The backpack into which the chute was originally packed contained an identity tag. It bore an identity number, followed by the name and date of each time it had been repacked. Hester Marsh, Heather Baker, May Sandalwood and CP Doyle seemed like reassuringly British names.
‘Hello?’ Stacey shouted. ‘Is anyone about? I’m here to help you.’
When he didn’t get a reply, the elderly policeman tried to imagine what he would have done if he’d landed here. The country on either side of the road was rugged, and Stacey had just ridden down the hill without seeing anyone.
Stacey decided to get back to his bike and ride downhill where he hoped to catch up with the parachute’s owner, but as he turned around he was smacked viciously across the side of the head by a plank of wood. He wrapped his hands around his face as he dropped on to his knees, but the adversary swung again. This time the wood hit so hard that the half-rotten plank broke in two.
A boy crouched down and opened Stacey’s eyelid to make sure that he was properly unconscious.
‘You’ll have a headache when you wake up, fatty,’ Luc said cheerfully, as he grabbed Stacey’s wrists and dragged him to the side of the road.
Luc had already cut several lengths of rope from his parachute cords. He rolled the officer on to his back and used two of them to knot Stacey’s wrists and ankles. Once the knots were tight, Luc searched the officer, taking a wallet containing four pounds, plus some coins and ration stamps, then he pocketed Stacey’s handcuffs and grabbed the truncheon hooked to his belt.
‘Thanks for the bike, too,’ Luc said, before spitting contemptuously in the unconscious officer’s face.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
An hour after landing, Joel, Marc, Rosie and PT had made it four miles. They’d stuck to the snowy fields for a mile and a half, then decided that they were far enough from their drop zone to walk on open roads.
The first village they reached had a parade of tiny shops with a post office on the corner. The milkman had already been through and the boys each swiped pint bottles from a doorstep and guzzled near-freezing milk.
Rosie turned her nose up when Joel offered her a swig. ‘Milk makes me puke,’ she said with a shudder.
At the end of the village, PT stopped a young farm labourer. He wore rubber boots and dungarees crusted in dried mud. ‘Excuse me,’ PT said politely. ‘We’re a bit lost. I wonder if—’
The young labourer spoke with an Irish accent. ‘Piss off with yous,’ he said abruptly. ‘Whatever you’re tapping me for, you’ll get nowt.’
‘We were wondering if there was a bus that could take us into Manchester.’
The man laughed caustically. ‘Bus around here? Not bloody likely. Now let me get to work, I’m late as it is.’
The farmer stormed past, almost knocking Rosie off her feet.
‘Nice talking to you, too,’ PT said sarcastically.
He waited several seconds before showing the farmer’s wallet to the others. The leather was cracked and it smelled of booze and the owner’s sweaty arse.
‘How much?’ Marc asked eagerly.
‘Not bad,’ PT answered, as he pulled out four ten-shilling notes and one fiver. ‘Seven pounds. I’d say he just got his wages.’
Rosie smiled. ‘That should do us for food, drink, train fares and whatever else keeps us going. Now all we need are tools for breaking in.’
‘Binoculars would be really useful as well,’ PT added. ‘For when we case the joint.’
‘The farmer I used to work for back in France had a big toolshed,’ Marc said. ‘I doubt you’ll find binoculars, but any farmer who runs a tractor will have the tools we need.’
*
Luc had studied his map. He figured that the other four would want to rob the machine gun before daylight and was sure they’d go for the nearest target. His two-mile bike ride ended on a new road built into a steeply sloped hillside. The wind blew the muggy smell of molten metal, mixed with the soot which belched out of three vast chimneys in the valley below.
Luc pulled off-road and stood astride the bike studying the scene. A single railway track ran around the opposite hillside and a huge crane dug coal out of wagons in a siding. The target detailed on his map wasn’t the main facility, but one of a dozen smaller ones that branched off the main road.
The oddest thing about the settlement was the absence of anything but the factories. Luc realised that the only reason for building a facility in such an inaccessible location was if it produced explosives or toxic chemicals that you wanted to keep away from the population.
The ground trembled as a single narrow headlight beam shot up the hillside. Luc dived for cover as three double-trailer trucks roared up the road. The first four trailers carried giant sea mines held in place with thick chains, while the final two were stacked with steel drums. They looked like beer kegs, but were actually depth charges used for sinking submarines.
Once the convoy passed, Luc remounted the bike. Fifty metres on was a huge concrete entrance cut into the hillside. The door was thick steel plate, and an elderly member of the Home Guard sat under a canopy, with his rifle standing between his legs and looking half dead from the cold.
At the bottom of the hill, the road widened to four lanes. Lights shone from a construction site. Equipment banged, welding gear shot out sparks and shouts came from the ground up to a crane twenty metres up. A new factory was rising out of the frozen ground behind a chain-link fence.
‘Got a light, boy?’ someone shouted.
Luc slowed his bike and looked back. A man stood at the fence. He looked powerful, in steel-capped boots and a donkey jacket. His dirty face glistened with sweat, but his eyes grovelled like a puppy begging for a treat.
Luc could have ridden on, but his map made less sense the further he went into town, so he turned the bike around.
Luc’s English wasn’t the best and he tried disguising his French accent. ‘What was that, sir?’
‘A light,’ the builder said.
Luc didn’t understand, but the man had a cigarette in his mouth and gestured like he was striking a match. Luc burrowed inside his satchel and took a match from a metal tin which also contained a tiny candle and cotton wool for starting fires.
‘Plenty of cigarettes but me matches are soggy,’ the builder explained. He took the match from Luc and struck it by flicking it against his front tooth.
‘Saved my life,’ the man said gratefully as he sucked a big lungful of smoke. ‘Would you like a ciggie?’
‘No, thank you,’ Luc said. ‘You certainly start work early around here.’
The man smiled as plumes of smoke shot from his nostrils. ‘Twenty-four hours a day around here. At least I’m off at seven.’
‘It looks like hard work,’ Luc said.
‘Backbreaking,’ the man agreed. ‘Churchill’s gotta have his bombs and the money’s not bad.’
Luc held up his map. ‘I was looking for this road,’ he said, drumming his finger on the paper.
‘Don’t see many kids here,’ the builder noted.
Henderson had taught his trainees to always have an excuse handy. ‘My uncle works there,’ Luc explained. ‘I have an urgent message for him.’
The map wouldn’t fit through the fence, so Luc put it up close. ‘That’s well out of date, sonny,’ the builder explained. ‘There’s been two new roads built in the last year. I reckon you want the third one, ’bout a quarter mile up the hill. There’s a lot of security up there. They won’t let you in. You’ll probably have to wait for your uncle’s shift change.’
‘I understand,’ Luc said. ‘Thank you.’
The dead streets made Luc wary. Instead of getting back in the saddle, he took a slow walk with the bike alongside. The road through the centre of town was thickly layered with rock salt to prevent ice forming. As it crunched under his boots a chemical smell in the air made his eyes burn.
Another convoy of trucks roared by, but while the factories behind the fences worked at full pelt, the
streets around them were dead. Luc turned right, sloshing through a huge puddle, then walked past three identical warehouses before reaching the target on his map.
He was desperate to find the others, not just to help with the mission but because this whole town gave him the creeps. The target was a warehouse on the edge of town. There was enough moonlight for Luc to spot the twenty-millimetre cannons positioned in a tower rising ten metres above the warehouse roof. This location was perfect for aiming at bombers swooping across the valley, but about as awkward as it got if you wanted to steal the guns.
There was barbed wire and armed guards on the gates. You’d then have to climb one of the towers, disassemble a gun and somehow lower it down to the factory roof. After pulling off that miracle, you had to escape on the only road out of town.
Luc wondered about the others. Had they already been caught? More likely they’d taken one look at all the security and found the fastest way out of town.
There was even a chance Luc had arrived first, but the more he thought about it, the more Luc wondered whether they might have not come here in the first place. PT was a talented thief. He would have taken one look at this remote location and decided that getting away was hopeless.
Luc wondered what to do next. He had to leave. If he stuck around after daylight people would ask questions, and it wouldn’t take a genius to link his truncheon and bike to the policeman who’d be found tied up at the roadside two miles away.
At least he had the bike. If PT and the others were on foot there was a chance that he’d be able to catch up with them at one of the other target sites. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was all he had.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The four kids had barely slept in twenty-four hours. They were cold, hungry, and it began raining as first light broke over the horizon.
PT was in front of a tall barn holding a short wooden fencepost. Marc and Joel stood alongside, while Rosie jogged towards them, dragging through snow and mud with each step.
‘I can’t see anyone nearby,’ Rosie said, as she swept strands of dripping hair off her face. ‘But there’s lights on in the farmhouse, and two blokes in the field on the other side.’
‘Better keep the noise down,’ Marc said.
‘You think?’ PT said sarcastically. ‘I was going to suggest that we all scream and make owl noises.’
There was a crack as PT drove the angled edge of the fencepost down behind the metal clasp on the barn door. The door shuddered, but the clasp didn’t budge until Joel grabbed the post and helped with the levering.
They’d seen the tractor through holes between the barn’s wooden sides. But there was no guarantee of tools inside and it was a relief to find them inside an old wardrobe. Its interior had been fitted out with shelves, with larger items like spanners and wrenches hung from hooks drilled in the back.
‘Perfect,’ Marc grinned. ‘All in good condition, too.’
PT always took the lead with anything that involved stealing. As Marc discovered a canvas sack on the earth floor, PT scowled back at Joel and Rosie. ‘One of you should be keeping lookout,’ he complained.
They were grateful to be out of the rain, even if it was just for a moment. Rosie was wringing out her long hair and got annoyed when she looked up and saw Joel still standing there.
‘I did the recon,’ Rosie said bitterly.
‘I’ve done other stuff though,’ Joel complained. ‘I want to dry off for a minute.’
PT looked back furiously. ‘Joel, get your arse out there.’
Marc had put a selection of the larger tools and a length of towing rope into the sack. ‘It’s heavy,’ he told PT as he picked it up. ‘We’ll have to take turns carrying it.’
‘What about another sack?’ PT asked. ‘Rosie, go look around the back of the tractor.’
They’d been stuck together long enough to get on each other’s nerves. Who’s put PT in charge? Joel asked himself resentfully as he stepped out of the barn. The rain had reached a new peak and huge balls of water exploded off the frozen ground.
‘It’s absolutely blasting down,’ Joel told the others. ‘We’re gonna have to sit out here for a bit.’
Rosie had found a couple of extra sacks. She shook out some mouldy onions, shivering with cold as she held the sacks open while Marc redistributed the tools. PT went through the drawers and added a few smaller items such as files and pliers to his satchel.
‘We can’t stick around at a crime scene, Joel,’ PT explained, as he headed towards the door. ‘We’ll find shelter somewhere, but not here.’
But PT gasped when he saw the rain. ‘Holy cock!’
The rush of water hitting the barn roof made a continual roar and the rain had overwhelmed the gutters, creating fountains that spilled from each corner of the roof.
‘We’re all set,’ Marc said as he joined the other boys at the door, but one look at the rain told him they were going nowhere.
And then there was a scream. It was hard to distinguish over the belting rain, but when they heard it again it was clearly, Daddy!
Rosie was the only one not standing in the doorway. She peered through a gap in the wall planks and saw a small girl holding a basket of eggs. She was six or seven, with long red hair. She was in a real state. The wind was blowing her skirt up and she charged panic-stricken through the mud after a wide-brimmed hat that had blown off her head.
Joel instinctively snatched the hat as it blew in from the side of the barn. When the girl saw him she dropped her basket and froze to the spot in her muddy rubber boots. Chasing through mud after a lost hat, the dark, the rain and an encounter with three half-drowned boys was more than the little girl could cope with and she broke down.
‘Hey, don’t cry,’ Marc said, as he took a step towards her. ‘We’re not going to hurt you.’
Back inside the barn, Rosie saw two men running towards the girl.
‘Alice, Daddy’s here,’ one of the men shouted. ‘Why didn’t you stay in the chicken shed, you daft apeth.’
‘Rosie!’ PT shouted, as Marc and Joel started to run. ‘Get the hell out of there.’
Alice started running towards her dad, but by this time the farmer had seen the lads running across his rain-swept pasture.
‘Run back to the house, Alice,’ the other man said firmly. ‘Mummy’s there for you.’
Rosie remained inside the barn as PT, Luc and Joel dashed across the field with the farmer close behind. She hoped that the second figure would follow, but he stopped to see what had happened inside the barn and sighted Rosie before she could take cover behind the tractor.
The lad standing in the doorway was about seventeen, with broad shoulders and striking blue eyes. Rosie guessed that he was the farmer’s son, as he stood in the doorway, looking unsure of himself, with Alice huddled up behind his legs.
‘What is this?’ the boy asked sternly, as Rosie stepped into the middle of the barn, in front of the tractor. He saw the open wardrobe and the stolen tools.
Rosie faked a sob. ‘Those boys dragged me in here,’ she explained. ‘I’m so glad you came. I dread to think what they were going to do to me.’
But the boy wasn’t stupid and he couldn’t reconcile Rosie’s story with the obvious theft of the tools.
‘You’ll come back to the house with me and we’ll fetch the police,’ the boy said firmly. Then he looked down at Alice. ‘Let go of my leg and go back to the house like Daddy told you.’
But Alice was scared and had no intention of going anywhere on her own. While the boy was distracted, Rosie bent down and picked up a long spanner that Marc had discarded while packing the three sacks.
‘Put that down,’ the boy said. ‘You might be a girl, but I’ll slap you if I have to.’
Alice squealed as Rosie charged forwards with the spanner. Rosie had done hundreds of hours’ combat training, but this was the first time she’d used it outside of the hall on campus.
She felt foolish, attacking a boy who was older and strong
er. The initial results weren’t good. The spanner swished past the boy’s head. He grabbed Rosie and she squealed as he grabbed her wrist and bent back her fingers.
Rosie screamed as the pain increased, but as she looked backwards she realised that the boy had taken no steps to defend himself. At last she felt confident and her vicious back-kick sunk into the farm boy’s stomach. As he stumbled backwards, Rosie knocked him down with a double-fisted punch to the back of his head.
Rosie felt like she was back on the training mats on campus as her mind calculated several ways to finish the boy off. But unlike in training, there was a distraught little girl standing in the background who couldn’t bear seeing her brother get hurt.
Instead of delivering a knockout blow, Rosie brandished the spanner in the boy’s face.
‘Stay down or you’ll be sorry.’
The shower had eased slightly as Rosie bolted out of the barn. There was no sign of the boys, but she was sure they’d have dealt with the farmer between the three of them.
Rosie made it less than ten metres across the sodden ground before she heard a huge bang from behind her. She looked back and saw the farmer’s wife with a shotgun. Pellets of hot metal hissed with steam as they sprayed the wet ground on either side, but Rosie ignored a powerful stinging sensation in her back and splashed on until she reached the hedgerow at the field’s edge.
The woman with the shotgun had given up the chase, but Rosie was badly shaken as she scrambled over the hedge. She smiled with relief when PT and Joel reached up to help her over.
‘Are you OK to keep running?’ PT asked. ‘We need to get as far away as possible.’
Rosie raised the back of her coat and touched the stinging area at the base of her spine. ‘Got hit by a pellet or two,’ she explained. ‘But I think it’s OK.’
CHAPTER THIRTY
The storm hit as Luc rode away from the target. The wheels of his bike dug into the mud. Water dripped off his fringe into his eyes, blinding him as he turned on to the steep hill that led out of the valley.