Scott Turow - Ordinary Heroes

I had watched the mangled, eviscerated, and limbless men who came off the Red Cross vehicles in Nancy, and I'd encountered corpses now and then, as on the day with Colonel Maples, but I'd seen a man die only once before, when I'd been sent as the departmental representative to a hanging. I had looked away immediately when I heard the trap sprung. But now the moment of death struck me as far more ordinary than I might have thought. Life was headed toward this instant and we all knew it, no matter how much we willed ourselves to forget. Wiping the wire on his gloves before returning it to the side pocket of his combat jacket, Robert Martin was the master of that knowledge. He appeared entirely unaltered by what he'd done.

Instead, he waved us forward, while he went flying down the track toward the locomotive. By the time we arrived, the other German soldier was on the ground with his face covered in blood. Antonio had stopped the engine on the young soldier's orders, then smashed the boy across the cheek with a wrench as soon as he tried to mount the ladder to the cab. He was moaning now, a low guttural sound from deep within his body. From the looks of it, I wasn't sure he was going to live, but Martin stuffed a handful of leaves into the long gash that was once the boy's mouth, and bound him with the laces of the low rawhide boots he'd worn under gaiters.

Then we stood in silence beside the enormous steam-driven machine that Antonio and the reseau had stolen. It was the height of at least four men and probably one hundred feet long, with six sets of steel wheels polished by the tracks, and a black boiler right behind its front light. Unlike American trains, the turbine was exposed. But there was little time to admire it. Martin's gesture set Gita running, and Biddy and I sprinted behind her. When I looked back, Antonio and Martin were leaning together to free the switch.

We retraced our path, running back along the riverbank as fast as the undergrowth would allow. A hundred yards on, behind a bend in the wall, we crossed the track again and headed up the hill, climbing on all fours to a path that rose steeply along the ridgeline.

Three or four minutes after leaving Martin, we heard the long lowing of the locomotive whistle. The train was on its way. I counted to sixty as we ran, and the detonations of Henri and Christian's grenades followed precisely. We were close enough to the saltworks to hear the cries of alarm go up in the German garrison-shouting and a siren pealing-and to see color against the low clouds. We continued upward until we could look down on the works and the trestle, two hundred yards from the railroad gate Martin was preparing to attack. Only one of the machine guns looked to be manned. Inside the high walls, the red flames were partially visible, and in that light, we could see the anthill swirl of soldiers pouring in that direction.

The locomotive lumbered around the bend then, moving at no more than ten miles an hour as it rocked on the old rail bed. The three machine-gun crewmen had turned to watch the fire, but the train sounds caught the attention of one of them. He stepped toward the trestle with his hands on his waist, an idle spectator for a lingering second, and then, with no transition, an image of urgent action waving wildly to his comrades, having suddenly recognized that the grenades and the locomotive bearing down on them were part of the same attack.

Watching from above, I briefly panicked when I realized what would happen if the gunners were smart enough to begin firing at the trestle. Delivering nine hundred rounds a minute, the MG42s probably could have damaged the ties enough to derail the train, maybe even to send it into the Seille. But they'd clearly given that alternative no forethought and prepared to take out their attackers more directly. One soldier steadied the MG42 on its tripod, while the gunner put on his helmet and the third crewman strung out the ammunition belt. Beside us, Gita raised her MI and whipped her chin to indicate Biddy and I should move apart. Before the Germans could fire, we began shooting down at them. We did not have the range at first, and the gunners suddenly swung the MG4z in our direction. As the long muzzle crossed my plane of vision my entire body squeezed in fear and I started firing frantically, until one of our bullets, maybe even mine, took down the gunner. With that, the other two retreated inside the walls, dragging the fallen man behind them.

When I lowered the carbine, I found my heart banging furiously and my lungs out of breath. I was at war. In war. The momentousness of it rang through me, but already, with just this instant to reflect, I felt the first whisper of disappointment. Below, the locomotive went down the trestle like a waddling hen, the burning fuse of the satchel charge now visible in the cab window.

I caught sight of Martin then, rolling along the right-of-way between the river and the high wall of the saltworks. As the engine rumbled past him, he sprang back to his feet and sprinted down the track, taking advantage of the cover provided by the huge iron machine. Once he was beyond the curve of the wall, he swung his rucksack around him and removed two lengths of rope, both secured to grappling hooks, which he dug into the crotches of two small trees. Bracing himself that way, he backed to the edge of the river, and then, without hesitation, skidded down the concrete retaining wall on the bank, disappearing into the water.

Suddenly, a gun barked on my left. I flinched before I heard Biddy crying out. He was shooting, and Gita immediately joined him. A gunner had returned to the other MG42. I fired, too, the jolting rifle once escaping my shoulder and recoiling painfully against my cheek, but in a moment the man was back inside the walls. One of the Germans had closed the low iron gate, but it was thin and presented no obstruction to the locomotive that crashed through it, headed for its descent into the mine. With a little shout, Gita signaled us to run.

Once we were beyond the crest, Gita dropped to her knees and threw herself down the hill in a ball. I fell where she had started but ended up spinning sideways into a tree stump. Biddy came somersaulting by, bumping along like a boulder. I dashed several feet, then tripped and accomplished what I had meant to, rolling on my side down the hill, landing painfully and bouncing forward.

In the midst of that, I heard an enormous echo of screaming metal piped out of the tunnel and knew the locomotive had barreled into the loaded flatcars. In the reality of physicists, there were actually two detonations, the satchel charges and then the ordnance, but my experience was of a single sensational roar that brought full daylight and fireside heat and bore me aloft. I was flying through the air for a full second, then landed hard. Looking up, I saw giant pillars of flame beyond the hilltop, and nearby a corkscrew of smoking black iron, a piece of the locomotive, that had knifed straight into the earth, as if it were an arrow. My knee, inexplicably, was throbbing.

"Cover up," Biddy yelled. My helmet had been blown off. I saw it back up the incline, but a fountain of dirt and stone and hot metal began showering around me. Debris fell for more than a minute, tree boughs and shell pieces that plummeted through the air with a sound like a wolf whistle, and a pelting downpour of river water and the heavy mud of the bank. At the end came a twinkling of sawdust and the tatters of leaves. I had crawled halfway to my helmet when there was a second explosion that blew me back down to where I had been at first. The concussion was less violent, but the flames reached higher into the sky and the hot remains of what had been destroyed rained down even longer.

I still had my hands over my head when Gita slapped my bottom. I jumped instantly and found her laughing. "Allons-y!" She took off down the hillside. Biddy was already in motion and I sprinted behind them. He moved well for a man his size, but lacked endurance. I had retained some of the lung strength of a swimmer and eventually pulled past him, but I was no match for Gita, who flew along like a fox past the strips of cloth Martin had tied, stopping only when we reached the edge of the last open farm field we'd crossed this morning. At the margin of a small woods, Gita scouted for signs of the Germans, but we all knew that the blast that had roared out of the tunnel, as from a dragon's mouth, had to have devastated the garrison. Biddy arrived and laid his hands on his thighs, panting.