A low rumbling and the distant, mournful blast of a train horn drifted down the valley — the sounds of the midnight freight express lumbering toward Vienna. They were still on schedule.
Duroc tapped his radio’s transmit button again. His hands were already busy with a final equipment check when the response came. Three clicks this time. The others were ready for Phase Two. He looked at Woerner and found the big man’s expressionless, pale blue eyes staring back. There were enough lights on around the factory headquarters to make their vision gear unnecessary.
Duroc pushed his own goggles further up his forehead and lowered his hand, frowning at the sight of the black camouflage paint smeared on his fingertips. Annoyed, he wiped them off on his sleeve. It was a cool night. He shouldn’t be sweating.
He drew in a quick breath, held it briefly, and then breathed out. “Now.”
They scuttled out from behind the truck and sped across the grass, angling away from the lighted walkway and toward concealing shadows at the base of the administration building. Duroc felt his heart speeding up, racing in time with his feet. Every noise they made seemed a hundred times too loud. Each footfall on the soft, dew-soaked grass sounded like an elephant crashing through dead brush. And every hushed, panting breath echoed dangerously through the quiet night air.
They merged with the shadows and stood still, waiting uneasily for the shout or clanging alarm klaxon that would tell them they’d been spotted. None came. Just the fading thunder of the freight train vanishing in the distance.
Duroc’s pulse slowed and he swallowed hard to clear the sour taste in his mouth. The Frenchman shook his head, coldly irritated by the lingering remnants of his own fear. Maybe he was getting too old for this sort of caper. He’d seen it happen to others in the secret services. Every field operative had only a limited reservoir of courage. When it was used up, you were finished, fit only for a sterile, useless desk job.
He snorted in self-contempt as Woerner touched his arm. Precious seconds were slipping away while he wasted time in absurd self-analysis. Action would burn through the fear. It always did.
Bent low to stay below eye level of anybody inside looking out onto the grounds, they edged around the corner of the building. Duroc counted windows silently. Three. Four. There. He stopped. The architects who’d designed the Sopron plant’s ultramodern headquarters had been thinking of esthetics, not security. Waist-to-ceiling picture windows made every outside room and hallway seem larger and lighter on sunny days. But they also left them exposed and unguarded.
According to the blueprints he’d memorized, the window in front of him opened directly onto a corridor leading straight to their objective, the factory’s computer center. It was almost a perfect entry point. He glanced toward the nearby staff canteen — far too near for his taste. Still…
He shrugged. Second-guessing a good plan was usually a certain road to disaster. Speed and convenience should outweigh any risk.
Woerner was already hard at work, his thick fingers flashing nimbly through long-practiced tasks. The big man pulled a piece of metal shaped as a flattened U out of his vest and smeared a fast-acting adhesive across both ends. Then he clamped the metal bar onto the window and held it in place for several seconds, waiting for the glue to take hold. Satisfied, he let go and stepped back, leaving room for his superior to take over.
Duroc moved forward with a diamond-edged glass cutter in his right hand. They had their door handle. Now to make the door. He dragged the glass cutter through the window in four steady strokes, two vertical and two horizontal, grunting softly at the effort it took.
When he was done, Woerner grabbed the metal handle with both hands and tugged straight outward, levering a solid piece of glass right out of the window. While the giant Alsatian carefully set his burden down on the grass, Duroc unrolled a thick sheet of black matting across their new-cut opening. The steel strands woven through both the matting and his gloves would protect his hands and legs while he climbed through the gap.
Without waiting for further orders, Woerner knelt down and put his own hands together to form a makeshift stirrup. Duroc stepped up into the other man’s locked hands, reaching for the edges of the cut glass as his subordinate boosted him toward the hole. He threw one leg over the protective matting, leaning inward…
An outside door banged open.
Duroc almost lost his balance as he jerked his head around toward the entrance to the factory’s cafeteria. A blue-uniformed security guard carrying a steaming cup of coffee stood there staring back at him. Shock and surprise combined to stretch time itself, turning a single second into an endless, frozen pause.
Sudden motion shattered the illusion as the security guard tossed his coffee cup away and fumbled for the pistol holstered at his side. “Halt!”
Duroc swore inwardly, unable to reach for his own weapons while he teetered practically spread-eagle against the window. For all his size and strength Michel Woerner was even more helpless. Neither could move without disastrously unbalancing the other.
With his pistol out and steadied in a two-hand grip, the guard edged closer, visibly more confident as his eyes sorted out the spectacle in front of him. Duroc forced himself to look beyond the muzzle aimed at his stomach. The other man was young, and young-looking despite the thick mustache curling above his upper lip. An ex-conscript perhaps, fresh from his military service and still eager for action. That was unfortunate. An older man might have been more reasonable or more worried about his own survival. But younger men prized glory above all else.
“Do not move or I will shoot.”
Duroc’s mouth twisted at the clumsy, phrase-book Hungarian. Nevertheless, he obeyed and stood motionless, still perched in Woerner’s cupped hands, silently willing the guard to keep walking. A little further, he thought. Just a little further.
The young man stepped away from the open cafeteria door, moving out onto the lawn to give himself a clearer field of fire. He lowered one hand from his pistol toward the radio clipped to his belt. Duroc felt his jaw muscles clench. An alert now would ruin everything.
Crack.
The security guard’s chest exploded in a red rain of blood and broken bone — torn open by a 7.62mm bullet that hit him squarely in the back and threw him forward onto the grass. He shuddered once and then lay still.
Duroc scrambled down from the window and knelt beside the body, feeling for a pulse. Nothing. He glanced toward the wooded hills three hundred meters away and punched the transmit key on his own radio. “Confirmed.”
Two answering clicks sounded in his earphones as the sniper he’d placed there on overwatch acknowledged the kill.
He pulled the pistol out of the dead man’s hand and rose to his feet. “Who was he?”
“Monnet, Jacques.” Woerner read the guard’s bloodied name tag aloud.
Duroc recognized the name and shook his head slowly and sadly from side to side. Monnet had been the sentry stationed at the main door. He ought to have been safely on duty and out of the way. But he evidently couldn’t wait for his shift change to get his coffee. So now the young fool was dead. A pity. His death would complicate matters.