being on looking and listening for any movement or noise from the wood in front of him, anything that would show him where the armed man-and Bronson was sure that the man who had smoked an incautious cigarette would be armed-was positioned. He heard no movement, but he did hear a low murmur as somebody spoke, the words indistinct. Then another voice, clearer and probably closer, replied with a single syllable: “Ja.”
That changed the odds; there were at least two of them waiting for him in the darkness of the wood ahead.
Still Bronson didn’t move, his mind racing as he considered his options. He could walk away, abandon the car, but that really wasn’t much of a choice. He needed a form of transport, but hiring a car wouldn’t work because his passport didn’t match his driving license, and if he stole a vehicle that would set the German police on his tail within hours. He needed the car, and that meant somehow getting into the clearing and incapacitating the men Marcus had positioned there.
For a moment he wondered how he’d been detected. He could only assume that before one of the clandestine meetings of the “new” SS in the house, Marcus probably ordered his men to do a quick search of the surrounding area. That would have been carried out while Bronson was asleep, and he guessed he was lucky that they’d only found the car, not him. And when they told Marcus it was on British registration plates, they’d know exactly who it belonged to.
Because he’d heard no movement, only the two brief snatches of conversation, Bronson still didn’t know exactly where the men were waiting for him, so he did the next best thing: he tried to work out where he would have positioned his men if he’d been told to set up an ambush in the clearing.
With two men, he’d probably station one in the undergrowth directly opposite the opening between the two large trees, and the second man over by the car. That way, both of them would see the intruder at about the same moment, as he stepped into the clearing and, if the intention was to eliminate him, they could cut him down in their crossfire.
And the other thing Bronson would have done was to position a car or other vehicle some distance further up the track so that, if by some miracle the target was able to incapacitate the men waiting in ambush in the clearing, the third man in the car would be able either to follow him when he drove away or, more likely, to ram him and attempt to stop him as he headed down the lane.
In fact, that was something he could check, he hoped. Bronson gripped the binoculars and took two cautious steps to his left, moving just far enough to enable him to see up the track, while keeping most of his body hidden in the undergrowth. He raised the binoculars and started looking at the land in front of him. In the dark, the instrument was less help than he had hoped, and at first he was unsure what he was looking at; everything just appeared to be different shades of gray.
Then he managed to identify the edge of the wood on the right-hand side of his field of view and slowly moved the binoculars to the left, looking for the more or less straight line of the track. Then a faint glint appeared in the eyepieces, and Bronson immediately focused his attention on that. There was a dark square shape just about visible some distance away, and what he’d seen was the faint reflection of the moonlight off one of the headlamps. He had no idea what type of vehicle it was, or how many people were inside it, but it was definitely some kind of car, and just as definitely it hadn’t been there when he’d arrived.
That was at least a confirmation, albeit an unwelcome one, that his tactical analysis had been fairly accurate. What he had to decide now was what to do about it, and as far as he could see, only one option made sense. There was no point in trying to sneak into the clearing to tackle the men hiding there while another group was sitting in the car in the lane, waiting for him to make a move.
He had to sort out the people in the vehicle first. And as he decided that, another thought struck him. Something that could actually turn the situation around in his favor. The only question was what he should do about it.
What he couldn’t do, quite obviously, was to continue walking up the track. That would just ensure that he was either captured or killed within a matter of minutes. Instead, he had to make use of the large open field that lay over to his left.
But for several minutes, Bronson just stood beside the tree and waited, because there was one other factor he’d noticed that might give him a tiny advantage. There were a few small and more or less circular clouds in the sky, all drifting slowly northeast, and a couple of them were soon going to obscure the moon.
The moment the first cloud blotted out the faint light, Bronson stepped back onto the edge of the track, keeping as close to the trees and bushes as he could without actually touching them, and began retracing his steps.
He didn’t go all the way to the end of the track, because he was very aware that the moon would reappear any moment, and he needed to get into the large field as quickly as he could. As soon as he reckoned he was out of sight of whoever was waiting in the car, he turned to his right and started jogging toward the center of the field. The ground rose toward the north, and he was reasonably certain that he was now effectively over the horizon as far as the people waiting for him were concerned.
Then he started heading east, this time much more slowly and cautiously, trying to get his bearings and, more important, hoping to spot the position of the waiting vehicle before the watchers inside it could see him.
A brief wash of pale white illumination swept across the field as the moon reappeared from behind the clouds, and Bronson immediately stopped moving. From his different perspective, looking across at the track from one side rather than along it, and from the slightly higher ground near the middle of the field, the vehicle was clearly visible.
It was a dark-colored saloon, possibly one of the BMWs he’d seen previously being driven by members of the group. It was less than a hundred yards in front of him, facing down the track, but in the poor light he had no idea if the car was empty or filled with armed men. That was something he needed to find out before he got too close to it.
The moon vanished again, this time behind the larger cloud, and the landscape was plunged into darkness once more. Bronson knew he had perhaps four or five minutes before the cloud moved away, a brief enough timescale for what he had to do.
He moved quickly down the gentle slope, angling slightly over to his left so that he would be able to approach the car from the right rear quarter. All mirrors have blind spots, and he hoped that the car’s occupant-or occupants-would be concentrating on the view in front of them, straining to see their victim as he walked up the track toward them. They probably wouldn’t be expecting him either to carry the fight directly to them or to approach them from behind.
He stopped moving the moment he could discern the bulky shape in the darkness in front of him, and eased slowly down to lie full-length on the ground. He guessed the car was only about twenty-five yards away. He still had no idea how many men were inside it, and that was vital information. He raised the binoculars to his face, adjusted the focus and stared at the car.
It was too dark to see anything clearly through the windows and obviously no lights were switched on in the interior of the vehicle. But as his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, he saw a faint movement in the front seat, on the driver’s side, but no sign of anybody sitting in the other front seat, or in the back of the car. And that, he supposed, made sense. It looked like there was just a single occupant. The ambush in the clearing was where they expected to trap him; the man with the car was just an insurance policy in case something went wrong.
And if Bronson’s plan worked, it would certainly go wrong for them.
He slowly rose into a crouch, and then backed away until he could no longer see the car, which meant that nobody in the car could see him. The field was hard-packed earth mostly covered in grass and presumably used for grazing cattle or maybe sheep. But there were a few low stumpy bushes dotted around the edge of the track, and one of those might help him.
Bronson moved about fifty yards behind the car, staying inside the field, and began tugging on the stems of the small bushes he found growing there. Most were firmly anchored by their roots, but within a couple of minutes he’d found one right at the edge of the field that wasn’t. The stem moved slightly when he pulled it.
He reached around to the belt on the right-hand side of his trousers and snapped open a small holster that contained the folding multi-tool that he never traveled without. He opened it and, working by feel, selected the knife blade and locked it into place. Then he worked the blade around the base of the bush, digging it into the ground to cut through some of the roots. It gave way suddenly, and he found himself holding the bush with a couple of pounds of earth still attached to the roots. It was just what he needed.
