طوفان

Chapter one

The Storm

Four young people - two girls and two boys - were standing in the long grass in the middle of Lychford Green airfield. The airfield wasn’t used anymore and all its buildings were in ruins. Their roofs had fallen and their walls were broken. Grass and weeds grew in broken places in the concrete runways. The airfield’s gates were shut. They hadn’t been opened for many years. But the wire fence around the airfield was broken in many places. The kids had walked through one of the broken places.

It was raining, and the kids were cold and wet.

‘This doesn’t look very exciting,’ one of the girls said. ‘But it will be a good subject for our project.’

The girl who had spoken was Frankie Fitzgerald. Frankie - a pretty, fair-haired girl - was thirteen years old. The other girl was eleven-year-old Regan Vanderlinden. Her hair was dark. The two boys, Jack and Tom Christmas, were brothers. Jack was thirteen and Tom was twelve. Both were fair-haired.

‘This is a very sad place,’ Jack Christmas said. ‘Something terrible happened here once. Perhaps it happened during the Second World War.’

Jack often said things like this. He often knew things which he couldn’t explain. Sometimes he knew what was going to happen before it happened. Sometimes he knew what had happened in the past, without being told about it.

‘Take your photos quickly, Tom,’ Jack said to his brother. ‘Then we can all go home. I don’t like it here.’

Tom Christmas looked around carefully. Then he lifted his camera and began to take pictures.

Suddenly, the younger girl ran in front of Tom.

‘Hi! Take a picture of me,’ she shouted.

‘Get out of the way, Regan,’ Tom replied. ‘I want to take photos for our project. I don’t want pictures of a crazy American kid.’

Regan’s blue eyes were shining. She laughed and pushed her long black hair away from her face.

‘There’s plenty of time for the project,’ she said.

‘No, there isn’t. We’ve only got two weeks,’ Tom said. ‘Today is the 24th of August. We have to finish the project by the 6th of September. And we haven’t started it yet.’

The four friends went to the same school. They were all members of the school’s archeology club. Their history teacher, Mrs Tinker, was in charge of the club. She’d asked all the members of the club to do a project during the summer holiday. They all had to find out about the history of their town of Lychford between the years 1939 and 1945. That was the time of the Second World War.

Frankie Fitzgerald had told her three friends about the airfield. Lychford Green airfield, which was at the edge of the town, had been a very important place during the War. Frankie knew about it because she had lived in Lychford all her life.

So Frankie, Jack, Tom and Regan had decided to do a project about the airfield together.

‘My grandmother was a young girl during the Second World War,’ Frankie said, as they looked around the wet, ruined airfield. ‘Gran remembers the Battle of Britain, in 1940. Spitfire fighter planes flew from this airfield to fight the Luftwaffe - the German air force. The airfield was a busy place then.’

‘It’s just a ruin now,’ Regan said.

‘We’ll see the airfield better from above,’ Frankie went on. ‘Darryl is trying to arrange a plane flight for us. He has a friend who flies an old plane.’

‘That will be brilliant,’ Tom said. ‘I’ll be able to take more photos from the plane.’

The rain was falling heavily now and a strong wind was blowing. Suddenly, there was a flash of lightning. The sound of thunder followed it at once. The four friends were in the middle of a terrible storm.

‘Run,’ Tom shouted. ‘Run back to Darryl’s van!’

As the kids ran towards the fence, lightning turned everything white again. Then there was a tremendous noise. They were all thrown to the ground.

Regan looked up and screamed. A black shape was falling out of the dark clouds. Tom looked up too.

‘It’s a Spitfire,’ he shouted. ‘And it’s going to crash!’

Another flash of lightning showed the Spitfire more clearly. Flames and smoke were coming from the engine of the falling plane.

‘No! No,’ Regan shouted.

At that moment, the plane hit the ground.