we’re here?’ Rosie whispered.
‘A million ways,’ Eugene said. ‘If someone saw us going into the sewer they’d guess we’d end up near here. Or someone saw us coming out of the pipe and took cover. Or we passed someone working in a field.’
Edith was naked and Rosie threw over one of her own dresses. ‘Get that on in case we have to run.’
As Rosie grabbed her boots and pushed her feet into them, Madame Lisle opened the front door. Out back, Eugene saw the admiral’s assistant being startled by two armed Gestapo officers coming around the side of the cottage.
‘They’re blocking our exits,’ Eugene said, as he took the safety off his pistol and threw the machine gun over his shoulder.
Rosie didn’t have a weapon handy, so Eugene threw her the aged revolver that his Gestapo friend had used to shoot Edith’s guard.
‘Stay with Edith,’ Eugene said. ‘Don’t come down unless I shout.’
The admiral was surprised to see Gestapo and shouted with the tone of someone used to being in charge. ‘What the devil is going on here?’
‘Gestapo business,’ someone shouted back. ‘Stand aside, these premises are to be searched.’
Training kicked in the instant Eugene and Rosie knew they were facing hostiles. They were trapped upstairs, so they had to make the first move.
Eugene rushed through the bedroom door, rounded the top of the stairs and aimed downwards. His first two shots hit the admiral in the back and as he crumpled another blast hit the Gestapo officer coming through the front door.
As Madame Lisle covered her ears and hurried down the hallway towards her kitchen, Rosie scrambled to the upstairs window. The old revolver wasn’t the most accurate weapon and her first shot skimmed over the head of a Gestapo man heading for the back door.
The bullet disturbed the admiral’s new horse, dragging the assistant holding her reins off his feet and bowling another Gestapo man over. As two more Gestapo officers scrambled away from the bucking horse, Rosie took advantage of the distraction.
Her first shot with the elderly revolver had pulled to the left, so she made a slight correction to her aim and popped off two shots. One Gestapo man was shot clean through the heart, the second was knocked unconscious by the bullet hitting his metal helmet square on.
With surprise still on his side, Eugene moved towards the front door. He shot the admiral’s driver, then sprayed a dozen bullets into the admiral’s Mercedes and the truck the Gestapo had arrived in. One Gestapo man was injured, while two more shot wildly towards the cottage as they ran for cover behind the car.
The machine gun needed reloading, but before Eugene backed into the hallway he ripped a grenade off his belt and lobbed it into the open-topped car. As he attached a fresh stick of bullets to his gun, Eugene heard someone shooting behind him.
It was the Gestapo man that Rosie had failed to stop coming in through the back door. Madame Lisle had grabbed a knife and sat cowering under her kitchen table. As the German passed without seeing her, he aimed his rifle at Eugene’s back.
‘Dirty son of a pig!’ Madame Lisle shouted, as she plunged a jagged-edged bread knife deep into the German’s calf.
The German squeezed the trigger as he fell, shooting Eugene in the right buttock. Nobody heard Eugene’s excruciating howl because it coincided with the grenade exploding. The blast sent chunks of shrapnel in all directions, some of the hot lumps puncturing the uniforms of retreating Gestapo men.
Up in the bedroom, Rosie acted clinically, using her last bullet to shoot the admiral’s assistant through the chest as he got up after being bowled over by the horse. Edith was weak, but she’d managed to open Eugene’s backpack, pulling out a leather holster which held three grenades and an automatic pistol.
‘Thanks,’ Rosie said, throwing down the useless revolver before pocketing the grenades and taking the pistol. ‘Get your dress on. Be ready to leave.’
Rosie’s ears rang from the grenade blast, but she was more unsettled by the sudden outbreak of silence.
‘Eugene?’ she shouted, as she rounded the top of the stairs.
He was slumped against the wall of the narrow hallway, with his right leg twisted awkwardly under his body. The bullet had entered his buttock at an upwards angle and exited close to his belly button, taking his bladder and a huge chunk of his lower intestine with it.
The burst stomach left Eugene’s pipe work spattered up the wall, and a smell