D-Day: Time Patrol by Bob Mayer

Author:Bob Mayer [Mayer, Bob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cool Gus
Published: 2016-05-23T00:00:00+00:00

The Missions Phase III

Normandy France, 6 June 1944 A.D

After holstering the .45, Mac discovered a chocolate bar in one of the bulging pockets on his fatigue shirt. It was broken, but edible. “I found breakfast.”

She was sitting next to the shovel, staring at the body of her father.

He offered it to her. She looked at it blankly, then took it. She broke it in half and held the rest up for him. “We have not had chocolate in five years.”

“You keep it,” Mac said.

She stuffed the rest into a pocket. Mac took that as a positive sign, that she felt there was a future when she would eat it. The most positive sign he’d noted since appearing here.

“What is your name, madame?”

“Mademoiselle,” she corrected. “My name is Brigit.”

“Hey, Bridget. I’m Mac.”

“No. Bree-geet.”

“Right. Brigit.” Mac sat next to her, trying to ignore the ticking clock of the mission and the passing darkness. “Do you know what time it is?”

She leaned forward and reached into her father’s vest, retrieving a pocket watch. “I would have forgotten it. I never liked the watch much. He was always living according to it, making us live our lives according to it. Does time matter to him now?” Nevertheless, she angled the surface so she could see in the moonlight. “Two and a half hours past midnight.”

Several hours of darkness left. The download tried to intrude with the exact time the mission should be done, but Mac was finding it easy to block the information intrusions. This mission was off the rails, pun intended, and he was going to have to do a lot of improvising. From what he’d seen of Edith Frobish, improvising wasn’t one of her fortes, so the download was less of a priority.

Brigit put the watch back into her father’s vest. “Mac? Short for something?”

“No. Just Mac,” he said. “How come the Germans didn’t get you?”

“Because I was hiding in the trees,” Brigit said as if explaining to an idiot. She had a vacant stare, although her eyes were on her father’s body, as she murmured: “‘Wound my heart with a monotonous languor.’”

It sounded so much better in French, Mac thought. The stanza of poetry by Paul Verlaine that was broadcast to let the Resistance know the invasion would begin within twenty-four hours. He repeated it, feeling the words roll off his tongue. “Blessent mon cœur d’une langueur monotone.”

“What does that even mean?” Brigit asked. “I told my father not to go after he heard the transmission. But he took out his watch, and with that, I knew he would go. I begged him not to take Louis. But Louis insisted. It was his chance to be in the war. To be a hero. You men, fooling yourselves with talk of heroism and bravery and honor. Isn’t every war like that? Talk of bravery and heroism and ending in dirt? Now, Louis will become dirt, become part of the farm that he should have had one day. Raised a family on. Now, there is only me.

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