Prologue

He had been tired on the final leg of the drive home. He'd thought about pulling over somewhere and just resting for a few hours. Every few minutes his head would nod and he'd adjust the radio, or the windows, doing whatever he could to stay awake. He should have found a diner somewhere and had some coffee but his mind said to keep going. So he kept going.

He was surprised when the police cruiser appeared behind him. The lights came on and Hanley pulled to the side of the road. He had military plates on his car and that sometimes attracted attention from the locals. He was certain he hadn't been speeding. Maybe he'd been even more tired than he realized and he'd drifted a bit.

Hanley stepped out of his car once he'd parked it on the berm. He was immediately blinded by a powerful light and saw only shadows as several figures stepped out of the police car.

"Lieutenant Hanley?" A voice called.

Instantly Hanley was alarmed. He hesitated a moment before he said, "No."

He backed up a few steps, putting his hand on the handle of the driver's side door.

There was a muffled conversation behind the light, hidden by the noise of the still running engines. Hanley pulled his car door open and a voice shouted a warning.

"Don't move, sir."

Hanley froze, canting his head to the side, trying desperately to see around the light slowly ruining his vision. When a body crossed in front of it he spotted, not police uniforms, but slacks, jackets and fedoras. Hanley jerked the door open and dove into the car, yanking the vehicle into gear and spitting gravel as he peeled back onto the road.

Shouts of confusion and gunfire followed. Hanley hunkered down low, ignoring the angry whine and thud of bullets hitting the car. He veered onto a side road at the first opportunity, jagging left and right until he found a dead end. The lead he'd gained dwindled while he turned the car around, backtracked, then found another road. When he spotted the lights of the cruiser in the distance Hanley turned his own lights off and drove by moonlight. He turned to the left and drove on, glancing continuously into the rear view mirror. The cop car sailed past the last turn off.

Hanley felt a brief moment of relief followed by an overwhelming wave of panic. He'd lost the fake cops, but in the process had gotten lost himself. He was far enough from the city that he could see the stars and he oriented then headed east. Eventually he would reach water and could find his way home from there.

An ache began to build. It started in his right hand, then traveled to his wrist. It had gone up to his shoulder before he realized that he wasn't just sweating heavily, but bleeding. The bullet was somewhere in his right shoulder, the damage causing the muscles and joints to stiffen and swell. The more attention that he paid to the pain, the worse it got.

He was soaked with sweat, his right hand limp in his lap, his focus wavering all the more by the time he reached a dirt road that ended in a farmhouse. In the blurring distance there was a single electric light hovering over a set of barn doors. Hanley had started to shiver and he stared at the light like it was a campfire, offering shelter, warmth, food and medicine. The only beacon in this now endless night.

Hanley looked ahead again, studying the twisting asphalt road before him. He caught the flicker of approaching lights and felt a fearful turn in his belly that made his shoulder hurt all the more. He stepped out of the car.

The engine was still running, the car was still in gear. Hanley stepped out and stumbled away from the vehicle as it rolled down the road. He weaved into the woods, collapsing to the ground. He hit damp earth and his nose was overwhelmed with the smell of a nearby marsh, the loam beneath him and the fertilizer in the field. Hanley threw a hand up and clung to the broken stubs of pine branches radiating from the skinny trunk of an evergreen. He got himself to his feet and dragged his shoes through the ground cover of pine needles and moss.

When he went down again he landed on his back. The impact to his shoulder drove a pained cry from his lips and the horrible, rawness of the pain took away his breath and all coherent thoughts. He heard a whimper come out of his mouth. The pain made him want to scream, but instead he ground his teeth together so hard that they creaked, and he only realized that he was holding his breath when the faint light in his vision began to fade.

He sucked air into his lungs and felt the world and his awareness of it snapping back to him like a rubber band. He forced his diaphragm to work, yanking oxygen into his lungs, and praying desperately that the pain would fade so that he could move. He had to move. He had to escape those that had attacked him. He had to find something to stop the bleeding. He needed shelter. He needed medical care. Police. Real police.

Towards the road a set of lights approached, then stopped. Dark shadows left the car and jumped down into the ditch where Hanley's vehicle had doubtless ended up. Hanley watched and listened, fading in and out. They spent a long time with the car, opening and shutting doors, but never once turning off the engine or trying to get the car back on the road.

It didn't take them long to find the trail Hanley had left. Five men soon surrounded him, turning him onto his side while they looked at the wound. One of them ripped a hole in his shirt, then stuffed a kerchief over the wound with boney fingers that felt like knives against the tender skin. They tied his hands with rope, then tied the kerchief to the wound with the same rope. They gagged him, then threw a pillowcase over his head and he was forced upright.

It hurt, and he wasn't at all shy about letting them know. When he heard something that sounded like the farmer opening his front door, Hanley started to scream through the gag. He used the last of his fast dwindling energy to struggle out of the grasp of the men escorting him, only to rush face first into a tree. The pillow case protected him from some of the damage, but the blast of pain in his face and head was too much to ignore. He hit the ground, desperately trying to breathe through the gag and the hood.

He heard the men arguing in German before a few were dispatched to deal with the farmer. The rest of the men dragged him upright. He felt and heard the gravel under his boots, then was shoved into a car that stank of mildew and sweat. Every pain that visited him was voiced as loudly as he could manage. Every shout required a few seconds for him to recover his breath. He was forced against a window and he turned, his fast swelling hands searching for a door handle.

He had found it and hunched over it, resting his throbbing head against the cool of the glass. He waited through the growl of the engine as it turned over, the voices of the men returning to the car, the slam of the other doors. Once the car pulled away, Hanley turned the handle and curled in on himself, pushing as hard as he could with his feet.

He landed badly. The fingers of his left hand ended up underneath him and bent in ways they weren't meant to. His forehead scraped across the asphalt and his knees took the rest of his weight, skinning open wounds on the hard surface. He yanked the hood free from his head and crawled, aiming for the ditch on the side of the road.

Behind him the car had stopped, the men had exited and they were pounding down the road towards him, shouting angrily at him and at one another. Before he could reach the ditch, Hanley knew he wasn't going to get away from them. He turned onto his back and thrust the heels of his shoes into the belly of the first man to reach him. He kicked out a heel at the knee of another and turned onto his side when he saw feet aimed his way, sweeping both shoes behind the ankles of a third.

They dragged him, struggling, to his knees and one of the men sank a foot between Hanley's legs. The indignity alone would have been enough to discourage him from fighting anymore, but with it came pain, nausea and the certainty that his head would explode. He was choking on the gag, having sucked air in so fast that some of the cloth had gone with it. When they dragged him to his feet, Hanley vomited, getting it on at least two of the men as well as himself. He couldn't keep his feet under him, so when they let him loose, jumping back in disgust, Hanley went back to the ground, his hands shielding the area of his anatomy that it seemed would never stop radiating with pain.

Another car approached. The vehicle stopped and the passenger side door opened. A young man stepped out, and stood in the moonlight staring at the men gathered in the middle of the road. He stopped outside of the possible range of more vomit and stared down at Hanley with keen brown eyes, his hands in his pockets.

"You have placed the decoy?" The man asked, his voice crisp and controlled.

One of the panting fake cops answered in the affirmative in German.

"Put him in the trunk of the car. We will clean him up when we've returned. The blood…will he survive?"

A string of German followed the question. Hanley might have been able to translate with the little he understood and given the context, but he was too focused on the stench of his own vomit, soaking into the gag still in his mouth. He knew he would vomit again, but he was holding off until he was close to one of his captors.

"Lieutenant...My apologies. Captain Hanley, you are now a prisoner of the Befreiung der Gruppe Deutscher Patrioten. The Group for the Liberation of German Patriots. You will be held in a secure facility. You will be treated humanely if you cooperate. We will hold you until the United States government has agreed to release certain German patriots being held in their custody. The more that you aid us in this endeavor, the more we will do for you. Keep this in mind. Do not fight us, Captain. You are not so valuable that we need sacrifice our own to keep you alive."

The man waited for a long time, holding Hanley's gaze. All the hurts that he had suffered up to that moment had ample time to announce themselves, but Hanley did his best to keep the misery off his face. There wasn't much in the way of defiance that he could show while sagging limply on the ground, but he did his best.

After a long moment the brown-eyed man ordered the others to get Hanley to his feet. He managed to keep his stomach in check. They carried him to the trunk of the police car and shoved him inside.