Not My Country

Winfred Peppinck

Description

Returning from finishing school in France, Louisa Hatton was full of enthusiasm for the life ahead. She was convinced it would be exciting and romantic.But her parents had already planned a very suitable marriage for her to Lord Westbridge, their new neighbour. He was a cold, hard man and he wanted Louisa despite her protests.Her parents would not support her. Her father owed Lord Westbridge money.It seemed that for help she could only turn to the mysterious, handsome Roderick Blake, whose dark eyes haunted her.But Roderick was only a groom. How could he protect Louisa from the forces ranged against her?How they faced danger together and Louisa discovered Roderick's secret is told in this thrilling romantic novel by BARBARA CARTLAND.

Sujets

• Fantasy (canción de Mariah Carey)
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: M-Y Books
• Date de parution: 22 octobre 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781906658069
• Langue: English

Extrait

Not MyCountry

By

Winfred Peppinck


Published by M-YBooks at Smashwords
Copyright 2010 Winfred Peppinck

Also by WinfredPeppinck at Smashwords.com

TheDiplomatic Dog of Barbados


Smashwords Edition,License Notes
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NOT MYCOUNTRY
CHAPTER ONE
OUT OF THESKY

The sun onlycame out for a few minutes that day, but in those minutes, its raysgave him away.

The two Hawker Typhoons were a hundred metres apart and flying atnot much more than three hundred metres, heading back to theirforward base after an aborted attack on Koblenz. The freight trainwas braving the squalls that had prevailed since dawn and which hadpersuaded the German military authorities to risk a daylight run.With almost complete Allied control of the skies and frequentpatrols as far as the Rhine, the Germans had made sure that groundmovement during the day was kept to a minimum. The Typhoons had caught the train just as it had entered the narrow gullybetween the Rhine and surrounding hills on the other side of theriver opposite the town of Boppard. Here the Rhine looped in a bigbow with train tracks on either side of the river. It was a “targetof opportunity” after heavy cloud had covered their primary target:the railway junction at Koblenz. There the bombers and theirfighter escorts had circled for half an hour, waiting for a breakin the weather, but none came and the Typhoons had peeledoff to make their way home independently. Catching a glimpse of theRhine in the grey light, they had wheeled south to see if theymight catch any river traffic chancing the favourable conditions.Or road traffic, or rail traffic for that matter. While Koblenz hadbeen heavily defended, intelligence reports said that there couldbe light ground fire at the major ferry crossings with heavy flakonly around Wiesbaden and Mainz. There should not be any worriesall the way down to Boppard and from there they would head back tobase. They still had about thirty more minutes of fuel for huntingand then it would be time to head home.

They saw thesmoke first. It was not a long train and it was pulled by a singlelocomotive, heading quickly up the line from the direction of StGoarshausen, striving to make the protection of the cuttings now akilometre ahead. A fast train, probably with a valuable cargo ormunitions, otherwise the Germans would not have risked a daylightrun. Even now they caught only a glimpse of the train as the rivermist swirled around the great Rhine bend. More smoke now belchedfrom the locomotive’s smokestack as someone had obviously spottedthe two planes and the engineer was trying to draw every ounce ofpower from the boiler. “Leader to Number One, follow me – this willhave to be head on, no time to get round for a side on attack,”said the Lieutenant in the first Typhoon.
“Copy that,Leader,” came the brief metallic reply as both pilots kicked theirrudder pedals and slipped slightly to the left, pushing theirjoysticks forward and pulling the throttles back so that the bigRolls Royce Vulture engines growled menacingly and theaircraft yawed slightly. The lead pilot flicked the switch to armthe two outer rockets and pushed the nose down further, rollingever so slightly to bring himself head-on to the train. The engineof the Typhoon howled as its twenty-four cylinders fed thebig four-bladed propeller and the plane raced towards the train ina shallow dive, the closing speed of the train and the plane nowclose to 650 kilometres per hour. The pilot held the stick with onehand and held his thumb lightly on the rocket-firing switch.Machine gun tracer now flew up towards him and for the first timehe noticed a flat-car in front of the locomotive with a heavymachine gun battery to ward off aerial attack. He jinked the bigaircraft slightly to the right to get a clear shot and immediatelyhis thumb hit the firing switch even as he realized the manoeuvrehad thrown out his aim, ever so slightly. At first there wasnothing and then a second later the trails of the two rocketsstreaked out from under his wings. He instantly realized that thenotoriously inaccurate rockets would miss the locomotive but therewas still a chance that he might hit some of the carriages. Hismain thought now was to wheel the aircraft and get away from thecoming blast wave, as he was very low. At only sixty metres, hepulled hard back on the stick, hit right rudder and applied fullthrottle. The train slid underneath him in a black blur and wasgone in an instant.

He felt theblast push the aircraft upwards as he turned but with the engine onfull power for the climb, he heard nothing. One moment he waslooking out of his teardrop canopy at the waters of the Rhine as heslipped sideways and then the twin spires of a large church flashedunder his right wing as he climbed out of the river valley, overthe town of Boppard and up over wooded hills. While still climbing,he throttled back slightly to level off beneath the smoky grey murkand now looked for his wingman. As he did so, his intercombuzzed.
“I think youshot up some of those boxcars at the end, Skip, but he’s draggedthem round a corner and the weather buried him. I couldn’t get aclear shot. Shall we go back for a look?”
There wassilence. The wingman called again, “Skip”?
The Lieutenantcut off the crackle and stabbed at his microphone switch, “I hadthe bastard, Mal, but I jinked around that bloody in-coming andlost him,” he said, hoping that it did not sound too much like anexcuse.
“Fair enoughSkip. I was tossing around quite a bit myself trying to follow youin and it was always going to be a tough shot with all that muckabout. I think you chewed up the line and that’ll take Jerry awhile to repair, over”.
“Thanks Mal,but I should’ve nailed him,” he said, looking over his shoulder andwatching his wing-man close up behind him. “I don’t think we’llcatch him in this muck and I’m starting to get low on fuel so we’dbetter head back to base. Come round and we’ll pick up the Moselle.I want to stay under this ceiling and we may get lucky again.”
But there was atouch of letdown in his voice. The sky was now darker and it hadstarted to rain.

“What amiserable bloody day – isn’t it wonderful,” thought Guus and then,in the joy of the irony, he said to himself, “that’ll keep thehunters out of the air.”
He beganwhistling to himself although it was hard to pick up the sound overthe laboured noise of the old Opel Blitz ’s engine. In thesnugness of his metal cabin with the comforting rumble of theengine and the wheeze of the wipers, and despite his lack of sleep,he actually felt happy even if apprehensive about his hidden cargo.He might get to Koblenz sooner than he had expected. He wouldsurprise them all.

Last night heleft Bad Kreuznach as part of a road convoy to Koblenz just as anallied air raid started and the trucks had been lucky to escapeunscathed. There were thirty trucks and they drove as fast as theirtiny headlight beams allowed, although the light from the flamesbehind them provided a ghostly illumination that served them well.Occasionally, great flashes of light filled his wing mirrors andthe noise of the blasts boomed behind him like continuous thunder.At last they crossed a ridge and the light from the firesdisappeared so that ahead there was welcoming darkness. The convoyonly slowed on the drive through the darkened town of Simmern withits heavy air defences around the airfield at Hahn and there werenumerous stops at barriers to present papers to anxious-lookingguards. Even in the half darkness it was easy to see the bombdamage that had been done to the ancient town, especially aroundthe railway marshalling yards where workmen were busy repairing thelines. Then the convoy sought the back-roads, hoping to be inKoblenz before the dawn light would give them away.

At eachbarrier, his heart had quickened a little in pace, although he wasrelieved that German overseers and guards led the convoy, for noneof the vehicles were searched. Everyone just wanted them out ofthere, and on to Koblenz.
“Why did I letTer Beek talk me into it?" he thought a hundred times over. He hadnever done anything so foolish before. Carrying guns meant instantdeath if he was caught. His whole demeanour during his entire timein Germany was governed by his mantra; Keep your head down andyou will survive this. If a bomb had his name on it, well thatwas another story, but he mustn’t take any risks. Yet, when TerBeek had approached him to carry the two machine pistols, he hadnot really dared to say no. If others were risking their lives tohelp the war effort it would be churlish not to help. Were theytesting him because of his connections? Was he being set up? Nowthose thoughts went over and over in his mind.

Ter Beek was amaintenance mechanic at Bad Kreuznach, a Dutchman like himself, whohad been drafted into the service of Germany along with all theother Dutchmen aged between eighteen and forty-five. Most were inlabouring and factory jobs but Ter Beek was a mechanic and therewas a constant need for his skills. Guus too had been drafted, buthis Father had political connections and intervened with theauthorities so that his son got one of the “softer jobs” as atruck-driver for the Reich. As a cadet reporter, it had all been abit of an adventure for him to be called up, to leave the officeenvironment and drive trucks in Germany, but the bombing becameheavier, the risks greater, and the “adventure” had long since losti