Run for the Border

Now I got a job

But it don't pay

- "Train in Vain" by The Clash

"What do you reckon, Ian?" Private Martin Williams said as both men gazed up at the sky from beneath their rimmed helmets. "Think Fritz has turned it off?"

"Haven't heard a shell land in near two minutes," his companion replied in the thick dialect of the highlands. "Or maybe the Jerries are tryin' to catch us with our pants down."

"Not much helping that, Ian. However, I might just die without a jolt soon."

Lance Corporal Ian Dunnel grinned between cheeks browned with mud. "You have a true love for the habit, Martin."

Martin nodded. "Ever since I lost a pack jumping from the side of Titanic. It's like those lost cigarettes left a hole that no amount of smoke can ever fill. 'Unsinkable,' my ass. Lost a good pair of shoes that night, too."

He turned to the back wall of the trench. "Ah, to hell with it. I'd rather be blown to bits if the moment before was spent with a lit one than stay down here and live to see another smokeless day."

The two infantrymen walked down the trench, passing the bored or blank faces of their fellow soldiers in the 1st Division, II Corps. A couple of the unshaven men stared at Martin with narrowed eyes, but Martin gave them nothing but a nod. Soon, he and Ian reached the slope that led them up to the thin strip of land separating the first and second trenches.

Here, the plant life had not all been wiped away, though every spot of green was bordered by the black maw of a shell hole. It was also here that Martin could pull out a pack of cigarettes without every other rifleman mobbing him for a handout.

Ian is the exception, Martin thought as he handed one to the Scotsman.

The two smoked in amiable silence for a moment, watching the tobacco haze follow the wind into No Man's Land. Only the breeze dared to move in the barren half mile that separated the British and German lines. It bore the scars of countless frontal assaults that Ian and Martin had both been lucky enough to survive as the Battle of the Somme dragged into its second month. Shells had torn open the ground, machine guns had churned that earth into sludge, and the dead had sunk into this mire with each failed attack.

It's enough to turn a man right philosophical if he thinks on it too long, Martin concluded as he lit a second cigarette.

Ian held out his hand for a second as well.

"Oh, no. You're not getting any more until you honor your end of the bargain."

"Patience, son, patience," Ian said, producing a thin bottle from his boot. "You know the gin always hits finer after the first smoke."

Martin smiled. "True enough."

He took a pull and sighed as the warmth spread through his chest and stomach. Juniper berries held no great place in his heart, but it wasn't like the trenches flowed with spirits. Alcohol had its own grip on him alongside tobacco, and either itch could drive him to the edge of madness with enough forced abstinence. Sometimes, he found himself praying for the next suicide charge so he could take a long draught from the rum flasks the officers passed around before the whistles blared.

If they combined that rum with a smoke, I'd be the first one over the top.

Ian's voice interrupted his thoughts. "Hey, now, let's not forget whose gin that is."

"Right, right." Martin handed over the bottle. "You'd think a Scotsman would have Scotch squirreled away instead of this juniper berry English piss."

"You would, aye. But my family doesn't own a Scotch distillery, so we must make do with what they do brew."

After a moment of silence, Ian spoke again. "Speaking of, I've always wondered where you get all these smokes from. You never mention any family or anyone back home."

Martin smirked. "Condition of my enlistment."

"Sure, son."

The highlander had chuckled, but it was only partially a joke. Martin recalled the conversation with the Firm's representative.

I want a carton every month, split into weekly parcels. If I'm going to enlist, train for months, then dodge shells and bullets so I can then shoot a fellow soldier when no one's looking, the least you can do is guarantee I won't be deprived

Is that all?

I also want double your usual payout given the considerably greater risk of bodily harm this job entails.

Two cartons a month.

Done.

Martin chuckled to himself. Dumb bastards. I knew they'd never increase my pay, but cigarettes are almost as good as currency in these trenches for acquiring all sorts of things.

Or at least they would be if he could keep himself from blowing through almost all the Imperials the Firm sent him through their proxies. At least he had worked out an arrangement with Ian.

If I'm going to die, I want a bottle and a cigarette sharing my lips when the bullet finds me.

At that thought, a whine reached Martin's ears he couldn't tune out. Instead, they focused in on the noise as it grew in intensity. Realization came a moment later.

Ian had started speaking. "It's rare to meet a man who volunteered these days. Most of those boys are dead. It's one of many reasons I keep you as my friend, Martin…"

He turned to find Martin diving to the ground.

"Cover," Martin roared, burying his face into the dirt and pushing his helmet up to cover the back of his head.

Then Ian finally heard the roar of the shell hurtling toward them.

Martin wasn't sure if he had blacked out for a moment or an hour. All he knew was that his entire body ached like it had been picked up and thrown back down.

Probably because it was.

"Ian," he croaked, staggering to his feet. "Ian!"

But there was no sign of his friend. Only a smoldering crater where they had both stood in comfortable silence.

Martin took a step forward and felt something beneath his foot.

Lifting his boot, he found a hand and part of a forearm.

Martin did not gasp in horror. Instead, he hissed in frustration as he caught sight of the severed neck of the gin bottle on the edge of the shell hole.

Then he looked back down and realized his friend had given him one last gift. The second cigarette Martin had given Ian was still clutched in the stiff fingers.

Well, if he's not going to finish it, Martin thought, reaching down.

***

Another shock jolted through Martin's flesh. But instead of the shockwave of a German shell, this one was much more localized. Limited to one of his cheeks.

Martin blinked awake, groaning. The mud of the trenches had been replaced by bench seats as the room he was in swayed back and forth. It took another moment for Martin to process that he was on a train. And that his hands were tied.

Martin looked up at the man who had struck him. "Did you have to wake me up? I was just getting to the good part of that dream."

"Oh, my apologies," the man replied. "I will be sure to ask next time."

"Much obliged." Martin tucked his chin into his chest and started to close his eyes.

The same hand that had struck him jerked his face back up. "I'm not playing, English. You're going to tell us who the hell you are and why you're on this train before we throw you off it."

English? Martin's murky mind begrudgingly started to analyze what he was seeing and hearing. Blinking away sleep, his eyes focused on the man's feldgrau jacket and the Iron Cross hanging from his chest pocket.

Then his eyes transitioned to the other side of the officer's jacket, noting the swastika at the bottom of the eagle insignia.

Ah, yes. Same bollocks, different war.

"I must have gotten on the wrong train at the King's Cross Station," Martin replied to the Wehrmacht officer standing before him. A hauptmann, he noted from the three silver stars on the jacket's insignia. The equivalent of a captain in the British Army.

"Amusing," the hauptmann said, his blue eyes flashing a moment before his Walther pistol whipped across Martin's face. "Try again, English."

Martin spat to give a moment for the stinging to subside, pleased to find no teeth in the mix of blood and saliva. Without my winning smile, how am I to win over the mademoiselles in sunny Paris when this is all over?

"Honestly, mate, I don't know why I'm here."

In the moment of silence that followed —excluding the constant clacking and whining of steel wheels against iron rails —Martin assumed the German was about to strike him again. Instead, the man's brow furrowed.

"You're serious," he finally spoke. "You sneak aboard our train wearing a schütze's uniform and cause all this trouble, and now you tell me you don't remember anything?"

Martin's eyebrows raised. "What trouble?"

The hauptmann ignored his question as he muttered to himself. "How on earth did you even know to get on this train? How could you have known we were taking this one?"

Martin's brain finally made the leap. "You stole this train?"

The hauptmann stared at Martin for a moment. Then, he shrugged. "Ah, what the hell, as you English say. You'll be dead soon, anyways." He paused for a moment to light a cigarette. "You want to know why we stole this train? Despite what Goebbels and his bureau of liars peddle, the Third Reich is losing this war. The Bolsheviks in the east are pushing us back from Kursk, the British and American bombers are pounding our cities, and their armies are mopping up the last of our forces in Sicily."

Martin stared at the burning cigarette with barely concealed envy. "So you're running away? Fleeing to a neutral country — Switzerland, most likely?"

The hauptmann snorted. "You think us cowards, but what is better, to stay and fight for a lost cause or to refuse to be part of this madness? It's not just the men caught in this storm, but women, children, and elderly, too. More lives are lost every day this war continues. In Switzerland, Hitler's thugs cannot reach us."

Something was bothering Martin beyond the immediate issue of being held captive by Nazis —and not being altogether sure why he was in this situation to begin with. As the train car they were in exited a tunnel, sunlight streamed through the window to his right. His eyes shot up in horror.

"You're making a run for the Swiss border in broad daylight?"

The hauptmann nodded.

"You must know that's bloody suicide. The Allied warplanes will find you in no time and strafe us until all that's left of these cars are the wheels."

"What other choice did we have? The rail lines are all clogged at night because that's the only time the Wehrmacht can move men and equipment without losing half of it to the American B-17s and British Typhoons." The hauptmann smiled. "Besides, we are no longer in Northern France. They will not be hunting for us this far south."

Martin's brow furrowed. How could this German have managed to hijack a train from underneath the noses of his own army while still being this stupid?

Then, a new noise reached Martin's ears. A rumbling in the air beyond the din of the wheels straining against the iron rails. He started to look out the window but stopped himself. Even if the source was on his side of the carriage, it would be no more than a dot until its incredible speed made it materialize in the final seconds.

Instead, Martin dove to the floor. With his hands tied behind his back, he was forced to soften the impact with the side of his face.

"What are you doing?" the hauptmann barked above him. "Get up —"

The train car exploded as hundreds of high-caliber bullets ripped through the roof and wall, adding wood splinters and glass shards to the shower of lead. Then the salvo ceased, and the rumbling overhead reached a crescendo before fading into the distance.

"I told you," Martin said to the hauptmann's body where it lay twitching beside him.

Even without standing, he could see at least a dozen wounds in the German's side and arm. Martin wiggled his arms and legs, unable to believe his own body had escaped unscathed except for a few splinters.

He rolled over, ignoring the prickle of broken glass sticking into in his back as he surveyed the car. The wind ruffled his hair from massive new holes the Allied plane had punched in the wall and roof. More importantly, Martin saw one of the guards splayed across the bench, blood running down the seatback. His other captors were nowhere to be found.

Right then. Martin eyed a particularly large glass shard a few feet away. He shuffled on his back, gritting his teeth with each new stab from a splinter or glass shard in his arms and back. Better to have scars there then the face, after all.

The pain magnified ten-fold as Martin took the jagged shard and started sawing at the rope tying his hands. The glass cut his hands as much as the rope. But what choice do I have?

Finally, the bindings loosened, and Martin scrambled to his feet. Only then did he notice the knife in the dead hauptmann's belt.

"Bloody hell," he swore, staring down at his savaged palms.

Then he noticed the cigarette still smoldering next to the German's pale lips, and his mood brightened considerably.

A minute later, now armed with the officer's pistol, knife, and smoke, Martin scanned the sky through the gaping holes in the passenger coach, reasoning the Allied fighter that had strafed them would not bother attacking the same section of the train twice.

Then again, when you're flying at hundreds of miles an hour, it probably all looks the same until seconds before you pull out of the attack run.

However, Martin's logic appeared to hold up as the air thrummed again with the roar of the plane's propeller. A moment later, bullets tore into a railcar further down the line, accompanied by shouting and screams in German.

Looks like this is my stop, Martin concluded.

But one look at the ground whipping past told him there was little chance he could jump off and survive. I need to slow this train down first.

The only way to do that was to reach the locomotive.

Martin slid open the door at the front of the passenger car, leaping the gap to the doorway of the next car as the wooden ties rushed past beneath him.

Peering through the window in the door, he found a similar layout of bench seats. Scattered through them were six Wehrmacht rifleman, all glued to the windows as they searched for the marauding Allied fighter.

Martin crept into the carriage. The men were so fixated on trying to predict when they would become the next victims of the downpour of lead that Martin could have easily slipped right past them down the center of the car.

Instead, Martin recalled Ian and a dozen other good men he had seen cut down in the trenches in the months before he had finally found the opportunity to "take care of business," as the Firm put it. He recalled the German bombers during the Blitz. More so, he recalled the fine bottle of Scotch lost when the explosion blew in the window of his hotel room and sent Martin flying into the opposite wall. The bomb had knocked his brains around so good that for several heartbeats Martin thought he was back in the meatgrinder of the Somme.

Whether it was vengeance for Ian or for the Laphroaig that drove Martin's hand to the pistol, he couldn't be sure. All he could be sure of was that his hand would not shake. It had done this sort of thing too often to be troubled by nerves now.

Martin took a drag of the cigarette and swung the Walther to center on the nearest man covered in feldgrau.

The first rifleman slumped over as Martin blew out smoke.

The second started to turn at the noise before a bullet caught him in the neck.

The third was fumbling with his rifle when his head snapped backward, the bullet carrying his helmet as it passed out the back of his skull.

The fourth had started to raise his weapon when his chest exploded in a cloud of red.

The fifth squeezed off a round, the rushed shot whizzing past Martin's left cheek as he gave the jumpy rifleman his last lesson in marksmanship.

The sixth threw his rifle to the floor and raised his hands as Martin was a hair's breadth from squeezing the trigger. He paused, and both men stared at each other.

Then Martin's eyes focused on the cigarette clamped between his teeth as the final bit fizzled out.

"Sod it all," Martin swore as he spat out the filter and emptied the clip into the German in retaliation.

Stepping over the limp body, he pulled open the door, finding the coal tender in front of him.

Martin smiled to himself. Another spot of luck. I only have two more clips for the hauptmann's pistol to take my revenge for that cigarette.

After taking a moment to reload, he stepped into the roaring summer wind and climbed the ladder to the top of the tender. On all fours, Martin scrambled down the thin catwalk over the mound of coal used to power the locomotive that was belching smoke into his face.

Martin coughed. This isn't the kind of smoke I want. Can't have this bloody stuff polluting my lungs.

A moment later, he dropped down into the locomotive cab. What he found there was somehow more surprising than waking up on a train a captive of Wehrmacht deserters with no prior memory of what had happened while aboard or why he had snuck aboard disguised as a German private.

In front of him, a woman in a black SS sturmbannführer's uniform stood with an MP 40 trained on the man at the controls. She spun around, catching Martin in the machine gun's sights a second before he could pull the Walther from his jacket.

"Ah," she spoke the English in a decidedly non-German accent. "The one who tried to ruin everything, yes?"

"What in the seven hells are you talking about?" Martin pointed at her blonde braid whipping about as the wind traveled through the open windows of the locomotive cab. "And what is a woman doing in the SS?"

"Bitte, hilf mir," the engineer cried out behind her. "Sie ist eine Verräterin."

"Halt den Mund," Martin barked back, unsure of when he had picked up German.

The wide-eyed engineer fell silent as instructed, and Martin pinched the bridge of his nose as he spoke to the woman. "Wait, wait… you're not in the SS. You're French Resistance. That explains the accent — and why your captive is calling you a traitor."

She nodded with the start of a smirk. "I see I was not the only one to sneak aboard this train with a stolen uniform." Her lips turned down with her next words. "Your little stunt nearly ruined my entire plan. I had to shoot the brakeman before he could stop the train."

Martin could feel his earlier frustration returning. "What stunt?"

"You cannot be serious." When Martin said nothing, her smile returned. "You sneak aboard, climb to the top of the train, wait for a bend so you can make a shot from two hundred meters back, and now you say you don't remember any of it?"

"Two hundred meters?" Martin gasped before his shoulders slumped. "Damn, the best shot I'll ever make, and I'll never even know how I did it."

The French Resistance fighter kicked a corpse Martin had not noticed before. "I hope it was worth it to prematurely kill this man."

Martin started to speak, then paused. "Prematurely?"

She nodded. "My group is waiting to ambush this train further up the tracks. That's why I had to keep it moving at all costs. And now you have denied my commander the pleasure of killing this piece of shit masquerading as a Wehrmacht major."

Martin's brow furrowed. What had this all been for?

Then he felt something flapping in his jacket pocket with the rushing air as the locomotive continued rumbling down the tracks. Martin pulled out the document.

Major Gunter Vogel has been a valued member of our operation by providing a conduit to sell contraband within the ranks of the German Army for great profit. However, we have reason to believe he plans to desert and flee to Switzerland. He cannot be allowed to take his knowledge of our enterprise with him.

Major Vogel is also directly responsible for massacres of Jews and Soviet civilians during his time in Russia before his unit was reassigned to France. He cannot be allowed to escape prosecution for these crimes by waiting out the war in a neutral country. Nor can he be allowed to use his knowledge of our conspiracy as leverage to escape the noose should he be picked up by the Allied authorities.

See that business is taken care of with all haste.

Martin closed the piece of paper and looked up. "Well, since my business is taken care of now," he nodded to the dead major, "I suppose I can help you with yours."

"I do not need your help or the help of any other man," she hissed at him. "I have been fighting le Boche since they first forced themselves on my country in 1940."

Then the sounds of German voices met their ears despite the wind trying to carry them the opposite direction.

"You sure about that?" Martin said, sticking his head above the lip of the coal tender.

A rifle shot whistled past and ricocheted off the iron wall of the locomotive cab. The engineer yowled with terror but stayed put as the resistance fighter jammed her gun in his back.

"Stay at the controls or you'll have a lot more to worry about than stray bullets, shithead," she growled in German.

Martin peeked over the lip, ducking as another bullet cracked past in the space his forehead had filled the moment before. One soldier had positioned himself on the catwalk, lying prone and able to shoot at the slightest suggestion of movement over the wall of the coal tender.

Not good. At least the locomotive cab has a long roof, or he'd be able to shoot down into our backs.

The German's only weakness was his weapon: a Kar 98k. The bolt action rifle required him to expel and chamber a new round each time he fired. In the few seconds that action took stood Martin's chance.

"Let's see how jumpy our rifleman is," Martin said to himself, throwing a hand in the air.

The air whistled with another bullet, and Martin defied instinct by leaping up the moment it passed instead of taking cover. Holding the ladder with one arm, he extended the Walther and fired three times for good measure.

The man's head slumped under his coal scuttle helmet, but another soldier popped up, copying Martin's strategy as he fired rounds from his pistol. Martin ducked and then returned fire, trading bullet for bullet as each man alternated covering on the opposite ends of the tender and shooting.

"You know," he said to the resistance fighter as pistol rounds peppered the air. "This would be a lot easier with that gun of yours."

"Not a chance, Englishman," she said without taking her eyes off the engineer. "Besides, you won't be needing that little gun anymore."

"What do you mea — "

She shot the engineer with burst from the MP 40, then seized the brake lever now slick with his blood and pulled back.

Martin felt his grip on the ladder rung vanish. He flew forward, landing hard on the iron floor as the air vibrated with the sound of metal couplings smashing together as the train ground to a violent stop.

No sooner had he started to regain his breath then voices came from the right side of the train. "Hands up," they shouted in crude German. "Throw down your weapons or we shoot!"

Apparently, the surviving soldiers on the train hadn't followed these orders, and a moment later a long burst from a machine gun sounded from the center of the train. Martin thought that was the end of the short-lived ambush, but when he got to his feet, he found the machine gun belonged to the resistance fighters, not the Germans. All along the train, Wehrmacht soldiers were climbing from the carriages with their hands raised.

"Guess that's all sorted, then," Martin said, replacing the pistol in his jacket a moment before he felt a gun pressing into his back.

He turned and found the resistance fighter from before now holding him hostage. "Really? After I risked my life to save you?"

"Move, Englishman," she growled in response.

"Fine, but this is the last time I show any kind of charity to anyone."

He climbed down from the locomotive and found himself face to face with a hardened looking man.

"Who is this, Sylvie?" he asked in French, another language Martin had not known he spoke until that moment.

"Some interloper that shot the commanding officer of these cowards before we could."

"Really?" The man's eyebrows raised.

"I am not an interloper," Martin replied in French, surprising them all. "I just had different business than she did to take care of."

"He took some crack shot from two hundred meters and nearly ruined this whole plan," Sylvie said. "Let me shoot him, please."

"Two hundred meters." The man smiled. "Lower your weapon, Sylvie. Clearly, this man could be of use in our group."

She scowled but did as he said.

"What is your name?" the man asked Martin.

"Martin Williams."

"Well, Martin, I am not sure how fate brought us together, but I see a mutually beneficial arrangement in the making." He extended his hand. "I am Jacques Bergerac."

Martin shook his hand as the gears turned in his head. With the note he had found earlier, missing memories had started to fall into place, and that name sounded familiar.

A moment later, he grinned. Ah, yes, that's where I've heard it before.

In one motion, he pulled the Walther and shot the French Resistance leader between the eyes.

No one seemed able to move for a moment. His subordinates had yet to comprehend what had occurred, and in that stasis, Martin bolted for the train.

In the next second, the world devolved into chaos as the Frenchmen and women turned every weapon onto him. Gunfire then started coming from in front of Martin, angrily buzzing above and around him. Some German holdouts on the train had taken advantage of this turn of events to make their stand, Martin surmised.

Yet the French and German guns quieted beneath another roar. Looking up, he spotted the dot in the sky growing larger.

The Allied warplane that had raked the train earlier must have called in additional fighters. Or he couldn't get enough of us from before, Martin thought as he ran with his head ducked even lower. Its pilot had no way of knowing that the silhouettes on the field beside the train were not Wehrmacht soldiers but French Resistance fighters. To him, everything was a target.

Martin dove beneath the iron coal tender, pressing the top of his head against the rail for extra protection as the machine guns ripped up carriages, dirt, and any human unlucky enough to be standing on either.

He scrambled to his feet as the plane's roar faded into the sky. He had to take advantage of the carnage the fighter had left in its wake before any attention returned to him.

Jacques Bergerac had purchased weapons from Martin's organization to supply his fighters but believed he could avoid paying by killing the handlers the Firm sent to deliver them without consequences.

So much for that trip to Paris, Martin thought. He might be a rotten bastard, but that city is full of French patriots who won't care what my reasons were once word gets out.

With a great yank of the lever, Martin uncoupled the coal tender before sprinting to the locomotive cabin. On the other side of the train, a few weapons were still exchanging fire, notably weaker than before.

"I wonder what the women in Zürich are like," Martin said to himself, chuckling as he threw the locomotive's throttle into forward. The train picked up speed now that it was freed of its burden, resuming the flight to the Swiss border.

Martin hoped that the Allied fighter would still be targeting the stationary train cars. He was relieved to see the first pink hues of dusk on the western horizon. It could not hunt him in the coming darkness.

"Two jobs in one afternoon," he said to himself as the train raced along the tracks.

He settled into the engineer's seat after wiping up the blood with the dead man's hat. "They better pay me overtime for this."

Then he sucked in his breath. The note didn't say anything about payment, did it?

"Bloody hell!"

***

Martin Williams will return to the Battle of the Somme in a future adventure.

In the meantime, join Martin on another adventure as he must overcome recent events and finish the job aboard a sinking RMS Titanic in...

The Complete* Martin Williams Collection

1. Sinking Prospects (1912)
2. For King and Country (1916) — print exclusive
3. Black Thursday (1929)
4. The Lindbergh Job (1932)
5. A View to Die For (1936)
6. The Rising Sun (1941)
7. Run for the Border (1943) — you are here
8. Down on Main Street (1946)
9. The Airlift (1948)
10. Into the Valley of Death (1951) — print exclusive
11. Epilogue: Retirement — print exclusive

*When paired with A Bloody Business, the official Martin Williams novel: