Secret Army - Robert Muchamore Page 0,61

everything seemed OK until he checked his line. ‘Your hook!’ he said urgently.

‘Shit!’ Luc gasped, as Marc held it up.

The static line for each parachute hooked to the overhead bar with a G-shaped clip. The gap in the G was filled with a spring-loaded clip that locked into place around the bar, but in Luc’s case the closing bar flopped from side to side.

‘Sir, sir!’ Luc shouted, as he ran down the plane towards the Poles. ‘What can I do?’

Parris took one look at the hook and saw that the spring had somehow popped out of the clasp. Fortunately, the nine previous jumpers had each left a static line and hook behind.

‘Corporal Kent,’ Parris shouted.

Kent was a slender instructor who’d been assigned to the Frenchmen for the past week. Kent sprung up from the jump seat behind the cockpit and hurried towards Parris.

‘Broken hook,’ Parris explained. ‘I’ll try fixing a replacement. You deal with the drop, OK?’

‘Right you are, sir,’ Kent said, but he looked worried as he moved towards the exit door. Kent was experienced, but it was three in the morning, he’d had no more sleep than the trainees and he didn’t appreciate the sudden pressure of having to organise the drop.

Parris knelt in front of Luc, his shoulder propped against a bulkhead as he tried twisting the broken hook out of the metal bracket sealed to the end of the rope. On the ground this was easy, but with the aircraft shaking and his fingers numb from sub-freezing temperatures it was over a minute before the metal hook came free and hit the floor with a clank.

‘Can’t I use one of the emergency parachutes?’ Luc asked.

This had occurred to Parris, but the parachutes used by the pilots and bomber crew had a manual release cord and mastering it wasn’t something you wanted to teach quickly when there was a risk of death if it went wrong.

‘This’ll be fine,’ Parris said unconvincingly.

At three minutes to drop time Corporal Kent gave the order for the four kids who were ready to approach the doorway and hook up. Luc looked horrified as the door of the plane came open.

Parris had got the hook off one of the other lines, but as he tried fitting it to Luc’s parachute he realised that the hook was slightly too broad to go through the metal ring on the end of Luc’s line. The design was only slightly different and you’d never have noticed unless you tried joining one to the other.

‘Damn it,’ Parris roared.

The Poles had their equipment on and were lining up behind the kids for the second drop as Parris grabbed another used line with the right kind of hook.

The co-pilot made an announcement over the loudspeaker. ‘Cockpit to drop crew, height is six hundred feet, drop zone will be live in ten seconds. Wind is seven knots north-westerly.’

Parris’ fingers had warmed up and with practice he’d become much quicker at switching the hooks.

But he wasn’t fast enough for Luc. ‘Hurry up!’ he begged.

‘DZ live,’ the co-pilot announced.

‘Rosie, step up,’ Corporal Kent shouted. ‘On my mark … and mark.’

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.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

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