‘Take a step back, sweetheart,’ Dale said, as he removed his headset and stood up.
After squeezing past Rosie, Dale moved towards the rear of the plane and crouched over a hatch in the floor. Moments later a red bulb illuminated directly above his head.
‘Beacon in clear view, commence drop in sixty seconds,’ the pilot announced over an intercom.
The message sent everyone scrambling. Rosie and Eugene strapped on parachutes they’d been sitting on for most of their journey, then helped each other attach cumbersome equipment packs that buckled to their thighs. More supplies for the local resistance would follow on additional parachutes and the nose gunner had left his position to help Dale push them out.
‘Twenty seconds. Wind north-by-north-east at two feet per second,’ the intercom said.
Rosie glanced at Eugene, feeling like she was about to spew. ‘I can’t remember the winds. Is that blowing me left or right?’
‘Gently left,’ Eugene said. ‘You’re first. Remember your breathing. Get up by the hatch.’
As the red bulb died and the green next to it flicked on, Dale tugged on a rope handle and lifted a half-metre-square hatch out of the floor. Air currents ripped noisily towards the rear as buffeting made the fuselage shudder.
Eugene gave Rosie a friendly whack on the back as he attached the static line hanging off her chute to a bar over the hatch.
‘Drop positions,’ Dale shouted.
The bomber flew at two hundred metres, going as slow as it could without stalling. But that was still over a hundred and fifty kilometres per hour, which meant every second moved Rosie’s drop zone by forty metres.
She sat on the edge of the hatch, boots dangling over a black abyss and tense hands resting against the side. She looked up, catching angst on Dale’s face. Eugene said something, but she’d pushed off before she understood it. She fell for two seconds before the static line tethering her to the plane snapped off, opening her chute.
The crack was reassuring. It’s tough to judge the approaching ground in darkness, but if the pilot had got the height right, Rosie would be able to count to fourteen elephants before touching down. She saw the outline of a hill, but no sign of the landing beacon. As her chute opened she heard the crack of Eugene’s line, followed by three more chutes loaded with equipment. At the same time, Fat Patty began a lazy turn, dropping back beneath German radar as she turned back out towards the Atlantic.
Rosie counted under her breath, ‘Nine elephants, ten elephants, eleven elephants …’
The dark made it hard to see the ground, but a torch beam hit Rosie and after a second’s blindness she sighted trees coming up way too fast. On twelve elephants she yanked her left steering line, opening a vent in the top of the chute and tilting her sharply to the right.
A whiff of manure hit Rosie’s nostrils as she got clear sight of where she was about to land. She’d cleared the trees, but there was a tall fence closer than she’d have liked and her boot thumped into it before she pulled up her trailing leg and made a gentle touchdown on its far side.
Two torch beams lit her up, casting shadows across her body in the shape of fence posts. She unbuckled the chute and scrambled forwards, ready to gather up the billowing chute before the next gust of wind caught it. She could see the other chutes landing nearby and then she heard a shout – in German.
Heart in mouth, Rosie rolled on to her bum and got her first proper look at the men behind the torches. Her eyes had adjusted to the gloom and it was hard staring into the torch beams, but the curved outline of two German army helmets was unmistakeable.
Note
1 U-Boat – German submarines were usually called U-Boats. The term is an abbreviation of the German word Unterseeboot, meaning submarine.
www.muchamore.com
www.hendersonsboys.com
www.hendersonsboys.com
www.hendersonsboys.com
www.cherubcampus.com
www.cherubcampus.com
www.cherubcampus.com
www.cherubcampus.com
www.cherubcampus.com
www.cherubcampus.com
www.cherubcampus.com
www.cherubcampus.com
www.cherubcampus.com
www.cherubcampus.com
www.cherubcampus.com
www.cherubcampus.com
www.hodderchildrens.co.uk
www.facebook.com/hodderchildrensbooks
www.twitter.com/hodderchildrens
Contents
Part One May–June 1942
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Part Two August–September 1942
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirth-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Sneak Peek
If you liked this, you’ll love…