Final impact

The second squadron, under Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton, was already setting down in their Landing Zone away to the west. The first choppers had disgorged their troops, who’d formed up just below a ridgeline overlooking Complex B.

Harry switched his view to a live feed of his squadron’s own LZ, overlaid with tactical and threat assessment data. They would be setting down another six hundred meters away, in a large field to the south.

The copilot’s voice cut in. “Strobe sighted. Verifying.”

An infrared strobe had just lit up, identifying the LZ, and Harry knew that the Big Eye had just focused at least half of its lenses and sensors on that area. All being well, one of Claudel’s Resistance cells would be down there, ready to lead them in. If that didn’t check out, and the Intel Division back on the Trident decided that the contact had been compromised, the area would be hosed down with autocannon and rocket fire, and they would move on to an alternative LZ.

He could sense Claudel’s tension next to him. “It is okay?” she asked.

Harry waited for the signal from the Trident.

The strobe kept flashing.

“It is okay?” she repeated. “Oui?”

A green ALL CLEAR finally appeared in his HUD.

“Oui,” he answered. “Lock and load, gentlemen. And mademoiselle, of course.”

Claudel smiled brilliantly as she prepped her old Sten gun with a metallic kerrchunk. Her white teeth and bright green eyes were quite arresting, even in the red light of the cabin. Harry checked himself, grinding down on a spark of attraction. He normally didn’t feel like getting a leg over until well after an op. But this had been happening a lot since his inserts had run out of neurochem inhibitor.

Oh well, perhaps if he lived…

“One minute.”

Suddenly they dipped and swooped to the right, leaving his stomach where it had been somewhere above them. The combat chief hit a switch, and the rear door of the Chinook opened with a slow, heavy whirring noise.

Dozens of people back in England were watching the ground below, alert for the slightest hint of a trap, but even so Harry was glad to see the chief giving it a severe eyeballing himself. That sort of attention to detail was how you got to be an old veteran rather than one of the poor fucking glorious dead.

A sick shudder ran through his body, a momentary aberration he recognized from the three or four times he’d experienced it before. It felt like a premonition of his death, but he suspected it was just a deep-body realization of his mortality.

After all, he was still alive, despite the previous visitations.

He noticed Claudel making the sign of the cross and whispering what looked like a Hail Mary. Of his own men, he could see four who were making their own peace with God, but like the remainder of his troop-and Captain Ronsard-Harry drove away his demons with a last equipment check.

“Thirty seconds,” the crew chief called out.

The pilot wiped out almost all of their forward momentum, dropping them into a hover over the thick grass of the field. Harry could see cows gallumphing away in fear. A good sign. The chopper assumed its landing attitude, with the nose elevated so that the rear wheels would touch down first.

The chief and his two offsiders stood at the rear door, scanning the ground closely.

“Clear left!”

“Clear right!”

“Clear in the arse, guv!”

They began the last few meters of their descent. Nobody was praying now. Everyone had their warrior’s mask firmly in place beneath the greasepaint and night vision goggles. Harry hooked an arm through his pack, getting ready to go. In his headphones, the copilot counted them in to touchdown.

“…four, three, two, one, down.”

The front wheels struck ground. The chopper jumped forward a meter or two, then came to rest.

As soon as he felt the soft bump, Harry was up. They all rose as one, some more gracefully than others, who were caught off-balance and wobbled slightly as they hauled up their packs. Everyone dropped into an old-fashioned runner’s stance: legs bent, knees flexing, ready for the starter’s pistol. The chief pulled on a lever, dropping the tailgate onto the ground.

“Go, go, go.”

The members of the heavy-weapon team ran out first, dropping to the ground, ready to start laying fire on the enemy if he had somehow gone undetected. Two by two, the remainder of the troop charged out behind them.

“Good luck, Your Highness,” Anjela Claudel said.

“Vive la France,” Harry replied.

They moved out into the night.

6

D-DAY + 8. 11 MAY 1944. 0341 HOURS.

DONZENAC MISSILE FACILITY, SOUTH-CENTRAL FRANCE.

No plan survives contact with the enemy. Harry was going to have that tattooed on his arse if he survived this right fucking teddy bear’s picnic.