Jørgen stood alone at the helm. McKay held out his hand. It took a moment for Jørgen to notice, and when he did he gave a surprised and cursory shake.
“Just in case,” McKay said. “Thank you.”
Jørgen waved a hand at him. “I heard the shout earlier, the war cry. The king’s motto.”
“A fitting motto, for these days.”
“I like the older ones better. Så var det beskikket—So it was appointed. Or ordained, if you like. Or maybe Intet uten Gud.”
“What’s that one?”
“Nothing without God.” Jørgen looked once more at him, gave a flippant salute, and said, “See you again soon, Captain.”
McKay smiled, nodded, and climbed down to the deck.
He knocked on the cabin door and the team came out, followed by the Norwegians. They stood in the dark and quiet and waited. Dark water, dark sky, dark land—it felt to McKay as though they glid across frozen emptiness. Only the kiss of the water on the hull gave him a sense of anything existing outside the boat. After a while, the boat slowed, the engine almost at an idle. McKay strained to see the shore as they approached.
The land appeared from the darkness just off the bow. Jørgen throttled back and wheeled to starboard and dumped the entire team sideways onto the deck. McKay caught himself on the planks and found himself admiring the group’s discipline—eleven men toppled and only one quiet “Oof.” He grinned and stood.
Jørgen gently swung the boat broadside to the shore and the men, upright again, dusted off, jumped in twos and threes to the strand. They slipped and worked to gain purchase on the wet and icy shingle, then hoisted their gear and stepped up into the snow. The snow was the first thing that went wrong.
It crunched.
McKay tested it with his boot, stepping and pressing and stepping again. The soft powder of the reconnaissance had stiffened in the hours since. He tapped Petersen on the shoulder and gestured at the snow, made it crunch and creak with his boot. Petersen nodded. McKay looked at the team assembled up the bank in the snow, looked at the shape of the Hardråde—barely twenty feet away, but in the dark—and waved to the wheelhouse. All ashore. Jørgen crept the throttle upward and the boat slipped away from shore. Time to march. He gestured again to Petersen—Lead the way.
They followed the shore again and moved inland before the wharf came in sight. Petersen crunched through the snow, as did McKay after him, but by the middle of the single-file column the men marched a well-packed trail. McKay wished Petersen would take more care, but knew it would make no difference, and they could not afford a slow march. They would move into the scrub trees soon. That would mask the sound further.
The ground steepened and they moved among the pines. McKay had not thought something could be darker than night, but here it was—the dark forest, straight from his books of ballads and legends. He shouldered between the snow-dusted branches. He remembered childhood summer nights in the woods at home. Even under the light-sopping pines there would be moonlight or lightning bugs, patches of foxfire, or the ambient glow that seemed to pulse from the gray forest itself. Nothing here—just the growing yellow haze above the ridge ahead, the light of the dam.
They passed through the trees with no other sound than the occasional sough of snow slipping from a cluster of needles. They moved higher. McKay’s breath shortened and he bowed under his pack. He had carried heavier packs, and in worse conditions, but never in such cold. He patted his face once to bring blood back to his cheeks, then pulled his scarf over his nose.
Ahead of him, Petersen reached the narrow shelf above the trees and turned to help him up. McKay nodded him onward, then turned and helped the rest of the group up, one by one until the line of march strung out across the face of the ridge. When he had helped up the last—Håkon, bringing up the rear with his submachine gun—he stood and took a few short breaths and looked below them. The headquarters camp lay in the low ground, a grid of light under the gloom. He watched, in his brief pause, for activity, saw none, and moved on.
He doubletimed to the head of the column and fell in behind Petersen just as they reached the rail tunnel. Petersen turned to him and held up a hand. McKay turned and signaled likewise to Stallings, who did the same, and in the dark behind him he could hear more than see the column stop. A few men knelt, puffing and blowing. He worried about noise discipline again.
Petersen trotted back along the column and came forward again with Håkon and Magnus. Håkon, the smaller of the two, carried a bundle slung across his chest—Graves’s little gift for the rail bridge. He had put together the material for his bomb in the boat on the way and shown the pair how to set the charge. Once in place, they would climb back to the ridge and join the others waiting in ambush on the heights. Petersen had picked Magnus for his mechanical proficiency, and Håkon because, as Petersen put it, “He will do anything.” Magnus smiled and nodded to McKay, and then Petersen waved them forward. They stepped up onto the tracks, looked left and right, and ducked into the black maw of the tunnel.
Without a signal, the remaining nine rose and moved forward again. McKay’s heartbeat picked up, and, absurdly, he thought of the Hardråde’s engine—tonk-tonk-tonk. He grinned beneath his scarf. Soon, now.
They slipped and scraped across the ridge and came to the footpath between the headquarters camp and the dam. Petersen’s men immediately fell out and, working slow and quiet in the darkness, laid their ambush.
Petersen watched a moment as if admiring his men, then turned to McKay. He gestured—After you—and McKay led them, five now, up the dark ridge toward the glow.
He climbed the ridge and looked on the dam again. He stood as Stallings, Graves, Ollila, and finally Petersen moved up beside him and knelt. It was the first time Stallings and Graves had seen the dam. He looked at them—only Stallings seemed awed. Graves looked eager, ready to put his explosives to use. McKay looked at Ollila, who looked back at him. He remained, for a moment, inscrutable, blank, but finally smiled—a wide, childlike grin.
Then McKay noticed the music—Wagner, drifting up from across the lake. It puzzled him, but he would not mind the distraction. Anything to cover their approach.
He looked again at Ollila and nodded. Ollila knew what to do. He dropped to his belly in the snow and crawled off into the crannies of the rock, looking for a blind. German hunting.
Now for the hard part, McKay thought, and signaled to the others to follow. He had scouted a point at which they could climb down—an angle of the cliffs not completely sheer, set low in a saddle of the mountains and ending at the bottom in what had looked like a snowy bank of scree. The cliff still rose over one hundred and fifty feet above the dam, but the bank saved them at least fifty feet of climbing. It was the chink in the mountain wall they needed.
When he reached the top of the cliff, he and Stallings dropped their packs and set to work by instinct. They both carried rope, hammers, ice axes, pitons, and karabiners. They drove a network of long pitons into the rock, dulling the blows with a rubber sheet folded between hammer and piton. Only Wagner and the snow, crunching, squeaking, made any sound. Soon they had ropes dropped over the ledge. McKay would abseil to the bottom carrying only his Thompson. Stallings would come last. The difficult part came in between.
McKay hooked to the rope and leaned back, out and away, over the edge, and held on, braced above the cliff and the darkness below. He tested his footing once on the gritty stone, then kicked back and dropped away. For a few moments he fell alone, in the dark, just himself and the cold rush of air and the music reflecting off the rock. He could have been at home, climbing in the Gorge.
He slowed himself and stepped easily down to the snowy scree, unhooked, and gave the rope a tug. Moments later, out of the vault of the night came Graves. He descended under control but came too fast, and McKay could hear the rope scorch through the palms of his gloves as he gripped himself to a stop six feet above the ground. Graves’s arms shook with the effort.
“Bllllllloody—�
� Graves said, and let go.
He dropped and crashed but stopped himself before rolling down the bank of rock. McKay turned to look at the dam, lying in its dragon-reek behind them, and waited. The guards walked their rounds, and a new act of the Ring began. He looked at Graves. Graves grinned and held up his hands—his gloves hung in shreds around his palms. He picked the remnants off and flexed his fingers as he mouthed some choice obscenities. McKay smiled and shook his head and tugged the rope again.
The gear came next—first Graves’s pack, the most precious, then McKay’s and Stallings’s. Petersen came next, abseiling down like a veteran climber. McKay had only had time to give him instructions once aboard the fishing boat, but the lesson had stuck. Now for Stallings. McKay signaled up the rope and felt suddenly sick. He imagined Stallings, concussed Stallings, slipping from the rope halfway down.
Stallings made it down easily. At the bottom, he released the rope, stooped for his pack, and grinned at McKay when he stood. Didn’t think I’d make it, huh? McKay shouldered his own pack and led them down the bank.
The climb had brought them the cliffs down two hundred yards behind the dam, in the dark beside the lake. What scree they dislodged from the snow and ice skittered down to the shore. They reached the bottom of the bank and followed the base of the cliffs, hunched to keep low and out of sight. They could see clearly, or well enough, in the ambient glow of the dam now. They reached one last shoulder of rock and McKay stopped. This was it.
He knelt and leaned low and to the right, around the cliff, and glimpsed the E-boat barracks, the tower, the wharf and johnboat, the wire. He checked his timepiece. 1140. It surprised him again, but he savored the oddness of it—this kind of darkness, and almost noon—and then felt exhaustion well up in him again. He looked back at the dam, the barracks. A single sentry had appeared, walking a slow pace along the inside of the barbed wire. McKay extended an arm to the men behind him and gestured down—Take ten, boys. He lowered himself to the ground and crawled forward, where he could peer at the enemy while prone in the snow. Now to wait for the guard to change. He prayed they would change at noon.
Håkon and Magnus had no difficulty with the bridge. Magnus, who had never admitted it, but feared the dark, and Håkon had jogged through the black tunnel and onto the bridge. Magnus had felt exposed there, standing just the pair of them on that strip of ground stretched across the air—and with the Germans how near? Near enough for him to hear their music, hanging on the air like a ghost. He wondered if the light carried far enough for the Germans to discern shapes on the bridge. He hoped not. But they would climb down the far side of the bridge support just to be sure.
Håkon went down first, and Magnus followed. The girders made a steel lattice, perfect for climbing. The bridge rose high above the fjord, probably higher than the dam, but both men had worked hard for years and the effort was nothing to them at first. Only Magnus’s hands ached from the constant gripping. What concerned him was the ice rimed upon the steel. He made certain to have a solid hold on the metal before trusting his grip. He did not want to end his days sinking into the black depths of the fjord because of a single slick handhold.
They neared the bottom of the column and stopped. Håkon unslung the bundle from his chest and they divided the contents. Håkon took the explosives, thirty-five pounds of hoarded gelignite, Nobel, and TNT, and set about fastening them to the bones of the bridge’s support.
Magnus took the pressure plate, climbed further down, almost to the waterline, and set to work. For his job he would have to leave the safety of the darkness. He took a breath and crept slowly around to the damward side of the bridge. He clung there in the dim light and listened to the Nazis’ music as he worked.
The Englishman had explained to him, carefully, how to set the device. A pair of planks, one wider than the other, with metal strips underneath, wire, and a battery cannibalized from the torch he kept in the Hardråde’s engine compartment. When the dam exploded—the Englishman had seemed sure they would succeed—the water flooding into the fjord would climb the bridge’s pier to the planks and press one—the larger of the two—against the other. The metal strips, one electrified by the battery, would touch, completing a circuit to the detonator in the explosives above. Magnus imagined the result. He hoped it would work.
The planks and wiring set, he climbed up to Håkon. Cord, rope, and Håkon’s own belt strapped the bundle tight to the steel. He looked at the belt, at Håkon.
Håkon whispered: “I wanted to make sure.”
Magnus nodded and drew the blasting cap from his pocket, a silver cigarette wrapped in wax paper. He let the paper drift into the dark and connected the wire from below and, with Håkon pointing him to a bare spot in their handful of plastic explosive, pressed the silver tip deep into the doughy compound.
He heard shouting from the dam and nearly fell. Håkon scrambled back into the shadow, but Magnus froze, one arm stretched high above his head where he had caught himself. He listened. Someone at the top of the dam was shouting—in German. He knew for a terrible moment that the Germans had spotted him, and waited. The riflemen would get him.
A long time passed. When Magnus began to notice his hands aching in their grips upon the steel, aching like the bones would crack, he looked back. Half a mile away, the dam stood still and peaceful in its own light. He could barely make out the movement of guards at the top, but at that distance he might have been seeing things. In the darkness, the eyes want movement so much that they will see things. The shouting had stopped.
He flexed his fingers, swung back into the shadow, and climbed—aching hands and frost be damned—back to the top of the bridge.
They went through the tunnel and found their friends in place near the footpath through the gap. Fredrik had picked a place for him to wait, a well-shielded spot behind some snowy rocks. He pointed the way saying “Careful of the path—mines” and Magnus took his place. He sat and breathed and watched the distant German camp.
McKay had never heard a sergeant chew out a private in German, but despite the language it differed little from what he knew. The guard had changed at noon, as he hoped, overseen by a sergeant. McKay had heard the man coming from all the way across the dam. He had left the command post shouting, rousted the new detail from the barracks shouting, and run them from post to post shouting even louder.
“The hell’s going on?” Stallings had whispered.
McKay pointed back at him without looking—Shut up, Grove.
Then the sergeant had appeared. A short man—McKay had smiled at first, remembered a war novel in which the narrator wondered why so many noncoms were angry little men—with a fine grey mustache and perfectly maintained uniform. He even came armed, wearing his helmet and bracing a slung submachine gun against his side. And the man looked tough—instead of the overcoat and scarves the new guards wore, he wore a Panzergrenadier’s dappled camouflage smock.
McKay stopped himself from swearing. The Germans had strengthened the garrison, he knew, but if all of the extra hands were Panzergrenadiers, his team could expect a fight. What had he said during the briefing? Or was it the Major? Plan like they’re Waffen SS. Jinxed me. Might as well be Waffen SS.
He checked his watch. 1209. He would give the Germans their half-hour and then move in.
The sergeant did not go away. The shouting finished, the old guards found enough energy to quick-step back to the barracks and the sergeant spoke quietly with another of the new guards for a moment, then took up a patrol inside in the barbed wire.
In half an hour he had not grown bored.
The sergeant bothered McKay. He was an old hand, what the Marines called salts, the old breed. The man had marched thirty minutes at a unvarying pace in the cold without so much as a sniffle. And he had remained alert. McKay thought of Gunny Bazemore, his old platoon sergeant—none had eyes sharper than a veteran NCO’s. This man would make things tricky. But now was the time.
The sergeant’s post followed the inside of t
he wire from the E-boat sailors’ barracks down to the edge of the lake, along the shore past the dock to the dam, and back. In his walk he passed the foot of the watchtower, and usually rapped on the ladder to wake up the guard there.
McKay watched the sergeant as he completed his circuit—up from the lake at a steady pace, watchful, past the foot of the tower, and up to the barracks. He stopped, seemed to look for the guard who walked the other half of the wire, then turned and continued. McKay took a breath and held it. On his way back to the shore the sergeant would pivot to follow the wire, and from that point on he would have his back to McKay. That was his opportunity.
McKay looked at the guard in the tower. The man idled, looking out over the lake. The sergeant reached the corner. His boot pivoted, churned up a rind of snow. McKay rose and sprinted.
The crunch of his steps seemed like gunshots and every inch of fabric in his suit seemed to swish and scrape. His heart pounded—they would hear him. He reached the wire and dropped, lay parallel to it. He looked up. The sergeant had just passed the watchtower. He knocked three times on the ladder.
“Wake up, Private Frühauf.”
The private started, acknowledged the sergeant, and shook himself.
McKay drew a pair of wirecutters and laid their jaws across the nearest strand. He wrapped his gloved hand over the wire—two fingers on each side of the cutters—and clipped. The wire shuddered beneath his fingers but kept silent. He repeated the action on the two strands above him and crawled forward between the rows of wire. He clipped three more strands, rose, and dashed into the shadow of the nearest barracks. He was in.
He had chosen the spot carefully, a point in the wire near the back corner of the fence, where the tower guard would have to peer through the angled rows of wire to spot him, a point on which none of the many brightly burning lights in the complex shone. The barracks blocked all but the light borne up and diffused in the mist. He stood and waited.
Dark Full of Enemies Page 19
