Scorched Earth - Robert Muchamore Page 0,33
off the armour somewhere behind, Luc ripped a pin out of a grenade and dunked it past the dead man and into the turret.
Someone shot at Luc from close range as he slid off the turret to the side of the tank. Shouts in German came from inside. Luc didn’t speak the language but suspected it was something like ‘Oh shit, that’s a grenade!’.
A fuel can strapped to the mobile gun’s side jammed into his gut. He pushed off, hitting the dirt on his knees as the grenade exploded.
This explosion instantly killed the mobile gun’s four surviving crew members. The much larger secondary blast from the shells stored inside probably would have killed Luc too, but for the fact that the turret hatch was open and most of its energy got directed upwards.
Luc found his feet, but was deafened and completely disorientated. He had no idea if he was staggering towards German machine-gun fire and he felt like church bells were going off in his head as someone grabbed him.
‘Luc,’ Edith said.
At the same moment Marc closed on the scene and shouted something that Luc barely heard.
‘That was amazing!’
As Luc looked around, he realised that while he’d taken out the mobile artillery, the combination of Marc’s sniper shots and everyone else’s grenade blasts had killed most of the Germans or sent them running away.
‘Is Luc OK?’ PT asked.
‘Quite a burn on his hand,’ Edith answered. ‘I’ve got some bandage.’
PT nodded. ‘The other German positions can’t be far off, so we need to move out. I’ll drive the truck. Marc, you speak the best German, so you ride with me up front and deal with checkpoints. The rest in the back. Try and get German uniforms. Grab any weapons you find, and we need fuel. Especially fuel.’
‘What about the bicycles?’ Marc asked.
‘We’ll still stop and pick them up,’ PT said. ‘Might need them further down the line, but this truck gives us a real chance to stay on the 108th’s tail.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Team A had struck gold with the truck. The only damage during the shoot-out was a smashed side window and some bullet holes in the canvas awning. They also found two large cans of diesel, towing ropes and a mechanic’s chest filled with tools and spare parts.
Edith, Luc and Michel faced a rough ride on the bare floor in the rear, with a strong oily smell and the bicycles packed around them. Daniel had found a corner and snuggled on a mound of greasy mechanic’s overalls, with a padded kneeling-mat under his head. Up front, Marc and PT had dressed themselves in uniform stripped from dead Germans.
At nineteen, PT was older than the 108th’s most recent conscripts, while at sixteen Marc looked young, but not so much that he’d raise suspicion.
‘Any ideas on what I should say if we’re stopped?’ Marc asked.
PT shrugged as he drove fast around a tight corner, making spares and tools crash about in the back.
‘Our uniforms show we’re from the 108th,’ PT said, as he accelerated. ‘Whenever I’ve seen big troop movements the vehicles just get waved through checkpoints.’
‘True,’ Marc agreed. ‘I reckon I can handle a checkpoint, but what if someone looks in the back and sees our passengers?’
‘Prisoners, or something?’ PT suggested.
‘Maybe if we tied them up,’ Marc said, then he shouted into the back. ‘Hey, Luc. Mind if we tie you up?’
Luc’s head popped through the canvas flaps separating the cab from the cargo bay. ‘I’ll put on a mechanic’s overall,’ Luc said. ‘If anyone asks, Daniel, Michel and Edith were arrested for sabotage before we left and have no proper paperwork.’
‘That’s credible and it explains the lack of documents,’ Marc said, as he reached into his slightly-oversized German jacket and pulled out several military IDs stripped from the dead Germans. ‘See if one of these looks anything like you.’
As Luc took the IDs and disappeared into the back, PT stopped the truck before turning on to a dirt road that Marc knew well.
‘Used to walk down here every day, between the orphanage and my school,’ Marc said.
PT was more interested in the chunks of bark stripped from trees growing close to the road. ‘Gotta be tanks did that,’ he said.
‘Slow down then,’ Marc warned. ‘Probably not a good idea to run into them.’
‘Tanks aren’t subtle,’ PT answered. ‘We’d hear ’em way before we saw ’em.’
It was a warm night, so the side windows were down and Marc caught a whiff of smoke. He knew that the only thing close by was