And so he trained, and trained. Time blurred together; the days became a series of electrical impulses: on, off, on, on, on.

On and on and on.

And then, after eight months of never eating or sleeping or shitting alone, of constant orders and drills and briefings and practice runs, he awoke in the utter silence of the woods with a single code name running through his head: Magpie.

It was the kind of quiet that drove other people mad. Three days of a silence so deep it made his ears ache. He stuck to the forest when he could, where at least there was the steady crunch of leaves underfoot, the occasional birdsong threading through the September damp and chill. At night, he risked traveling the roads. He hugged the forest’s edge and dove into the underbrush the moment he heard the distant growl of diesel motors or the drone of Luftwaffe overhead. His head hurt from squinting into the distance, and he could’ve killed for a slice of lemon chiffon pie. Sometimes he’d catch himself muttering, saying his stream of thoughts out loud just to have something to say, something to hear. But he needed to keep listening to the silence. Any sound could spell his death.

Nazi Germany didn’t look how he’d expected: no bombs, no columns of goose-stepping soldiers, no dictators screaming into scratchy mikes. It looked no different from the land his folks owned north of Tulsa, their wooded enclave by the lake. But just like in Tulsa, it took only one person to decide he didn’t belong.

Phillip stopped every few miles to make sure the compartments hidden in the soles of his boots hadn’t worked loose. He’d check his compass and the tissue-paper map he was supposed to eat if he got caught. He should be coming across the farmhouse any minute now. Any minute now, and then the hard part of his mission would truly begin.

He wove his way through the final stretch of trees. The early autumn sunset cast the same grim splash across the cloudy sky as it did in Tulsa, an unsettling similarity. But nightfall would be worse. As soon as the sun went down, the Nazis would come to life like the roaches they were, Uncle Al warned: moving troops and munitions, patrolling villages, sending their planes east to bomb the Russkies, or west to make sure France wasn’t getting any bright ideas. He had to make it soon.

There—down the sloping hill. An empty field carved out of the trees, the empty husks of harvest season scattered across it. Phillip hastened his pace.