Scorched Earth - Robert Muchamore Page 0,52

inside and spitting a powerful fireball.

As a dozen of Rouen’s most senior German officers got incinerated, shards of hot glass and debris flew across the square, causing serious injuries and leaving almost nobody sitting around the small square without burns or cuts.

The quickest way out of town and the most direct route to Paris would involve crossing the Seine, but the bridges would all have a German checkpoint, so they headed south. Cars were a rare sight, so the plan was to drive 4 kilometres and abandon the car when they reached the Dominaile Forest.

They passed the heavily-guarded gates of the fuel depot they’d sabotaged the night before with no problem, but as the terrain turned rural and the first trees scrolled past the side windows a truck roared out of a side turning and T-boned them.

Joel fought the steering wheel, but the truck was much heavier and their little car tilted on to its side. Injuries might have been far worse had the sideways skid not been absorbed by a huge hedge. The car had no seatbelts and Henderson found himself lying on top of Joel with a smell of fuel and the sound of free-spinning wheels.

When he looked in the back, Sam was clambering out, but Paul appeared to be unconscious. The car windows had been open. Paul’s shirt was in shreds and his shoulder bled profusely where it had been dragged along tarmac.

Henderson realised he had a slight concussion himself, because it seemed like one second he was looking at Paul, then his memory blanked and Sam had him halfway out of the car.

The truck was 30 metres away, stationary. The way it had come out of nowhere had to be deliberate and there appeared to be a group of scruffy young men peering cautiously around it.

‘Let’s move,’ Henderson said, as he flopped to the ground and found his feet.

There were dense trees on both sides of the road. Henderson grabbed Sam’s arm, but he was trying to climb back into the car.

‘My brother’s still in there,’ Sam protested.

The young men were still cautiously moving around the truck and it was now clear that they were local Maquis, not Germans. Finally, the bravest of the young men shouted, ‘Surrender.’

Henderson gave Sam a tug and the teenager found branches scraping his face as Henderson dragged him into the woods.

*

Team A’s mood relaxed after a few hours’ sleep in a barn. An accidental encounter with a lonely old farmer earned PT, Edith, Marc, Luc, Daniel and Michel a generous cooked dinner of eggs and wild mushrooms, served with local wine.

The farmer told them about a downed British airman he’d helped two years earlier and as he regularly foraged for mushrooms, he gave excellent information on the best paths for riding bikes and likely places for German checkpoints.

They left the farm at sunset and the Germans were now spread so thin that the convoy of bikes went 20 kilometres before seeing any sign of the enemy.

It was an abandoned Tiger tank. At first they thought it had been shot by an Allied plane or blown up by local resistance, but the outside was in good shape and when Luc climbed cautiously on to the turret he caught a strong whiff of burnt rubber and saw dials and controls melted from some kind of electrical fire.

‘Shorted out in the heat, I guess,’ Luc said.

The Germans were sure to be back. Even if the tank couldn’t be repaired, undamaged parts could be used for spares, so PT reached inside and dropped their last ball of plastic and a thirty-minute timed fuse down by the gunner’s position. Hopefully the small explosion would ignite all the ammunition and blow the tank apart when it went off.

Their next encounter with the 108th came an hour later and had been caused by Allied bombing. Two Opel trucks had been hit by rockets. One must have been full of ammunition crates because its blackened chassis had burned so hot that it had melted to the surface of the road. The second truck had a burned-out cab and they’d already rolled past when Edith looked back and saw something like a face.

‘Wait,’ she gasped.

It was a short night so PT looked frustrated as he turned back. Edith had spotted three boys laid out on the roadside. The only obvious damage was blood congealed in their ears, which meant that delicate blood vessels inside their skulls had been ruptured by the shockwave from a large explosion. Most likely when