Eagle Day - Robert Muchamore Page 0,99

with a German machine gun resting on her lap. She reached out to grab it when she saw a figure moving on the cliffs.

‘Only me,’ Paul said, as he came scrambling down the clifftop with one arm held up rather limply. ‘Shampoo,’ he added, as he remembered the password.

‘My god,’ Rosie said, when she saw the grazes all down his arm and across his face. ‘The state of you! What happened?’

‘I don’t exactly remember,’ Paul said. ‘The explosion knocked me off the bike. Then I was sitting on the pavement with all these people around me. I’ve got a bump on the back of my head, and the bike was smashed to pieces where it went under a car.’

‘Smashed!’ Rosie gasped. ‘So how’d you get here so quick?’

‘The German officer who ran me over. I was all confused and said I had no way to get home, so he put me in the car and gave me a ride to the farm. He dropped me off down on the main road. I started walking towards the house, then doubled back and came here once he was out of sight.’

‘You’re so lucky.’ Rosie smiled as she shone a torch at her brother’s cheek and felt around the back of his head. ‘You’ve got quite an egg back there, but the grazes are nothing to write home about.’

‘The whole front of the bike was mangled,’ Paul said. ‘The woman who picked me out of the road said the front tyre barely missed my leg.’

‘And now we’ve got a boat ride to look forward to,’ Rosie said warily.

The sinking of the was still fresh in both of their minds.Cardiff Bay

‘Don’t jinx it,’ Paul said. ‘Besides, we can’t get sunk twice in a row. What are the odds of that?’

‘Henderson said he wants whoever gets here first to start carrying everything in the truck up the pier to the tug, but you should sit down if you don’t feel up to it and I’ve made sandwiches if you’re hungry.’

Paul shook his head. ‘I’m a bit queasy, but I can take some of the lighter stuff up to the boat.’

The truck was parked less than five metres away and the back flap was already down from where Henderson had grabbed the coal sacks. Paul looked inside and saw his case, along with everyone else’s and the documents Henderson had stolen from headquarters. But he quickly realised something was missing.

‘Rosie, where’s my tins?’ he asked.

Rosie laughed. ‘Paul, I packed your clothes, your drawing stuff and all the money you’ve made, but we’re not lugging dozens of tins of food across to England. I left them on the kitchen countertop with a note telling the prisoners to take them.’

‘Bloody hell!’ Paul moaned. ‘You said you were going to pack them for me.’

‘Don’t be an idiot!’ Rosie said. ‘Why don’t we take Lottie and the chickens while we’re at it?’

‘I’m going back to the cottage,’ Paul said bitterly.

‘How are you gonna carry them? And besides, you just got whacked on the head – you should probably rest.’

Paul glowered at his sister. ‘I got here early. I can easily get to the house and back before Marc and PT arrive.’

‘Henderson won’t like it if you break his plan.’

But Paul was determined. ‘I can’t carry all the tins of fruit, but I’m getting the two big tins with my strawberry jam and the dark chocolate sauce.’

‘You’re an idiot,’ Rosie said angrily, as her brother started walking back up the cliff. But she didn’t go after him because she had the machine gun and Henderson had ordered her to guard the dock.such

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

21:27 The Harbour

Rosie was still annoyed at her little brother when she saw the big Mercedes drive down the approach road towards the harbour. She was sure it was the car that had dropped Marc off at the farm a few times, but she backed cautiously into the reeds beside the guard hut and kept the machine gun ready until she saw the two African men coming out of the back.

‘Khinde and Rufus,’ Marc said, as Rosie shook each of them by the hand. ‘This is my sister Rosie.’

‘A beautiful name,’ Khinde said. Rosie was overawed by his massive physique and a hand that enveloped half her arm.

‘I think we can stop pretending to be brother and sister now,’ Rosie pointed out. ‘Did you get here all right?’

‘Wasn’t bad,’ Marc said, nodding. ‘Sailed through the checkpoint in Boulogne without getting stopped and the one on the coast road wasn’t