Read Chapter 23: The Alarm

The bell was still ringing when the first bullets chewed into the steel above their heads.

Jack flattened himself against the damp concrete, one arm thrown over Claire's back as she crouched beside him. Henri was on his knees, one hand clamped over the wound in his side, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps. The wiring box hung open above them, a nest of severed cables and sparking copper ends, and every one of those sparks felt like a signal fire.

"Move!" Jack shouted, grabbing Henri by the collar and hauling him upright. "They'll be on the deck in seconds!"

Weiss lay crumpled against the junction box, blood pooling beneath his skull from where Jack had pistol-whipped him. His eyes were open, glassy, staring at nothing. Jack didn't have time to feel anything about that.

Claire was already moving, crawling low along the shadowed underbelly of the bridge, heading for the access ladder they'd used to climb down. Above them, boots pounded on the wooden deck—troops running, shouting orders in German, the crack of a command voice cutting through the chaos.

"Not the ladder," Jack said, grabbing Claire's ankle. "They'll have it covered."

She looked back at him, face tight. "Then where?"

The marsh. Through the reeds to the west, where the ground turned to mud and water and the Germans wouldn't follow without boats. It was a long swim, cold and exposed, but it was the only way out that didn't run straight into a firing squad.

Jack pointed. "The water line. We go under the bridge, find a gap in the reeds, and we go dark."

Henri made a sound halfway between a laugh and a wheeze. "I've been shot, American. You want me to swim?"

"You can float," Jack said. "Let's go."

They moved in a crouch, staying in the shadow of the girders, the river black and sluggish below them. The alarm bell had stopped, but the shouting hadn't—and now there was a new sound, the squeal of a field telephone being cranked, officers calling in the breach. Jack didn't know how long it would take for Kessler to make the call, to order the charge blown. Maybe minutes. Maybe seconds.

Maybe it didn't matter, because the demolition was still fully wired. They'd managed to damage the primary circuit, but only half, and the secondary SS charge was still out there, hidden, waiting.

They were out of time.

A searchlight snapped on from the south tower, a white column of light that swung across the water in a lazy arc. Jack threw himself flat against the steel walkway, pressing Claire down with him. Henri didn't make it—he stumbled, his wet hand slipping off the railing, and he fell the last three feet into the shallows with a splash that sounded like a grenade in the quiet.

The searchlight swung toward them.

"Henri!" Claire hissed.

The old hunter was already moving, though, dragging himself through the mud on his elbows, leaving a dark trail behind him. The light swept past, then back, held on the water for a long, terrible moment.

Somewhere above, a voice called out. "Da! Im Wasser!"

Jack swore and pulled the Luger from his belt—Weiss's gun, the one he'd taken when the engineer had pulled it on them. It was a good piece, clean and oiled, and it held seven rounds. He had five left.

He fired once at the searchlight. The bulb exploded in a shower of glass, and the bank of the river went dark again.

"Go!" he shouted.

They ran—or staggered, or crawled, whatever each of them could manage. Jack's shoulder was on fire, the old wound reopened and bleeding down his arm, but he kept his feet, kept moving, dragging Henri when the hunter's legs went out from under him. Claire was ahead, already at the reeds, pushing through the tall grass with a urgency that bordered on violence.

Behind them, more shots. Muzzle flashes on the bridge deck, figures silhouetted against the night sky. A bullet whined past Jack's ear and smacked into the water beside him.

Then a burst of automatic fire, and Weiss's body—still crumpled by the junction box, still partly visible through the girders—jerked and twitched as rounds tore through it.

Jack stopped. Just for a second, just long enough to see it.

Weiss had been a liar and a coward and probably a traitor to every cause he'd ever claimed to serve. But he'd also been the only man who knew the full layout of the primary wiring, and now he was dead, and the knowledge had died with him.

Henri grabbed Jack's arm. "Leave him. He's gone."

"I know he's gone."

"Then don't look at him like that. Move."

They crashed into the reeds, into the cold, sucking mud of the marsh, and the dark closed over them like a hand.

The shots faded behind them—still there, still searching, but muffled now by distance and the thick press of vegetation. Jack kept moving until his legs gave out, until he fell to his knees in the black water and couldn't get up again. Claire came back for him, hooked her arm under his, and half-dragged him to a small rise of dry ground hidden in the center of the reeds.

They collapsed there, all three of them, breathing hard.

The sky was starting to lighten in the east. Not dawn yet, but close. The invasion would come in a few hours—would already be loading onto the transports in England, crews doing final checks, men writing last letters home. They would hit the beaches and find the bridges blown to rubble, the roads blocked, the Germans reinforced and ready.

Unless they could stop it.

Henri was lying on his back, his hand pressed over the wound in his side. His fingers were dark with blood, and his face was gray in the early light. Claire knelt beside him, tearing a strip from her uniform to bind the wound.

"Bad?" Henri asked.

"Not good," Claire said. She didn't look up. "But you'll live."

Jack struggled upright, cradling his arm. The watch was gone—his father's watch, shattered in the gorge, lost to the water below. He'd told himself it didn't matter, that the past was dead. He'd meant it. But there was still a hollow place where it had hung, a little weight that was no longer there.

He pushed it out of his mind.

"We need to talk about what happens next," he said.

Henri laughed, a dry, bitter sound. "What happens next is that we die in this marsh when they bring the dogs. Or we die when the bridge goes up. Or we die when the invasion lands and there's no bridge for the trucks and tanks. Pick your death, American."

"We don't die," Jack said. "Not yet."

He crawled to the edge of the rise and looked out through the reeds, toward the bridge. It was still standing, a dark line against the gray sky. But he could see activity now—men moving on the deck, vehicles arriving, a motorcycle courier tearing down the road from the north. They were preparing for something. Either they were going to blow the bridge or they were going to reinforce it, and Jack couldn't tell which from here.

Kessler's hidden charge was still out there. Somewhere under the bridge, in a place Weiss hadn't known about. It was armed and waiting, and if the German command decided the bridge was lost, they'd detonate it at the worst possible moment—when American troops were crossing, when the whole invasion plan was riding on that span of steel and concrete.

"Weiss is dead," Jack said. "The primary wiring is damaged but not disarmed. The SS charge is still hidden. We're kneeling in a swamp with one wounded man and no clear way forward." He paused. "So what do we know that we didn't know yesterday?"

Claire looked up from her work. "We know the Baron was trying to escape. Weiss said—"

"He said my father tried something and got caught," Henri finished. His voice was tight. "He didn't say what."

"Do you think he knew?"

Henri was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, "My father knows things about the château and the bridge that no one else does. If any man could stop this, it's him."

"He tried to escape," Claire said. "He's probably under guard now, or worse."

"Or he's already dead," Henri said. He closed his eyes. "But if he's alive, if he's still there, then he's my only chance."

The marsh was silent around them. The reeds rustled in the breeze, and somewhere in the distance a bird called out, a sound that felt obscenely normal after everything that had happened.

Jack looked at Henri, at the gray pallor of his skin and the blood seeping through Claire's makeshift bandage. He looked at Claire, at the set of her jaw and the worry in her eyes.

"We need to move," Jack said. "They'll search the marsh at first light."

Henri opened his eyes. "I know where to go."

He pushed himself up onto one elbow, his face twisting with pain. But there was something new in his eyes now—not desperation, but resolve.

"I'm going back to the château," he said. "I'm going to find my father—alive or dead—and I'm going to find out what he knew. If he was trying to escape, he had a reason. He knew something. He was trying to tell us something."

Jack shook his head. "The château is garrisoned. You'll walk right into them."

"I know," Henri said. "That's why I'm going alone."