Chapter 11 The Shot #2
My bladder ached, but I didn't move. Couldn't risk changing position now, couldn't risk being seen if advance scouts came through before the convoy.
Thirteen thirty.
Sweat trickled down my spine despite the cold. Familiar sensation. The body's response to anticipated violence, flooding the system with adrenaline in preparation for fight or flight.
I breathed. Slow and steady. Let the tension flow out with each exhale.
Thirteen forty-five.
Engine noise, distant but growing. Coming from the east, just as the intelligence predicted.
My finger moved to the trigger guard. Not touching the trigger itself, not yet, but close enough that the motion would be instantaneous when the moment came.
The first vehicle appeared around the bend.
Military car, open-topped, two soldiers in the front and two in the back with rifles. Security detail. They scanned the road ahead, the treeline, the ridge where I lay hidden. Their eyes passed over my position without stopping.
Good cover. Good concealment. Art's coordinates putting me exactly where I needed to be.
Second vehicle.
Staff car, enclosed, Nazi pennant fluttering from the aerial. Through my scope, I could see the driver's face, young and bored, and beside him a shape that might have been the target.
I tracked the car as it moved along the road, keeping the crosshairs centred on the rear passenger window. Waiting for the angle that would give me a clean shot.
The convoy slowed as it approached the crossroads. Standard protocol: check for obstacles, confirm the route, proceed with caution.
The staff car stopped.
Rear door opened.
And there he was. Oberst Wilhelm Brandt, stepping out to stretch his legs or check his map or do whatever officers did when they thought they were safe from the war.
He was older than the photograph had suggested.
Grey at the temples, lines around his eyes, the slightly soft build of a man who'd spent more time at desks than in trenches.
He said something to his driver, laughed at the response, turned to survey the countryside with the casual confidence of a conqueror.
My crosshairs settled on his chest. Centre mass. Biggest target, highest probability of kill.
Breathe in. Hold. Feel the heartbeat slow, the world narrow to a single point of focus.
He wasn't a monster. Wasn't some cartoon villain twirling a moustache. He was a man doing his job, same as me. Had family somewhere, probably. People who'd mourn him when he didn't come home.
But his job was helping the Germans win. His job was coordinating signals that sent U-boats after convoys, that guided bombers to British cities, that kept the war grinding on while people like Danny died in the mud.
His job made him a target.
And my job was to pull the trigger.
Breathe out.
Squeeze.
The rifle kicked against my shoulder, familiar as a handshake. Through the scope, I watched Brandt stagger, hand going to his chest, confusion on his face in the fraction of a second before he crumpled.
Shouts from the security detail. Soldiers scrambling for cover, rifles coming up, searching for a threat they couldn't see.
I was already moving.
Rifle slung across my back, body low, sprinting through the trees toward the extraction point. Behind me, more shots rang out, wild and undirected, soldiers firing at shadows because they needed to do something and didn't know what.
Pierre appeared beside me, then Jean-Claude, both moving with the desperate speed of men who knew what capture meant.
We ran.
Through the forest, over a stream that soaked my boots, up a hillside that burned my lungs. German voices behind us, getting fainter, search parties spreading out in the wrong direction.
Art's intelligence had been perfect. The position, the timing, the escape routes. Everything exactly where it needed to be.
An hour later, we reached the secondary location: another farmhouse, another cellar, another waiting game.
Pierre handed me a flask. Water this time, clean and cold. I drank half of it in one go, hands shaking with the aftermath of adrenaline.
“Good shot,” Jean-Claude said. First words he'd spoken to me directly. “Clean. Professional.”
“That's the job.”
“You've done this before.”
It wasn't a question. He could see it in me, the same way I could see the war in him. We were both men who'd killed for causes we hoped were worth the cost.
“Too many times,” I said.
He nodded, understanding without needing explanation. “It does not get easier.”
“No. It doesn't.”
We sat in the cellar, listening to distant patrols, waiting for darkness and the aircraft that would take me home.
I thought about Brandt. About the look on his face in that final moment, surprise more than pain, the incomprehension of a man who hadn't expected to die on a Tuesday afternoon in the French countryside.
I'd given him that death. Me and my rifle and Art's coordinates.
Another ghost to carry. Another face to see when I closed my eyes.
But also, maybe, a step closer to ending this war. One less officer coordinating German signals. One more crack in the machinery that kept the killing going.
I had to believe it mattered. Had to believe the weight was worth carrying.
Otherwise, what was any of it for?
The Lysander came at midnight, a shadow dropping out of darker sky.
I ran to meet it, climbed aboard, felt the aircraft lift and bank and carry me north toward England. Toward safety. Toward Art.
The pilot didn't speak. I didn't want him to. Just sat in the cramped fuselage and watched France fall away beneath us, and thought about the man I'd killed and the man I was going home to.
Brandt was dead. The mission was complete. Command would be pleased.
And I would carry this, like I carried all the others, until the weight finally broke me or the war finally ended.
Whichever came first.
Dawn was breaking when we landed on English soil. Grey light, familiar cold, the smell of wet grass and aviation fuel.
Major Hartley was waiting on the tarmac. He shook my hand, said something about a job well done, mentioned debriefing and reports and all the administrative machinery that turned killing into paperwork.
I nodded in the right places. Said the right things. Performed the role of competent soldier completing a successful mission.
But my mind was already elsewhere.
Already calculating the distance to the estate. Already imagining Art's face when I walked through the door. Already feeling the weight of the rifle case in my hand and wondering if he'd look at me differently now that I'd used his intelligence to take a life.
Probably not. He understood. Better than most, he understood what we were.
Weapons. Both of us. Different kinds, different methods, same war.