he went on, looking out through the doorway, ‘form a line of defence. Two of you behind this hut, the other two behind the engine shed over there. If Jerry starts pouring out of those lorries and heading this way, start shooting.’ He pushed a lock of unruly hair back inside the beret and turned to Beckwith. ‘Come on, Morrie, we’ve got a bridge to blow.’
There was still no movement in the distant forecourt, though this time Morgan thought he could hear laughter from inside one of the lorries. The officer had not returned – if McCaigh had been right about his destination maybe the bastard was constipated.
As Corrigan and Imrie, suitably coated and helmeted, walked along the track towards the bridge, Morgan and Beckwith skirted round the pool of light, reached the bank of river some thirty yards downstream and then worked their way back along the water’s edge. Climbing up into the underslung girder was as easy as it had looked from the OP, and they encountered no difficulties crossing to the other side along the wide, L-shaped beams. The only real problem was a distinct lack of light, but then Beckwith had always claimed he could put together explosive charges in his sleep.
On the bridge above them Corrigan and Imrie had stopped to light cigarettes and were now leaning over the parapet, puffing away as contentedly as their German predecessors had done. Away to their right the lorries were still sitting in the forecourt.
The striking of a match betrayed the position of the missing officer. ‘The bastard’s standing on the platform,’ Imrie suddenly realized.
‘Maybe he’s waiting for a train,’ Corrigan said flippantly.
A few seconds later the two men were staring at each other, suddenly aware of what that might mean.
Thirty yards away, crouched behind a corner of the stone-built engine shed, Farnham was mentally sifting through the same implications. If the lorries were there to meet a train, then the chances of it arriving either just before or just after the bridge blew up were pretty good. But was there any way to take the train down with the bridge? He couldn’t think of one. It was already too late – Beckwith would have the time pencils in place by now. They would have to trust to luck.
The mingled smell of coal, tar and oil was heavy in Farnham’s nostrils, taking him back to his schooldays and the frequent illicit trips to Bishop’s Stortford 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
