A woman beside him spoke up. “What do you want to know?”
“Where did this mysterious soldier come from?” Petain asked.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Do you know why he killed my men?”
“No sir.”
He put a hand on her shoulder, gripped her tight. Without another word, he pulled out his pistol, cocked the hammer, pointed it at the woman’s head, and pulled the trigger. He let go of her shoulder and the body slumped over onto the woman beside her.
The other four women in the truck whimpered. When asked, each one rattled off the same information Lebeau had gathered. When he shot the fourth woman, the remaining maid jumped out of the truck and started running. She tripped over the body with the apron covering its head. Lebeau approached the woman as if he intended to restrain her.
“No need Lebeau.” Petain aimed and shot the woman in the back as she made it to her feet. He hit her just below the right shoulder blade. After a quick examination of the pistol, he decided he needed to schedule some target practice. He would have his assistant block out some time when he got back to the office.
“Lebeau, clean up this mess.” Petain jumped down out of the truck.
“What should we do with the bodies?”
Petain pulled out his kerchief and wiped the sweat off his face. It came away dotted with pink. “Bury them, burn them. I don’t care.”
Petain headed back to his car with mud caked shoes, torn pants, and Jew blood speckling his uniform. His irritation grew.
Returning to his office in the provincial capital of Perpignan failed to improve his mood.
“Call my wife and tell her I’ll be late,” he said to his secretary. “And get that criminalist Locard over here, tout de suite.”
“Yes sir,” the woman said as Petain disappeared into his spacious office.
Emile Locard arrived ten minutes later, flushed from a brisk two block walk to Petain’s office. “You wished to see me sir?”
“Have you heard about the escaped prisoners and murder of seven of our men?” he asked.
“I heard nine,” Locard replied.
“Yes, yes, seven policemen and a couple of civilian drivers returning a group of maids from Chateau Vernet." He handed Locard the four bullet casings he found near Hiram’s foxhole. “What do you make of these?”
“High quality. Thirty caliber cartridges, but I’ll have to measure to make sure. The markings on the base are not familiar◦– SXP300WM. American Winchester, I suppose.”
“The bodies will be here tonight. Dig the slugs out of them, cut them up, or whatever it is you people do with them. I don’t care, but I want you out at the ambush site at first light. The damn road should be fixed by then. Don’t even think about sleep. I need to know what I’m dealing with before I get a call from the Marshall’s office.”
Louis Petain’s granduncle, Marshall Philippe Petain, popularly known as the Lion of Verdun, had been appointed French Prime Minister in 1940, negotiated the French surrender to the Nazis, and became head of state in unoccupied Vichy France. A report regarding the loss of seven policemen and two civilians would cross his desk in the next couple of days, followed by the news of thirty escaped Jews from Camp Joffre. The Marshall’s staff, who had seized the opportunity provided by the Germans to rid France of the Jewish lice, would look to hang someone’s hide on a wall. Captain Louis Petain planned to make damn sure the hide in question belonged to someone else.
7
0630 hours, Tuesday, July 7, 1942, West of Vingrau, Pyrénées-Orientales Department, Vichy France
Hiram scratched out a crude map in the dirt beneath the towering pine trees. “Camp Joffre is about twenty kilometers by road from the harbor at Port Leucate,” Hiram said. “The docks are lightly guarded. A number of the docked cargo vessels are large enough. Should be easy to take one over. With only a few guards on duty at the camp, freeing the prisoners should be pretty simple too. The hard part comes with moving the prisoners from the camp to the dock. We’ll need to hold off any response from the camp while we make our way past the harbor defenses. Once we sail out into the Mediterranean, we’re looking at about thirty nautical miles◦– that’s three hours◦– to the nearest Spanish port. We can bribe our way ashore.”
Danette stared at Hiram, eyes wide when she spoke. “You want to steal a ship?” Deborah translated.
“With a large enough diversion, we have a chance,” Hiram said.
Barbara lit up as Deborah spoke. “Like freeing the other five thousand prisoners at the camp?”
“Exactly,” Hiram said.
“How much time do we have?” Sarah said.
“Not much,” Hiram said. “According to Wiseman’s source, the inmates in F and J Blocks will be moved to Drancy in mid-August.” Hiram prayed that the recent events surrounding the escape of the thirty maids wouldn’t accelerate the timetable. He planned to keep an eye on the camp.
Shortly after breakfast, Hiram led his thirty new recruits deeper into the wilderness. Adaptive camouflage uniforms with matching body armor and helmets replaced the delicate cotton blouses and skirts the women wore the previous day. Dress shoes were set aside in favor of hefty black boots that altered their once feminine gait. Although the location they spent their first night offered suitable cover, he wanted more distance between them and their pursuers. The new campsite he had selected rested miles from any settlements, near the abandoned village of Périllos. On the hike to their new temporary home, Hiram, with Deborah’s help, talked to his troops about maneuvering through the woods, about keeping an eye on their surroundings and on the others in the team. His unfamiliarity with this version of the world made it hard to assume anything. He couldn’t be sure if hunters moved through these woods or if wolves sought out easy prey. His mini-lessons kept them safe from French Policemen, while his eyes searched for more native predators.
After two hours of hiking they reached a small break in the forest. While the women rested and drank from water bottles, Hiram deployed one of his aerial drones to detect any intruders long before they became a threat. He opened up the portal and reached in. With the exception of his sniper rifle and the nine-millimeter pistols, most of his weaponry consisted of nearly silent rail guns like the M22 assault rifles◦– an IDF standard. Training the women in the isolation of the woods wouldn’t attract too much attention. He retrieved an M22 assault rifle for each of his would-be soldiers.
He issued a rifle to each woman, removing the standard holographic sites since it would take several days to train the former prisoners on their proper use. Despite their light weight, the weapons seemed bulky and awkward against the thin build of most of the women. But a few of the women held the carbon fiber and steel rifles with confidence, as if today were just another day out in the field.
The remainder of the morning was spent familiarizing the women with the weapons. Safety had been Hiram’s main concern in turning over such powerful tools to such green hands. “Don’t point a weapon at anything you don’t intend to kill,” he told them over and over again, with Deborah by his side translating. “Don’t put your finger on the trigger unless you are ready to fire.” They listened well and learned quickly. By lunchtime, Hiram began to trust his new team without much hesitation.
It took most of the afternoon for the women to become comfortable with the weapons. The M22’s quiet design and minimal recoil certainly helped. After the initial how-to on proper loading, Hiram allowed for a short period of target practice. He walked behind them, Deborah at his side, watching them at work. Firing. Reloading. Firing again. A few of the women fired tight shot groups after only a handful of rounds. By the time he made the call to end the exercise, he had identified the best shots among them: Ester, Lea, Frieda, Ellen, and even Danette. Hiram intended to test their skill. He wanted all thirty of these women, otherwise inexperienced in combat, to be able to protect themselves. Even if they presented little skill in the initial session, he needed them all to know how to put down an assailant. He needed to make sure Danette made it out of this mess alive.