Dark Full of Enemies(66)

He found Graves just unhooking his pack from the block and tackle. He took one of its straps and Graves the other, and together they carried it into the passage. McKay had paced off the distance and stopped one quarter of the way across, about two hundred and twenty feet. Graves looked up and down the passage.

“Here?”

“Here.”

Graves grinned and drew out the thermite tin.

“You remember this lot, sir?”

“Yeah.”

“Seal the doors, if you please.”

McKay took the tin and went to the end of the gallery. At the steel door he took out a wad of thermite, prepared by Graves at the Petersen house, and a match and squashed it into the gap in the jamb, just above the lock. He set the bolt and lit the thermite.

The little wad caught and burned white. Molten steel fizzled and guttered in sun-bright globs onto the floor. The tunnel lit up—McKay shut his eyes. He had not seen real light for days. Yellow metal coursed in runnels down the jamb, cooling as it went. A minute later, and only the lock still glowed. The rest of the door stood smoking, fused shut.

“I’ll be damned,” McKay said.

He set another pinch of thermite in the jamb above the lower hinge, set it aflame, and left.

“Bally good stuff, right?” Graves said as he squeezed past in the gallery.

McKay grinned. “Outstanding.”

He climbed to the top gallery and crossed the length of the dam again. He opened the far door carefully, listening again, then shut the door, locked it, and sealed it with the thermite. When he had returned to their side of the dam, he sealed that door.

He looked down the well to the darkness at the bottom, far below, beneath the waterline. He took a breath and started climbing.

The sound of the dam deepened the farther he descended. Below the inspection gallery frost grew like fur on the rungs, and he slowed so he would not fall. Here some of the lights had burned out, more and more of them the lower he climbed. He had never felt claustrophobic, even aboard the Viking, but the sound of the dam, the darkness of it, the weight of both—he hated this place. He hoped that, when Graves’s explosives went off, he could see it.

He reached the bottom. The steel door here stood open. He moved to go through it and slipped on the icy concrete. He swore and caught himself, turned on his flashlight, and moved slowly into the lower gallery.

He understood why the dam’s personnel may have shirked the lowest gallery. It had no lights, and the air was so chilled and damp that his fingers began aching even inside his gloves. He knew the bottommost gallery of the dam could be no longer than the others, but it seemed to stretch ahead and to the left forever. He realized with surprise that he was fretting about the dark, like a child. He swore at himself. He just needed sleep. He quickened his step, slipping occasionally on the ice and not caring, and forced himself to look nowhere but into the splayed moonshape of his beam.

He reached the opposite door and did not bother trying the handle. He set thermite at the lock and both hinges and left as the white heat burned ice to steam for a yard in every direction around the door.

He came back into the well and looked up. Far above he saw the tiny point where Stallings waited. Somewhere between was Graves. He took a breath and tried to close the door. It would not move. He shone his flashlight on the hinges and saw thick ice, chipped at it with his ka-bar and tried the door again. It moved not an inch. He braced as much as he could against the floor and pushed. Nothing. He stepped back and looked at it. The doorframe seemed to be warped, but why the door would not close he could not determine. This door, in the dark and cold, had something it wanted to let out. It stood there open, like the mouth that breathed out the dam’s awful sound. He decided not to bother.

He climbed back up to Graves. He had just reached the landing and passed through the gallery door when he heard gunfire.





Petersen had lurked behind the barracks for five minutes, then took up a patrol of his own. He moved behind the buildings and around to the corner where they had entered the complex, and watched the dam. After a few minutes, he went back the way he came, crossed the lane between the barracks and swept each alley as he passed. Nothing happened for some time.

He went to cross the lane again when one of the barrack doors opened. He stepped back and pressed himself against the side of the building. He felt something beneath his feet and looked—he stood on the sailor Graves had killed earlier. After a moment, he stepped off of him and looked back toward the barracks.

At first no one appeared. He heard low voices, and then “Piss off.” The door slammed and a man in a navy coat and boat cap stepped out into the lane. He took a moment to light a smoke, waved out the match, and walked down the lane to the latrine.

Petersen would have to kill this man. He had come from the same barracks as the earlier sailor, and if he did not see the first sailor, now dead, in the latrine, he would become suspicious. Petersen thought about how to do it, and moved around the back of the building into the alley between it and the next. He waited.

The sailor returned at a quicker pace than he had left—Petersen listened to his tread. When the footsteps reached the alley, Petersen wheeled out in front of the man. The man’s cigarette dropped from his lips and he drew his hands uselessly from his pockets. Petersen swung his Sten and struck him in the temple with the sharp angle of the metal stock. The man reeled back and sat in the snow. Petersen swung again. The man raised his hand and Petersen hit it. He fell back onto one elbow. He looked up at the buildings around him and opened his mouth to call out. Petersen pointed without aiming at the man’s body and fired, tchk-tchk-tchk-tchk. An invisible first rapped the man’s chest and he sagged.