revealing us.

  "Balls!" Kearns muttered.

  A voice screamed something in German from the bank.

  Rifles and submachine guns began chattering, lacing the river with shot, here and there a tracer showing the paths of their bullets -- many of them were very close to their targets.

  "Let 'em have it!" I yelled back, grabbing up my rifle and hoping that inertia would carry the boat the rest of the way to the bank.

  Kearns' tommy gun began to fire only seconds after my rifle. To my surprise Sir Gerald, who had been silent, fumbled with his Enfield for a moment, then placed it to his shoulder and began to snap off shots with a marksman's ease. He seemed to have forgotten about his wound, for the moment at least.

  From a quick estimate of the number of rifle and submachine-gun flashes from the now-distant left bank I guessed that there were about fifteen Germans there. There seemed to be none on the right bank now, and I wondered why, though I thought that now and then I could hear small-arms fire from the vicinity of the broken bridge and I wondered if the British had overrun the German trenches and driven the Imperials that far back into the city.

  But I didn't take much time to think about that sort of thing. I was far more worried about the fifteen or so firing from the left bank.

  In a few seconds the brilliant light of the explosion passed, and the river was again plunged into darkness, save for the flickering red glow that reached it through broken buildings and naked trees. Then the Germans could see us no better than we could see them, and that was only by the flashes of our weapons.

  Suddenly, unexpectedly, the boat's prow bumped against something solid. I spun around, felt forward, and my hands met slimy stone, the bank of the river and the stonework that had been built there.

  "We're there," I gasped, grabbing the stone as best I could and pulling the boat in closer. The river's current turned us around so that the boat's side bumped against the old, slimy stones.

  "Kearns," I said, "out! Help Sir Gerald."

  "But I . . ." Sir Gerald began to protest.

  "Out!" I said and then turned my attention back to the far shore, slipping a fresh clip into my Enfield.

  I heard Kearns' harsh breathing as he clambered around me and out of the boat onto the uncertain footing of the stones.

  "Take my hand," he said.

  "Be careful, you fool," Sir Gerald gasped.

  "Shut up and get out," Kearns snapped, hauling upward on the general's arm.

  Sir Gerald came to his feet awkwardly, gasping under his breath, but British enough not to cry out from the pain.

  He came out of the boat, half falling onto the stones, struggling and then with Kearns' help stumbling up the sides of the slippery stone steps to drier ground.

  The boat began to slip away from the shore. I slung my rifle across my shoulder, grabbed the stones with both hands, pulled the boat back against the bank. Then, barely able to keep my footing as the boat tried to pull out from under me, I half stepped, half jumped onto the slimy stonework. For a moment I almost fell back into the water, dropped to a crouch, grabbed for a handhold, and then pulled myself up to where Kearns and Sir Gerald stood. Even as I reached his side, Kearns had begun to fire again toward the distant bank.

  The second and third boats came up against the stones, and the men tumbled out. One man did not get out of the final boat, and his body was still in it when it began to pull away from the -bank, bumping against the stones and then moving out into the current.

  "Come on," I said. "We've got to get a couple of miles up the river and then cross back over. The villa's on the other side."

  "Oh, shit!" someone muttered under his breath. A few of us fired parting shots at the Germans on the far bank and then we moved away from the river into the dark ruins of the city.

  7

  The Villa

  The villa had been built in the early part of the century, back in the days before the war. Then France had been, in theory at least, a free and sovereign nation, though in reality it had been little more than a British satellite.

  When the bloody Peasants' Rebellion of 1789-93 had been put down by the remnants of the French nobility and the British Army and the kin
g restored to his throne mainly by British aid, France had been unable to sever all ties with its British allies. Normandy and Brittany had been ceded outright to the English throne by a grateful French king, but the king had not bargained on the redcoats who remained stationed near Paris and half a dozen other French cities to, as the British claimed, "guard the person of the rightful King of France."

  When Louis XVI died in 1803, at the age of forty-nine, and was succeeded by Louis XVII, the British found a faithful servant in that weak-willed monarch. For the remainder of his reign Louis XVII was more than happy to allow British troops to protect him from his own people.

  A string of other Louis' followed, none with the will or power to try to throw off the British occupation. A brief attempt was made, however, by the Duke of Gascony in 1868, but since no Joan of Arc stood at his side, the duke found the only reward for attempting to free his nation was a cell in the Tower of London and the hangman's noose.

  By the beginning of the twentieth century local France accepted its vassalage to England perhaps not unwillingly, realizing now the growing power of the reborn Holy Roman Empire and the inability of France alone to maintain its independence from the German Empire, even more hungry for continental land than Britain.

  The villa itself had been built by the Earl of Kent as a summer retreat on a parcel of land deeded to an ancestor of his by the grateful Louis XVI after the putting down of the Peasants' Rebellion.

  Sitting on the bank of the Loire, five miles or so north of the center of the new Beaugency, the villa's ground covered perhaps fifty or sixty acres, half of it devoted to vineyards, for the Earl of Kent had had a great weakness for French wines, and half to stables, for he had also had a weakness for racing horses, mainly those of British Arabia.

  The main house was an enormous, rambling, gingerbread structure, all frills and lace and useless ornamentation, three stories of rococo ugliness that the late Earl of Kent must somehow have found attractive.

  Half a dozen outbuildings, servants' quarters and such, ringed the main house, half protecting it from attack, half hiding it from the beautiful countryside in which it had been built. The stables and their related buildings were located some distance from the main house, and as far as we knew they were now used as garages for German motorcars. A company of elite, handpicked grenadiers inhabited the servants' quarters, and Intelligence had told us that there were six black-booted bodyguards living on the villa's main floor. Just where Count von Heinen and his wife were dwelling in the house we did not know, though we believed that they and the guards were at present the villa's only inhabitants. Von Heinen, according to reports, had a passion for privacy. He had been warned against it -- this morning he would learn why.

  There were eight of us who came shivering out of the Loire into that cold predawn drizzle in the spring of 1971. Sir Gerald and a Corporal Land who had been in Tracy's boat were wounded, though neither very seriously. Sir Gerald's bleeding had stopped, and despite the agony in his leg, he had come to realize that the wound was not as bad as he had feared. Using his rifle as a crutch, he could hobble along and with his other hand use his .62 Harling if necessary. The corporal had a flesh wound In his left forearm, and after allowing a cursory examination and the application of dry bandages, he waved us away, saying that he had fought with wounds a hell of a lot worse.

  We stopped in the shelter of a poplar grove a good hundred yards from the first building beyond the boathouse, unwrapped our weapons, checked them for dryness, and then got out our gas masks.

  The corporal from the final boat sat his heavy pack on the ground and with the aid of Tracy's sheltered flashlight removed half a dozen gas grenades designed to be fired from our Enfields.

  Kar-hinter had given us a weapon that had not yet been used in battle -- at least not in this Line. It was a newly developed nerve gas, so we were told, and would stun and render unconscious for periods of two to three hours anyone exposed to it. It was claimed to be a British development, but I doubted it. I believed that Kar-hinter had it imported just for this one operation, though he had covered his tracks well. The grenades looked like British issue.

  The corporal passed two of the grenades to me, two to Tracy, and kept two for himself. We each fitted one grenade onto our rifles, clipped the other to our belts. Then we all pulled our gas masks over our faces, cleared and checked them, and began moving toward the villa.

  Halfway there, carefully concealing ourselves behind trees and bushes, we split into three groups: the corporal with the gas grenades and one man, Tracy and a private named Starne, and Sir Gerald, Kearns, the wounded Corporal Land, and myself.

  "Okay," I whispered, "get yourselves into position, hold, and wait until you hear me fire. Then go into augmentation, and let them have it."

  The others nodded, except for Sir Gerald who seemed puzzled at my reference to augmentation, and we moved apart.

  Most of the buildings were dark. One of the servants' houses was lighted, two windows showing the yellow light of a gas lantern and the forms of two gray-clad Imperials sitting at a table, apparently playing cards and drinking something -- German beer, I guessed. The yard immediately before the villa was lighted by two gas lamps that bracketed the main entrance. A German staff car sat in the glare of the lamps, and two men sat in the car, one of them smoking a long black cigar. A single light burned on the second floor of the main house, off in what I thought to be the west wing. It was my guess that there we would find the count and his wife. They were my own special targets.

  Kearns was at my side, Corporal Land assisting Sir Gerald a few feet behind us, as we slowly, carefully circled the house, came in from the dark rear.

  At last, within rock-throwing distance of the house, I signaled for Sir Gerald to sit down and wait until we had cleared the house. He made an effort to protest, then seemed to think better of it and slowly sat down, assisted by Land.

  Giving the general a brief parting handshake, I signaled Kearns to circle back around the house. Land and I moved in closer.

  I don't know why I hadn't thought of it before, but I had the second grenade on my belt, and it would probably do us a lot more good if it were on the end of Land's rifle. I slipped it off my belt, handed it to him, and pointed toward a window in the east wing, bottom floor. He got the message. We parted.

  I wondered where the six bodyguards were sleeping, but I had no way of knowing. We would just have to hope that wherever they were, they would run into the gas once hell began to break loose in the villa. I figured they probably would. They wouldn't be expecting it.

  Now I was at the window near the center of the rear wall and pressed my face against the cold panes of glass and tried to peer inside. There was total darkness. I only hoped that I wouldn't be firing into a closed pantry.

  It seemed that there had been plenty of time for the others to have got into position. Kearns would now be standing in the shadows a few feet from the staff car, the safety off his tommy gun, a full clip in it. Tracy would be near a window of the servants' quarters where a light had shown, perhaps watching the two Imperials playing cards and drinking beer and probably wishing that he could have a stein himself. I did too. But later. Much later.

  The time had come. There was no point in waiting.

  I stepped back a few paces to be clear of flying glass, aimed the rifle and its heavy grenade at the window, snapped off the safety, squeezed the trigger.

  The rifle seemed to explode with a tremendous roar in the stillness, though I knew that the grenade had muffled its sound. And the breaking of glass seemed just as loud, as did the pop! of the exploding grenade.

  I willed electrobiological circuits into operation. All my senses and responses increased fivefold. Sounds slowed and shifted toward the bass; what light I could see became redder. The world seemed to be moving with slow motion now.

  For a long, dragging instant it was still again, but only for an instant. A man yelled, his voice a rumble, a rifle fired, its sound like a distant cannon's bo
om, and was answered by another rifle from the servants' quarters. A voice sounded inside the villa, guttural German, and a light on the first floor flickered on.

  "Come on," I yelled as well as I could from inside the gas mask, leaping toward the door that was a few feet off to my right. I kicked at it savagely twice before the latch sprang and wood splintered and the door swung inwards. Then I leaped into the house; Land was behind me, moving as rapidly as I in his augmentation.

  Now I could see the room from which the light came, down a long corridor; at the end of it was a parlor or sitting room. A half-naked bull of a man stumbled to his feet in slow motion like a character in a dream, clutching for his submachine gun, swearing, yelling.

  He never had a chance. I squeezed the trigger of my Enfleld, firing from the hip, and opened a great hole in the man's left breast. He seemed to float back, stunned by the impact, but hung onto his submachine gun, slowly fighting to bring it up. I worked the bolt of my rifle, cursing its awkwardness when my reactions were so fast, threw another shell into the chamber and squeezed it off as the submachine gun in the dying man's hand came to languid life, emitting a trail of bullets my eyes could almost see individually that chipped plaster from the hallway and ceiling. But the German suddenly lost his face as my bullet and Land's both plowed through flesh, bone, brains.