The alarms had started before the last echo from the blast died away; they were just part of the background now, so when someone at the plant finally threw a switch and turned them off the silence hit them like a clap of thunder.
"We gotta get out a here!" Goniff whispered urgently.
"You wanna just walk off and leave him?" Casino accused.
"A 'course not!" the little pick pocket shot back. "But we can't stay here, can we mate?"
Suddenly they heard the sound of gun fire. Several single shots from a couple of pistols, followed by the rapid cough of a machine gun, then sporadic rifle fire. Both of them bent protectively over their fallen leader.
"That's gotta be the Jerries after Chiefy an' Actor!"
"No! That's gotta be Actor and Chief givin' us a diversion." Casino jerked his head in the direction of the dead German laying in the brush nearby. "Grab the stuff off that guy. We're gettin' outta here!"
Goniff scrambled over and picked the body clean of things he thought might be useful. He quickly stripped the man out of his tunic, grabbed up his helmet and rifle and dumped everything next to Casino before slipping back out to the first body. When he returned he was working the buttons up the front of the German uniform blouse he'd taken, the helmet was perched at an angle on his head, the second rifle slung over his shoulder.
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Casino jammed his arms into the sleeves of the tunic then he tore open the pouches on the utility belt until he found the first aid kit. He'd already eased Garrison out of his jacket and now he pulled the Warden's shirt up out of the way and did his best to powder the wound in his side with sulfa. The field dressing he found wasn't large enough to take care of the whole thing so he covered as much as he could before tying it down. When Goniff returned they raided his supplies too and did the same for the injury to the Lieutenant's back after carefully turning him on his side.
"How d'we do it 'th out hurtin' him?" the cockney asked as he crouched down next to the Warden.
Casino had Garrison supported in an encircling arm, the ruined jacket tucked around him for warmth. The Warden was still, unresponsive, his breath coming in short gasps. "I don't think we can hurt him. Not anymore," the safecracker said quietly, then some of the anger and fear he was feeling edged into his voice. "Just get him behind his back and under the legs there while I get set, will ya?"
Goniff quietly did as he was told but just as Casino mirrored his position and started to lift he brought them to a halt. "The bag!"
"What?"
"The Ruddy pack he had on 'is back… We gotta take it!" There was a pleading note to Goniff's voice. "Warden said the plans he give me and the stuff he threw in that bag was important… He thought they was important enough to risk his life on. If he's gonna…. If he's," Goniff's voice broke. …. "Well, we just gotta take 'em."
They already had enough to do to get Garrison out of there. Taking anything else would just slow them down…. But Goniff was right, the Warden had already paid for whatever was in that bag. Casino left Goniff to hold their commander up for a moment as he leaned down and retrieved the pack he'd shoved aside. Swinging it onto his own back he turned and slipped his arm usnder the Warden's legs and around his back and grabbed onto the heavy wool that made up the sleeves of the German tunic the pick pocket had on. They stood, cradling Garrison between them, and Casino rolled his shoulders to settled the pack.
"Jeeze! What'd he put in here, anyway, a damn dead body?" The question was directed over the top of the Warden's head as they moved off into the trees.
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They didn't even try to be quiet. All of the action was still on the other side of the compound so the chances were good that all of the soldiers had been drawn that direction too. If they had any kind of luck left no one would find the breach in the fence Goniff and Garrison made, or those two dead soldiers back there, until they were long gone. Still their progress was agonizingly slow as they tried to keep from jostling the Warden. When the lighter color of the moon-lit roadbed finally appeared at the base of the trees in front of them they both said a silent prayer of thanks. Goniff started easing them off to the right.
"Hold it." Casino brought them to a halt. "We gotta go the other way."
"What 'r you goin' on about? The Bloody safe house is back this way!" Goniff protested. "We gotta get the Warden back to that foundry."
"Yeah? What foundry? I blew the place."
"What?" that cockney asked, stunned "Why?"
"Cause it wasn't safe anymore, that's why!" Casino started moving off to the left but Goniff continued to stand rooted to the spot. The two staggered a bit and Casino growled. "Will you c'mon, already?"
Goniff took a couple of shuffling steps but continued to look back. Safety was…had been, back there. They were supposed to meet up with the others back there if anything went wrong… "Hey! What about Actor and Chiefy? They're gonna walk right into a mess if one of us don't…"
"Don't sweat it." Casino cut in. "They'll have more 'n enough time to turn tail and get out a there. They'll know all about it around a half mile out."
"How'll they know that, then?"
"Cause that's about where they'll start seein' little bits and pieces of the place! Jeeze! Goniff, a damn Kraut patrol ran me out a there. I had the rest of the stuff with me, and a couple a things I found layin' around after you guys took off, so I blew the place, and them, up when I left! Now just shut up and keep movin' will ya?"
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An hour later Casino estimated they'd only managed to cover a little more than a mile. "This is never gonna work. We gotta get some wheels or we're never gonna get out a here."
They'd been working their way along the road, just out of sight in the cover of the trees and had watched as traffic raced towards the factory as the Germans increased security and probably organized search parties to run them down.
"How we gonna do that, just the two of us?"
Before he could answer him Garrison started to struggle. "Down. Put me down." It was only a whisper panted in Casino's ear.
The two men carefully knelt and laid their burden on the ground.
"How y'doin' Warden?" Goniff smiled down at him.
Garrison rolled his head back and forth once as he tried to gather his strength. "Where?" was all he managed to get out.
"Maybe three, four miles from the factory." Casino lied.
The Warden shook his head again and tried to get enough air for another comment.
"Forget it." Goniff and Casino said in unison, and Casino continued. "Look, we already been through this, alright? We're not leavin' unless you'r dead. And since it doesn't look like you'r dyin anytime soon," he glanced up at Goniff and they both willed that into being the truth. "You're comin' along with us." The safecracker waited a beat. "Unless you want all three of us to just sit right here until the Krauts catch up to us." He let the Warden chew that idea over for a moment. "So, do we stay, or do we go?"
It was a struggle and Garrison had to work up to it. "Go," he eventually got out, right before he passed out again.
Goniff laid two fingers along the Warden's throat for a few seconds before a grave smile lifted the corners of his mouth. The Warden was still hanging in there. Casino shrugged out of the pack and stood to stretch his sore muscles, when he caught sight of the uniform he wore the idea hit him.
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Leaving Garrison hidden in the underbrush they moved out to the edge of the road and waited. It didn't take more than five minutes for them to hear the car. The vehicle pulled around the curve and they could see it coming towards them. It was just the kind of set up they needed and from what they could see and hear it was the only car on the road. They staggered out of the trees and up onto the road. Goniff was on the far side, they presented Casino's blood soaked uniform to the car's oncoming headlights. When the car braked to a stop and the driver shouted to them in German they turned, squinting into the lights and just waited. The arm of Goniff's tunic, saturated with the Warden's blood, was now visible. The sound of the engine changed as the driver shifted into neutral, there was a mechanical grinding as he put the brake on and then the sound of two doors opening as the occupants of the vehicle got out to come to their aid.
The German officers were only about five feet away when Casino and Goniff stepped apart, aimed their weapons and fired. Casino shot his man in the side too, without wasting any time on feeling guilty about it. They quickly stripped the uniform jacket off the captain Casino'd killed, pulled the bodies off the road and went back for the Warden.
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Casino eased off the gas pedal a little as they approached the roadblock. There were four soldiers manning it. Two up on the road, two off to the side casually leaning against a machine gun drinking something hot out of their cups. The headlights caught the steam and caused it to glow against the dark background of the trees. There was no barricade; it looked like the Krauts thought that one machine gun would be enough to do the job…
They had enough fire power, they'd taken the weapons from the German guards outside the factory, and the officers who'd stopped on the road to help them, and they still had the pistols they'd come in with, but he was hoping they wouldn't have to use them. There was no telling if these four guys were the only ones around. Casino slowed the vehicle but didn't come to a complete stop. When he saw the guard start to open his mouth to demand their papers he bellowed 'Krankenhaus!' in the guy's face.
The man took one look at the blood staining Casino's uniform and Garrison, dressed in a blood soaked captain's jacket, laying across Goniff's knees on the back seat and responded with, "Feldkrankenhaus, Sieben-Kilometer-Osten! Biegen Sie nach rechts ab und folgen Sie den Zeichen!" The guard quickly stepped out of the way and waved them through.
Casino gunned it and within a few seconds the roadblock was out of sight behind them.
"What was all a that, then?" Goniff shouted from the back as he pulled the officer's tunic closer around the Warden.
"Jeeze! How the Hell do I know? I only got 'hospital' and 'seven kilometers'… How far's that, anyway?" Casino called over his shoulder
"Dunno. Five miles, maybe less." Goniff shouted, the wind pulling his words away and spreading them across the road behind them. "Blimey! We're not gonna be able t' bluff our way past a bloody hospital!"
"You're not kiddin' we're not. But we don't go all the way there." Casino prayed his memory was right about the map. "There's a road goes off to the left up here about a mile up. That's the one we're takin."
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When they turned off the main highway Casino cut their speed and turned off the headlights. The road they turned onto hadn't seen much in the way of maintenance and, in the dark, it was almost impossible to see the pot holes in time to guide the vehicle around them. The car jerked and shuddered, drawing faint moans of pain from Garrison.
"Watch it, will ya!" Goniff hissed from the backseat. "You're killin' 'im back here."
"You wanna come up here and do this in the dark, Limey, you come right ahead!" Casino shot back over his shoulder, but he slowed down, almost to a crawl.
"Look, mate, I'm sorry. I didn't mean…"
"Yeah. I know. Me neither."
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Right, right, right, left and right again. Each time they came to a fork in the road they were following he stopped and closed his eyes to bring an image of the map up in his head to get a look at it. The bloodstained original was somewhere behind them tucked into the pocket of a similarly bloodstained green jacket. Their course seemed to follow what Casino thought he remembered from the map the Warden showed him. If he made the right decisions it would take them to the hideout where the resistance was supposed to be waiting. If he made the wrong ones…. He shoved those thoughts away and concentrated on the road.
Each time they made a turn the road got smaller and rougher. They were on a rutted track now and the trees were closing in. They were far enough into the forest that the car's headlamps weren't going to give them away and it was too dark to go on without them so he pulled the knob and turned them on. As Casino made the last turn the headlights picked out an ancient old shack tucked back in a grove of spindly, moss covered trees. There was a clear space in front of it, hardly larger than the car, and he came to a halt in it and killed the motor.
The two men sat there straining to pick up any sound that they'd been followed. All they heard was silence and the ticking of the large engine as it cooled. Casino rummaged in the glove box and came up with a flashlight. The car door opened with a creak and he slid out. Leaving Goniff in the car with Garrison he started a search of the grounds around the shack.
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Casino was thorough as he looked for the signs that Chief had shown them that would mean someone had been there. All he saw was dust. He moved up on the building, worked his way around it and, with a growing sense of unease, carefully checked the doors and windows. Just because there were no tracks left in the dirt outside didn't mean someone couldn't be waiting inside… He made it all the way around the little building without finding any sign that the place was occupied, or that entry to it had been booby-trapped. He approached the old door that still hung solidly on its hinges. Turning his head he checked behind him and found Goniff had one of the rifles up at his shoulder and was already sighted on the door.
Casino got set, took a deep breath, rocked back and kicked the door opened. He thumbed the flashlight to life at the same time he barreled through into the shack. Holding the light in one hand, and a pistol cocked and ready to fire in the other, he swept the shack's single room. It was deserted. Not satisfied with his initial impression he spent a few more minutes poking into every dark empty corner before he finally returned to the car.
"Blimey! I thought you was gonna take all night!"
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They waited at the car for almost ten minutes after Casino checked the grounds and the building. They put the weapons, all but their original hand guns, on the hood of the vehicle to reassure the resistance group they assumed were watching them. At every creak from the trees swaying in the breeze, at every rustle of the leaves in the wind, both of them turned, expecting the underground fighters to appear. The vigil was a silent one finally ended by Goniff.
"This isn't the right place, is it?"
"Doesn't look like it."
"What'r we gonna do?" The cockney pick pocket tucked the wool tunic tighter around their injured commander. "He can't go no farther."
Casino took in a deep breath and let it out and then pushed himself off the car door where he'd been leaning. "C'mon. Let's get him inside there first, then we'll figure it out."