In the alley behind the service station, the legionnaires huddle by a low wooden fence enclosing the tiny garden of the house adjacent to the gas station. From somewhere inside the house Marcel can faintly hear the sound of music playing, a radio or a phonograph perhaps. A little light can be seen peeking around the curtain on the window in the back door, but otherwise the alley is in deep shadow.
“Joder Cristo,” Sánchez whispers profanely. He cranes his neck slightly, carefully, attempting to peer around the corner of the fence at the yard of the Esso station. “I can’t see a putain thing. Everyone stay still.” The Spaniard immediately ignores his own direction and shifts his weight, first toward Ortu and then back to Marcel – a knee pops like a champagne cork as Le Vieux changes position, and he utters a small, frustrated grunt. “Silvio, Karel, watch the far end of the alley,” he says, his voice barely audible even above the faint sound of the music from across the garden.
Leaning back, he places his lips close to Marcel’s ear. “If shooting starts,” Sánchez says softly, carefully, “keep an eye on this house, okay? I don’t want some citizen to do something stupid like shoot at us by mistake. Understand?”
For Pyotr and Normand, the street at the front of the garage seems almost bright by contrast with the Stygian darkness in the alley. Starlight mixed with a faint glow from the streetlights along the main street a couple of blocks away provides a shadowy light that is dimly reflected in the glass panes of the large garage doors. The diffuse light isn’t strong enough to penetrate the deep shadows under the porte-cochere, however, where two gas pumps stand on a low island at the edge of the darkness. Through the windows of the garage doors themselves is an impenetrable inky blackness.
“Listen,” Sgt. Katsourianis whispers hoarsely, quickly, to the men kneeling on the dirt sidewalk at the front of the house, “we have to move fast, short runs. Stay low, watch the windows and doors. David, you and Burhan first. Near corner, then move to the far corner. Go.”
Nedjar and Pamuk run in a crouch to the corner of the building where a large tree stands. Both peer in the windows briefly, then quickly move along the front of the service station – Nedjar stops and crouches down in the shadows beneath the porte-cochere, disappearing into the dakness, while Pamuk continues to the far corner, peeking around the edge of the building.
“All right, you two now. And you,” the sergent says, pointing a finger at Normand’s chest, “it’s a gas station. No grenades. Now go.”
Cutting across the side alley, boots crunching on the dirt, the two replacements reach the corner of the garage, in the shadows beneath a leafy eucalyptus. In the shadows are a stack of boxes, piled haphazardly against the wall – at the corner an air nozzle for inflating car tires hangs from a rubber hose coiled on a rack affixed to the wall.
All: Sneak and Watch checks, please. Normand and Pyotr’s positions are relative – feel free to describe moving to a different position if you like. Note that Marcel is still off the map at the moment.
