Clash by Night by Doreen Owens Malek Page A

tongue, aided amply by gestures. She stepped in when more complicated concepts required explaining and when precise understanding was necessary.  
    “Okay,” Harris said, retrieving the plant blueprints from a corner and spreading them out on the floor. He knelt and indicated points on the drawing, talking as Laura translated for him.
    “If we place the charge in the office here,” he said, tapping his pencil along a margin, “next to the main power generator, we can run the line right out this door.” He placed the eraser against a square marked Sortie , for Exit, and leaned closer. “Then we put the detonator on the rise in back on the plant,” he stabbed his other index finger at the small hill shown by a crescent on the map. “When the blast goes off, we scatter and run for these trees.” He waved the hand holding the pencil at the woods indicated by stick figures on the plans. “I’ll have to get out there and check it personally, to make sure this map is accurate and nothing much has changed, but that about covers it. With enough juice the factory should go up like a Roman candle on Independence Day.” He sat back on his haunches and looked up at his French audience. “Excuse me, Bastille Day. How does that sound?”  
    Laura smiled as she finished translating. The Vipére members glanced at one another and nodded, murmuring approval. Only Alain looked on in stony silence.
    Harris rubbed the back of his neck. “Now we’ll be doing this at night, one or two in the morning when they run only a skeleton crew, but the French workers can be alerted to get out in time. According to what you told me before, the Germans post guards at each door and around the perimeter of the building. We’ll have to plan how to divide them up and who should take each one, but we have to see the exact deployment first. We’ll check that next week.”  
    He exhaled sharply and put his hands on his thighs. “So. What have we got in the way of fireworks?”  
    Laura asked Curel and received an answer.
    “Nitroglycerin,” she told Harris. “They use it in the mine.”
    Harris shook his head. “Nitro’s no good. Too unstable. What else?
    They all looked at him, unable to frame an alternative.
    “Plastic high explosive?” Harris said. “PHE?”
    Laura translated and it was obvious they didn’t know what it was.
    Harris exhaled slowly. That had been too much to hope for; it was being used by the newly formed British SOE, Special Operations Executive, in training its agents to work underground in occupied countries. He cursed again his situation, which had precluded bringing along the high technology materials which would make this job easier and safer.  
    “No dynamite?” he said.
    Laura repeated the word, giving it the French pronunciation, but they had received the message.
    “The Germans have plenty of it,” Curel said, after a protracted pause.
    “Then I guess we steal it,” Harris said.
    “They’ve been moving some of it out on hay wagons the last few weeks,” Michel Thibeau said. “My uncle works in a camp and he was brought here to load it. He says the consignment from Hamburg’s been held up and they’ve been taking part of it back across the border.”
    “Wagons? Surely the master race can’t be having trouble with its trucks,” Harris said.
    “They’re using all of them to loot art treasures from the Louvre and carry them to Berlin,” Curel snarled.  
    “I get dynamite for you,” Alain said abruptly, in English. He was torn between his growing reluctance to aid Harris, for whom he was forming an intense dislike, and his desire to complete the mission. The latter won.
    Laura shot the boy a look. “Alain...” she said warningly.
    “I know where the boche keep it,” he said to her.  
    “Been sneaking around the camp again?” she asked.
    “Is it easy to identify?” Harris demanded, ignoring her.
    Alain spit in the dirt. “Those methodical bastards label everything, including the