Jean-Michel asked, "It isn't difficult to generate a conference call, to make it seem as if Rosenlocher, the American, and the girl are all together."

Richter shut his eyes.

"You made the kind of mistake a leader cannot afford to make," said Jean-Michel. "You told the American how to beat you, provided him with the name of the one man he could trust. And now you may be giving that enemy the chance to weaken you with an old psychological game."

Richter bent slowly at the knees. Then he shook his fists at the sky and screamed, "Get them!"

The Germans hesitated.

"We should take care of the bodies," said one man.

"That's what the Hauptmann wants you to do!" Richter screamed.

"I don't care," said the man. "It's the right thing."

Rolf was in turmoil, buffeted by grief and rage. But above all, there was duty. He turned his flashlight around and started out. "I'm going after the Americans," he said. "That's what Karin Doring and Manfred Piper would have wanted, and that's what I'm going to do."

Several others followed wordlessly, then more and more of them joined in. They moved quickly to make up for lost time and also to bum off their anger.

But as Rolf picked his way through the woods, tears rolled down his cheeks. The tears of a little boy who was still very close to the surface of the young man. The tears of someone whose dreams of a future with Feuer had just turned to ash.

CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

Thursday, 11:15 P.M.,

Toulouse, France

Colonel Brett August's primary job with NATO was to help plan maneuvers. Though his specialty was infantry assaults, he had been fortunate to work with experts in aerial and nautical attacks as well. One of the men with him, Airman Boisard, had worked on aerial extractions in Bosnia. August enjoyed working with men like him to see which maneuvers could be transplanted, mixed, and mutated to surprise the enemy.

For the bastide, however, he had decided to go with a simple, proven two-by-two assault. Two men advance while two men cover, then the two covering men move in while the forward pair covers them. Even if eight or ten or twenty men were going in, four men were always responsible for each other. It enabled the assault to remain tight, focused, and to strike with laser accuracy. If a man fell, the squad switched to a double-leapfrog assault. The rear man moves to the middle while the front man covers, then moves to the front while the rear man covers. That way, he isn't accidentally shot by his own teammate. If two men fell, the remaining two went in leapfrog. If three men fell, the last man hunkered down and tried to keep the enemy pinned down.