Crouching low, she scanned the grounds. Commander Yardley said sentries patrolled the perimeter ten minutes past each hour, and no movement caught Cilla’s gaze.
She tapped the wall three times, and the men joined her with their satchels. They ran, hunched low, to the boundary fence of the station, and they lay flat on the damp ground.
After the MI5 officers used wire cutters to snip through the fencing, Cilla led them through the breach and ran about twenty feet to a cubical concrete hut, the target.
A few weeks before, Yardley had ordered the construction of a new combined transmitting and receiving hut. They’d laid the foundation and assembled the concrete walls and roof, but they hadn’t installed the door or equipment. Even if the sabotage demolished the hut, the station would be set back only a week or so—with no injury or loss of equipment.
Hidden from view of the main station, the MI5 officers readied the explosives whilst the moon steadily brightened a thin layer of clouds to pewter.
The two men sneaked around the hut. Cilla pressed her ear to the concrete wall and heard faint shuffling sounds.
In a few minutes, the men reappeared, and they all rushed through the breach in the fence and over the stone wall.
Cilla wanted to flee, but they needed to make sure the explosives worked. If not, they’d try again—or retrieve the materials and the evidence.
One of the men checked the glowing dial of his wristwatch, ticked off seconds with a wagging finger, and pressed both hands to his ears.
Cilla covered her ears too. White light flashed, and an explosion rent the air, rocked the stone wall.
Satchels in hand, the men bolted down the slope to the road.Cilla followed as fast as she could over the steep and uneven ground.
When she reached the road, she ran downhill, away from the lighthouse, her feet slapping the pavement in her clumsy wellies. They had a few minutes to get out of sight—before the men at the station could reach the hut and check over the wall. And they had maybe five minutes more to escape—before a vehicle could chase them.
The gap between the MI5 officers and Cilla widened, but she wasn’t leaving with them in their automobile.
In the distance behind her, men shouted.
Cilla didn’t have much time. Around a bend, a little loch rested dark in a hollow. She veered off the road and picked her way through the heath, boggier with each step. On the far side of the loch, Cilla found the crevice she’d scouted out earlier in the week.
She lowered herself into the knee-deep crevice and stretched down on her stomach, raised on her elbows. Chilly, smelly water soaked through her trousers and jacket, and she grimaced. She’d need a long, hot bath, using her full ration of soap.
If she wasn’t captured.
A lorry engine rumbled down the road, and Cilla huddled as low as she could whilst keeping her mouth out of the stinking mud.
Men yelled, and headlamps and torchlight sliced the air above her.
Her breath sounded as loud as a furnace, her heartbeat a drum, and she clamped her lips shut and prayed.
The engine noises receded downhill, but Cilla stayed put. How much longer until Yardley came for her, pretending to search for the saboteurs?
Shivers turned to shakes, and her fingers turned numb, even though gloved.
Another engine rumbled, but softer—an automobile? Thevehicle stopped not far away, and the engine idled. A door opened and another.
Cilla stretched up to the rim of the crevice but resisted the urge to run to the vehicle. It could be Yardley, or it could be someone else, conducting a more thorough search.
A door shut. Then the shielded headlamps flashed three times.
Yardley! Thank goodness!
Cilla extracted herself from the mud and dashed for the staff car, the open door, and she scrambled inside, slammed the door, and threw herself flat on the floorboards.
Yardley drove downhill. “There’s a blanket on the seat. Cover yourself.”
“Yes, sir.” Cilla dragged the blanket down and wrapped herself in it.
The commander would pretend to search for a while before returning to the station. “You stink,” he said.
