Read Chapter 17: The Ambush

The farmhouse roof sagged under moss and decades of weather, but the barn behind it was solid, its stone walls thick enough to muffle the sound of their plans. Claire stood at the gap where a door had once been, watching the eastern road through a curtain of rain that had started before dawn and hadn't let up since.

Jack pressed his back against the mildewed hay bales, rolling his shoulder. The wound protested with a dull, wet ache. Bound tight with a strip torn from Henri's shirt, it had stopped bleeding, but it hadn't stopped throbbing. He'd had worse. He'd also had a field surgeon and a week of morphine for the worse ones. Now he had a roll of twine and a French hunter whose patience was wearing thin.

"This truck comes every third morning," Claire said, not turning from the doorway. Water dripped from her hair. "Small. Two men. They take the road to the bridge works."

"Always the same time?" Jack asked.

"Near enough. The Germans like their routine." She glanced back, and there was something hard in her eyes that hadn't been there when they'd first met. "They also like their sausage. The driver stops at the farm past the mill to trade for eggs and butter. He waits while the other man eats."

Henri looked up from the pack he was sorting—what was left of their supplies, which wasn't much. A coil of wire. A rusted wrench. Three sticks of explosive wrapped in oilcloth. No detonators. No fuse.

"How many men at the bridge now?" Henri asked.

"More than yesterday," Claire said. "The convoy we saw on the ridge, those were engineers. They brought timber and cable. And explosives—I heard one of the workers say they have enough to bring down a mountain."

Jack pushed himself up, fighting the pull in his shoulder. "Then we're not just blowing the bridge. We're keeping it standing."

Henri's jaw tightened. "So we go to the farmer. The one with the detonators."

"The one who charges German prices and pockets German coin," Claire said. "He will sell to anyone."

Jack shook his head. "We don't have anything to trade. We're out of money, out of favors, and out of time." He walked to the barn's far wall, where the boards were warped just enough to see the road below. "There's a truck coming with ammunition for the bridge garrison. Maybe explosives." He turned. "We take it. We take what's inside, and we take any man who knows how to wire a charge."

Henri's eyes narrowed. "You want to capture a German engineer."

"I want to capture the bridge's demolition plan." Jack's voice was flat, final. "A truck that size on a supply run—there's a cargo manifest, maybe diagrams. And there's a driver and a guard. One of them might know where the detonators are, or how the charges are wired."

"And if they don't?"

"Then we've got a truck full of ammunition and we use it to make noise the other way while we cross the river."

Claire stepped inside, brushing the rain from her coat. "The road narrows at the old stone bridge, two klicks south. They have to slow to cross. There's cover in the treeline."

Jack looked at Henri. "You in?"

Henri's hand drifted to the knife at his belt. For a long moment, his face was unreadable. Then he nodded once. "I'm in. But I take the driver."

They moved into position before the truck appeared, Jack and Claire on one side of the narrow crossing, Henri on the other. The rain had turned the road to mud, and the truck's wheels would find no purchase if it tried to speed through. The plan was simple: Claire would walk into the road, waving her arms like a woman in distress. The truck would stop. Then Henri would take the driver's door, and Jack would handle the guard.

It was the kind of plan that worked until it didn't, and Jack had seen enough of those go sideways to keep a second plan in his head.

The truck came at noon, lumbering out of the gray. Canvas-covered. Mud-splattered. Two men in the cab, as Claire had said. It slowed when it saw her, and Jack watched the driver lean forward, squinting through the rain. Claire waved her hands over her head. She was wearing her coat open, and she'd mussed her hair. To a man who'd been weeks without company, she'd be a welcome sight.

The truck stopped. The driver rolled down his window.

Claire leaned in, saying something Jack couldn't hear. The driver laughed. Then Henri moved, silent and quick, and the driver's door was open and Henri had him by the collar and his knife was at the throat.

Jack's own door was slower. The guard had seen Henri move and was fumbling for his rifle, half-turning as Jack hauled the door open. Jack grabbed the man's coat and dragged him out, and they hit the mud together. The guard was young—maybe eighteen—and he fought with panic, not skill. Jack got an arm around his neck and squeezed. The boy went limp.

Jack looked up. Henri had the driver pinned against the cab, knife still at his throat. The driver's hands were up, and he was babbling in German. Henri's face was stone.

"What's he saying?" Jack asked.

"He says they have no money. He says we can take the truck, take everything, just let him live." Henri's grip tightened. "He says please."

"Ask him what's in the back."

Henri rattled off a question. The driver answered fast, sweat mixing with rain on his face.

"Explosives," Henri said. "TNT and detonator cord. Ammunition for the bridge garrison. And a passenger."

"A passenger?" Jack pushed the guard away and stood. "What passenger?"

The driver was talking again, pointing toward the canvas cover behind the cab. Henri asked another question. The driver's answer was shorter, and his eyes had gone wide with fear.

"No," Henri translated, "he is not talking about a passenger. He says there is an engineer in the back. They are escorting him to the bridge to inspect the priming system."

Jack's pulse jumped. "Priming system. Meaning detonators?"

Henri asked. The driver nodded eagerly, his words spilling out now.

"He says the engineer is from Berlin. He checked every charge, every wire. He will arm the bridge when the order comes." Henri's face tightened. "The driver says he is the only man who knows the full wiring diagram."

Jack looked at the canvas cover. The rain had soaked through in patches, and the fabric moved slightly in the wind. Inside was a man who could tell them exactly how to take the bridge down—or how to keep it standing.

Or a man who could raise the alarm the moment they touched him.

"We need him alive," Jack said.

Henri's knife pressed closer. "We don't need him for anything. We cut his throat and we leave the engineer a gift: he will tell us the wiring, or he will watch his men die one by one."

"Henri." Jack stepped closer, low enough that the driver couldn't hear. "If we're going to use him, we need him cooperative. We scare him half to death, he'll lie to us. He'll send us into a wire that blows us apart."

"Then we kill him after."

"We use him first." Jack held Henri's gaze. "You wanted to do this your way, you're not doing it. You wanted to do it the way that gets your nephew out alive, you do it mine."

The words landed hard. Henri's jaw worked, and for a moment Jack thought he might push past him anyway. Then Henri's grip loosened, just slightly.

"We take them both," Henri said. "We take them to the farmhouse. We get what we need." He looked at Jack, and his eyes were cold. "And then we decide what to do with them."

Jack gave a single nod. "Fine."

The guard was stirring in the mud. Jack dragged him over to the driver, pulled them both to their feet, and shoved them toward the back of the truck. The canvas flap moved, and a face appeared—pale, bespectacled, older. The engineer had heard everything.

He looked at Jack, then at the knife in Henri's hand. He swallowed.

"Please," he said in accented English, hands rising slowly. "I am not a soldier. I am an electrician."

Jack grabbed his collar and pulled him out of the truck. The man stumbled into the mud, losing his glasses. He scrabbled for them, and Henri ground the frames under his boot.

"Then you know how to wire a charge," Jack said. "And you know how to unfire one."

The engineer blinked up at him through the rain, one lens cracked, his face white. He looked at the young guard, still trembling, and at the driver, who had stopped shaking and now stood still, watching Jack with a different kind of fear in his eyes.

The driver knew something. Jack saw it. The engineer knew something too, but it was the driver who held the thing they needed.

"What're you not telling us?" Jack asked.

The driver said nothing. Henri raised the knife.

"Stop," the engineer said. "Stop. I will tell you. But not here. They have a patrol that uses this road. If we are not gone in five minutes—"

Claire was already moving, pulling the guard toward the treeline. Henri shoved the driver forward, and Jack grabbed the engineer by the arm and pushed him after.

Behind them, the truck sat in the mud, its engine still ticking, its cargo of explosives waiting under the canvas they wouldn't risk staying to take.

They had a prisoner. They had a chance.

But the driver hadn't been afraid of them. He'd been afraid of something else.