Under Orders (A Donald Cameron Naval Thriller) by McCutchan Philip

Author:McCutchan, Philip [McCutchan, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2014-10-29T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘I take it you do know just what we’re going to do?’ Cameron asked.

‘Yes,’ the girl said. Her voice was quiet and attractive and there was no hint of fear or nerves.

‘You’re not worried?’

‘No. Should I be?’

‘Damn it all,’ Cameron said with a touch of exasperation, ‘it’s not every day a woman joins in an attack on a fortified base, or is it?’

There was a laugh. ‘You’re the Navy, aren’t you? We all rely on the Navy. You’ll bring it off—you’ll see!’

‘Thanks for the confidence,’ Cameron said drily. ‘Just who are you, or shouldn’t I ask?’

‘You shouldn’t really. Let’s just say I’m Jane, a FANY who lost her way in the dark. All right?’

Cameron said, ‘All right. I won’t pry.’ FANY-the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry—involved a multiplicity of jobs done by women. Drivers for senior officers and government ministers, largely, was their official role; but many found themselves chosen for work as agents with the Special Operations Executive. This, obviously, was ‘Jane’s’ part in the war—liaison, perhaps, with the Norwegian Resistance? No wonder she wasn’t showing any special fear over the business that lay ahead of them! He said, ‘When we approach the base, you’ll go below. There’s a cabin for’ard. Stay there—all right?’

‘I’m under your orders,’ she said. ‘I’ll obey!’

He grinned at her tone, which was faintly mocking. He had an idea she was a year or two older than himself. She went on to say that she hoped not to be a nuisance; the Germans were after her, she said. She’d overplayed her hand a little and had been rumbled, or believed she had, and she’d been ordered by London to make her way out of Norway. Had she been in France or Belgium there would have been a pick-up organized, but not from north Norway. She was out on a limb, or had been until the Navy had so fortuitously turned up. She would say no more than that, and for his part Cameron kept his word and asked no questions, even personal ones, though he was intrigued by the girl: she didn’t look the sort who went to war, but of course that might well apply to many or even most of the FANYS—he had seen them in their khaki uniforms when on leave in London, and before he’d been made aware of their other functions they’d struck him as mere socialites, young upper-crust women doing a soft war job that allowed them to keep up the peacetime routines of dinners and nightclubs and evening dresses and plenty of boyfriends. Which all went to show that one shouldn’t judge too much by appearances...

‘Light ahead, sir,’ Petty Officer Harbin said suddenly.

Cameron looked: the light was still distant. He believed it to be the floodlights over the base: the shattered bulbs would have been replaced by now. Bringing up his binoculars, he identified it as such. Five miles to go, at a guess: distances over water were always hard to judge in darkness. He looked across at the vessels in company, keeping nicely together as he could tell from their wakes.

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