Tramp in Armour (38 page)

'It's a green Renault and I'm sure it's Jacques. In fact,'
Reynolds concluded heavily as though not enjoying contradict
ing Barnes, 'I saw him twice. It's definitely Jacques.'

'All right. Slow down and then pull in, but keep your engine
running. Was he alone?'

'As far as I could see, yes.'

The darkest suspicion flooded into Barnes' mind and he put one hand on the door handle ready to jump out as soon as the
vehicle stopped. If this really was Jacques no possible stretch
of the imagination could explain his presence up here in the
Pas de Calais, yet what was he doing so far from the Mandel farm and Abbeville? Still not at all sure that Reynolds hadn't
made some ghastly mistake, he jumped down as soon as the
transporter pulled up. When he reached the ground the
Renault was stopping a dozen yards ahead. The engine was
switched off and a man got out. He ran towards them, shielding his eyes against the powerful beams. It was Jacques.

'I've been driving up and down this road for three hours
hoping to see you, Sergeant Barnes. But I didn't really expect I ever would - I thought you'd follow that route I marked on
your map, though.'

'I didn't expect to see you either,' Barnes replied grimly.

'You amazed me when I saw Reynolds in that cab - it is a
German transporter, isn't it?'

His face looked chalk-white, although it might have
been the light of the beams, and his voice was harsh and
strained.

'Yes, it's a transporter. What are you doing here, Jacques?
You said you were on your way to Abbeville.'

'A terrible thing has happened. The Germans have shot my
sister.'

Had his voice trembled? Barnes thought so, but the fleeting expression of pain was succeeded by an expression of bitterness and hate.

'How did it happen?' Barnes asked quietly.

'The Germans are trying to say it was an accident - their
interpreter told me that - but they killed her. She was stand
ing in a square in Abbeville and some German tanks arrived.
Someone leaned out from a window and shot one of their men
in the tower of a tank. They fired their machine guns all round
the square and my sister was killed. Boches!' He spat out the
word.

'I'm very sorry to hear that, Jacques.' Barnes spoke gently.
'But what are you doing in this part of the world?'

'After what happened I decided I must come home to tell
my father. I live in Lemont - that is near Gravelines. I told
you that,' he ended accusingly. 'Then I shall kill some Germans.'

'I'd think about that, if I were you. Killing Germans takes training and skill.'

'Not with a knife in the back in a dark street.'

He spoke without hysteria, his mouth tight. He means just what he says, Barnes thought, and he'll do it coldly and clini
cally. This was the lad who led a gang to put wire across a
road, wire which killed a German cyclist.

'On the other hand,' Jacques said suddenly, 'I could come with you.'

'Thanks, but nothing doing.'

Jacques was peering up at Colburn who leant out of the cab
window to listen to the conversation. He frowned and turned
to Barnes.

'Who is that?'

'A soldier - someone we picked up on the way.'

'And where is Mr Penn?'

'He died.'

'I am so sorry. I liked Mr Penn. He was so jolly, is that the
word?'

'Jolly would do.'

'And you will not let me come with you?'

'Sorry. No. You get home to your people at Lemont.'

'This is the road to Calais as well as to Gravelines. You are
going to one of those places - to Calais, perhaps?'

'Perhaps.'

'I could drive ahead at least some of the way and warn you of danger.'

'It's no good, Jacques. That would put you in a crossfire
between us and the Germans.'

'I don't mind. No, that won't make you change your mind.'
He paused. 'You are travelling on the main road at the moment, the most dangerous road. If you are going to Calais I
know another road which turns off this one and it would be much safer, I'm sure. The Germans are less likely to expect
someone coming that way. If I take you along it I can leave
you before you reach Calais and drive back to Lemont. In fact,'
he added slyly, 'if I insist on driving ahead of you, you can't
really stop me, can you?'

In the end, reluctantly, Barnes agreed. Before the night was
out the lad was going to do something silly, anyway, and he was within a few months of being called up when he would
have no choice. If they were very lucky they might get him behind the Allied lines where he would be safer while he got
over his sister's death. The only alternative, in view of his
obstinacy, was to throw away the ignition key and leave him
stranded, and he wasn't prepared to do that. He gave Jacques
careful instructions - he was always to drive at least one
hundred yards ahead of them and if they ran into trouble he
was to leave his car at once and run. Climbing back up into the
cab, Barnes watched him walk back to the Renault.

'I still don't like it,' he told Colburn, 'but if he keeps that distance ahead of us it won't look as though he's leading the
way.'

'There's a war on and he looked pretty mature to me. If
you'd made him leave us he'd have been up to his back-stab
bing tricks and sooner or later they'd get him.'

'Let's go, Reynolds,' said Barnes.

As the transporter moved on through-the night the air of
tension returned to the cab and it never went away again.
There was no longer much conversation and Barnes found
himself holding the machine-pistol in a vice-like grip as his
eyes followed Jacques' tail-light. He had already made up his
mind that as soon as Jacques put them on the side road the lad
would have to leave them and go home to Lemont. Telling Colburn to keep a close eye on the tail-light, he took out his
map folded to the Pas de Calais area and found Lemont, a dot little more than a large village close to Gravelines, the town east-north-east of Calais. Both places were on the waterline, a
system of canals with sluice gates to control the flow. Closing
the map, he lowered his window and looked to the east where the flashes now rivalled the moonlight as they illuminated the
sky, but it was no longer the flashes alone which told him they
were moving very close to the battle area, for now he could hear in the distance the thump of big guns. He wiped more
sweat off his forehead and dried his hands on his trousers. The rising sense of tension had almost become a physical presence inside the cab, something they could all
feel.
Was it simply the
growing sound of the guns or was it also the realization that
with every second which passed, with every yard they moved
forward, they drew closer to the inevitable encounter with the Germans? Five more minutes passed, five minutes of loaded
silence, and then the crisis broke with alarming suddenness.

They had followed Jacques round a sharp corner and im
mediately Reynolds was jamming on the brakes, the huge
vehicle still trying to move forward against the restraining pressure. The Renault was stationary perhaps seventy yards ahead, and no farther than fifty yards beyond the stopped car
lights were strung across the road. One of the lights, a red
lamp, moved from side to side.

'Road-block,' said Barnes tersely.

Colburn stirred beside him. 'Hadn't we better move up
closer to Jacques?'

'No, we stay here. Reynolds, switch off the headlights but
leave the side ones on - we may have a visitor in a minute.
And turn off the motor -I want to hear what's going on - but
get ready to start it again as soon as I tell you.'

Leaning out of the window, he turned his head and listened.
The big guns had obligingly paused with their cannonade and he heard a voice, a staccato voice probably speaking in German. Then Jacques began to turn the car round in the road. He
had only commenced the operation when a burst of machine-
pistol fire shattered the night. The car stopped in mid-turn
and ran back into the ditch, its front wheels still on the road.
Barnes had his head poked out of the window when he heard
another burst. As it broke off he detected a faint noise and
looked up the road but it was difficult to see anything between
the transporter and the Renault, whose lights were now
beamed across the road. Colburn grasped Barnes by the
arm.

'For God's sake...'

'Quiet! I think he's almost here.'

The running footsteps were very close and as Barnes
jumped down into the road Jacques appeared, his breathing
laboured, his expression bleak. He spoke rapidly.

Tm all right. They opened fire when I wouldn't drive up to
them. As far as I could see there's only three or four of them
but they've got a pole across the road
'

'Any sign of a field gun? A gun with a shield and a big barrel?'

'No, but there was one man crouched by the roadside behind
a sort of rifle on legs.'

'Anti-tank rifle. Which side is he on?'

'The left as you approach them. I saw a motor-cycle and
side-car behind the rifle...'

'Anyone in it?'

'No, but there are three more men behind the barrier - it
was one of them that fired at me. I managed to get out of the
car on this side.'

'Get up here quick.' Barnes was unfastening one corner of the tarpaulin and he held it while Jacques scrambled up on to
the transporter deck. 'Get on to the tank behind the cab and lie
flat on the engine covers - the turret should shield you from any bullets that may be flying about.'

'We're going through it?' asked Jacques.

'Yes, so keep your head down.'

Re-fastening the tarpaulin, he climbed back into the cab and
gave the order to move. He held the muzzle of his machine-pistol well below windscreen level and Colburn extracted his
own pistol from under the seat. The transporter began to move
forward, headlights blazing again, while inside the cab three
men gazed fixedly ahead.

'No shooting unless we can't avoid it,' Barnes warned. 'We
stopped and they'll think there's something funny about that
but they'll recognize their own vehicle. We're not stopping
whatever happens and they may lift the pole. Reynolds, get up
some speed and keep going - I'd like at least forty miles an
hour when we reach that barrier, more if you can manage it.'

The transporter began picking up speed fast as Reynolds
put his foot down. He had reached a speed well in excess of forty as they flew past the abandoned Renault and ahead the
lights of the road-block rushed towards them. Barnes was
leaning well forward now, straining his eyes to see as much as possible before they reached the obstacle, which was clearly
visible in their headlights - a narrow pole mounted several
feet above the road. And something else, too. On the left a
soldier lay behind the anti-tank rifle, while beyond rose the silhouette of the motor-cycle and side-car, a soldier already astride the cycle. The pole remained obstinately down. Barnes
shouted.