Chapter XII – 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 a metal detector.

‘I’m going to hide the van over there, behind those trees,’ Darryl said. He pointed to a place a hundred meters 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.

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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, there had found a big black metal hatch – a door in the ground. The hatch was two meters 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.