by Joe Buff
"Five," Clayton shouted, "use grenades!"
Ilse pulled two concussion grenades from her battle vest and pulled the pins and popped the spoons. She counted to three and threw them over the barricade. They exploded in midair. The MG fire ceased.
Turks charged the crowd of cowering technicians. For a split second the surviving guards were torn between who or what to protect, the staff or the missile. The Turks opened fire on the German technicians mercilessly. The guards cut down some Turks, till Ilse and Clayton killed them, too. A pair of scientists with nothing to lose lunged for the fallen guards' weapons. The pair of Turks with fire axes blocked their path and cut them down. Ilse saw the ax heads rise and fall relentlessly, and red blood sprayed and bullets crackled.
The victims were in uniform. None had tried to surrender.
With a sharp crack SEAL Nine's detcord blew down the door to the test chamber. Ilse dashed inside: It was very warm in here.
She tried to lift the missile. It barely moved. She had to pull her gloved hands back — it was still scorching hot from the test.
"The fire nozzles!" she shouted, pointing at the overhead. She set the master selector knob to "Wasser." Water. Nothing happened.
SEAL Nine popped another illumination flare, and held it against a flame detector head. The water nozzles sprayed a freezing blast; the missile cooled. The Gastarbeiter dashed in and hefted the missile to their shoulders, then ran out like pallbearers with their prize. Seal Nine quickly bandaged his leg wound; it was minor.
Clayton and Ilse covered their rear as they withdrew. Ilse glanced into the corner of the control room. Blood dripped from the walls, and from the overhead. The Turks had left not one scientist alive. Ilse was revolted by the carnage. It was hard to tell where one corpse ended and the next began.
On second thought, Ilse ran and checked the light machine guns. "Light" was relative; these fired 7.62mm .30-caliber — rounds. One of the weapons was smashed, but the other worked. Ilse draped herself with belt after belt of ammo, till she could barely stand. She hefted the weapon and chased the rest of Six Platoon upstairs.
She passed some badly wounded Turks; it tore her guts to know they had to be left behind.
They pleaded for grenades, to try to take a German with them. She gave them what she had.
* * *
Jeffrey heard a strange whirring sound behind and wheeled in panic. He saw a huge pile of sandbags coming at him.
Salih shouted it was him, and Jeffrey realized he drove a heavy forklift. The bags held halite and rock salt.
"For the sidewalks and roads and parking lot," Salih said.
"I think they'll do."
Bullets poured steadily out of the air duct now, in short but vicious bursts. Jeffrey realized the Germans had set up a light machine gun on the other side.
"Six and Three, Five. Six and Three, Five."
"Five, go!"
"Shaj, Chief, there's no way we can make it through the air duct. The Germans have set up a static defense. We'll be cut to pieces."
"Five, Three, if we make a direct assault through the interlock we'll be cut to pieces."
"Maybe not," Jeffrey said while he rigged wads of C4 as booby traps around his side of the air duct. "Salih has something we can use as an armored car."
* * *
Ilse watched Jeffrey and Salih pull up with the forklift. Again she surveyed to the front. Their side of the heavy blast doors gaped open. The doors into the other half of the lab formed a solid obstacle. Bodies of Turks and Germans littered the deck between the sets of blast doors. The walls were marked with bullet impacts and gore, and debris smoldered even with the sprinklers going.
"They've had too much chance to set up on the other side," Montgomery shouted. "Every time we move in and close this side so we can open the other doors a crack, they pour in overwhelming fire."
Behind them, one of Jeffrey's booby traps went off. SEAL One emptied a clip in the direction of the air duct, his weapon puff-puff-puffing as it recoiled heavily. A German assault rifle chattered back, and ricochets zinged past. Another blob of C4 detonated by the air duct.
"Get that forklift in there!" Clayton shouted, pointing to the interlock. "Use the rock salt bags, the bodies, everything! Fortify a line, and then we've got to go for it!" Everybody went to work, building a makeshift slit trench across the space inside the interlock. Everyone took positions, laying out spare ammo clips and grenades and flares.
Salih still drove the forklift, with a good supply of sandbags left on the pallet as a shield. Jeffrey with his twelve-gauge shotgun, and Ilse with her light MG, climbed onto the back of the electric-powered forklift, protected by the sandbags in front. Now the team had armored, mobile, heavy firepower.
Montgomery worked the interlock controls, and the blast doors closed behind them. At the last second he tossed a thermite grenade at the workings on the other side, to isolate the Germans trying to outflank the SEALs through the air duct. One way or another, there'd be no retreating now.
Montgomery pushed the button on the wall to open the other set of blast doors, into the other half of the lab. Nothing happened. "They've locked us out!"
"Try the manual override!" Clayton snapped. "They might not have fused the gears yet!"
Montgomery yanked open the utility hatch built into the wall. He heaved, and undid the linkage for the main hydraulic mechanism. He grabbed the giant hand wheel. SEAL One helped, and they cranked the outer blast doors slowly open.
They took fire at once.
Jeffrey let off five buckshot rounds. Clayton opened fire, and the surviving SEALs, One and Eight and Nine, did, too. Turks also started shooting as they gained good lines of sight. Ilse climbed atop the heavy metal cage that protected the driver's seat of the forklift from falling cargo. She waited… a little longer… a little longer.. She poked her MG over the top of the sandbags on the forklift and held the trigger down. A belt with a hundred rounds worked through her weapon rapidly. Hot spent shell casings flew everywhere, and her barrel smoked. From her vantage point well off the floor she pulverized the guards and furniture to her front. She changed belts.
"Go, go, go!" she screamed. She felt Salih floor the accelerator.
Salih charged. She pressed the trigger again, and swept her flaming muzzle back and forth. Beside her Jeffrey's shotgun boomed and boomed. The rest of Clayton's company maintained a base of fire from the sandbags in the interlock.
The Germans broke and ran. One guard glanced back — it was the woman who'd challenged Ilse before. Ilse cut her in half with MG fire.
* * *
"Achtung, achtung!" came over the public address. "All lab staff evacuate the installation. All lab staff evacuate the installation."
Ilse recognized the voice. It was the head of Internal Security.
Salih's improvised armored car sped down the main corridor on the upper level. Clayton, with SEAL Nine, followed on foot to one side, leading the rest of the team. Jeffrey stayed with the main force on the upper level. Ilse and Montgomery took Three Platoon to the deck below. More Turks emerged from hiding, and joined the fight. Four — Jeffrey's — and Six — Clayton's — Platoons both kept advancing. The Germans kept falling back.
The forklift, with Jeffrey riding shotgun, sped round another corner. In front of them was a second line of German defense. Desks, refrigerators, massive piles of thick tech manuals, formed an impenetrable barrier. There were no stairwells beyond this barricade protecting the main entrance/exit interlock: There was no way to outflank. The Germans opened concentrated fire — their withdrawal had been a trap. Salih and Jeffrey pulled back in the forklift. The sandbags at the front were riddled. Bullets punched through and nicked Salih in the arm and smashed the forklift's battery compartment. On momentum, one-handed, Salih steered around the corner in reverse. He and Jeffrey bailed out. Jeffrey stumbled over yet another dead German guard.
"Six, Five!" Jeffrey shouted. "I see different insignia! We're meeting reinforcements!" More naval infantr
y had come into the lab, to engage the SEALs as forward as possible. Clayton, somewhere to Jeffrey's left, didn't answer. "Six, Five. We can't advance!" Still nothing.
Jeffrey realized the guards were expendable, even if a nuclear demolition killed them all. It was far more important to keep Clayton's team from escaping with the missile and anything from the computer center, and let the remaining lab staff get away.
"Five, Nine," Jeffrey heard. "We're pinned down bad! Lieutenant Clayton's hit!"
CHAPTER 22
SIMULTANEOUSLY, ONE LEVEL BELOW.
The computer center, a dead end in the floor plan, was heavily defended.
"We can't get in without damaging the disk drives!" Ilse said.
"We have to flush the Germans somehow," Montgomery said.
"The fire suppression system for the mainframe. I saw it. It's poison gas!" It worked by blocking oxidation — fires stopped burning, men stopped breathing.
Ilse and Montgomery and SEAL Eight pulled on their dive masks and put their Draeger regulators in their mouths.
A handful of Turks grabbed breather packs from cabinets of fire-fighting gear. The others held back at a safe distance, based on Ilse's instructions.
"Move it!" Montgomery yelled to his assault team. Ilse and the men advanced, firing on the run, mowing down the guards who tried to protect the way into the computer center. SEAL Eight blew in the door with a deftly handled miniature satchel charge.
"Watch it!" Montgomery snapped. "Don't damage the disk drives."
"The emergency handle!" Ilse shouted. "There!" SEAL Eight broke cover and reached for the big red handle for the gas. German fire hit him in the arms and legs. He grunted and clenched his teeth. He lunged again and grabbed the handle. As more bullets pounded into him he pulled the handle hard. An alarm bell sounded and the invisible gas hissed. The guards tried to don their gas masks, but the masks did them no good: They asphyxiated. Other guards broke cover to reach the respirators stored in the computer center for just this reason. Ilse and Montgomery cut them down. The Turks in air packs moved in to mop up. Montgomery checked SEAL Eight. He shook his head.
Ilse ran to the main memory storage units. These were big white cabinets with see-through doors, ranged in a circle so their fiber-optic interconnections would be as short as possible, and processor speed consequently high.
The superdensity disk drives themselves looked like stacks of platters, like old-fashioned records on a record-player changer; each drive wore a big number. Crude, but a way to prevent clandestine pilferage. Near the storage units were spare carrying cases, also numbered, locked inside another see-through cabinet. Montgomery broke open the doors of the floor-to-ceiling units. Alarms sounded immediately.
They had no idea which drives held what. Ilse and Montgomery took them all. They loaded the magnetic drives into the carrying cases.
They and the Turks with respirators lugged them out of the computer center and linked up with the rest of Three Platoon.
Ilse knew this was a desperate measure. The disks were fragile, and not saltwater proof, and unshielded on the surface the magnetic storm might spoil them all. She hoped National Security Agency data experts would be able to decode and reconstruct the key information.
Over her helmet radio she heard that Jeffrey's platoon was halted by another wave of guards, and Lieutenant Clayton was down.
* * *
Jeffrey was in command now, and he'd run out of further options. He finished loading the back of the forklift with six small satchel charges. SEAL One jury-rigged connections in the battery box, to get enough current so the thing could move. The driver was a heavily bandaged Turk volunteer, already shot in a shoulder and one thigh, who knew he'd never make it far in any case.
Jeffrey yanked the igniter cords on the satchel charges together. He prayed the shock wouldn't trigger the A-bombs' antitamper. They had no choice. He fell back to where SEAL Nine was giving first aid to Clayton's pelvic wound.
The Turk driver screamed something and charged the German barricade. The German firing increased, and concussion grenades went off. There was a dreadful detonation, the loudest, hardest one so far.
Jeffrey charged immediately through the smoke. Now he held a German assault rifle in either hand, firing both at once. Ilse worked her light machine gun. Montgomery threw concussion grenades as far ahead as he could.
Surviving Turks charged after them. Others carried the SEALs' packs, much lighter from their heavy use of ammo and explosives. Others brought the model missile, and the computer disks. Two men served as Ilse's ammo bearers now.
The combined satchel charges worked terrible havoc among the latest German position. Furniture and equipment were shattered beyond recognition. The blast broke so many overhead pipes, the sprinkler heads ran dry. Ammo cooked off as wreckage burned. The stench was sickening. Jeffrey's team paused to quickly salvage bullet clips and weapons — they were running dangerously low.
Jeffrey advanced again, firing and reloading constantly. He and Ilse and the rest of the team bled steadily from nicks and cuts: from bullets and broken glass, ricochet fragments, and flying shattered concrete and metal and wood. From the unending unbearable noise of battle they were almost deaf; Jeffrey's eardrums felt persistent pain and throbbing pressure. His rifle barrels were red-hot, and he knew they'd be drooping, making the weapons inaccurate — but at such short range it hardly mattered.
The team came to one last German position, barring the main interlock to the surface. Jeffrey spotted the fat man — the security chief — firing a pistol.
Jeffrey eyed his watch: four minutes till the A-bombs blew. If the interlock was jammed, the SEALs were trapped. If it wasn't jammed, more German reinforcements could come through any moment. Both Jeffrey's rifle clips ran empty. Next to him, SEAL Nine's ran empty.
"Use cold steel!" Jeffrey yelled. "The Germans hate cold steel." He caught Ilse's eye and shook his head, motioning her to save her remaining MG ammo — hitting the armored blast door walls, the heavy-caliber ricochets would go everywhere. Behind a structural column Jeffrey fixed a captured German bayonet to a captured German rifle. He loaded a fresh clip, his last, and chambered a round.
Jeffrey tossed Ilse his other rifle. He watched her fix a bayonet. He heard Montgomery shouting orders to the Gastarbeiter in German; they, too, fixed bayonets. Some Turks grinned.
Jeffrey tossed smoke grenades. Through the smoke he threw illumination flares. Jeffrey cleared his throat. "Charge!"
* * *
Ilse lunged and parried and lunged and stabbed. Her rifle clip was empty; in close-quarters hand-to-hand fighting there was no time to reload. Everywhere around her, men screamed and grunted. She heard rips and thuds and clicks and crunches, as butts and bayonets clashed with each other or hit home. These barely registered on Ilse, as her combat mind focused in a tight tunnel-vision toward the front. Also in her mind she heard a constant scream of fear and panic, her own inner voice, but she had to keep on fighting. Any second she might die in agony. She cringed in naked vulnerability as she worked: The difference between life and death was random chance. She had no time for praying now — God helped those who helped themselves.
The Germans' backs were to the wall, the inner doors of the last interlock. The SEALs' and Turks' backs were to the wall, the A-bombs about to blow.
Behind Ilse flames crackled, and harsh flares hissed. In front of Ilse macabre shadows danced.
Ilse found herself face-to-face with the head of internal security. He realized she was a woman, and aimed his pistol at her head with obvious delight. The hammer clicked on an empty chamber.
Ilse jammed her bayonet way down in his groin, just above the pelvic bone. She dug and lifted and dug and lifted, pinning the man against the inner blast door. His eyes widened and his mouth gaped. She twisted her rifle and worked the muzzle back and forth. Pink foam issued from his mouth, and his face turned white. He began to collapse against Ilse's weapon, shuddering and convulsing. Bright red blood spattered her ca
mmo smock, and boiled against her overheated gun barrel.
She yanked free her rifle and plunged the bayonet into his chest, right at his heart. The weight of his body pulled her weapon down with him. She tried to remove the rifle but the bayonet was jammed, tight in his ribs.
She jumped — Jeffrey was tapping her on the shoulder. "Next phase! We have to get through the blast doors now.»
Ilse looked around in shock. The Germans all were dead. SEALs and Turks worked over the latest bodies, reammunitioning.
A Turk ran up to the corpse of the security head, whom Ilse had left where he fell. The Turk gave back her light MG — she was still swathed in belts of ammo for it, though the belts were swathed in blood. Ilse stood under a broken water pipe to clean her gear. With a fire ax the Turk cut open the fat man's chest with a nauseating crunch, and freed the assault rifle. He grabbed it with a smile. A comrade tossed him a loaded clip. ARBOR, and the martyred Gastarbeiter, were avenged.
* * *
Again the surviving company squeezed into the space between the inner and outer blast doors, missile and computer drives and all. This time there was no time to lay out sandbags, and they had no idea what forces they'd face on the surface. Ilse lay flat behind her bipod-mounted machine gun. Montgomery opened the outer door a crack.
Cold air blew in. No snow There was a blinding flash and a deafening crack as something impacted hard against the outside of the blast door.
"They've got an armored car!" Montgomery shouted — "a real one."
SEAL One retrieved his pack and pulled out two small shoulder-mounted antitank weapons.
"Watch out!" Montgomery said. "These have a back-blast!" Everyone scrambled aside. Ilse waited to be roasted alive by flame from the bazooka shells. Montgomery fired through the narrow space between the halves of the blast door. There was a roaring woosh, then a flaming blast outside.
