Chapter 11 The Shot
ELEVEN
THE SHOT
TOM
The aircraft banked hard to the left, and my stomach lurched with it.
Below us, France sprawled in darkness, a patchwork of black fields and blacker forests broken only by the occasional pinprick of light from a farmhouse that hadn't learned to fear the sky.
No moon tonight. Cloud cover thick enough to hide us from German spotters, thin enough to let the pilot navigate by the rivers that snaked silver through the landscape.
I sat in the belly of the Halifax, back against the cold metal hull, pack strapped tight to my chest. The roar of the engines made conversation impossible, which suited me fine.
Nothing to say to the dispatcher crouched near the jump door, nothing to say to the pilot I'd never meet, nothing to say to anyone until the job was done.
My rifle case lay across my knees. I'd checked it six times since takeoff. Would check it again before I jumped. The Lee-Enfield inside was cleaned, oiled, zeroed to my specifications. Fifteen rounds in my pocket, though I'd only need one if Art's intelligence was good.
Art.
I'd seen him before I left. Brief conversation outside Hut X, both of us pretending it was just another escort, just another walk between buildings.
He'd looked pale, shadows dark under his eyes, and I'd wanted to tell him everything would be fine, that I'd be back before he knew it, that his coordinates were perfect and I trusted them completely.
The dispatcher held up five fingers. Five minutes to drop zone.
I stood, legs steady despite the aircraft's shuddering, and moved toward the door. The dispatcher hooked my static line to the overhead cable, checked the connection twice, gave me a thumbs up. Professional. Efficient. The kind of man who'd done this a hundred times and would do it a hundred more.
Two minutes.
I closed my eyes and breathed. In for four. Hold for four. Out for four.
Not thinking about the drop. Not thinking about the mission. Thinking about Art's face in the lamplight outside his billet. The way he'd said nanti perishers like it was a prayer. The promise I'd made to come back, the promise I intended to keep even if the universe had other plans.
One minute.
The dispatcher pulled the door open, and cold air screamed into the fuselage. Below, nothing but darkness. Somewhere down there, a Resistance cell waited with torches to mark the landing zone. Somewhere down there, a crossroads outside Saint-Véran waited for a bullet I hadn't yet fired.
Green light.
I jumped.
The world became wind and darkness and the violent snap of the chute deploying above me. For a few seconds, I was suspended between sky and earth, between the life I'd left behind and the death I was about to deliver. The silence after the aircraft's roar felt holy, almost peaceful.
Then the ground rushed up, and training took over.
I hit hard, rolling to absorb the impact, fingers already working the harness releases.
Chute gathered, bundled, shoved into a hollow beneath a hedgerow.
Rifle case retrieved, opened, weapon assembled in the dark by touch alone.
Thirty seconds from landing to ready. Not my best time, but good enough.
Torches flickered at the edge of the field. Three of them, waving in the pattern I'd memorised from the briefing. Friendlies.
I moved toward them, keeping low, rifle in hand but not raised. No point antagonising the people who were supposed to help me.
Three figures resolved from the darkness. Two men in rough farm clothes, weathered faces that gave nothing away. And behind them, stepping forward with the unmistakable bearing of British military authority, a man I recognised from the briefing photographs.
Major Edward Hartley. SOE liaison. The officer who'd planned this operation from the safety of London and flown in ahead of me to oversee the final details.
“Sergeant Hale.” His voice was clipped, public school, the kind that expected immediate obedience. “Good drop?”
“Clean enough, sir.”
“Excellent. We've got a farmhouse half a mile from here. You'll rest there until dawn, then move to the observation point.” He gestured to the two Resistance fighters. “Pierre and Jean-Claude will guide you. They know the terrain.”
I nodded to the Frenchmen. They nodded back, faces unreadable. We didn't need to be friends. We just needed to work together long enough to kill one German officer and get out alive.
The farmhouse was exactly what I'd expected: stone walls, low ceilings, the smell of animals and old smoke. A woman who might have been Pierre's wife brought bread and cheese and wine that tasted like vinegar, and I ate mechanically, fuelling the machine that would need to perform in a few hours.
Major Hartley spread a map across the rough wooden table, anchoring the corners with stones.
“The crossroads,” he said, tapping a point I'd already memorised. “Brandt's convoy is expected at fourteen hundred hours. Three vehicles: lead car with security, staff car with the target, trailing vehicle with additional escort.”
“Rules of engagement?”
“One shot if possible. We don't want a firefight that alerts every German patrol in the region.” His eyes met mine. “You'll be positioned here, on this ridge. Good sightlines, natural cover. Range approximately three hundred metres.”
Three hundred metres. Child's play for a trained sniper. Close enough that wind wouldn't be a significant factor, far enough that I'd have time to withdraw before anyone could pinpoint my position.
“Extraction?”
“Pierre and Jean-Claude will guide you to a secondary location two kilometres north. We have a Lysander scheduled for tomorrow night, assuming the weather holds.”
Assuming. The word hung in the air. Nothing was certain in operations like this. Weather could turn. Patrols could stumble across us. The target could change his route, his timing, his entire itinerary.
“And if something goes wrong?”
Hartley's expression didn't change. “Then you improvise. That's what we trained you for.”
I looked at the map, at the crossroads where a man would die tomorrow, at the ridge where I would make it happen. Art's coordinates, transformed into terrain. His intelligence, transformed into firing angles and escape routes.
“Sir.” I kept my voice level. “The consequences of this. If Brandt dies, if the Germans trace it back to us. What happens to the people who provided the intelligence?”
Hartley frowned. “That's not your concern, Sergeant.”
“With respect, sir, it is. The decrypt that gave us this location came from people I work with. If there's blowback, if the Germans figure out how we knew—”
“The intelligence chain is protected. Compartmentalised. Even if they suspect a leak, they won't be able to trace it back to source.” He studied me. “Is there a particular reason you're asking?”
Because Art's face haunted me. Because his coordinates might as well have been written in his own blood. Because if this mission somehow led the Germans back to Bletchley, back to the codebreakers, back to him...
“Just want to understand the full picture, sir.”
“The full picture is above your pay grade. Your job is to pull the trigger. Let the brass worry about the rest.”
I nodded, because that was all I could do. The brass would worry about the rest. And I would lie awake tonight, staring at a farmhouse ceiling, imagining every possible way this could go wrong.
Dawn came grey and cold, frost glittering on the fields like scattered diamonds.
I'd slept maybe two hours. Enough to take the edge off exhaustion, not enough to feel rested. Pierre brought coffee that was mostly chicory and a heel of bread that was mostly stale, and I ate and drank without tasting any of it.
The walk to the observation point took an hour, moving through hedgerows and drainage ditches, staying off roads and away from farmhouses where German patrols might have eyes.
Jean-Claude led the way, moving with the sure-footed confidence of a man who'd grown up on this land and knew every fold and hollow.
The ridge was perfect.
Natural rock formation providing cover, clear sightline to the crossroads below, multiple escape routes through the forest behind us. I settled into position, unfolding the bipod on my rifle, adjusting the scope until the road swam into crystal focus.
“We wait here,” Pierre said, crouching beside me. “When the shot is taken, we move north. Fast. No stopping.”
“Understood.”
He and Jean-Claude faded back into the treeline, close enough to guide me when the time came, far enough to avoid being caught in any return fire.
I was alone with my rifle and the empty road and the slow crawl of time.
The waiting was always the hardest part.
In combat, you didn't have time to think. Everything happened too fast, reactions outpacing conscious thought, training and instinct merging into a single continuous flow of action. But this, lying still while minutes stretched into hours, this gave your mind too much room to wander.
I thought about Danny. About the moment in the crater when I'd hesitated, just a fraction of a second, and he'd paid for my hesitation with his life.
I thought about all the faces I'd seen through scopes. German officers. Machine gunners. Other snipers who'd been hunting me while I hunted them. Each one a life ended by my finger on this trigger.
I thought about Art, sitting at his desk in Hut X, translating death into data. Wondered if he was thinking about me. Wondered if he'd slept any better than I had.
Wondered if I'd ever see him again.
The road remained empty. Birds called in the trees behind me. The sun climbed higher, burning off the morning mist, turning the frost to dew that soaked through my uniform where I pressed against the ground.
Twelve hundred hours, by my watch. Two hours to target.
I ran through the checklist again. Rifle secure. Ammunition ready. Scope clear. Wind minimal, coming from the northwest, maybe five knots. Negligible at this range.
Thirteen hundred hours.