Tramp in Armour (45 page)

'Barnes, I can see the canal embankment beyond the bottom of this street, so we're on the right road. And we turn right in a
minute.'

Barnes had been waiting for that right-hand turn but he
knew that with both hands occupied with the steering levers
his shoulder was still going to have to bear the brunt of shov
ing that box back against the wall. Would he be able to stand
the pain; Colburn's voice again, a voice edged with tension, the sure sign of further trouble.

'Something coming up ... a soldier in a doorway, a sentry, I
think. Keep moving at this speed - we'll have to turn in less
than a hundred yards...'

Colburn ducked his head inside the turret and waited,
waited for the challenge, the pause, then the first burst of fire from the machine-pistol the sentry held across his chest. His own machine-pistol was gripped in his hands and he looked upward beyond the open rim of the turret. The tank clattered
down over the cobbles, the dark silhouette of irregular rooftops
slid past beyond the turret rim, cold specks of starlight glittered distantly in the late night sky. The moon was low now
and an early morning chill prickled the back of his neck. Still no sound from the sentry. He couldn't stand it any longer: he
peered over the rim. Nothing moved but he thought that he
could still see the shadowed figure by the doorway, a motion
less figure. It was incredible. Some of his astonishment travel
led down the intercom.

'Barnes, he never moved - he never moved. And we're in a
British tank.'

It worked, Barnes thought, the element of surprise worked
there. Perhaps the sentry hadn't done his homework on tank
silhouettes. He might have been posted there from other duties and he was tired out, so when a vehicle came down the streets
of German-occupied Lemont with its headlights blazing he
assumed that it must be all right. He could even~have been
asleep on his feet. But the main thing was it had worked once and it could work again. Colburn's voice spoke urgently.

'I can see the embankment clearly now - we're close to the
turn. You'll have to watch this one, it's narrow. I'll guide you
round...'

Barnes reduced his speed close to zero. He remembered this
bend and it was the worst one they would have to negotiate.
The route they were following had been so simple that he had known exactly where they were ever since leaving the farm
building. Once they had entered the village the way had led straight forward down the first street, across the square, continuing along the street beyond up to the first left-handed turn
down the hill. At the bottom of the hill they turned right and
then it was straight on again by the side road at the foot of the canal embankment. If they could only manage this corner ...
They were almost round the sharp turn when it happened.
They were moving slowly forward and then there was a terrific
jolt and the tank stopped, its engines still ticking over. Barnes
had jammed on the brake, warned by the impact and the scrap
ing sound he had heard just before the jarring crash which
rammed the detonator box savagely against his shoulder. He
struggled against an overwhelming desire to be sick, too shaken to try and thrust the box back while his hands were free. Then he heard Colburn.

'Track's jammed against the left wall. Sorry - my fault.
We'll have to get out of here quickly - that-sentry has started
to walk down the hill. Reverse slowly. We can't go forward.'

Inside the hull Barnes heard the harsh grind of metal plate
along immovable wall as he reversed carefully. Then the tank
stuck. He grimaced and thought for a few seconds. If they
weren't very lucky he could immobilize them. He remembered
once seeing a track split and come apart, so that the tank hull
moved for a few yards while it splayed out track like unrolling
a metal carpet. If that happened they were done for, and there
was that little matter of the sentry coming down the hill to
investigate. They couldn't go forward so they'd have-to go
back. Gritting his teeth, he reversed, hearing, feeling, the
agonized grind of metal over stone. Then they were free again.
And still intact. Colburn guided him round without haste and
then they were moving along the next street, the headlights
probing its emptiness and desolation. Barnes glanced at his watch, the one he had borrowed from Colburn.
3.30
am.

Up in the turret Colburn put the revolver back on the ledge
next to the plunger box and wiped both his hands dry. The
revolver had seemed a more appropriate weapon for one sentry.
Taking a last look back at the dangerous corner he concen
trated on observing the view ahead, issuing occasional instruc
tions to keep Barnes in the dead centre of the street, his mind
chilled. On his right a row of two-storey houses ran down the
side of the street as a continuous wall, the upper-floor windows
just above the level of his turret. To his left ran the high
embankment of the unseen canal, a steep-sloped embankment
at least twenty feet high which closed off the view across open
fields. Ahead lay the street, a canyon of shadow, apparently
deserted, the forward movement of the beams exposing only
empty road. It seemed quite uncanny and as the tank ground
forward Colburn found his nerves screwing up to an almost
unbearable pitch of tension. Within the next few minutes they
were bound to run into something very big.

Barnes was experiencing the same emotion, as far as he could
experience anything beyond the mounting pain which gripped
bis whole body. The tenderness of the shoulder wound was
almost unendurable now as the side of the detonator box sagged against him, a relentless pain which should have
obscured all others, but he could still feel the aching bruise on
top of bis head where the German sentry had knocked him out
and the back of his burnt left hand felt strangely disembodied, as though it might float off the end of his arm. And over it all
flooded a tidal wave of fatigue which threatened to drown his
mind, a wave held back more by pain than by any effort of
will.

Another part of his mind mechanically operated the steering
levers and the two control pedals - the gear-box clutch pedal
on the left and the accelerator on the right. There was a hill in front of them, a hill which rose almost level with the embank
ment then a steady drop with a side turning off to the right,
then another hill beyond that...

Colburn's voice was taut. 'We're running alongside the
canal embankment now - there's a line of houses on the right.
Still no sign of trouble.'

Which was exactly how Barnes was visualizing it. Had they got away with it? Already they were driving along this road at
the very edge of Lemont - the village ended abruptly at the
embankment and beyond there was open country. Jacques had
told him that it was very much of a side road, which was why they had reconnoitred along this route. And now they had left
behind what Barnes had anticipated might well be the grim
mest part of their journey - the dash through the village. What
lay ahead didn't bear thinking about but it almost looked as
though they might reach the airfield. In his mind's eye he saw
the lie of the land ahead. They had come in one way, along
this road to the empty house of Jacques' father, and then for safety's sake they had come back across the fields on the far
side of the embankment... He heard the shot, one single re
port. Then another.

Colburn had been striving to watch all ways at once - the road ahead, the road behind, the line of two-storey houses to
his right and the silhouette of the high embankment which
showed more clearly now against a faint glow. Dawn was on the way. He looked for his watch and remembered that he had
loaned it to Barnes. The line of the embankment was dropping
now as they began to move uphill. He knew that soon he would
be able to see across it and he kept reminding himself to keep a
sharp eye on those houses. There was no reason to suspect any
danger from their darkened windows but they worried him
because they were so close and the upper windows looked
down on the tank. He picked up the revolver and the weapon gave him a sense of security.

The emergency happened so unexpectedly that it almost
took his breath away. A window on an upper floor was flung
open and the curtain must have been attached to it: a pool of
light flooded out and illuminated the tank below. Colburn
looked up and saw a German soldier, his pudding-shaped hel
met clearly visible, staring down. He heard him shout, saw
him reach back into the room and then lift a machine-pistol.
Colburn reacted instantly, raising his revolver, he fired twice.
As the tank moved on the German toppled into the garden
below.

'Barnes, a Jerry opened a window and spotted us. He was
going to shoot but I got in first.' Colburn wished that the
damned intercom wasn't simply one-way. It was like talking to
a ghost. 'If they've got a phone in the house they'll be all over
us soon now. Unless he was alone with a girl. He had his
helmet on,' he added with unconscious humour.

Barnes thought of the joke and smiled grimly. He hoped that the German had been with a girl: if that were the case
she'd probably try and get a neighbour to dump the body into
the convenient canal. Not that it was likely if the village had been evacuated, so they'd better assume a warning was going
out. They must be close to the top of this hill now, and close to
where he had crossed the canal with Jacques over that huge barge. Was there something wrong? He could have sworn he
had heard Colburn suck in his breath. Colburn had sucked in
his breath and now he was no longer looking at the houses or at
the embankment. He was gazing straight ahead and as they
moved over the hill-top his mouth was dry with fear such as he
had not known since they started their fateful journey through Lemont.

From his vantage point at the hill crest he could see over the summit of the hill beyond where a chain of headlights moved towards him, an endless chain which threw up a great glow of
light behind the next hill summit. He had no doubt at all that
he was looking at a column of armoured vehicles advancing
down the road they were moving along, probably a column
sent for the express purpose of intercepting them. My God, he
thought, and I was kidding myself up that we might have got away with it. We're finished now, finished.

'Barnes! There's a whole stream of traffic on the road ahead.
It's still some distance off but it's coming towards us and we'll
meet it in the next few minutes. They're on-to us - it must be
Panzers, a helluva lot of them.'

Barnes' reaction staggered him. He felt the tank pick up speed as it moved down the hill, the tracks grinding round
"faster and faster as they rumbled forward at ever-increasing
pace as though Barnes couldn't wait to meet the oncoming
column in head-on collision. For a moment he thought he had
gone mad and then they reached the bottom of the hill and
stopped. The headlights went out and Barnes rolled back the hood. He paused for a second while he heaved the detonator
box back into position, using both hands to push the case
firmly against the side of the hull. Then he jacked up the seat
so that when he sat down his head would be above the hatch.
He called up to the anxious Colburn.