Grey Wolves (7 page)

‘Well I’ve met Walters,’ Marc said jubilantly. ‘He was the pilot when I did parachute training up in Scotland.’

Jarhope stepped in front of Alois. ‘I’m convinced they’re for real now,’ he said. ‘Nobody could possibly have known that.’

Marc had to translate so that Alois understood. He signalled reluctantly and the shotgun was tilted away from Henderson’s head. Marc loosened his grip on his knife, Alois put the wrench down on his workbench and there were a few wary laughs.

*

While Henderson went off with Nicolas and Alois to find a boat and plan the best strategy for finding
Madeline
in pitch darkness, Marc and Edith found themselves being mothered by Alois’ twenty-something daughter, Therese.

The two kids stripped and washed the worst of the dirt away in cold buckets on the back porch. For Marc, this was a day’s sweat and a welcome relief from the coal dust. But Edith battled furiously, refusing to scrub several weeks of grime away until Therese threatened her with a wire brush.

Stripped of clothes and dirt, there wasn’t much to Edith. Puberty hadn’t kicked in and she was whip thin. Inside they got a hot bath. Marc chivalrously let Edith go first, but when she’d finished the water was so filthy that Therese tipped it away and Marc stood wrapped in a blanket for twenty minutes while more was boiled.

By this time it was early evening, with the temperature plunging as the sun vanished. After their baths the two kids drew chairs up to a wood fire and toasted their tired legs and the palms of their hands until it was time to eat.

Jarhope, the airman, was first to arrive for dinner.

‘Good job you knew that Walters chap,’ Marc whispered, as Edith dozed beside him. ‘Otherwise I might have ended up getting chucked in the harbour.’

‘To be honest, I’ve never heard of the fellow,’ Jarhope confessed in a whisper. ‘But I’ve been stuck here for over a month while my burns heal up. The rest of my crew have gone south already and I reckon I’ve got better odds shipping out with you two than trekking down to Spain with no French and this mess for a face.’

Dinner was a proper show. Madame Mercier came by car, Nicolas brought out his best brandy. Only Alois was subdued, embarrassed by his behaviour earlier on. The waitress who’d served lunch at Le Chat Botté gave Henderson a remarkable stash of original blank documents, from bicycle permits to ration cards, but she also brought bad news. The body of the OT worker had been found. Security at checkpoints around Lorient had been stepped up.

Everyone agreed it was a grave business. The Germans would clamp down. Arrests, searches, days of tightened curfews and possible revenge executions of French prisoners.

Madame Mercier stood up as gloom settled over the diners. ‘To make the omelette, you break the egg,’ she told them resolutely. ‘This is a war and worse things will happen before we win.’

Henderson was impressed and raised a toast. ‘To victory for France,’ he said.

‘And a safe trip home for our guests,’ Madame Mercier added.

*

‘It’s like two pins manoeuvring blindfold through a haystack and hoping to bump into each other,’ Henderson explained to Jarhope, as they sailed away from Kerneval.

Nicolas and Alois had done them proud, locating a four-metre sailing boat and safe spot to cast off outside the harbour wall well away from German eyes. Henderson was a confident sailor and reckoned the boat was good enough to reach Britain if they didn’t find
Madeline
. They’d brought food and water just in case, but five days in an open boat would be no fun, and if a storm didn’t get them, the Germans might.

Jarhope was no sailor and would have looked green if it hadn’t been pitch dark. Marc lay at the bow, trying to ignore all the places that hurt as he cupped his ears, listening for the distinct rumble of
Madeline
’s propeller shaft. He had a flashlight and a pair of luminous wands to help attract
Madeline
, but they’d all be for it if he made the wrong call and flashed a German boat.

There wasn’t even a guarantee that
Madeline
was coming. It was a fifty-hour voyage from Porth Navas to Lorient, so the little tug had been forced to spend the day drifting seventy kilometres offshore, risking the attentions of German patrol boats and fighter planes.

Henderson sailed in a zigzag pattern. If Rufus was doing his job,
Madeline
was sweeping back and forth along a two-kilometre channel. They’d practised the technique off the Cornish coast and
Madeline
had met the canoe four times on four consecutive nights. But that didn’t account for sinkings, mechanical faults, or the possibility that Rufus had navigated to completely the wrong section of coastline as he’d done the previous night.

Midnight passed by, then one, two and three a.m. Henderson decided that he’d give up at four, because if he left it any later he wouldn’t be able to sail clear of the coast before sunrise. The breakthrough came with less than a quarter-hour to spare.

‘I’m pretty sure it’s her,’ Marc said.

Henderson put up the sail and pointed the bow towards the noise. They had to be careful, because
Madeline
was expecting a canoe not a sailing boat. Marc made a V with the two luminous wands and held them up high. His eyes squeezed shut as a powerful light swept across the water. This was a huge risk so close to the French coast, but the crew aboard
Madeline
were also getting desperate.

Henderson smiled as a gust caught the sail and they finally recognised the little tug. The crew comprised Rufus, a slender Moroccan-French soldier, Troy LeConte, a thirteen-year-old from a seafaring background who’d recently completed training with Henderson’s second batch of recruits, and Elizabeth DeVere, a nineteen-year-old who’d trained as an undercover radio operator, but discovered that you did a bit of everything in a small unit like CHERUB. Everyone called her Boo.

Jarhope passed up the bag of equipment and clothing as Troy gave Marc a hand on to
Madeline
’s deck.

‘Any trouble?’ Henderson asked Rufus.

‘Nothing to speak of, Commander,’ Rufus said with a smile. ‘But I’m sure I’ll find you some.’

‘Let’s winch that sailing boat up on deck, then I want full steam ahead. It’ll be sunrise in under forty minutes.’

*

Madeline
had been stolen by Henderson’s team when they’d escaped France the previous autumn. She was now officially HMRS
Madeline
of the Royal Navy Reserve, and part of a small fleet of trawlers, tugs and passenger boats used for espionage based in Porth Navas Creek on the River Helford in Cornwall. Unofficially, nobody but Henderson was interested in a forty-year-old French tug and he’d spent most of the winter scratching together the equipment and manpower needed to get her in shape for undercover operations.

She was no warship, but she was much improved. A larger boiler for speed, a new keel fitted for stability at sea, high-powered binoculars on the bridge for navigation, an armoury of hand weapons and most importantly a 22mm machine gun that could be hauled from below and attached to a bracket on the rear deck.

The voyage from Lorient to Porth Navas would take thirty hours in peacetime, but in war this doubled because you had to stay away from the coast, out of main shipping lanes and well away from the British minefields you knew about, and the German minefields that you hoped you knew about.

So Marc faced two more sleepless days. Always noisy, wet and swaying from side to side. He sat up the back of the deck with Troy, using a coil of rope as a rock-hard pillow.

‘I spy with my little eye, something beginning with D,’ Marc said, as he prodded the bruises under his shirt.

‘Darkness,’ Troy said.

‘
Shit
,’ Marc laughed. ‘How did you get it so fast?’

‘If you’re awake, one of you can go below decks and take over from Boo shovelling coal,’ Rufus shouted from the bridge.

The two boys hunkered down and tried not to laugh as they faked snoring noises, but Marc was exhausted and fake sleep eventually turned real.

Henderson’s boot woke him three hours later. Marc stretched out to yawn, but Henderson yanked his arm. ‘Get below decks, we need the sniper rifles. Quickly.’

It was light, but the main thing that hit Marc as he scuttled across the deck was the roar of diesel engines. Á German E-boat
2
was blasting towards them, throwing up a huge bow wave. These high-speed craft were thirty-five metres long. They carried torpedoes and two heavy-calibre deck guns capable of blowing
Madeline
out of the water.

‘They’ll know we’re up to no good if they board us,’ Henderson shouted, as Troy passed guns and weapons up from below deck. ‘Our only chance is to act innocent until they’re right next to us. Keep calm, remember your training and be ready to shoot if they try to come aboard for an inspection.’

Marc grabbed a sniper’s rifle. It came in five pieces, which he fitted together in barely twenty seconds, then he looked through the sight to check the scope was aligned properly. He slung an ammunition belt around his neck and ran up to the front of the boat, hunkering down in front of the anchor hole. Troy was down at the stern, and now nestled in the spot where Marc had been sleeping a few moments earlier. Boo had fitted the cannon on the deck and slid over a wooden frame built to disguise it. Jarhope crouched in the deck hatch with a Sten machine gun.

Madeline
rocked from the wash as the German patrol boat pulled alongside. Everyone kept out of sight except Henderson on the rear deck and Rufus inside the tiny bridge. They acted innocent, but both had Sten guns within reach.

Marc eyed the Germans through the anchor hole. He counted five men on deck, but none were expecting trouble from the little tug. One even sat on an upturned bucket peeling potatoes.

‘A beautiful morning,’ Henderson yelled across, as he shielded his eyes from the low sun.

‘It is,’ a bearded German sailor agreed. ‘Why are you out here so far from the coast?’

‘We’ve been out all night,’ Henderson explained. ‘A distress call went up from a tramp steamer. We brought out some replacement parts and an engineer. Thought we might have to tow her in, but they got her running on her own steam and now we’re heading back to Brest.’

A little pantomime played out on the deck of the E-boat. Junior officer shouting to captain, captain can’t hear. Junior officer walks up to bridge, arms wave, beards get scratched. Junior officer comes back looking unhappy.

‘We’ve been patrolling this area and haven’t heard any distress call,’ the bearded sailor said. ‘We’re coming aboard, to check your documentation and search the boat.’

Henderson acted calm and shook his head. ‘Knock yourselves out, I guess.’

As the German threw a rope over, Marc eyed the German captain on his bridge. The E-boat was twice as long as
Madeline
, with her superstructure lined up with their bow. The side window was open, making it the easiest shot he was ever likely to take.

There was a shudder as the two boats touched, side to side. The decks were almost level and the bearded German judged the swaying boats carefully, with two armed ratings ready to board behind him.

‘Geronimo!’ Henderson yelled, as he grabbed the pistol tucked into the waistband of his trousers and shot the German through the head.

Jarhope’s machine gun polished off the armed men behind him. Boo sprung up, threw the lightweight awning off the 22mm gun and mowed down two men on the rear of the deck. Up front, Marc’s first shot went clean through the captain’s head. He hit a second man, as a third jumped out of the bridge, only to be shot from the opposite end of the boat by Troy.

Eight men had been killed before the Germans fired a shot, but the balance of power shifted when the potato peeler got himself behind the armoured flanges of a 20mm cannon at the front of the boat.

The first heavy rounds practically parted Marc’s hair. The gunner aimed down, punching holes in
Madeline
’s bow, then swung across, tearing chunks out of the wooden superstructure and shattering every window in the bridge. Fortunately the two boats were too close for
Madeline
to be holed below the waterline.

As Rufus jumped clear of the flying glass, Troy shot a German coming out of the rear hatch from below deck. Marc tried to aim at the German behind the cannon, but he was shielded by the armoured flanges.

Henderson realised that the only way to stop the heavy-calibre fire was to board the E-boat, run to the front and shoot the German from behind his protective shield. As Henderson vaulted on to the E-boat, a pair of grenades came the other way.

One landed in the coiled ropes next to Troy. He batted it over the side, seconds before it would have blown his hand off. Boo watched the other grenade bounce off the deck and drop through the open hatch below decks. As Troy saw a third grenade missing the rear of the boat, he spotted the man throwing them, tucked up behind the torpedo tubes on deck, and took aim.

Jarhope jumped aboard the E-boat to back up Henderson as the grenade went off below deck, cracking
Madeline
’s cast-iron boiler and sending out a powerful blast of superheated steam. The 2cm shells continued to pound the superstructure as Rufus screamed in pain. His arms had been lacerated by the flying glass in the bridge, and Boo cut her own hands on the shards embedded in his skin as she dragged him away from the steam.

Troy had been knocked down by the grenade blast, but now took aim from a kneeling position and pumped two shots. The first missed. The second hit the German grenade thrower up the arse and left him hanging over the side.

Further up the E-boat, Henderson had climbed up into the bridge. He aimed his machine gun through the blood-spattered windows and shot the cook firing the deck cannon. With the big cannon muted and no Germans left on deck to shoot at, the only sound was the high-pitched whistle of steam escaping
Madeline
’s cracked boiler.

‘Get across, all of you,’ Henderson shouted. ‘
Madeline
could blow sky high.’

Troy vaulted easily and immediately shot a German coming out of a hatch in the rear of the boat. Boo helped Rufus, who was blinded by blood running into his eyes. But at the bow
Madeline
was more than two metres away from the E-boat, and Marc couldn’t get to the rear because of the rapidly venting steam.