Night of Flames by Douglas W. Jacobson

Author:Douglas W. Jacobson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2008-09-30T23:00:00+00:00

Marchal stood silently at the top of the hill, mesmerized by the awesome sight. He knew the raging inferno in the repair building would continue for several days. Two locomotives and a coal car had been destroyed, along with the water tower and the conveyor system. The facility would be out of commission for a long time. Managing a smile, he glanced around at the rest of the group who stared transfixed at the wreckage, their faces illuminated by the blazing flames in the night.

Chapter 35

JAN FOLLOWED TADEUSZ and Slomak into a wooden shed hidden among a stand of colossal oak trees at the end of a rutted dirt road. Inside, another man, thin and hard, perhaps in his early twenties, struck a match to a lantern. The man blew out the match and hung the lantern from a hook, illuminating a workbench covered with a gray canvas tarp. Jan moved in closer as the man rolled back the tarp revealing dozens of rocket fragments.

Jan sifted through the parts, examining the strange devices with care. Some had wires protruding at odd angles, others were nothing more than blackened metal shards and twisted sheet steel. He looked up from the workbench and turned toward the young man who was lighting a hand-rolled cigarette. “Where did you find these?” he asked.

The man took a drag on the cigarette and picked a speck of tobacco from his lower lip. “In a field about two kilometers from here. A rocket crashed in the middle of the night. This was all we could get before the SS showed up.”

Jan sifted through the jumble of debris a second time, examining each piece, trying to understand what he was looking at. It was always the same—the rockets crashed with such incredible explosions that little remained. “I don’t know what these are,” he said. “Some of them look like a type of timing device…but I don’t understand the significance. I don’t know how it all fits together.”

Jan rubbed his eyes and looked at Slomak. “We’ve been at this for almost a month, sifting through these shattered fragments. And I don’t know any more than when we started. If we could find something that was more intact…” His voice trailed off. Frustrated, he pulled out his notebook and made some sketches and notations while Tadeusz took some photos. Slomak and the young man stepped outside. Jan had not been introduced to the man, which he had now come to realize was the way things were done in the AK. Everything was on a strict “need-to-know” basis.

When they were finished, Tadeusz extinguished the lantern and fastened the padlock on the door. Slomak waited for them, sitting in the cab of the ancient Russian-built truck provided by operatives of the AK. The young man was gone.

Tadeusz hid the notebook and the photos in the compartment under the floorboards then climbed in, behind the wheel. Jan settled in next to Slomak, and they drove off without a word.

Jan stared out the window

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