One Shot Kill - Robert Muchamore Page 0,74

metres back from the mesh gate.

‘Buzz off,’ a man with a cigarette between his lips shouted. ‘If you make me come out there, I’ll arrest you for breaking curfew.’

Germany didn’t waste good men on remote bunkers. The guard was an elderly fellow, with a platform under one boot to compensate for one leg shorter than the other.

‘I’m really sorry, sir,’ Sam continued, as he faked a sniffle. ‘I know I shouldn’t be out this late. But we were hunting. We got lost and my friend hurt his leg. He’s bleeding badly. Please help me.’

The German didn’t understand much French, but Sam’s boyish face and hysterical tone was enough to send him limping towards the gate. Paul watched through the sight of a sniper rifle from a hundred and ten metres out. This wasn’t his moment to shoot, but it was the first German he’d seen between his crosshairs and the thought of killing an elderly disabled German didn’t fill him with glee.

Sam kept up the hysterical spiel as he led the German into the woods, towards his imaginary injured friend. The German’s slow walk hadn’t been factored into the plan, and it took Sam twice as long as he’d expected to reach a small clearing seventy metres from the fence.

‘What is this?’ the German asked.

As the guard looked about suspiciously, Sam reached into the fork of a tree and picked out a silenced pistol. He’d played this moment in his head since he’d heard Henderson’s first detailed briefing and it felt dreamlike as he gave a double tap on the trigger, putting one bullet through the German’s head and one through his heart.

This was Sam’s first mission. He’d not killed before and had to suppress a shaking hand as he pulled up his shirt and tucked the gun into a holster. While the German bled out, Sam grabbed his kitbag from behind the tree. He pulled on a black combat jacket stuffed with grenades and sniper ammunition, before digging his fingertips into the earth and smearing some across his cheeks as camouflage.

*

Henderson sat with the field telephone in his lap while Luc kept lookout. When it was time, he pressed the only button to make the phone at the other end of the cable ring.

‘Hello,’ someone said.

‘This is Beauvais headquarters,’ Henderson said, responding in perfectly-accented German. ‘Are you having difficulty with your aerial? We’ve had no response to our urgent request for an inventory report.’

The man sounded confused. ‘Our radio is only used in an emergency.’

‘It was not your emergency,’ Henderson said irritably. ‘Our telephone system has been sabotaged. An urgent request was sent to you by radio.’

‘Err …’ the man said, sounding like someone who wished he’d not picked the phone up. ‘Can I get the base commandant to call you?’

‘No,’ Henderson snapped back. ‘Our telephones are still erratic and I am calling from a street telephone. Get someone monitoring your radio transmissions. The signal will be repeated in five minutes and I suggest that you act upon the instructions promptly this time.’

‘It takes longer than that to warm the receiver up,’ the guard said.

‘Very well, ten minutes. And the group commander expects an immediate acknowledgement of our request.’

Henderson slammed the phone down, and gave Luc a smile. ‘Now let’s see if they take our bait. Get into your sniping position and be ready to fire on my signal.’

*

Henderson’s plan to get as many Germans as possible above ground took a few minutes to start moving. As soon as the radio set had warmed up inside the bunker, its operator realised that the aerial was faulty and two Luftwaffe men came out into the drizzle.

They soon discovered that the aerial cabinet had been sabotaged and then tracked Luc’s boot prints to the hole in the wire fence. One German stood around looking clueless while his colleague rushed back inside to tell someone senior.

By this time the guard who’d remained on the gate had grown increasingly suspicious about the prolonged absence of his colleague. He couldn’t leave the main gate unattended, so he used the phone in the guard hut to call up two more men who could help him search.

Paul watched them emerge from the bunker, knowing that Sam would also be able to see from his shooting position more than a hundred metres west. While those two covered the front of the compound, Marc and Goldberg had excellent firing positions from higher ground to the west, while Luc worked from a position close to Henderson in the east.

Henderson