Page 3 of Denied Access
The Soviets were still the notional allies of the Americans and British. Stansfield didn’t think this détente would survive the year, but for the time being, West and East were working together. It wouldn’t do for the Russians to discover that their convoy had been ambushed by American-aligned Resistance fighters. For this to work, the scientists and their minders had to die in a manner attributable to one of the few remaining pockets of German resistance.
A bridge destroyed by German explosives fit the bill.
Just as the tension gripping Stansfield’s stomach began to seep into his chest, the armored car at the front of the convoy lurched forward. Stansfield’s heart stopped as the hood swung to the right. Then his breath came back in a shuddered gasp when the car nosed back left.
“Pothole,” Andre said. “The driver must have been steering around it.”
Stansfield nodded in reply, not trusting his voice just yet.
While there was widespread division throughout the ranks of the OSS with regard to the Soviets, he was firmly in the camp that it was better to act now than to wait for the cancer growing in Eastern Europe to fully metastasize. He’d weathered several lifetimes’ worth of trauma over the last couple of years. The naïve college graduate was long gone, replaced by a hardened killer. A person who’d seen the depravities of men in unfiltered detail. He’d scouted the Buchenwald concentration camp shortly after its liberation. He understood evil at a visceral level.
Others might pretend otherwise, but the truth was that Stalin and Hitler were two sides of the same coin. The Soviets could not be allowedto develop an atomic bomb. The OSS chain of command was uncharacteristically indecisive when it came to whether they should prevent the Russians from obtaining Germany’s uranium oxide.
Stansfield was not.
“They’re on the bridge.”
Stansfield refrained from pointing out that he could see that convoy just as well as Andre. In some ways he found the boy’s observations refreshing. Stansfield had at least enjoyed a normal childhood before being thrust into war. War was all the French boy had ever known. Perhaps if someone as jaded as Andre could still feel excitement, there was still hope for the world.
Perhaps.
“Ready the signal,” Stansfield said.
He and Andre were not located with the demolition team. The charges emplaced on the bridge had to be denotated on command via an electronic switch. The only spot close enough for the demolition team to accomplish this while still remaining hidden did not offer an adequate view of the road leading to the structure. Accordingly, Stansfield had split the attacking force into observation and demolition elements. Leon, the demolition team leader, was experienced, but too headstrong for Stansfield’s liking. This operation required finesse, which usually meant his would be the hand holding the firing mechanism. Since that wasn’t possible, he’d drilled a set of simple instructions into Leon’s head—the explosives were not to be detonated until he gave the word. In this case, the word would come in the form of the electric flashlight Andre was holding.
The bridge shuddered under the convoy’s weight and for a moment Stansfield was worried the structure would give way prematurely. That would be almost as bad as if the bridge failed to collapse at all. The center of the river had both a treacherous current and the needed depth, but the first several feet featured a gently sloping riverbed that gave way to a precipitous drop-off. To obtain the desired result, the convoy had to be over the deepest part of the river when the bridge fell.
The aged timbers stopped swaying, and the convoy continued at a stately, if slow, pace. Stansfield sighed, but his relief was short-lived. Rather than follow the first two vehicles onto the bridge, the second armored scout car remained on the riverbank. Perhaps the driver was waiting for the first vehicle to make it to the far side before adding his vehicle’s weight to the rickety-looking span. Stansfield’s heart rate quickened at the implication.
He needed all three vehicles in the river.
By the same token, he couldn’t allow the lead scout car to reach the far side. His sources inside the village claimed that the uranium cache was unguarded by Nazi soldiers, but if he had assets among the townspeople, logic dictated that the Soviets probably did too. If the second scout car didn’t join the rest of the convoy, he would have to drop the bridge, ambush the remaining vehicle, and then push it into the river.
This would stretch his little band of partisans to the limit, but the mission was a no-fail operation. He would trade all of their lives if it meant keeping the uranium out of Russian hands. Stansfield was in the process of planning the ambush when the trail scout car rolled onto the bridge in a cloud of smoke.
“The driver must have stalled it,” Andre said. “Good thing you knew to wait.”
Stansfield considered coming clean with the boy, but didn’t. Casualties were all too common in this line of work and treachery and doubledealing were the norms. Life as a Resistance fighter was usually both bleak and short. Partisan fighters needed to believe that they would defy the odds, and if following a commander with a fox’s cunning helped them sleep better at night, so be it.
The lead scout car was now two-thirds of the way across the bridge. Stansfield was running out of time. The trail vehicle hadn’t yet reached the drop-off, but with a little luck, its forward momentum would carry it into the river’s depths.
“Send the signal,” Stansfield whispered.
Andre slid the flashlight’s power switch forward.
Nothing.
Cursing, Andre toggled the switch on and off.
Still nothing.
The French boy flipped the flashlight on end and was reaching for the battery cap when Stansfield snatched the torch from him. The scout car had less than ten yards to travel. No time to mess with the batteries. Stansfield struck the metal cylinder against the ground and felt the jolt travel the length of his arm. Then he aimed the flashlight and slid the power switch to the on position. The bulb glowed a warm crimson through the filter he’d fitted over the lens. Like a madman, Stansfield waved the torch in a circle, praying that his demolition team got the message.
His prayers were answered.
A series of flashes flared across the bottom of the bridge as the charges detonated. A low rumbling followed, but by then the bridge was already collapsing. With a groan, wood splintered and pylons bent. The scout cars and truck followed the debris into the swirling river. The turbulent water swallowed the convoy and its occupants, leaving no trace of the Russians.
They’d done it.
