Danielle Steel - Echoes

Amadea wondered if Rupert was part of it, and was sure he must have been. She had heard nothing of him for four months since their mission into Germany in December. But there was no reason why she should. She thought of him from time to time, and his kinders , and hoped that he and the children he had brought to England were safe and well.

She went on more missions than usual in March. The weather was better, and it was easier moving around than in the winter. She had been made the head of her group, and many of the decisions of her cell rested on her.

In an effort to cripple the Germans' movements, she had decided with several others to blow up a train. They had done things like that before, often with dire results, and severe reprisals, but the word they were getting from Paris was to slow the trains down in any way they could. Blowing up the train and the tracks east of Orléans seemed like a good move, although it was dangerous for all of them.

Coincidentally, the plan was set for the night of Amadea's twenty-seventh birthday. No one knew, and it meant little to her. Birthdays and holidays seemed irrelevant at that point. They always made her sad anyway. She was happier doing something useful, particularly if it hindered the Germans.

There were twenty people involved in their movements that night. A dozen men and eight women. Some of them were local, and others had come from nearby cells. One of the men had worked for Jean Moulin and had left Lyon the year before, when Moulin got arrested. Not surprisingly, Amadea thought he was remarkably well trained. And she couldn't help thinking as she lay in the dirt that night, waiting for the sentries to pass, that it was hard even for her to believe now that she had once been a nun. She spent her time preparing weapons, putting together explosives, damaging property, and doing everything she could to disrupt and destroy the enemy that was occupying France. She still intended to go back to the convent, but she wondered sometimes if they, or the God she loved, could ever forgive her for all that she'd done. But she was more determined than ever to do what she was doing. Until the war was over, she felt she had no choice.

Amadea herself helped set the explosives near the track that night. She had done things like it before, and knew how much to use. As always when they did things like that, it reminded her of Jean-Yves. But she was careful, and when they lit the fuse, she was about to run, just as a German sentry strolled by. She knew that within seconds he would be blown to smithereens, but if she didn't move, so would she. Instead of moving toward where some of the others were hiding, she had no choice but to fall backward, which separated her farther from them. She had just started to run, when the first explosion detonated. The German sentry was killed instantly, and Amadea was thrown backward with such force that she flew into the air like a rag doll, and landed not far from the tracks flat on her back. Much to her own amazement, she was still conscious and knew what was happening, but she couldn't move after what she'd been through. She had landed with a breathtaking blow to her spine.

One of the men had seen what happened, and he darted past the fire to where she lay. He threw her roughly over his shoulder and ran back to the others, just as the second explosion went off. The second one was huge, and would have killed her, just as had happened to Jean-Yves.

All she knew afterward was that someone carried her for a long time, and she felt nothing. She remembered being put in a truck with explosions in the distance and fire everywhere. After that, she lost consciousness and woke up two days later in a strange barn, among people she didn't know. She had been taken to a neighboring town and concealed.

She drifted in and out of consciousness for the next week, and two of the men from her own cell came to see her. They looked worried about her, and said the Germans were looking for her everywhere. They had gone to Jean-Yves's aunt and uncle's farmhouse where she lived, and found her missing. The old couple said they had no idea where she was, and miraculously they had been spared. But she couldn't go back there. Serge had radioed them from Paris and said they had to get her out. But in addition to the Germans looking for her, her second greatest problem was that she couldn't move her legs or even sit up. Her back had been broken when she had fallen. Her legs were numb, and there was no way she could leave on her own. In the condition she was in, she had become a serious handicap, and was no longer of any use to them.

“He wants us to get you out,” one of the men she knew and had worked with for a year and a half told her gently. They didn't want to say it to her, but she looked like death. She had been incoherent and hallucinating for the past two days. Her back had not only been broken but badly burned. She felt nothing as she lay there, not even pain.

“To where?” Amadea said, trying to focus on the problem. But she was so tired she could hardly stay awake. She kept drifting into unconsciousness when she talked to them. In one of her brief moments of lucidity, they explained what was going to happen. Everything had been arranged.

“There's a plane coming for you tonight.”

“Don't send me back to the camp,” she pleaded with him… “I'll be good, I promise. I'll get up in a minute.” But they all knew she couldn't. A doctor had come and said she would be paralyzed for life. And even in her condition, if the Germans found her, she'd be killed. They wouldn't even bother sending her to a camp. She was worthless to them now, even as a slave.

To make matters worse, it was too dangerous for them to keep her now. A young boy had informed, and the Germans knew that she was either part of or in charge of a cell. They all knew Serge was right. She had no choice but to get out. If they could get her out alive, which seemed doubtful. One of the Lysanders was coming for her that night. If they could get her on it. And if she survived. She was unconscious that night when they carried her out of the barn. One of the women had wrapped her in a blanket. She looked like a dead body, and they had covered her face. She moaned as they carried her, but she didn't regain consciousness again.

A young boy who had known her since she came to France ran across the field with her, as the others shone their lights. It felt more like a funeral than a rescue mission. One of the men had cried and said she would be dead before they got her off the plane. And the others suspected he was right.

The door was open as soon as the small plane landed. And they literally threw her onto the floor of the plane, still wrapped in the blanket. There were two men on the plane. One of them pulled her in, and then slammed the door shut as they took off. The pilot just managed to clear the trees, and then turned and headed toward England as the other man gently pulled the blanket off her face. They knew they had come for a French Resistance fighter they had to get out. They knew nothing more than that. They didn't even know her name. Serge had radioed what they needed to know to the British. All the pilots needed to know was where to go and that there was someone to pick up. They had.

“I think we made a bum run on this one,” the man sitting next to her on the floor said as he saw her face. She was barely breathing, and she had almost no pulse. “I don't think she's going to make it.” The pilot said nothing, and flew home.

They were both surprised to find that she was still alive when they got to England. An ambulance was waiting on the tarmac and took her. They took her to a hospital, where a bed was waiting for her, and when they saw her, they realized that she needed a lot more than a bed. She had third-degree burns all over her back, and her spine was broken. It was unlikely, the surgeon wrote in the report, after they had done what they could for her, that she would ever walk again.