Scorched Earth - Robert Muchamore Page 0,32

in the woods?’ Edith asked.

‘Nah,’ Marc said. ‘There’s got to be at least three of them around.’

‘I think I heard some smaller, eighty-eight-millimetre ones, as well,’ Luc said.

‘It won’t stop them attacking the woods, but I still think we should act on this,’ PT said. ‘The truck will make our journey west a lot easier than pushbikes. We’re already close and the hedges give good cover if we’re careful.’

Marc nodded in agreement. ‘If I run around the front of the mobile gun and crack a few Germans with my sniper rifle, they’ll think we’re coming out of the woods and it’ll draw their fire. The rest of you can flank from the sides. Pick off as many men as you can, but you’ve got to blow the tracks off the Wempe before it can drive away.’

‘Makes sense,’ Luc said.

PT agreed, though as he was supposed to be running the show he was irritated by Marc calling the shots.

Marc was equipped for a long journey, but the gear would slow him down. After stashing his pack close to the hedge he set off with his sniper rifle, throwing knife, pistol and ammunition belt covered with spare clips and grenades.

Another huge shell got launched towards the woods as Marc skimmed past a hedge. He sighted the Wempe and a German major standing on the roof of the truck, studying the woods through binoculars. After 100 metres, Marc found a decent climbing tree. He stepped up into a large fork that gave him a view over the hedges, then leaned against a branch and sighted the major through his scope.

Marc held his breath and squeezed the trigger. It was too dark to see subtle movements, but the crack of his rifle scattered at least half a dozen Germans as the major himself crashed backwards on to the truck’s canvas awning with a bullet through his heart.

As Marc’s second shot hit an observer whose head had popped up from the turret of the Wempe, the area lit up with a succession of grenade blasts. Unfortunately, these blasts illuminated Marc’s position and he was forced to jump out of the tree as bullets whistled past.

While the German troops regrouped, the driver inside the Wempe threw it into reverse and shot backwards. The Wempe was less than one fifth the weight of a Tiger tank. While the heavily armoured Tiger was built to plough into battle, the Wempe was designed to fire giant 105-mm artillery shells from safer positions behind enemy lines.

But although it was no Tiger, the big mobile gun still made a fearsome target for a group armed only with grenades and plastic explosives.

Whatever criticism people made of Luc, he was no coward. He shot out of a hedge on a carefully timed run, aiming to get within a couple of metres of the Wempe and toss a grenade under the side flaps to blow off a track.

But the driver’s rapid reverse sent the tank straight towards him. Luc slipped as he turned around and tucked his right leg in half a second before the metal tracks would have mashed it.

He ended up between the mobile gun’s tracks in pitch darkness, listening to its whirring driveshaft echo through the armoured floor centimetres above his ear. There seemed to be a lot of shooting going on as the tracks on either side of Luc stopped moving.

Fearing that the Wempe might turn and squish him, Luc had no option but to clamber out at the front and jump on to its armoured hull. He was now on the front running board, with the turret being slowly cranked into a firing position. Judging by how low the barrel was being aimed, the crew were hoping to fire through the nearest hedge, at what they assumed was a frontal assault by Maquis coming out of the forest.

Luc’s head was less than a metre and a half from the 105-mm gun’s huge muzzle and if it went off while he was this close his eardrums would rupture. His palm seared on the hot gun barrel as he kicked against a metal rung to launch himself to the top of the turret.

Since he’d turned and slipped, everything Luc did had been for self-preservation. Now he finally had a second to think.

He’d dropped his grenade somewhere along the way, but there was another hooked to his belt and the top of the turret was open, with the bloody face of the guy Marc shot staring at him. As a bullet pinged