pylon. In peacetime a heavy-calibre machine gun would be kept under close guard, but there were tens of thousands of anti-aircraft installations across Britain. Finding bodies to man the batteries by night was difficult; deploying scarce manpower to guard all these installations by day was impossible.
As the Poles worked to unbolt the cannon from its steel platform, Luc plotted their downfall. There were porters everywhere: tough old men willing to shift a load on a trolley or handcart for a few pence.
Luc’s biggest problem was with the Poles themselves. If you stuck Luc in a room with ten other thirteen-year-olds and told them to fight, he’d be the one who came out on his feet. But these opponents were grown men who’d done the same kind of espionage and combat training as he had. His sole advantage was that the Poles had no idea that he was stalking them.
The area beneath the pylon and the two warehouses was five metres wide. Fire-damaged timber and molten glass had been shovelled in and the resulting mound had spawned a few weeds and a lot of rats. Currently the rubble was capped with snow.
Luc watched the Poles release the final bolts and lift the gun from its mounting. As two men began disassembly, the third clanked down metal rungs towards the ground. He might be going back to the bus, or maybe he was planning to steal or hire a handcart to make moving the gun easier.
The rungs were icy, and he made a relieved gasp when he finally stood on the rubble.
‘Don’t you like ladders then?’ Luc said, making a poor attempt at sounding like an Englishman.
The Pole turned, but before he had a chance to see who he was talking to, Luc smashed him in the face with a huge blob of slate and melted glass. As blood spewed and five front teeth buckled inside the Pole’s mouth, Luc hit him again in the back.
Luc took a quick glance to check that nobody else had seen him before kneeling down across the Pole and using his right arm to choke him out. On a real operation Luc would probably have cut the Pole’s throat, but this was an exercise.
Luc smiled crazily as he wiped his hand across the Pole’s bloody face. ‘Now let’s see how we can fix your two pals.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Rosie stayed inside the third-floor office, keeping lookout while holding a hefty torque wrench that would deliver a nasty surprise to anyone arriving early for work. The doorman lay under the desk, gagged and trussed but his eyes still defiant.
Out on the roof the three boys were hidden behind sandbag walls as they disassembled the twenty-millimetre cannon. Clearing ammunition and stripping the gun down was no different to cleaning rifles after target practice on campus, except that the pieces were bigger. The tricky part was removing the body of the cannon from the metal turntable on which it was mounted.
Marc lay awkwardly with his back on the metal footplate, pulling a spanner with all his might.
‘Jesus,’ he sighed breathlessly. ‘This nut must have been tightened by a gorilla.’
Joel shook his head with frustration. ‘Where’s Luc’s muscle when you need it?’
‘He’s probably got his feet up on a nice warm train with Paul and Takada,’ PT sighed. Then he laughed. ‘Either that or he’s dangling off a tree by his parachute strings.’
‘Get me the hammer,’ Marc ordered, as he sat up. ‘Joel, you hold the spanner.’
PT gave Marc a hammer from the tool sack, then stood over the end of the gun holding the barrel so that the turntable didn’t swing around. Marc lay back down and swung the hammer.
‘Owww!’ Joel yelped, stumbling backwards and clutching his thumb. ‘Look what you’re doing, you prat.’
‘I’m upside down here,’ Marc protested, as he craned his head upwards and smiled. He gave the spanner another pull and the nut started twisting free. ‘Am I a genius, or what? Let’s do the next one. Grab the spanner, Joel.’
‘If the so-called genius whacks me again he’ll get a punch in the gob,’ Joel said irritably.
‘I barely tapped you,’ Marc said. ‘Ready?’
Marc repeated the hammer and spanner technique and released the other three bolts without further damage to Joel. When the last bolt came out, the gun began sliding off its plinth. It would have hit Marc’s legs if PT hadn’t grabbed the barrel, but in doing this he knocked the gun sideways. The roof creaked as it hit the asphalt with a dull thud. The women