Dark Full of Enemies(60)
“Have you been given your orders? The plans?”
The men nodded.
“Sub-lieutenant Petersen has explained the situation to me. The other raid, the reprisals. None of you had to come but you did.” He looked at them all one by one. They understood that he was thanking them.
He nodded, stepped back, and looked at Petersen. Petersen nodded to him, stepped toward his men and raised his Sten to the ceiling in the dim light.
McKay saw a change come over Petersen, like the face of a statue emerging from a caul of snow and ice. The practiced stoniness fell away. His eyes shone in the light, he flushed and grew animated. He raised his Sten to the ceiling in one hand and cried out:
“Alt for Norge!”
The other six men thrust their weapons as high as they could and shouted once with him. “Alt for Norge!”
All for Norway.
They passed Hallensnes in the deep dark and sailed the still and quiet fjord to the dam. After talking to the Norwegians and going over the changes that Petersen would bring to the infiltration, McKay stayed on deck for the whole trip. He watched the dam form from a point of light, fixed above a thin and wobbly pillar stretched down across the waters, and grow from the middle of the point to a distant glowing wall reared high in the surrounding black. When the glow had parted into particular lights strung through the haze, J?rgen steered the Hardr?de to starboard and the wall of the gorge edged forward and between them.
McKay, alone in the dark, breathed deep of the frost air and went to the cabin. He felt awake, had grown more and more awake since boarding the boat. The excitement, the excitement he had felt in the Colonel’s office and boarding the Viking—the excitement of a task to overcome had taken hold. He sucked in the cold air again, savored it, and climbed into the wheelhouse.
J?rgen stood alone at the helm. McKay held out his hand. It took a moment for J?rgen to notice, and when he did he gave a surprised and cursory shake.
“Just in case,” McKay said. “Thank you.”
J?rgen waved a hand at him. “I heard the shout earlier, the war cry. The king’s motto.”
“A fitting motto, for these days.”
“I like the older ones better. S? var det beskikket—So it was appointed. Or ordained, if you like. Or maybe Intet uten Gud.”
“What’s that one?”
“Nothing without God.” J?rgen looked once more at him, gave a flippant salute, and said, “See you again soon, Captain.”
McKay smiled, nodded, and climbed down to the deck.
He knocked on the cabin door and the team came out, followed by the Norwegians. They stood in the dark and quiet and waited. Dark water, dark sky, dark land—it felt to McKay as though they glid across frozen emptiness. Only the kiss of the water on the hull gave him a sense of anything existing outside the boat. After a while, the boat slowed, the engine almost at an idle. McKay strained to see the shore as they approached.
The land appeared from the darkness just off the bow. J?rgen throttled back and wheeled to starboard and dumped the entire team sideways onto the deck. McKay caught himself on the planks and found himself admiring the group’s discipline—eleven men toppled and only one quiet “Oof.” He grinned and stood.
J?rgen gently swung the boat broadside to the shore and the men, upright again, dusted off, jumped in twos and threes to the strand. They slipped and worked to gain purchase on the wet and icy shingle, then hoisted their gear and stepped up into the snow. The snow was the first thing that went wrong.
It crunched.
McKay tested it with his boot, stepping and pressing and stepping again. The soft powder of the reconnaissance had stiffened in the hours since. He tapped Petersen on the shoulder and gestured at the snow, made it crunch and creak with his boot. Petersen nodded. McKay looked at the team assembled up the bank in the snow, looked at the shape of the Hardr?de—barely twenty feet away, but in the dark—and waved to the wheelhouse. All ashore. J?rgen crept the throttle upward and the boat slipped away from shore. Time to march. He gestured again to Petersen—Lead the way.
They followed the shore again and moved inland before the wharf came in sight. Petersen crunched through the snow, as did McKay after him, but by the middle of the single-file column the men marched a well-packed trail. McKay wished Petersen would take more care, but knew it would make no difference, and they could not afford a slow march. They would move into the scrub trees soon. That would mask the sound further.
The ground steepened and they moved among the pines. McKay had not thought something could be darker than night, but here it was—the dark forest, straight from his books of ballads and legends. He shouldered between the snow-dusted branches. He remembered childhood summer nights in the woods at home. Even under the light-sopping pines there would be moonlight or lightning bugs, patches of foxfire, or the ambient glow that seemed to pulse from the gray forest itself. Nothing here—just the growing yellow haze above the ridge ahead, the light of the dam.
They passed through the trees with no other sound than the occasional sough of snow slipping from a cluster of needles. They moved higher. McKay’s breath shortened and he bowed under his pack. He had carried heavier packs, and in worse conditions, but never in such cold. He patted his face once to bring blood back to his cheeks, then pulled his scarf over his nose.
Ahead of him, Petersen reached the narrow shelf above the trees and turned to help him up. McKay nodded him onward, then turned and helped the rest of the group up, one by one until the line of march strung out across the face of the ridge. When he had helped up the last—H?kon, bringing up the rear with his submachine gun—he stood and took a few short breaths and looked below them. The headquarters camp lay in the low ground, a grid of light under the gloom. He watched, in his brief pause, for activity, saw none, and moved on.