on a fresh one. Jean looked completely horrified.
‘No mercy for Nazi scum,’ Luc told Jean, as he slapped him on the back. ‘Signal the boys out front, then deal with the trucks. Make sure the engines run. Make sure the tanks are full and clear out any junk in the back. I’m going downstairs to back up the others.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Paul and Sam had watched from their sniping positions in front of the base as the huge blast doors closed and reopened. Handheld radios were too bulky and highly vulnerable to German interception, so the pair had no way of knowing what the situation was below ground until Jean came out and signalled with a torch.
Two flashes would have meant that the bunker had been secured, but he gave a single which meant it was safe to move in, but that the operation was still underway.
Paul slung his rifle over his shoulder, leaving Sam as the last sniper to cover any surprise movements on the base. After jogging to Sam’s position and checking that he was OK, Paul ran a couple of hundred metres back to Rosie in the clearing.
She’d taken the locator beacon out of her pack, connected the battery and switched it into the warm-up position. The device was the size of a couple of loaves of bread. It contained two transmitters, with a rotating dish aerial on top and a package of high-explosive booby traps at the bottom to destroy the top-secret device if a bomb didn’t get it first.
Once activated the first transmitter would send a radio pulse which could be picked up from over fifty kilometres away. The second short-range transmitter sent out a series of directional radio beams. A bomber fitted with a compatible receiver unit could fly along the path of these beams, and receive precise information on their distance to the target.
‘What’s going on?’ Rosie asked, when Paul got close.
‘It’s as clear as mud,’ Paul said. ‘But we got the single flash from Jean, so they must be making progress.’
‘I know we had it working earlier at the house,’ Rosie said, as she stared at the contraption anxiously. ‘But the pounding it’s taken must have knocked a connection loose. It’s switched out of warm-up mode twice already.’
‘Too late to start tinkering with it now,’ Paul said, as he stared at the transmitter’s army-green casing. ‘It’ll either work or it won’t.’
‘I don’t want it to get bumped,’ Rosie said. ‘I’ll carry the transmitter. You take my backpack and gun.’
*
Marc did sums as he crept down the spiral stairs behind Didier and Goldberg. He hadn’t seen every kill, but reckoned they’d sniped eight to ten Germans above ground, Sam had taken one out in the forest and there’d been a few more in the lift.
‘Can’t be more than three bad guys left down here,’ Marc whispered.
‘Sounds right,’ Goldberg agreed. ‘I’ll lead. Marc, cover my back with the silenced pistol. Didier, keep the gas ready.’
The stairs ended at a broad corridor, with a pair of battered miniature forklift trucks parked at the far end. Rooms branched off on either side, each with doors wide enough for cargo pallets, while the air was heavy with aromas of bad plumbing and cigarettes.
There was no sign of life, but most of the doors did have small portholes. Dr Blanc had told them that she’d treated the suicidal scientist in the penultimate room on the right-hand side of the corridor, and had briefly glanced into the laboratory directly opposite.
Within seconds of Marc reaching the bunker floor, Luc had caught up.
‘Got five of ’em,’ he said proudly.
Goldberg ordered Luc to stand by the lift shaft, covering the length of the corridor while he and Marc walked down, peering into the rooms on each side as they passed.
The rooms seemed more like tunnels. Each went back more than sixty metres and was ten metres wide, with the only light coming from a line of bare bulbs strung down the centre.
The first room Marc peered into was full of metal crates filled with fighter-plane ammo, his next had sinister-looking racks containing hundreds of bombs and the third was crammed with all the junk the French had left behind, from waterproof ponchos to ancient wooden-handled grenades.
Goldberg had reached the dorm and laboratory when a bolt snapped on a much smaller door directly behind him. Cigarette smoke billowed as an elderly man strolled out, adjusting braces attached to drab green army trousers.
By the time Goldberg had turned to face the door, Marc had shot the