Ian Slater - World in Flames

“Ours?”

“Don’t know — at Roosbeek. You know it?”

“Not to worry, chief. Got a Michelin in the glove box. Has to be on the line ‘tween here and Brussels, doesn’t it?”

“Right,” said David, with more optimism than he felt.

“Why don’t we just go on to Liege, guv?” suggested Parkin. “It’s not too far. Wait there. Nothing much we—”

“No!” said David. “Train’s full of wounded. Need all the help they can get. Besides, I know some people on it.”

“Oh. Yeah — well, that’s different, in’t?”

The stationmaster was coming back down the platform. Glancing quickly at them, his mood changed. “Be careful,” he told David. “You must have your identification ready. There will be many people there by now.”

“What you mean, guv?” put in the corporal, calling out over the rattle of the Humvee engine. “Lots of people?”

The stationmaster shrugged, as if the answer were surely obvious to all. “Police, the army — they might still be around, you see.”

“Why?” asked Parkin.

“The SPETS, of course. It was they who attacked—”

Before the Belgian could finish, Parkin had unclipped his seat belt, reaching down into the backseat. He produced a red light, its magnetic base thudding on the roof over him as he plugged its adapter into the dashboard lug.

As they sped back from where they’d come, having to use several detours because of rocket damage to the main Brussels road, David told himself it probably wasn’t Lili’s train anyway. There were dozens — goods trains, troop trains, passenger — every day. Had to be one of the busiest lines in all Europe.

The red light swishing in the mist produced a surreal pink glow. David wasn’t sure an illegal MP light was a good idea. It’d get them there faster, but if there were SPETS around, it could draw fire. Momentarily he was ashamed he was thinking about his safety rather than Lili’s, but then again, his marine training had conditioned him against drawing undue attention to himself in any battle zone.

“Don’t worry, sir,” Parkin assured him. “SPETS would’ve been after them for the front — the troops. Wouldn’t bother with anyone else on board. Anyway, this bird of yours — she’s a noncombatant. Right?”

As if that made any difference, David thought. “More non-combatants are killed than soldiers, corporal. Besides, you obviously don’t know about the SPETS.” As he spoke, David instinctively felt for his.45 sidearm. “You carrying any weapons?” he asked Parkin.

The corporal was shocked by the suggestion. “Only my rifle — in the back. Haven’t fired it since me national service. That was two years—” He paused. “Ah, not to worry, sir. The SPETS’re hit-and-run types, right? Won’t bother us. Hardly gonna go runnin’ around in uniform, are they? Civilian garb, most likely.”

“Allied uniforms,” said David, not taking his eyes from the fields, dim outlines of farmhouses, and gaunt, stripped poplars racing by. “They’ve got nothing to lose. They’d be shot as spies either way, in civilian garb or military.”

There was another flashing red light ahead and Parkin started pumping the brake. The Humvee slowed and though visibility was poor, they could soon make out six or seven men, all with submachine guns, possibly in Belgian military uniform, waving them down. Off to the right ahead, David spotted at least fifteen more — spread out — the same number to his left — all in all, a U-shaped formation running down either side of the road, the road blocked by two 3-ton trucks parked so they overlapped each other in a tight V — so you’d be forced to drop to five kilometers per hour in order to negotiate the S-turn.

“Bound to be our blokes, right?” proffered the corporal unconvincingly.

“Don’t know,” said David softly, watching the officer approaching him. “You any good at reversing this jalopy?”

“Not now,” said the corporal. “No way.” He was looking in the rearview mirror. The U-shape had closed to an O, with three men about twenty yards behind them advancing, submachine guns at the ready.

“Out!” shouted the officer ten yards in front of the Humvee. “With your hands up!”

“They’re not Belgians,” said the corporal. “English is too bloody good.”

“Don’t know,” answered David quietly.

“I could try a run,” said the corporal, his foot hovering above the accelerator. “We’d hit the ditch but take a few…”

“Out! Turn off the engine. This is an order! You!” The officer in a black beret was pointing the gun directly at Brentwood. “The holster. Take it off!”

Parkin switched off and David did as he was told, slowly, while trying to make out the insignia of the Belgian regiment. He became aware of a faint tinkling sound, like an old steam kettle all but boiled dry, its metal flexing, giving off the most mournful sound he’d ever heard.

It was only as the officer moved forward that he saw what it was. Beyond the roadblock, across the canal, the locomotive sat deserted, derailed, its boiler punctured, steam bleeding from it like vaporous ghosts floating this way and that until the white became absorbed by the gray of the mist.

There were small groups of men watching, further back behind the locomotive, their figures fading in and out of view in the mist, which, rising for a second, revealed a line of khaki trucks. Further beyond the train, on the canal’s north side, off to his right, David saw a line of other figures, the sticklike projections of their rifles visible now and then as a breeze flustered the mist, which continued to roll across from the canal.

“Looks like a bloody firing squad!” said Parkin, joking uneasily. “Ah — bound to be our blokes.”

“Taisez-vous!” —”Silence!”—said one of the soldiers on the road.

“Venez avec moi!” —”Come with me!”

“What’s your business here?” demanded the senior Belgian officer, a colonel, his military police checking David Brentwood’s ID as closely as the railway inspector had at Ezemaal. The other Belgian officer who’d escorted him and Parkin down the road had now turned back to the roadblock.

“I’ve got a friend on the train,” David told the colonel.

The Belgian looked at David’s face and back at the photograph. “All right, you may pass through,” he said, returning the ID cards. “But don’t get in the way of the ambulance teams. Wait until they tell you it’s all right.”

“The stationmaster at Ezemaal,” said David, “told me SPETS had hit the train. Is that true?”

“Yes.”

Neither in the fright-filled, bloody, and often confused fighting at Pyongyang nor the bone-chilling terror of Stadthagen— the bared teeth of the German shepherd at his throat near the ammunition dump — had David Brentwood felt as he did now, standing on the platform of the first carriage of the still mist-shrouded troop train. As David moved aside while the stretcher bearers negotiated the tight right-angle turn from the carriage down the steep steel-grate steps to the spongy turf, Parkin was standing by the nearest of the six ambulances, talking to one of the Belgian drivers. First aid attendants, who had at first swarmed over the train, were now poking carefully through the chaos on a second sweep. “How many survivors?” Parkin asked the driver.

“Don’t know. We were among the last ambulances to arrive. But not many, I expect. When the SPETS hit, my friend, it is total.” He offered Parkin a cigarette, which the Englishman eagerly accepted. “They leave no one,” continued the Belgian, flicking open his lighter, “who might be able to identify them, you see.”

“Course,” said Parkin, cupping his hand around the flame. “Silly bloody question really.”