A YOUNG SUCCUBUS NAMED DELICIA by Michel Poulin - HTML preview

CHAPTER 15 – NEW OCCUPIERS

10:45(Paris Time)

Saturday, February 21, 1942

Avenue des Champs Élysées, 8th Arrondissement Paris, Occupied France

Mélanie was furiously tempted to give the royal finger to the SS soldiers now rolling down the Avenue des Champs Élysées in long columns of vehicles, on their way to the various train stations of the capital and then Germany. However, she restrained herself, knowing that the reactions to that from the SS could be unpredictable. After five months of continuous attacks and ambushes by ‘British commandos’, the three SS divisions which had arrived in Paris last September were now decimated and demoralized, having lost over a quarter of their men, along with many weapons which had simply vanished. A Luftwaffe senior officer who was a good customer of the cabaret had told Mélanie in nearly gleeful terms that those three SS divisions, now thoroughly discredited on top of being despised by many regular German officers, were returning to Germany, where they were to be refitted and then sent to the Russian Front. In return, three regular Heer divisions, equally decimated but by the Soviets, would take their place in Paris, where they were supposed to rest and recuperate. As well, the widely hated Brigadeführer Paul Hausser just had been relieved as the Kommandant of the Greater Paris region, with General-Leutnant Blaskowitz replacing him. Johannes Albrecht Blaskowitz had a reputation as an honorable man who respected the laws and customs of war and who, in fact, had been relegated up to now to a relatively minor command by Adolph Hitler, for protesting SS atrocities in Poland earlier in the war. Mélanie was ready to give a bit of a break at first to these new German occupiers, as long as they behaved in a decent manner. If not, then more caserns could blow up at night. In the meantime, she would use this transition period to continue building up her hidden arsenal of stolen weapons, which now counted over 2,000 portable weapons of all kinds, and to continue training the employees of the cabaret in their handling. Just that, plus her occasional looting expeditions made in order to provide extra food and

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supplies to the cabaret, would be enough to keep her plenty busy in the days and months to come.

Turning her back to the departing SS troops, Mélanie got back on her bicycle and started pedaling back to the cabaret. As she pedaled, her mind started thinking about the possible opportunities that such a massive exchange of units could bring to her. For one, the departing SS units were not likely to have destroyed their local stocks of weapons, ammunition and fuel, nor would they carry all those stocks with them to Germany, something that would have necessitated a lot more transportation capacity, of which they already had a shortage of. More likely, they would have left them in place, to be available to the units taking their place in Paris. However, Mélanie knew from having watched a similar switchover in the past that it would take days to move a full unit out, plus more days for a fresh unit to move in. Any stocks left behind were thus liable to be lightly guarded at best during those few days. This was definitely a good time for her to pay discreet nocturnal visits to the various caserns and garrisons being vacated by SS units, to see if anything useful for her could be open to looting.

01:56 (Paris Time)

Sunday, February 22, 1942

Basement levels of the French École Militaire

7th Arrondissement, Paris

Mélanie was on her guards and ready for anything as she materialized in the basement of one of the southeast corner buildings of the French École Militaire, near the Eiffel Tower. She had visited those same basement levels many times before, months ago, when she had extensively looted the stocks of old French Army weapons and ammunition kept there, with apparently the Germans unaware of her looting. The previous SS occupiers could however have transferred the remaining weapons and ammunition in the meantime, in which case she would find only empty basement rooms. Her hearth jumped in her chest when her night vision ability showed her long lines of piles of crates and boxes half filling the dark room, exactly as they had been during her last visit. Those departing SS troops had simply ignored or forgotten those old French weapons, leaving them behind without any guards to watch over them. Many of these weapons would be considered obsolete today, but they were still deadly and effective,

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especially if used by combatants firing from fixed defensive positions. Not believing her luck, she started walking down the piles of crates, choosing what would be of highest value to her, then started to transfer those chosen items to her secret cave via teleportation jumps.

Mélanie ended up actually emptying completely the rooms containing the French Army weapons in the process of two nights, transporting her loot to a cave adjacent to and interconnected to her original secret cave, which she called ‘Ali Baba’s Cave’. Luck then smiled to her on the third night, when she found out that the departing SS unit had left behind sizeable stocks of German small arms ammunition and fuel, meant for the incoming replacement unit and kept under light guard. Three more nights of work were sufficient for Mélanie to move out those stocks of munitions and fuel, nearly filling up her second cave.

Tired and dirty from her last night of carrying weapons and ammunition to her two caves and of piling them in separate, well identified piles, Mélanie contemplated the fruits of months of looting and stealing. She now had enough to arm a small army and sustain it with ammunition for weeks of intensive combat. She also had enough explosives stashed in her caves to blow-up sky-high half of the Quartier Latin if someone ever made a mistake while handling them. Mélanie then thought about when and to whom she would eventually distribute her stocks of weapons and explosives. Obviously, the whom would have to be French members of the Résistance. As for the when, the bulk should ideally be distributed just before the fight to liberate Paris. If done too soon, there would be the very real risks that some traitor or double agent infiltrated into the Résistance would hear about her stocks of weapons and alert the Germans about it. Such traitors and double agents were unfortunately too common around Paris. Already, a few Résistance groups, notably the Groupe du Musée de l’Homme, had been dismantled by the Germans and its members jailed or executed, thanks to either denunciations, lax security protocols, double agents or traitors, or a combination of those factors.

‘’What I need is a well-organized, well-trained group which takes security measures seriously.’’ said Mélanie to herself. To her knowledge, only one such group came to her mind at once: the communist-organized and run Francs-Tireurs et

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Partisans42, or FTP. She had already helped one cell of the FTP, the one run by Paul Romanov, a number of times, providing it with weapons, explosives and even operational assistance, like when she had raided the Fresnes Prison in conjunction with FTP fighters. Maybe she could approach Romanov again, to pass to him the word that more weapons were available for the needs of the FTP and that she needed someone highly placed in the FTP to devise a sensible distribution plan for her weapons.

Liking that idea, Mélanie walked slowly to the big piles of crates full of either TNT or RDX in one-kilo blocks, pondering how best to use all these high explosives. Just with those one-kilo blocks, she had a total of over thirteen tons of molded explosives in her caves and just couldn’t see how she could use all of that, short of blowing up every remaining German barrack building in Paris. Something that she had read years ago, as she was studying chemistry under a private tutor, among other basic sciences and mathematics, then came back to her mind, bringing a devilish grin on her face.

‘’Yes! Let’s be imaginative with those explosives.’’

05:17 (Paris Time)

Thursday, March 5, 1942

Kitchen of the ‘Mille et Une Nuits’ Cabaret

Marie Laurent, alerted by her cook, Sylvie Renaudin, about noises in her kitchen, took a deep breath before taking one step to stand in the doorframe of the kitchen, an old French Army revolver in one hand and pointed. She was about to shout a warning as well but was left speechless on seeing that Mélanie was the ‘night intruder’. Her adopted daughter was actually busy around the stove of the kitchen, on which water was boiling in a large steel kitchen pot. What looked like a large, empty tin can floated in the boiling water. Marie’s eyes then fell on the collection of old tin cans, blocks of some kind of whitish substance, strings of steel wires, electrical tape and German stick hand grenades spread on the big dining table. On the kitchen counter next to the stove stood five tin cans from which protruded the wooden handles of German stick grenades. The kitchen was also fairly cold, as all the windows had been opened, apparently to ventilate

42 Francs-Tireurs et Partisans: Approximate translation is ‘Skirmishers and Partisans’.

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the room. Marie lowered her revolver and approached Mélanie, who was now smiling to her.

‘’Mélanie, what in the World are you doing this early in the kitchen? And what is all this for?’’

‘’I am making a few improvised bombs and mines in preparation for the future fight to liberate Paris, Mother. By the way, be careful with those blocks: they are one-kilo blocks of Hexogen high explosives.’’

‘’You are making bombs in my kitchen? Do you want to blow us all up?’’

‘’Don’t worry, Mother, I know what I am doing, believe me.’’

‘’Oh! And does this have anything to do with your latest fad of searching the garbage cans of our neighbors for empty tin cans and of collecting old nails, screws and steel nuts?’’

‘’Yes, it does! I need empty tin cans, preferably with their top still attached to them; to contain the explosives I want to melt into shape, and I will use those old nails screws and nuts as shrapnel for my bombs.’’

‘’And those German stick grenades? I suppose that you are not coating them with sugar to turn them into candies?’’

‘’Of course not, Mother!’’ said Mélanie with a grin. ‘’Those grenades, half dipped into tin cans filled with melted hexogen explosives, will serve as delayed fuses and detonators for what will be very powerful hand anti-tank and demolition charges. Just watch as I make one of them.’’

Now truly intrigued, Marie watched Mélanie take two blocks of explosives and put them inside the big empty tin can floating in boiling water. She instinctively stepped back on seeing that, half expecting the explosives to blow up or ignite because of the heat. Instead, the blocks soon started to melt into a kind of thick syrup.

‘’Hexogen, apart from being insensitive to shocks, melts at a fairly low temperature, Mother. Once those blocks will be completely melted, I will then stick at the vertical a German stick grenade in the can, with its wooden handle upward. Note that I taped a small string of steel wire bent into a corkscrew to the head of the grenade’s explosive canister. That is to allow the grenade to stand in the can with a space at the bottom that will allow hexogen explosives to flow under the grenade and solidify there. That way, that German stick grenade will be completely surrounded by two kilos of hexogen explosives. I then take the tin can filled with explosive and grenade out of the boiling water and let it cool down, so that the hexogen can fully solidify. Once they are

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cold, I then fit the old tin cover of the can in place, with a hole cut in the center to let the wooden handle of the grenade stick out of the can. The last step is to tape the cover to the can, to hermetically seal its top and to keep the whole thing together. At the end, we have a hand-thrown charge that is easy to operate and has its own, five-second delay fuse to ignite the standard explosive charge of the grenade, which then in turn ignites the two kilos of hexogen, enough to rip to pieces a tank track or kill everyone in a large room.’’

Marie was left overwhelmed for a moment as she eyed the hand charges presently cooling on the kitchen counter.

‘’Mélanie, you are truly devilish!’’

Her daughter grinned at that compliment.

‘’I know, Mother: it’s in my nature. I also plan to produce remote-controlled shrapnel bombs and heavy canister shells which could be hidden to cover the approaches to fixed defensive positions. Give me enough time to prepare and I swear to you that the Germans will hurt when the fight for Paris will start.’’