The Black Jackals (18 page)

Lamb and Valentine swiftly dragged his lifeless body into the trees and pushed it beneath the undergrowth before moving back round to the front of the truck. Lamb looked up at Bennett, who shook his head and nodded towards the guardhouse. As he did so another guard emerged through the doorway. He looked startled and clearly alarmed not to see his friend. Then he saw Lamb in the German sergeant's uniform and nodded respectfully at him before saying something which he did not understand. Valentine intervened, pointing to the man's tunic, on which a button was undone. But it was too late. The man had noticed the rip in the sleeve of Lamb's uniform, where its previous owner had taken a piece of shrapnel, and, worse than that, the fresh blood, which shone on the left side of Lamb's tunic. He began to raise his rifle and Lamb watched in horror as he opened his mouth to shout the alarm to the base. Lamb began to reach for the bayonet, but from nowhere, it seemed to Lamb, a blade shot out of the darkness and fixed the German in the chest, penetrating his heart. As the man fell to the ground, Lamb looked at where it had come from and saw Valentine, grinning and staring at the dying guard.

After a few seconds Lamb spoke. ‘Come on, let's get this body shifted.' They dumped the dead man in the guardhouse, and as they did so Lamb said, ‘Thank you, Corporal. That was a bit close for comfort.'

‘Quite all right, sir. Would have done the same for anyone.'

Again Lamb wondered at the man, belittling his own action in saving the life of his officer just to maintain that irritating façade of cynicism.

While Lamb and Valentine pushed up the barrier, Bennett jumped into the Opel and started her up before they climbed aboard. They continued along the road, and very soon the trees had given way to open fields stretching flat into the far distance. Directly ahead of them lay two huge hangars and the shell of a third, burnt out, and close by the wreckage of four destroyed Bristol Blenheim fighters. So the RAF had been here too, with the French, before the Germans had come.

To the left of the hangars stood half a dozen wooden sheds – barrack blocks, he presumed – and a smaller structure which still bore a sign in English: ‘The Ritz – Officers Mess'. All were lit up from the inside, and from the smaller hut they could hear the sound of music. To their right six ME110s lay on a grass landing strip, the pale moonlight glancing off their hulls. Two were being attended by refuelling trucks, while a third was surrounded by ground crew refitting her with ammunition.

Bennett carried on driving until they had drawn level with the first of the barrack huts and then Lamb looked at him and gestured to the right. The truck veered off the track and across the runway till it was behind the farthest of the aircraft. A few of the ground crew looked round in surprise before returning to their work and no one moved from either the barracks or the mess hut. Bennett drove alongside the planes for about thirty yards and then, when Lamb saw that they were perfectly placed to cover all six, he gave the word and Bennett turned a sharp left and stopped the truck, being careful not to switch off. As he did so, Lamb yelled to his rear: ‘Right. Now. Let them have it.'

Behind him Perkins and Hughes pulled hard on the sides of the rear tarpaulin and the flaps flew up to reveal the three machine guns and their crews. At the same time Parry threw off the rear of the canvas and dropped a bomb into the muzzle of the mortar. Then all hell broke loose.

The machine guns, as yet unfired in war, rattled off their deadly load and bullets slapped at a rate of 900 rounds per minute into everything in their path: metal, wood, canvas and flesh.

Some of the rounds found their home in the ground crew, and within moments most of them were dead or dying. Several hit the two petrol tankers, sending them sky high in explosions that tore apart the night sky, and these were instantly followed by three of the aircraft themselves as their newly filled fuel tanks ignited and blew them to pieces. There was a thump as the first of the mortar rounds hit another of the planes, splitting it apart.

Lamb jumped out of the cab and rushed to the rear of the truck and watched as the world in front of them dissolved into a sea of flames and death. The wounded came rushing towards him, out of the inferno, human torches, their terrible shrieks barely audible, only to be mercifully despatched by the machine guns. Still Lamb's men kept the ammo coming. And in the orange light of the burning aircraft he saw Madeleine too now as she pulled open one of the crates and handed the circular metal cartridges to the men on the guns. The barrels were getting hotter now and Lamb knew that it would not be long before he would have to order a ceasefire. It had only been a matter of minutes, but already they had done all that he had hoped they would. But he knew that at any moment the barracks would spill out the enemy.

Lamb shouted to Mays, ‘Hold your fire. Get the infantry.' Two guns were silent and he heard the third stop shooting as he ran along the side of the truck. He yelled up to Bennett: ‘Get going. Turn her round against the barracks.'

The truck drew away and turned a full circle in a tight angle. Lamb stepped out of its way. He had drawn the Luger now and prayed that it would live up to its reputation. As he watched a dozen Germans in various states of undress rushed from the first of the barrack buildings, to be joined by officers piling out of the mess block, pistols and sub-machine guns in their hands. Lamb took careful aim with the captured Luger, resting it on his left forearm for support, and focused it centrally on the chest of the leading officer, a big man with an open tunic who was shouting words which could not be heard. He squeezed the trigger and the pistol came back against his hand. Simultaneously, it seemed, the officer's chest opened in a spray of blood and he flew back against the side of the building just as Bennett stopped the truck.

The men in the rear had managed to keep their positions, but only one gun crackled into life. Yet it was enough to stop the tide of grey surging from the barracks. Some of the officers, however, had stopped and were taking aim. As Lamb watched they opened fire on the rear of the truck, and he saw Tapley fall. Slipping the Luger into his holster, he ran towards the tailgate and heaved himself aboard, then crouching down amid the bullets managed to pick up one of the machine guns from the floor where it had fallen and lever it back onto its bipod.

He turned to Madeleine, ‘Get down. Hit the floor.'

More of the infantry had got out of the barracks now, and even Butterworth's steady fire could not wholly stop them. Lamb saw Parry, blood seeping from his shoulder, lob another bomb into the mortar before it flew towards the barracks block. It missed but exploded on the ground in front, sending shrapnel fragments towards the officers. Three of them fell, and now Lamb was at the second machine gun himself. Perkins crammed another magazine round onto the mechanism and Lamb pressed the trigger, spraying the infantry and stopping them in their tracks like a deadly hailstorm. More explosions from behind told him that another plane had gone up and he knew that it was time to leave before they met the same fate. Surprise had gone now, and with it most of their ammunition.

Lamb handed the grip of the gun to Perkins and leapt from the tailgate, then ran to the cab. ‘Go, man, go on. Get us out of here. Come on.'

He hoisted himself up using the door and the seat, and as Bennett began to move off swung himself down into the passenger seat. Bennett turned to the left and pressed his foot hard down on the accelerator pedal, revving it up and pushing it towards its maximum speed. The engine complained but carried on, and the truck sputtered then shot forward to clear the edge of the mess hut before hitting the track to the gate. From behind them he heard the guttering rattle of semi-automatic fire and then a shriek and a groan, and Lamb wondered who had been hit. He prayed that it wasn't Madeleine and then felt guilty for valuing her above a member of his platoon. The sweat was pouring off him, making dark marks on the grey serge of the captured uniform. He felt sick with excitement and fear and noticed for the first time that he had been hit in the left forearm. No more than a glancing blow. He had also lost his peaked cap. The Luger, though, was still in his belt. The truck carried on down the lane, passing the barrier and the dead guards, and emerged on the main road.

Bennett looked at Lamb. ‘Sir?'

‘Take a left and keep driving. We need to make some miles away from here. Fast. Every bloody Jerry in the district will be on our tail soon.'

They swung to the left and Lamb looked out of the cab window. Leaping flames and columns of thick black smoke marked the location of the airfield, and more explosions still rocked the night. Good, he thought. He imagined that would be the fuel dumps going up as the fires spread. It was a job well done.

He turned to Valentine, who was sitting with a blank expression, staring out at the night. ‘Where the devil did you learn to throw a knife like that?'

‘It's not that hard. A few years ago I was part of an act. You know, sir, a stage act. Variety. Music halls, mainly. Just after I left university. I was drifting a bit. We played the south coast. Actually, we supported Max Miller once. You know, sir, the comic. Now there's an interesting man. I knew it would come in useful some time.'

Lamb stared at him. The man was an enigma. ‘Come in useful?' He shook his head. ‘Is there anything you haven't done, Valentine?'

Valentine smiled. ‘Well, yes, there is actually. I've never been an officer, sir.'

They drove on through the night, sticking to the minor roads, even though it did not make things easy for them as Lamb had ordered Bennett to drive without lights. Looking across the fields to a major road which ran roughly parallel with their own, Lamb could see enemy trucks and smaller vehicles racing in the opposite direction, presumably towards the base. A whimper from the rear reminded him of the casualties, and finally, when they were a good five miles clear of the base and in the midst of a thick forest, he told Bennett to stop.

Opening the door and rushing round to the rear, Lamb pulled himself up into the truck. The wooden floor was slick with blood and four bodies lay slumped against the rails. Archer and Mitchell were obviously dead, their sightless eyes staring to the heavens. Lamb searched quickly for Madeleine and was happy to see her in the back of the truck tending the wounds of a fifth casualty, Sergeant McKracken. He looked at the others. Driscoll and Blake were goners too. Tapley was mumbling something about his mother and didn't look long for the world. Of the other eight men, miraculously none had been badly wounded. He found Mays.

‘Well done back there, all of you. There'll be a few less bombs falling on our chaps tomorrow. We need to ditch the dead here, I'm afraid. And we've no time to bury them properly.'

They placed the four men in the woods to their right, and covered them as best they could with brambles. Lamb stood for a few moments beside the sad, makeshift tombs and muttered a few words of commendation, then they all piled back into the truck. Madeleine was cradling Tapley's head in her lap. Lamb looked at her and there was no need to speak. He could see the tears running clear down her face in the moonlight. He shook his head and she lowered hers.

Lamb turned away, jumped off the tailgate and climbed back up into the cab, closing the door. ‘Let's go, Sarnt. They're sure to be right behind us.'

Peering at the map by the light of a small torch, Lamb took them through the woods and south again, skirting a small hamlet, until once again they were in open fields. They were on nothing more than a farm track now, and Lamb was pleased. He knew that they were almost there, but at the same time was well aware that this would be the hardest part of their journey.

He was in two minds about what to do. Very soon he knew they must hit the rear echelons of the German front line. It stood to reason that if the 51st had drawn a line from the coast along the Somme, as the colonel had told him they would, then the advancing Germans would be directly opposite. So their task now was to break through the German lines once again but this time from the rear, pushing their way out. That at least would take the Jerries by surprise. Then, however, they would have to make it to the safety of their own lines.

Well, thought Lamb, one thing at a time. The choice now facing him immediately was whether they should carry on at night and risk all for speed and the cover of darkness, or whether they should lie low and wait for day, then bluff it out. In the dark a fast-moving lorry would undoubtedly arouse suspicion, and he was unsure, given their mental and physical state, if the men in the back would be able to win another encounter with a pursuing enemy. But to wait for the day also had its own pitfalls. First and foremost, the truck was in a sorry state. The tarpaulin was ripped and half gone and it was not hard to see from the rear the khaki-clad men and weapons in the back. From the front, however, he presumed that the truck still had a veneer of correctness. If they could guarantee to meet their enemy head on before blasting their way through, that might be the way to go.

But at this stage in a campaign where the British army had been out-manoeuvred, if not entirely out-fought, he knew that nothing could be guaranteed. They were moving fast now, as fast as the truck could manage, touching the 45-kilometre marker, and she was shaking. Those in the back, Madeleine included, had stopped making any sound, and none of the three men in the cab had spoken for a while. Lamb felt his eyes beginning to close and, waking with jolt from a second-long doze, shook himself awake, but just as he did so he was aware that Bennett too had taken his eyes off the road for a second and that the truck, arriving at that moment at a junction where a major road crossed their own, was taking the wrong turning and joining the highway.

Lamb came to his senses: ‘Christ, Bennett. This is the wrong way. We're heading for that bloody town.' But it was too late. Sergeant Bennett pressed hard on the brake, but not before the truck had gone blundering into the outskirts of the village of Buigny-Saint-Maclou. The usual brick-walled farms rose on either side of them without any perceptible signs of life. Then, without warning, the street opened out into a wide crossroads and before them stood a pair of wrought-iron gates edged with verges of shorn grass. Beyond them, on a slight rise, Lamb could see the twinkling lights of a large château. On either side of the gates stood a German lorry. Half a dozen infantrymen stood smoking beside them, and with them, seated on his bike, with his mate in the armed sidecar, was a great-coated motorcycle outrider. As the Opel screeched towards them the Germans looked up in alarm.