Chapter 35
CHAPTER 35
J ack watched Lizzie cycle away from him. Every fibre of his being yearned to protect her and order her not to go to the Nazi’s hotel. When she told him what she was going to do, his heart felt like it would break out of his chest.
He was her superior, and he was painfully aware that if he ordered her to stand down and return to the farm, she would have to obey.
But he asked himself, would he stop her going if he wasn’t crazy about her? The truth was, he knew he wouldn’t, so he held himself back from restraining her.
But God, how in that moment he wanted to keep her with him so he could watch over her forever. He wished he were a normal man, living an ordinary life, not an SOE agent who might be dead this evening and never spend another precious second with the woman he loved.
When she turned the corner, he clenched his fists. The thought that he may never see her again tortured him. It was all he could do to continue, but there was no choice. When he joined Military Intelligence, he made a pledge to place his country’s interests before his own.
Never had his allegiance been tested to such a degree. The only allegiance he could feel right now was to Lizzie. He didn’t know when or how it had happened—against his better judgement—he had fallen in love with her. His heart had been an arid desert for years and, apart from the occasional dalliance, as Lizzie would call it, he made no time for love.
His alter-ego, Raven, was a tough agent with a methodical mind and a stony heart. He ran his intelligence operations with a cold, calculated precision and he was one of the most successful field agents with an impressive track record to join SOE when war broke out.
But suddenly, it all seemed pointless. What was it for? What had all those years of risking his life in dangerous undercover operations been for when they still led him here? To this place where he had to choose his country over Lizzie.
He nipped the tender flesh on the inside of his arm, which was an old habit he used to sharpen his mind when he was weak or tired. It brought him back to the present.
Lizzie was unbelievably intuitive when faced with danger and even though he hated her going, he knew she had made a good plan to make sure the general was out of the way whilst they blew up the airfield. That had to be the priority.
London was being bombed every day. He couldn’t let himself stop her from doing what was best for the operation. He muttered a few words of prayer that he wouldn’t live to regret letting her go and she would escape the Nazi’s clutches and get out of France tonight.
The thoughts whirled through his head as he crept through the trees with the stealth of a tiger, out of sight of the road, until he was almost parallel with the entrance to the airfield .
Jack, Pierre, and the rest of the team formed a huddle, and he whispered last reminders. They squeezed each other’s shoulders for good luck before drawing away.
Jack looked at his watch and nodded. It was time.
If all followed the pattern of previous days, since they’d been monitoring the airfield, the night patrol guards, and the Luftwaffe pilots wouldn’t arrive until around curfew.
Lizzie had confirmed his suspicions that during daylight hours, they only kept one guard at the entrance and one nearby.
The office should be empty by now—they’d watched the few staff members leave before Lizzie appeared. The memory of the Nazi General in the black Mercedes reared into his mind. He should have killed him right there and then, he thought, vicious images dominating his consciousness.
He shook his head. If he’d done that, he would endanger the whole operation. But his sweet Lizzie wouldn’t have to risk her life to appease the rotten bastard.
Jack pulled himself together.
The abandoned land had been commandeered some time earlier, but it was only a few weeks since they’d turned it into an airfield. Since then, the German pilots had used it to fly their raids to London. With France under Nazi control, it allowed them to fly from Northern France rather than all the way from Germany.
Jack crossed the road towards the guard who sat in the hut eating and looking downwards. No doubt he thought he was in for a quiet few hours before the evening’s action started, and the pilots arrived.
Jack tapped on the window of the hut. The soldier looked up, startled, swallowing hastily as he grabbed his rifle and scrambled to his feet.
‘Ja? ’ he said, emerging. It was clear to Jack by the soldier’s body language that he considered a French labourer to be an inconvenient nuisance, not a genuine threat.
That miscalculation cost him his life.
Jack wasted no time in conversation but signalled to Pierre with a jerk of his head as he stepped to the right, out of the line of fire. The soldier’s eyes bulged in shock as the bullet hit him right in the heart. His knees crumpled, and he fell to the floor, gasping. Pierre’s gun had a silencer, and the sound of the shot barely registered.
Jack edged around the barricade, which was a basic affair that had been erected in haste when Reims received orders to set up an airfield to facilitate the Blitzkrieg of London.
All life had drained from the young soldier’s face. His body was a deadweight as Jack dragged him behind the hut, out of sight of the entrance.
Jack removed the soldier’s clothes and Louis, one of the Resistance lads, ran over and hastily dressed in the uniform. Jack had instructed Louis to have a close shave so he would look the part.
Louis took the place of the soldier and sat in the hut. They could do with his help in blowing up the bombers, but they couldn’t take the chance that someone would arrive early and be alerted to an unmanned post.
Jack looked around for the other guard, but there was still no sign of him. The watch tower was usually empty until the busy night shift. This was the Nazis’ Achilles’ heel. They were so arrogant; the soldiers hadn’t even imagined in their worst nightmares that the Resistance would dare strike here in daylight.
Most of their manpower was focused on protecting railways, which Jack and the team had doubled down on disrupting. The Germans didn’t see this coming, and that was the beauty of it, thought Jack as he attached the first timed explosive to one of the bomber aircraft .
Dusk had fallen and protected them like a cloak as the team darted from bomber to bomber, attaching the explosives like he had taught them when they practiced on the railways and bridges. No wonder the Nazis were furious. Jack, Pierre, and the network had created havoc for them during the past few weeks.
Jack counted twenty bombers. He estimated they had four more to do, so that was one each. He looked at his watch. The timers were ticking. They must get out in the next ten minutes, or they risked blowing themselves up with the entire squadron of planes.
A few minutes later, two of the team signalled to him they were done. They began moving away from the bombers.
They had almost pulled it off. In five minutes, the airfield would be an inferno. No one would bomb London from here tonight.
But they must leave now.
Where was Julien?
Jack searched the field, looking at the area he had been assigned.
No Julien.
Jack heard a noise and turned.
The second soldier held Julien at gunpoint.
‘Put down your weapons,’ he shouted, ‘or I kill him now.’
Jack’s voice was deathly calm. ‘Move towards us or you will die with him. The planes are about to blow, and you will blow with them. If you want to live, move toward me now.’
The soldier kept his rifle trained on Julien, and Jack and the others kept their guns pointed at the soldier.
‘Tick, tock, tick, tock,’ Jack said. ‘Move out of the field or you will die in a few minutes.’
The soldier pushed Julien forward roughly, clearly panicking at the threat of being blown to smithereens, but not sure if it was a bluff .
‘The others will be here soon, and it will all be over for you,’ he shouted with what sounded like false bravado.
Jack said, ‘You know as well as I that no one is coming for at least another hour. Put down your rifle and let him go, or I will have to shoot you.’
‘What if I shoot him first?’
‘Then we will all shoot you and you’ll die too.’
The soldier wavered but kept his gun close to Julien’s head.
‘Why not do the smart thing? There’s no one here to know. Let him go and that will be one less death on your conscience.’
‘But you’ll kill me anyway,’ the soldier said.
Jack fired the shot and hit the soldier’s forehead before he could say anything more. He stood there frozen in mid-air until Julien grabbed his rifle, which fired and hit the ground.
Julien was white and shaking. This was his first operation where he saw someone die in front of him.
‘The bombers are going to blow at any minute. We must get out of here. Run,’ Jack shouted.
‘Now!’ commanded Pierre.
They ran out of the base and back under cover of the trees on the opposite side of the road. The booms of the bomber engines were so loud, the earth shook beneath their feet. The sky lit up like a fireworks display.
‘That’s for Black Saturday,’ Jack said aloud.
They all knew what to do. Without another word, they went their separate ways as silently and swiftly as the undercover operators they were trained to be.
Jack reached a ditch where he’d hidden an old bicycle. Pulling it out from beneath the leaves and branches, he dusted it off quickly and set off for the farm. He cycled across country, avoiding the roads that would soon be blocked by Gendarmes and Gestapo as they drove to the site of the explosions.
As he rode, he didn’t think about the two soldiers he had executed. He thought only of Lizzie and whether she had made it safely out of the hotel.
If not, what would the general do with her when he heard what had happened?