اتاق عملیات

Chapter twelve

The Ops Room

It was 5/30 the next morning. The sky was getting light. Darryl had driven the kids up to the airfield gates. The gates were shut and locked. And there was a new wire fence all around the airfield.

The kids got out of the van. Frankie, Jack and Regan were carrying spades. Tom was carrying a metal detector.

‘I’m going to hide the van over there, behind those trees,’ Darryl said. He pointed to a place a hundred metres away. ‘If I see anyone coming, I’ll sound the van’s horn. Good luck!’

The kids climbed carefully over the gates. Tom put on the headphones which were connected to the handle of the metal detector. Then the four friends started to search the ground carefully, meter by meter. They all looked carefully at the ground in front of them, and Tom moved the metal detector from side to side.

After he’d watched them climb over the gates, Darryl drove the van under the trees. He was very tired. He didn’t like getting up at five o’clock in the morning. He tried to stay awake. But after a few minutes, he was asleep.

It was an hour later. The children had searched only a small area of the airfield.

‘This is taking too long,’ Reagan said angrily. ‘We’ll never find anything.’ She looked up for a moment. Then she gasped. She pointed to the small hill over the old Ops Room.

‘Look,’ she whispered.

A line of women was walking over the grass. They were dressed in WAAF uniforms.

A pale light was glowing all around them.

As the four friends watched them, the WAAFs disappeared into the hill, one by one.

Regan ran towards the women.

‘Come back! Come back,’ she shouted. But the women had gone.

Frankie, Jack and Tom followed Regan. Tom moved the metal detector over the grass on top of the little hill. Suddenly, there was a sharp sound in his headphones.

‘There’s a big piece of metal under here,’ he said. ‘Quickly! Dig, everybody!’

The kids started to dig with their spades. Ten minutes later, they had found a big black metal hatch - a door in the ground. The hatch was two metres long and one meter wide. It had two large metal handles.

The four friends pulled on the handles and slowly, the heavy hatch opened. Underneath it, they saw some concrete steps. And at the bottom of the steps there was a red metal door.

Regan ran down the steps first and Tom followed her. Together, they pulled on the handle of the red door. The door slowly opened. Inside, they saw a brightly lit corridor. Its walls were white and there were grey wooden doors along both sides of it. Electric lights hung from the ceiling. Everything looked clean and new.

‘We’re back in 1940 again,’ Regan said. ‘Come on. Glen has brought us here for a reason.’

Jack and Frankie came down the steps. They all went through the red door, and they closed it behind them.

Now the friends could hear sounds - the sounds of typewriters, the sounds of women’s voices. Suddenly, one of the grey doors opened. A woman in WAAF uniform came out of it and walked towards the red door. She passed the children, but she didn’t see them.

‘She can’t see us. She’s a ghost,’ Frankie said.

‘No, she’s not the ghost - we are the ghosts,’ Jack replied. ‘She’s not in our time. We’re in hers!’

The friends walked on down the corridor. Then they stopped and looked through an open doorway. They saw a room which was full of women who were sitting at desks. They were using typewriters. They were very busy. A calendar on the wall gave the date - 28TH AUGUST 1940.

Darryl was still asleep in his van. It was now seven o’clock. He didn’t see the Facelift Construction trucks drive onto the airfield. He didn’t hear the bulldozer’s engine start. At ten past seven, big machines began to dig into the hill over the old Ops Room.

Darryl was sleeping in 1999, but below the hill the kids were still in 1940. And it was the day of the big German attack on Lychford Green - the 28th of August.

The four friends walked to the end of the corridor. On the left was a grey metal door.

‘We must go through there,’ Jack said. But suddenly, a bell began to ring loudly. The ground around them shook. Then the kids heard the thud of exploding bombs.

‘German bombers are attacking the airfield,’ Tom shouted.

‘Come on,’ Jack said, and he pushed open the metal door. A young woman in WAAF uniform was standing just inside it. Her back was towards the doorway.

Behind the woman, there was a big room. There was a table in the middle of it, covered with a huge map. More young women were moving small colored flags across it. This was the Ops Room itself!

Some men in RAF uniforms were sitting on a high platform at the back of the room. There were many phones on the long desk in front of them. One of the men was Squadron Leader Leighbridge-Smith.

The young WAAF turned towards the kids. Frankie remembered the photo which she had seen the day before.

‘Florrie Skinner,’ she said.

Florrie looked at the four friends and smiled.

‘Don’t be frightened,’ she said. ‘I won’t hurt you.’ Her fingers touched Jack’s shoulder.

‘She can see us! She can touch us,’ Regan said quietly. ‘The others can’t see us, but Florrie can.’

The kids went back into the corridor. There was another metal door on the other side of it. Jack was going to open this door. But at that moment, there was a terrible noise and then a tremendous explosion. The building was falling on top of them. They heard several more bombs exploding nearby. Next came the screams -the terrible screams.