LITMIR.BIZ

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engine shed which he and Tubby Mayne had made. Fifteen years ago now. A lot had happened in that time. The Depression, the War, marriage, growing up. Tubby had been killed in the Battle of Britain.

      He looked at his watch – Morgan and Beckwith had been under the bridge for almost fifteen minutes. And then he heard the train whistle in the distance. It was still a few miles away, he thought. Probably approaching one of the three tunnels that lay between San Severino and Tolentino.

      Under the bridge Morgan had heard it too, and the same possibilities had occurred to him. But by this time Beckwith had placed all the charges and was now scurrying through the girders, squeezing the detonators on the black-coded time pencils. As the ampoules shattered, the acid began eating into the thin wire, and in roughly ten minutes – the ‘roughly’ was a sore point among users – the wires would break, releasing the springs and slamming firing pins into initiators, exploding the charges and hopefully, in this case, dropping the bridge into the river.

      Morgan could hear the wheeze of the approaching locomotive. It couldn’t be much more than a mile away.

      Beckwith was only a few feet away now, breathing heavily as he reached for the final device. The last thing Morgan heard was his sergeant’s mutter of frustration, and then the charge went off, tearing Beckwith limb from limb and hurling Morgan himself against an iron girder with the force of a hurricane. Both bodies dropped into the surging river.

      Thirty yards away Farnham spun round to see the bridge still standing, the smoke clearing to reveal Corrigan on the far bank, pointing at something in the water. He just had time to notice that the German officer had vanished from the station platform when the man re-emerged in the forecourt barking orders at the standing lorries. There was a sound of boots hitting the ground.

      Realizing he’d been holding his breath, Farnham took in a gulp of cold air and tried to think. As far as he could tell the best way out was the way they’d come in – the only alternative was to retreat across the bridge and then they’d be trapped between cliff and river.

      ‘Get across to Neil,’ he told Tobin, who was crouching wild-eyed beside him. ‘Tell him to keep Jerry at a distance. I’m going to check the bridge.’ Without waiting for an answer he launched himself across the space towards the river’s edge, reaching it just in time to see what looked like a severed leg bobbing beyond the circle of illumination offered by the searchlights. On the far bank Corrigan and Imrie were gazing hopelessly at the water, and for a few seconds Farnham felt equally paralysed. The sound of the approaching train mingled with the clatter of boots in the forecourt and the guttural shouts of the German NCOs.

      He forced himself to think. Morgan and Beckwith must have been under the bridge long enough to place and prime all the charges, but Farnham was certain that only one of them had exploded. The bridge would probably still go up, but when? There’d been no discussion of which time pencils would be used – making sure everyone was on the same page had never been one of Morgan’s strengths. If they made a run for it now the Germans might have time to save the bridge, but could he ask the others to die holding them off when he wasn’t even sure the bridge was going to blow?

      He gulped in another lungful of air and decided he couldn’t. ‘Get back over here,’ he shouted at Corrigan and Imrie, who both looked at him stupidly for a second and then started clambering back up from the water’s edge.

      A second later the Germans opened fire, presumably in response to the silent Stens of Rafferty, Tobin and McCaigh.

      Farnham began zig-zagging his way back towards the shelter of the guardhouse. He was about halfway there when a second charge went off behind him, and then a third. He turned to see a huge cloud of smoke rising to obscure the cliffs beyond as the far end of the bridge, with what sounded eerily like a huge sigh, sank heavily into the river.

      As the smoke cleared he could see Corrigan and Imrie climbing shakily to their feet on the far bank. The bad news was that they couldn’t get back across; the good news was that neither could the Germans. Farnham gestured to them to escape along the tracks and after only a few seconds’ hesitation Corrigan flashed a thumbs up and turned away, pulling Imrie after him.

      Farnham resumed his run towards the guardhouse, just as a hail of bullets swept over his head. The train was now entering the station, pouring a dark plume of smoke at the sky and half drowning the sound of the German guns. With something akin to a leap of the heart Farnham realized that it was going to pull right through the station, effectively cutting them off from the German troops who were inching their way forward from the end of the platform.

      Reaching the shelter of the guardhouse, he opened up with his own Sten and saw a German fall, though whether from his or Rafferty’s fire he couldn’t tell. The Italian locomotive was still coming forward, and at this rate it might even reach what remained of the bridge.

      ‘The boss and Morrie are dead,’ Farnham told the others. The edge of panic had disappeared and he now felt almost supernaturally calm and collected. ‘Corrigan and Imrie were on the other side of the river when the bridge went down. They’re making their own way home. We’re going out the way we came in. OK?’

      The others nodded at him.

      The train was almost on top of them. ‘So let’s go,’ Farnham said, leading off at a run towards the line of trees beside the river. To their left two more charges went off on the broken bridge, momentarily eclipsing the deafening hiss of the braking locomotive.

      The train was composed entirely of closed and lightless wagons, and once away from the bridge area the four SAS men found themselves cloaked once more in the relative safety of darkness. They raced towards the road, occasionally stumbling over rough pieces of ground, expecting to hear gunfire behind them at any moment, but the German troops were either very green or unusually disorganized, and none came. Reaching the road, Farnham resisted the temptation to seek the safety of the high ground they already knew, instead ploughing on through the orchard opposite. From this they emerged into an open field, which in the darkness seemed to stretch for miles.

      This was the escape route they had decided on earlier that night in the OP. If anyone got separated from the party the plan was to rendezvous a quarter of a mile north of the tiny hill village of San Giuseppe, which was itself about six miles east of San Severino. The spot in question might be a swamp or a local trysting place – their map was somewhat limited, to say the least – but if Corrigan and Imrie escaped from the Germans then that would be where they’d expect to find their comrades waiting.

      And then they could all cheerfully hike their way to the sea.

      Farnham suddenly felt cold all over. The remaining radio had been in Corrigan’s bergen, and that was still lying where Corrigan had left it, on the floor of the railway hut. They had no way of contacting the Navy, and if they missed the pick-up there would be no second chance. How could he have been so stupid?

      As they tried to hurry across the wet field, slipping and sliding in the mud, he told himself it was done, and there was no point in dwelling on the fact. They still had forty-eight hours to go, or two whole nights. The Germans would be looking for them, but they couldn’t have that many men in the area, and with any luck the Anzio landing – which would be starting in an hour or so – would give the enemy something more important to think about.

      He became aware that Rafferty had stopped a few yards ahead of him. ‘The railway’s only just over there,’ the younger man said, pointing to a dark line of bushes away to their right. ‘Don’t you think we’d be better off walking down the track than wading through all this muck? Just for a while, anyway. They can’t follow us with their lorries, can they? And if they try backing up that train we’ll hear it coming.’

      It was a good idea, Farnham realized. Rafferty’s brain seemed to be working better than his own. ‘Let’s do it,’ he said.

      The four men struggled across the last thirty yards of mud, bulldozed their way through the line of bushes and on to the track. Away to the right, they could see nothing of the station half a mile away – only the faint yellow glow which hung above it.

      As they started walking in the opposite

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