Chapter Eight
MIA
One of Morgenstern’s guards had spent almost forty minutes walking the same route between the structures with a rifle slung beneath his coat, while a dark van remained parked beside the outbuilding with its rear doors facing away from the road.
The main screen showed all of it at once while Raven and I rebuilt the target picture from the records we had found earlier.
The twelve-bed license still claimed six residents.
Utility use still said otherwise. A commercial laundry truck had visited that morning, and a Südweg van had arrived shortly after three in the afternoon before leaving less than twenty minutes later.
Hawk had counted two visible guards and one man who kept appearing in an upstairs window without ever stepping outside.
German authorities had approved an emergency entry once the missing-person links and forged documents were put together, but the local units supporting us would hold farther back until Wolf called them forward.
Too many uniforms on the surrounding roads would warn the people inside before ARC reached the property.
Raven enlarged the rear building. “No public floor plan on this one. Property records call it storage, but the power draw says somebody uses it every day.”
“Heat?”
“Not from where Hawk can sit without getting spotted.”
I pulled the old sale listing closer and compared the roofline to the current satellite image.
“There used to be a loading door on the east side. It’s gone now.”
“Walled over?”
“Looks like it. The smaller pedestrian door is still there.”
Bear leaned over the table from my left and studied the photograph. He had showered after training, but a faint line of dirt remained near one thumbnail as though the compound had finally managed to defeat even him.
“That frame is newer than the wall,” he said. “If they reinforced it, I’ll know when I get there. If they didn’t, we don’t need anything loud.”
Wolf stood at the head of the table and looked toward Hawk. “West ridge still clean?”
“Clean enough for the farmhouse and yard. I lose the east side of the rear structure for about twelve meters.”
“Jackal takes that side.”
Jackal nodded from the opposite end of the table.
Wolf pointed to the farmhouse service entrance. “Bear gets us through here. Viper runs point inside. I’m behind him. Jackal controls the yard and anyone who leaves the rear structure. Hawk owns the west and north sight lines. Raven keeps the feeds and comms together.”
Then his attention moved to me. “You stay with Raven until I call the site secure.”
I expected my own irritation to answer before I did. Instead I looked at the target photographs and thought about the locked rooms we already suspected were inside.
“Understood.”
Wolf watched me for a second longer than necessary before asking, “Understood?”
I lifted my eyebrows. “Would you prefer an argument?”
“No.”
“Then don’t ruin it.”
Jackal’s mouth twitched at the exchange, but he kept whatever comment had formed to himself and turned to his gear.
Bear set a compact plate carrier on the chair beside me. “You’re wearing this in the vehicle.”
I looked at it. “I’m not going through the door.”
“Bullets don’t check job descriptions.”
“Do you rehearse these?”
“Only the inspirational ones.”
He adjusted one strap so it would sit clear of my shoulder and told me to leave the right side looser than usual. The joint had improved, but lifting the arm still pulled unpleasantly if I went too high, and Bear had already warned me that being stubborn about body armor would earn me a sling.
Raven started packing his field kit while I copied the final names and vehicle plates into the mission file. The compound had become quieter than usual, the easy conversations dropping away as each person moved through the small rituals that came before leaving.
Hawk checked the long case for his rifle. Viper loaded magazines at the equipment table. Jackal secured the MP7 against his chest and tightened his gloves without speaking. Bear moved through the breaching kit once, put half of it back and took only what he expected to use.
Wolf finished preparing after the rest of them, and the full gear changed him in the same way it had during training, except the property on the screen made this version feel less imaginary.
His head was covered and the field mask hid everything but his eyes.
The suppressed HK416 sat against the black plate carrier with an optic and compact laser module mounted along the handguard, while the Glock rode at his hip.
He seated a fresh magazine, checked the chamber once and then asked each specialist for status instead of reaching over anyone else’s work.
The retention webbing was still attached to his belt, tucked toward the rear where he had moved it that morning. His eyes met mine from across the operations floor before I managed to look elsewhere.
He turned toward the garage and said a simple word: “Move.”
Whatever scraps of compound banter had survived the target build disappeared with the order.
◆
At 2:41 in the morning, Raven and I were parked behind a stand of trees almost a kilometer from Haus Eberhardt.
The first real pull of sleep had started weighing on my eyes, and my tired brain still insisted on converting everything back to miles.
A little over half a mile. I had been in Germany long enough that I probably should have stopped doing that, but apparently the metric system was going to take longer than jet lag.
Then the property went dark.
A few upstairs windows still glowed behind drawn curtains, and low security lights remained around the rear yard, but the decorative lamps lining the drive shut off one after another until most of the estate disappeared into the surrounding night.
Raven watched the change on two feeds while I sat beside him with the old floor plan across my lap and Bear’s plate carrier snug around my torso.
“Was that scheduled?” I asked.
“Looks like it. Same time the last four nights.”
Hawk’s voice came through the headset, so calm that he could have been reading weather conditions instead of watching armed men through a scope.
“North guard moving toward the shed. Second guard is at the rear steps. Upstairs male still in the west window.”
Wolf answered from somewhere in the dark beyond us. “Hold.”
Raven’s fingers moved over the tablet. The team icons were simple enough that I could follow them without needing a tactical education.
Wolf, Viper and Bear were approaching from the south through a low section of wall.
Jackal had already moved east toward the rear structure. Hawk remained west on higher ground.
I had asked Raven earlier whether he ever got used to sitting in the vehicle while everyone else went toward the danger. He had looked at me like the question was more complicated than I meant it to be.
“No,” he said eventually. “You get better at being useful from here. I guess that’s not the same thing.”
I understood the difference now because the headset gave me every footstep I could not see, every quiet breath when someone transmitted, the occasional soft scrape of equipment against stone.
Raven had a camera from the southern gate and one poor angle on the rear yard, but most of the operation existed as voices and icons until the team reached the property.
Jackal spoke first. “East set.”
Viper followed. “South wall.”
Bear’s voice came lower. “Service door has a steel strike plate. Frame’s older than the plate. I can take the hinge side quietly.”
Wolf answered, “Copy. Do it.”
I pictured Bear rejecting half a room of breaching equipment earlier and choosing one tool because the door in front of him had told him what it needed. A faint metal complaint came through the comms, followed by several seconds of silence.
“Open,” Bear said breathlessly.
Wolf’s next word was for Viper. “Go.”
The movement inside accelerated the moment Viper crossed the service room into the kitchen, his updates short enough that I could follow the geography from the plan in my lap. Wolf stayed behind him. Bear controlled the door and rear angle while Jackal watched the yard from outside.
“Kitchen clear. Hall.”
A man’s voice shouted somewhere inside the farmhouse.
Viper said, “Gun.”
Two suppressed shots reached the microphone as flat, hard cracks. My shoulders locked at the sound, but Raven did not look away from his screen.
“One down,” Viper said. “Moving.”
There was no pause afterward because the rest of the farmhouse was still unsecured.
No celebration in his voice and no explanation of what the man had done beyond the single word.
I knew enough from training to understand what it meant though.
Viper had seen the weapon and made the decision before the rest of us had time to turn it into a plan.
There was a reason Wolf trusted him to go ahead of him. He was fucking good at this.
Hawk spoke over the channel. “Rear guard heard it. Moving toward the house.”
Jackal answered, “I have him.”
The rear camera caught only part of what happened. A guard appeared at the edge of the frame, reached beneath his jacket and vanished behind the side of the farmhouse. Jackal never followed him into view. Three seconds later came a muffled impact and Jackal’s voice.
“Rear secure. One detained.”
Raven glanced at me. “He cut the corner instead of chasing.”
“How do you know?”
“Because the guard went north and Jackal was east.”
The answer sounded almost absurd until I remembered watching Jackal catch the role-player during training by running where the man was going instead of where he had been.
Inside, Viper reached the central stairs and stopped.
“Closed door top landing. Movement behind it.”
Wolf said, “Bear.”
A few seconds passed while Bear moved up.
“Door opens inward,” he said. “Narrow landing.”
Wolf’s response was immediate. “Flash.”