Thunder in the Deep cjf-2

by Joe Buff

  "I'm not good at making speeches. Those two volunteered, as soon as I explained things. They knew what would be done to them. I knew the rest of us would have to watch. That got my men fired up, far better than my words could."

  Jeffrey gulped: the self-sacrifice, the ruthlessness. "I'm glad you're on our side, Mr. Salih."

  "Call me Gamal."

  "There are a hundred of you?"

  "Some are massed at key points on the other side of the interlock, waiting to break cover when they hear the shooting reach them. The rest of us are here, or waiting near here. My men all know the only alternative to escape is death, from your bombs or from a German noose. We'll fight hard."

  "How many more of you have firearms?"

  "None so far," Salih said. "We'll get them the time-honored guerrilla way, from enemy dead. Some of you might reach the surface, with our help."

  "All right." It would be a slaughter, but with both A-bombs in place they had nothing to lose. The same idea had come to Jeffrey after crawling through the air duct — to join with the Turks and try to fight their way out together — but Clayton and Salih were way ahead of him.

  Clayton returned. "The device is armed and set." Jeffrey looked at the SEAL team leader with new, heightened admiration.

  "There's one change," Jeffrey said. "On the way out, we work past the test chamber, and grab the model missile."

  "Concur," Clayton said.

  "There's something else," Ilse said. "We should swing by the computer center. Before the A-bombs blow, we steal the drive disks outright."

  Over Jeffrey's helmet earphones came, "Six, One, contact! Contact!" Around a bend there was a crackling burst of assault rifle fire. Jeffrey heard soft sputtering, and whining ricochets, as SEALs One and Nine responded. A grenade went off with a flash and a sharp concussion, and there were screams.

  To sounds of more gunfire, Clayton finished his hasty briefing, telling everyone where to go and what to do and how to stay coordinated. "Keep them guessing! Keep up the pressure! Don't stop for anything till we get out the front door!"

  Each platoon had phase lines, and intermediate objectives, like any infantry assault. Clayton, Montgomery, and Jeffrey each commanded a platoon. Each of the SEALs, and Ilse and Salih, led a squad of Turks.

  Jeffrey's group took off in one direction, Montgomery's in the other. Ilse and Salih stuck with Clayton, the headquarters platoon.

  There was a deafening blast. The overpressure tried to burst Ilse's lungs. Her headphones crackled.

  "Six, Nine. Turnstile down with C4!" That was SEAL Nine calling Clayton. Smoke and concrete dust began to fill the air.

  Another burst of assault rifle fire, then more grenades.

  "Six, Three! Three Platoon advancing toward trucking interlock!" That was Montgomery. Ilse knew his thrust was a feint, but one with a purpose. He had to secure their rear. With most of Clayton's scratch command half-starved Turks, they couldn't afford a fight on two fronts inside the lab.

  Ilse followed Clayton round a bend. She leaped past dead Germans and Turks. Her own Gastarbeiter squad followed in her footsteps, lugging her pack. Some of her Turks stopped to strip dead guards of weapons and ammo, helmets and body armor.

  "Their boots!" Ilse shouted in German — the Turks' sandals were pathetic and it was dead of winter outside. "Take their boots!"

  A spent round ricocheted past her head, then another. She bent lower and charged. She came to the wrecked turnstile; she vaulted over twisted titanium bars. It was raining. What? The sprinklers had gone off. She dashed through a waterfall, a ruptured overhead pipe.

  She glanced back. Three of her Turks had weapons. She waved for them to fan out, to build a base of fire. For all their zeal, their combat skills were rusty; she didn't want one firing into her back.

  "Six, Three," came over her headphones. "Truck interlock jammed as ordered. Mechanism fused with thermite grenades. We'll wreck the service elevator next." Ilse heard and felt a heavy blast. "Elevator destroyed."

  "Three, Six. Casualties?" Ilse caught a glimpse of Clayton, firing on the run. He dropped a guard. Another fired at Ilse, hit one of her Turks. She dropped the other guard. A Gastarbeiter grabbed the fallen Turk's rifle.

  * * *

  "Achtung, achtung," came over the public address. "All staff proceed to safety areas. This is not an exercise."

  "Five, Four," Jeffrey's voice called Ilse. "What was that?"

  "The staff's taking cover!"

  "Where?" Jeffrey shouted.

  "Ten," Ilse yelled. "Where?"

  "The dorm and the wind tunnel area," Salih said. "They're armored." Ilse relayed — Salih, now squad leader Ten, lacked a helmet radio; Ilse's number was Five.

  "Three, Six," Clayton called. "Repeat: casualties?"

  "Six, Three," Montgomery answered. "SEAL Seven is dead. We lost fifteen Turks. Rear secure. Beginning retrograde movement."

  "Copy. What's your body count so far?"

  "Ten enemy dead. All naval infantry. Eight's squad is sweeping the level beneath us now, blocking the stairways with cluster minelets to isolate the level under that."

  "Three, Six. Copy."

  "Six, Nine." Nine was also now on the level below, beneath the rest of Clayton's platoon. Nine led another squad of Turks — Ilse had seen them assaulting down a stairwell.

  "Nine, Six. Go."

  "They keep changing the encryption keys, to lock out captured radios. More naval infantry are mustering outside. I heard something about a freight train coming, with Army helo gunship escort."

  "Nine, Six. Copy," Clayton said. "We're heading for the wind tunnel. Keep pace under us! Work with Eight's squad to cover your flank. Break break. Four, Six — status?"

  "Taking heavy fire," Jeffrey said. "When's that freight train due?"

  "Four, Nine. They said about four zero minutes."

  "Six, Four. Reset your bomb, four zero minutes."

  "What? You said seven five!"

  "That's a direct order, Shaj."

  "I'm in charge of the mission. We'll never get out of here in forty minutes!"

  "Six, Four. With the ROEs, I rule."

  Ilse heard Clayton hesitate. "Four, Six. Roger that, aye, aye. Break break. Nine, Six, you copy?"

  "Six, Nine. Affirmative. I'll reset the bomb." Nine knew the antitamper disarm code.

  "Four, Six. Status?"

  "We're taking heavy fire near the air duct," Jeffrey said. "Unable to advance."

  "Fall back," Clayton said. "When Three Platoon links up, assault the duct again."

  "Copy."

  "Six Platoon," Clayton said, "squads Five and Ten, to the second level now! Follow me!"

  * * *

  Jeffrey spun and fired and spun and ran. He tried to make every shot count, trying to slow down the German pursuit. He was the leader of Four Platoon, and Four Platoon was retreating. Something slammed Jeffrey's flak vest from behind but didn't penetrate, and he dropped to the floor and crawled. Jeffrey fired over his shoulder, then crawled more. A Turk, too slow, had his back stitched. He thumped hard to the concrete; his head bounced, then lay still.

  Everywhere the sprinklers poured. This is like house-to-house combat in a monsoon. Rifle reports echoed harshly in the corridors and stairwells, making it hard to tell who was where. The Turks with German weapons made it worse.

  At least the heavy sprinkler flow held down the smoke and cordite fumes, and suppressed the dust from shattered plaster and concrete. But it couldn't soften the broken glass from smashed fluorescent bulbs — Jeffrey's arms and legs bled. He had no choice: The enemy fire was too intense to duckwalk now.

  Jeffrey's surviving men scrambled back around the cover of a structural load-bearing wall. They clambered over dead Germans, whom they'd killed just moments before. Among the lifeless navy blue, and the bright red blood, Jeffrey saw orange: dead Turks. Desperate for cover as more enemy closed in, Jeffrey gestured for his men to pile the bodies as sandbags. He noticed these dead guards wore bandoliers of beanbag rounds, wit
h taser stun-guns on their belts. The Turks had already grabbed the riot guns and twelve-gauge killing buckshot loads.

  Bullets snapped overhead, or thudded into the bodies. One Turk raised his head too high — his skull exploded. Jeffrey squeezed off three aimed shots with his pistol, using his helmet visor reticle, and hit one guard in the face. The German had pulled the pin on a offensive concussion grenade, but didn't live to throw it. It detonated under his belly. More gore pelted Jeffrey and his men, red and gray and purple. The deep puddles on the concrete floor were tainted with fresh blood.

  Then Jeffrey saw something else among the dead guards' gear.

  * * *

  "Six, Four! Six, Four!" Nothing. More bullets snapped overhead. A Turk raised his shotgun blindly while he sheltered behind fallen friends, and answered with a deafening boom.

  "Six, Four," Jeffrey repeated into his open mike. On his headphones he heard the others breathing, grunting, and cursing, and the sounds of battle in stereo. Up his nose he smelled spent high explosives, acrid bullet propellant, and pungent vomit and urine and shit.

  "Four, Six. Go!" Clayton said at last.

  "These dead guards have radiation detectors!"

  "What?"

  "Six, Five." Ilse's voice sounded, above more firing and more grenades and screams. "I had to show that lady guard my laptop."

  "Team, Six," Jeffrey heard. "They're on to us. Pick up the pace."

  Jeffrey's .50-caliber pistol was empty; the sound suppressor smoked. He loaded another clip. A grenade landed behind him. Its fuse train also smoked. A Turk grabbed the grenade and threw it back in time. Jeffrey ducked, and another searing shock wave overtook him — the engagement ranges were too short for fragmentation grenades. Burning debris pelted Jeffrey's legs, then was extinguished by the constant freezing downpour.

  "Six and Four, Three," Montgomery said through the ringing in Jeffrey's ears. The chief was breathing very hard. "My flanks are linking up with yours." The sounds of German firing increased. Every second that passed, the two A-bombs came closer to detonation.

  Every second that passed, German experts might find the bombs and disarm them — to prevent their going off too soon from blast shock from the firefight, Jeffrey had ordered their antitamper sensitivity set on low. The best way to protect the bombs, and the only way to escape, was to keep up the attack toward the front door of the lab.

  Jeffrey heard a grunt and a gurgle on his radio. Then he heard a Turk shouting in German on the circuit. "Two's dead!" SEAL One translated. "A Gastarbeiter has his helmet." Two Squad was leaderless now. "One, Four," Jeffrey ordered. "Have Two Squad merge with Eight! Then get Two's commo gear to Ten, to Salih!"

  * * *

  "Team, Six," Clayton snapped. "Next assault phase, commence."

  All the remaining lights went out. Battery-powered blackout lanterns switched on from the overheads. The Germans shot them one by one. Jeffrey realized what the guards already knew: The Turks had no way to see in the dark.

  Jeffrey popped an illumination flare. It ignited and he threw it toward his front. It skidded and hissed along the concrete, then burned brightly even in the endless indoor deluge. Weird shadows flickered on the pockmarked walls.

  Jeffrey traded his electric pistol for the Turk's captured twelve-gauge shotgun. He showed the man how to use the backup iron sights on the SpecWar weapon, with their tritium dots for night work. They traded ammo.

  Jeffrey jacked seven fresh shells into the big pump-action magazine under the shotgun's barrel. He looped a bandolier with twenty over his shoulder.

  "Forward!" Jeffrey screamed.

  Jeffrey fired at the ground, halfway between himself and a group of German guards. The deadly pellets bounced hard off the concrete, then tore on at kneecap height — they knocked the Germans down. Some of Jeffrey's men threw grenades. His squad hit the deck. Detonations flashed; the shock through the concrete punished Jeffrey's insides.

  SEAL One and his men dashed from around a corner. They poured fire at the guards from enfilade. Four Platoon had reached the air duct. They had to get through the air duct, or Montgomery's push through the interlock, to the other half of the lab, was doomed.

  Another naval infantryman stuck an assault rifle out of the duct and sprayed Squad One. Two Turks fell, bellowing in pain, mortally wounded. SEAL One and his surviving squad returned the fire. The German's corpse dangled from the air duct.

  "One, cover me!" Jeffrey shouted. Jeffrey grabbed an aluminum step stool, twisted and riddled from bullets and blast. Two of his Turks helped him toward the air duct. Jeffrey aimed his shotgun into the duct and fired and pumped and fired and pumped and fired and pumped. The bullets spewing at him from the other end of the duct subsided for a moment. He shoved the dead dangling German in front him as a shield, vaulted into the duct headfirst, and fired another blast. Two Turks came in right behind him with German assault rifles.

  Jeffrey pushed the corpse-shield ahead. He crawled through slippery blood and gore. The Turks kept pace over both his shoulders, their bodies close, bonding in a way civilians could never know. The Turks kept firing toward the other end of the tunnel. Germans kept firing back. Bullets hit Jeffrey's helmet, his flak vest, with the force of baseball bats. One of the Turks was hit. Jeffrey fired another shell and crawled on; the dead guard he used as a mobile sandbag was being pulped. Another Turk took the place of the one left dead behind Jeffrey, and the threesome pressed on.

  A German guard vaulted into the tunnel from the other end; he too used a dead man as a shield. Two other Germans climbed in behind him, and that threesome advanced. Halfway between them and Jeffrey lay the jammed-open blast door, the constriction giving a modicum of extra cover. Whoever reached it first would have a razor-thin advantage. Jeffrey fired another shell, then another. The Turks on both sides emptied fresh 35-round clips, as the Germans fired back on full auto. Hot, angry hornets spat by in both directions; Jeffrey was struck by spent shell casings, and sand-blasted by concrete chips. His Turks died instantly; the Germans to his front also died.

  The tunnel ahead was clogged. Jeffrey scrambled past the blast door. He tried to push the pile of bodies ahead of him, but they wouldn't budge — the Germans were barricading the air duct from the other side.

  Jeffrey heard something on his headset. He was almost deaf; he turned up the volume.

  "Four, Three! Four, Three!" Montgomery was calling him.

  "Three, Four. Go!"

  "You've got to take the far side of the interlock in enfilade! If my platoon goes through the blast doors unsupported, the interlock's a murder hole!"

  "Three, Four. We're trying!"

  Jeffrey reached to his load-bearing vest, grabbed a handful of C4 and a timer. "Back," he screamed to the new men crawling behind him. "Back!"

  They understood. Jeffrey glanced over his shoulder, watched them pile out of the air duct entrance oh-so-far away, as their comrades beyond the duct mouth yanked them by the feet.

  Jeffrey set the timer and shoved the charge into the jam-up of bodies. He crawled backward fast for all his life.

  Men helped him down and they took cover and the C4 blew.

  Flame and smoke belched from the air duct. More enemy fire belched from the air duct. A Turk aimed his rifle into the air duct. Automatic fire killed him instantly. Another Gastarbeiter took his place. His forearms were shattered at once, and he fell back in paroxysms of pain.

  "Four, Three," Chief Montgomery called. "We're pinned down, taking heavy losses. We need support!"

  CHAPTER 21

  SIMULTANEOUSLY, ON THE LEVEL BELOW

  By the hot, smoky light of illumination flares, Clayton's platoon fought their way toward the entry to the test section. Ilse was their guide, keeping to the rear per orders, shouting directions to Clayton and SEAL Nine. On her headset she could follow the desperate seesaw battle raging on the level above. She heard the shouts and screams and weapon reports over the circuit, and felt the shock of grenades and C4 through the deck and through the air. The c
arpet here on level two was squishy from water and blood, and bodies slumped like tattered sacks of trash.

  Resistance on the second level seemed weaker now. Were the Germans laying a trap somewhere ahead? Did they really know there was an A-bomb ticking, or more than one, or were they just not taking chances? Ilse was glad she'd _thought to hide her case behind a pile of water jugs: The H20 would help block gamma rays and neutrons. Ilse heard Montgomery shouting for reinforcements. Salih offered to take some men and head upstairs, and Clayton said to go.

  Ilse moved closer to Clayton. She passed a badly wounded German writhing on the floor. He was pimply-faced and looked barely seventeen. He kept calling, "Mutti, Mutti." Mommy. Tears streamed from his eyes.

  Ilse shot him through the forehead, under the lip of his helmet.

  Ilse reached the heavy door to the test section. It was locked. Of course. Salih had said the whole area was armored.

  Clayton's men, the Turks, diminished in number but almost all of them armed now, crouched on both sides of the corridor. Two of them at the back, Ilse noticed, held big fire axes they'd broken from emergency-equipment cabinets.

  SEAL Nine fixed lines of sticky detcord to the test section door. He started a timer and everyone pulled back around a corner.

  The air itself seemed to solidify and heave. The door clanged to the deck. The men poured fire through the portal and charged inside.

  Guards returned the fire and something knocked Ilse backward and knocked the wind out of her. She saw the stub of a bullet sticking from her flak vest, smoldering hot. Her breasts hurt. More automatic weapons spoke in both directions, but Ilse's throbbing eardrums barely heard. To one side of the control room a crowd of technicians took cover behind a barricade of desks and consoles, while a squad of naval infantry tried to hold off Clayton's platoon. Two of the guards, crouched behind overturned steel desks, had light machine guns mounted on bipods. They poured an endless stream of bullets at the SEALs and Turks, pinning them down. Through the armored glass of the wind tunnel beckoned the model missile.

  Clayton and SEAL Nine crawled for the inner door to the wind tunnel chamber, below the arc of fire of the bipod MGs. More guards tried to head them off. Ilse saw SEAL Nine clipped in the leg by a bullet. Clayton had one bootie heel shot off.