Night Lantern Tour Leg 4

Leg 4 — LDZD → LDDU Zadar, Croatia → Dubrovnik, Croatia

A long nighttime corridor flight carrying intelligence operatives toward increasingly compromised southern sectors. Near Miss The fourth leg nearly ended the network. Cloud cover broke unexpectedly over the southern Adriatic, exposing the aircraft beneath bright moonlight while crossing mountainous coastline south of Split. Then the radar warning activated. Brief. Sharp. Someone had painted the aircraft. You descended immediately toward the coastline while searchlights swept distant cloud layers behind you. Military patrol aircraft crossed somewhere overhead while storm cells rolled across the sea farther south. Dubrovnik finally appeared beneath rain and sea mist just before dawn. The city felt tense. Silent. The intelligence operatives departing the aircraft carried sealed cases chained to their wrists. Armed escorts surrounded them immediately before vanishing into the darkness near the old harbor district. Nobody explained what was inside those cases. But people were clearly willing to kill for them.