Chapter 31 Will
Will
We’d been in position for forty minutes.
Danny sat behind the wheel with the engine off.
The car was tucked into an alley with a clear sightline to the facility’s main gate.
I sat in the back seat, camera braced against the doorframe, using the shadows of the alley to mask the lens.
Eddie was somewhere in the darkness closer to the fence, watching approaches we couldn’t see from the car.
Nothing moved.
The station hummed, its transformers buzzing, but the grounds remained empty.
There were no trucks, no men, no sabotage.
“Maybe they’re hitting a different target first,” Danny said quietly.
“Maybe.” My watch read 01:12. “Give it another twenty minutes. If nothing happens, we move to our secondary location.”
The radio was silent except for periodic check-ins. I heard the CIA woman’s voice, Thomas’s voice, and the Baroness coordinating from the farmhouse. Each time I heard Thomas, something in my chest flinched.
At 01:23, Eddie’s voice came through my earpiece: “Movement. East approach. One vehicle with lights off. Go radio silent.”
I raised my camera and scanned the darkness.
There—a van, rolling slowly along the access road, its headlights dark. It stopped fifty meters from the perimeter fence.
“I see it,” I breathed. “Danny, be ready to move.”
Three men climbed out of the van. They moved quickly, pulling what looked like long wire cutters out of the back. One man hefted a heavy bag that clanked when he lifted it.
I started photographing.
Snap.
Wind the film.
Snap.
Wind the film.
The men approached the fence.
One kneeled and began cutting through the chain link while others kept watch. Through my viewfinder, I could see their faces—grim, focused, intent on their work.
“Can you get a plate number on that van?”
Danny squinted through the windshield. “Can’t make it out. Eddie’ll get it if he has the angle.”
The fence was opened.
The men slipped through, leaving their van outside.
They marched toward a transformer station at the edge of the facility. I tracked them with my camera, capturing their progress and documenting every step.
Then one of them pulled something from the heavy bag.
An explosive charge.
Magnified through my lens, it looked compact and professional, the kind used by a nation’s military, not some rogue faction. It also looked like a device designed to destroy equipment without leveling buildings.
They were going to blow the transformer.
“Base, mobile.” I kept my voice steady, though my pulse was racing. “We have three men inside the perimeter with explosives. They’re targeting the main transformer.”
“Mobile team, base. Copy.” The Baroness’s voice was calm. “Document but do not engage. Repeat. Do not engage.”
I understood the logic. We were here to gather evidence, not fight, but watching the men plant that charge while knowing what it would do, knowing people might die in the chaos that followed . . .
The transformer was in clear view.
I snapped photos of them placing the explosive.
Photographed them running the detonator wire back toward the fence.
Photographed their retreat to the van.
Their engine started. Its headlights never engaged. After a moment, the van pulled away and disappeared into the night.
“Base, mobile,” I reported. “The van is gone. Charge is in place. No read on detonator.”
“Mobile, base. Move to your secondary target.”
“Copy.”
Eddie returned a few minutes later. We pulled out of the alley and headed west toward the communications hub near the university.
Behind us, the power station hummed on, oblivious to the bomb infecting its heart.
01:30.
“Base, primary. Main bay is dark. West side active.”
Then Thomas’s voice: “West side. Very active. Seventy-plus photographs. Heavy traffic, heavy equipment. Teams are prepping to move.”
I let out a breath.
Seventy photographs.
He was doing his job and building the evidence we needed.
More importantly, he was staying hidden and safe . . . for once.
“Base, mobile,” I reported. “En route to secondary.”
“Copy all,” the Baroness said. “Next check-in at 02:00.”
The communications hub was twelve minutes away.
Danny drove carefully, obeying every traffic law, giving no one a reason to look at us twice. Eddie sat in the passenger seat, reloading his camera, his movements quick and precise.
“How many shots you have left?” he asked.
“Half a roll. Maybe eighteen.”
“Should be enough.” He glanced at me.
We reached the communications hub at 01:44.
They didn’t make us wait long.
They came in two vehicles, a truck and a sedan. They didn’t bother being subtle or cloaking themselves in darkness.
The truck rammed through the facility’s front gate at 01:52.
The sedan followed close behind, disgorging men with weapons and equipment before the guards could respond.
I heard shouting, saw flashlights cutting through the darkness, and watched as the Order’s people swarmed across the grounds.
“Jesus,” Danny breathed.
I was already photographing.
The truck. The sedan. The men pouring out, their faces caught in my viewfinder.
License plates, weapons, the systematic way they moved toward the main building.
Inside the facility, alarms began to wail.
“Base, mobile team. Communications hub is under assault. I counted a dozen hostiles, possibly more. This isn’t sabotage—it’s a raid.”
“Mobile, base. Copy.” The Baroness’s voice was tight. “Document. Do not—”
The radio cut out.
Static.
Then nothing.
“Base?” I tried. “Base, do you copy?”
Nothing.
“They’re jamming,” Eddie said quietly. “Someone’s running interference on our frequency.”
My stomach dropped.
No radio meant no contact with the other teams.
No contact with the farmhouse.
No way to know if Thomas was—
Don’t think about it. Focus on the job.
“We keep documenting,” I said. “Until we’re out of film.”
The assault on the communications hub was brutally efficient. The Order’s people knew exactly where to go and what to disable. Within minutes, the facility’s lights flickered and died.
The alarms cut off mid-wail.
Bern began going dark.
We moved to the third target with only a few shots left, but we were too late. By the time we arrived, smoke was already rising from the main building. Fire trucks wailed in the distance, converging on the site. Whatever the Order had done, they’d done it before we could witness it.
“Back to the farmhouse,” I said. “We’ve got what we can get.”
Danny nodded and turned the car east.
The radio was still dead.
I kept trying, cycling through frequencies, hoping for a signal.
Nothing. Nothing. More nothing.
“They’ll be fine,” Eddie said. He was watching me with calm, steady eyes. “The warehouse team, they know what they’re doing. They’ll be all right.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No, but I know panicking won’t help them.” He paused. “Your partner, Condor, he’s good?”
“He’s the best.”
“Then trust him to find a way.”
I wanted to believe that.
I wanted to believe Thomas was out there, slipping through shadows, staying one step ahead of whatever was chasing him, but the silence from the radio was a void that swallowed every hopeful thought.
The drive back felt endless.
Every minute stretched, every second weighted with dread.
I watched the streets of Bern slide past. They were all dark now, the streetlights blind in whole sections of the city. The Order’s handiwork was spreading like a stain.
Or a disease.
At 02:47, the radio crackled.
“—peat, primary team. Does . . . copy?”
It was the CIA woman’s voice.
I grabbed for the radio.
“Primary, mobile. We copy. Status?”
A pause.
Static.
Then: “En route to extraction. Marcus is with me. We have the photographs.”
Marcus?
Not Thomas.
“What about Condor?” My voice cracked on his name. “Where’s Condor?”
Another pause.
Longer this time.
Long enough for my heart to stop.
“Condor was compromised. He signaled he was heading for extraction, but . . .” The woman’s voice was steady, but there was deep unease beneath it. “He took fire from one hostile in pursuit. We haven’t been able to raise him.”
My world tilted.
“What do you mean? Where is he? Why aren’t you pulling him out?”
“I don’t know.” For the first time, something slipped in her voice. “We tried to reach him, but more hostiles arrived. We had to get our evidence out—”
“You left him?”
“Mission before men. He would have done the same.”
Mission? Fuck the mission!
Thomas was out there in the darkness and freezing cold. He could be shot, bleeding, maybe dying, and they’d left him because of protocol?
“We’re going back,” I said. “Danny, turn the car around.”
“Emu—” Eddie started.
“Turn the goddamned car around!”
Danny looked at Eddie.
Eddie looked at me.
Then something passed between them.
“The jamming’s stopped,” Eddie said quietly. “That means the operation’s winding down. If Condor made it to extraction, Bisch will have him. If he didn’t . . .”
He didn’t finish the sentence.
He didn’t have to.
“We go back to the farmhouse,” Eddie said. “We regroup and find out what happened. Going in blind won’t help anyone.”
I wanted to scream at him.
I wanted to grab the wheel and force Danny to turn around.
I wanted to tear through the streets of Bern until I found Thomas, until I knew he was alive, until I could see him and touch him and know that another gunshot hadn’t—
But Eddie was right. Damn it. I knew he was right.
“Farmhouse, go,” I said.
The words shredded the last of my strength.
The farmhouse was dark when we arrived. There were no lights in the windows and no cars in the drive. For one terrible moment, I thought everyone was gone.
Had the Baroness been captured again?
Had she been killed?
Had our whole operation burned to the ground?
Then the front door opened, and the Baroness stepped out.
“Inside,” she said. “Quickly.”
We hurried through the door.
The kitchen was lit by candles. The power was out here, too. The Order’s sabotage reached even to our remote farmhouse.
The CIA woman and Marcus were already there, spreading photographs across the kitchen table. Bisch stood nearby, his shotgun cradled in his arms.
Thomas was nowhere.
“Where is he?” I demanded. “Where’s Condor?”
The Baroness turned to face me.
In the candlelight, her face was carved with shadows, her eyes unreadable.
“We do not know,” she said.
“What do you mean, you don’t know? Someone has to—”
Her voice was steady, but I saw her hands trembling. Those ruined, bandaged hands had already given so much. “We are trying to raise him on the emergency frequency. So far, nothing.”
Nothing.
That word again.
That terrible, empty word.
“He could be hiding,” Marcus offered. “Lying low until the heat dies down. It’s what I’d do.”
“Don’t.” My voice came out sharper than I intended. “Just . . . don’t.”
Silence.
The candles flickered.
Outside, the wind picked up, rattling the windows.
Somewhere in Bern’s darkness, Thomas was either alive or dead, and I had no way of knowing which.
The CIA woman cleared her throat. “We have work to do. Whatever’s happened to Condor—”
“I don’t care about the fucking photographs.”
The Baroness flinched. The CIA woman didn’t.
“You should.” The woman’s voice was hard. “Because if we don’t get this evidence to the press, everything he did tonight was for nothing. Every risk, every photograph, every—” She stopped herself and took a breath. “Wherever he is, he wouldn’t want you to throw it all away. You know that.”
And I did.
Thomas would tell me to focus, to finish the mission, to make sure every sacrifice meant something. He would be furious if I let emotion cloud my judgment.
But Thomas wasn’t here, and the not knowing was eating me alive.
“Let me try the radio,” I said. “One more time.”
The Baroness nodded, and Bisch handed me the equipment. It was a field radio acquired from Swiss military surplus. It had a better range than our handhelds.
I keyed the mic. “Condor, Emu. Do you copy?”
Static.
“Condor, respond. Just . . . please respond.”
Static.
“Thomas.”
I dropped the code name and any hint of propriety.
Nothing mattered anymore.
Nothing but Thomas.
“Thomas, if you can hear me—I’m here. I’m not leaving. Just give me something. Anything. Please.”
The static hissed and crackled.
I lowered the radio.
My hands were shaking.
“We wait, and we work,” the Baroness said softly. “It is all we can do.”
I knew she was right.
But as I sat down at the table, surrounded by photographs of the operation that might save Switzerland, all I could think about was Thomas.
My Thomas.
Somewhere in the darkness, alone, maybe hurt, maybe worse.
And there was nothing I could do but wait.