Davey was targeting an RAF airfield at Bexhill, on England’s southern coast. It was less than two hundred kilometres from their take-off point, making a forty-minute flight for the night fighter. They flew at two hundred metres. This was below German radar coverage, but also low enough that an unexpected hill or a tiny lapse in Davey’s concentration could easily lead to a crash.
The coast was well defended, so Davey went higher and took a slight detour to avoid the searchlights and anti-aircraft guns around the port of Dieppe.
Long-range aircraft such as bombers were able to navigate using networks of directional radio beams. But night fighters carried no advanced navigational receivers, leaving Davey to rely on a simple compass bearing, and any features he could identify on the ground while skimming over at 280 kph in darkness.
When they reached the English Channel, Davey cut the altitude to 125 metres. He hadn’t dared retract the undercarriage in case it didn’t come out again, and he got Marc and Noah to shine a torch out of the cockpit in an attempt to inspect the damage.
With the British coast in sight they encountered three Hurricanes on a routine patrol. They’d probably been sent to investigate a signal picked up by powerful ground radar stations dotted along England’s southern coast.
Every British pilot in the sky that night should have been warned to look out for a lone JU-88 night fighter, flown by a friendly pilot. But Squadron Leader Davey had given enough pre-flight briefings to bored and exhausted pilots to know that this far from guaranteed their safety.
Luftwaffe and RAF planes used different radio frequencies, so Davey had no way of talking to his fellow RAF pilots. His only way of showing friendly intentions was to put on his landing lights and then go into a gentle upwards climb.
In this position, the bottom of the aircraft was exposed, making the largest possible target. It was the aviation equivalent of a dog rolling over to let you tickle its tummy.
‘Oh Christ,’ Davey shouted, as he watched one of the Hurricanes break formation and dive into an attack run.
He threw the JU-88 to one side, but in this position it would only take one machine gun blast to blow their fuel tanks.
Fortunately, at least one Hurricane pilot had paid attention during his briefing – or maybe just realised something was fishy about an enemy plane that flew at you belly up with its landing lights switched on.
Either way, the attacking Hurricane broke off and as Davey levelled out a second Hurricane moved alongside. They were close enough to see goggled faces illuminated by instrument panels and the two RAF pilots exchanged thumbs up.
Two of the Hurricane’s resumed their patrol, but to prevent further mix-ups one stayed on the tail of the German night fighter. For the next several minutes, Davey flew calmly, but kept an increasingly wary eye on his fuel gauge.
He studied his instruments. Having the undercarriage down created extra drag, but that wasn’t enough to explain the rate at which they’d been burning fuel.
Marc had noticed Davey’s increasingly anxious movements, but decided it was better to let his pilot concentrate than ask what was going on and risk breaking his concentration.
Two near-simultaneous events caused Davey to break his silence.
‘I’ve left the choke out,’ he shouted, first of all. ‘That’s a rookie’s mistake, damn and blast!’
Marc had learned about choke when he’d learned to drive cars and motorbikes. By pulling out the choke lever, an engine got fed a richer fuel mixture that was needed while it warmed up. But if you left the choke out once the engines were warm, you burned too much fuel.
Then Davey said, ‘And that’s Worthing blasted pier. Which means we’re a good ten miles off course and running on fumes.’
‘Can we make it to the airfield?’ Marc asked.
‘It’s touch and go,’ Davey said.
Marc and Noah exchanged anxious glances. Neither of them knew enough about flying to discern whether Davey’s mistakes were down to incompetence, or just the fact that he was doing a very difficult job. All they could do was keep quiet and let him concentrate.
The other pilot in the Hurricane was confused by the sudden change in course when they reached the coast, but he kept flying just behind. Then the right engine went into a death spiral, choking with several misfires as the propeller slowed to a halt.
‘We’re too low to glide in,’ Davey shouted, as he rolled the plane to the left, hoping to tip any last dregs of fuel towards the surviving engine. ‘We’re less than ten minutes from Bexhill, but we’ll only get a few seconds if the second engine goes, so if I see a good spot I’m going to try and plant her.’
The plane felt twitchy with only one engine running and Marc’s heart thudded when the engine spluttered, but mercifully kept running.
‘I’m seeing a good flat stretch of field up ahead,’ Davey shouted, as he turned the plane gently.
The left engine stuttered and misfired twice more.
‘You two brace yourselves. It’s going to get bumpy.’
The plane landed hard, with grass and stones pelting the underside, as Davey used left and right flaps to try keeping the JU-88 balanced on its one good wheel. All was good until their only wheel ran into the stump of a felled tree.
The wheel tore off, along with the engine pod under the right wing. The frame of the aircraft buckled, making the cockpit canopy break its bolts and shoot open. Marc’s neck snapped painfully as Noah’s huge bulk crushed him against the side of the plane.
They were pirouetting. The sound was deafening and a boulder dented the fuselage right next to Marc’s head.
As the speed decreased, the rustling and ripping sounds grew more like normal. It was almost a relief, but in a final act the right wing broke off completely and they tilted tail first into a narrow stream before coming to a complete halt.
There was only moonlight. Noah had thumped his head on something hard and moaned as Marc struggled to get out from beneath him.
‘Noah, move,’ Marc shouted, as he felt around in the dark, trying to release his safety harness.
The big Canadian was concussed, but conscious. Up front, Davey had smashed his face on the control stick and he was spark out, with his nose caved and a deep gash in his cheek.
Even the fumes in an empty tank of aviation fuel are enough to cause an explosion. Marc fought his seat buckle and used every bit of strength to push Noah to one side and knock off the remains of the shattered cockpit.
‘What’s going on?’ Noah asked, completely off his head.
‘You need to stand up and get out of the plane,’ Marc shouted. ‘Can you understand me?’
As Marc stepped out of the cockpit he realised they were at a steep angle. He could step backwards, then slide down the unbroken left wing to the ground, but he didn’t want to abandon Noah and Davey.
‘Come on, you fat bastard,’ Marc said, as he undid Noah’s harness and gave him a tug.
Noah almost head-butted Marc as he stood up. After the noise of the crash, the plane was making eerie sounds. Broken hydraulics hissed and hot engine parts pinged and gurgled.
As Noah slid face-first down the wing, Marc leant over the cockpit sill and reached into a bloody mess to undo Davey’s harness. It took everything he had to drag the pilot’s torso over the side of the cockpit.
‘Stop what you’re doing and put your hands where I can see them,’ someone shouted, in English.
Marc had been too busy huffing and grunting to hear two men and a woman crossing the field towards the wreckage.
Marc spoke in English, ‘I’m trying to get the pilot out. He’s RAF!’
A shotgun blast rang out and a man shouted angrily. ‘That was a warning shot. Next one won’t be, you devious Boche bastard.’
Marc had no choice but to step away from the cockpit and slide down the wing towards a pair of waiting shotguns.
‘He’s an RAF pilot,’ Marc repeated.
‘We saw that Hurricane shoot you down,’ the younger of the two farme
rs said irritably.
Marc was pissed off because he wanted to help Davey, but he understood the gunmens’ perspective. They’d seen a German plane chased by a Hurricane, followed by a crash landing and the emergence of two people who spoke English with funny accents.
Noah was starting to get his senses back, and looked up at the shotgun pointing in his face.
‘We should move further from the aircraft,’ Noah said. ‘If it catches light we’ll know all about it sitting here.’
Marc looked around towards the nose of the aircraft, as Davey groaned from up in the cockpit. At least it meant he was alive.
Although several of the aerial pieces had snapped off, Marc was optimistic because the nose cone with the sensitive radar set inside appeared to have suffered nothing more serious than scuffs and dents.
But the men with the shotgun were on edge. They didn’t like Marc looking around, or Noah giving them orders.
‘Devious Kraut bastard,’ the younger of the two farmers said, before swinging the butt of his shotgun and knocking Marc cold with a blow to the temple.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHERUB campus looked different. There was a new perimeter fence and a US Air Force team working security on the front gate. The road up to the old village school where CHERUB agents lived was a sea of mud, churned up by trucks and construction machinery building a runway at the eastern end of what had been a British Army artillery firing range when Marc left a year earlier.
Marc had spent two nights in hospital under observation. He had a dressing over his right temple and mild burns on the back of his neck as he stepped out of Superintendant McAfferty’s little Austin.
Inside, a toddler sat beneath a table in the hallway, playing with spent shell cases. Charles Henderson’s head popped out of his office and his face lit up when he saw Marc.
‘Shit, shit, shit!’ Henderson shouted. ‘Bloody good to see you!’
‘Shit, shit, shit!’ the toddler under the table repeated.
‘Terence, what have I told you about Daddy’s naughty words?’ McAfferty asked, as she gave Henderson a dirty look, then picked up the smirking toddler and gave him a good squeeze and a kiss on the cheek.
Henderson and Marc exchanged a solid British handshake, followed by a Gallic exchange of kisses on the cheek.
‘Seems quiet,’ Marc said, as he looked up the staircase towards the rooms where young agents and trainees slept.
‘If they’re not away on a mission, they’re out training,’ Henderson explained. ‘I’ll need to give you a full debrief on what you’ve been up to, but from what I’ve heard so far you’ve put on a top show. The RAF is chuffed with their radar set. I hear the boffins have already got it working.’
McAfferty spoke firmly. ‘Marc’s still groggy from the concussion, Captain. He’s been away for a year, I’m sure your debrief can wait for a day or two. Right now he needs rest.’
‘Absolutely, take your time!’ Henderson said cheerfully. ‘Head upstairs. Come down for a chat when you feel ready for it.’
As Marc headed upstairs, the familiar smells of floor polish and steam from the showers became a warm reminder of his friends and his training. His room was a former classroom, at the end of a first-floor corridor which he shared with five other agents.
Paul Clarke was the only person in the room. He lay on his bed, sketching on a small pad. He’d grown ten centimetres while Marc had been away, and had one ankle heavily strapped.
‘Still finding excuses to get out of training then?’ Marc said brightly.
Paul smiled, then put down his pad and stood up to clear a load of clothes and junk that had built up on Marc’s bed while he’d been away.
‘We weren’t expecting you until this evening,’ Paul explained. ‘Sounds like you had a good little holiday.’
Marc laughed. ‘Nice weather, nice people. It seemed rude to hurry back.’
‘We thought you were dead,’ Paul said.
‘A lot of people did. What are you drawing?’
Paul had a major artistic gift, and Marc was impressed as Paul turned his pad over, revealing a surreal image of two topless girls being chased by a giant serpent which had swastikas instead of scales.
‘Very attractive,’ Marc said, smirking. ‘I take it from the large breasts that you’ve grown out of the girls are yucky phase.’
‘Must have,’ Paul agreed.
‘Much else going on while I was away?’ Marc asked.
‘We nicked some sugar and yeast from the yanks. PT’s been brewing beer and selling it to the locals. Groups B and C are fully trained, but they’ve decided to cap our unit at twenty agents. A few people have been on missions. Henderson says we’re riding our luck: no casualties or anything.’
‘Nice,’ Marc said, as he sat on the edge of his bed.
He’d abandoned almost everything in France in order to fit into the plane, and apart from the boots his black commando gear and weapons had all been returned to British Army stores. There were just three items in the laundry pouch that McAfferty had brought to the hospital to collect his belongings in.
Marc placed his throwing knife and the dead German soldier’s pocket watch on his bedside table, then took out the knotted strands of Jae’s hair and gave them an experimental sniff. His heart surged as he caught the smell of the farm, mixed with the barest hint of Jae herself.
Marc turned his head so that Paul didn’t see his glazed eye. He was finally home, but it didn’t feel like a triumph. There was a huge hole where Jae belonged and Marc knew he wouldn’t fill it until he walked back through the gates of Morel’s farm and pulled his girl up close for a kiss.
READ ON FOR AN EXCLUSIVE FIRST CHAPTER OF THE NEXT HENDERSON’S BOYS BOOK, ONE SHOT KILL.
CHAPTER ONE
Fat Patty was a four-engined B-17 bomber, crewed by Americans, but assigned to a Royal Air Force special operations squadron. She’d been in the air for four hours, heading for France’s Atlantic coast. There were three men in the cockpit. Seven more manned electronic equipment and gun turrets, plus two trained spies ready to parachute into one of the most secure areas of occupied France.
Fat Patty’s crew were old hands. They’d dodged night fighters and anti-aircraft guns to insert agents deep in German territory and even made top-secret runs, dropping supplies to partisan groups in eastern Europe and refuelling in Russia before returning the following night.
Tonight’s run was as easy as this work got. After takeoff they’d flown down over Cornwall, then in a gentle southwards arc over the Atlantic, where no German fighter dared probe. The agents were to be dropped in countryside, a few kilometres from the port town of Lorient and its heavily fortified U-Boat1 base.
Dale was the radio operator, but the crew called him Old Boy because at thirty-five he was ten years older than his pilot, and the rest were even younger. He rubbed gloved hands, pulled his headphone cup away from one ear and gave the girl squatting on her parachute a few metres away a big show of pearly white teeth.
‘Gets damned cold up here,’ Dale said, shouting above four propellers and a whoosh of air. ‘Got a flask of coffee if you feel the need.’
The view down the metal-ribbed fuselage was gloomy. The only light came off illuminated dials and chinks of moonlight through the gun turret up front.
‘If I drink too much I’ll have to pee,’ Rosie Clarke replied.
The closest thing to a toilet on board was a relief tube built into the fuselage, but even when it wasn’t frozen up there was no dignified way a girl could use it.
‘Better give it a miss then,’ Dale said, smiling. ‘How old are you? Seventeen? Eighteen?’
At sixteen, Rosie was young enough to be flattered when someone said she looked older. But while Dale seemed nice, she wondered if his question was a trick that would cause trouble when she got back to campus.
‘I’d better not answer,’ Rosie said. ‘You know, security and everything.’
Dale nodded. He’d dropped enough agents to stop won
dering what happened to them, but Rosie might stick in his head because she reminded him of his daughter. Rosie was nervous and kept the conversation going to help her mind settle.
‘Where are you from?’ she asked.
‘Garfield County, Utah,’ Dale said, before making a little laugh. ‘I’ll bet you’ve never heard of that.’
As Rosie nodded her stomach plunged. The pilot had pulled the bomber into a sudden upwards lurch and she had to put her hand against the floor to stop herself tipping over. They’d been skimming at two hundred feet to avoid German radar, but now they had to gain height to get a visual on their drop zone.
The two agents were to be met by a reception committee from the local resistance, who were supposed to switch on a battery-powered light beacon when they heard Fat Patty approach. Rosie’s fellow agent Eugene came eagerly down the steps from the cockpit, crouching to save his head.
Eugene was a twenty-one-year-old communist who’d run the anti-Nazi resistance around Lorient for almost two years. He’d been picked for the job by Rosie’s commanding officer Charles Henderson and by most accounts he’d built a superb team of locals to gather intelligence and sabotage the town’s heavily fortified submarine bunkers.
While the combat gear they wore draped awkwardly from Rosie’s curves, Eugene’s thick frame had been made for it. He was moderately handsome, but sharply angled eyebrows and slicked-back hair gave him a vampirish quality.
‘How are we doing?’ Rosie asked, in French.
‘Just waiting for the beacon,’ Eugene replied. ‘I wanted to see the terrain from the cockpit myself. Last time I parachuted in, the navigator mistook the landing beacon for a German searchlight and I ended up walking twenty kilometres.’
Eugene had travelled to Britain to brief his superiors, learn the latest espionage techniques and most importantly to take a break from the mental pressure of working in Nazi-occupied territory.
For Rosie, this would be her first drop since completing parachute training two years earlier. After landing, her role was to serve as a back-up radio operator, and to train some of the younger members of Eugene’s circuit.