Quarry

Nelson Robinson James

Description

10 years have passed since youngsters Bobby Massey and Linda West stumbled across an Australian Government secret cache of weapons. Now armed with new information, rogue government officials were ready to take any measures necessary to ensure their lucrative secret deal with a third world nation rebel group, remains secret.Bobby is captured by ex-military soldiers working for the rogue elements and interrogated in an effort to get him to reveal all he knows. Witnessing Bobby's capture, Linda recruits a serving Royal Australian Navy commander and a senior sergeant in the NSW Police Force to assist her in rescuing Bobby from his captors. The rogue government officials get a nasty surprise once the two are reunited.

Sujets

• Thriller

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
• Date de parution: 30 novembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781398487413
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Quarry
James Nelson Robinson
Austin Macauley Publishers
2022-11-30
The Quarry About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © Acknowledgement Introduction Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50 Chapter 51 Chapter 52 Chapter 53 Chapter 54 Chapter 55 Chapter 56 Chapter 57 Chapter 58 Chapter 59 Chapter 60 Chapter 61 Epilogue
About the Author
James Nelson Robinson was born in Reading, Berkshire, England in 1949. At the age of eight, his family migrated to New South Wales, Australia. Finishing his schooling in 1965, 16-year-old James enlisted in the Royal Australian Navy as an apprentice Aircraft Maintenance Engineer.
Resigning his commission from the Navy in 1985, ex-Warrant Officer Robinson then joined the Australian Department of Civil Aviation where he worked until his retirement from the workforce in 2004.
While he was encouraged by his wife to write seriously for many years, it wasn’t until the forced lockdowns that came with the spread of COVID-19, that, at the mature age of 73, he finally sat down and, as they say, ‘put pen to paper.’
( Please note that James Nelson Robinson is the nom de plume of the author.)
Dedication
To Pam – for being the mortar that has held my life together for 51 years.
Copyright Information ©
James Nelson Robinson 2022
The right of James Nelson Robinson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781398487406 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781398487413 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published 2022
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd ® 1 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5AA
Acknowledgement
I’m writing this novel at my home near Forster, on the New South Wales Mid-North Coast.
It is with a sense of profound wonderment that I sincerely acknowledge the indigenous Worimi and Biripi people as the traditional custodians of the land where I live and work, and pay my utmost respect to the Elders both past and present.
Names of persons in this novel have been borrowed from people I have known over the years so if you happen to have the same name as a character in my book, you must have left a lasting impression.
The early chapters of the story take place in a purpose-built Australian Government Migrant hostel comprising uninsulated corrugated Nissen huts dotted over a barren hill a few hundred meters from a large salt-water lake.
If you are reading this book and you recognise the camp, I hope the unpleasant memories of the living conditions have faded over the past 60-odd years and my description of the camp and the surrounding area only revives the good ones.
Introduction
I was a ‘Ten Pound Pom’; actually, it was my parents that earned the right to that colloquial title as my passage to Australia was free. That fact obviously went over the heads of many of my teenage mates who seemed determined to attach a label to everyone that wasn’t, in their eyes, ‘Australian’.
Many of the British families we immigrated with became disillusioned within weeks of disembarking and couldn’t wait to return ‘home’. As a child, I was insulated against the invariable and mostly exaggerated, comparisons newly-arrived migrant adults made between the two countries. (Here’s a good example; ’ My dinner stayed hotter in England’. Really?)
As an eight-year-old, England was a place where I had lived and played—Australia was exactly the same—only warmer! Those early days in the Hostel were full of adventure and excitement; who’d have thought you could actually play under a house? Everything was new and different, with every day revealing another wonderful and sometimes weird, facet of my adopted country.
This is my first attempt at writing a novel. While not an autobiography, the story encapsulates many vignettes of my life; yes, I was a migrant and lived in a hostel; I served in the Royal Australian Navy for 20 years and my first car was a 1965 Mk1 British Racing Green Ford Cortina—sadly, not a GT but a ‘440’ (it did have one advantage over the GT—it had a front bench seat! Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more, say no more, know what I mean, eh, eh!— thank you, Eric Idle and Monty Python ).
I hope you enjoy reading, as much as I enjoyed writing, this book.
Prologue
August 1942
On 25 March 1942, nearly 1,000 Jewish women and girls were ‘deported’ from Slovakia. They were packed into enclosed airless rail cars and sent to Auschwitz Concentration Camp in German-occupied Poland. That same year, as part of Adolf Hitler’s ‘final solution to the Jewish question’, Auschwitz began exterminating Jewish prisoners in large gas chambers disguised as shower blocks.
Jewish prisoners were also being used as guinea pigs by German doctors in experimental medical procedures.
It didn’t take long for the Polish resistance movement to send details of what was happening inside Auschwitz back to the British Intelligence service.
****
“Good luck, Jimmy.”
Wing Commander Jessop, Commanding Officer, Special Operations Group extended his hand to the man standing in front of him. Warrant Officer Jimmy Schreiber shook his CO’s hand.
“Just another day at the office, Sir.”
“At the risk of repeating myself; make sure you stick to the plan because I don’t need to explain the consequences if you get caught!”
“That’s right, you don’t and I won’t—get caught that is!”
Their farewell was cut short when the Wright Cyclone R-1820 radial engines that powered the all matte-black Douglas DC-3, they were standing beside, roared into life in a cloud of blue smoke.
With the noise of the engines preventing any further conversation, Jimmy saluted his CO and climbed into the spartan interior of the ‘Gooney Bird’. The aircraft had been stripped of all non-essential fittings—this included any passenger comforts; Jimmy strapped himself into one of only six canvas sling seats attached along the fuselage.
The aircraft climbed unhurriedly out of RAF Winfield near Berwick on Tweed, to a cruising altitude of 20,000ft. She didn’t have a great rate of climb to begin with, but with the additional long-range fuel tanks fitted, it was almost painful. Their route would take them out over the North Sea on roughly an easterly heading towards Sweden. Once in neutral air space, the aircraft would turn south towards the designated drop zone in the heart of Poland. Being outside the normal bomber aircraft approach lanes, with any luck, they wouldn’t encounter any German fighter patrols.
Once they had levelled off, Jimmy adjusted his leather helmet, fitted the oxygen mask, pulled the fur collar of his sheep skin-lined leather jacket up around his ears and settled back against the cold aluminium skin. He closed his eyes and automatically went through the operation from whoa to go for probably the hundredth time. However, the steady drone of the propellers soon had him nodding off to sleep.
The plan had sounded absolutely bonkers but Jimmy’s trust in the many people behind the scenes had grown with each successful mission into enemy territory so, despite some nervous anticipation, he was able to sleep for most of the three-hour flight.
This was Jimmy’s sixth mission behind enemy lines in the last twenty-four months. He only had to look in the mirror to understand why he was selected. With his pale skin, blond hair and piercing steely blue eyes, he was by all accounts, the ‘typical’ Aryan German that Hitler dreamed would rule his world.
****
Jacob Werner Schreiber had been born in Dresden, Germany to parents who were highly regarded University Lecturers.
Following in their footsteps, Jacob had been on the cusp of gaining his Bachelor of Engineering degree when his family had fled to England; his parents totally opposed the ‘realignment’ of the education system by Adolf Hitler.
While it hadn’t taken his parents any time at all to find positions at Cambridge University, 19-year-old Jacob was distraught with leaving his home, his friends and worst of all, having to suffer the insults and slurs that came with being a German in England in 1933. However, the family’s arrival hadn’t gone unnoticed by British Intelligence.
Once his parents had started lecturing full time and had a regular source of income, his father had purchased a beautiful 2-story house on the outskirts of Chesterton on the banks of the River Cam.
Jacob just couldn’t adapt to the radical changes in his life and dropped out of University within the first six months of enrolling. Much to his mother’s disgust, he took up smoking and was spending more and more time in the pubs in and around Cambridge.
It was following a rather unsavoury incident just on closing time in the Green Dragon pub between him and a rather la