Henderson's Boys: Eagle Day (29 page)

Rosie grabbed an iron frying skillet that hung above the stove and gave Dumont a two-handed smash on the kneecap. Still on fire, he fell to the floor and rolled on to his chest to smother the flames. Rosie stepped astride his body and knocked him out by smashing the heavy skillet against the back of his head.

‘Dirty pig,’ she screamed, dropping the skillet as smoke continued to rise from Dumont’s smouldering shirt.

Dumont was unconscious, but instead of relief Rosie’s stomach churned. She collapsed against the kitchen dresser and doubled over sobbing. For a few moments she gave in to the horror of what Dumont had tried to do, but as she looked down at his unconscious body she was determined not to let her emotions affect their carefully laid plan.

While Eugene and PT drove to Dunkirk in the freshly stolen truck, Paul and Henderson parked up and headed for a hotel near the port in Calais. The bombed headquarters were less than a kilometre away and you could still hear ambulance sirens and see smoke from small fires billowing into the sky.

‘A terrible business,’ the elderly woman on the reception desk said. ‘The man who cleans my windows was up that way. He tells me they’re pulling one body after another out of the rubble. Mostly Boche, but a lot of French too.’

‘I didn’t see any bombers either,’ Henderson noted, trying to sound innocent as he wrote and the farm address into the hotel register while the receptionist swapped his banknotes for a room key.
Charles Boyle

‘Is that on the top floor, Dad?’ Paul asked eagerly.

‘He likes to watch the big boats come and go,’ Henderson explained to the woman.

The receptionist smiled. ‘It’s right up top, with a lovely view over the harbour. Now, our air-raid shelter is across the street and, obviously, with our location we get our share of those. Our restaurant is permanently closed because our chef went south, but there are a few nice cafés along the canal.’

‘Thank you so much.’ Henderson smiled as he took the room key off the countertop and began walking up a flight of narrow stairs with a heavy suitcase in his arms.

Paul opened the door and breathed musty air as he stared at two rusting single beds and a cracked washbasin on the wall with a chamber pot standing beneath it. As Henderson closed the door and threw the suitcase on the bed by the balcony, Paul opened up the doors and stepped outside.

In comparison to the large harbours at Boulogne, Calais was a warren of natural inlets and manmade canals, with docks spiking off in different directions. The invasion barges were spread about, making it more difficult for the RAF to destroy large numbers in one go, but on the upside, the port sprawled through the heart of the town. The homes and businesses all around made it impossible to build a truly secure perimeter around the docks.

‘You see why I picked this hotel?’ Henderson said quietly, as he stood on the balcony beside Paul. ‘The main port entrance and open sea less than fifty metres away, docks going off to either side and these old buildings will burn like tinderboxes.’

‘I wonder if that lady owns the hotel,’ Paul said, a touch sadly, as he headed back into the room.

Henderson opened the lid of the suitcase, exposing two dozen sticks of gelignite and more than fifty golf-ball-sized phosphorous flare bombs.

‘You’ve got to look at the bigger picture,’ Henderson said, as he pulled a tin of detonators out of his jacket pocket. ‘Do you think I’m proud that I set a bomb that’s probably killed fifty or sixty people inside army headquarters? Some people will probably die when these buildings burn. More will die when the bombers arrive.’
certainly

Paul nodded as he sat on the bed and peered into the suitcase.

‘I’m setting everything up for you now,’ Henderson said. ‘You’re using a four-minute detonator. Light the end of the cord, run downstairs, up the street and unlock the bike. Are you certain you know the route back to the farm in the dark?’

‘It’s easy enough,’ Paul said. ‘Left at the top of the road, then the turn-off for the coast road; you’ll all be waiting at the harbour.’

‘Excellent,’ Henderson said.

Paul gave Henderson a serious look. ‘Do you ever think about dead people? Like my dad, or the people who drowned on the
Cardiff Bay
? I always do. I get nightmares sometimes too.’

‘I don’t think you’d be human if you didn’t get upset,’ Henderson said. ‘I guess the difference between me and you is that I chose a life of adventure, and you had adventure thrust upon you. Your father was one of my closest friends. I know he’d be incredibly proud of what you and your sister are doing for your country.’

Paul smiled a little as Henderson took a large bar of Belgian chocolate out of his jacket. ‘A nutritious dinner for you,’ he said, smiling. ‘Now I’ve got to drive back to the farm and help Rosie to sort out a boat for the ride home.’

When you’re scared the worst thing that can happen is that you have to sit alone with nothing but the voices in your head for company. Lunchtime had been Marc’s only opportunity to separate from Kuefer and meet up with Khinde and Rufus, but that left six agonising hours between planting the phosphorous bombs inside the fuel tanks and the air raid.

The two prisoners had hidden in the complex of burned out wharves behind the harbours, but Marc had to keep up the pretence that he was mystified by Kuefer’s disappearance, and that meant sticking close to the Mercedes. He’d chatted to the ladies who made lunches and scrounged some extra food, he’d occasionally wandered into the office and asked if anyone had seen his boss, but mostly he’d sat in the back of the Mercedes and made himself feel sick, worrying about all the things that could go wrong.

The prisoners rarely worked any later than seven and Marc had his eyes shut and was half asleep when knuckles rapped on the car window. He jumped when he saw a German guard with a machine gun over his shoulder.

‘Where are your black buddies?’ the guard asked, as Marc pulled down the window. ‘Last truck’s heading back to the prison camp. Is Kuefer gonna drop them back, because we’re gonna cop hell if two prisoners go missing.’

Marc tried to sound a lot calmer than he felt. ‘I don’t know anything. Kuefer came and took them away, then went off with the SS officers again.’

Henderson had suggested adding phantom SS units into Marc’s story and it had worked well. The SS were elite units attached to the Nazi party rather than the military. They had absolute powers and scared ordinary German soldiers as much as they scared French civilians. The merest mention of SS involvement ensured that there would be no investigation into whatever Kuefer was supposedly up to.

‘Dammit,’ the German said. ‘I bet whatever happens, it’s me that cops the blame.’

‘Sorry.’ Marc shrugged. ‘I’m just stuck here waiting for my boss. I need to get back to my dad’s farm, but I’ve got no idea how long I’ll be stuck out here.’

Henderson arrived home in the truck as Rosie was slicing the joint of pork. People would be coming and going at different times, so rather than cook a conventional meal she planned to use the chicken and pork to fill baguettes which people could grab whenever they arrived.

‘Meat smells good,’ Henderson said brightly, as he came in and bent forwards to give Rosie a peck on the cheek.

‘Don’t,’ she said firmly, as she backed away.

Henderson was surprised, but he didn’t think much of it until he saw how upset she looked.

‘Dumont tried to force himself on me,’ Rosie admitted, with a shudder.

‘Damn,’ Henderson roared, as he pounded on the table. ‘Did he run off? If I lay my hands on that little son of a—’

‘He’s tied up in your bedroom,’ Rosie said. ‘He saw all the cases packed. I couldn’t let him get away and I didn’t know what else to do.’

Henderson strode through to the bedroom he’d shared with Maxine and was startled by the state Rosie had left Dumont in. He lay on the floor, conscious but bloody-nosed, with deep burns across his chest. His ankles were tied and his wrists bound behind his back.

‘Please,’ Dumont begged, as he crawled back towards the wall. ‘You’ve got to let me go, she’s crazy!’

Henderson kicked Dumont hard in the stomach before pulling out his gun and sticking the muzzle against Dumont’s head.

‘There’s only one good reason why I’m not gonna blow your brains out right now,’ Henderson yelled. ‘And that’s because in my book, people who try to molest young girls deserve to die slowly.’

Henderson stood up and shouted back towards the kitchen. ‘Rosie, my petal, bring in the meat cleaver.’

‘Please,’ Dumont grovelled. ‘She’s a lying bitch, I
swear
. She came on to me.’

Henderson booted Dumont in the stomach again. ‘Don’t you call her a bitch,’ he shouted.
dare

Dumont sobbed as Rosie came into the room, conspicuously not holding a cleaver. She suspected the suggestion was a scare tactic, but with Henderson you could never be sure.

‘Just say the word, sweetheart,’ Henderson said. ‘If you want him dead, he’s dead.’

Rosie put her hands over her face and shook her head. ‘There’s enough death in the world right now,’ she said. ‘Take him out somewhere and make sure that I never have to see him again.’

Henderson crouched down and loomed over Dumont. ‘On your feet,’ he growled. ‘You’re damned lucky Rosie’s a better person than I am.’

Marc had warned Eugene and PT about the desolation around Dunkirk, but nothing prepared either of them for mounds of debris and swarms of rats scuttling out on to the road in front of them.

The port complex was more than ten times the size of Calais, centred on vast twin harbours, the largest of which was more than two kilometres wide. The eastern harbour was more modest, but both fed into a huge network of canals and docks.

In Boulogne and Calais it was a question of lighting a beacon that would provide a focus for bombing the entire dockyard. Although more than five hundred tugs and barges had been refurbished and docked around Dunkirk, having them spread along more than twenty kilometres of canals and docks made precise targeting impossible.

But Marc had identified two high value targets in the canal leading from the eastern harbour. The first was the huge dry dock where most barge conversions were done. The second was a nearby canal where the Germans had built a refuelling station and kept more than twenty fast patrol boats, carefully disguised amidst the remains of the Dunkirk fishing fleet.

The Royal Navy had the English Channel blockaded at both ends, preventing the German Navy from bringing in any large surface ships. This meant that defence of the invasion fleet would rely upon submarines and these lightly armoured patrol boats. A successful bombing of the patrol-boat base at Dunkirk would destroy a quarter of the German fleet in one swoop.

PT and Eugene’s starting point was a dockside camp, comprising twenty large wooden barrack huts which housed both skilled French workers and much of the local German garrison.

The Germans paid good wages in this area and even though the barge conversion programme was nearing its end, skilled Frenchmen were still coming in to undertake rebuilding works around the docks.

‘Recruitment office is closed till morning,’ a German guard explained as the Renault truck stood at a security gate. He gave Eugene’s travel permits the briefest of inspections before continuing, ‘You can bunk in one of the French huts if you can find a bed. You’ll get a meal in the bar. What’s inside the truck?’

Eugene shrugged. ‘Just my little brother and a bunch of tools. Search it if you want.’

The back of the truck was full of explosives, but Marc said the Germans never searched vehicles entering the barracks, only the nearby docks.

Eugene rolled through the checkpoint and drove a couple of hundred metres to the only place in town that had any life coming out of it.

PT led Eugene inside and found the narrow space crammed with Germans, who all went spookily quiet. One man even pulled a pistol.

‘French in hut eight, up the other end,’ a man sitting near the door explained.

They backed out nervously and found the bar where the French workmen socialised. The Germans ensured that there was plenty of food and booze for these valuable workers, who crammed the bar and spilled outside, sitting on chunks of dockside rubble and lining up to piss into a nearby canal.

The only women inside stood by a piano – one playing badly, one singing badly but compensating for it by being beautiful and topless. It took Eugene an age to reach the bar, where he bought two bottles of German beer and enquired after a man named Wimund.

‘Somewhere down the far end,’ the sweat-streaked barman answered, as Eugene paid.

Marc had described Wimund as a stocky man with a balding grey head who always wore a blue overall, but that could have been any of thirty workmen. Eugene grew anxious and considered switching to a less effective fall-back plan, after they’d spent more than fifteen minutes squeezing between bodies and asking questions.

They were about to give up when PT got touched on the shoulder.

‘You the boy that’s looking for me?’ Wimund asked.

Eugene smiled warmly. ‘You know my little cousin, Marc?’

Wimund had downed plenty of booze. His eyes seemed a little lost and his expression was blank. ‘Can’t place him, but there’s a lot of men around these docks.’

‘Not many twelve year olds though,’ Eugene said. ‘Little blond guy, works as Kuefer’s translator?’

‘Ahh, the boy.’ Wimund nodded, wagging his finger knowingly. ‘Nice little chap. Tips me off when his boss is on the warpath.’

‘We just arrived from Calais,’ Eugene yelled, as PT moved in close so that he could follow the conversation over all the singing and banter. ‘We’re both carpenters. Marc said you’re the man to talk to if you want a decent job.’

As Eugene said this, he produced a bottle of top quality brandy from a canvas bag.

‘For a small consideration, of course,’ PT added.

Wimund glanced about anxiously to see who was standing nearby. ‘Don’t let people be seeing that out in the open,’ he said. ‘Your boy Marc’s done me a few favours. Tomorrow you get your papers sorted and work wherever the Germans assign you. Then come see me after work and I’ll sort you out, no charge.’