Scorched Earth - Robert Muchamore Page 0,9
the youngest member of Henderson’s team.
‘Milice,’ Henderson said, before squirting spit through a gap where he’d lost three front teeth the year before. ‘Absolute scum.’
Sam and Joel joined the spitting.
In the eighteen months since the organisation had been formed, Milice had become the dirtiest word in the French language. As the war turned against Germany, Nazis had run short of military manpower and French police became reluctant to carry out their most extreme orders. The occupiers solved this problem by forming the Milice.
The first Milice were loyal French Nazis, but after four years of occupation these were thin on the ground. The net was cast wider and Milice were recruited from the dregs of society. Thugs and criminals were given navy tunics and metal helmets. Answerable only to the Nazis’ Gestapo secret police, Milice units enthusiastically infiltrated resistance groups, rounded up homosexuals and Jews and ruthlessly hunted down Maquis.
The Milice terrorised their own countrymen and often used their new authority for criminal ends. In many areas the Milice took control of the black-market food supply, set up brutal extortion rackets and used their search powers to rob homes and shops.
‘You must have been betrayed by the informant inside the office,’ Joel told Edith.
‘If it was her, why was the getaway ladder still in the toilet where she’d promised to leave it?’ Edith asked.
Joel shrugged. ‘Well, who else could it be?’
‘She could have been under duress,’ Joel’s younger brother Sam pointed out. ‘Like, suppose the Gestapo found out somehow and threatened her. But she didn’t tell them everything, so you still had a chance of getting away?’
Edith nodded. ‘If she’s never seen again, we’ll know the Gestapo got to her.’
‘Too many people knew Jean was going into Beauvais,’ Sam said. ‘We’re not secure here with so many men coming and going. Any one of them could be a Nazi spy.’
‘But we keep operational details to a core group, plus anyone going on the operation,’ Joel said.
‘Someone could easily have followed you into Beauvais.’
‘Or—’ Edith began, but Henderson had lost patience with the chatter.
‘Stop,’ Henderson said, as he stood up. ‘Why spend all morning speculating when you know it won’t get you anywhere? When we have the facts we’ll make use of them. For now, we remain vigilant in case someone has ratted us out. We’ll station extra lookouts and make sure everyone moves deeper into the woods.’
‘You want me to take a message around to the other squads’ camps?’ Edith asked.
Henderson shook his head. ‘You get some rest. Joel and Sam can get word around. The Nazis will be jumpy after a shootout in town and the Milice will be out for blood. Everyone must lie low for a couple of days. Tell every squad to double up on lookouts and make it clear that nobody is allowed to leave until this dies down.’
‘A lot of the lads won’t take orders from you,’ Sam said.
‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ Henderson said, with a shrug. ‘But if Jean was here, he’d say exactly the same.’
CHAPTER FIVE
The Milice were ruthless, but poorly trained. Any decent soldier would have kept low and pointed rifles through the cottage’s open windows. Booting the door and charging in gave PT a second to spread himself out and launch a rugby tackle.
As Rosie took cover and Jean went for his pistol, the Milice officer shot the ceiling before PT locked an arm around his neck and started choking him.
The shoulder wound meant Jean had to shoot left-handed, but his aim was good when another Milice bobbed up at the window less than 3 metres away. After PT’s victim made his last gurgle, things went quiet apart from Rosie thumping upstairs to grab a hidden gun and get a look out of the upper windows.
Franco sat up, looking startled as PT crawled to the open door. There were two cars on the road in front of the orphanage and some kind of disturbance amongst the kids taking outdoor lessons. Rosie glanced out front from the upper floor and saw the same, but gasped when she got to the rear.
Two Milice crouched behind a low garden fence and one had just lobbed something towards an open window.
‘Grenade!’ Rosie shouted.
PT thought about scrambling out of the door as the grenade bounced off the table and hit the dirt floor. Jean instinctively flicked it away with his boot before PT bravely intercepted and flipped it backwards over his head out of the rear window.
He’d come within a second of getting his