Dark Full of Enemies

by Jordan M. Poss

  “I think I got a friend you’ll get along with.”

  “But I was excellent at my studies. I could have been the hell of a great theologian.”

  McKay did not know what to say.

  “There,” Jørgen said. “Narvik.”

  McKay stood and peered through the wheelhouse window. Ahead in the darkness, about four miles away off the starboard bow, he could make out the low shape of a seaside town on a hill. There were some lights, none individually distinguishable, but enough to make out the shape of the city in the surrounding gloom. As he looked, Jørgen throttled the boat back to its old, slow speed.

  “We do not want to look like we’re in a hurry,” Jørgen said.

  McKay saw other boats in the distance, but could not tell how many, how far off, and how large. He thought of German battleships, destroyers, cruisers—even the lone E-boat was more than a match for them.

  “German?”

  “Some of them, and some not. But some fisherman work for the Germans, you know. Not many, but enough to worry about. We do not want to hurry.”

  With that, he wheeled to starboard and Narvik drifted across their bow and out of the window frame. Ahead lay more darkness, more dimly felt mountains with a channel between. And, near the mouth of the fjord, a town. This one had taken little or no blackout precautions at all, and the close-set huddle of homes, with a single church spire, lay mottled by the house lights of the locals.

  “Grettisstad?” McKay said.

  “Home,” Jørgen said.

  The Petersen house stood on the water at the near end of the town, a sturdy two-story building like a chalet or cabin, but of more comfortable proportions. Two or three outbuildings stood in the snowy yard, and a wharf big enough for the sixty-footer reached out to them across the water. No other boats nodded at the dock—it was their own. The Petersens, McKay decided, were well-off.

  He also noticed, a minute or so before they docked, that no lights burned. The house stood dark on the shore.

  They had almost reached the dock when one man appeared on it. Petersen came on deck for the first time in hours and waved to him. They said nothing as the boat slowed and sidled toward the dock. Petersen threw the man a line and Jørgen brought the Hardråde to a perfect stop beside the pier, not even bumping the dock until their own wake pushed them softly against it.

  McKay waited in the door of the cabin. Someone doused the cabin light and he and the team stood ready, all gear strapped on and ready for hauling. He watched Petersen.

  The man on the dock did not tie them off but belayed the rope around the top of a piling and leaned back on the line. He looked around once and jerked his head at Petersen. Petersen stepped up onto the dock and waved McKay forward.

  McKay swung through the cabin door at a trot, skip-stepped to the top of the gunwale and in another bound leapt onto the wharf. Petersen had already stridden off toward the dark house. McKay gave his men a hand up onto the pier and then a shove after Petersen. As soon as Ollila, the last in line, left the boat and trotted for the house, McKay dashed ahead of the team to catch up with Petersen. He looked around, listened. They moved quietly despite their eighty or more pounds of equipment, crates, and cans. They had packed carefully.

  He caught up with Petersen as the Norwegian rounded the house. He fell in beside him but said nothing. Talk could wait.

  The house, McKay could now see, was set back into the swell of a hill. The rest of Grettisstad stood above them, two hundred or more yards off and partly hidden by another fold of the earth. He looked for other houses along the waterfront and saw a few dark shapes on the water farther up the fjord and, like the town, partly hidden by the terrain and a few small trees. The Petersens had privacy.

  The hill behind the house came up almost to the second story, where there was a door and a small wooden stoop. Beside the stoop, a long stack of firewood, leaning against a chest-high fence set a few feet from the house, stretched the whole length of the back wall. In the gap between the house and the fence—a railing, McKay realized—a staircase led down into the earth.

  Just then the church bells of Grettisstad pealed out of the darkness and silence. McKay started at the noise and looked uphill. Across the snowy knoll the bright church spire stood, still and steady in the streetlight glow above the roofs of the village. The bells rang loud, uncannily loud after the long silences of the trip in from the submarine.

  McKay risked a whisper to Petersen. “What is that?”

  Petersen said nothing, but led them down the stairs behind the firewood. McKay, with another glance at the church spire, followed.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Petersen let them through a heavy door into a dark room. full of cold, damp air. McKay sensed stone walls even before Petersen turned on the lights.

  “Cozy,” Stallings said as he filed in.

  McKay did not like it. They stood in a rock-walled cellar perhaps twelve feet by fifteen feet wide. The effective space was even smaller—empty wineracks lined the room. A card table with folding legs leaned in one corner. There were no chairs or beds, but McKay did see rolled straw pallets on the racks in another corner. And he was unconcerned with comfort, anyway. What bothered him were the lack of windows and the single exit, a door at the foot of a stairwell, a door narrow enough for one man to block, especially a man as large as Petersen, who stooped in the doorframe now, already drawing the door shut behind him.

  McKay grabbed the door. “We need to talk.”

  “Later,” Petersen said. He tested the door, gave it a little pull. McKay did not let go.

  “We need to talk. I have to see the dam at least once, for planning.”

  “I say again, impossible.”

  McKay said nothing. He held firmly to the door.

  Petersen said, “I have to report to Narvik, if you recall.”

  “Now?”

  “They know the speed of our boats. They reported our time and position. If I am late, they will guess I detoured and want to know why.”

  “All right. When you get back, then.”

  Petersen, still gripping the door, looked at him for the first time since landing. He said, “Yes.” McKay let go of the door and Petersen pulled it almost shut, then stopped and leaned back into the room. He jerked his head back, toward the church, where the bells still rang. “Happy Christmas,” he said, and shut the door.

  They stood still and silent for a moment, none of them looking at each other.

  “Well, the hell with this,” Stallings said.

  Alone now, they checked their gear. McKay checked his own before doublechecking his men’s, starting with weapons and going through everything. He wanted to make sure nothing had been lost, broken, or destroyed in the transfers along the way. They spent time inspecting the radio and its individual parts. If they could not destroy the dam, McKay wanted at least to deliver a serviceable radio to the Norwegians. When they had finished, they checked everything again, and then McKay set them into the long haul of loading magazines.

  Ollila—with his bolt-action Mauser—excepted, each of them carried ten magazines for their submachine guns—300 rounds per man, every one loaded by hand. McKay had not had them load the magazines before departing, a precautionary measure. The larger a magazine, the more tension the spring sustained when fully loaded, and the more likely to break and jam the weapon. The submachine gun the Germans carried had a 32-round magazine but they seldom loaded it to capacity precisely to prevent jams. And the likelihood of a jam increased the longer the full magazines sat unused, the springs bracing uselessly against the stack of bullets above them. McKay had seen weapons jam in combat and, with the odds already so heavily against them as a four-man team in enemy territory, he would not have malfunction against them, too.

  Now, though, he felt they had reason to load. He did not want to be caught here of all places. He tried not to think of the effect of three submachine guns in such a tiny place, or of how they might escape if they managed to shoot their way out and up the stairs�
�the firewood could provide good cover, but a single man on the stoop above could kill every one of them with plunging fire. He focused on the task as a step toward assaulting the dam.

  They pulled out the card table and set it up. Without chairs the table proved nearly useless, so McKay had them fold the legs back up and they rested the table on their packs. They sat Indian style on the floor, one of their ammo crates open in the middle of them like a platter at Sunday dinner. Or Christmas dinner.

  The holiday had snuck up on McKay. He had thought of it a few times since returning to England, and he had even heard—without noticing—the Coventry Carol on the wireless in the pub the night he decked the Aussie, but since then he had been… distracted. He owed his family a card and a letter. Perhaps even Sally. He felt an old longing reawaken in him like new pain in an old wound and scoffed and shook his head. He would take care of it when they returned.

  He watched the team for a moment. Every filled magazine went into a stack beside the crate on the table, where they each dipped in a hand as needed and brought out smaller cardboard boxes marked pistol ball caliber .45. Ollila had pitched in and sat thumbing the squabby rounds along with them. Graves worked quickly, nattering to himself from time to time. Stallings worked slowest, almost absentmindedly. He seemed to have trouble seating the rounds in the slot at the top of the magazine, and even tried to put a few rounds in backwards before stopping himself and turning the bullet over, laboriously, with fingers from both hands, and snapping into place with the others.

  Stallings looked up and saw McKay watching him. He looked as if he had been caught stealing. McKay said nothing.

  Stallings managed a grin and held up his box of pistol ammo.

  “First time since I’ve been in the Army I’ve got to open presents on Christmas.”

  McKay laughed despite himself. Graves snickered. “Bloody right.”

  Ollila looked at Stallings, at McKay, and then returned to his work. He looked doubtful. McKay would have to talk to Ollila, soon.

  “Don’t guess we can get some eggnog or something here?” Stallings said.

  “You can drink when we get back to England,” McKay said.

  “Toss that stuff,” Graves said. “Give me a tot of rum, or whiskey. Don’t see the point in hiding your alcohol.”

  Stallings grinned and looked at McKay. “That’s always been my philosophy,” he said.

  McKay laughed.

  It had been nearly Christmas and time for a trip home when Stallings had finally gotten kicked out of Clemson.

  It was that car of his. Stallings drove an old Ford. He had put his skills—his talents—to use in modifying the engine. Their trips between Clemson and Rabun County, Stallings’s home in North Carolina, or any other mountainous place on the winding and dangerous highways, had frightened Keener more than their mountain climbing, and had probably been more dangerous.

  McKay had had inklings of what Stallings got up to on his weekends, those rare weekends when he and Keener did not plan something or when Stallings was determined to cause trouble. He would disappear at the first opportunity after classes and drill on Friday and reappear, disheveled and hungover if not still drunk, in the early hours of Monday morning. His car would have new dents at the corners, some new knock or rattle in the engine, and mud up to the windows. McKay and their friends, with varying degrees of patience, would get him sobered up. It was easier in winter—they would make a trip down the hill to the Seneca River and throw him in. Sobered and dressed in time for drill, Stallings would survive another week, rebuild the engine when he should have been studying, and disappear again. Repeat.

  McKay always resisted losing his patience and his temper and always failed. Once upon finding Stallings leaning halfway into the engine of the Ford after missing class, he had shouted, sworn, and said, “Grove, if you put half the ingenuity into class as you did into that damn car, you’d be captain of cadets.”

  Stallings just raised himself out of the car, grinned, and tipped his cap.

  They had a week left of the fall semester, senior year, when the real captain of the corps of cadets came for them. Specifically, for McKay. He had just returned from dinner in town with Sally and lay down to read in his barracks room. He left the book—Robinson Crusoe—open on his bunk. It was weeks, after Christmas and into the new year, before he resumed the story.

  The captain led him to President Sikes’s office and let him in, but did not follow.

  Stallings stood at parade rest in the far corner of the president’s office. McKay noted him without looking. The President sat behind his desk, regarding Stallings. When the door clicked shut behind McKay, the President turned his head, barely.

  “Lieutenant McKay.”

  McKay came to attention before President Sikes. Kindly-faced, bald, bespectacled, the picture of a college president, he sat rigid behind his desk as if carved of adamant—he looked furious. His anger filled the room, the stillness was all that contained it. McKay waited.

  President Sikes removed his glasses. “Mister McKay, Mister Stallings, with whom I believe you are acquainted, has been caught secreting spirits on this campus in direct contravention of its laws.” McKay’s throat had thickened. He fought to swallow without betraying the movement. “Furthermore, it has come to light that Mister Stallings has been undertaking to sell such spirits—illegally—throughout this vicinity, in a criminal enterprise that has furnished spirits to a great number of… places of low standing. Now, Lieutenant—” the return to formality was McKay’s cue, the notice that questioning would now begin, “I ask you whether you knew of this enterprise, and whether we are just in expelling Mister Stallings from the Corps of Cadets and this institution.”

  “No, sir.”

  “No, we are acting unjustly?”

  McKay’s face died and chilled. “No, sir—I meant—no, I did not know of Grove’s—that is, Cadet Stallings’s undertakings.”

  “At ease, Lieutenant,” Sikes said, and McKay made himself relax. “Mister McKay, your reputation is well known on this campus. We have already interviewed Cadets Keener, Smith, Skardon, and Crunkleton, and they have avowed that neither they nor you had any knowledge of Mister Stallings’s misdeeds. I take you at your word. But I ask again whether it is just to expel such a man from this college after such an offense.”

  McKay regained his bearings. He had wondered about Stallings’s weekends away, the heavy use of the big, spacious car, the wear and tear on the engine—and Stallings’s ability to repair it. Where did Grove get his money? had been an occasional joke on campus, always with farcical answers—he had a long-lost industrialist uncle, he was the bastard of a Duke, he was a far-flung underling of the Chicago mob. This last had struck them all as most hilarious. McKay felt sick to realize—even without the mob connection—the liquor running was true. Stallings was done for.

  “Sir,” McKay said, “I humbly submit that such a question is… above me.”

  “You know about the largesse that has enabled Mister Stallings to study here? Against all odds, owing to his unfortunate situation?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How is such largesse more grossly wasted? By letting a prodigal—and criminal—continue to expend it, or by allowing that it has come to naught, and ending it?”

  McKay dizzied. “Sir, I—”

  “I’m sorry, son,” Sikes said, and McKay knew the interview was over, that he was free from taint, that he would never see Stallings at Clemson again. “I’m sorry. I know that you, especially among the corps, have made especial efforts to keep Mister Stallings in line. He has had no truer friend.”

  He let McKay go. McKay, afraid, sensing the sickness that hovered over him, left the office without looking at Stallings. He did not even say good bye.

  The next time McKay saw Stallings had been six days ago, in a Quonset hut in the south of England.

  They finished loading the Thompson magazines and Graves put the box of 9mm pistol ammunition on the table. Each of them had three mag
azines, one for their Browning and two for the pouch on their belts. McKay had already loaded his aboard the Viking. He helped load for Ollila and Graves, and they quickly finished. Stallings’s stolen Colt had only one magazine, which he loaded with seven leftover .45 rounds for the Thompsons.

  They stripped and cleaned their weapons.

  McKay found out later that the Greenville police had spotted a man and a car departing the scene of an illegal moonshine delivery. They gave chase but were easily outrun. They had seen the car before and, this time, finally pooled their resources with other cities and towns in the area. Throughout piedmont South Carolina, railway stops like Seneca, Walhalla, and Central and benighted shitholes like Westminster had all tried in vain to catch the same man in the same car. They began searching. They found Stallings.

  He had put his ingenuity into only a few things—mechanical works, anything with gears and electricity, and into his business. Both had, in a way, landed him in jail.

  When McKay had finished cleaning the Thompson, the Browning, and the Welrod, he sat back against one of the wineracks and closed his eyes. He felt himself on the edge of sleep, about to tip over into it, when Stallings spoke.

  “You think Petersen’s going to feed us?”

  “You got C-rations,” McKay said. “Eat some of that.”

  “Dammit.”

  “But better than no food at all, right?” Graves said.

  Stallings laughed. “Maybe in extremis.”

  McKay grinned. Stallings had never been totally immune to education.

  “Back in Africa,” Graves said, “a bloke couldn’t keep the sand out of his grub stakes. Then a bloke couldn’t keep it out of his teeth. It was especially bad with the gyppo.”

  “The hell?”

  “Soup, right? You get sand in there, mate, you can’t get it out.”

  “Well, hell, if it’s going to be much longer before they get back, I’m going to eat something.”

  “Go ahead,” McKay said. “But you better boil that chocolate if you don’t wanna lose any teeth.”