Dark Full of Enemies(44)



“We will make land here, under cover, and proceed on foot,” Petersen said.

McKay turned and stopped. Petersen carried a weapon, a silenced Sten submachine gun.

“Outstanding,” McKay said.

“My crew will fish—actually fish, as we did briefly in Lofoten before picking you up. You understand.”

“Of course.”

“They will not be joining us.”

“That’s all right. Scouting parties are better small.”

Petersen slung his Sten and stuck a thumb in his pistol belt. McKay noted the German-issue holster and magazine pouch. Probably a Walther. Petersen eyed him for a moment.

“You have done this before?”

McKay smiled. “Not exactly like this, but yes. Scouting.”

“In the Army, before you became a commando?”

“Actually, I’m a Marine.” Petersen’s eyes narrowed. A fraction. “Shipborne assault troops. Technically part of the Navy. But only technically.”

“I know what a Marine is.”

“Sorry,” McKay said. “But yes—I have some scouting experience against the Japs.”

“Hm. We will disembark shortly.”

Petersen turned and climbed into the wheelhouse. McKay watched him go. He could not figure the man out. He looked at Ollila.

Ollila had been smoking and now ground out his cigarette on the gunwale. He flicked the butt overboard. “I wondered about your uniform,” he said.

“Everybody does.”

“I have heard about your Marines.”

“Yeah?”

“A department of the Navy,” Ollila said. “The men’s department.”

This was the last thing McKay had expected here, now, from the inscrutable Finn—a joke. It was an old one, but he could not help himself and began to laugh. He clapped a hand over his mouth and stifled it. He could not start laughing now. Just then, the engine shut off and the Hardr?de settled into a glide across the haven.





The boat touched shore just a moment, just long enough for McKay, Ollila, and Petersen to leap overboard into the snow, and then three crewmen with gaff hooks punted them away and the boat drifted into the black.

McKay checked his timepiece—0010. The Hardr?de would check for them at this spot every two hours until 0800, at which point it would return to the Petersen house and await either their return on foot or as corpses in the bed of a German army truck. Either way, if they did not return to the boat, they would be written off.

McKay rose. They stood on a steep snow-covered bank. The fjord lapped at bare rock. He looked uphill and, faint and far, caught the dam’s electric glow above the hills. He looked at Petersen and nodded, tapped him on the shoulder. Petersen walked.

They moved along the shore at first. Petersen seemed to be looking for something, taking his bearings on the dark terrain. After a while he held up a hand and they stopped. Petersen pointed ahead of them into the darkness and McKay looked. They neared the bottom of a narrow cove and ahead of them lay a short wharf and a guardhouse. A small boat moored to the pilings—what looked to McKay like a johnboat with an outboard motor—nodded on the waves.

McKay raised his binoculars and looked at the guardhouse. He could see no one, but the entrance was on the other side. He lowered the glasses and moved ahead of Petersen.

They moved at a careful trot along the shore and reached the wharf. McKay held up a hand to Ollila and Petersen—Stay here—and moved up the path from the wharf to the guardhouse. There were no footprints, not even the muted, snow-softened shapes of old prints. He stopped beside the little building and listened. Nothing. He raised the pistol and rounded the front of the shack. There was no one there.

He waved the others forward to him and tapped Petersen on the shoulder again, and they moved on.

Petersen led them away from the wharf, path, and guardhouse into the sloping foot of the fjord-side mountains. They moved among stunted trees, scrub pines frosted like storebought Christmas greenery. The snow yielded silently to their boots—no crunching, cracking, or, thank God, squeaking from this fresh powder—but the ground underneath was hard and scrabbly. McKay guessed at a layer of loose rock and scree.

The night sky glowed here, too. McKay guessed that the dam’s support camp must lie nearby, but had no idea how close it may be. He found out when they moved uphill.

This proved heavier going, and he had to resist grabbing at the trees for support. A moving tree on the hillside could have drawn unwanted attention—even a bored German guard hoping to poach a deer for extra meat would have doomed them. At last, they reached a shelf and moved along it, and McKay saw below them the German headquarters camp.

It looked at first like a small rail station. It did have a small station house and platform along the railway, but the platform had no roof and he saw nothing else that might indicate an important stop along a rail line. He thought of the smaller stations along the route running through his county, the ones that fed small-time farmers into the towns and brought goods from the towns to the farmers. This station did nothing but consume—supplies arrived for the Germans, and Germans left on leave.

They stopped and McKay glassed the camp proper. Behind the station stood a few buildings, all neatly lain down on a grid and surrounded by barbed wire. Watchtowers stood at opposite corners, but no searchlights swept the perimeter. Four long buildings were certainly barracks. A fifth looked like one as well, possibly for officers. He wondered how many officers were necessary for this assignment. Along the back of the camp sat a long, low building with bay doors. McKay guessed that it was a motor pool. A larger, squat building beside the rail station looked like the headquarters, and here McKay saw the first German of that long night—a guard standing beside a striped boom, guarding the entrance to the camp. McKay watched him a moment. Even from a distance—McKay gauged it at half a mile or so—the man looked miserable. He stamped his feet, but barely, trying to maintain a semblance of discipline and indifference to the cold.

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