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Frank leaped off, unbolted it, swung it open, and remounted.
They were through it in an instant and racing down the moonlit asphalt road.
When they reached the highway, they stopped again.
"They must be in their car by now," said Frank. "You can be sure Paul Reynard has a
fast one." He looked up and down the highway, surprised to see that it was empty. He
glanced at his watch. It was three in the morning. "We can't beat them in a race. We'll
have to outsmart them. They'll be expecting us to go to Bayeux. We'll go the other way.
Come on."
The hoof beats of the horses were thunderously loud as they pounded down the
concrete highway. Joe had to yell to make himself heard over them.
"We've done it! We've shaken them!" he
132
shouted triumphantly, looking over his shoulder at the empty highway stretching behind
them. But his last words were drowned out by a loud sound, that was growing louder.
"They're using the helicopter!" cried Denise.
"Of course!" Frank shouted. He urged his horse to move still faster, the hoof beats
sounding like machine guns now. "I should have known! It's the perfect way to hunt us.
They're high enough in the air to look down the road in both directions. The moon is as
bright as a spotlight they ve probably seen us already."
At that moment, the three of them realized that they had to make another fast decision. In
front of them, the highway came to an abrupt end, running into a road that cut it at right
angles. The horses hesitated, not knowing which way to-turn. The noise of the helicopter
had become deafeningly close.
Frank looked up, then to the right, then to the left. "We'll go straight ahead!" he
shouted. "Maybe we can find some cover in the countryside and lose them!"
The horses easily leaped the highway guardrails. They galloped up a low rise of land
that was barren of trees and bushes, covered only with sparse grass. Then they halted
again.
They had reached the end of a cliff. Below, lit by moonlight, was a wide white beach
and then the darkness of the sea.
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"We have come to the English Channel," said Denise. "We cannot go any farther."
The noise of the helicopter grew still louder. It was descending.
"So these are the D-Day beaches," Frank mused. "The Allies staged the biggest
invasion of all time here over forty years ago." Frank had always been a World War II
buff, and the site of the Normandy landings had always filled him with fascination. For a
moment he forgot the predicament he and the others were in. He sat motionless astride
his horse and gazed down at the dimly lit glowing white sand as if hypnotized by its
ghostly splendor, feeling the pull of the past like the pull of a tide out to sea.
"What a time for a history lesson," cried Joe in exasperation. He could see the
helicopter now as it approached the ground less than a hundred feet away. In the
moonlight, it looked like some prehistoric monster, its whirling blades starting to slow.
In seconds it would touch down. He could imagine the Reynards poised to jump out,
their fingers on their triggers. "Hey, Frank! Unless we figure out what to do fast, we'll be
history. This will be our D-Day, too. Death day."
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Chapter 16
"WHERE CAN WE go?" Denise cried desperately as the runners of the helicopter hit the
ground and its door began to open.
"Nowhere on horseback, that's for sure," replied Frank. He jumped off his mount, and
the others did the same.
"Here goes nothing! Let's hope the sand is soft," exclaimed Joe, as he reached the very
edge of the bluff and prepared to leap. Then he saw that wasn't necessary. A path led
downward. "Come on. Let's make tracks."
Struggling to keep their balance, the three scrambled down the narrow path. Ten feet
from the bottom, the path ended, sheared away by wind erosion.
Without discussing the matter, all three of them jumped. They landed hard, sprawling
on the
135
sand. Almost instantly they were on their feet, brushing the sand off and looking upward.
The sound of the helicopter told them it had taken off again and was coming after them
on the beach.
"Do you still have your gun, Denise?" Frank asked.
"Unfortunately, no," Denise answered. "Pierre asked me to give it to him right after
you were locked in the dungeon. He claimed that Karl's was defective and that Karl
needed a gun more than I did. I can see now that was just a way to disarm me before they
tested me."
"Probably Paul Reynard's idea," said Frank. "He seems to think of everything."
"We have to think of something right now," said Joe. "That helicopter is coming down
again.
"There is no way to climb back up the bluff," said Denise.
"The only thing we can do is split up and go in different directions," said Frank. "That
way at least one of us might make it out of this alive."
They looked at each other solemnly for a moment.
Then Joe said to Denise, "Let me show you an American custom. We use it in
basketball. It's called giving a high five."
"Right," said Frank, as he and his brother slapped each other's palms high in the air.
"I see!" said Denise, and the three of them did
136
it together. "Now I will show you a French custom," she said. Denise kissed Frank and
Joe on both cheeks.
"Good luck," the three said at the same time.
And as the helicopter touched down on the beach they ran for their lives in three
different directions.
Frank ran to the right, feet flying across the sand. His last sight of the others was Joe
veering off to the left and Denise heading straight for the sea. None of them had any plan,
which made Frank nervous. He didn't like to take things as they came. As he ran, bullets
whizzed past him. He was a moving target in the moonlight, and whoever was chasing
him wouldn't keep missing those shots forever. All he could try was to run faster, faster.
Then it happened.
His foot sank into a hollow in the sand, and he fell to the ground face first. For a second
he saw stars. Then his vision cleared, and he felt the pain shooting upward from his
ankle. He didn't think it was a very bad sprain, but it was bad enough. His running speed
was cut to a kind of limping hop. He was finished unless there was a miracle. And then
he saw one.
It wasn't exactly a miracle, but it would do. A squat shape rose ahead of him-some kind
of building on the beach.
It took him only a minute to figure out what it was. He had seen pictures of structures
like it in
137
the same history books that had told him about the D-Day landing on this beach long ago.
It was a German pillbox-a squat cylindrical concrete fortress, big enough for three men [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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