Hanna Lance, Sebastian Lee, The general and Cartright are my own characters.

Joe Sullivan is not.

Hope you like it! Please Review.

Lavender Fields, Empty Craters and Love's Broad Grin

She looked out of the car window and sighed. There was nothing more she loved more than lavender fields, except maybe archaeology. Hanna Lance was a professor at the Institute of Archaeology University College in London . She had been in the middle of a lecture when her secretary had given her a note telling her that the head of the university had assigned her to go to Norfolk Airbase after receiving a phone call form the base general. She was puzzled, why would the base general need any knowledge about archaeology, especially at wartime, was beyond her.

The driver turned his head in her direction:

"Norfolk Airbase, miss, will be on your left side," he motioned with his head and she saw the runway come into view. A plane was circling, waiting for permission to land.

In the plan above the navigator, know as Sebastian Lee, glanced to his left and saw the car heading for the base.

"Look, Joe! I didn't know they let civilians in. I thought this base didn't exist to the public," Sebastian said over the intercom.

"It doesn't. Whoever it is down there must be mighty important. Well, let's show them what we're made of!" Captain Joe Sullivan commented as he pulled the plane up into a loop. He was the pilot of the Tiger T-3A. He claimed that he knew the plane as the back of his hand, yet Sebastian had caught him a few times flicking through the plane manuals.

"Stop showing off, Joe. You know what the general thinks of it, he'll have your flying permit for this!"

"Relax. The general's only wishing he could do the same. Hang on, we're about to land."

The plane came into land as the car stopped by the side of the runway. When Hanna stepped out of the car and straightened, she saw that one of the pilots had climbed out of the cockpit and caught her breath. The man was tall, broad shouldered, with dark brown hair in wavy locks falling around his handsome face. She saw him draw breath and she could imagine how she must look standing there with the sun in her back, framing her golden locks like an aura. She was dressed in a pale blue dress suit and high healed shoes. Her long blond hair was in a smart bun at the back of her neck, leaving a few strands to frame her face. The effect must be stunning for he did not move as his friend, the navigator, tried to climb down the ladder from the cockpit. He look around him to see what his friend was staring at and as he saw Hanna, he threw out his arms in a surrendering gesture and jumped down to land steadily on his feet next to the his friend.

Hanna looked at the driver who was smiling sheepishly at her and took her bag from him. Her movement seemed to have broken the spell for now the pilot came striding over to her with a determined look in his eyes.

"Captain Joe Sullivan at your service," he said and saluted with a disarming smile.

"Wait a minute, Joe. She's just arrived," Sebastian said coming over to join them. "The name's Sebastian Lee." He too saluted and as she was about to reply, a man she assumed was the general strode out of a nearby building.

"Ah, Professor Lance. It's a pleasure to meet you and thank you for coming on such a short notice."

"Professor…. Brains and beauty, you really have it all don't you." Joe commented before he could stop himself and received an angry glance from the general.

"Now, now, leave the Professor alone. This way, if you please." He motioned to a building that was his office.

"Oh, and by the way, Captain Sullivan, nice loop. I wish I could have the freedom to do the same."

"HE knows something!" Sebastian whispered to Joe. "Could he have heard us?"

"Nah, the line was safe, I double checked it. We'll have to be careful."

"What? We're still going through with it, are we?"

"'Course we are. Now if you will excuse me, the general will be needing me," he said and at that moment he was called into the general's office.

"How do you do it?" Sebastian shouted after him.

"A gift, mate," Joe answered as he entered the office.

"What, Captain?" the general asked as he looked up from the desk where he was seated.

"My good looks, sir." He glanced at Hanna and winked at her. She rolled her eyes.

Ignoring Joe, the general turned to Hanna:

"Professor, you might be wondering why we need your help. It is simple. Yesterday, the Germans bombed the whole country. Nothing strange there, Hitler might be feeling optimistic, thinking he will defeat the entire country by one air raid. It was the bombing that was… well, unusual. They usually drop as many bombs they can before they're shot down, but this time each plane only dropped one bomb. In addition, it seemed as if they had distinct targets. Not all are inhabited; they even bombed fields and woods. There have been reports of bombings in the moors all over England. We sent some men to check the bombs that fell in the area of the air base. They reported that someone had been digging in the crater the bomb made when it detonated. Apparently they found what they were looking for, only the spades were left. We were intrigued by this, so we looked at other places where the bombs fell. The same scene, a hole, nothing in it, not even bomb splitter and some spades." He leaned back in his chair and sighed. "That is why we need your help."

Hanna sat silent, her eyes showing the chock she was feeling after this flow of information.

"Wow!" Joe commented and whistled. "That was…a mouthful to say the least."

"I- I don't know where to start. I think I would like to see the crater where they have been digging," she said and stood up.

"Cartright!" the general shouted and a tiny man in his thirties entered the office.

"Sir," the man said and saluted.

"Show the professor where she's staying and then take her to where the car is parked, we'll meet you there." The man saluted a second time and Hanna followed him out of the office.

"Now, Captain Sullivan you must be wondering why I need you."

"Sir."

"I need you to escort Professor Lance around the base and to the craters. You will fly her wherever she wants to go and help her when she needs it. No fooling around. This is as important as any other mission is; we really need to know why the Germans did this. Understood?"

"Yes, general. No fooling around, best foot forward."

Hanna stood waiting at the car that the general had ordered for her when Joe arrived.

"So, we're off to see this crater, eh?"

"Yes, I need to see how deep it is and the surrounding countryside. I might need to do some digging and I might need your help."

When they arrived at the bombsite they could see that who ever had been there the night before had left in a hurry, for the spades where cast away and they hadn't even bothered to cover up their footprints in the soil, leading away from the airfield into the countryside on the other side of the barbwire fence.

"Where do we start?" Joe asked as he picked up the spades, turning around, looking across the field with the crater in the middle of it.

"Well, we start mapping the ground. Then we start digging trenches around the crater to see if there is anything left of what they found. If not we dig trenches in the areas we've mapped to see if there are any remnants of any kind of life here. When we've done all that, then we call it a day," Hanna said unpacking her bag she'd brought with her, rejecting and muttering as she saw the things she had stuffed in it.

To Joe's despair, it took the better part of the morning to map the area around the crater and to decide where to start digging.
"So why is a pretty girl like you, interested in the past, choosing to dig in the dirt, mud all over her, when she could be a glamorous secretary and be with me say Saturday at eight. I'll pick you up," he said with a confident, and some might say, cheeky smile.

"Aren't you confident? How can you expect me to accept when you insult my way of living?" Hanna looked up at him and saw that he was grinning at her, which annoyed her even more.

"Stop grinning! This is not a joking matter! The way I live my life is not for you to question."

"Touchy are we…. No, I am sorry for insulting you, I did not intend to. What I really was trying to say was that you puzzle me. I cannot for the life of me understand why you would want to spend you days in the past, observing history, when I'm in history making it."

"And I cannot see why you seem to avoid the past, if I'm reading you right. You want to make history but not study it. Has it occurred to you that you might learn a bit or to from history?" She continued scraping away the earth. "Then we might have avoided this war," she added under hear breath as she started to dig out the centre of the crater where there had been the most activity.

Joe grew bored and walked off to see if he could spot the place where the intruders had come from. There were no wheel tracks, which puzzled him. Then he saw a strange pattern in the earth and bent down to take a closer look. There were footprints, many footprints, going everywhere so there was no telling where their owners had gone. He then pressed his foot down into the ground and noticed that the same footprint was mixed with the others. Interesting, very interesting, he thought as he headed back to the crater, saving the piece of information, in the back of his mind, for later.