Read Chapter 30: The Check

The acetylene torch sputtered, its blue flame eating through the last centimeters of welded steel. Jack’s arms ached, sweat dripping into his eyes despite the damp cold of the drainage tunnel. Beside him, Émile held the cutting rig steady, his face a mask of concentration.

“Almost through,” Jack grunted, voice raw from the fumes.

Émile nodded, glancing back toward the tunnel entrance where the other escaped prisoners waited in the darkness. It had been too easy so far. That thought gnawed at Jack as the metal finally gave way with a groan. The maintenance hatch swung inward, revealing the cramped crawlspace beneath the southern pylon.

“You first,” Émile whispered, his rifle trained on the darkness above them.

Jack slid through the opening, dropping onto a steel platform that hummed with the vibration of water rushing overhead. The space was tight—maybe four feet high—crammed with conduits and junction boxes. The air smelled of oil and cordite. And there, six feet away, tucked into a steel cradle bolted to the pylon’s concrete base, sat the main demolition charge.

It was a coil of copper wire wrapped around what looked like bricks of TNT, with a detonator cap wired into a junction box stamped with the Reichsadler. Wires ran from the box like black veins, disappearing into conduits that fed toward the surface. Toward Kessler’s command post.

“Fail-safe,” Émile breathed, crawling up beside him. “The red cable. That’s the one wired to the château.”

Jack pulled out Henri’s master key, turning it over in his palm. Worthless without the junction box above. But the demolition charge itself—that was another matter.

“You know how to disarm this?” Jack asked.

Émile’s face was pale, drained from the months in the camp. But he nodded. “I was trained before the war. German engineers who built this system used standard Wehrmacht procedure. The detonator cap is armed by a pressure spring. If I pull the wire from the cap without releasing the spring... boom.”

Jack’s eyes found the thin copper wire running from the detonator cap to the junction box. The final connection. The one that would send the signal.

“Do it.”

Émile exhaled slowly, reaching into the junction box with trembling fingers. Jack watched the tunnel entrance, his Thompson half-raised. The roar of the river above them muffled all sound, so he saw it before he heard it—a flicker of movement at the far end of the crawlspace, where the utility ladder led up to the bridge deck.

A boot thudded onto the steel platform.

Then another.

Jack snapped his Thompson up as a figure ducked into the crawlspace, a flashlight beam cutting through the darkness. The German engineer froze, his jaw dropping beneath the brim of his field cap.

“*Halt!*” he shouted, lunging for the alarm bell mounted on the wall—two yards from his position.

Jack fired.

The Thompson barked, muzzle flash blinding in the confined space. The engineer staggered but didn’t drop. He’d been thrown sideways by the impact, slamming into the junction box just as Émile was working on it. Émile cried out as the metal casing sliced his forearm open, blood spurting across the wires.

But the alarm bell rang—a clear, piercing tone that cut through the roar above them. One second. Maybe two. Long enough for the rest of the bridge garrison to hear.

The engineer, bleeding from two wounds in his side, clawed at his holster. Jack crossed the space in two strides and brought the butt of his Thompson down on the man’s temple. The German went limp, sprawling across the platform.

“He got the bell,” Jack said, hauling the unconscious engineer off Émile. “We have minutes at best.”

Already distant shouts echoed down the ladder shaft. Boots rang on the steel stairs above.

Émile was slumped against the pylon, blood pouring from his forearm, his face white. But his eyes were fixed on the junction box, on the red wire he’d been about to pull.

“Leave it,” Jack said, pulling him to his feet. “We have to move.”

“No.” Émile wrenched free, cradling his wounded arm against his chest, crawling back toward the junction box. “If we run, they know we were here. They’ll check the charge, find nothing wrong—and one hour later, you’ll still be trying to blow this bridge with a prayer and a flare gun.”

He reached into the box, fingers shaking, blood slicking the wires.

“Émile—” Jack started.

But then Émile’s hand closed on the red cable. He pulled once. Twice. And the copper filament he tore from the detonator cap came free—clean.

The demolition charge sat, inert, in its steel cradle.

Émile slumped back against the pylon, a grin splitting his pale face. “Done. He can’t blow it from the château. Not this one.”

Jack turned to the maintenance hatch they’d come through, then looked up at the tunnel shaft where bootsteps were growing louder. The bell kept ringing.

“They’ll be on us in seconds,” Jack said. “We got what we came for. Let’s go.”

He grabbed Émile’s good arm and half-carried him toward the access hatch. Behind them, the German engineer’s body lay sprawled across the junction box—the one thing that might have told Kessler what they’d done.

As Jack pulled Émile through the opening into the drainage tunnel, a wordless shout echoed down the shaft behind them. A flashlight beam played across the platform. They heard it—a German voice screaming orders, boots running to stop them.

But they were already gone, scrambling into the black water beneath the bridge, Émile bleeding out beside him, and the main charge disarmed.

Unless someone checked the wiring.

Unless the engineer had gotten the bell off in time.

Jack splashed through the darkness, dragging Émile toward the marsh, toward the safehouse where Henri might still be alive.

Behind them, the alarm bell kept ringing.