The last letter from her father had arrived three months ago saying her brother Jed had jumped the gun and enlisted in the army. He’d written how sorry he’d been not to meet his son-in-law and granddaughter. Touchingly, he had requested a lock of Lisbeth’s hair to keep alongside her mother’s.
She didn’t even have that.
“Mah brother’s bin evacuated,” said Greer. He had been sent to France and Kate knew Greer had been desperately worried about him since the fighting began at Dunkirk. He was only sixteen—Greer had confided that he had lied to join the army. Just a kid.
“Hope he’s home soon, Greer.” Kate had listened to the BBC broadcast last week, when the recently appointed prime minister Winston Churchill had described the British soldiers evacuating the Dunkirk beaches on every kind of fishing boat, a flotilla bobbing in the Channel. Churchill had warned of the impending German invasion, his words still ringing in her mind: “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”
“Have a wee sip.” Greer poured steaming milky tea from a thermos into a chipped mug and offered it to Kate. “Mah gran found sugar on th’ black market.”
The tea was hot, sweet and strong as nails. “You’re a real pal to share, Greer.” Kate squeezed Greer’s hand. Rationed sugar was like gold on the island. “Lovely, haven’t tasted anything sweet since I don’t know when.”
Several of the maintenance crew were emerging from the torpedo depot, wiping their hands. As they passed Kate and Greer, one was saying, “What’s that noise?”
Kate heard it, too. It came from the sky.
A propeller plane droned out of the clouds, followed by a second, then a third one.
A Royal Navy lieutenant was pointing. “Call control. We need to identify these aircraft.”
The whole island of Hoy was a restricted security area. Special permits and security clearance were required to travel in or out. Planes brought supplies and equipment only at scheduled times due to the difficulty of moving the hydrogen-filled barrage balloons that camouflaged the pier, the anchored fleet and naval stores. A shipment had come in several days ago; there wouldn’t be another today. But Kate knew yesterday’s storm had grounded all but one of the barrage balloons; normally hostile aircraft would have been forced to higher, less accurate bombing altitudes.
“Sound the alert!” The team of servicemen playing hockey in the next field were beating a path off their pitch, shouting and pointing at the sky. As the planes approached from the east, the plane fuselages came into view—unmistakable swastikas. The Luftwaffe.
Startled, Kate choked on the tea.
“Bloody ’ell.” Greer chewed faster.
Confusion set it. People were running for cover. Why hadn’t the alert sounded? Kate saw the gunners at the newly installed Vickers Mk VIII light antiaircraft guns trying to fire, but the guns seemed to be jammed. So much for thinking this place was impregnable.
The planes made a lazy dip, then the droning faded away. Gone. Had the Luftwaffe strayed too far from their Norway base? Why hadn’t the radar system warned the two frontline RAF fighter squadrons stationed over at Wick to intercept the planes?
The English officer was chiding servicemen to return to duty. “Back to positions,” he said in that let’s-be-sensible-and-not-cause-a-big-fuss way Kate had still not gotten used to during the time she had been living among English officers. “Control is looking into what’s going on.”
Greer stood, wiping crumbs from her work smock. “Gotta tell mah gran ta get home. She shouldna finish out her shift.”
“See you later, Greer.”
Kate put the half-eaten pasty in her pocket and drifted across the yard to join some coworkers. There was general excited discussion of the Luftwaffe planes as they trudged back to work, filing along the factory’s blacked-out windows, their sills gray with clots of pigeon droppings.
They hadn’t made it into the factory when Kate heard the drone of planes again. Her stomach clenched. Everyone looked up. The Luftwaffe were taking another pass now that the clouds had parted. Only two this time, their swastikas glinting on the fuselage.
Then a thundering explosion. A bomb. Dark black billows mushroomed from the naval barracks beyond the factory. The ground trembled.
“Attack,” someone yelled.
The nightmare of the fiery explosion that had taken Dafydd and Lisbeth was happening all over again. Frozen in the horror of her memories, Kate watched as a plane broke out of formation, picked up speed and swooped down, flying low along the pier, not three hundred yards away beyond the factory wall.
Why were only the Territorial Army unit overlooking Lyness responding with their eight 4.5 heavy antiaircraft guns? Why wasn’t an alert sounding?
The plane executed a loop. Showing off, the cocky bastard. Sun sparkled on the cockpit window. The plane dipped, heading straight toward the factory, the armament stores, the torpedo depot and the recreation center.
The place would explode, taking the wharf and the base with it.
She looked around at the shocked faces of her coworkers.
“Gas masks, everyone!” yelled the factory foreman. “To the shelter at the foundry!”
Sirens blared. Assembly line and munitions workers streamed past her now, jostling and shoving toward the shelter on the other side of the yard.
Over the fence she saw a plume of charcoal smoke rise from the black hull of the half-sunk shipwreck used to block submarines from the harbor. Everyone was running for cover, into nearby barracks, the canteen, any place to escape the plane’s machine gun strafing. She saw a stream of bullets scattering people coming out of the recreation center. A screaming woman pulled her child down to the ground. An older woman ran terrorized only to be mowed down by machine gun fire, dropping like a doll.
Kate felt her heart seize. She thought of Greer’s grandmother—could that woman have been her? But where was Greer? She searched the crowd.
“You there, get going.”
Her heart thumped in her chest, fear icing through her veins. The plane’s constant droning got closer. “Greer!” Her shout was swallowed by all the other shouts in the yard.
“Hurry inside, the shelter’s filling up,” said one of the older men from the ammo supply. He grabbed her arm, pulling her into the throng.
When they were inside, standing crowded together, she wiped the perspiration from her forehead with her sleeve. One of the English home guard wardens blew a whistle. “All inside, door closing.” The metal door grunted and scraped over the stone as the other warden started to pull it shut.
More tat-tat-tat sprayed the brick wall. In the narrowing patch of daylight on the other side of the door, Kate saw a woman running toward the shelter. Her torn dress trailed in the oil puddles in the dirt yard and a gas mask was bouncing from her belt. Greer!