One Shot Kill by Robert Muchamore Read Free Book Online Page B

dead Germans out back, but the one Rosie shot on the helmet was just knocked out. It seemed wrong to kill a man who was unconscious, but he could come round at any moment and she didn’t have time to mess about tying him up.
    After shooting him through the heart with the rifle, Rosie made a complete circuit of the cottage, keeping close to the walls in case one of the Gestapo men was hiding out in the bushes. Besides the admiral and his two companions, Rosie counted eight dead Gestapo.
    Back in the hallway, Eugene was losing the fight. He’d gone much paler and tried saying something, but all he could do was shake and make a long croak. But his eyes showed Rosie his problem: his grip was weak and his lethal pill floated in the blood pooled between his legs
    ‘They can’t take me,’ he finally muttered.
    Rosie doubted Eugene would survive more than a few minutes, but despite being in agony he seemed anxious about being captured. She crouched down and picked the rugby-ball-shaped pill out of the blood.
    ‘Do you want it?’ Rosie asked, as tears smudged her vision.
    Eugene parted his lips. His face felt cold as Rosie balanced the pill between his teeth and then pushed up his lower jaw to crush it.
    ‘I let you down,’ Eugene croaked.
    As Rosie took the machine gun and made half a step back, the cyanide paralysed Eugene’s breathing and his body began convulsing from a heart attack.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    Rosie felt like breaking down. At least fourteen people had died in four crazy minutes and it might have overwhelmed her if she hadn’t had to concentrate on helping Edith.
    ‘I can’t carry you far,’ Rosie said. ‘I’m not as strong as Eugene.’
    Rosie stripped her equipment pack down to essentials: three grenades, pistol, machine gun, her ID, Madame Lisle’s bandages and iodine plus the first aid kit, money, maps, compass, some food and refilled water canteens.
    Rosie helped Edith down the stairs, then piggybacked her a dozen paces through the gore in the hallway and left her sitting on the doorstep at the back of the kitchen. There still might be Gestapo in the bushes, so Rosie didn’t hang about as she belted across to the stables, with Eugene’s blood-crusted machine gun slung over her shoulder.
    There was a saddle room at one end of the stables, but Rosie had only ridden a few times and had never prepared a horse herself.
    Which way round did a saddle go? How tightly? How would she know which horses were good for riding? Should they take one horse or two?
    ‘I’ve got no clue,’ Rosie confessed, once she’d dashed back to Edith. ‘Do you think you can help?’
    Edith had found a pair of Madame Lisle’s rubber boots by the back door. They were slightly too big, but made walking on her badly scarred feet more bearable. She moved across to the stables with an arm around Rosie’s back, but the sight and smell of horses seemed to rejuvenate her.
    Friendly heads poked over the stable door and Edith gave two animals handfuls of fresh grass to keep them calm as she led them out and talked Rosie through fitting the saddles.
    ‘You’re sure you’re OK to ride?’ Rosie asked. ‘It might get hairy.’
    ‘If I can cling on to Eugene, I can ride a horse,’ Edith said.
    It took nearly ten minutes to get the horses ready. Edith asked for her own pistol and Rosie considered running back to the house to get one, but they heard a car approaching and cars only meant Germans, because civilians in the military zone weren’t allowed petrol.
    After giving Edith a lift into the stirrup, Rosie mounted her horse as voices sounded fifty metres away, around the front of the house.
    ‘We were ambushed,’ a German was saying. ‘At least half-a-dozen guns blazing at us.’
    Rosie gave her horse a little kick and said gee-up, but the animal regarded this with contempt.
    ‘Not like that,’ Edith said. ‘A little higher up, and give it more of a snap.’
    Rosie looked back anxiously, half expecting men to come running