Work Text:
"Right chaps, here's the plan." Major Gus March-Phillips had his men gather around the battered table in the cabin of their pleasure boat turned fishing trawler, the Maid Honour. Windswept and sunbaked, the men all looked about as battered as their trawler. They'd barely been at the SOE training base for a few days before Gus had informed them they'd be leaving again. The only clue as to where they were going was Gus' instruction to the ship's captain, Henry Hayes, to head north. "Lassen, Apple and Freddy, you will take out the guards on the watch towers - two here, one here, another here and one at the very back." Gus gestured to a rough map spread across the table. Mugs, compasses and rocks held the corners of the paper down as the men scrutinised it. "I recommend starting with the towers at the back before heading towards the gate towers. Lassen, you will then go to those two remaining towers and neutralise them. After, go around and silence any stragglers. Freddy, you and Apple will then go around the base and attach charges to any planes and fuel bowsers, even those in the hangars. Anyone you encounter will need to be dealt with quickly and quietly. It is estimated that at least a hundred men or more are on the base, and we think that at least 20 of them will be on patrol and watch duty." The three men nodded their heads in agreement.
This mission, it turned out, involved a brief jaunt to occupied Norway, accompanied by an Exiled Norwegian force, to blow up as much Nazi equipment as they could before a second larger Norwegian raiding force headed to the glycerine factory not too far away. By the time the second raid hits the factory, they would be unable to call in reinforcements.
"What about you and me, Sir? What will we be doing whilst they go galivanting around?" The youngest team member, Henry Hayes, asked as the hunter next to him, the Danish Hammer Anders Lassen, began sorting through his disconcerting amount of weaponry.
"We, Hayesy, will be dressing up in our finest Nazi uniform and heading toward the command centre and the prison bay." Gus gestured to the map firmly. "No point going in and leaving their communication in tacked."
By this point, Freddy Alverez was checking his explosives whilst simultaneously batting Geoffrey 'Apple' Appleyard's hands away, much to the entertainment of the rest of the cabin. Freddy was the explosives expert, and his eagerness to cause fiery mayhem made him rather bad company during the run-up to the main event - especially when you try to touch his explosives. "We are meant to set these together." Apple reasoned.
"You can be my cover." Freddy quipped.
"Why the prison, Sir?" Hayesy asked, dragging Gus and Anders' attention away from the accident waiting to happen and back to the mission at hand.
"M is under the impression that one of his agents is being kept there. He couldn't be sure and wouldn't give Apple or me a name. Our instructions are to rescue anyone there who can get themselves back to the boat. If they can't walk back, then our instructions are to silence them." Those last words hung in the cabin. Even Apple and Freddy had paused their bickering. "This is a quick in-and-out job; anyone sleeping shouldn't know what's happened until the explosions wake them up. By which point, we'll be on the boat home. So pack your knives, chaps, and only use your gun if necessary. We are joined by a Norwegian team, so we shouldn't have to worry about our lack of Norwegian."
"Just their lack of English." Apple mused. With that, the team set about preparing. Some bagged their equipment, while others grabbed a nap since they were unlikely to sleep tonight.
Cold. It was Norway, which, as countries go, was rarely not cold. It was chilly when they dragged the prisoner here a few weeks ago, and it only grew nippier as winter approached. But the prisoner couldn't feel it anymore. Couldn't really feel anything anymore. Only the faint ache in their joints, in their bones, which they had come to cherish. The pain was evidence that they were alive. Alive was probably the wrong word; it was more like some sort of Schrodinger's purgatory, both alive and dead. Won't be long now, they thought, although they'd been thinking that for nearly a month now. The sleep deprivation helped sometimes, and also... Didn't. It led to bouts of euphoria, often followed by crushing waves of melancholy. They always looked forward to the joyful moments of torture-induced hysteria before reality came crashing back down. It wouldn't be long now.
Today might be the day, as the next moment, the only door to the room was thrust open with a squeal. The man who walked in looked tall, although that might just be because of his floor-length leather coat. "Good Morning, Fräulein. How are you this fine evening?" The prisoner seemed barely conscious, let alone compos mentis enough to reply cordially, and instead stared blankly at the opposite wall. Given that there were no windows to look out from, the prisoner pondered how fine an evening it was. All she had now was memory and imagination to get lost in. "I'm afraid that you haven't been as helpful as we would have liked, but never fear; we are not giving up."
He was a reasonably new one, this... Interviewer. Chirpier. He had been here for not even a week. "Tomorrow, I will be rid of you." Ah. "Now, I know you hoping I mean we'll put a bullet in the back of your head. But I'm afraid I'm about to disappoint you. I'm afraid I'm needed elsewhere. There is another rat whom we hope will be more willing to talk when I squeeze him. But never fear; I'm sure someone else will take up the honourable work we've been doing." Right... The prisoner knew that she was always likely to be arrested. Her dark hair meant that any true white supremacist Nazi soldier, who thought that all Scandinavians were blond-haired and blue-eyed, was going to interrogate her. Fortunately, Norway was cold enough that a woollen hat had hidden that for a while. What she didn't understand was why they were trying so hard. The local officers had been replaced with more senior officers. They had then been superseded by the Gestapo. Who was above the Gestapo? And what did they think she knew? Whilst her Norwegian was patchy, her German was sufficient. Although she conceded, they'd given up trying to talk to her in Norwegian a while ago, her understanding had been so good. The current threatening, auf Deutsch, Nazi chit-chat was a testament to that.
The original... Talks... Had been done in German with her putting on an approximate scandi accent, and for a while, they seemed happy with this. Until the beatings had started. For a while, she considered that the men simply wanted an excuse to enact some pain. But then the Gestapo had come. They preferred burns and electricity. "So this will be our last night together, and I know you are as disappointed as I am. So we must make of it what we can." If she could feel her limbs, she would have flinched. As it was, she couldn't stop the sobs that overtook her. She was so hungry, so cold, and so tired. "Hush hush, Fräulein. I'll leave you alive. Maybe if you're good, I won't invite the guards to take a turn." She had wondered when this would come. For the first week, she'd barely slept, sure someone would sneak in under the shroud of night. After that, she'd wondered how she must look after two or three weeks of little food, little sleep and no warmth. Was it enough to put them off? Maybe orders had come down from above? Maybe from the Gestapo.
He began by fiddling with his belt. She heard it rattle as she hung her head, sobbing. The tears seared down her frost-touched cheeks. She'd envisioned death. And pain. She knew her purpose was to get information, not necessarily to get herself out. There was something about the threat of rape which filled her with indignation. It was the first emotion she'd felt in weeks, which was hers and not something induced by starvation and torture. "Come now, Fräulein, I'll make this feel good. It might be the last good thing you'll experience. When you look at it like that, it's not so bad, is it?" She began mumbling, praying almost. Begging him to stop in German, in pointless broken Norwegian and occasional English. He shushed her again before starting on the restraints on her wrists.
When they'd first apprehended her, most of the officers interviewing her had foregone their weapons. She wasn't always bound back then, you see, and they knew that desperate people made some desperate decisions. Besides, there was a guard on the door, armed and ready. Recently, though, they'd become lax. A woman, malnourished and bound as she is, couldn't be a danger to them. She wouldn't be able to break the cuffs binding her and, therefore, couldn't grasp the weapons they carried. Not unless they remove her shackles themselves.
Using the last of her energy, her newly liberated hand snapped out and seized the knife at the bastard's hip. Drawing all the strength she had left, she carved the depraved Nazi in front of her from crotch to sternum.
"Right chaps, you all know what you're doing. Take around four men with you each. Once the first three watch towers are neutralised, we'll all follow. Slash the tyres of vehicles you can or put a hole in their oil sumps. And remember, Gentlemen..." Gus was cut off.
"Try to have fun? I know I will." Lassen grinned.
"As will I." Freddy counted.
Gus sighed. "Try to be quiet. Unless you're willing to take on nearly a hundred Germans in their hair nets." Most people would think that the fence line boundary of an enemy base was the wrong place for this last-minute conversation. Alongside March-Philipp's team were around twenty Norwegian soldiers who definitely thought this was a poor place to joke around.
"That's a lot of Nazi hearts." Lassen mused. "I'd need another barrel." Freddy just smirked at him.
"And the heart-snatcher is back." Apple jests.
"Don't worry, Apple, your heart is safe from me." Lassen retorted.
"Too right it is," Gus finished, winking at Apple. "Lassen, watch towers if you please." With the command, Lassen, Apple, Freddy, and their merry band of exiled Norwegian soldiers faded into the darkness.
"Sir." Hayes sidled up to the Major's side. "When we get to the prisoners, how are we going to convince them that they can trust us and that we aren't the German soldiers we're dressed as?"
"You'll just have to sway them with your Irish twang, old boy." Hayesy frowned at this.
"And if the prisoner is Norwegian, Sir, and doesn't speak English?" Gus' face had gone suspiciously blank.
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, Hayesy. But we should bear in mind that they will be injured, scared and helpless. That won't make this rescue any easier."
Blood leaked over her knees, dripping down her legs to her feet and onto the floor below. After the first slash of his stolen blade, the German had tumbled to his knees in astonishment, only for the prisoner to force the dagger across his neck. Blood flowed freely from the slash the knife left before the body slumped off to the side, landing with a sickening snap.
She took a moment; fatigue and relief washed over her, but it was short-lived. Killing an officer was bad. Killing a Gestapo officer was worse. Well, they were never going to let her go anyway, she reasons. Reaching down, she snatched the key he'd used to unclasp her left hand and released herself from the chair. She didn't bother standing. Instead, she dropped down from the chair onto the blood-coated floor and began rummaging through the dead man's pockets. Despite her best intentions, grief washed over her, and she had to stop her search when the tears made it too hard to see. She'd never taken a life, and whilst this man was not a good man, she couldn't help feeling that she'd killed a part of herself with him. Desperate people make desperate decisions, she reminded herself, and she was desperate to get out of this room. Even if they shot her at the door of the building.
So she continued her search, finding a lighter, a pack and a half of cigarettes, a comb, a wallet, a set of keys, and the man's watch. With shaking, numb hands, she knocked a cigarette out of its packet and brought it to her lips. The first breath made her cough violently as she snapped the lighter cap back on. The second and third warmed her in a way that almost made her smile. She'll try, she thought; she'll have a cigarette and try not to just see the Norwegian sky but see the British sky too. But for that, she'd need some new clothes.
This raid wouldn't be as easy as the one on La Palma. Anders Lassen would have loved the same daylight and easy sights he had that day. No, this raid was happening at night, and the problem with night raids was the watchtowers. Or rather not the towers themselves but the sweeping light at the top. Most people would think it's because if the searchlight lands on you, you've been seen. That wasn't true; Anders had learnt long ago that the towers were looking for movement. That meant you could hide in plain sight as long as you froze and let the light wash over you. No, the problem with watch towers at night was that if that light stopped rotating as it should, someone would notice and either come to investigate or raise the alarm. Therefore, they needed to go slow and methodically. First, Anders, Apple, Freddy and the Norwegians split up into three groups of five and hit the three furthest towers. They were the most remote from each other, and therefore, five men going to each would be easier to disguise than ten men heading to the two towers by the entrance. It also meant that the rest of the compound was less likely to hear any noise if there was a struggle. Anders leads his group, silently dodging the sweeps of the spotlight and freezing when they couldn't. They stumbled across a Nazi whom Lassen quickly dispatched before he, and his men, had to promptly freeze as two more Nazis walked by, not noticing the dead officer still held standing by Lassen in the shadows.
After that, it was just a matter of Anders killing the two Nazis at the top of the tower with a single arrow before instating two Norwegians in their place. And like that, the spotlight kept sweeping, and the Nazis were none the wiser. Freddy and Apple were quick to follow with their towers, each under the Norwegians' control, within minutes of climbing the towers. They left two Norwegians in each while Freddy and Apple, along with a soldier each, went about setting the charges. Lassen led the other men to the gate of the compound. These towers were nowhere near as clean. They were manned by four Nazi guards. Anders ended up killing three Nazi officers with rapid stabs of his knife before plunging an arrow deep into a nazi on the other tower. In the end, Anders collected a heart, much to the revulsion of the Norwegians. He ignored them and instead watched its last few beats in the palm of his hand.
Finally, with all the towers in the Norwegian's capable hands, Anders Lassen was free to hunt.
So far, so good, Gus thought to himself. No alarm had been raised, and so far, not a shot had been fired. He and Haysey had run into a couple of officers. Still, once they saw his hat and the rather dashing coat, they all promptly saluted, only for Hayesy to creep behind them. One of them had been horribly keen and had informed Gus that Herr Schitter was currently with the prisoner and had been asked to be left alone. Apparently, Herr Schitter wanted to say goodbye to the Fräulein before she was sent to Paris in the morning, and he left for a neighbouring province. Gus had saluted the officer and thanked him before slitting his throat. "Thanks for the warning, old boy." They were careful enough to move the bodies into disused rooms to avoid anyone tripping over their fellow ex-officers before the grand finale.
"Come, Hayesy, communications will have to wait. It sounds like we're needed in the cells now." They nodded towards each other when four men came round the far corner. Which would have been fine, Gus thought, if they'd been able to remove the slumped body in front of them first. Three men approached them while the fourth ran in the opposite direction. Well, so much for subterfuge; it looks like their secret was out.
Taking down three Germans with nothing but their knives was no easy feat. Especially since Gus hoped to dissuade them from using their loud guns. Fortunately, Gus' coat is terribly good at hiding silenced semi-automatic machine guns. So, with the dead German still standing, throat slit and weeping blood in Gus' arms, he dropped his knife and pulled forward his secret weapon. Hidden behind Gus' human shield, the three soldiers were quickly mowed down by it in what Gus assumed was a dazed state of shock.
Once he let the body drop, Hayes turned to him, looking resigned. "So much for don't use guns."
"Oh, don't worry about it, Hayesy, who's going to be in the kitchens this time of night?" Gus opened the door to said kitchen and confirmed that it was deserted. He then proceeded to drag the body swiftly into it. For a man he'd kill not a moment before, Gus laid the German down with a gentleness that surprised Hayesy.
"Looks like the baker isn't up yet." Hayesy said when Gus joined him again in the corridor.
"Apparently not. Shall we? " Gus retrieved his knife and started off down the corridor. Now, if I were a prison, where would I be?"
"I think we should follow our runaway, Sir."
It had taken a while for anyone to come to her room. She'd burnt through the first cigarette a while ago and, after searching the room, had burnt through two more whilst she waited to warm herself as best she could without stripping the man of his blood-stained garb. The keys, it turned out, would have been more helpful if there was a keyhole on her side of the door. As it was, she'd have to knock and address the guard on the other side, and for some reason, she thought they wouldn't be fooled. So she waited behind the door.
When the door finally opened, two men rushed to enter the room. "Herr Schitter, we are under..." The prisoner threw herself against the door and slammed one of the men shut in it. He made a broken wheezing sound before he collapsed on the floor with a smack. The other officer had run to the fallen Gestapo, clearly not expecting Herr Schitter's killer to still be in the room. This gave her ample opportunity to run her borrowed blade into the side of his neck. It sliced deep enough that he didn't scream or moan, just made wet sucking noises before he began to gargle and choke on his own blood.
Falling to the floor, her stomach cramped painfully, and it threw up nothing but acid and bile. She couldn't stop now, she thought, bright Norwegian sky and grey British ones. Righting herself, she pretended that she was oblivious to the noise of death behind her. She instead turned her attention to the shorter man she'd caught in the door. Blood pooled at his head, but he was still breathing slightly. Deciding that this was her best chance, she dragged the man through the door with a strength she didn't know she still had. Once he was through, she had to jump over him to catch the door, stopping it before it shut, wedging it open with the stolen lighter. Breathing a sigh of relief, she set about divesting herself of her tattered clothes, wiping away any blood on her hands and arms before stripping the unconscious soldier.
Freddy had to admit that Apple was efficient. He had a sixth sense for when Jerrys were around the corner and was almost as brutal as the Danish Hammer. With all the chess and tactical planning, it was easy to forget, Freddy thought, that Apple was a soldier first. It was probably best that Apple came with him since Freddy has always preferred walking fire to close combat.
The first hangar was blissfully empty, and the four made quick work of the single-engine planes. Luftlotte 5, it seemed, hadn't regained any muscle in terms of their planes' firepower. The aircraft are barely worth blowing up, but Freddy's job wasn't to question; it was to create the most carnage possible with the explosives they had. The second hanger, however, had a light on inside.
Apple glanced through the crack in the door whilst Freddy and the others waited for his report. Whilst they waited, they noticed the singing. Freddy couldn't make out the words and didn't know the tune, but the voice was nice enough. Freddy never fathomed how Nazis could inflict so much pain and suffering and then turn their backs and make merry with their friends. He was conflicted as to how this one, it seemed, could sing so peacefully.
Behind them, the two Norwegians muttered to each other before poking Freddy and Apple to get their attention. "It's Norwegian." Fearing this wouldn't be enough on its own, the man tried again. "The man..." Frowning, the two locals exchanged a few whispers before the first man sighed in defeat and roughly hummed some of the song. "Is Norwegian."
Apple glanced back through the gap before giving another glance around the base. "You two can go in first, then." Apple announced. The men looked at him quizzically before Apple gestured for them to go in first. Freddy and Apple shared a glance as they watched the soldiers head inside. They barely waited ten seconds before they followed them.
Despite the lack of proper light inside and out, Apple and Freddy could tell that this was by far the largest hangar here. No matter how softly they stepped, every footstep was echoed and repeated in the far-off corners. The sound of singing and tools being used and set aside was fortunately loud enough to disguise them. Once the Norwegians were closer, they greeted the man cordially. Freddy heard a bang from where he was setting up a charge, but a brief glance told him that the singing mechanic had only bashed himself on the plane he was working on in surprise. Carrying on, he moved around to set another charge, vaguely aware of Apple doing the same on the other side of the hangar.
Freddy was getting restless; he knew. Watching his creations go off was something he always savoured, especially when others admired him and shared his joy for a job well done. But during the run-up, Freddy got tetchy, not because he was desperate to see the destruction, though Freddy couldn't deny that he felt some satisfaction, but because whilst he and the others were setting up each incendiary device, all the explosives expert could hear was a tick tick tick in the back of his head. That tick is why Freddy was so protective of the explosives and why he'd battered away Apple's greedy hands back on the ship. One wrong move, bash, or poke could knock the fuses and the timers out of place and significantly affect their timings from 'showtime in one hour' to 'ready to blow in ten minutes'. Freddy enjoyed watching his explosions, but only when all of his team was present to watch them with him.
Apple had made his way over to the other two, leaving Freddy to finish planting the devices. The mechanic had long since stopped being friendly to his fellow Norwegians and looked pretty scared of them. Angry too, Apple thought, although he had no idea what the soldiers had said to the man, to be fair. Add to that that the mechanic was now being restrained by one of the Norwegian soldiers, and Apple couldn't blame the man for looking a little bit cross. But they didn't have time for this. "Do you speak English?" Apple tried first; the man, predictably, shrugged his shoulders and muttered, "Little". So Apple tried again, "Breken zie Deutsch?" This got a nod. Apple continued, "We have been ordered to kill anyone we meet on this base." The man flinched and paled. "We don't want to do that. These two men are trying to free Norway from the Nazis. If you want that too, then come with us. If not... we can't leave you alive." The man couldn't hold back the solitary tear as he processed what he was being told.
"But my family—my mother, my brother—I don't want to leave them." One of the Norwegians clearly knew enough German to follow along because he interrupted the man. Apple left the soldier to take over. If it came to it, Apple would cuff the man as best he could and have the soldiers take him back, kicking and screaming. He had enough blood on his hands. He wouldn't add a Norwegian mechanic whose only sin was being in the wrong place to it. God rest his soul, probably.
"We need to get a move on." Freddy had finally joined him by his side. With his eyebrow furrowed and lines in his forehead, Apple suspected his flippant response wouldn't be appreciated. In truth, Apple agreed with Freddy, but he wasn't about to say that. "Unless people want to experience being blown up." The pair share a look before focusing on the trio of Norwegians.
Nothing seemed to have changed, not that Apple's Norwegian had improved, but the mechanic's shaking of his head was clear enough. Apple never considered himself much of an altruist, none of the team were either. They may all be here under the banner of King and country, but when push comes to shove, they were all here to defeat the Nazis, regardless of who that meant they ended up fighting for. Gus had a habit of collecting strays but even he didn't help someone who couldn't help him later. This team of disgraced misfits was a testament to that. However, Apple had integrity, especially regarding why he was here and what he was willing to do. For his team, he was willing to do... a lot. If the choice was the mechanic or Freddy, then the mechanic would already be dead. But that wasn't the choice here. So, he set about finding some rope.
Gus and Hayesy encounter only three more Germans while looking for the prison. After they decide to follow their escapee, they nearly run into a German officer coming in the other direction.
"Sorry, Sir." The officer stuttered and saluted when he saw Gus' coat.
"Where is Herr Schitter, boy." Gus responded, saluting back.
"With the prisoner, Sir. It's at the end of this corridor and to the right, Sir. But he won't want to be disturbed, Sir."
"He'll see me. Guten Nacht, boy. Hayesy." On Gus' command, Hayesy swiftly thrust his knife into the man's neck and severed his spinal cord. Hopefully, he wouldn't have felt much. "Follow me."
When they finally found what had been the prisoner's holding room, they didn't recognise it at first. There were no guards, or group of cells, or locked doors to get through. In fact, even the prison door was open. The room inside was dark, but both men could see the shiny reflection of fresh blood in the gloom. Hayes found the light switch and flicked it on. There was an ominous pause as they waited for the bulb to flicker on. Once the fluorescent light had stopped flickering, the men properly surveyed the room. Two men had large pools of blood surrounding them, covering most of the concrete floor. Their necks had large gashes in them, making the viciousness of death plain to see. The third man groaned quietly before blinking at the newly turned-on light. He was naked, not stark bollock naked, but save his vest and underwear, he was bare to the room. Even his socks were gone. The German blinked groggily up at Gus and Hayesy and barely flinched when Gus drew his hidden gun and shot him once between the eyes. A chair was in the middle of the room, restraints simply hanging from it. A table sat over to one side with odd rust-coloured stains on it. The German closest to the chair wore a Gestapo coat that failed to cover his unbuckled belt, open trousers and limp penis.
"Seems someone beat us to it, Sir." Hayes mumbled. He stationed himself by the door, acting as a lookout while Gus ventured further.
"Certainly appears that way, Hayesy." Gus replied as he surveyed the men. He assumed that the man in the Gestapo coat was Herr Schitter, the man who'd been with the prisoner and had requested he not be disturbed. Gus was a lot of things. He often tittered on the precipice between loyal soldier and charismatic conman, and he had the stubbornness, determination, and morals to suit. But he liked to think that he wasn't stupid. What he did know was that there were five people currently in this room, and only four of them were dressed correctly.
"What should we do now, Sir?" Hayes enquired from the door, eyes still scanning the hallway.
"Now, Hayesy, we find ourselves in a bit of a pickle. You see, it seems like the prisoner got tired of waiting and decided to break themselves out, taking a Nazi uniform with them. Which would usually be a fool-proof plan, except Apple, Freddy, and Lassen are out there with instructions to gut anything that looks like a Nazi."
Hayes momentarily forgot his job as watcher and stared at March-Philipps and the scattered men in disbelief. "Well, we need to find her first, then Sir."
Anders Lassen barely thought as he cut through any man he came across. He'd worked his way around the base, stopping any walking patrols who had the misfortune to face him and was now entering the main building. His last conscious thought was that Gus and Hayesy were more likely to need help than Freddy and Appleyard. Freddy was capable of blowing up every building, plane, and car in this barrack if he was given thirty minutes and free rein of the place. He hoped he'd get to watch this one, watch the fiery parting gift they leave, and have the satisfaction of a job well done.
If Anders was being honest with himself, he was following Gus and Hayesy because he didn't like the idea of killing an allied soldier, one who needed help. Of course, they all had cyanide pills, and Gus had instructions, but it still felt like failing. Many assumed Lassen was here because he liked killing, that he wanted the thrill of the kill and the high stakes risks of the missions, and he did for the most part. But he liked it because he was good at it. No, the reason Anders was here was because he couldn't help his brother when the Gestapo arrested him, couldn't help him when he was tortured and couldn't stop them from killing him. So he got his revenge by killing Nazis and preventing them from arresting, torturing and killing other people's brothers. And taking the occasional heart along the way. Either way, Lassen reasoned, their team hardly went on the most orthodox of missions and, even then, hardly ever listened to direct orders. Therefore, if Lassen had decided he could carry a prisoner or two back to the boat whilst Gus and Hayesy covered him, M could hardly be surprised when he received some prisoners who couldn't walk.
Lassen encountered a few officers making the rounds, but clearly, Gus and Hayesy had dealt with most of them. This was confirmed when he opened the door to what looked to be a store cupboard and found two bodies neatly tucked away inside. He was retrieving an arrow from one of the two men he'd just felled when he heard more footsteps approaching from around the corner. Lassen ducked into a room, fortunately empty, and watched the figure approach the dead men. With Gus and Hayesy in uniform, Lassen was more cautious about who he killed inside the building. Therefore, Anders would wait to see their faces first. He had time, he thought, lining up his next arrow, but he couldn't allow them to raise the alarm. Just before he let his arrow fly, the officer removed their hat and shook their hair. The officer was a woman. But still a nazi officer, Anders thought to himself.
The Small Scale Raiding Force, led by March-Philipps, tried to avoid killing and kidnapping women and children if at all possible. There had been a couple of women of the Ducessa who they'd locked away instead of killing. Anders briefly wondered what had happened to them. Probably sent to a Nigerian prisoner of war camp, he supposed. Maybe killing them would have been the nicer thing to do.
Lining up his shot again, he resigned himself to shooting a woman in the back and having to put up with Gus' disappointed face for a while when the officer got to her knees and started patting down the dead Nazis. Lassen let the tension out of the bow again and watched curiously as the woman relieved the men of a gun, ammunition, cigarettes and a hip flask. Stealing from your own dead colleagues, Anders mused. No honour among Germans. The last thing the woman liberated from the men was a large set of keys. Hmmm. Anders kept his arrow firmly trained on her and decided to see what the little Fräulein would do next.
She was expecting to encounter more officers. Thought that the uniform she'd pilfered would work on some, minimise the conversation to mockery on why women shouldn't be allowed in the military and maybe some salacious advances. Others she fully expected to fight tooth and nail to defeat. Instead, the halls were empty. Maybe it's later than she believed. Perhaps not the evening but the middle of the night. Either way, she decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth despite the warning bell ringing in her mind. The wrongness of the base still uneased her, but what, she thought, could she realistically do in her weakened state? So she walked as silently as she could, hoping the limp would get better, not worse. That's when she saw them.
For a moment, she thought her sleep-deprived brain had finally lost it. That it had decided to go full Macbeth on her and make her face her guilt head-on. The men before her looked so similar to the ones she'd just ambushed back in her torture room. One was tall, and one was short like the other two. But they were both wearing their uniforms. As she got closer, she could see the arrow sticking out from one of the officer's necks. These were real. The cold wave of panic washed through her, freezing her from her shoulders to her toes. She suddenly knew what it was like to know a shark was in the water.
She could have run, could have begged for her life to an empty room, could have stood there in shock until an arrow found her as well. Instead, she decided to use the one thing she'd loathed about herself for most of her life. She removed part of her disguise, shook out her hair and revealed that she was a woman.
Men had funny rules when it came to women and children during warfare. As if a woman couldn't hold the same ideologies as the worst man or a child couldn't fire a gun. Given the number of twelve-year-olds joining up to the war, she thought the latter was definitely true. And her mother... Well, she'd always thought of her mother as toxic. But right now, however, she felt that being a woman might stay their hand. It wasn't guaranteed that the archer would hold these morals, but hopefully, if they were watching, her next action would convince them.
So, she got on her knees and gave these men the same pilfering body frisk she'd given the ones in her cell. She now had three and a half cigarette packs, four wristwatches, a pocket watch, a wallet with nearly a hundred Reinsmarks in it and two hip flasks, one of which was empty. What she didn't have, until now, that is, was a gun. She'd been lucky so far. But the next person she came across most likely wouldn't be alone and would overpower her easily. Both the men below her were armed. Not that that'd done them much good, she mused grimly. She grabbed the first one she saw and gave it a perfunctory once-over before nicking the spare cartridges from both men.
Now, as ready as she could be, she continued to stumble down the corridor, hoping it was the same one she remembered. She had tried to memorise the way they'd brought her all those days ago. But now, with so much time past and the physical and mental toll being... here, she wasn't convinced her memory was still reliable. However, with no better plan, she slung the MP-40 gun over her shoulder and hoped for the best.
It took opening some wrong doors and the occasional double-backing before she encountered her first living officers. They probably didn't react as quickly as they should have; her uniform slowing them down enough that she got off the first shots. Turns out it was easy to shoot Shanghai style from the hip with a submachine gun. She tried to follow the training as best she could. A warning shot and two shots to the chest. It was far from perfect and loud, but the men soon dropped like stringless puppets, and she could continue on. Or rather, she would have carried on if five more officers didn't come running. The submachine gun took care of three of them before she was forced to find cover. That's where she was, back-pressed to a wall, trying to remove the old cartridge and insert a full one when two arrows shot past her in quick succession. Her head whipped round to see the remaining two Nazi soldiers crumple to the ground like a bag of limbs, arrows sticking out of one man's neck and the other man's eye.
Barely comprehending what she'd witnessed, she glanced back in the other direction. What she saw scared her more than any of the soldiers so far and reassured her in equal measure. The man had a bow and arrow drawn and trained on her as he slowly approached her. Let's be honest, she thought whimsically; the bow and arrow were the least interesting things about this man. He was built like a bull and seemed to have the red misted temper to boot. He'd dwarf most men and easily towered over her. He must struggle to find clothes that fit, she thought rather nonsensically as she eyed the ratty, hole-ridden shirt.
Glancing back to the pile of limbs, she found her voice for the first time in a couple of days. "Thank you." She punctuated this by slumping back harder against the wall and breathed a sigh of relief. Her voice cracked horribly and hurt a surprising amount. Now, to convince him not to just shoot you. "Do you speak English?" She asked him whilst trying once again to unclip the spent cartridge from her gun and replace it. She heard no answer, so she looked up at the man with a frown; the man nodded once. "Good, good. My name is Audrey; any point in me asking you yours?" The man shook his head, the arrow still pointing squarely at her. Managing to replace the cartridge, she leaned against the wall whilst she got her breath back. "Do you know the way out?" Another nod. "Will you show it to me?" A vague tilt of the head but no distinct answer from the man. "Right, well, I'm going to call you David. Is that okay?" No answer. "Right, well, I'm going to try this way." They couldn't afford to stand around much longer; the shots were likely to have also been heard by other people. So, possibly foolishly, she turned her back on the archer.
'David' was surprisingly easy to ignore, so light on his feet that Audrey hardly knew he was there. They didn't meet many more officers, and any they did were promptly stopped with some well-placed arrows. Fortunate, really, since her limp was steadily growing more prominent. Their ruse played out like clockwork, unnerving really in its efficiency. Audrey had tucked her hair back into her cap and acted as a distraction. Usually, she'd walk past, only for the officers to turn around and order her to halt. Naturally, this allowed 'David' to sneak up on the soldiers from behind. On the occasion that there were more than two, Audrey would help silence one or two of the men. Ten men now, she noted, assuming the one she stripped was only unconscious. The number made her pause her looting. She didn't really know why. She couldn't find it in herself to regret any of it. She hated that she'd been put in this position, but she'd chosen to do it. Not that there had been much of a choice. The reality was she had known going in that a consequence would be she'd either come out a killer or not come out at all and had opted to bear that burden herself rather than let someone else shoulder it. Didn't stop the reality in front of her from making her think that she should be ashamed or horrified by her actions.
'David' quite literally pulled her out of her musings and up onto her feet. Annoyingly, it aggravated the pain in her ankle, but it was the jolt she needed to remember where she was. "Thank you." The giant made no comment, but the look he gave her moved slowly from weary to concerned. Ignoring it, she ran her gaze over the name plaques on the doors around them; one caught her attention. Records Room.
Appleyard wasn't happy. The Norwegian mechanic had refused to leave peacefully, and aware that their time was fast running out, Geoffry Appleyard had made an executive decision. With a firm but controlled swing, he'd hit the plane mechanic on the back of the head, rendering him unconscious. The other Norwegians seemed outraged by the aggression until they watched Apple heft the sleeping man over his shoulder, fireman style. The consequence of all of this, however, meant that Appleyard had an unconscious mechanic to carry back to the boat, which wasn't close, without running into any remaining Gerrys. Oh, and of course, he and Freddy had just set up half a hundred ticking, explosive clocks.
Despite this, he, Freddy, and the others made good time with the two Norwegians, with Freddy covering him at all times. Clearly, they'd all done a good job with their first sweep when they entered the compound. So good, in fact, that they were the first back to the two-thirds point. It provided a decent advantage point over the barracks and was closer to the safety of the boats than the Gerrys. Glancing towards the Maid Honour, Apple basked in the quiet and blackness, reassured himself that the ships had been undiscovered or at least undisturbed. They had an alternative plan: to commandeer some cars and drive down to the factory, where the other raid would be attacking about now. But Apple was glad, having now blown most of the cars up, that they wouldn't have to resurrect any of them.
Now, though, all he could do was wait and hope that the quiet blackness brought his friends back to him.