Upsetting the Balance

They closed the door behind them and went downstairs and then outside as quietly as they could. Every little clank they made seemed magnified in the dark, silent street. Jager wondered how many people were peering at them as they trudged east down the Avenue du Marechal Foch toward the park.

He also wondered if he would make it to the park. Added together, the mortar bombs and powder charges were at least as heavy as the weapon that fired them, while he was not nearly so big and burly as Otto Skorzeny.

He was staggering but still moving along when they got to the Parc Rochegude. A rustle in the bushes made him snatch for the pistol he wore in the waistband of his trousers. “Just a couple playing games,” Skorzeny said with a coarse laugh. “Might have been a couple of men, but it’s too dark for me to be sure.”

The tree-surrounded open space they’d picked to set up the mortar had no couples using it, for which Jager was heartily glad: he had found a discarded French letter in it one morning. “We won’t need the compass or the North Star,” he said with relief. A few days before, Skorzeny had splashed whitewash on a branch of one of the elms in the grove. Set the base plate of the mortar on the gray stone Jager had placed in the grass, aim the barrel over the white splash, and the Lizards-and the humans who worked for them-would learn collaboration had its price.

Skorzeny assembled the mortar, swearing softly when he barked his knuckles in the darkness. He’d practiced so often in the flat that the lethal little device quickly grew from a collection of innocent-looking hardware to an artillery piece. He lined it up roughly on the marked branch, then turned the traversing screw to bring it to exactly the bearing he wanted. At last he grunted in satisfaction and began adjusting the elevation screw so the mortar would fling its bombs just the right distance.

Jager, meanwhile, had been taking the bombs out of the packs and standing them on their tailfins by the mortar. Even without knowing the particularly lethal freight they carried, anyone would have recognized them as intended for no good purpose: nothing painted flat black and full of sharp curves and angles was apt to be a kiddie toy.

“Flick on your lighter,” Skorzeny said. “I want to make sure I have the elevation right. Wouldn’t do to shoot over or under.”

“No, it wouldn’t.” Jager dug the lighter out of his pocket and flicked the wheel with his thumb. His breath came short and quick, as if he’d spied a Lizard panzer’s turret traversing to bring its main armament to bear on him. A cry ofQu’est-ce que c’est? and feet pounding toward the copse would be just as disastrous now.

After what seemed like an eternity but couldn’t have been more than half a minute, Skorzeny said, “Everything’s fine. Douse it.” Jager flicked the cover over the flame. Even that little noise made his heart pound. Well, the Parc Rochegude would know bigger noises any minute now.

Skorzeny softly slapped him on the back. He took that as his signal to begin. Snatching up a bomb, he dropped it down the barrel of the mortar.

Wham!The noise hit harder than that of a panzer’s cannon; he didn’t have several centimeters of steel shielding him from most of it now. He grabbed another bomb, sent it after the first one.Wham!

Between shots, he tried to use his stunned ears to listen for any outcry, and for whistle blasts from the French gendarmerie. He didn’t hear anything, and prayed that meant there wasn’t anything to hear. He’d brought a dozen bombs in all. He’d hoped to be able to fire most of them before the uproar started. In just over a minute, he sent every one of them on its way.

Skorzeny slapped him on the back again, this time hard enough to stagger him. “You can be on my mortar team any day!” the burly SS man bawled, his mouth as close to Jager’s ear as if he’d been a lover.

“That’s wonderful,” Jager said dryly. “Now let’s get back to the flat before somebody spots us out here and puts two and two together.”

“Just a minute.” Skorzeny grabbed the mortar by the tripod, heaved it up off the ground. Jager started in alarm; the plan had called for leaving it behind. But Skorzeny didn’t carry it far. Close by the copse was a little pond. He heaved the mortar in with a splash. “They won’t find it till sunup this way, and maybe not for a while afterwards. By then,Gott mit uns, we’ll be on our way.”

“Gott mit uns,”Jager echoed. “Now come on, damn it.”

They’d just shut the front door to their building when several men came round the corner and dashed toward the park. Jager and Skorzeny hurried upstairs. The biggest worry in the plan had been that people would come out of their block of flats when the mortar started banging. That would make them notice the two men in Number 14 had been outside-and wonder why. They probably wouldn’t have wondered long.