Dark Full of Enemies(22)
“Sir.”
“We need to consult specifically about that. But generally speaking, what I plan to do is move in with all our explosives, plant them at a point somewhere in the inspection gallery—about halfway down the dam, where the concrete isn’t too thick but where we can still hope to do permanent damage—and detonate them with a timer.”
Graves thrust out his chin and nodded. “Damned good, sir.”
“Simple, right?” McKay grinned. “Well, that part is. It’s the Germans at the dam that complicate matters.”
Stallings and Graves chuckled. Ollila nodded.
“Unfortunately,” McKay paused to work over the wording, to choose with precision, “we’ve embarked with limited intelligence, especially regarding the resistance we’re likely to encounter. What we do know is this.”
He took his first sketch, the simple schematic of the gorge and dam, and added a handful of boxes to the lefthand side of the gorge, a large one near the dam and four smaller ones beside it. He sketched in two more on the right and slid the paper to the center of the table.
“We’re not sure how many there are, but there is a German garrison. Some of the higher ups seemed to think it’d be guarded by old men and Russian POWs in German uniforms, but we should plan for the worst. Based on the photos I’ve seen, their HQ and barracks are here, on the north side of the dam, but there are a few buildings on the south side, too.”
“More barracks?” Graves said.
“Possibly. Could be storage. Could be a mess hall. No way to know given the quality of our intelligence.”
Graves gave Ollila an unsure look, and McKay raged at himself for a moment. He continued before they had too long to ponder what he meant by the quality of their intel. “At any rate, our plans for the infiltration, attack, and escape will all depend on what we find out when we arrive. Our Norwegian contacts will have a better idea of the dam’s guard and the ways in and out than we can get from photos. And how we assault the complex will depend on how many men the Norwegians have at their disposal.”
“Very good, sir,” Graves said.
“Now, Graves and Ollila, y’all have done this kind of thing before, but I want to go over something for Stallings, here.”
Stallings laughed. “Go to hell.”
McKay grinned, waved a hand at him, and looked at the table. “We have no hope of overcoming a German garrison, not by direct assault. What we have on our side are stealth, surprise, and speed. We move up on them, catch them unawares. By the time they realize—if they realize—what’s going on, the balance has already tipped in our favor. The trick is preventing them from realizing that until the last possible moment. From that point on, during any given mission, we have about thirty minutes to get out before we’ve lost the initiative and are killed. Or worse.”
Stallings had stopped laughing. “Got it.”
“Focus on the task, move quickly and silently,” McKay said. “Until then, rest up, rehearse the plan—as good as we’ve got it, anyway—and maintain your weapons.”
McKay went over his weapons a few hours later. He had the storage area to himself as long as he needed it. He had made it clear to Hopper that they carried classified material and that his men and their equipment were sacrosanct—the only case in which they could be interrupted was enemy contact. Hopper would relay the message to Treat. McKay would be polite. He had met enough rank-pullers before to know how unpleasant they could be, and he wanted to avoid conflict.
He cleaned and oiled the Thompson first, brought the weapon from the ready to his shoulder several times, somehow comforted by the familiar motion, and put it away in its case. Next was his Browning. He had strapped it on that morning at Lunna House—Commander Treat had given the pistol belt a glare or two on McKay’s trips through the control room—and would wear it until he was safely back in England, if that day came. He removed it from the leather holster, stripped and cleaned it, and, when he had reassembled it and thumbed on the safety, returned it to the holster. His knives, the Fairbairn-Sykes commando dagger and his Marine ka-bar, he wiped down, checking for rust, and whetted aimlessly for a few minutes before packing them away.
The last lay in a black Bakelite case. He opened the top like a jeweler presenting something fine to a nervous young customer. Inside on the velvet padding rested not a selection of rings, but a pistol.
McKay had fought hard in many places and killed enemies with many things—he had killed at least one person with every weapon he had already checked and cleaned—even down to his bare hands on Guadalcanal. The Marines had trained him to kill and he had done so, many times, with both them and the OSS. But he did not like to strangle.
In Denmark, one of his first assignments, he had been discovered by a Danish informer to the Gestapo. He intercepted the man on a quiet street, two blocks from the police station, and they grappled in an alley. McKay had the Browning under his armpit but could not risk the noise of the shot or even releasing his grip to draw the weapon, and he had no knife. He strangled the man with his own necktie, an imitation silk tie with paisleys, a pattern he knew intimately, stitch by stitch, before he released the man and let him sag onto the ground. It had taken twelve minutes.
When he returned to England he had asked the Major for a silenced pistol. A few days later, just in time for his next trip abroad, the Major had brought to him the Bakelite box. Inside lay the Welrod.