Chapter Fifteen #3
The plan remained simple enough that I could hold it in my head without a screen.
ARC would enter from the west side through loading bay two after Hawk had the rear covered.
Viper would take point with Wolf behind him.
Bear would open whatever kept them out and then shift to casualty support as soon as the entry was secure.
Jackal and German officers would own the escape routes.
Raven would keep everyone connected from the mobile command vehicle while I stayed with him until medical could move.
The objective was even simpler.
Get the women out.
Kade came after that if the opportunity existed.
By early afternoon, the operations room had settled into the quiet that came once everyone knew the plan. Nobody needed Wolf to walk them through it again.
Equipment cases were open across the table, radios moved through final checks, and Bear went through the medical bags a second time before adding warming blankets after another look at the old refrigerated rooms on the building plans.
Keller spent most of the hour on the phone coordinating ambulances and a small group of female officers who would hold far enough from the property to keep the response invisible until ARC was already inside.
I stayed beside Raven with the missing-person files spread between us, matching names against languages, photographs and the fragments of information families had given police.
Some of the files were years old. Others had been opened within the last few months.
By then, the possibility that women from Haus Eberhardt had passed through the same site had stopped feeling like a theory.
Across the room, Wolf finished gearing up. The buckle of his tactical belt closed with the familiar metallic click, followed by the softer sound of equipment settling against his hips as he checked each attachment by touch.
A while later, Keller’s surveillance team sent another image.
Kade stood outside loading bay three speaking to a man beside a black BMW.
The photograph caught him more clearly than the morning frame.
His hair had come loose around his face, and one hand rested inside his jacket pocket while the other held a phone.
He looked toward the building while the man beside him talked. Then he turned toward the road.
For half a second, even through the grain of the long lens, I had the irrational feeling that he was looking directly at us.
Raven checked the timestamp. “Current.”
Wolf came to the screen.
“Vehicle?”
“BMW arrived with him. Driver stayed.”
“Airfield nearby?”
Raven opened the map. “Small private field east of the site, but nothing filed under this vehicle or the lease company.”
Wolf looked toward Keller. “Any aviation activity?”
Keller was already making the call. I stared at Kade’s image.
A black BMW and three vans sat around a building we had reason to believe held women, with a private airfield close enough to matter. We still could not say exactly what Cerberus planned to do that night but we had enough pieces to make waiting until morning difficult to justify.
Keller ended the call. “No scheduled helicopter traffic. Field operator says one private arrival requested a fuel window after 1700 without filing onward details. Registration came through a charter broker.”
Wolf’s head turned toward him.
“Type?”
“Light twin-engine helicopter. They don’t have a tail number yet.”
Raven started pulling the broker before Keller finished speaking.
A helicopter. Kade had an exit.
Wolf checked the clock.
“We move the entry up.”
Nobody objected.
Keller called his prosecutor again while Bear changed the timing on the medical convoy.
Hawk stayed on the embankment and shifted his hide before daylight began to drop.
Viper moved closer to the west approach with one German vehicle and Jackal took the southern road with another officer and complained exactly once when Bear reminded him over comms that stitches were not an opinion.
Raven closed his laptop and moved for the garage.
I picked up the two photographs Keller had given me and slid them into the clear sleeve on my field clipboard. The women smiling in the pictures had no idea what was coming. We still didn’t know if any of them were inside the building ahead of us.
I hoped this was where we found them.
I hated what that meant. Finding them there would mean they had survived long enough for us to reach them. It would also mean the cold rooms were exactly what we thought they were. Keller held the garage door while I followed Raven toward the command vehicle.
Raven opened the van and the screens inside came alive one by one, replacing everything personal with maps, thermals, camera feeds and the live position of the building outside Offenburg.
On the center monitor, Kade crossed the rear lot and disappeared through a steel door.
Wolf’s voice came through my headset from the vehicle ahead.
“Five minutes.”
I looked at the two photographs clipped beside Raven’s screen, then at the door Kade had just vanished behind.
This time, there was no empty address waiting for us.