the blacked-out window behind him. ‘It must be one of the coldest nights I’ve ever known.’
*
Hut P hummed with nerves. Marc, Luc, PT, Joel and Rosie had been told to sit by their equipment packs near the door at the back of the room. PT peeked inside and was relieved to find things the way he’d left them, with the Frenchmen’s good compass and the chocolate rations he’d stolen from the Norwegians.
Everyone shot to their feet as Air Vice Marshal Walker came in. He clutched a wad of briefing notes while his red face suggested slightly too much to drink.
‘Sit,’ Walker said firmly, as he stopped in front of a blackboard and turned to face the crowd. He continued once the chairs had finished grating across the floor. ‘I want you to listen carefully. I am only going to say things once. I will not take questions at the end. I couldn’t give a damn if you didn’t hear or if you don’t speak English.
‘You’ve all spent between three and six months at various training campuses within Great Britain. Now each team must prove its worth in a realistic field exercise. You’ve all been directed towards your equipment packs.
‘Each team will be dropped at a separate location in the north of England. The French team will parachute first, followed immediately by the Norwegians. You’ll then fly onwards for approximately fifteen minutes to the second target zone, where we’ll drop the kids, and almost immediately afterwards the Poles. This is your objective.’
Walker pointed towards his assistant, Jamieson, who unfurled a picture of a large gun, mounted on a rotating plinth.
‘This is a twenty-millimetre anti-aircraft gun. These cannons have been fitted on sensitive military and industrial sites throughout Britain to prevent low-level German bombing. We will provide each team with maps, listing three locations where one or more of these guns are installed. Your task is to remove such a gun from its mounting and steal it. Once you have the gun, you must transport it to London’s King’s Cross station and present it at the lost property office alongside platform three.
‘This is as close as we can get to a real-world test of your skills without dropping you behind enemy lines. Nobody apart from the people in this room and a few senior members of the police force knows what you’re doing. You’ll need to enter a secure facility. If you’re spotted, the chances are you’ll be shot at by armed guards if you don’t surrender quickly. You are allowed to tie up or temporarily disable people. You may not do anything that is likely to cause permanent injuries.
‘You’ll find additional maps, drawings and photographs in the mission briefings which will be handed out as you leave this room. I strongly suggest that you use your time onboard the aircraft to study these documents. Each of you will also be given a sealed envelope containing a surrender letter. This letter explains your actions and requests that a message be sent to SOE headquarters in Baker Street.
‘If you surrender or get captured, hand over this letter of explanation and we will do our best to rescue you as soon as possible. However, don’t rely on anyone believing that you’re who you say you are and if you’re captured there’s a good chance you’ll be roughed up by people who think they’ve caught a spy.
‘To pass the exercise, each team must deliver the weapon to the lost property desk at King’s Cross station by midnight tomorrow. That gives you forty-five hours from the time of your parachute drop. The mission is a team effort. The whole team will pass, even if only one member makes it to the station with the weapon. And that is all I’m going to say, except to bid you good luck.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The Wellington droned, a thousand metres above the industrial heart of England. This was the closest any of the trainees had come to a real parachute operation, instead of a ten-minute flight and a drop on to fields, with instructors and trucks awaiting them.
The five kids had been in the air for three hours. They’d seen war rage through the bomber’s rear dome: flames from an air raid, pockets of flak and vapour trails from dog fights in the moonlit sky. The Kids, Birds, Poles and Frogs huddled in four separate packs, bums perched on parachutes and fearing the worst as the condensation in their breath turned to ice on the inside of the fuselage.
Everyone looked for