Weaver

XXXIII

The wooden blocks glided silently across the ops table, mirroring the blood and horror that must be unfolding out in the English countryside right at this moment. Gary wondered if these calm Wrens had night-mares.

He glanced at the big clock on the wall. Already it was almost two p.m.

'It's working,' Mackie said. 'It's only bloody working. Look, can you see – there's a lot of detail, but just concentrate on the Panzer divisions. You have the Tenth heading off east towards Ashford, and the Fourth pushing for Lewes. Well, they're so far from any support they might as well go back home. But the main thrust, the main line of breakout, is coming from the Seventh and Eighth, pushing up from the Sussex coast towards Guildford. Just where we want them.'

There was a fuss around the ops table, and the Wrens started sliding their blocks across the map with increasingly frantic haste.

'And it's starting,' Mackie said. 'Our counterattack. About bloody time.'

'Request leave to return to my unit, sir.'

'Of course, Corporal. I've ordered a car for you. Tell Monty to give old Hitler one from me! Sergeant Blackwell?'

'Sir. This way, Corporal…'

So Gary was led out of the bunker, bundled into a staff car, whisked out of the base, and rushed along roads crowded by troops and supply vehicles. There were a few civilians, fleeing north and west from the threatened towns of Sussex and Hampshire, the usual dreary parade of women and children and old folk. But such was the urgency now, and the volume of military assets on the move, that police, MPs and ARP wardens were peremptorily shoving the civilians off the road. It was all vividly real, after the monasticism of the ops room.

'Quite a show, isn't it, mate?' shouted Sergeant Blackwell, over the roar of the engines. He was a bulky man with a fat, shaven neck, and what sounded to Gary like a strong London accent. 'You pick up a lot down in that ops room. We're putting up a fight. But it's all we've got, isn't it?' Blackwell looked over his shoulder. 'What we have in the field right now. I mean, this is all there is, between the Nazis and London. Has to work, doesn't it, Corporal?'

'I guess so.'

The car rushed on, taking Gary back to his unit.