A middle-aged man in overalls cycled slowly down the back road from Saint-Georges, the front wheel of his bike creaking on each turn, until he heard a low whistle from the steep bank above him. He clambered off his bike, lit his pipe and waited. As he sent a contented cloud of smoke into the air, Nancy and Tardivat emerged from the tree line and greeted him.
He didn’t bother speaking, just handed them a sheet of paper, turned his bike around in the road and set off again. Nancy would have kissed him if he’d only stayed still long enough. He was a train driver who had spent thirty years loving every engine, every sleeper and rail on his patch, and now he did everything he could to help the Resistance destroy them. Just as long as you didn’t ask him to get chatty. Nancy was pretty sure she could rely on him, but they had set up this meet the day the first lines of the poem had been transmitted, and she couldn’t be certain he’d heard the next lines yesterday evening on Ici Londres until she heard that squeak of his bike.
“How long have we got?” Tardi asked as she studied the paper.
“Forty minutes.”
They picked up the rest of the team from their cover farther off the road and forded the Ruisseau de Mongon, a fierce little tributary of the Truyère, without being spotted, dodging between the beech trees and pines. Nancy was grateful for every moment she had spent on these tracks now and every hour of PT she’d endured. The climb was fierce; they had to drag themselves up, reaching from one slender trunk to the next until they reached a narrow promontory where they could see both the road and the rail bridge.
Nancy got out her compact and Tardivat raised his eyebrows. “I assure you, mon colonel, you look beautiful.”
“Grow up, Tardi,” she said, then rather ruined the effect by sticking her tongue out at him. She checked the position of the sun, flicked open the compact and twisted the mirror, angling it to give three quick flashes. Far below them on the river, a single flash answered them. Nancy flashed the mirror again, twice this time.
“They’ll blow it in twenty minutes?” Tardi said, looking at his watch.
“That’s right. Now, shall we get a move on? All clear on the plan?”
Jean-Clair rolled his eyes. “Mon colonel, I can draw this bridge in my sleep and every time I swallow I taste steel.” He patted his backpack. “Can we blow it up now?”
Nancy felt her lips twitch in a smile, her fingers tingle. This is living, she thought. This is what it is to live.
“Roger that.”
Tardi, Mateo and Juan headed out first, then eight minutes later Nancy followed with Franc and Jean-Clair, staying high up the slope where the trees gave them some cover, and looking down on the lower track that the Germans patrolled, winding its way along the line of the river, halfway down between them and the water. Nancy was as close as she could get now without losing the cover of the trees; that left a hundred meters of open ground sloping fiercely downward before they got to the concrete pilings.
“Ready?”
The two men nodded without looking at her, focused only on the base of the bridge. Mateo was clenching and unclenching his fists.
Nancy looked at her watch. “Now!”
A muffled rumbling explosion from the road bridge, then another sharper detonation and Nancy saw a great plume of stone and smoke fountaining up in the center of the river. Franc and Jean-Clair set off down the slope at once; she couldn’t resist twisting sideways to see the patrol on the western edge of the path spinning toward the sound and straight into a burst of machine-gun fire from the trees. They crumpled to the floor.
Then she ran.
Jean-Clair had already clambered to the top of the concrete piling twenty feet above their heads, fastened and tied a rope and thrown it down to them. His mother had been right about his climbing abilities and she was right to be proud, he was like a rat up a drainpipe, the darling. Franc, his sister had told her, used to sneak out of their house to visit his girlfriends in Montluçon by climbing out of their bedroom window and over the roofs in darkness. And ever since she’d joined forces with Gaspard, Franc had been terribly respectful toward her, trying to make up for plotting to kill her on day one. They both were confident with explosives now too, handling the deadly blocks with confident attention. So they were her bridge team.
She walked up the wall, leaning back on the rope, and Franc followed her. Jean-Clair gathered up the rope and returned it to his pack, and she checked her watch again.
“Fifteen minutes.”
The sound of scattered small arms fire came from the direction of the road bridge. Rodrigo and his team had orders to try to keep the Germans as busy as possible.
Nancy, Franc and Jean-Clair started up the iron steps. Don’t look up, don’t look down. The crisscross ironwork cut the world into impossible shapes. Twisted diamonds of sky and river, bank and woodland. A handrail of some kind would have been nice though. You’d have thought the greatest engineer in France might have considered a banister. No such bloody luck.
The patrols on top of the bridge and in the guard towers would stop staring at the remains of the road bridge soon. She thought in the rhythm of her jogging steps. South side top, blind from this angle. South side bottom, dead she hoped. North side top, blind soon, north side bottom, not blind, not dead. Hopefully still distracted. If they could reach the top of the arch before any of them thought to look up into the ironwork, they might not be seen at all. It felt good, the burn in her muscles, the thrill of doing what she had trained for. Even the weight of the plastic in her backpack felt right.
Nearly there. She checked her watch again, and at the same moment heard the warning bell above her on the tracks. The ten-minute warning. Shit. They pushed on at the final ascent, her legs screaming in protest, and she could hear Jean-Clair panting behind her.
This is it. She looked above her, searching for the right joints where the charges needed to be placed to make a chain of three blocks across the width of the rail track, four pounds of explosive in each block to tear a line slicing through the top of the arch like a hot knife.
OK. Just there.
They spread out, Nancy staying on the walkway, the two men clambering, nimble as monkeys, out across the joists. Smooth, practiced movements, no need to chat. They had both heard the bell too and knew exactly what it meant.
Nancy threaded the detonation cord through the explosive. Jean-Clair was walking, apparently on air, balancing on one of the central cross bars, his packs of explosive already in place. He caught the coil as she threw it, passed it through his own charge, slung it across to Franc. Franc buried it in his own, turned to them and grinned.
“Six minutes,” she said.
Now for the pressure trigger. Franc swung across the lacework, passed Jean-Clair and back to Nancy and took it from her, then hauled himself upward to the point immediately under the rails.
“Jean-Clair,” she said, “get over here.”
“Just want to be sure it’s secure, mon colonel.”
Franc reached up, pushing the pressure switch into position where the weight of the train would set off the fireworks. They could get well away from the blast in six minutes. This was almost too…
The shots struck sparks from the iron that flew up into her face and almost blinded her. She fell sideways. Franc cried out, fell heavily onto the walkway and rolled. Nancy grabbed hold of his belt, yanking him back. The pressure switch bounced on the iron and spun into the empty air. Franc’s hand shot out, just brushing it as it spiraled out into the river and disappeared. It was too far for them to even hear the splash.
“Mon colonel…” Jean-Clair said, and something was wrong with his voice.
She twisted round toward him as another spatter of gunfire sparked and clanged around them. Jean-Clair was gripping one of the central struts with one arm, slumped in the V of a crosspiece. His shirt was already soaked with blood, and Nancy could see the pulse of another wound in his thigh.
She abandoned the walkway and scrambled out toward him on her hands and knees along a foot-wide beam, keeping her eyes on his face.
“Jean-Clair, we can get you down.”
“The pressure switch?” he panted, each word an effort.
“It’s gone, forget it. The Nazis get to keep this bridge. Give me your hand.”
He shook his head. Stared at her. “Give me a grenade, mon colonel.”
She understood. A grenade would do nothing to the bridge, but exploded here, right here, it would be enough to set off the charges.
“No.”
“Mon colonel,” he said, “please.”
He couldn’t say any more. She pulled one from her belt. Put it in his hand, closed his fingers around it.
“Take out the pin.”
She took out the pin and brushed his knuckles with her fingertips.
“For France,” she said, and he managed to smile, his eyes half open.
“For freedom,” he whispered.
“Nancy!” Franc was screaming, reaching for her.
She inched backward across the beam until he grabbed her, dragging her away over the last couple of feet, then shoved her down the walkway in front of him.
There was no need to look at her watch now; they could feel the earth shaking as the train bore down on them. Above their heads they could hear the desperate warning shouts of the guards, but they were lost in the thunderous metallic roar of the approaching train. She ran. The bridge shook as it took the weight of the engine, and she looked up as the bridge became a flashing nightmare of clattering metal.
Franc shouted her name again and she realized they were at the rappel point. Not enough time. Franc had already anchored his rope and started his descent. She wove her rope around her as another burst of gunfire came from the bank, then she stepped out into the air and looked up—the train was already nearing the other side of the bank.
Her fall was too fast, not fast enough, the rope hot and tearing at her fingers. They had fucked it up, the train was going to make it over before the charges…
Everything happened at once. She hit the water hard, and fumbled to release herself from the rope as the current turned her upside down and above her the charges blew. One, two. One, two. Grenade, middle charge, west side, east side. The world was noise and water. She was deaf and blind, turned over in the river, a wave of heat and light striking her as the rocks and roots grabbed at her legs. Her lungs began to ache. Then she felt a hand pulling at her wrist, hauling her out, and she took a great shuddering breath of air.
Tardi was dragging her ashore. She shoved him away and staggered upright in time to see Franc being pulled out of the water by Mateo. Then they stood there, mute and staring.
The smoke plume began to clear and Nancy saw the rip they had made in Eiffel’s beautiful ironwork. The rest of the bridge groaned and swayed, but the train was still there, not moving. Why hadn’t it raced away? She rubbed her eyes, trying to clear the river water out of her vision. No. The last carriage had been above the site of the explosion, now it hung between the twisted bars. It was jerking downward, pulling the train back.
Her hearing began to come back, the high whistle fading. Through the shrieking of the metal she could hear other sounds: screams, the screams of the soldiers in the last carriage. Too amazed to move, Nancy watched men from the train still on the bridge trying desperately to uncouple it and the pleading cries of the men suspended in the air who realized what they were doing.
Other soldiers were smashing the windows of the carriages nearer the engine and scrambling out, running north over the bridge, a panicking mass. One fell, or was shoved out of the way, his greatcoat flapping, arms flailing as he struck the water. The train shifted back again, the bridge swayed and more men went tumbling into nothingness.
Then the void won. Slowly, then very fast, the last carriage swung free and the whole train was pulled backward in a rush, the metal work sighed and twisted sideways as if trying to shrug it off and the train plunged four hundred feet into the water. Eiffel’s masterpiece did not quite fall, but it sagged and twisted sideways, the line cut, the arch pulled low. It groaned, like an animal in pain.
Someone was shouting her name. “Nancy! Now!”
Tardi, shaking her shoulders.
“Fall back!” she said, and they raced together back into the woods, making for the rendezvous point, just as the fixed machine gun on the opposite bank found its range and began spattering the shingle under their feet with bullets.