Secret Army (21 page)

As Rosie flung herself out of the plane, Parris dropped the replacement hook on the floor.

‘Blast,’ he shouted.

‘For god’s sake,’ Luc yelled desperately, as Marc jumped out of the doorway.

Parris didn’t appreciate getting shouted at by a thirteen-year-old. ‘Shut your mouth and keep still,’ he ordered.

PT went next and Joel four seconds after that. Luc looked around desperately as the Poles awaited the order to hook up for their drop zone which was just a few minutes away.

‘It’s on!’ Parris said triumphantly, as he passed the end of the hook towards Luc.

‘It’s been more than twenty seconds,’ Kent warned as Luc raced towards the doorway and hooked up. ‘Are you sure you want him to jump, sir? He’ll be half a mile away from the others, at least.’

‘Drop zone closing in ten seconds,’ the co-pilot said over the speaker. ‘Drop crew, please communicate. Do we have the all-clear to turn towards drop zone four?’

‘Let me drop,’ Luc begged. ‘I’ll find them somehow.’

‘Go on then,’ Parris shouted.

Proper procedure was to stand in the doorway and wait for the go signal, but Luc was moving away from his teammates at more than a hundred miles an hour, so he flung himself straight through the doorway.

As Marc landed a gust of wind caught his trailing chute and yanked him sideways into a bush. He yelped and swore as thorns pierced his trousers and stabbed his thigh. The snow was thinner in these parts, but Marc was engulfed as the parachute silk snagged and sent white clumps tumbling down from the branches.

Marc’s boot hit a thick trunk. He used it as a brace to stop himself getting dragged deeper into the branches, but he still had to brave the thorns and reach down and free himself from the harness.

‘Need a hand?’ Joel asked.

Marc looked up. It was dark, but there was enough moonlight to catch the amusement on Joel’s face. ‘What do you think?’ Marc grunted. ‘Grab hold of me.’

Marc cursed as he staggered to his feet. The thorns in his thigh hurt and he knew his wet legs and bum wouldn’t dry out in the cold. Just to rub in the misery, Marc saw that he’d hit the only obstacle for fifty metres in any direction.

PT and Rosie had found each other and came towards the scene holding balled-up chutes.

‘Nice landing, Marc,’ Rosie grinned, as Marc shone torchlight on his thigh and pulled out the first of six thorns.

‘Hold the torch for me,’ Marc said irritably.

PT began shoving the four parachutes deep into the sprawling bush. If the chutes were left open they’d catch the wind and might be spotted. The last thing they wanted was a search party looking for them.

‘No sign of Luc,’ Joel noted, as he scanned the landscape.

‘I didn’t see his chute,’ PT agreed. ‘Parris can’t have got the hook back on in time.’

‘First bit of good news I’ve heard all day,’ Marc said, then winced as Rosie used her nails to tweeze out another thorn.

‘Luc’s a fool,’ Joel said, with a nod. ‘But those guns look heavy and an extra pair of hands might have sped us up.’

Joel pulled the map out of his satchel. Although it was dark, there was enough light to see three looming hilltops and a narrow road a few hundred metres away.

‘What does it look like?’ PT asked, as he crouched beside Joel.

‘The Norwegian’s map is right,’ Joel said. ‘You see, the three hills over there? They match the contour lines on our main maps and the road is exactly where—’

‘Owwww!’ Marc yelled.

Rosie had saved the deepest thorn until last and couldn’t help laughing as Marc hobbled around clutching his thigh. ‘You’re such a baby!’

‘Keep the racket down,’ PT warned. ‘For all we know there’s people nearby.’

Once Marc calmed down, the quartet crouched in a circle of torchlight around Joel’s map.

‘Three targets,’ Joel said. ‘This one is much nearer. Two and a bit miles.’

Rosie was suspicious. ‘We know Walker’s out to get us,’ she said warily. ‘There’s three targets on that map, one is two miles from where Walker chose to have us dropped. The others look like they’re six and eight miles away.’

‘You’re saying it’s a trap?’ Joel asked.

Rosie shrugged. ‘All I’m saying is, do we want to go where Walker expects us to?’

‘It’s the same gun at each target, though,’ Marc said.

‘Same gun,’ Rosie agreed. ‘But what about security? I mean, wouldn’t security be tighter at, say, a factory where they made Spitfires than a factory where they make boots or tents.’

‘Rosie’s right about Walker,’ PT said, as he took the map from Joel. ‘I was involved in a few heists when my dad was alive. He always said that stealing is an art, but true genius lies in getting away afterwards. Looking at this map, the nearest target is in the middle of nowhere. One road in and out, which means you’ll either get picked up easily, or you’ve got to hike across country. I say we go for this one.’

PT pointed at the most distant of the three targets.

‘Eight miles,’ Joel protested. ‘And that’s if we go cross country through snow and ice. It’s more like twelve on these country roads.’

‘But it’s on the outskirts of Manchester,’ PT explained. ‘The city is off our map, but Manchester has dozens of roads. It’ll be much easier to lose ourselves after the heist.’

‘Guess you’re right,’ Joel nodded. ‘Maybe we can steal bicycles or catch a lift.’

‘We’ll try,’ PT agreed, as he took out his compass and started pencilling a route on to his map. ‘We’re going to need tools and stuff too, bolt croppers for cutting fences, spanners for taking the gun off its mounting.’

‘Plus food, or money to buy food,’ Marc added. ‘We’ve got the chocolate and water in our canteens, but that’s not much if we’re out in this cold all day long.’

‘I think we should start walking,’ Rosie said. ‘We can work out the details as we go along.’

*

Police Sergeant Stacey wasn’t due on duty until six a.m., but he suffered from insomnia and, rather than tossing about in bed until his wife yelled at him, he’d decided on an early start. After putting on his uniform, Stacey made corned beef sandwiches and a flask of Bovril for his lunch. He then climbed on his bike and headed for a police station in a larger village seven miles over the hills.

Stacey should have retired, but the government wanted young men in the armed services rather than patrolling rural Lancashire, so he’d gone back to work for the duration of the war. Mostly he didn’t mind, though pedalling up a steep hill at four-thirty on a snowy morning did make his bed seem more enticing than usual.

Freewheeling down the other side was much more Stacey’s thing. The speed and recklessness of going fast in slippery conditions gave him a childlike thrill. During thirty-six years as a police officer, he’d freewheeled every hill on his beat a thousand times, but nothing had prepared him for the ghostly presence he sped towards that February morning.

White waves shimmered in the moonlight, blocking the entire width of the lane. Stacey braked as hard as he dared, but the tarmac was slippery and he veered into the scrub along the roadside. He ended up in a shallow ditch, with torn trousers and the bike stuck in a hedge with the front wheel spinning freely.

Stacey kicked the bike aside and felt a dull ache in his hip as he rolled on to his bum and sat up. He recognised the distinctive shape of a parachute and drew a relieved breath upon realising that he hadn’t been driven off road by a ghost.

The policeman saw three possibilities: a British airman who might need help, a German airman who might be dangerous, or most alarmingly of all, a German spy.

Stacey kept a hand on his truncheon as he limped towards the billowing parachute, but his weapon would be inadequate if his opponent had a gun. The chute would cause another accident if left in the road, so Stacey grabbed the ropes and began pulling in the billowing silk. When it was balled up at the roadside, he knelt on the fabric and studied the harness by the light of his torch.

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.

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.