Dark Full of Enemies(64)
The sergeant did not respond.
Frühauf’s smile vanished and he jogged to the body. He knelt and his rifle swung around him, in his way. He shrugged it off into the snow and knelt beside the sergeant. Green recruit, McKay thought, with a faint pinch of remorse, and drew his ka-bar.
He killed the private and waved his team forward from the darkness. They came at a jog and crawled through the wire. McKay pointed to Stallings and Petersen and then at the bodies. They lifted and dragged and McKay led them into the lee of the barracks again, where the sergeant and private joined the shatter-faced guard. They laid the bodies end to end by the wall and kicked snow over them, over the bloody patches. McKay looked himself over. He already had blood on his boots—the second guard had apparently coughed blood onto him—and both arms of his jacket, especially after cutting the private’s throat. He wiped the excess off with snow and moved along the side of the barracks. He stopped at the corner, checked the Welrod, and edged around until one eye could see down the lane between the buildings. Beyond, just this side of the dam, stood the entrance to the galleries. The target.
Two guards stood in the lighted lane, smoking. They had slung rifles and spoke in low voices. One chuckled. They stood at their ease, unaware. McKay leaned back and thought.
The guards stood together in the middle of the lane. Six barracks comprised the garrison on this side of the dam, and all stood with their porch lights burning. He could use the alleys between the buildings to move, but he worried that they were too wide to conceal his movements. And the guards stood in the light, in full view of the guards walking the dam.
No chance to practice, McKay thought, and tried to forget about it.
As he thought, one guard thanked the other for the light and started to move off. The other muttered something that caused the first to laugh. McKay peeked around again. The first guard went his way toward the dam. The other remained to finish off his cigarette. McKay looked at Graves and nodded toward the other side of the lane, to the shadow beside the facing barracks. Graves nodded and dashed lightly across the well-packed snow. McKay looked. The guard turned idly, glanced back, and then dropped and ground out the butt in the path. He started toward them.
McKay looked across at Graves. Graves already had his knife out. McKay held up a hand—Wait. The guard hummed to himself as he rounded the corner and ran into McKay.
McKay took him by the throat and squeezed and with his right hand drove his ka-bar into the back of his knee. The man sagged but did not go down. He struggled, put up a fight. McKay kicked at the hamstrung leg and the man dropped onto his back. McKay leaned into the man’s throat and held.
The door of the barracks across the lane opened. McKay looked up—a sailor in a dark blue overcoat staggered out and slammed the door behind him. He had both hands at his throat, holding the upturned collar shut. Hair stuck out from beneath his garrison cap like old straw. A half-awake man on the way to the latrine. Graves got him before he had time to look up and see McKay, reached out from the shadows and dragged him in.
The guard, still alive, had heard and begun kicking, driving his heels into the snow, anything to make noise. The man’s throat fought against McKay’s weight, focused in the curve between thumb and index finger. McKay felt him trying to swallow. He thought of the Gestapo man in Denmark and felt his gorge rise, choked back the nausea and gripped harder. He shifted across the man’s body to make way for his right arm and the man’s eyes found the ka-bar and bugged. McKay drove the knife into him beneath the sternum and twisted. After another minute with his hand pressed down hard on the guard’s throat, and sweat dripping from his chin and nose, he stood. He wiped his face and eyes.
“Christ,” he gasped, and thought, Help me.
He checked the lane again, then walked across to Graves. Petersen and Stallings followed. McKay looked at them—both had paled, but had their jaws set. They would stick with it. He looked closely at Stallings and saw the man, scared shitless, who had nonetheless earned a sergeant’s stripe and Bronze Star in Sicily. Places no one cares about, people no one cares about, he thought, and could not believe that had convinced anyone to fight the Nazis.
He nodded to each of them and they nodded back. He led them along behind the barracks until he could lean around the corner of the last one and see the little concrete shed that housed the stairwell to the guts of the dam.
Ollila watched them movement by movement. He also watched the guards, anticipated McKay’s movements and theirs, readied himself for the moment he would need to move his finger to the trigger and squeeze. As much as he enjoyed the skill of it, of lofting a slug at great range and speed through the soft unyielding air into a small, swift target, and as much as he enjoyed killing Nazis, he dreaded that moment. If the team had not been discovered before, that shot would end their stealth.
Ollila lay still under the ragged fronds of the ghillie suit, wedged in the gap between two snow-covered rocks above the dam. He had a clear line of sight up the barracks lane, up a long sweep of the dam’s curved pathway, and into the command post compound on the opposite side. The view through five hundred yards in the light-yellowed frost was not perfect, but he could see movement and could fire if he had to and ther glare from the dam’s lights would make it hard for the guards below to spot him. He had found a good spot—had noted it even during their reconnaissance and made sure to remember it.
He watched McKay through the sight. He stood watching the guards on the bridge. Ollila moved the crosshairs over them and watched. His intention became clear—he wanted a moment when the nearest guards had their backs turned. He looked at the path from barracks to entrance. McKay had chosen well—the little building itself would hide most of their movement, but he wanted to make sure. Ollila hoped that would not be McKay’s undoing.