above them, rolling slowly eastward in an ever-thickening band that promised rain before morning.
Down in the valley below, dim yellow lights outlined vague shapes in the darkness — huge aluminum-sided warehouses and factory buildings, a concrete and glass administration center, and boxcars waiting empty on a railroad siding. Other lights were strung at widely spaced intervals along a wire fence enclosing the whole compound. A single wooden guardhouse blocked an access road leading to the Budapest-Vienna highway and the Austrian border.
Nothing moved. Money and energy were both too scarce in the wreckage of Europe’s economy to warrant around-the-clock manufacturing. Too scarce even for the high-tech tilt-rotor assemblies built by the French-owned Sopron plant.
Major Paul Duroc glanced at his companion. “Ready, Michel?”
“Yes.” The big man’s guttural French tagged him as an Alsatian — a man born in one of the twin provinces torn back and forth between France and Germany for centuries. He was half a head taller and massed at least ten kilos more than Duroc, extra weight and extra height that often came in handy for the physical side of their work. He slipped a pair of night-vision goggles over his eyes and quickly scanned the darkened factory compound. “Still clear.”
Duroc tapped the transmit button on the tiny walkie-talkie clipped to his web gear. Two soft clicks sounded in his earphones. The other members of his team were in place and alert. Perfect.
He flipped his goggles down, rose to his feet, and moved downhill. Michel Woerner followed close behind — cat-quiet despite his size. Neither man had any trouble avoiding the trees, thorn-crowned clumps of underbrush, and moss-covered stumps in their path. Their goggles magnified all available light, turning the nighttime world into an eerie array of sharp-edged blue-green images.
Duroc paused at the edge of the woods, carefully studying the narrow band of open ground separating them from the factory’s wire fence. There weren’t any signs that Sopron’s security personnel had set up new motion sensors, video cameras, or other detection devices to cover this part of the perimeter. The single camera assigned to monitor this stretch of fence scanned slowly back and forth in a regular, dependable pattern. Men who knew the pattern in advance, and who moved quickly enough, could avoid its unblinking gaze. He allowed himself a quick, cold grin that flitted across a narrow face quite unused to smiling. For once the mission planners had been right. The Eurocopter complex was wide open. The fence, the lights, and the rest would keep out thieves, but not professionals with access to detailed information on the factory’s security systems and routines.
He nodded once to Woerner and loped across the open ground, dropping prone next to the fence. The other man slid into place beside him a second later, already reaching for the wire cutters he carried in a pocket of his equipment vest. Duroc slipped the razor-edged jaws of his own cutters over the lowest strand of barbed wire and waited for his subordinate to do the same. Six short, powerful snips cut through three strands in rapid succession, opening a gap just wide enough for them to wriggle through. They were past the first barrier.
The two men scrambled upright and headed deeper into the darkened factory complex. Despite the continued silence, they moved cautiously, skirting pools of light and staying out of sight of the main gate guardhouse. Both men were veterans of more than a dozen “special” operations conducted in half a dozen countries around the world. And professionals never took unnecessary chances.
Duroc led the way, picking a roundabout path through the man-made maze of warehouses, assembly lines, and loading docks. The hours he’d spent studying detailed maps and photographs were repaid with every surefooted step. Ten minutes after they’d cut through the security fence, he crouched beside the waist-high rear wheels of a tractor-trailer truck — surveying the deserted parking lot and empty lawn surrounding the plant’s administration center and an adjacent staff canteen. Near the main walkway, a large, floodlit billboard proclaimed “Safety Comes First” in French, German, and Hungarian. His lips twitched upward at the irony. That might almost be his own motto.
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!”
