At the Narrow Passage (7 page)

Funny, I should have known by then that the time to be most careful in war
is when you feel sure that you've accomplished something. That's when you
get careless and when the enemy is most likely to do something deadly.
It came suddenly, without warning.
A light flashed above us from the riverbank. An instant later a second
light came from the other bank. The two beams met on our lead boat. And
a German machine gun opened up on it.
For an instant I was tempted to switch my body to full combat augmentation,
to speed up my actions and reflexes to five times their normal speed --
for that had been built into me too -- but I did not. Full combat
augmentation, though it makes a man the most deadly fighting machine in
all the known universes, also drains a man's metabolism at an astonishing
rate. And I knew that I would need all my strength when we reached the
villa. I did not will those electrobiological circuits into operation.
One of the men in the lead boat came to his feet, a tommy gun in his
hands, aimed toward the nearest of the spotlights. The tommy began to
chatter within a second of the barking of the German gun, and its first
slug must have hit the spotlight's lens. But even as the light was going
out, the British soldier's body was cut in half by the machine gun's
rain of bullets.
Then the boat seemed to come apart, two more bodies tumbling out as
rifles from both sides of the river began to fire.
I grabbed up the rifle that lay in the boat beside me, swung it up, and
pulled off a shot at the second spotlight. I heard another Enfield crack
in unison with mine, off to my rear. Tracy had been just as quick as I.
The other German spotlight went out.
We dropped our rifles, all of us in the three remaining boats, grabbed
our paddles and began paddling like mad up the river. We had only a few
minutes of darkness, at best, before the Imperials brought up another
light. We all knew that we'd better make the most of it.
It was still totally dark in the river and I'm sure that the Germans on
the bank couldn't see us, but they could hear us, and they could fire
in our direction. I just hoped that their hearing wasn't good enough to
pinpoint us all, and I thought that echoes from the buildings along the
river would aid us. My main fear was that one of our own men would be
foolish enough to fire back, revealing our positions with the flashing
of his weapon. I should have known better. All these men were experienced
mercenaries -- not heroes.
The river curved slightly, carrying us away from the spot where the
machine gun was set up, though it continued to fire into the water around
us until we finally got out of its range. The rifles, however, moved along
as easily as we did and continued to pelt the river around us. More than
once I heard the whistle of a bullet that missed my head only by inches.
"Ach!" came a sudden expletive from directly behind me. "Bloody hell!"
It was Sir Gerald's voice.
"What is it?" I asked, hoarsely whispering.
"I'm hit," Sir Gerald said weakly.
"Where? How badly?"
"Right thigh," he gasped. "Don't know how bad. Really doesn't hurt
much yet."
"Give it time," I said. "Is the bone broken?"
"Don't know."
"Kearns," I whispered, "see about it."
I heard movement behind me, Kearns slipping into position to investigate
the general's wound with the tips of his fingers. Now I had to paddle
the boat alone.
"Not too bad," Kearns' voice said a few moments later. "It's going to
hurt him, but I don't think it got the bone."
"Can he walk on it?" I asked.
"If he has to."
"My God, man," Sir Gerald gasped, "I don't even know . . ."
"If you have to, you'll walk on it, sir," Kearns said slowly,
bitterly. "Or I'll blow your bloody head off."
"What are you saying?" Sir Gerald asked in a pained voice.
"I'm saying you're not going to slow us down when we hit the ground,"
Kearns said as if speaking to a child. "Mathers?"
"Yes?"
Kearns was silent.
"Oh!" I said, realizing what he meant. "I'm sorry, Sir Gerald, but you'll
have to walk on that leg or surrender yourself to the Imperials."
That was enough for Sir Gerald; he said nothing more.
"Kearns, help me. I can't handle this boat alone."
But already I heard the splash of Kearns' paddle in the water.
By now the city was thinning, gaps appearing between the lower, smaller
buildings and the light of the burning portions of the city was beginning
to play on the water. In a few more moments the riflemen on the shore
would be able to see us.
"Right," I whispered to Kears. "Head for the right bank."
We began to cut toward the center of the river, out to where we stood a
better chance of being seen, but I figured that it was a chance we had
to take.
The men in the boats following us must have been able to see us well enough
to realize what I had in mind, for they began cutting out toward the middle
of the river and then toward the right bank.
My boat had passed the midpoint of the river and was nearing the darkness
of the right bank, Tracy's boat was now no more than a yard or two behind
mine, and the final boat was very close to his, though I could barely
see it. The Imperials on the left bank had momentarily lost us in the
confusion, and we dipped our paddles silently, carefully, to try to
avoid detection.
Then a brilliant explosion from the burning portion of the city lighted
the river, revealing us.
"Balls!" Kearns muttered.
A voice screamed something in German from the bank.
Rifles and submachine guns began chattering, lacing the river with shot,
here and there a tracer showing the paths of their bullets -- many of
them were very close to their targets.
"Let 'em have it!" I yelled back, grabbing up my rifle and hoping that
inertia would carry the boat the rest of the way to the bank.
Kearns' tommy gun began to fire only seconds after my rifle. To my surprise
Sir Gerald, who had been silent, fumbled with his Enfield for a moment,
then placed it to his shoulder and began to snap off shots with a
marksman's ease. He seemed to have forgotten about his wound, for the
moment at least.
From a quick estimate of the number of rifle and submachine-gun flashes
from the now-distant left bank I guessed that there were about fifteen
Germans there. There seemed to be none on the right bank now, and I
wondered why, though I thought that now and then I could hear small-arms
fire from the vicinity of the broken bridge and I wondered if the British
had overrun the German trenches and driven the Imperials that far back
into the city.
But I didn't take much time to think about that sort of thing. I was
far more worried about the fifteen or so firing from the left bank.
In a few seconds the brilliant light of the explosion passed, and the
river was again plunged into darkness, save for the flickering red glow
that reached it through broken buildings and naked trees. Then the Germans
could see us no better than we could see them, and that was only by the
flashes of our weapons.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, the boat's prow bumped against something solid.
I spun around, felt forward, and my hands met slimy stone, the bank of
the river and the stonework that had been built there.
"We're there," I gasped, grabbing the stone as best I could and pulling
the boat in closer. The river's current turned us around so that the
boat's side bumped against the old, slimy stones.
"Kearns," I said, "out! Help Sir Gerald."
"But I . . ." Sir Gerald began to protest.
"Out!" I said and then turned my attention back to the far shore,
slipping a fresh clip into my Enfield.
I heard Kearns' harsh breathing as he clambered around me and out of
the boat onto the uncertain footing of the stones.
"Take my hand," he said.
"Be careful, you fool," Sir Gerald gasped.
"Shut up and get out," Kearns snapped, hauling upward on the general's arm.
Sir Gerald came to his feet awkwardly, gasping under his breath, but
British enough not to cry out from the pain.
He came out of the boat, half falling onto the stones, struggling and
then with Kearns' help stumbling up the sides of the slippery stone
steps to drier ground.
The boat began to slip away from the shore. I slung my rifle across
my shoulder, grabbed the stones with both hands, pulled the boat back
against the bank. Then, barely able to keep my footing as the boat tried
to pull out from under me, I half stepped, half jumped onto the slimy
stonework. For a moment I almost fell back into the water, dropped to
a crouch, grabbed for a handhold, and then pulled myself up to where
Kearns and Sir Gerald stood. Even as I reached his side, Kearns had
begun to fire again toward the distant bank.
The second and third boats came up against the stones, and the men tumbled
out. One man did not get out of the final boat, and his body was still in
it when it began to pull away from the -bank, bumping against the stones
and then moving out into the current.
"Come on," I said. "We've got to get a couple of miles up the river and
then cross back over. The villa's on the other side."
"Oh, shit!" someone muttered under his breath. A few of us fired parting
shots at the Germans on the far bank and then we moved away from the
river into the dark ruins of the city.
7
The Villa
The villa had been built in the early part of the century, back in the
days before the war. Then France had been, in theory at least, a free
and sovereign nation, though in reality it had been little more than a
British satellite.
When the bloody Peasants' Rebellion of 1789-93 had been put down by
the remnants of the French nobility and the British Army and the king
restored to his throne mainly by British aid, France had been unable to
sever all ties with its British allies. Normandy and Brittany had been
ceded outright to the English throne by a grateful French king, but
the king had not bargained on the redcoats who remained stationed near
Paris and half a dozen other French cities to, as the British claimed,
"guard the person of the rightful King of France."
When Louis XVI died in 1803, at the age of forty-nine, and was succeeded
by Louis XVII, the British found a faithful servant in that weak-willed
monarch. For the remainder of his reign Louis XVII was more than happy
to allow British troops to protect him from his own people.
A string of other Louis' followed, none with the will or power to try
to throw off the British occupation. A brief attempt was made, however,
by the Duke of Gascony in 1868, but since no Joan of Arc stood at his
side, the duke found the only reward for attempting to free his nation
was a cell in the Tower of London and the hangman's noose.
By the beginning of the twentieth century local France accepted its
vassalage to England perhaps not unwillingly, realizing now the growing
power of the reborn Holy Roman Empire and the inability of France alone
to maintain its independence from the German Empire, even more hungry
for continental land than Britain.
The villa itself had been built by the Earl of Kent as a summer retreat
on a parcel of land deeded to an ancestor of his by the grateful Louis XVI
after the putting down of the Peasants' Rebellion.
Sitting on the bank of the Loire, five miles or so north of the center
of the new Beaugency, the villa's ground covered perhaps fifty or sixty
acres, half of it devoted to vineyards, for the Earl of Kent had had a
great weakness for French wines, and half to stables, for he had also
had a weakness for racing horses, mainly those of British Arabia.
The main house was an enormous, rambling, gingerbread structure, all
frills and lace and useless ornamentation, three stories of rococo
ugliness that the late Earl of Kent must somehow have found attractive.
Half a dozen outbuildings, servants' quarters and such, ringed the main
house, half protecting it from attack, half hiding it from the beautiful
countryside in which it had been built. The stables and their related
buildings were located some distance from the main house, and as far as
we knew they were now used as garages for German motorcars. A company
of elite, handpicked grenadiers inhabited the servants' quarters, and
Intelligence had told us that there were six black-booted bodyguards
living on the villa's main floor. Just where Count von Heinen and his
wife were dwelling in the house we did not know, though we believed that
they and the guards were at present the villa's only inhabitants. Von
Heinen, according to reports, had a passion for privacy. He had been
warned against it -- this morning he would learn why.
There were eight of us who came shivering out of the Loire into that
cold predawn drizzle in the spring of 1971. Sir Gerald and a Corporal
Land who had been in Tracy's boat were wounded, though neither very
seriously. Sir Gerald's bleeding had stopped, and despite the agony in
his leg, he had come to realize that the wound was not as bad as he had
feared. Using his rifle as a crutch, he could hobble along and with his
other hand use his .62 Harling if necessary. The corporal had a flesh
wound In his left forearm, and after allowing a cursory examination and
the application of dry bandages, he waved us away, saying that he had
fought with wounds a hell of a lot worse.
We stopped in the shelter of a poplar grove a good hundred yards from
the first building beyond the boathouse, unwrapped our weapons, checked
them for dryness, and then got out our gas masks.
The corporal from the final boat sat his heavy pack on the ground and
with the aid of Tracy's sheltered flashlight removed half a dozen gas
grenades designed to be fired from our Enfields.
Kar-hinter had given us a weapon that had not yet been used in battle --
at least not in this Line. It was a newly developed nerve gas, so we were
told, and would stun and render unconscious for periods of two to three
hours anyone exposed to it. It was claimed to be a British development,
but I doubted it. I believed that Kar-hinter had it imported just for
this one operation, though he had covered his tracks well. The grenades
looked like British issue.
The corporal passed two of the grenades to me, two to Tracy, and kept
two for himself. We each fitted one grenade onto our rifles, clipped
the other to our belts. Then we all pulled our gas masks over our faces,
cleared and checked them, and began moving toward the villa.