The continuing bulletins from loudspeakers had been like a background buzz throughout all that had previously occurred, and now, if you listened hard, the name of Goded was just audible. News of his surrender was being broadcast and it had to be the case that those defending the telephone exchange had a radio and thus knowledge of that fact.
Would they believe it to be true, would they realise their position was hopeless and ask for safe passage; would Laporta grant that to save lives? No one was crazy enough to walk out into the open with a white flag and ask, which was just as well; waved from behind a thick tree trunk and in full view of the building, it was shredded by rifle fire within seconds. It was going to be a fight to the finish and it seemed the defenders had ammunition to spare!
The two 75 mm Schneiders arrived, drawn by horse teams now under the control of local carters. The man in charge of loading and firing them, a dock worker by trade, had been an artilleryman at one time, so he knew not to bring them too close, to a point where the gunners would be at risk from concentrated rifle fire, just as he knew to warn those along the avenue to get out of the way. Given the angle from which he was required to fire, shells could very well ricochet off the stone frontage and bring more destruction further on.
The first target was the parapet, yet even blasted — and some of the shot went right over — it was impossible to utterly destroy that, which still left good fire positions for the men occupying the roof, who, under bombardment, had been safe from anything other than flying stone by a mere withdrawal, protected by an angle of fire that could not directly do them harm.
Next it was the nearest set of windows, a row rising to the sixth storey; a shell entering through one of those would do massive interior damage, both in terms of destruction and noise, but his first efforts proved the wisdom of his earlier precautions. Hitting the front of the building the shell bounced off and within seconds had reduced to splinters one of the large trees a good hundred yards further on. Aim adjusted, the next shell hit the joint between the window and the surround, smashing through in a cacophony of tearing wood and shattering glass, followed by audible screams.
Laporta had been standing by, or to be more precise, reinforcing his restraint, given the mere sound of the shot and the long-flamed muzzle flashes were acting on his already excited cohorts to make the task ten times harder. The safe option was to fire at the rooftop and windows from cover, to keep the heads of the defenders down while not exposing yourself. It was a testimony to the level of excitement that both Vince and Cal had to yell at their own party of eager young athletes to stay still and not do as was being demonstrated to them by the others — stepping out into the open to blast off full magazines.
Even with shellfire hitting the building, and at least half the shot doing serious internal and external damage, the amount of returned fire was lethal, and several of the workers paid the price, this just as the cannon fire shifted to the main target, the double doors, which were well pounded. Yet they, being bronze, seemed like a sort of malleable armour plate, buckling but not cracking, despite taking several hits. It became increasingly clear they would need to be blown; from the angle at which the shells were striking they could not break open the part that mattered, the point at which the doors joined.
Charges were sent for while the windows of the telephone exchange building were systematically blown in until not one remained intact. Parts of the frontage, knocked off, now sat as a layer of disordered rubble before the building, yet still the defenders returned fire and inflicted casualties on anyone foolish enough to overexpose themselves, which they did regularly, leading to a steady stream of wounded and dying being borne away to the hospitals under covering fire.
When the dynamite did arrive, brought by a runner, Vince nearly had a fit as he saw the amount it had sweated. Like a father with a new baby, he held it and wiped each stick clean, careful with the cloth as well, so unstable was the nitroglycerine, before he bound the sticks into one tenfold charge, inserting a short length of fuse, while others were made ready singly and with even less fuse, to be thrown through the now-destroyed first-storey windows.
The problem, exacerbated by the fact that they were still being observed from the rooftop, was now twofold: the charge had to be laid by the doors and that meant crossing open ground under the eyes of the men on the roof; even coming from the sides, if they exposed themselves for short periods, those defenders could see what was being executed. Then, with the possibility of dropping grenades, the fuses had to be lit, and the man doing that, who must be the last to run and therefore a lone target, had to get far enough away to be safe.
Again, Cal experienced a sea change in attitude; Xavier, hitherto seen as a noisy and argumentative pest, was now transformed into a hero who would not countenance that anyone else but a miner should undertake the task, not that he had too much opposition to that stand. Laporta, who had barely spoken to Cal since the confrontation with Xavier, called to him and, with the aid of Florencia, sought his views. They were given freely, but the primary recommendation was to take time and to comprehensively explain to each person taking part, in proper detail, their individual task.
‘Otherwise, monsieur, you will have confusion, and if you have that, it will fail.’
Dusk was close by the time that task was completed, the front of the east-facing building now in deep and useful shadow. The attack was split into three parts, four if the cannon were included. Vince, with his single sticks of dynamite, took one party down the avenue well away from the exchange; Cal took another in the opposite direction and that included Xavier, both sets of attackers obliged to dodge from doorway to doorway until they were far enough off to cross the road. They would come at the exchange from the sides, using their proximity to the front of those adjoining buildings, as well as their doorways and moulded parapets, to provide some protection.
Laporta had his riflemen aiming at what remained of the roof, to keep down the heads of those watching the attackers’ movements. Any sight of one popping up resulted in a fusillade; that such action presaged an assault just had to be accepted. At the signal, the artillery would take over that task while the rifles were trained on the windows, their orders, which only existed as a hope, being that they would put a series of single shots through each one to suppress the defence enough to provide the time needed to place the charge.
At Laporta’s signal Cal and Vince led their groups forward, backs pressed into stone as the docker-artilleryman aimed the shot, falling masonry another risk that just had to be accepted. The defenders knew what was coming and the first grenade, a proper one, popped out to bounce on the rubble-strewn pavement, really too far off to do serious damage.
As soon as that emerged, Vince’s men went into a huddle in which matches were set to lengths of fuse, the explosion acting as the signal to rush forward and for the riflemen to commence their suppression fire. There was no way to throw those individual sticks through the destroyed windows without stepping back to do so, and that created another risk.
Anyone shot dropping a lit fuse would endanger his own, something which happened immediately. This was an occasion when suicidal courage was admirable: the man shot did not let his dropped stick injure his fellows; twisting, he flung his body on top of the charge, bouncing in the air, his guts blown apart as it detonated.
The other sticks made their targets, exploding inside and below the level of the sills under which the attackers were now crouched, protecting their heads from both the blast which emerged and the bits of stone crashing down from above, some of them big enough to kill. Steady gunfire was coming from the main position as Xavier flung himself into the doorway and with great care lit the fuse. Just as he did so, a second grenade dropped no more than ten feet away from him.