They always said: Use two to make sure. He used all five and made certain in his orthodox Midwestern way that each one was secure and driven in deep enough so that gravity wouldn’t pull it out.
God, I did it, he thought.
It seemed to take an hour to clamber back up to the bridge span itself, and Franc and Leon pulled him, while the third maquis hammered away with the Sten periodically.
On the span he was elated, yet also exhausted.
“Whoa,” he said in English, “wouldn’t want to do that job over.” Then, reverting to French he said, “Friends, let’s get the hell out of here!”
He grabbed his Thompson and ran back down the bridge, past the blown-out guardhouse, deserted, sandbagged gun pits with their silent 88s pressing skyward, the wreckage and small fires from the Gammons; now it was only a question of the long run up the hill to the treeline in the darkness, waiting for the boom from the. .
That’s when he noticed the Brens were no longer firing.
That’s when he saw a German truck scuttling over the crest of the road, and it began to disgorge troops, many of them, while up top, a soldier unlimbered an MG-42.
It was spread out before her on Frank Tyne’s desk: Operation Jedburgh.
She could see all the locations for the teams and all their targets, laid out across all of France, all the boys who’d gone in with darkened faces and knives between their teeth. Teams Albert and Bristol, Charles and David, Teams Edward and Francis, and on and on to Teams Xylophone and Zed, with the mission to set Europe ablaze.
“Oh, Frank,” she said. “And to think, you thought it up. That’s your plan. Those magnificent men, fighting and killing, and all under your direction.”
Frank swelled a bit, then turned modest.
“Sweetie, you have to understand, I didn’t think it up on my own. I mean, it was a true team effort, and it involved logistics and liaison between three entities; I was just part of the team that put the players on the field, that’s all. It’s my bit. Nothing dramatic. I don’t want you thinking I’m a hero. The kids are the heroes.”
Her eyes scanned the map with incredible intensity, and if dumbbell Frank had had a whisper of sense in his brain he would have noted how inappropriate her concentration was, but of course he was way gone. He was over the edge. His dick was as big as a wine bottle.
“Ooooo!” she squealed girlishly. “What’s this one? Casey. At Nantilles.”
“You must have heard the name in the air. Casey’s on for tonight. There’s a bridge, Casey’s going to hit it, take it down, ka-boom!”
“Such heroes.”
“If there’s room for heroics. First you have to get through the bullshit — oh, excuse me — the bull crap about politics. France is not only fighting the Germans, but the French themselves are always trying to skew this way or that for political advantage after the war.” He wanted to show her what an insider he was. “Casey was hung up for some reason, because a commie guerrilla outfit wouldn’t give them support. Somehow the Brits managed to get it all the way to Moscow and back, and the commies were ordered to pitch in.” He smiled smugly, loosened his tie, took another swig of rye.
“And it’s happening tonight?”
He looked at his watch, worn commando-style upside down on his wrist.
“Real soon now. We should know by dawn.”
“It’s so exciting.”
“Millie, whyn’t you come over here on the couch and we’ll relax for a bit, have a few more drinks? Then I’ll wander down to Radio and see if anything’s come in on Casey.”
“Oh, Frank,” she said. She sunk down on the old sofa that comprised his office furniture, beside the desk and the battered filing cabinets and the safe, and snuggled close to him and felt him groping to get his beefy arms around her.
“Oh, Millie, Millie, God Millie, if you only knew, Jesus Millie, I’ve had the same feeling for you you have for me. I’m so glad the war has brought us together, oh Millie.”
She smiled, and when he closed his eyes to kiss her, she brought a handkerchief full of knockout drops to his nostrils and felt him struggle, then go limp.
She got up quickly, went to the map, marked the coordinates for Nantilles and Casey’s operational area and then realized of course they would know all this. The big info was that a red group had agreed to assist the Jeds, which meant assist the FFI. She knew NKVD would go through the roof on that one! It felt so wrong to her, so unjust. If you helped FFI, then the war would have been for nothing; when it was over, it would just go back to what it had been before, with big money ruling everything and the little guy squashed to nothingness and all the bullies and all the rich scum and all the boys who’d pawed her at Smith — brutal, smelly, drunken Frank Tynes — all those men would be triumphant, and what, really, what would have been the point? The only hope was the Soviet Union, the greatness of Uncle Joe, the justice of a system that didn’t depend on exploitation but that enabled man to be all that he could be, noble and giving, generous and loving. That was a world worth fighting for, and if she didn’t have a gun, she had a telephone.
She picked it up and dialed, knowing that nowhere on earth would anyone see anything suspicious about Frank Tyne of OSS calling David Hedgepath of the Office of War Information at 10:14 p.m. on the night of June 8,1944.
Leets did a quick tumble through the facts as he thought them to be and concluded that yes, Team Casey had a chance.
Luftwaffe troops were basically antiaircraft gunners, their rifle marksmanship and combat aggression had to be somewhat deficient. They wouldn’t understand elevation or deflection fire at moving targets. It was dark; untrained, unblooded troops didn’t care for the dark. They weren’t sure where they were going, and at best they’d put in a half-effort, each fellow thinking, “I don’t want to be the one guy who dies tonight.”
“Okay,” he said to the maquis, “we’ll go ahead by leapfrogging. As each guy runs, the other three pour fire on Les Boches. When you hold on them, aim a man high, or your rounds won’t reach the target. Shoot, move, don’t stop no matter what. We spread out, try and go about fifty yards per spurt. Up top they’ll be covering us. We don’t need the damn Brens; we’re fine.”
“Fuck that fat Roger,” said Leon. “He is pig filth, swine, a screwer of mothers and babies.”
“That communist shit, the reds should be rounded up after the war and—”
“We will visit Roger, I promise you,” said Leets. “Now come on, guys, let’s get a move on.”
Franc went first, then was passed by Leon, and finally Jerome. Leets crouched behind a sandbag revetment and had a wild, insane heroic impulse. Maybe I should stay here, cover them, and keep the Krauts off until the bridge blows.
Then he thought, Fuck that.
He was moving, was past Franc, past Leon, almost to Jerome, moving through fire that was sporadic at best, now and then licking up a spit of dust in the general area, and he’d heard nothing blazing by his ears, indicative of the fact that Jerry had zeroed on them.
The flare popped, freezing him.
Flares? These clowns have flares?
He looked back to the bridge and beheld with horror the reality that two more trucks had arrived, in the dappled camouflage coloring of 2nd SS Das Reich, and watched as from each truck spilled lean, toughened Panzergrenadiers in their camouflage tunics, hardened by years on the Eastern Front, a unit noted and feared far and wide as the finest of the SS Divisions. These characters carried the new Stg-44, something the Germans called an “attack rifle,” which fired a shortened 8mm round with accuracy and a high rate of fire. Oh, fuck, they could really lay fire with that sonofabitch.