“There,” Cormack said. “Just to the left of the lighthouse.” The other men strained to see a dim rectangular outline partially obscured by the snow-covered trees. “That’s the northern entrance.” For a moment, he thought he could see the flicker of light around twenty yards to the west of the entryway.

“Not the way we want to go in,” Cicero commented.

“No,” Cormack agreed. “There’s another entrance on the east side of the hill.”

“Won’t they be watching there as well?” Buddy asked.

“Maybe,” Cormack said. “But it’s less likely. The fort was separated into two sections. Two different artillery groups operated independently. The two sides are connected, but if we’re lucky Soh and his men are only using the northern section.”

“What if we’re not lucky?” Buddy asked. No one answered.

Skip Olney steered the boat out past Lovells Island so that if anyone was watching them from Fort Strong, they would assume they were headed out to sea. Then he swung the bow around and to the south, around Lovells and Georges Island, then headed back to the west so that the boat could approach Long Island from the southeast, protected from sight by the northern hill.

Olney cut the engines and the Citacea idled in toward the shallow inlet formed by the low, narrow run of beach and field that separated Fort Strong from the rest of the island. He kept a sharp eye on the depth finder. The boat was his life, and notwithstanding the debt he would always owe Cormack, he wasn’t eager to risk running aground. Besides, they needed the boat to remain seaworthy—it was their only way off the island in the unlikely event that they were able to get in and get out without getting themselves killed.

“That’s as far as she’ll go,” Olney said, shifting into neutral and working the controls to maintain the boat’s position. Cormack nodded, and he, Cicero, and Buddy left the bridge and headed out to the stern.

The ten-foot inflatable was loaded with three tactical vests, rope, and the weapons they had gathered for the assault. Cormack wished they’d had more time so that he could have found more weapons, but there was no option to wait. As a result, they were going in with two guns and multiple clips each. In addition, Cormack had been able to scrounge up three flash-bangs that had been left at the union office after the last raid police had been carried out on a tip from Cormack. They wouldn’t kill anyone, but they could stun people, particularly in close quarters, and Cormack thought they might prove useful.