“It will only take a few hours even traveling the back roads,” Remy said. He had made it very clear that he agreed that the car was the smartest way for us to travel. It seemed that Marcel was the only one with any reservations, but even he could see there was little alternative.
They took the front seats automatically—Remy driving, Marcel beside him in the passenger seat with the map. On an ordinary day in the field, I might have argued for a more active role, but I was distracted, staring down at my misshapen ankle and wondering how long it was going to take me to be useful again. As we neared the village of Salon-La-Tour, I was startled out of my reverie when Marcel suddenly cursed.
“What’s this…” Remy asked uncertainly. A few hundred feet ahead, at the bottom of a hill with a long, gradual slope, a cluster of German vehicles stretched across the road.
“It’s a roadblock,” Marcel muttered.
“Turn around,” I said, leaning forward to rest my hands against the back of the front seat. Remy did not react, so I said it again, more urgently this time. “Remy, turn the car around.”
Marcel glanced back at me, and his gaze dropped towards my foot.
“Our options are limited…” he said, then he swallowed. “There’s nowhere to turn off unless we try to drive through a field, and that will only draw attention to us. And if we turn around now, they’ll surely follow us.”
A sudden vision of Elwood and Booth at the airfield flashed through my mind. Turner assured me it was safe for me to return to the field, but what if he was wrong, what if the Germans had already been alerted to our mission, and by someone right there in Baker Street?
“There’s every chance that roadblock might have been setup to look for us. We have to turn around!”
Marcel looked at me, stricken.
“Fleur, we can’t out-run them. We’d have to ditch the car at some point, and you can’t even walk!”
“What’s the alternative?” I said fiercely. “Surrender? Never!”
Remy cursed and spun the car around in a U-turn so violent I rolled from one side of the back seat to the other. Just as the car shifted direction, a shot sounded, and the car veered wildly off the road. Marcel was caught off guard by the sudden shifts, and as he was thrown around, his head hit the window beside him with such force that the glass shattered and he slumped in his seat.
“Remy!” I exclaimed. “For God’s sake, keep your head!”
“The car is pulling!” he shouted, his voice shaking. “The tire is gone. What do I do?”
Just then, the back window shattered behind me and the scent of gunpowder tore through the car as I fumbled for the Sten gun. We spent weeks at training learning how to assemble them quickly—how to move our hands without pinching the skin between the components, how to put the pieces together without conscious thought, eventually how to assemble the whole thing blindfolded, working by muscle memory only. I was grateful for that now as the gun came together in seconds, and I swung up on my knees to peek out the back window of the car. The Germans were scrambling into armored cars to give chase, and it wouldn’t take them long to catch up to us.
“Fleur,” Remy cried, and when I glanced back, he was flicking his panicked gaze between the road and Marcel, who was limp and unconscious. There was a wound in his left shoulder and blood was already seeping through his shirt. Behind us, the Germans again fired at the car but the shots flicked up dust on the road behind us.
They were trying to shoot out the rest of our tires. If they caught up to us, Remy could run, but Marcel and I would be defenseless.
“There!” I shouted, pointing to a barn off the main road.
“But they’ll just follow us—” Remy protested, voice thick with tears. He was panicked beyond reason now, and I knew I had to take charge.
“I have a plan. Pull into the damned barn!”
Remy pulled the car off the road and brought it to a stop in the barn so abrupt that Marcel was thrown forward. I grabbed his bloodied shirt and caught the fabric just in time to stop his head from slamming into the dashboard.
The path forward was crystal clear. There was no way to save all three of us—but there was also no reason we all had to be captured.
“Get him out of the car,” I ordered, dragging the canvas bag with me as I limped from the back seat. Remy was moving slowly and visibly in shock. “Remy, now. Do it now!”
He shook himself, then raced around to the passenger side to hoist Marcel over his shoulder.
“What do I do?” he asked me. He looked like a child in that moment—a frightened little boy who needed reassurance and guidance. Just the thought brought my Hughie to mind, and my frustration with the young man softened.
“Climb into the loft and pull the ladder up behind you,” I instructed him quickly. “Hide yourselves and the ladder behind the hay—and don’t come out, no matter what you hear or what happens. If the Germans come in and Marcel makes a noise, hold your hand over his mouth.”
“But—”
I couldn’t spare any more time to reassure him. I drove away then, spinning the wheels violently as I went. I glanced up into the rearview mirror in time to see Remy struggling up the ladder with Marcel over his shoulder. It wasn’t a great plan, but it gave them at least a chance, especially if I could draw the Nazis away to buy them some time.
Could the Germans have seen how many people were in our car from that roadblock, even at such a distance? If it all happened so fast, perhaps they didn’t even realize there were three of us in the car. If I got lucky, maybe they wouldn’t even go back to look for Remy and Marcel.
It was easy to drive haphazardly running on only three tires. I swerved from one side of the road to the other, driving as fast as the car would allow me to travel, moving toward the armored vehicles even as they drove toward me.
The gap between their vehicles and mine seem to be shrinking by the second. When a shot rang out and another one of the Citroen’s tires blew, I jammed on the brake. As the car came to a stop I threw myself from the driver’s seat, pulling the canvas bag behind me. There was a tree ahead—just an apple tree, but it would give me something like cover. I scrambled across the ground on all fours to reach it, then lined up the boxes of ammunition on the ground in front of my legs.
Behind me, the German cars came to a stop right near the Citroen. I glanced back and did a quick count of vehicles.
My ploy had worked. All four German cars had followed the Citroen. There was shouting—in German, and then in clumsy English and French, ordering me to give myself up. But I had been praying for a moment like this one for years. The revenge I craved was right in front of me now—all I had to do was take it.
I leaned around the tree and fired off rounds in warning toward the Germans. It would not deter them, but it seemed only fair to give them a chance to flee before I started shooting at them.
Shots came back toward me in return, and the time for warning fire was over. I had eight boxes of ammunition but the Sten shot so quickly that if I wasn’t careful, I would burn through it in minutes. I had to draw this out to make sure that Remy had a chance to hide properly.
For the next thirty minutes, I toyed with the Germans. I rationed those bullets as if they were made of pure gold—firing rounds, pausing and allowing them to come closer, firing more. I felt no guilt when I saw some of those men go down hard, but I was somewhat surprised to find I also felt no joy. Collectively, the Germans had taken so much from Europe and they had taken so much from me, but when the moment for revenge came, I fired that gun for an altogether different reason.