Eagle Day - Robert Muchamore Page 0,76

rumble of propellers. Down in the field, Henderson heard the same and began repeating an agreed signal: three quick flashes of light, followed by the lights staying on for five seconds. This was designed to prevent the spies from being dropped if the Germans captured the lamps. The wrong sequence or continuous beams would make the pilot fly back to Britain without dropping the spies.

The droning grew louder over the next half minute, but Marc and PT still got a fright as the twin-engined Whitley bomber swooped overhead, rattling the trees and making the metal shed behind them shake.

Aircraft technology had improved rapidly in the build-up to the war and the Whitley’s five-year-old design lacked speed and manoeuvrability. Flying without a fighter escort, the medium bomber would be easily picked off by German fighters. Its only defence was to hedge hop – the technique of flying extremely low in pitch darkness. This required a highly-skilled pilot but made the aircraft nearly impossible to detect either on radar or from the confines of a fighter cockpit several thousand metres above.

Henderson watched the bomb doors open as the aircraft skimmed the hillside at more than a hundred and fifty miles an hour. A large pod dropped out of the bay and slammed down in the field a few seconds later.

After signalling four flashes to indicate a safe drop, Henderson switched out the lights, grabbed the large canvas bag and raced across to check the next field, where the pod had landed.

‘That’s our cue,’ Marc said.

As PT ran back downhill to help Henderson, Marc and Rosie watched through binoculars as the Whitley applied full power and went into a steep climb. While it was safe to drop items like plastic explosives and guns into a field, more delicate items like radios, detonators and humans need parachutes, which require a much higher altitude to open safely.

After climbing to more than three hundred metres, the Whitley turned in a wide arc. Once the bomber was facing back towards him, PT flicked the lamps on. Rosie had moved around to the same side of the hill as Marc and the pair now acted as spotters, watching as the parachutes opened and then tracking their path to the ground.

‘I’m following the one on the left,’ Marc said, as he watched the moonlight reflecting off the top of a white ’chute through his binoculars.

‘Right,’ Rosie said, as she momentarily lost track of the second parachutist. She took the binoculars away from her eyes and saw that the wind was blowing her target severely off course. ‘He’s going way left of the field,’ she said anxiously. ‘It’s all woods over that way, he’ll get tangled.’

Rosie began sprinting downhill towards the trees, glancing up occasionally to track the parachute. Once Marc was certain that the first parachutist was going to land on target he chased after her.

As the pair neared the bottom of the hill, the bomber had passed behind and was making a rapid dive for its treetop-skimming ride home.

PT switched out the signalling lights for the last time as Marc and Rosie crashed through the undergrowth beneath the trees. It was pitch black and as neither of them had a torch their only option was to feel blindly until they heard a crash in branches less than twenty metres ahead, followed by a blood-curdling moan.

‘That’s not good,’ Marc gasped, as he charged towards the noise.

The moonlight illuminated streams of white parachute silk hanging down between the branches, but there was no sound apart from mulch crackling underfoot.

‘Hello?’ Rosie called, cupping her hands around her mouth. ‘Hello?’

Marc looked up and saw that the ropes attached to the parachute led high up into the trees. He couldn’t see the parachutist, but there was the unmistakeable outline of a large backpack snagged in a fork between the branches.

‘Mate?’ Marc asked uncertainly, as he gave a gentle tug on the rope.

This produced some rustling, until the pack overbalanced and the whole thing came crashing down. Marc dived back so that it missed his head, but the pack was heavy enough to knock him down when it hit the lower part of his leg.

‘Ooof!’ Marc groaned, as tree roots jarred his back.

Rosie closed in, half expecting to see a man hooked into the arm straps. ‘You OK?’

‘I guess,’ Marc said. ‘But where the hell is he?’

As Marc shoved the pack off his legs and stood up, Rosie noticed torchlight coming through the trees behind them.

‘We’ve spotted traffic,’ PT reported when he’d made a