Scorched Earth - Robert Muchamore Page 0,53
the truck full of ammunition blew up.
The boy in the middle didn’t seem to be bloody and Edith reached forward to see if there was a weak pulse. As she was about to lift his arm, Luc grabbed her slim waist and yanked her backwards.
‘Don’t touch me,’ Edith shouted furiously, as Luc threw her down in the dirt. ‘Why’d you do that?’
Instead of answering, Luc shone a small torch between two of the bodies. When Edith stood, she saw the torch beam illuminating a grenade nestled in the middle boy’s armpit. The pin was pulled, and had almost certainly been wound down to a one- or two-second delay.
‘You just saved my life,’ Edith gasped, and she was so relieved that she kissed Luc’s cheek.
‘Would have got me as well,’ Luc said coldly. ‘The 108th are bad-asses. There’s always gonna be a trap if they lay bodies out like that.’
PT and Marc were the last to double back. ‘Are they from your orphanage?’ Daniel asked.
Marc choked back tears as he looked into young dead faces and nodded. ‘I grew up with those three.’
Marc, Edith and Daniel all started crying and for once Luc kept his mouth shut.
‘We can’t leave ’em like that,’ PT said. ‘It’s disrespectful, but the poor bastard who turns up next might get their arms blown off.’
They all got back on their bikes and rode about 100 metres. Marc was the best shot, but he was in a state, so Luc knelt on one knee and aimed Marc’s sniper rifle at the body in the middle. The bullet jerked the body and the exploding grenade made a gory mess across the road.
Marc was sobbing. ‘I wonder what’s happened to the other two?’ he said.
PT put an arm around his back. ‘Don’t let it get to you. The Allies are landing more equipment every day. They’re gonna break out of Normandy and push every Nazi out of this country.’
‘Hope you’re right.’ Marc sniffed. ‘Because I don’t think I can take much more of this shit.’
Part Three
August 15th–August 24th 1944
Resistance and Maquis activity meant that the 108th Heavy Tank Battalion arrived at the front lines in Normandy three days late, critically short of fuel, spares and ammunition, and with a quarter of its Tiger tanks destroyed or out of action.
It took two months of brutal fighting for the Allied armies to break out of Normandy. But once they’d smashed through German lines they began a rapid advance, sweeping west to Lorient and Nantes and south to the River Loire.
In mid-August, Operation Dragoon saw 95,000 Americans landing in southern France. They advanced further in one week than the Normandy invasion managed in its first two months. In the north, a vast Allied army now charged west towards the River Seine and the cities of Rouen and Paris which lay on its banks.
An increasingly desperate Hitler made arrangements to send heavy artillery and huge quantities of explosives to the French capital. Many people believed that Paris was the most beautiful city in the world, but if Hitler got his way, scorched-earth tactics would see it razed to the ground.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Tuesday 15 August 1944
Marc stood peeing. The little window in front of him was open and he stared over rooftops at the hilly and affluent suburb of Saint Cloud, 9 kilometres west of central Paris. The sun was bright and already hot enough to make his brow bead with sweat.
He washed his hands, but kept them wet. Marc’s bedroom was tiny. All the covers were on the floor and Jae was sprawled on his bed, face down and naked. Marc held his fingertips above her shoulder blades and let the cold water drip.
Jae’s slim body shuddered as drops hit her skin and she moaned as she rolled on to her back.
‘Hey you,’ she said, smiling.
The bed was a single and Marc shivered as he laid on sheets cold with sweat. The air felt thick and there was a smell of stale breath and armpits that would have been gross coming from anyone but a girl he was madly in love with.
As Marc snuggled up, Jae threw a surprise by swinging a leg across his midriff and sitting astride his chest.
‘You’re putting on weight,’ Marc gasped. ‘Get off.’
‘Make me,’ Jae teased.
Marc raised his right leg and effortlessly knocked her off. As Jae slid off the bed on to the floorboards, Marc snatched her ankle. Jae went into a spasm as he tickled the sole of her foot.
‘No!’ Jae shrieked.
‘Ticklish there, aren’t you?’ Marc said.
Jae