One Shot Kill - Robert Muchamore Page 0,81

was helping the elderly Wallanger up the spiral stairs as Marc came back into the corridor. He bounded past the pair and caught an anxious shout from Paul as he neared the top.

‘What’s going on?’ Paul screamed. ‘Why are those idiots still down there?’

Marc glanced at his watch and looked mystified. ‘We’re OK. The bombers won’t get here until after the beacon’s switched on.’

‘The beacon’s been on for ten minutes,’ Paul said.

‘You what?’ Marc shouted. ‘Why did you turn it on?’

‘Luc shouted up the stairs.’

‘He told you to turn it on in twelve minutes,’ Marc said. ‘Shit!’

‘I didn’t hear twelve minutes.’

‘I bloody did,’ Marc said. ‘I was right there when Luc shouted.’

Marc had reached the garage by this time. Sam, Jean and Didier had dragged in the bodies killed by sniper shots and piled them up at the base of the metal staircase. This way, they’d get blown up and the Germans wouldn’t find bodies with gunshot wounds. Eight scientists sat in one truck looking anxious, while Henderson was in the other, with Rosie knelt over him giving first aid.

‘Get that truckload of scientists out of here, now,’ Marc said, as he put Wallanger’s case down and threw off his backpack, shedding weight so that he could move as fast as possible. ‘I’m going back down.’

‘Planes could be here any second,’ Paul said.

Didier shouted from up by the garage doors. ‘I think I can hear them.’

Planes on a bombing run fly at over two hundred kilometres per hour, so unless Didier was hearing planes from a very long way off Marc had no chance of warning Luc and Goldberg in time. But Marc wasn’t thinking rationally after shooting the two scientists and he headed back down, even though it was probably a suicide mission.

As Marc set off, Didier was climbing into the truck to drive the scientists out of the garage.

‘You two run,’ Marc screamed, as he pushed past Rivest and Wallanger, a dozen stairs from the top. ‘Luc, Goldberg. Get up here now.’

Paul was shouting from up top. ‘Marc, we’re leaving. Three planes sighted, we’re moving out right now.’

Marc gripped the banisters on either side of the staircase and leapt three steps at a time, all the while screaming for Luc and Goldberg. Even in his panicked state Marc saw the irony that he despised one of the people he was rushing to save.

His thoughts were all jumbled: he thought about Jae, he imagined a fireball shooting up the staircase. Then he missed a step and twisted his ankle, but he had too much adrenaline in his system to feel the pain.

‘They’ve set the beacon, planes are coming,’ Marc screamed, when he burst through the door of the bomb room.

In the back of Marc’s mind, he was beginning to think that if Didier really had seen three bombers, he should be dead by now, or should at least have heard some bombs going off nearby.

‘What moron set the beacon?’ Goldberg yelled. ‘They should just be turning it on now.’

‘We’ve done five out of six,’ Luc said. ‘It should be enough.’

Goldberg hesitated as Marc turned to race back up the stairs. ‘You said you’ve got two baby daughters back in New York,’ Marc told the American. ‘If you ever want to see them again, you’d better shift.’

CHAPTER-THIRTY SIX

Henderson looked up at Rosie as he lay across the slatted wooden floor of a canvas-sided German army truck. She’d put five stitches in his holed right cheek before stuffing the inside of his mouth with bandage. She’d also ordered him to press another wodge of bandage hard against the outside of his cheek to stop the blood flow.

‘Uah uop,’ Henderson said. ‘Uop uop.’

Henderson was used to running the show. Not knowing what was going on was as much of a torture as the missing teeth and the hole in his face.

‘I can’t understand you,’ Rosie said. ‘You’ve got to keep your mouth still until a scab forms.’

As Rosie spoke, Jean started the truck engine, and scientists Rivest and Wallanger were clambering over Henderson’s legs.

‘Leave now,’ Paul said, as he slammed the truck’s rear flap. ‘Drive about a kilometre. We’ll try catching you up. The photographic stuff is in Marc’s pack, if we don’t make it try to rescue the negatives.’

‘What about you?’ Rosie asked.

‘If I don’t stay, Marc will think we’ve abandoned them when they get up here.’

Rosie wanted to say something to her brother, but Jean was terrified that he was about to get blown up and floored the gas pedal.

As