Ch8 - The Anvil

It was an…
An interesting duo, shall we say, who were currently stalking the streets of Saint-Raphael.
The townsfolk were in a panic as what little men the German invaders had available scrambled to set up positions in order to retreat against the oncoming assault. A joint US-Canadian force had seized the heavy artillery emplacements on the Hyeres Islands, alerting the occupiers to the incoming threat of a secondary invasion.

What this trio knew, of course, was that it was nearly the entire coast of Provence, South France, that was the target of the Allied invasion, a combined British, French, American and Canadian force swinging about from Sardinia and Corsica, many battle-hardened from previous campaigns in North Africa and the Middle East, several more having been transferred in from Burma and North India. The job would be hard, and yet it would happen, because it needed to be done.
The pair themselves were unconventional for plenty of reasons.

The first, and most notable, was that each of them was female.

That in itself would be of no consequence, until one realised that two were in the employ of the American Intelligence Service, the OSS, and the third was a soldier in the British Army.

Piper McLean, a girl of Cherokee heritage from Oklahoma, was stood alongside an OSS colleague. They weren't deployed together, their meeting had been nearly entirely on chance. It had actually been quite the fiery encounter, the two ladies having each found their way across the countryside to the town on the French Coast, overlooking the tranquil Mediterranean in the height of summer. Each had received orders to scout out the beach at Saint-Raphael, and each had quickly determined that this was the best spot from which they could accurately survey the terrain.
The resulting confrontation had been…

Feisty.

The other girl was an interesting case, once they had firmly established that they were on the same side, hardly an easy task among spies in a hostile land as they were, made more difficult still by the fact that this particular OSS agent neither looked nor sounded American, and certainly not English or French.
Her name - or perhaps her fake identity, Piper honestly couldn't tell for the life of her - was Reyna Ramirez-Arellano. Her backstory checked out to the Cherokee girl, a Spanish refugee, fleeing Catalonia, or Catalunya as she insisted, had managed to get to the States, leaving her family in Tarragona, not far from Barcelona itself and to the states, promptly joining up with the OSS, who she had recognised as her best way to take revenge on the fascist oppressors of Europe, and perhaps stand a chance at helping the situation in her own home country, or at least earn sufficient money to free her own family from Franco's clutches.

Piper wasn't complaining.
The girl was a hell of a fighter.

Reyna Avila Ramirez-Arellano was in a bit of a fix.

Her mission had been to reach this seaside town and scout out the surrounding terrain, which she had done, miraculously bumping into literally the one friendly person in the entire town. She wasn't sure how this had happened, but she certainly wasn't complaining.
Her intel had been sent in by someone from well outside the town, the maps and drawings being spirited away in the dead of night, her priceless information hopefully making its way towards Paris, where the forces up north were now rapidly advancing.
The new message was an interesting one.

Wait, and your objective shall reach you.

Having consulted her new companion Agent McLean, she had pointed out that it was worth keeping on the move within the town. After all, the frantic German troop movements, be they rapid advances or hasty retreats, they were movements that HQ should really be kept abreast of, lest they miss out a crucial detail.
Reyna had learned quickly that details saved lives.

Her sister had drilled this into her, the last time the duo had exchanged words being when an experienced MI5 agent had appeared in the USA to aid them in their project which had begun whispers of a Central Intelligence Agency, such was the success of the OSS.
Never had Reyna been so scandalised as when Hylla of all people had shown up, eyes hidden by sunglasses her grandparents would have been scandalised at seeing.

She was snapped out of her thoughts by a shadow flitting across her eyeline, followed by the muted bang of a bullet.

Sniper.

Discreetly grabbing Piper, Reyna darted towards the nearest building, only to pause as she realised exactly what it was.
The German Garrison headquarters, not a single other building within running range before they were potentially in danger..
Swearing under her breath, Reyna darted inside, her comrade now hyper aware of the situation and moving under her own steam.

They snuck in amidst the chaos, making their way stealthily through the foyer, and despatching the two posted guards with ease, using concealed garotte wires and dragging them away before seizing their Walther P38 semi-automatic pistols and Kar98k rifles. They scrounged about for a few moments in order to ensure that they possessed sufficient ammunition to defend themselves.
Pistols in hand, they stalked through the building, noting that the German soldiers paid them no mind, terrified by the sniper.
They caught one particular word, spoken in dreading whispers and causing many a German to pale in fear.

Nachtschatten.
Nightshade.

The shadow moved once more, the sun glinting momentarily off the telescopic sights of a sniper's rifle, the dark outline of their silhouette barely visible in the afternoon sun. Every movement was measured, causing the minimum possible disturbance, a skill learned from years in North Africa.
Each breath was slow, considered and honed to an art, designed to disturb the air to the least possible extent, a skill learned in the freezing nights of Egypt and Libya.
Reyna had to stare long and hard at the sniper, so as not to lose their position in the sun as they wrought havoc among the German Garrison, removing three further officers before they ghosted away.
In a moment of sheer shock, Reyna realised that she was about the only person who hadn't been moving in this entire exchange, her eyes fixated on this phantom of an assassin, Nachtschatten, as the Wehrmacht soldiers now screamed as they hurried to take cover, completely unable to locate the deadly gunner, who now seemed to have descended to a lower floor, firing from a window a mere floor above the little courtyard from which the Germans were attempting to take cover.

Her comrade, Piper, had hardly been idle, removing a further four enemies, the stolen P38 pistol being put to good use, the sound of its shot just one of many, indistinguishable over the Germans' own shooting in their increasingly desperate attempts to pin down this conduit of death, their panic blinding them from the spy from Oklahoma.
Reyna focused once more on the sniper, only to realise that they had moved once more, and so the game began.

Or so she thought.

The Germans were reduced to a raw panic, Officers attempting desperately to restore some semblance of order and begin the arduous process of clearing out rooms one by one, and yet only a few men complied, the rest too caught up in the terror of what felt like a mass attack from an enemy whose name had been enshrouded in mystery, the bane of the Afrika Korps. The sniper who only struck at night, the infamous Nightshade.

What they hadn't noticed, of course, was that there was no sniper shooting at them.

Just as fast as the attack had begun, it was over, dead bodies strewn across the courtyard, blood dripping from one of the upper floors down the stairs, and bullet holes peppering the walls from the panicked shots fired off in an attempt to drive off the enemy.
Reyna relaxed slightly, eyes hunting for Piper, and breathing out in relief as she popped up from behind a supporting pillar a few yards away.

Now to get out.

Piper was shocked by what she had just seen and done, in complete awe of the incredible display of marksmanship on show from the sniper.

If reports were to be believed, then this was truly Nightshade, a British sniper brought into the conflict in North Africa, serving in Montgomery's British Eighth Army and quickly earning a name for a surge of confirmed kills. No less than a Hundred and Eighty Six Germans fell to their Enfield Rifle, their only aid in firing apparently the standard telescopic sight used by a sniper, as opposed to any of the better scopes of the time.
There were various myths and legends, the Egyptians supposedly likening him to Khonshu, the God of the Moon, such were his exploits in the field.

It wasn't even the British who gave the now near-mythical moonlight hunter his name, rather the Germans who he so regularly terrified, a mark of fear and grudging respect for a true warrior, who would prove to be more than a match for any of the Germans' own.
Nowhere near, Piper noted, to a certain 'White Death' of whom she had heard rumours from the Soviet operating in her usual circles.

They had covered some distance from the Garrison building by now, their pace at a brisk walk - it would be unwise to run what with the inevitably high level of alert raised as a result of Nightshade's lethal attack. The sniper had managed, inexplicably, to knock out many of the higher-ranking German Officers in the building, but the risk was an unworthy one.
It was then that Piper noticed that she had neglected what should well have been a natural reflex for a spy.
Reyna seemed to pick up on her tension, eyes flying open as well in a rapid response to…

Something.

Piper picked up her pace, gesturing to her companion to break off the main road, hoping for better cover in the forest against their tail. The road was faster, yes, but far too open for the American Agents' liking, skills in the forest honed over years of training and so the duo began to move with real pace.
They kept their ears open as they moved, hearing their stalker increasing their pace as they raced through the trees, before stopping.
Thoroughly honed instincts set Piper's mind on alert, as she threw herself to the ground, scrambling for cover behind a tree, sighing as Reyna did the same as the first bullet thudded into the wood, millimetres away from Piper's head, forcing her to suppress a shriek of shock, flinching as chunks of wood flew up from the impacted tree trunk.
The two American Agents didn't dare move as the sniper reloaded, given pause by the accuracy of the hostile.

They heard the telltale click of a clicked rifle, and then the ominous crunch of leaves as their chaser advanced on them.
Each OSS agent withdrew their recently seized Walther P38 semi automatic pistols, checking the sidearms to ensure that they were loaded. Still the hunter advanced, the crunch of dried leaves nearly inaudible, such was their skill, before all sound ceased.

And then, a voice.

It wasn't so unusual that the person in pursuit of them would talk to them, perhaps monologue in the style of the villains in the newer motion pictures.
What they didn't expect quite so much was for their metaphorical Scarface to be a woman.

"Good chase, ladies," the voice said, smooth and pleasant to the ears, an accent lingering over the top of the fluent English. Turkish, perhaps? No, not light enough. It seemed almost…
Arabic?

Sounded pretty darn similar.

The two OSS Agents shared a look, Reyna's nod barely visible in the shadows of the forest, the trees providing shelter from the afternoon sun.
"I promise, I am friendly, you need not worry," the voice insisted, the statement accompanied by the sound of a rifle being set to the floor, the clack of the rifle an easily distinguishable sound to spies as experienced as this pair.
Somewhat reassured, they rose to face Nightshade.

Piper knew for a fact that she was a particularly attractive human being, it was simply a fact, and had come in very useful in the business of wheedling information out of more resolute sources.
This woman, the person accredited with the killing of close to a hundred enemy soldiers, was quite simply stunning.
Her complexion was interesting - it seemed to match Piper's initial estimation of Turkish origin, with the slightly darker tone of skin, and yet Turkish didn't seem to define this woman.
The dark brown of the hair, falling in slight curls made her think…
North African, perhaps?

And then there was the way in which this lady, Nightshade, stood.
It wasn't the tense posture of a soldier, of a person ready to throw themselves into the thick of the action.
No, it was the hyper-aware constant scanning of the eyes, the relaxed confidence of a hunter.

Reyna seemed to have understood the same, asking the question, "So, you're a hunter, then?"
"Four years ago, that was what I did for a living, yes," Nightshade explained, her eyes darkening and tone softening with nostalgia of a simpler time, "And yet now I seem to be known for being a hunter of men, not the animals which I once chased."
The trio fell silent for a moment, each taking a moment to consider their lives outside of this mess, to imagine how life could have been had some fool nod decided to attack the American Fleet, had a mad dictator not decided that some lives were worth more than others.

Nightshade…

What an interesting name, thought a vaguely amused Zoya El-Faouly as she conversed with these new comrades of hers.
One from Oklahoma, in the United States of America, another from Spain, and here she was, of Egyptian descent.
She had been born to farmers near El Alamein, the youngest of five girls, raised to take care of the land that was theirs, a beautiful piece of land, often compared to the garden of twilight by her Father, who studied the history of Ptolemaic Egypt, as well as the Greeks who made it that way.

It had been a good life, peaceful and with little incident. She had grown up with loving parents and sisters who had taken good care of her.

A beautiful, loving way to grow up.
She never appreciated this, and this would be something she would regret for the rest of her life.
She had saved up, pounds and pounds' worth of money, and bought something which changed her life forever.
At age sixteen, Zoya El-Faouly bought herself a rifle.

It was nothing too spectacular, an old thing of indigenous make, with worn rifling and misaligned sights. Still she practiced, and after years she became something entirely different to all those that had come before.
For generations, her family had maintained this land, and yet young Zoya had chosen to leave it all behind, to turn her back on those who loved and cared for her most, moving to the city proper, and working hard to make a name for herself.
For three years she slept rough, subjecting herself to the scalding heat and freezing cold of Egyptian weather as she scrounged for money, doing what little she could as a hunter, a pariah in a world where the role of the woman was to get married and raise children, where she would have had to cook and clean for her husband like a dutiful little house life.
Fiza, her eldest sister, had already gone that way, and her father was looking for grooms for Iman and Leena. Zoya had no plans of going the same way, of conforming to the norm, and so here she was, a lone woman attempting to hunt.

And then the war started.

Zoya was not a fool, never had been, and she knew that the British Army would never take a woman, no matter how incredible her skill with a rifle, and so she had pretended to be a man, taking measures to ensure that her secret would never be discovered.
She nearly always hid her face in a cowl, signing up for the most menial of tasks and spending long hours on the shooting ranges, honing her art with the Lee Enfield rifle she had been handed by the English Sergeant Major.
The Italians had swept into Egypt, killing and murdering like demons, paying no regard for those who begged for mercy, and plundering like vile, uncouth knew, in her heart of hearts, that their path of invasion pointed towards one place, her own home, where her parents and siblings would still be living.

She did not want that paradise, that garden of twilight to be disturbed, for that utopia, that little piece of land that could not be any closer to Firdaus, Paradise.
And so she became a dragon, a protector and a killer of men.

They had fought at El Alamein once, and then driven their foe back, braving the hellish conditions of the desert as they went. She did not know when it started, but it became something of a ritual to go out in the dead of night, under cover of darkness and not daring to so much as disturb a single grain of sand.
For a full five years of her life, she had been mocked, treated with the utmost disdain and discarded as unworthy of her mantle as hunter. They had looked at her battered old rifle and laughed, asking who she had bought the animal carcasses from, and to guide them to him instead. They had looked at her lithe frame and questioned how she had carried the dead body of a crocodile from the river to the hunting outpost.

Her nights had never been safe, having been too worried about the evil men and their lecherous gazes to be able to sleep.
And so, it became the time during which she decided to pay it all back.

If an enemy soldier moved, he died.
If an enemy officer shouted, he died.
If an enemy soldier spotted her, he died.

It didn't take too long for her kill count to rack up, and she had reported each to her commanding officer, who had beamed at her, pride evident in his harsh features..

She was finally gifted with telescopic sights.

The Germans joined the war not long after, worried for their holdings further west, and suddenly wary of the platforms granted by the possession of the North coast of Africa for the Allies, particularly the proximity to South France and Spain.
They were led by a man who Zoya had been informed was likened to a Desert Fox.

It was ironic, really.

Her first kill had been a Desert Fox.

This one, however, was much harder to kill, and so the Egyptian settled for his Officers instead.
The Afrika Korps had driven the British back, yes, halted only by the brave Australians at Tobruk, but they would never be able to delude themselves into thinking they were safe.
It was, in fact the second time the Allies had found themselves in El Alamein when she first heard the name she had been given.
The disciple of Khonshu.

Nightshade.

It had been an eye opening moment for the young woman, who had never set much stock by such titles, and yet this one she was particularly proud of.
The look in the haunted prisoner's eye as she had whispered the identity of the fabled Nightshade had stuck with her for a long, long time, for that was the day when she had finally appreciated the value of her skill,
If she could inspire such fear in a human being, then what else could she do?
She could end the tyranny of this insane dictator who claimed the right to rule the world.
She could be something more.

The summons back to Cairo had come not long after, with an invitation to train among people of similar skill to her, in the arts of espionage and assassination, so that she could fulfil her greatest potential.
She had accepted on the spot, being shipped out to British Malaya three days later, joining the advance with the Chindits - British special forces under the command of Major General Orde Wingate.
The group itself had been a success, a rare bright moment in the darkness of the string of failures that the war in Burma and the Southeast of Asia that the war against Japan had been.

Singapore had famously fallen in a mass surrender, the warships Prince of Wales sinking to overwhelming Japanese air power and large parts of British Malaya being lost to the rapid enemy advance.
The Australians were throwing men and resources into the Kokoda campaign on Papua New Guinea as the Australian Imperial Forces fought to liberate Buna and Gona from their Japanese captors, the entire battle having been one small part of the overall plan to isolate the Australians from their American Allies.

Life fighting in the jungle was extremely different to the war in the desert, and yet exactly the same. It was, however, a form of warfare in which she excelled, her knowledge of Arabic and English making interaction with many of the Indians rather easier than it had been for many of those of the King's Liverpool Regiment who had been brought over from England. It had taken some time to understand the language spoken by the Gurkhas, but she began to quickly grasp Hindi and Gorkhali, each a beautiful language of its own which she resolved to nurture throughout her life.
The Chindits were created as Long Range Penetration Units - effectively scouts, earning their name from the Burmese word for Lion, a fitting name for the fearsome warriors brought through in the campaigns they faced.
Her comrades quickly discovered her secret, the fact that she was a woman nearly impossible to hide in the sticky humidity of the jungle.

First came the Longcloth campaign, where she had crossed over the Chindwin river in Burma, drawing out the Japanese in a cunning feint, claiming a supply drop in broad daylight, a man even impersonating a British General in a further attempt to hammer home the message.
They had pushed on, crossing the Irrawaddy next, several soldiers having been lost to Malaria and Dysentery, and then yet more of their original 3,000 lost to the treacherous terrain on the other side of the Irrawaddy had proved to be Wingate's worst decision, crossing that river, the Japanese having set up outposts and guard posts in order to prevent the Chindits from returning.
The fights had been bloody, and the pace frantic. The wounded were discarded, left with nothing but a few days' supplies and their weapons - an Enfield No.5 Mk1 Jungle Carbine and their Kukri dagger, in a village in the middle of the jungle from which they so desperately wished to escape, these Englishmen, Nepalis and Burmese refugees that had made up the Allies' most effective fighting force in the Burma Campaign.

Zoya was one of the lucky few, able to return with Wingate's own Headquarters to their base in Jhansi, North India, but two months of campaign under Wingate had been a steep learning curve, teaching her invaluable skills and raising her confirmed kills to soaring heights.

She had found herself on Sicily not long later, being briefed on a mission into South France, and all of a sudden, the end seemed so much closer than it had been for that little girl of eighteen leaving home back in '32.
On her person had been nothing but her British Army uniform, littered with the insignia of the various units she had been attached to - first the 8th Army Signals, then the King's Liverpool Regiment, who she had decided to honour in this latest engagement by donning their colours.

Three spies, masters of espionage and reconnaissance in their own rights, three warriors forged in the fires of life watched the Allied men land on the beaches of Southern France that night and into the morning. Three heroes, each drawn together by fate watched as destiny continued in its steady course.
From there, onwards into Marseilles, and further to Paris.

A/N

Whoa, I didn't actually plan this chapter, It was all just written off the cuff. I had this big massive gap between the Germans reaching El Alamein and the beginning of Operation Dragoon, and an entire unexplored theatre. Don't be surprised of Longcloth returns in a flashback, I fully intend for it to do so, same with Rheinubung, which Percy was involved in aboard HMS Rodney.
We won't be seeing the first set of five for a while, as we explore this second phase of the Allied invasion of France, rather less bloody I must admit (There's one particularly fun story involving a gentleman selling the invaders refreshments and food on the beach)
Not much has changed, I still don't own PJO, cool cool.
I don't know if I'll be able to update next week, we shall see - it may just be a day late, or I may save it for a week's time.
Until then, see you all.
Sol