The Darkest Hour(51)

After the truck vanishes over the hill, Sabine uses a compass and map—given to us by Christiane—to chart the coordinates that Dorner gave me. With a tilt of her hand in the correct direction, we form a line and follow after her, saying nothing as the forest grows thick around us and the gnats start buzzing about our heads. We’ve walked more than a mile when Tilly points toward a gravel path that she spots at the bottom of the rise we’re standing on. Sabine and I nod at her in silence. If there’s a path, then there must be something ahead of us.

We trek a bit farther until Sabine raises one fist above her head, her signal for us to stop. She crouches and crawls to the very top of the next hill, where she checks her map again and motions for us to join her.

“It’s straight ahead of us,” she whispers.

I peer over the edge. True enough, it’s there. Just like Dorner said. The hill bottoms out into a flat slice of land, completely emptied of trees and completely encircled by a barbed-wire fence. A lone brick building lies at the very center of the land. It reminds me of the old post office back home, a blink-and-you-miss-it sort of place. But this is no post office, and I know better than to skip over it. Dorner told me that building will be our access point to the laboratory underground.

“It doesn’t look like much, does it?” Tilly says under her breath. “Look at all of those guards, though.”

She’s right. There are soldiers on guard all along the fence, more than a dozen by the looks of it, but we figured as much as we discussed our options on the long drive out here.

“We’ll stick to the plan,” I tell them. “We get in. We set the Aunt Jemima. We run.” Except it won’t be that easy—I see that now, as I squint at the compound again. On the building’s roof, I spot a widow’s walk—a sniper’s nest, probably. We won’t have any trees or outlying buildings to shelter us from the gunfire, which leaves us with two options: shooting the sniper dead or sending in a bomb to destroy him. At this distance, however, both choices are long shots. “We need to figure out how to get over the fence and take out that sniper.”

Sabine scrutinizes the roofline with me. “We’re too far. Not even the best shooter within the Resistance could make such a shot. How about using a bomb?”

I quickly nix the idea. “We could destroy the whole building, and the laboratory would remain intact underground. We need to obliterate the whole thing from the inside to kill any traces of that virus.” I wait for one of them to contradict me, but they say nothing. “Are we agreed, then? We have to get down to the laboratory and set up the bomb there. We need to make sure Elias Reinhard goes down with it.”

Both of them nod at me, so we’re united on that front. All that remains now is figuring out how to get rid of the sniper before he takes us out with three clean shots. The trouble is that we’ll never get close enough to the building while he’s alive. Unless …

“We need a distraction,” I whisper. “How much Aunt Jemima powder can you spare, Tilly?”

“Not much. Why?”

“What if we bomb a corner of the fence? That should draw enough attention away from us so that we could make it to the building.”

“That could work, but the Nazis could cut off access to the laboratory,” Tilly says.

“Then we’ll have to be quick about it,” I reply.

“No one can be that quick,” Sabine says while she takes another hard look at the compound perimeter. I’m about to ask her if she has any suggestions, but then she points far to our right. “I may have another idea. At three o’clock, just outside of the fence.”

Tilly lets out a low whistle. “Why, won’t you look at that?”

It’s a patrol. I can’t tell what he looks like at this distance, but he does appear to be alone.

“I see just the one. Shouldn’t there be more?” I ask. Then I notice something I hadn’t before.

“He’s … relieving himself,” Tilly says. “Guess he wanted some privacy.”

“Precisely,” Sabine says. “The other soldiers can’t see him from where he’s standing. Stay here.” Then, without explanation, she takes a pistol out from her valise—one that’s equipped with a silencer—followed by a long knife. She sprints away from us without another word, racing through the forest on silent feet, leaving us to gape at her. I start to rise myself, but Tilly stops me.

“Let her go,” she whispers. “She must have a plan.”

I wonder, however, if Sabine has gone insane. Tilly and I watch nervously while Sabine slinks toward the soldier in question, who’s zipping up his pants and stooping down to tie his shoe. Sabine darts behind a particularly thick tree, and there’s a flash of metal in her hand. The knife.

Just then, the soldier stands straight. Something must’ve caught his attention, and I have to bite my lip to keep from shouting a warning to Sabine. He reaches for his gun and cranes his neck toward the forest—toward Sabine. But she doesn’t need any help from Tilly or me. Whirling around from the tree, she takes aim and throws the knife, sending it whipping through the air and straight into the soldier’s skull. He doesn’t make a sound, simply crumples like a toppled domino.

I breathe in sharply. That was a perfect shot. Not just good or accurate but perfect. A spark of hope ignites inside me that we might survive this day after all.