by Joe Buff
“Tom!” Jeffrey shouted in concern.
“I’m okay!” Harrison shouted.
Bullets flew in both directions viciously now. The Land Rover bounced and sagged as its tires were hit and exploded. All the different noises hurt Jeffrey’s ears.
Henga fired his revolver twice at a distant clump of bushes. Jeffrey knew the weapon was useless at such range — and Kampfschwimmer wouldn’t be slowed by ineffective fire. But then Jeffrey had an idea. He turned to Clayton. “We don’t want the Kampfschwimmer knowing we’re SEALs.”
“Concur, Skipper. Let’s show ’em some sloppy fire discipline.” With difficulty, since the slightest movement drew more fire, Clayton tossed Jeffrey his pistol. It landed on the ground halfway between them. As Jeffrey reached, a sniper bullet almost took his hand off at the wrist.
Jeffrey grabbed the pistol and checked that the muzzle was clear of dirt. Like Henga, he fired two rounds. The AK-47s boomed, and the M-16s responded, but the outflanking enemy men advanced again. Soon the line of retreat would be cut off.
“Who do I call?” Harrison yelled from down inside the driver’s compartment. His voice sounded deep and confident; Jeffrey was very glad they’d had that talk in the minisub.
“Waitangi!” Henga shouted. That was the only town, in the middle of the island. “Tell the council duty clerk to sound the invasion alarm.”
Jeffrey waited impatiently — Harrison seemed to take forever. If that radio is busted we’re in very serious trouble. This was an uninhabited part of the island. Anyone who heard the firing from farther off might just think Henga was holding an exercise.
“I’ve got him,” Harrison yelled.
Henga shouted his orders. “Waitangi platoon to head here by the Tuku Road. Owenga platoon to come the way we came, and Saracen to follow the Naim River trail! Others to muster in place and hold the rest of the island!”
“Okay!”
Jeffrey and Clayton looked at each other. Henga sounded like he knew what he was doing. Reinforcements from Owenga would strengthen their hold on the satellite site. From Tuku, the militia could threaten the enemy from the rear. The Saracen, with its cannon and machine gun raking the Germans from off to the side, could tip the balance decisively.
But this would all take precious time, and the time factor favored the Germans. The SOSUS bunker itself would have made a beautiful defensive stronghold, but the path there was much too exposed for Clayton’s men to get inside — the door faced right at the enemy’s center.
Bullets continued to fly. One of Clayton’s spent shell casings burned the back of Jeffrey’s hand. There was a loud clang, then a screeching whine, as an incoming bullet ricocheted off the Land Rover’s engine block. In the far distance, carried on the wind, Jeffrey could hear air-raid sirens now.
“Tom,” Jeffrey yelled. “Get out of there before they hit the fuel tank!”
“Tom,” Henga yelled, “take my shotgun, under the dashboard! Shells are in the glove box!”
Jeffrey saw Harrison roll out of the Land Rover. As enemy rounds chewed the dirt near his feet, Harrison bobbed and weaved and dashed behind the outcropping next to Ilse. He was smart enough to hold his fire — a shotgun was a close-in weapon. Jeffrey urged him to fire a couple of rounds — again, the deception plan that they were rear-area troops.
The shotgun blasts were deafening crashes. Another sniper bullet barely missed Jeffrey’s head. He crawled and shifted position again. The firefight had been raging long enough for him to take stock of what was happening and why.
How did the Germans get here? Dropped from a secret compartment of a pseudoneutral airliner? High-altitude-low-opening parachute tactics at sea, then move inshore with the wind and tide, using rubber boats or even underwater scooters? Do they want to commandeer the SOSUS site to eavesdrop on the data? Use it to locate Allied subs, and then use that to help Voortrekker?…
So that’s what ter Horst is waiting for, our undersea fleet dispositions, before he tackles the Gap.
Yeah, that’s what the Germans are after. Even with all this shooting they’re leaving the satellite bunker untouched.
They’re clever, I’ll give them that.
Clayton fired another round from his smoking rifle, then ejected the empty magazine, his last. “Captain, we have to withdraw. We’re outnumbered and outgunned.”
“We can’t,” Jeffrey said. “We have to destroy the equipment bunker.” Jeffrey told Clayton why: the whole outcome of the battle between Challenger and Voortrekker could hinge around this little bunker.
Clayton told his man nearest the bunker to throw in fragmentation grenades.
As the man rose off the ground he screamed, hit in the neck by the sniper. Bright red arterial blood arced into the air and soaked the grass. Montgomery dashed to help the wounded man, dodging incoming rounds, and the chief was quickly soaked by the blood. From behind a boulder he looked at Clayton and shook his head.
That’s two dead, Jeffrey told himself, counting the SEAL killed by the sniper at the very start of the action.
Another enlisted SEAL made a try for the bunker. The distant sniper fired but missed.
A German light machine gun, held in reserve, opened up immediately. The SEAL was almost cut in half. He dropped both live grenades. They exploded next to his body. The double concussion through the ground made Jeffrey hurt. Intestines and body parts flew, but the bunker was undamaged. The corpse began to burn. The stink was unbearable. The dead SEAL’s ammunition cooked off like strings of firecrackers.
That’s three dead, one-fourth of our manpower, and it confirms they really want the bunker intact. The Kampfschwimmer flanking units were swinging wide now. Soon they’d surround Clayton’s team and hit the SEALs with fire from every direction at once.
Clayton lobbed a grenade, to try to cut Ilse’s cable that ran to the sea. The concussion flashed and pounded the earth and more shrapnel whizzed through the air. Jeffrey aimed at the satellite dish, and kept firing rounds from his pistol to try to knock the dish out. At this distance, he couldn’t tell if he’d done anything. He ran out of ammo, and Clayton threw him another clip for the pistol, his last.
“We have to withdraw!” Clayton repeated.
Jeffrey shook his head. “They’ll pick us all off if we move.” As if to emphasize, the German light machine gun fired again, peppering the SEALs and Jeffrey with dirt and fragments of rock. “We need a smokescreen or we’re finished.”
“We don’t have that many smoke grenades. Not with this wind, it’s too strong!”
“The truck’s fuel tank. We can use that.”
Clayton nodded. Jeffrey crawled flat on his stomach until he had a good line of fire. He shot at the underside of the truck. The bullet found its mark, and diesel fuel leaked in a widening puddle. Jeffrey fired again, at a stone under the vehicle, to make a spark. The diesel refused to ignite. Jeffrey signaled for Clayton to pass him his other grenade. Jeffrey set the timer to “Long,” seven seconds.
“Grenade!” Jeffrey shouted. He rolled it beneath the truck and scrambled away.
A split second after the grenade went off, the whole fuel tank exploded with a gut-pounding whump. Parts of the Land Rover flew through the air. Jeffrey felt a wave of blistering heat that didn’t diminish. The truck was giving off heavy gray-black smoke. It grew even thicker when all four punctured tires began to burn. The combined odors at this point were revolting.
“Pop what smoke you got,” Montgomery ordered at the top of his lungs. The chief was hoarse from shouting and breathing the smoke, and Jeffrey’s eardrums ached so badly it was hard for him to hear.
The surviving SEALs tossed the few smoke grenades they had. Clouds of chemical smoke puffed out in green and orange and purple. The different colors blended oddly with the oily, choking smoke from the burning truck.
Montgomery shouldered the nearest dead SEAL’s body. Henga was closest to the enlisted SEAL who’d been killed first — Henga crawled and grabbed the body and started to drag it along. Ilse
, with nothing to do up to now, darted through the smokescreen and snatched the corpses’ intact M-16s. She threw one rifle to Jeffrey, then with the other began to send short bursts blindly through the smoke, toward the Germans.
The third SEAL, killed by the machine-gun fire, had to be left behind. The corpse had been shattered by the SEAL’s own grenades, and was self-cremating anyway.
“Back!” Clayton shouted. “Fall back!”
Minutes later
Van Gelder looked away from the smoldering broken skeleton near the rock outcropping. The other two large pools of blood were congealed now, sticky and brown. The stench of burning rubber and flesh made Van Gelder nauseous, and the lingering smoke from the tents and the truck made him cough. The ground was littered with brass shell casings and empty smoke grenades. Sharp bits of shrapnel poked out from the grass. The wind blew scattered bits of paper and unwound streamers of white field-dressing gauze. To Van Gelder the small abandoned battlefield was depressing. The bright sunny sky and twittering birds made it worse.
The enemy was fleeing to a low stone wall a thousand meters away. Bauer had his sniper and his machine gunner hold their fire. He told them to let the defeated men run, to save ammo for the militia’s counterattack — the Kampfschwimmer radioman had been monitoring communications on the island all along. Some of Bauer’s men spread wide to form a defensive perimeter, and blended into terrain and disappeared.
At intervals one of the enemy fired a round from a pistol or shotgun. To show his contempt, Bauer paraded around in plain sight, forcing Van Gelder to do so as well. The Kampfschwimmer chief crept off north, inland toward the Naim River, lugging two antitank rockets to ambush the armored car when it came.
The SEALs retreated over the long stone wall, then piled rocks and logs on top for better protection. Jeffrey flopped behind the wall and sat in the dirt with Clayton’s pistol warm in his hand. He leaned back against the stones and fought to catch his breath. He tried not to look at the dead SEALs laid out neatly by the wall. He felt their unseeing eyes stare at him, and he blamed himself for their deaths.
I distracted Clayton’s team by coming here when I did, to no good purpose. If it wasn’t for me they might’ve been more alert.
Ilse knelt behind the wall, clutching a dead man’s M-16. She glanced at Jeffrey; he thought she did it accusingly. Her face was streaked with sweat, and stained with black soot and green moss. Jeffrey knew he looked the same. He had a powerful thirst but lacked a canteen. He’d lost his sunglasses somewhere, and he squinted in the glaring sun. There was no shade here at all, but the endless wind prevented the sun from giving him any warmth.
Henga fired his revolver toward the enemy, then Harrison quickly fired another shotgun round. Each report made Jeffrey jump.
Apprehensive, he peered over the wall. The Kampfschwimmer weren’t pursuing.
Way up there, next to the rock outcropping, Jeffrey spotted the whip antenna for a German tactical radio. He knew they’d also have longer-range communications gear. They want the bunker, not us.
“It’s coming,” the radioman said. “There it is.”
Van Gelder heard a puttering, droning sound in the sky. He saw a black dot approaching, growing larger fast, a small airplane. The island militia had sent it up for reconnaissance and spotting.
Bauer reached for an equipment pack and pulled out an antiaircraft missile. He waved for Van Gelder to get out of the way of the back blast.
Bauer crouched and hefted the missile launcher to his shoulder. He armed it, aimed, then pressed the trigger.
With a loud bang and a gush of flame the missile left the launcher; Bauer jolted, then regained his balance and put the empty launcher down. The missile rose into the sky, homing crabwise on the aircraft as its flight was caught by the crosswind.
The plane began to bank away. The missile impacted. There was a red-orange flash, followed seconds later by the sound of a sharp detonation. Pieces of aircraft, and burning fuel, fell to the ground in the distance. The earth shook slightly when the pieces hit. A pillar of smoke rose from the impact sight.
“So much for him,” Bauer said.
The two demolition specialists left their concealment and brought up the atom bomb, a heavy box in a waterproof black outer casing. In shoulder satchels they carried their tools and supplies.
Van Gelder eyed the satellite-equipment bunker. It seemed such a flimsy thing.
“They left the door wide open,” he said to Bauer.
“So?”
“I don’t think you need to use an atom bomb.”
Bauer walked to the bunker, kicked the severed ends of wires and cables out of the way, and swung the armored door closed. He snapped the padlock onto the hasp, and jiggled it pointedly to show the door was locked now. “Satisfied?”
“No, I’m not. If this bunker is hardened at all, it’s against conventional bombs. Look at it. We do not need a fission weapon here.” Van Gelder was doing his job, to enforce the rules of engagement for using a nuclear weapon near civilians.
“We need to destroy this bunker,” Bauer said. “It’s a military target. We didn’t bring high-explosive charges. My hands are tied.”
“But this is just a backup relay site. Look at it. They’ll have spare links and nodes in other places, and cables underwater, too, for redundancy. Destroying this little bunker will hardly hurt the SOSUS at all!”
“We use the device.”
Van Gelder felt his blood pressure rise. There was an uncomfortable silence, punctuated by the rushing of the wind. “Can I speak to you in private?”
Bauer made a face and led Van Gelder to the side.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?” Van Gelder said.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Following my orders.” Van Gelder held up the thick binder Bauer had made him bring, detailing the ROEs at great length in German. “The rules of engagement aren’t satisfied. You can’t set off the atom bomb.”
“You’re so naive, Van Gelder.”
“I’m doing what you told me to do. There’re a dozen ways a nuclear blast here would break international law. The principle of just cause, proportionality of collateral damage, protection of the environment… No such conditions have been met.”
“They were never meant to be, you idiot.”
TWENTY-NINE
"Thanks." Jeffrey took a swig from Clayton's canteen, and swished to rid the bitter taste of smoke and cordite. He spat, then took a few good swallows, and handed the canteen back.
Beside him, Clayton looked at his two dead enlisted SEALs and sighed. "Man, it never gets any easier."
"I told you first time we fought together, Shaj. When you're the guy in command, you have to give the orders. Sometimes people get hurt."
"Yeah… Right now we got bigger problems:'
Jeffrey nodded. He peeked over the wall using Clayton's binoculars. "What the hell are they up to over there?" He passed the binocs to Clayton.
Clayton took another careful look, through the space between the top of the wall and a twisted log the SEALs had placed above the lichen-covered stones. "I dunno, Skipper.
That big box is out of sight now. I think they put it on the far side of the outcropping. I can't tell what they're doing in the bunker. I can't see the door from here."
"You think the box is some kind of portable supercomputer?"
Clayton shrugged. "Nothing else makes sense… Do you think it could tell them that Challenger's here, by processing the SOSUS data? Maybe you should clear out, Skipper, now."
Jeffrey shook his head. "If they know what they're doing, they could even track the minisub if it tries to make a move… No, you need every bit of manpower." And with Wilson and Bell on Challenger, I'm hardly irreplaceable as captain. "My best place to protect the ship is right here."
Jeffrey dearly wished the militia reinforcements would arrive. Any second the enemy might activate their listening post, and any moment after that something might be heard to l
et them draw a bead on Challenger. Jeffrey considered charging the bunker now, with what small force he and Clayton had but that would be sheer suicide, a useless, hopeless gesture.
The atom bomb was out of the waterproof cover. Its stainless-steel casing gleamed in the sun. Van Gelder looked at the bomb with revulsion, and looked at himself with calculated disgust.
He was a patsy, and his professional opinion counted for nought. His continued attempts to argue with Commander Bauer fell on deaf ears. Van Gelder was more the fool for not realizing sooner the game that Bauer was playing with him — the same game Jan ter Horst had played. My captain used me, by sending me on this abominable mission, to im-plicate me further in the Boer cause.
Van Gelder knew now he'd been brought just so the Axis could say he was here, simply to pander to world opinion — with a bald-faced lie, to claim that the tactical nuclear blast was justified. As Bauer pointed out, the blast itself would remove the evidence either way about military necessity, so let the Allies make what counterclaims they liked. Once the mushroom cloud rose high, the message to neutral nations would be sent, demonstrating Axis power and projecting Axis will.
Plus, as Bauer had just taunted Van Gelder, if this bomb was a war crime, then Van Gelder was an accessory: guilt by association, by being involved. If he were arrested by the Allies he'd be tried and hanged; protestations after the fact would be jeered at by the judges, and sincere denials wouldn't save Van Gelder's neck. Bauer caressed his pistol meaningfully as he said this; he'd made sure that Van Gelder was unarmed. He reminded Van Gelder that cowardice in the face of the enemy — however Bauer chose to interpret cowardice on the spot — was punishable by summary execution. By the hard look in Bauer's eyes, Van Gelder knew that any attempt to interfere, to try to halt the emplacement of the atom bomb, would be sheer suicide, a useless, hopeless gesture.
This is outrageous extortion, and I walked right into the trap… They're forcing me to be one of them, another amoral aggressor. Is this how ter Horst intends to guarantee my lasting loyalty?
