A burst of machinegun fire drew Hiram’s attention to the right. Through the scope, he saw one of Donath’s machine gun nests by the railway bridge engaging infantrymen attempting to cross from the island on foot. They must have crossed over the upstream lock on foot, then climbed onto the railway bridge. The LVF men fell one after another. Many dove into the water to avoid joining the slaughtered pile on the bridge. The men in the water struggled against the current. Drown, you bastards.
He swung the rifle back to the north. The two lead tanks slew their turrets in the direction of the machine gun nest. The scope flared as an artificial sun passed over him, revealing the lead tank commander in high relief.
Hiram pulled the trigger. The lead tank’s gun blossomed flame as its 88mm main gun fired. And, three AT-7 anti-tank rockets leapt out of the night headed for the Panzers. Hiram assumed he hit the LVF officer. Even if the shot missed, an AT-7 struck the tank at the bezel ring, popping the turret off like a champagne cork. The 88mm round from the Panzer landed in the nearest of the two machine gun nests. Dirt, broken weapons, and body parts erupted from the crater.
Hiram turned back to the tanks. Three unmoving, mechanical corpses sat along the road. A legless man pulled himself away from the wreckage. The AT-7s never disappointed. On the railway bridge, the LVF infantrymen made another push to cross the bridge. With one of the machine guns silenced, they had a chance, he supposed. Hiram, armed with his grandfather’s trusty M2010, began picking off the LVF men almost seventeen hundred meters away.
“Hawk, this is Echo, over,” Charlotte said through his headset.
Hiram took out two more soldiers on the bridge.
“Echo, this is Hawk, over.”
“Hawk, the enemy commander on the far shore is gathering up his men and loading them into the halftracks, over.”
“Roger Echo. Advise if they begin moving, over.”
“Wilco Hawk. Echo out.”
The LVF commander would have to find another way across the river somewhere downstream. Their new route awarded Hiram and his teams two more hours to clear out.
Hiram spotted a straggler trying to make his way across the bridge. The man looked down at the water, and then in Hiram’s direction. Hiram fired and the man fell across the wooden slats at the center of the bridge. After two minutes, and no further movement on the bridge, he checked on Deborah in the boxcar below.
“Deborah, how is it going down there?”
“We’re loading as fast as we can!”
“We need to be gone in an hour, maximum,” he said. “Speed it up.”
“Almost done the first five cars. The rest should be quicker.”
Hiram watched the railway bridge for another five minutes, but no new LVF soldiers appeared.
Simone’s voice broke his concentration. “Hawk, enemy column is heading north, over.”
The news erased some of his unease. He surveyed the bridge and the area around the train before climbing down to the ground, his left ankle objecting all the way. Nora waited for him at the bottom. She helped him down from the last rung of the ladder.
“Thanks,” he said.
She nodded and said, “I’ve got good news, bad news, and worse news.” The translator almost kept up with her.
“Tell me,” Hiram said.
“Emma has freed Ellen, Myriam, and Isabelle, with the help of the French Partisans. They’re back in uniform and ready to fight. That’s the good news.” Nora paused. “The bad news - Barbara’s family is not here. Her husband and two sons are missing. According to some of the other prisoners, they didn’t board the train in Drancy. No one seems to know why.”
“Diane?”
“She’s going to live, but they roughed her up a bit. Isabelle said they raped her, but Diane wouldn’t admit it. She’s in bad shape. She’s with her family in the first truck.”
“And the others?”
She nodded toward the first cattle car in line. “In the next car.” She looked down at the ground. “As we thought, all dead. Ester, Anna, Justine, Stephanie, little Solange. The pigs threw them in there like garbage.” She wiped her eyes and took a breath. “Fourteen more in there too. Two male prisoners I don’t know, two men I think were part of the train’s crew, and ten French policemen. Two of them dressed like prisoners. Why do you think they are out of uniform?”
Hiram shrugged. “Don’t know for sure. Inspector Locard told me Captain Petain tried to keep the whole matter of your escape quiet.”
“Don’t suppose he’ll be able to keep this quiet.”
“Hawk, this is Echo, over.” Simone’s voice, not Charlotte’s. The Babel Fish translated. Now what?
“Echo, this is Hawk, over.”
“Hawk, pull up the feed from drone one, over?”
“Roger Echo. Checking now, out.” Hiram pulled the C2ID2 auxiliary display out of its pouch on his combat vest and powered it on. He tapped a few icons and a thermal image came into focus.
“Echo, this is Hawk. What am I looking at, over?’
“Hawk, I think it’s another German column, over.”
Hiram tapped an icon to overlay a map on the display. The line of vehicles moved north through the town of Diarville, about twenty-five kilometers south of Pont-Saint-Vincent. The convoy looked similar to the mechanized infantry company they defeated. The vehicles traveled at about twenty-five kilometers per hour, their headlights switched on, heedless of potential Allied air attacks.
“Not German,” Hiram said. “LVF. French Nazis working for the SS.”
“Bastards,” Simone said.
“Can you overlay the route we’re taking to Besançon on this map?” Nora said. “If we can reach the town of Pierreville and cross this bridge, we can put the La Madon River between us and them.”
“But they could cross further south, here in Ceintrey and cut us off.” Hiram pointed to the bridge on the map.
“Not if we blow it up first,” Nora said.
Hiram did some time and distance calculations in his head. The LVF column could cross the ten kilometers to Ceintrey in about a half-hour. Port Saint Vincent was about fifteen kilometers from Ceintrey and the railbikes could travel faster than the LVF column, but it would still be a race to the bridge.
It was all academic, if their own convoy of trucks couldn’t get across the bridge in Pierreville first.
“Deborah, we leave in fifteen minutes,” he said. “Anyone not on the trucks gets left behind.”
“Got it,” she said, and began shouting orders to Team Charlie.
Hiram turned back to Nora. “I need to get a few more charges out of my pod. Can you keep an eye out for me? We don’t need any of Donath’s men knowing about it.”
“Of course.”
Hiram inched closer to the mutilated locomotive, hoping to use the structure for added cover. Nora stood a few feet away looking up and down the train.
Hiram activated the portal in his pack, setting it to the moment he had pulled out the drift mines he’d used on the locks. He reached inside and hauled out the floating mines one-by-one, thanking himself for situating them by the pod entry so he wouldn’t have to attempt a climb down another damn ladder. A total of four drift mines sat on the ground beside his pack a minute later. Forty kilos of high explosive, enough to weaken, if not destroy both bridges over the La Madon River.
“Okay, I’ll take Barbara with me,” Hiram said.
Nora held up her hand. “You need to stay with Petain. I’ll take Catherine on the railbike.”