Read Chapter 21: The Sentry

The night air was thick with river mist as they crept along the bridge's steel underbelly, the girders cold and slick beneath their gloved hands. Below, the Vire ran black and silent. Jack could taste the rust on his tongue. His shoulder screamed with every arm-over-arm movement, but he kept his jaw locked and his breathing shallow.

The junction box was exactly where Weiss said it would be: a recessed panel bolted into the web of the main truss, accessible only by a narrow service ladder that dropped from the deck above. A single sentry stood at the top of that ladder, his silhouette cut against the sodium haze of a distant floodlight. He was smoking. The ember pulsed orange like a small, patient warning.

Jack pressed his back flat against the girder and signaled to Henri. Conversation between them had been abandoned hours ago; they moved in gestures and looks now. Henri answered with a slow nod, then slid his Mauser from his shoulder, checking the bolt action with a practiced, silent efficiency.

Claire came up beside Jack, her eyes on the sentry. She hadn't spoken much since they'd crossed the gorge. Her knuckles were white around the strap of the grenade pouch she'd taken from the dead guard. She leaned close to Jack, her breath barely a whisper against his ear. "He changes position every twenty minutes. When he moves to the far rail, you have half a minute before he returns."

Jack looked at Weiss, who stood at the rear of their small group, hands bound loosely in front of him, the posture of a man who had already decided his survival was better served by cooperation. Jack still didn't trust the German engineer's resignation. A man who betrayed his uniform for his life would betray his life for his uniform if the arithmetic changed.

"You're certain the junction is on the far side?" Jack asked, low.

Weiss nodded, his eyes flicking to the sentry. "Beneath the deck plating, third panel from the pier. The primary wiring passes through it. Cut the wrong lead and the charge goes out on the spot—no, that is not correct. Cut the *right* lead, and you isolate the detonator. But the panel is alarmed. If the sentry is not neutralized before you open the casing, you get a signal to the bunker."

The sentry moved. He dropped his cigarette, ground it out with his heel, and began a slow walk along the deck toward the far rail. Henri raised the rifle. The scope caught the floodlight, glinting for a single bad second, and Jack felt his chest tighten. But the sentry didn't turn. He stopped at the rail, unbuttoned his fly, and began to urinate into the river below.

Henri did not hesitate. The rifle coughed, a sound that was flat and wrong against the groaning of the bridge structure. The sentry's head snapped forward, and his body pitched over the rail—not outward into the water, but backward onto the deck. It landed with a sickening, audible thud, and the man's steel helmet clattered loose and rolled across the planks, ringing like a struck bell in the silence.

For a moment, no one moved. Jack could hear the river again, the distant drone of truck engines somewhere in the dark. Then a voice called out from the far end of the bridge approach, in guttural German, demanding to know what the noise was.

Weiss's face went pale. He looked at Jack, then at the fallen sentry, sprawled in plain sight at the top of the ladder. There was no time to hide the body. No time to retreat below the deck line. The voice called out again, closer now, and a flashlight beam swept along the deck, catching the edge of the dead man's boot.

"Your cover story," Jack hissed at Weiss. "You earn your life now."

Weiss swallowed hard. He straightened his tunic, which was already stained and disheveled, and called out in a voice that cracked just slightly at the edges. "Don't shoot! It's Feldwebel Weiss, from the engineer battalion. My truck broke down on the south road. We have been walking for hours."

The flashlight beam steadied on Weiss. A figure emerged from the darkness at the far end of the deck—a German soldier, young, rifle held point-low, wary. "Feldwebel? You're on the wrong side. The approach is sealed."

"I know where I am," Weiss said, with a passable note of authority. "I was coming to inspect the junction panel. My driver," he gestured vaguely at the shadows where Jack, Henri, and Claire pressed themselves flat against the trusses, "went to check the railing. He saw the body. The man fell or... he was careless. A guard should not be drinking on duty."

The soldier came closer. His flashlight swept past Weiss and found the dead sentry, the dark bloom spreading beneath his head on the deck planks. "Fell?" The soldier's voice turned sharp with suspicion. "That's not a fall. That's a shot."

"He tripped on his own rifle," Weiss said quickly. "I saw it happen from the ladder. The butt caught the rail, the weapon discharged. A tragedy. A waste of a good man."

The soldier looked down at the body, then back at Weiss. The beam wandered, hunting. It passed over Claire's shoulder, over the glint of Henri's rifle barrel, and Jack held his breath until his lungs burned. Then the soldier grunted, holstered his weapon. "Drunk, you said?"

"I said careless," Weiss corrected. "Either way, he's dead. I need to file a report at the bunker. And I need my men up here. We cannot leave him lying there for the whole battalion to see. It will lower morale."

The soldier seemed to weigh the options. He kicked the sentry's helmet, which rolled again, a hollow clatter. "All right. Get your men up. We'll carry him to the motor pool. The duty officer can sort it out in the morning."

Weiss turned and made a sharp gesture with his bound hands, hidden from the soldier's view. Jack understood. He scrambled up the ladder first, hauling himself onto the deck with one screaming arm, and crossed to the body before the soldier could get a good look at him. Henri followed, Claire behind him. They lifted the dead man—warm, still leaking—and draped him between them as if he were a casualty, not a kill. The soldier didn't look at their faces. He was already walking ahead, muttering about the paperwork he'd have to fill out.

Weiss fell in behind them, his voice pitched for Jack's ear. "The bunker is two hundred meters east. If your weapon is found on the body, we are all dead."

Jack didn't answer. He was looking at the sentry's face, slack and young under the floodlights. A boy, maybe nineteen. Then he looked past the boy's body to the far side of the deck, where the third panel from the pier sat beneath a bolted steel casing. So close. One panel, one wire, and the primary charge would be dead.

But somewhere deeper in the darkness, hidden on the north side of the bridge, Obersturmbannführer Kessler's secondary charge was still armed, silent, and waiting. And they had no idea where.

The soldier turned back suddenly, his flashlight catching Jack full in the face. "You. I don't recognize you. Which unit?"