Secret Army - Robert Muchamore Page 0,65

smoke. ‘Would you like a ciggie?’

‘No, thank you,’ Luc said. ‘You certainly start work early around here.’

The man smiled as plumes of smoke shot from his nostrils. ‘Twenty-four hours a day around here. At least I’m off at seven.’

‘It looks like hard work,’ Luc said.

‘Backbreaking,’ the man agreed. ‘Churchill’s gotta have his bombs and the money’s not bad.’

Luc held up his map. ‘I was looking for this road,’ he said, drumming his finger on the paper.

‘Don’t see many kids here,’ the builder noted.

Henderson had taught his trainees to always have an excuse handy. ‘My uncle works there,’ Luc explained. ‘I have an urgent message for him.’

The map wouldn’t fit through the fence, so Luc put it up close. ‘That’s well out of date, sonny,’ the builder explained. ‘There’s been two new roads built in the last year. I reckon you want the third one, ’bout a quarter mile up the hill. There’s a lot of security up there. They won’t let you in. You’ll probably have to wait for your uncle’s shift change.’

‘I understand,’ Luc said. ‘Thank you.’

The dead streets made Luc wary. Instead of getting back in the saddle, he took a slow walk with the bike alongside. The road through the centre of town was thickly layered with rock salt to prevent ice forming. As it crunched under his boots a chemical smell in the air made his eyes burn.

Another convoy of trucks roared by, but while the factories behind the fences worked at full pelt, the streets around them were dead. Luc turned right, sloshing through a huge puddle, then walked past three identical warehouses before reaching the target on his map.

He was desperate to find the others, not just to help with the mission but because this whole town gave him the creeps. The target was a warehouse on the edge of town. There was enough moonlight for Luc to spot the twenty-millimetre cannons positioned in a tower rising ten metres above the warehouse roof. This location was perfect for aiming at bombers swooping across the valley, but about as awkward as it got if you wanted to steal the guns.

There was barbed wire and armed guards on the gates. You’d then have to climb one of the towers, disassemble a gun and somehow lower it down to the factory roof. After pulling off that miracle, you had to escape on the only road out of town.

Luc wondered about the others. Had they already been caught? More likely they’d taken one look at all the security and found the fastest way out of town.

There was even a chance Luc had arrived first, but the more he thought about it, the more Luc wondered whether they might have not come here in the first place. PT was a talented thief. He would have taken one look at this remote location and decided that getting away was hopeless.

Luc wondered what to do next. He had to leave. If he stuck around after daylight people would ask questions, and it wouldn’t take a genius to link his truncheon and bike to the policeman who’d be found tied up at the roadside two miles away.

At least he had the bike. If PT and the others were on foot there was a chance that he’d be able to catch up with them at one of the other target sites. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was all he had.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The four kids had barely slept in twenty-four hours. They were cold, hungry, and it began raining as first light broke over the horizon.

PT was in front of a tall barn holding a short wooden fencepost. Marc and Joel stood alongside, while Rosie jogged towards them, dragging through snow and mud with each step.

‘I can’t see anyone nearby,’ Rosie said, as she swept strands of dripping hair off her face. ‘But there’s lights on in the farmhouse, and two blokes in the field on the other side.’

‘Better keep the noise down,’ Marc said.

‘You think?’ PT said sarcastically. ‘I was going to suggest that we all scream and make owl noises.’

There was a crack as PT drove the angled edge of the fencepost down behind the metal clasp on the barn door. The door shuddered, but the clasp didn’t budge until Joel grabbed the post and helped with the levering.

They’d seen the tractor through holes between the barn’s wooden sides. But there was no guarantee of tools inside and it was a relief to find them inside an old wardrobe. Its