Warren Murphy: The Empire Dreams

Holding his breath as he did every night, Civray quickened his pace. He stepped around the many stacks of huge shells and back out onto the road used by the demineurs' trucks. He moved swiftly away from the long 170 mm casings.

Only after he was a few yards distant did he release his breath. He had made it.

Claude wouldn't have to tour the yard for another two hours. Moving more briskly now, he made his way back to the main clapboard building near the barbed-wire-festooned gate of the large facility.

When Claude had hiked the quarter mile back to the front of the yard he was surprised to find the main gates open.

There were two large halogen lamps positioned on curving poles on either side of the gate. Insects fluttered crazily in the light.

Claude could make out a line of trucks sitting idle along the desolate dirt road leading into the depot. This was more than just a little unusual. The demineurs never worked at night. It was dangerous enough to stumble around fields in broad daylight looking for eighty-year-old shells. To do so at night would be suicide.

It couldn't be a delivery.

So what was going on, then?

Maurice St. Jean, the second man on duty that night, had been working alone in the main office when Claude left on his rounds. Now there seemed to be several figures moving in the windows of the wooden building. Something was wrong.

Thoughts of 1951 immediately sprang up in Claude's mind.

Heart fluttering, he hurried over to the office.

CLAUDE FOUND several men inside. None was a demineur. St. Jean was nowhere to be seen. As one, the men inside turned to the door when Claude entered.

"What is wrong?" he demanded anxiously. "You are Claude Civray?" one of the men asked. The speaker was old. Perhaps seventy, perhaps older. Though his words were French, they were spoken clumsily. He was clearly a foreigner.

Claude became immediately suspicious. And haughty.

"This is a restricted facility," he said, pulling himself up proudly. "What is the meaning of this invasion?"

The foreigner carried a walking stick. He tapped it on the wooden floor.

"Curious choice of words," he said, casting a glance at the others in his party.

Some of the men laughed. The younger ones in particular. They guffawed loudly, slapping one another on their backs at the wit of the old man.

One man pulled off his winter hat. His head was shaved bald. Tattoos covered his bare scalp. Though the others didn't remove their hats, it was apparent from what could be glimpsed of their scalps that they were adorned like the first.

Civray had seen their kind before. Skinheads. NeoNazis. Though the young men laughed loudly and nervously, the leader of the group didn't even crack a smile.

The old man used his cane to point at Civray. "Put him with the other one."

The skinheads pounced. Claude found himself being grabbed by the arms, by the legs. He was half dragged, half carried out the door and into the yard.

"Unhand me!" Civray cried, twisting in their hard grips. His pleas fell on deaf ears.

They carried the struggling guard back several yards to an isolated spot off to the right near the side hurricane fencing.

Claude saw Maurice immediately. When he did, he stopped fighting. The other guard had been beaten to insensibility and tied to a wooden pallet beside a pyramid stack of 75 mm shells. For whatever reason Maurice must have foolishly opened the gate for these men. Civray would never find out why.

The skinheads didn't pause to give Claude the same treatment they had given his compatriot. They forced him down atop a neighboring pallet. They lashed him quickly and efficiently to the wood.

Even before he was tied down, the trucks began rolling through the gates.

There had been only the two of them assigned to guard the facility. Maurice must have told them that. With Claude out of the way, the intruders would meet no opposition.

An army of men swarmed from the backs of the trucks. They went to work immediately, gingerly collecting rusted shell casings and hauling them off as speedily as possible into the rear of the awaiting vehicles.

They worked for hours, carrying and loading. At one point one of the men working the truck nearest Claude dropped a case of "racket" German grenades. Claude was certain that it would go off.

It was a miracle that it didn't. "Dummkopf!"

The skinhead was berated for his carelessness by one of the supervisors of the operation. The grenades were carefully collected and the box was placed in the rear of the truck.

Eventually the trucks were packed to the point where they could hold no more. Only then did they begin turning slowly around. They headed in a long, careful convoy back out the gates of the Guise facility.

Claude couldn't see his watch, but he felt that it had to be somewhere near 3:00 a.m. The intruders had toiled for nearly four hours.

The last truck stopped in the inverted-V-shaped clearing made by the stacks of bombs that had been left near Claude and the still-unconscious Maurice.

The elderly man who had spoken to him in the main guard house stepped down from the passenger's side of the truck.

Several of the skinheads came running in from a point somewhere farther up the convoy. They each carried a large red metal can. The men shouted encouragement to one another in a language Claude was now certain was German.

Claude could hear liquid sloshing within the cans. The young men began dumping the contents of the containers in a trail from the gate up to the bombs nearest Claude.

While the young ones worked, the old man strolled over to view Civray, trussed up like a lamb for slaughter. He tsked when he glanced at the stack of 75 mm shells.

"Very dangerous," he confided to Civray, tapping the column of bombs with his cane. It made a dull rapping noise. The bombs sounded as solid as an anvil.

Claude cringed, waiting for the shells to explode. They remained blessedly intact.

"I thank you for holding these for us. They are back in the hands of their rightful owners now." One of the skinheads had come over next to the old man. He stood there patiently.

The wind suddenly shifted, bringing the sharp scent of gasoline to Claude Civray's sensitive nose. The rest of the men hurried away, out of sight.

In that moment Claude understood what these men had in mind for him. He shook his head dully. "No," he begged. The word was a croak.

The old man ignored him.

"Soak them," he said to the skinhead. He turned and walked briskly back to the truck.

Grinning, the young man upended his container over the bodies of Claude Civray and Maurice St. Jean.

The gasoline poured out clear in the dull lamplight. The acrid smell cut into Civray's flaring nostrils.

As the gas soaked into his clothes and mottled his hair, the truck carrying the old man drove calmly away. The man did not even cast a glance in Claude's direction.

When the man had finished dousing him with gas-oline, he laughed uproariously at the two helpless Frenchmen. Dropping the can onto Claude's legs, he ran from sight.

Maurice began to stir groggily. Claude prayed that his friend wouldn't awaken.

The minutes dragged on. It seemed to take forever.

After a time Claude allowed the hope that the men had reconsidered.

As the night insects chirped in the grassland around the facility, Claude Civray heard something approaching. It was a soft whooshing noise. Like the sound of a distantly racing train or wind across an open field.

The wall of flame slipped into sight up the dirt path. It glowed malevolently, illuminating the sides of the guardshack in weird patterns, stabbing streaks of yellowy-orange into the black French sky.

It came slowly. Looping in from the main gate, it almost seemed as if it might pass him by. But like a dog on a scent the flames caught the path of gasoline poured in to the spot where the two guards lay.