Read Chapter 23: Flight to Darkness

The turboprop’s cabin smelled of stale coffee and hydraulic fluid. Étienne pressed his forehead against the cold window, watching the darkened French countryside slide beneath them—a black patchwork stitched only by the faint glow of emergency lamps in scattered farmhouses. The storm had turned the land into a prehistoric thing, indifferent to the humans crawling across it.

Claire sat in the left seat, her hands moving across the instruments with the ease of someone who had logged a thousand hours in machines like this. She had swapped her agency jacket for a battered flight vest, the forged documents for “Françoise Leclair” tucked into a thigh pocket. Her face, lit by the dim green glow of the panel, was all sharp angles and quiet focus.

“Forty minutes to Auxerre,” she said, not looking at him. “Then we swap to the turboprop and head northeast. If the weather holds, we touch down outside Frankfurt before dawn.”

Étienne nodded, though she wasn’t watching. His mind kept circling back to Jacques—the way his mentor’s eyes had held a desperate clarity, the way his voice had cracked when he said *they’ve cleared a path for your execution*. The recording was still in his bag, the minister’s voice trapped in digital amber. It could have been staged. All of it could have been staged.

“You’re doing it again,” Claire said.

“Doing what?”

“Thinking too loudly.” She finally glanced at him, a ghost of a smile on her lips. “Jacques gave you the watch. He gave you the list. If he wanted you dead, he could have let the consortium do it back in Lyon.”

“Or he’s feeding me exactly where they want me.” Étienne rubbed his eyes. “I keep going in circles.”

“Then stop. Look down.”

He looked. Below, a ribbon of headlights moved along a darkened highway—a convoy of perhaps a dozen vehicles, their lights cutting through the black like a line of ants. Étienne frowned. Civilians were supposed to be staying put, rationing fuel, sheltering in place. A convoy this organized told a different story.

“Military?” he asked.

Claire squinted through the windscreen. “Too many vehicles, moving too fast. Military convoys run dark—no lights, radio silence. These are lit up like a Christmas parade.” She adjusted the yoke, dipping the nose slightly to bring them closer to the treeline. “They’re heading northeast. Same heading we’re on.”

Étienne’s stomach tightened. “Frankfurt.”

“Or somewhere near it.” Claire banked the aircraft, the wings tilting to give her a better angle. “I count twelve vehicles. Troop transports and a couple of armored SUVs. No markings I can read at this altitude.”

“Can you identify them?”

“Not from here. But they’re not local police—no blue lights, no military escort pattern.” She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice had gone flat. “They’re running with the same discipline as a DGSE field unit.”

Étienne turned to face her fully. “Your people?”

“Former people.” Claire’s jaw tightened. “If the consortium cloned my badge, they could have cloned clearance codes for a convoy too. Or they’re simply using the chaos to move assets without questions.”

The aircraft hummed as she pushed the throttles forward, dropping them lower until the treetops blurred past just beneath the wings. Étienne could make out individual vehicles now—blocky shapes, their headlights painting thin cones across the asphalt. One of the rear vehicles had a long antenna mast, the kind used for secure satellite communications.

“They’re running a command vehicle,” Claire said. “That’s not a patrol. That’s an operation.”

“Heading to the same airstrip we are?”

“Either that or the substation itself.” She pulled up slightly, banking west to widen the gap between them and the convoy. “Jacques said the hub was in Frankfurt. But if the consortium knows we’re coming, they might have moved the pieces. Or they’re sending reinforcements to guard what’s already there.”

Étienne pulled out the laminated map from his vest, unfolding it across his knees. Claire’s penlight cast a narrow beam over the paper. “If we land at the airstrip Jacques designated, we’ll be right in their path. They’ll see us before we can reach the substation.”

“Which is why we’re not landing there.” Claire’s voice was calm, almost casual. “There’s an abandoned agricultural strip twelve klicks south of the main field. I used it once during a training exercise—it’s still serviceable, if you don’t mind a few bumps.”

“Can we reach the substation from there on foot?”

“If we move fast.” She glanced at him. “But it’ll be close. The convoy’s doing maybe eighty klicks an hour. If they’re heading to the same target, they’ll arrive before us.”

Étienne studied the map, tracing a finger along the roads leading north from the agricultural strip. “Then we don’t walk. We commandeer something at the strip.”

Claire raised an eyebrow. “You’re suggesting grand theft auto in the middle of a national emergency, in a country where neither of us has legal standing?”

“I’m suggesting we don’t die because we were polite.”

She laughed—a short, sharp sound that surprised them both. “There’s the man who survived Lyon.” She adjusted her grip on the yoke. “Hold on. We’re going to drop lower and use the river valley to mask our approach. The military radar will be thinner there.”

The aircraft lurched as she pushed the nose down, the engine note deepening to a growl. Étienne gripped the edge of his seat as the world outside turned to a smear of black and silver—the river below catching starlight, the banks rushing past at frightening speed. Claire flew with her eyes fixed ahead, her movements economical and sure.

“You’ve done this before,” Étienne said, more statement than question.

“I’ve done a lot of things before.” She didn’t elaborate.

They flew in silence for another twenty minutes, the map spread across Étienne’s knees, his fingers tracing their progress by the occasional landmark—a bridge, a church spire, a cluster of farmhouses that appeared and vanished like ghosts. The convoy had disappeared from view, swallowed by the dark. But Étienne knew it was still out there, rolling steadily toward whatever waited in Frankfurt.

The airstrip appeared as a faint scar on the landscape—a strip of cracked asphalt flanked by rusting hangars. Claire set the aircraft down with barely a bump, killing the engines before they had fully rolled to a stop. The silence that followed was sudden and absolute, broken only by the ticking of cooling metal.

“No lights,” she said, already unbuckling. “No reception party. That’s either very good or very bad.”

Étienne pushed open the cabin door, stepping onto the wing and dropping to the tarmac. The air was cold and still, carrying the faint smell of diesel and wet grass. In the distance, a dog barked once, then fell silent.

They moved toward the hangars, keeping low, skirting the edge of the runway. The first hangar was empty, its doors gaping open to the night. The second held a rusted tractor and a pile of hay bales. The third—

“We have company,” Claire hissed.

Étienne followed her gaze. Beyond the far edge of the strip, a line of headlights was cresting the low hill, moving toward them in disciplined formation. The convoy had abandoned the highway, cutting across country toward the same destination.

Toward them.

“They’re not stopping at the substation,” Étienne said, his voice barely a whisper. “They’re coming here.”

Claire’s hand went to the pistol at her hip. “Then we take the tractor.”

“That’s not going to outrun armored SUVs.”

“It doesn’t have to.” She was already moving, jogging toward the hangar. “It just has to get us to the substation before they do.”

The first vehicle crested the hill fully, its headlights sweeping across the airstrip like searchlights. In their glare, Étienne caught a flash of markings on the convoy’s lead vehicle—a stenciled emblem, faded but unmistakable.

The twin lightning bolts of the DGSE’s covert operations division.

“Claire,” he said, his voice tight. “They’re not consortium contractors.”

She turned, following his gaze, and froze.

“Those are French foreign intelligence vehicles,” Étienne said. “Your former colleagues are here.”

Claire’s face went pale in the headlights. “That’s not possible. The clearance codes I burned—the badge they cloned—it was supposed to keep them away from me, not send them hunting.”

“Unless someone knew you’d come here.” Étienne’s mind raced. “Jacques said the consortium cleared a path for my execution. What if they cleared a path for you too?”

Claire stared at the approaching lights, her gun still in her hand. “Then we’re not running from a conspiracy anymore,” she said quietly. “We’re running from the French government itself.”

The lead vehicle had reached the edge of the airstrip now, its engine rumbling, its headlights painting their shadows long and dark across the cracked asphalt.