to target tanks.’
‘I said we should blow up the bridge—’ Sam blurted.
Henderson cut him off. ‘Blowing up bridges suits retreating armies far more than advancing armies. And the more bridges that get destroyed, the more likely it is that Paris will get drawn into a siege.
‘Most of the Paris Garrison’s tanks are being kept in city parks. I’ve been told that one of the largest tank facilities is just across the river, in Bois de Boulogne. German vehicles are distributed throughout the park, and camouflaged to avoid attacks from the air. The Germans have no reliable way of bringing more fuel or spares into the city so we’ll be targeting a refuelling and maintenance depot.’
‘Who’s we?’ Edith asked.
‘It’s a simple blast and run operation,’ Henderson said. ‘So it’ll be me, and I’ll take Marc because he speaks the best German. We’ll only need about half of the explosives, so we’ll leave the rest behind for a rainy day.
‘While I’m gone, I want PT to take overall charge. Luc and Joel can run the ambush points. Sam, Paul and Edith concentrate on the barricades. Questions?’
‘What if you get blown up?’ Luc asked sarcastically.
Henderson looked irritated. ‘You’re all trained. You know how to contact the Ghost Circuit if needs be.’
*
The truck’s windscreen had been shattered by Marc’s bullets, but not so badly that Henderson couldn’t see where he was driving. He wore the dead SS officer’s uniform. Marc sat next to him, dressed in a beige mechanic’s overall. He’d tried putting on the dead Pole’s jacket, but it was absurdly small.
‘Like old times,’ Marc said, as they set off.
Marc was thinking back to the weeks after the Nazi invasion when he’d first met Henderson in Paris. They’d depended on each other and Henderson felt like the father-figure Marc, as a twelve-year-old orphan, had always craved. But nostalgia could only take Marc so far. He was now old enough to see Henderson’s flaws, and his heart belonged to Jae.
Paris wasn’t much like old times either. They got over the bridge with no bother, but after that every street was dead. They imagined resistance snipers looking at their German truck from rooftops and balconies. There were fewer barricades than they’d expected and many of the ones they did see were unmanned and looked like a good stiff breeze would flatten them.
Henderson drove flat out, but the truck still caught a couple of bullets as it pulled on to a large crossroads. A German motorbike messenger had crashed some hours earlier, possibly after being shot at. The bloody rider lay unattended at the kerb, covered with flies as documents from his attaché case caught the wind.
The journey was less than 3 kilometres and, given their explosive cargo, Henderson was relieved to reach parkland where there was far less chance of getting shot at.
The tank park was blocked off with coils of barbed wire. The wooden security booth was burned out and a sturdier entry gate had been built further back, using sandbags and ribbed steel plates which were usually laid flat to help vehicle convoys cross boggy ground.
‘Special destruction unit,’ Henderson told a guard, as he flashed the dead SS officer’s military ID papers, on to which he’d skilfully grafted his own photograph.
The guard looked baffled.
‘I’m carrying demolition explosives,’ Henderson explained. ‘I can’t get into the city centre, so I have orders to transfer my cargo to an armoured vehicle.’
The elderly German guard walked cautiously around the vehicle and peered in the back.
‘Strange explosives,’ he said.
Henderson spoke in his most irritable, pompous German, as two small Panzers drove out of the compound in the opposite lane. ‘This has all been cleared in advance. I was told a vehicle was being prepared for me in the refuelling area.’
The guard shrugged. ‘Nobody tells me anything, sir. You need to drive six hundred metres. Branch left when you see a turnoff to your right, after the two felled trees. You’ll see the maintenance and refuelling sheds right in front of you.’
Henderson and Marc exchanged relieved smiles as they set off through the gate. Most of the park was woodland, but there were also areas of grass. These were beyond the shooting range of any resistance sniper and they drove past German soldiers sunbathing or playing football.
As Henderson drove slowly, Marc stepped into the truck’s rear compartment. He grabbed a bunch of pre-wired detonators and began pushing them into the sockets on twelve drums of torpedo explosive.
There was no additional security around the maintenance and refuelling compound and nobody