Dark Full of Enemies(54)

They were bad chess players, McKay thought, and remembered every game he had ever lost to Keener in the Clemson barracks. They had revealed their purpose, what they were after, and had decided to keep trying to get it anyway.

He understood. There were men further up the ladder than he who worshiped at the altar of special operations. He had known them since before the war, the type of men who had wanted a Marine version of the British Commandos and then used them to plug gaps in the line in a war of attrition. Even Churchill, whom he admired, had spent most of the war flinging tiny groups of specialists against impossible targets, barely inconveniencing the enemy, whittling at them.

Some had found success—he had heard of some, even if many remained secret. And every little bit, every shaving cut away…

“It’s not for nothing,” McKay said.

“Isn’t it?”

“We have to beat them. Can’t beat them without fighting.”

Petersen turned his bread over in his hand, looking idly. “You can fight without us. No one cares about us here.”

Achilles in his tent, McKay thought. “You do.”

Petersen’s hand shook. “That is why I do not want any longer to fight.” On the last word he crushed the last of his loaf. Crumbs sifted through his fingers.

McKay waited a moment. “You going to let the Nazis keep doing this?”

“It is what they do.”

“And mad dogs bite people. You’re not going to put it down?”

“What?”

“Kill it.”

“Someone else will do so.”

“Maybe. But it’s bitten you, your people.”

“You are speaking of revenge.”

“You don’t want it?”

Petersen dropped the lump of bread and rubbed his forehead. He said nothing.

“There are evil people in the world,” McKay said, and left it at that. His head swam. He was not much for philosophy, had avoided it in his medieval work. He thought a moment—of the Canal, of the massed charges on Edson’s Ridge, of a dark full of enemies spilling itself over him and his Marines, what those enemies had done every chance they got. He blinked and felt tired.

Petersen still sat with his head down, silent.

“Revenge or not,” McKay said, “and whether you make it or not, you do the right thing for the ones that will make it. I know better than to think you don’t give a damn about beating the Nazis. I know better. Before I did this, I fought in the Pacific. Islands nobody cared about, places that might as well have not had names. Before that, I came from a place nobody cared about. Stallings too. Back up in the mountains, in the South, the lowest of the low. But that’s where wars are won, by people doing things it doesn’t seem makes a damn but of difference. And who’ll beat them if not us, nobodies fighting and dying in places nobody cares about? You do enough of it, and eventually, well...”

McKay stood. He felt dizzy for a moment, but held steady. His eyes burned. He looked at Petersen, who sat still and silent at the table.

“As soon as my team is ready we’re going for the dam, with you or without you.”

He left the house and closed the door behind him.





In the basement they had almost finished giving the weapons their final cleaning. McKay inspected his Thompson—which Stallings had cleaned, and well—and cleaned his own Hi-Power. He took out the Welrod and cleaned and inspected it, then checked his knives for rust. They all stood prepared, in their uniforms and white snow gear, white woolen toboggans, their thick gloves stuffed into their belts. Ollila already had ragged white burlap wrapped loose around his rifle’s forestock and his ghillie suit rolled and tied at the top of his shoulders.

It was time to plan.

He sketched a map of the dam, the barracks on both sides, the rail bridge, tunnel, and below the ridges flanking the fjord, the headquarters camp for the entire dam complex.

“It’s a good ten miles up the fjord to the dam,” McKay said, “and we’re on the wrong side of the fjord. We landed on the western side for our reconnaissance and I think that’s our best approach.”

“So we’re going?” Stallings said.

McKay looked at him. “Yes, we’re going.”

“The Norwegians gonna help us?”

“Can’t plan on it,” McKay said.

A long silence, and then, “Shit.”

“Can it.” He tried to move on. He tapped the pencil on the map and looked from face to face. Stallings and Graves looked at the map, waiting for his next point. Ollila looked at him. He knew what Petersen’s refusal meant. Whether they succeeded or not, the Viking would depart in less than a day, and they had no ride to the Vestfjorden, not without abandoning their mission altogether. They would be left behind.

McKay moved on before that could occur to the others. He pointed at the western side of the dam, where the concrete command post and main barracks stood. “These are the barracks for the garrison at the dam. There are more at the HQ camp down here, by the railroad tracks.”

“How far off?” Graves said.

“Half a mile, three quarters—uphill.”

Graves raised his eyebrows.

“On the western side, the side we scouted, the side we have to get to, is another set of barracks. New ones. Looks like they house the crew and some of the equipment for an E-boat, docked here—” he struck a tiny rectangle in the fjord below the dam “—covering the water approaches to the dam.”