Page 76 of Hearts of Resistance
Hazel doubted she’d ever be able to fall asleep now, but Sophia was right. Her heart skipped a beat as she carefully put her headset on, groaning when the transmission faded and she had to try to fiddle with her radio again. She needed Rose to ensure she could keep getting messages out, and most of all, she needed to know her friend was still alive.
Hazel stirred. She stretched out an arm, surprised to see darkness surrounding her. How long had she been sleeping? She’d doubted she’d be able to get even a wink of sleep, but she’d obviously been more tired than she’d realised. She went to sit up, swinging her legs down, and froze.
There was thumping. Then a bang. She stayed still, listening to her own breath pushing in and out. What was going on down there? Was that what had woken her up?
Hazel carefully put her feet down, not making a sound. She padded softly across the floor and listened at the door, wishing she hadn’t shut it properly. She didn’t dare turn the knob. Something was wrong. Something was happening down there that shouldn’t be.
She kept her ear tight to the timber. And then her blood ran cold, her skin instantly turning to ice, every tiny hair on her body standing to attention.
The muffled bang was unmistakable. She stifled a scream, the silent call for help caught in her throat.
They’d been found. There was no other explanation. When she heard another bang, this one louder, followed by screams and shouts, she knew they were under attack. Suddenly gunfire exploded downstairs, and Hazel leapt into action. She grabbed for the radio, pulling it apart. They couldn’t take the radio; it was the only piece of equipment that was truly crucial. It might need fixing, it might not be reliable, but it was still a valuable radio and she wasn’t going to let anyone get their hands on it.
She hastily took it apart, knowing she couldn’t take everything with her. It wasn’t pitch-black yet, so she was able to see enough, but the truth was she knew the machine so well that she could have figured it out with her eyes closed.
Hazel turned, scanned the room and decided to hide some of the pieces. She ran to the window first, cringing as more gunfire echoed out from downstairs. She pushed the flimsy curtain aside, looked down and gasped when she saw the commotion. There were Germans everywhere. She definitely wouldn’t be able to get the radio out, because her chances of getting away from the chateau herself were...She dashed back to the radio pieces. She knew it was unlikely she’d get away. The only positive was that the Germans were wasting their time here instead of preparing for the landings, which meant the intelligence must have been correct. They couldn’t know where and when it was happening!
Hazel stashed one part under the pillow on the bed, then another piece high in the wardrobe, standing on tiptoe to reach it. After scurrying over to the bed and pulling it out, yanking hard with all her might, she packed the rest of the radio in her satchel. She pulled up two loose floorboards and stuffed the satchel inside, then replaced the boards and hefted the metal legs of the bed back across the floor. The noise would have alerted anyone to the fact someone was up there, but they’d have eventually come looking anyway.
Hazel glanced around the room, knew there was nothing else she could do. She could have taken the pieces of the radio and strewn them outside, getting rid of them individually, but she had to believe that someone would survive, that one of her own would come frantically looking for the parts she’d hidden. If Rose returned and they were all gone, she would be able to transmit at least.
She pushed the curtain aside again, praying that no one would see the movement. The only light now was from the moon, sitting high in the sky and illuminating the roof for her. She pushed the window open and climbed up, the narrow opening almost too small to squeeze through. The roof was steep and she had no idea how she was going to safely clamber down, but her only other option was to open the door and walk down the stairs into certain death.
She looked down and wished she hadn’t. It was like the night she’d jumped from the plane into France, only then she’d had a parachute to stop her from falling and smashing all her bones.
She heard shouting and loud footsteps, knew they were coming upstairs. Hazel fought the urge to freeze and await her fate, half sliding, half scrambling down the first part of the roof. Her feet crashed into something hard, the jarring feeling shooting up her legs and through her body, but she didn’t pause. A gunshot echoed out, a bullet whirring too close to her for comfort, and she glanced up, knowing they were on to her whereabouts.
Hazel scurried as fast as she could, staying low, sliding down the next part of the roof and then wriggling. She dropped, hands scrambling for the downpipe as she slid the rest of the way. It gave way, breaking and sending her spiralling to the ground, and she landed with a loud thump on the grass below. The wind came out of her with a big gasp and she struggled to inhale again, but she didn’t have time to stop and feel sorry for herself. She rolled over, used her hands to push herself up and staggered away, running towards the wooded area, arms pumping as she sprinted for the trees. She saw others, knew she wasn’t alone, but they were shooting back, retreating but probably trying to find somewhere safer to position themselves. She had nothing. No gun, no knife,nothing. Her training had taught her to kill a man with her bare hands if she had to, and she’d already proven to herself that she had the guts to do it, but nothing was going to help her against men with guns, men who were hunting her and every other Resistance member.
There was no way she was getting out of this. She was as good as dead. If they caught her, she’d never say a word, which meant days of pain before they’d finally kill her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
SOPHIA
Sophia clung tightly to the tree. Her arms were scratched, her skin bruised and torn from climbing the trunk and pushing her way up the branches. She’d been near the back door when they’d been raided. She’d been about to go up and look for Hazel, wanting to see how she felt about Harry’s departure and make sure she wasn’t too worried. It was obvious there was something between Hazel and Harry, it would have been obvious to anyone, and she’d hoped for her friend’s sake that Harry made it home safely.
She shuddered as she listened to screams below, squeezing her eyes shut and wishing she could block it out. Her natural instinct was to drop down and fight, to do anything she could, but her bare hands were nothing against the men below toting guns.
Hazel.
Sophia dug her fingernails into the trunk, the pain inside her impossible to comprehend. The only other time she’d even come close to this kind of pain was seeing her mother...She pushed away the memory, refusing to let it in. There was nothing she could do. Nothing.
She could try to drop slowly, quietly, or she could try to sneak up on one of them and take a gun, but the probability of either of those things working was almost nil. Her training was clear; she had to do whatever she could do to protect herself. She had to hide and wait and get up to the attic. She had to secure anything she could that was left in the house, and then get to the next closest cell and re-establish.
‘Let me go! I have nothing to say!’
Sophia’s blood ran cold as she heard the scream. Icy, painfully cold. In the moonlight Sophia could see Hazel, held on each side by Gestapo, her legs kicking frantically as the men each clutched an arm. She was like a wildcat, scratching and clawing and squealing.
Whack.
Sophia gasped. One of the men had clearly had enough. His fist connected with Hazel’s face and she went limp, falling to the ground. The other man gave her a kick before hauling her back up. She stumbled, blood dripping from her nose and down her top – the lights from one of their vehicles had suddenly perfectly illuminated her face. There was silence for a moment, or perhaps it was the ringing in Sophia’s ears that made everything else silent for her. And then Hazel started to fight again.
Sophia listened to her friend yelling and wished she’d just go quietly, knew they’d probably go easier on her if she was meek and mild. But Hazel was a fighter, and she knew in her heart that she would never give anything away.
She waited for a gun to fire, for the blast that would take Hazel’s life, but instead she heard her friend swear as they dragged her away, feet trailing in the dirt as they hauled her to one of their trucks.
Before, the lawn and trees had been full of gunfire. The maquis had battled hard, but she knew most of them were dead, strewn across the grass. There would be Germans dead, too, but she guessed they’d lost fewer. They were the ones who’d taken them by surprise, which meant they were always going to come out victorious. Hazel had been so worried about staying, about their location being discovered, and Sophia had been the one insisting they wait until Rose was back. She blinked away tears. Rose was gone. It had been days since they’d waved her goodbye, and she would have returned by now if she could have. They should have left; they could have left a coded message and disappeared, moved on so they had less chance of being found.
