“It would be a veryThomasway to die,” he quipped.
I grinned at his startled squeal when I smacked his ass.
29
Will
The last day was the hardest. Not because of the work—there was plenty of that, and it kept our hands busy with equipment checks, route planning, and contingency reviews. The CIA woman ran us through the operation three more times, probing for weaknesses, while testing our responses to scenarios that grew progressively more catastrophic.
What if the warehouse is empty?
What if it’s a trap?
What if the radios fail?
What if someone gets captured?
We had answers for all of it. Whether those answers would hold up under fire was another question entirely.
No, the hardest part was the waiting.
The hours stretched like taffy, thick and slow and impossible to rush. The knowledge that everything we’d done—every risk, every sacrifice, every drop of blood—came down to what happened tonight.
I’d felt this before.
Endless tension always filled the night before a mission, when the planning was done and there was nothing left but the doing. It never got easier.
I spent the morning with Danny and Eddie, reviewing our route through the city.
We would hit three targets: the power station on Hardstrasse, the communications hub near the university, and a secondary power facility on the western edge of the city. That gave us three chances to catch the Order’s people in the act.
“We stay mobile,” I said, tracing our path on the map. “No more than fifteen minutes at any location. We photograph what we can, then move. If we see sabotage in progress, we document it. We do not engage.”
“And if they see us?” Danny asked.
“We disappear. These streets”—I tapped the map—“are full of alleys, courtyards, and dark places to vanish. We know the routes. They don’t know we’re coming.”
“You’reassumingthey don’t know we’re coming,”Eddie said quietly.
I looked at him. His face was calm, but his eyes held the wariness of a man who had learned not to trust assumptions.
“You think they might?” I asked.
“I think, from what you’ve told us, they’ve known where you would be since the moment you arrived in Switzerland, possibly before you even left France. I think they’ve been operating for years without getting caught, which suggests competence.” He shrugged. “Competent people assume they’re being watched and prepare accordingly.”
He wasn’t wrong.
I’d been trying not to think about it—the possibility that we were walking into a trap, that somewhere in the Order’s hierarchy or the Soviets’ planning, someone had anticipated exactly this response. Eddie’s words dragged those fears into the light.
“Then we stay sharp,” I said. “Trust nothing and assume the worst.”
“I always do,” Eddie said. And somehow, that was reassuring.
The afternoon brought a visitor.
Bisch had gone into town that morning on a supply run, he’d said, though I suspected he was also checking on his own network of contacts. He returned around three with groceries, ammunition, and a man I didn’t recognize.
“This is Vogel,” Bisch said, ushering the stranger into the kitchen. “Werner Vogel, the reporter.”
