The pigeon’s torso was flattened, its wings crumpled like origami fans. As Ollie reached into the cage to retrieve the canister, his hand brushed the bird, and he noticed that its body was still warm. The pigeon’s head was twisted. Bloodied feathers clung to the cage. He carefully removed its leg from the clasp. As he placed the canister into his pocket, he thought of Susan and regretted he hadn’t arrived sooner.

The return trip took longer, since Ollie had to make several stops to rest, prop up his leg, and ease the blood flow to his ankle. When he reached a railroad track, he feared he had gotten lost, until he noticed, in the distance, the church steeple of Madeleine’s village, Airaines. As he turned to adjust his direction, the sound of aircraft engines caught his attention. He ducked under a pine tree. The buzzing grew. Moments later, a Messerschmitt squadron swooped over the forest. Instead of gaining altitude, the fighters formed a line. Their landing gear lowered. And they disappeared beneath the trees on the opposite side of the tracks.

Choices flooded his head. He could go back to Madeleine’s. After all, he had gotten the canister he needed. His ankle, not to mention his shoulder, hurt like hell. But how could he pass up the opportunity to gather useful information? For now, the only thing he could send back to Susan—and the RAF, for that matter—was that he and Boar were hiding like rats under floorboards. Before he could change his mind, he crossed the tracks and worked his way through the pines.

Fallen needles created a soft blanket under his feet. He crept forward. In minutes, he reached the edge of an airfield. Under a canopy of branches, he lowered himself to the ground. He slithered on his belly. His heart rate quickened. Four runways had been created by the Germans, who had commandeered several farms and leveled them with bulldozers, now parked along a barbed-wire fence. Where crops once grew was now a port for a Luftwaffe armada.

Along the side of a field were dozens of Messerschmitt fighters, their black noses and sleek, shark-gray bodies giving them a ferocious appearance, even on the ground. There were over forty Heinkel bombers, each big enough to hold enough explosives to pulverize a city block. There were numerous Stukas, ugly mechanical mosquitoes with a reputation for precision dive-bombing, and several other aircraft Ollie didn’t recognize. He’d read about Germany’s growing air superiority at the Buxton Library. He’d seen their planes over Epping and the English Channel. But nothing prepared him for the ominous sight of the resting Luftwaffe, as though he had walked into a den of sleeping lions.

Near a hangar, soldiers were loading bombs and boxes of ammunition onto a truck, likely in preparation for another night of raids. Beside a runway, there were hundreds of oil drums.