Eagle Day - Robert Muchamore Page 0,96

down the wharf, just as they noticed torch-beams and German voices, followed by figures running out the back of the building towards them.

‘Shit!’ Eugene yelled as he straddled the motorbike. ‘Get on, get on!’

Two gunshots sounded as PT climbed aboard and locked his arms around Eugene’s waist. More shots rang as the motorbike blasted across the bridge, then swerved left and right to run along the side of the dry dock.

The holes in the dock gates were now fully open and the torrent of water had sent the small boats crashing against the sides of the dock like rubber ducks clattering around a bathtub. The navy officers were on foot and had no chance of catching the motorbike, but a bullet clipped the truck as it continued rolling towards the patrol boats.

The instant the bullet hit the gelignite an area fifty metres around the truck erupted into a vast fireball, vaporising several dozen naval officers and the wharfside building as men further back dived into the water beneath the flames.

The explosions in Calais and Boulogne were beacons, designed to start fires and light the way for incoming bombers. The three hundred sticks of gelignite spread over the floor of the truck help British pilots to find their target, but their primary aim was to destroy as many German patrol boats as possible.would

‘Jesus,’ PT screamed. ‘Where’d our two minutes go?’

Even from two hundred and fifty metres the heat from the fireball seared PT’s back as he watched curling flames reflected in the back of Eugene’s crash helmet.

But fire was the least of their problems. The early blast had sent a huge shockwave through the canal system. A wave more than three metres high seared over the wall of the dry dock. When it landed two small barges washed up over the end of the dock as the boats inside smashed deafeningly against the walls.

PT looked back a second before water spewed up over the side of the dock and hit the bike. No rider could have kept upright as the force of water lifted the wheels off the ground and sent the two teenagers skimming helplessly towards a metal-sided hut.

PT covered his face as his back slammed the metal. A huge wooden mast speared through the building less than twenty centimetres above his head.

‘Eugene,’ he shouted, using the impaled mast to lever himself up as the water drained back into the dock.

Eugene had almost been flushed back inside the dock and had ended up clutching one of the giant bollards, perilously close to the edge. PT ran towards him, fearing he’d been knocked out, but Eugene was only winded and was standing by the time a smaller, reflex wave washed over their ankles.

‘You OK?’ Eugene asked, as he pulled off his sodden crash helmet.

‘Fine.’ PT nodded, looking back for any sign of someone coming after them. ‘But the bike’s wrecked. How the hell are we gonna get back to the farm?’

CHAPTER THIRTY

20:42 The Harbour

Henderson parked the truck fifty metres from the pier that formed one side of the small harbour, then set off along the dusky coast road with Rosie.

‘Remind me what Manfried told you,’ Henderson said, as explosions and flashes of light pulsed over Calais directly behind them.

‘Three guards,’ Rosie said. ‘Two in the hut, one on patrol, but he said sometimes they all play cards inside because it’s so quiet. The shift change is at eleven and they eat what they bring with them. Nobody comes to deliver food or anything.’

‘Works for me.’ Henderson nodded as he paused behind a white boulder, opened the cartridge of his silenced pistol and replaced the four bullets he’d shot at the stables in Calais earlier on.

‘He’s a decent guy,’ Rosie said, as Henderson started walking again. ‘Manfried, I mean.’

‘He’ll die fast, before he even knows it,’ Henderson grunted.

‘Isn’t there another way?’ Rosie asked. ‘Couldn’t we tie them up or something?’

‘A plan’s a plan once it’s underway.’

Rosie hated the calculating way that Henderson plotted death.

‘Manfried’s only about eighteen and he seemed really nice,’ Rosie said desperately, but only succeeded in irritating Henderson.

‘This is a war, honey,’ he said patronisingly. ‘I have one silenced pistol, there’s three of them and they have machine guns. What do you think this Manfried was doing during the battle for France? You think none of those soldiers shot any Frenchmen, or burned any villages?’

Rosie didn’t like the answer, but supposed Henderson was right. They stopped behind a low ridge overlooking the harbour. A chink of light escaping the