Once a Warrior (3 page)

“I hear something,” she whispered now in the English she’d learned at school.

“The German patrol?” he asked on a cloud of breath.

“They’re not due back for twenty minutes.”  She’d managed to glean the timing of their new schedule while the Gestapo agent’s bad tooth was being pulled. While she was at it, she’d filched a small glass of the cognac he’d anesthetized himself with before submitting to the painful extraction. She’d poured some of it into a snifter for her grandfather. The rest she’d used to disinfect the pilot’s nasty leg wound before they’d set out from the village on foot.

The seconds dragged by as they listened intently. A twig snapped. Ice-crusted leaves rustled. Then an owl flapped out of a tree, showering them with snow.

Anne-Marie breathed a sigh of relief and then whistled softly in a pre-arranged signal. When a gnomelike figure rose out of the ditch on the other side of the road, she stood on cramped legs and gave the pilot a hand up. “Follow me.”

The road they needed to cross was coated with a thick, slick layer of ice, making it hard for the limping aviator to keep up with her. Normally the crews of shot-down Allied planes escaped back to their bases through northern France, near the Belgian border. The Gestapo had recently infiltrated the Résistance network that repatriated them, however, so he’d been passed farther south by a friendly railroad man and was being flown back tonight.

“You’re late,” Guy Compain scolded, raising his wrist to check his cheap steel watch as they approached. He was Anne-Marie’s age but had taken to wearing little boys’ shorts, even in winter, to appear too young for forced conscription. So far, the Germans had been too busy trying to capture the more illustrious Résistance leaders to bother with some village idiot who didn’t have enough sense to wear long pants when it snowed.

“Sorry, old chap,” the Englishman gasped, “but I’m a bit wobbly on the pins.”

“The leg wound he received when his plane went down is infected.”  Anne-Marie had switched back to French for the explanation. She slid a supportive arm around the pilot’s waist and motioned for Guy to do the same on the other side. “Since my grandfather won’t have any sulfanilamide powder until the Lysander comes, I poured a little cognac on it and gave him some aspirin for his fever.

“Let’s go,” Guy snapped.

He hadn’t wanted any part in helping the pilot escape, which was what they’d been arguing about when Henriette’s father had seen them coming out of the woods. Too dangerous, he’d declared, reminding her that they would automatically be given the death penalty instead of a prison sentence if they were caught. It was too late to back out now, she’d countered. The pilot was here and he was hurt.

Guy had finally relented when Anne-Marie urged him to remember Miriam Blum, on whom she’d always suspected he’d had a crush.

Moonlight guided the slow-moving trio’s path. A copse of trees lay straight ahead. On the south side was a lake where the villagers swam in summer; on the north, a large field that had been cleared of snow so the small British Lysander could land.

Silent as ghosts, several other figures came out from behind the trees. Like Anne-Marie and Guy, they were all dressed in dark clothes and knit caps. One carried a Sten gun, which had been delivered in a previous drop while the others created a flare path with their obstacle lights.

Tonight’s mission was the partisans’ most daring to date. Their supplies were usually dropped with black parachutes on moonless nights. Since this was their first pick-up, though, they’d decided to risk exposure instead of a crash.

“I hear . . . the plane.”  Now that escape was so close at hand, the fevered pilot began to shake.

“You’ll be home soon.”  Anne-Marie kept a tight hold on him, finding that his weakness somehow gave her strength.

On the ground, everyone watched anxiously as the Lysander approached the makeshift airfield they’d prepared. They’d been warned that timing was of the essence in an operation of this sort. Once the plane landed, they would have three minutes to unload the precious cargo it carried and to get the wounded pilot aboard before it took off. Any longer than that and the German patrol might spot it and sound the alarm.

“
Vite, vite
!”  Guy reminded them to hurry in a harsh whisper.

The instant the tiny aircraft came to a stop on the four hundred-yard runway, the waiting réseau members got to work. Outgoing “mail” diagramming the location of railway depots and bridges so the Allied bombers could further disrupt the Germans’ supply routes went on, while medical supplies, boxes of ammunition and orders for continuing the clandestine sabotage of Nazi travel came off. Last but not least, the injured aviator was made as comfortable as possible in the cramped interior.

Then, before the Lysander even lifted off, the partisans vanished into the night as quickly and quietly as they had earlier appeared.

Anne-Marie stuffed the package meant for her grandfather under her sweater and took off at a run. Snow whitened the ground under the trees, but otherwise it was hard with frost. The ski boots she’d bought on the black market made a ringing sound when their iron supports struck a frozen rut in the road.

Traveling alone, it hardly took any time to reach the village. Only once, when two bicycles came along with their blackout lights flickering unevenly, did she have to sink into the bushes alongside the road. Like her, the riders were breaking the midnight curfew, and she wondered on an increasingly rare romantic whim if they were secret lovers hurrying home to avoid the German patrol.

She clenched her chattering teeth, then shoved her bare hands in her pockets and tucked her chin into the curly lamb collar of the old coat she’d found in her grandmother’s armoire and remade for herself, waiting until the bicycles faded around the next curve.

The rue de Bretagne, the main street in Ste. Genviève, was deserted now. Still, she looked carefully before crossing it because the Nazi nights had a thousand eyes. Even though the patrol car wasn’t due to pass for another few minutes, there was no telling who might have gotten up to use the bathroom and then stopped to peer out the window on the way back to bed.

Her grandfather’s house was as dark and tightly shuttered as a tomb. She slipped around to the back, took off her boots, and tiptoed in through the door that opened to their cramped kitchen. On stockinged feet then, she started across the living room.

Skirting the massive mahogany sideboard that stood against the same wall as the door to the vestibule, Anne-Marie permitted herself a small smile at how well things were going. First, she would set the sulfanilamide powder in her grandfather’s medical cabinet. Then she would duck into the tiny downstairs bathroom to strip off her clothes and put on her nightgown before sneaking back up—

A light flared on just as she reached for the doorknob.

She spun, her heart in her throat, to find her grandfather sitting in the harsh glare of a gas lamp near the draped and shaded window that faced the street. Despite the fact that he was on call for emergencies all night, they suffered the same gas cuts as the rest of the village. Which meant that he’d been waiting for her under cover of darkness.

The lamp hissed steadily as she studied him in the gloomy silence. He looked as if he’d just awakened from a long nightmare. His white hair was mussed, his face flushed, and the fraying ties of his black silk robe lay limp and wrinkled in his lap. On the small table beside his favorite reading chair with the worn frieze upholstery sat the crystal snifter, empty now, into which she had poured the pilfered cognac.

“‘Tiger Lily!’”  He practically spat out the
nom de guerre
she’d taken when she’d joined the Résistance movement.

Anne-Marie sighed in resignation. She couldn’t deny it. He’d caught her in flagrante. Nor could she look him in the eye and lie. He’d see right through her. The only option she had left was to try to contain the damage.

Toward that end, she spoke softly so as not to wake Henriette. “How long have you known?”

“I have eyes, I can see. I have ears, I can hear.”  His own voice quavered with quiet dignity. “Or do you think I’m too old, too blind and deaf and senile to know what you’ve been up to all these months?”

“Of course not.”  With more aplomb than she felt, Anne-Marie set her ski boots on the floor, unbuttoned her coat, and pulled off her black knit cap. Her hair, gleaming almost gold in the light from the gas lamp, fell past her shoulders. She reached up under her sweater and removed the precious parcel of sulfanilamide powder he needed to treat his patients, many of whom had been beaten by the Germans or badly wounded by Allied bombs.

“You—” As he took the package she proffered, his dark eyes widened in dismay. “Where did you get this?”

“That,” she said gently, “you’re better off not knowing.”

His shrewd expression told her he wasn’t as gullible as she thought. “Are you crazy?”

“War is crazy.”  Still too wound-up to sit down, Anne-Marie paced the room. She moved as lithely as a dancer, her hair swirling as she turned the corner of the heavy old table where they took their meals. “And as pretentious as it sounds, I want to help bring an end to the insanity.”

“By hiding pilots and derailing trains?” he demanded hoarsely.

Her jaw clenched. “If that’s what it takes.”

“The Germans have threatened reprisals—ten of us for one of them.”

“As if they need another excuse to torture and kill the French!” she scoffed.

He gave her a penetrating look. “And if you’re captured?”

“I carry a cyanide pill.”  When he flinched, she realized she’d gone too far and rushed to soften the blow. “But only as a last resort.”

“This war . . .” With his beard spreading like cold ashes below his cheekbones, her grandfather looked older and more tired than ever. “It’s not like other wars. Only men fought them—not women.”

Giving in to her sudden fatigue, Anne-Marie sank down on the arm of his chair. Her heart constricted at the realization that she had added to the burden of grief and worry he already carried. But to do nothing, to simply surrender to the occupiers of her homeland because she was female, to blindfold herself in order not to see what was going on around her . . . it was unthinkable!

“We don’t look at each other as men and women.”  She ran a smoothing hand over his hair and imagined her grandmother smiling down at her from on high. “We see one another as comrades in arms, fighting side by side for a common cause.”

But her grandfather was beyond such simple appeasement. “Is Henriette a partisan?”

“No. But Maurice is threatening to take to the mountains.”

“The Maquis?”   He blanched at the news that his oldest grandson was thinking of joining the guerilla fighters. “My God, what is this world coming to?”

“It’s dying,
Grand-père
,” she said sadly.

“And you think you can save it?” he concluded in a flat tone.

“Not by myself, of course.”  She lifted her chin to a proud angle. “But I need to do my part.”

Some of her grandfather’s old spirit reared its head as he peered up at her and put a new twist on the argument he’d been making for a good year now. “What you need, young woman, is a man to keep you home at night!”

CHAPTER TWO

Kansas City, Missouri

Second Lieutenant Mike Scanlon was feeling the beer, but he’d yet to get really a good handle on the curvy blonde who’d made herself at home on his lap.

No sooner had he sat down with John and Charlie and their girls than the blonde had strolled boldly up to the table and asked him if he was saving that empty chair for someone. He’d taken one look at her abundant breasts and promptly pulled it out for her. Now if he could just recall the name she’d shouted at him over the swoony blare of “I’ve Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good ” . . .

Bully’s on Broadway was the best juke joint and the worst kept secret in town. Soldiers, sailors and marines stood three deep at the bar, seeking a respite from the constant drumbeat of war news coming out of Asia and Europe. Between drags on their cigarettes and drinks from their bottles or glasses, they eyed the women dressed in their Friday night best who were coming in the door. Not to be outdone, the women eyed them right back.

The couples who’d already connected were dancing beneath dimmed lights and dangling strands of leftover Christmas tinsel. Raucous cheers from the craps table in the next room said that some lucky sonovagun had made his point. An interservice-shouting match near the jukebox had attracted the bouncer, who was trying to break it up before it escalated into a fistfight.

The loud music and even louder voices fell on deaf ears as Mike concentrated on his own battle plan. His objective was simple. First, he wanted to talk Blondie into leaving the bar with him; second, he wanted to take her to bed. The obstacles he faced, however, were a hell of a lot more complicated.

For one thing, he’d taken an oath to conduct himself as an officer and a gentleman. So far he’d managed to remember he was the former. But given the golden opportunity that had landed in his lap, he was increasingly hard-pressed to remain the latter.

And for another, he was running out of time. He’d been ordered to report to Camp Shanks, New York, with seven days leave home enroute. After eight months of training other men to become overseas replacements, he knew damned good and well what that meant. It was his turn to ship out.

Mike finally resolved his dilemma with a maneuver as smooth as any he’d ever directed on a field of fire. He picked up the brown glass bottle with his left hand and slid his right from the cradle of the blonde’s slender waist to the side of her lush breast. Mission accomplished, he crowed silently when his wandering thumb encountered an erect nipple beneath her tight black sweater.

“And people say we don’t know what we’re fighting for,” he toasted dryly, before taking a drink of beer.

Blondie jiggled when she giggled.

First Lieutenant John Brown and his fiancé, Kitty Martin, were too engrossed in each other to notice the shenanigans going on across the table from them. They exuded intimacy, sitting as close together as their chairs allowed. His right arm was draped across her shoulders and her cheek rested against his uniformed chest.