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But that wasn’t why she was scared. It was the fact that they’d neverdeployed by this method. In their jumps during the last two weeks they had gone out of the side of a conventional transport plane. On the green light, stand by in the doorway, feel the slipstream, hands across your chest, and go! That had been the drill, and she and Otto had just about got used to it. But the Mosquito wasn’t a conventional transport plane, so they had had to be strapped in, literally like bombs, to be dropped from its belly.
    She felt the Mosquito hit another trough of turbulence and her stomach came rushing up to her throat as the plane dropped like a stone for a dozen terrifying seconds before slamming into a trampoline of clouds and hurtling back up.
    They’d been in this unpressurized, freezing craft for hours, at least three by her calculation. Perhaps we’re over the Alps , she thought. The pilot increased the throttle and the engines roared loudly above Leni, making her whole body vibrate. She struggled to see Otto on her left. With a heavy pack on his front and a parachute on his back, he looked the way she felt: like some insect in a cocoon, waiting to hatch.
    The plane shuddered and bucked again. She felt the sour taste of vomit at the back of her throat but refused to let it rise higher and gush into her mask. They’d both been given a drug called Dramamine before takeoff, but that only counteracted the motion sickness. Not the fear. She stared up at the metal panels above her head and started to count the rivets, willing the time to pass.
    As if on cue, a small hatch opened above her head and the navigator’s face appeared, his oxygen mask hanging to one side. He looked ludicrously young to be flying a plane, not much older than Leni.
    Leni, Leni, Leni. Her new name throbbed through her head in time with the engines.
    “Can you hear me?” yelled the navigator above the din.
    Leni nodded and raised her gloved hand in a thumbs-up. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Otto respond similarly. She hoped he was all right.
    “Five minutes to the drop zone. Understand?”
    Thumbs up again. The plane gave a sudden violent lurch to the left.
    “Sorry about the bumps!” the navigator went on jovially. “Bit of a storm. It’s blown us south of the drop zone. But we’ll soon have you down. Good luck!”
    He gave them what Leni thought might have been a look of pity, then he slammed the inspection hatch shut.
    Leni focused on the steady red light. Her stomach had turned to water.
    The light started to flash. Her toes curled tight in her boots.
    Then it turned green.
    She took a deep breath. Before she knew it, she was completely weightless. Falling. Into the night.

    It was so black that when the ground came up to meet her, Leni only just managed to see it before her boots slammed down. She landed with her feet together just as she’d been taught, collapsing her knees and rolling onto her side. It really hurt, and knocked all the breath out of her. It was, she thought, a bit like being shot out of a circus cannon towards a brick wall, feetfirst. She lay still for a minute, trying to breathe, then scrambled to her feet and started gathering up her parachute. She prayed Otto had made it down safely. It had been too dark to see him, and she’d been concentrating on her own landing.
    She tried to put the last few terrifying hours to the back of her mind. From the moment they’d strapped her into the Mosquito’s bomb bay and the doors had slammed shut, she’d been convinced she was going to die. But she hadn’t, and here she was. Which brought her back to the present. She was on a road. She frowned. There weren’t supposed to be any roads near the landing zone.
    She looked around, trying to get her bearings as her eyes gradually became accustomed to the dark. Soon she could see the outline of a forest to her left. Above her there was still the odd rumble of thunder, but the storm had passed through. She finished gathering in