Scorched Earth - Robert Muchamore Page 0,63
bet they don’t leave all that money in the bistro overnight.’
‘Why don’t we go in now, grab the cash as planned and come back for Robert later?’ Luc asked.
Marc shook his head. ‘If we rob the money, the place is gonna be swarming with gangsters and Germans. It’ll be too hot to come back for Robert.’
Luc looked frustrated. ‘Well, there must be some other way to find him. His wife worked in a factory. If we could get hold of her …’
‘If we knew what factory she worked in,’ Marc said.
‘We know Robert visits his kids,’ PT said. ‘The mother-in-law told me he brings food for the kids.’
‘But how often?’ Marc asked. ‘Every day? Every third day? Once in a blue moon?’
PT spoke firmly. ‘We’re not running off on tangents. I made a plan and we’re sticking to it. If we spot Robert we follow the plan. If he doesn’t show, we can try again tomorrow, or work out some alternative.’
Luc scoffed. ‘Henderson will be pissed off that we disappeared today. There’s no way he’ll let us disappear a second day.’
‘How would he stop us?’ Marc asked.
PT laughed. ‘Our beloved captain may have gone all misty-eyed on us last night, but he’s still Henderson. If the only way he could stop one of us from disobeying a direct order was to shoot us, I reckon he’d do it.’
Luc smiled at PT. ‘Henderson loves Marc, but he’d shoot you or me without batting an eye.’
When the time came, Luc walked past Bistro le Baron in both directions and drew another blank. But when Marc made his first pass just after 3 p.m. there was a group playing dominoes at a table by the bar and Pierre Robert was among them.
‘Got him,’ Marc said when he got back to the bomb site. ‘And when I walked past there were still porters going in and out of the depot.’
Luc, Marc and PT exchanged wary smiles as they squatted behind a blast-damaged wall, sorting out their kit. Marc assembled his sniper rifle and handed it to PT, while Luc went down his bag and pulled out a lump of plastic explosive the size of a ping-pong ball.
‘All set?’ Marc asked.
Luc nodded as PT took the safety off on Marc’s rifle.
‘Let’s do this shit!’ Luc roared.
Marc walked the long way around, passing the depot as he headed towards Bistro le Baron from the top of the street. A girl in a servant’s uniform came out of the depot’s front entrance with a basket of vegetables straining on each arm. Marc didn’t like the idea of hurting her, so he slowed his pace and glanced at a handcart being loaded with sacks of potatoes down a side alley.
The girl was 20 metres clear when Marc neared the depot’s high fence and dropped down on one knee. He tied his shoelace, but as he stood he cracked a glass time pencil, pushed it into the ball of explosive and squished it against the wooden fence. Plastic explosive was naturally a sandy beige colour, but he’d pre-rolled it in dirt so that it blended in perfectly.
The time pencil was designed for one minute. As Marc gave an All good signal by scratching his scalp, PT hid in a side street with the sniper rifle poised and Luc strode into Bistro le Baron. The men playing dominoes eyed him suspiciously as he approached the bar.
‘Two coffees,’ Luc said.
The waitress looked curious. ‘Two?’
Luc nodded as he peeled out a ten-franc note. ‘My friend will be here any second.’
Marc stepped in as the waitress turned to face the coffee machine. He’d only got two paces when the explosion went off. Nobody was within a metre, so the small charge just blew a hole in the fence. As Bistro le Baron’s windows rattled and people in the street took cover, Pierre Robert and his fellow domino players charged towards the exit to see what had happened.
There was broken glass in the street as PT raised the sniper rifle and took preliminary aim at head height, just past the Baron’s exit. Keeping one eye shut and holding his breath, PT watched different heads in his telescopic sight.
Robert glanced around as PT pulled the trigger, almost as if he’d spotted the muzzle poking around the wall across the road. PT hadn’t done sniper training like Marc and Luc, but he was still a decent shot and the range was less than 50 metres.
The bullet split Robert’s head like a boot stomping a ripe pumpkin.