Dark Full of Enemies(71)

A pair of officers had spent the time since the shooting began dashing back and forth, organizing for a counterattack. He had watched a squad form up in the open, then fired on and brought down three of them, two fatally wounded. The rest ran for cover. The wounded he let crawl away.

The officers put picked riflemen at high points in the camp—above the command post, on the roof of a barracks, on the far side so they had cover. A few dared stand in the open to take occasional potshots. Ollila harried them and shot two, drove the others to cover too often to be useful.

Then he saw a squad run from the cover of the barracks to the far dam entrance, a concrete building like the one on this side. They filed in. After several minutes, they came back out, and Ollila shot two who had grown careless.

Meanwhile the reinforcements had come up, and the Norwegians nearby had fired on them. They had only two automatic weapons between them but they held the Germans off and—judging by the cries he heard—inflicted more damage than he had expected. The fire slackened, and the fight died down with the hollow booms of two German grenades. He looked up from his scope and listened. The Germans were retreating. The Norwegians had beaten them back.

Then he heard the whistle. A pea whistle, high and shrill above every other noise in the daytime night. He turned from the dam and climbed up to the edge of the ridge. He glassed the dark below and saw bodies, some wounded crawling or squirming in their throes. He looked farther, at the headquarters camp. More men had fallen in—fifty, sixty, he could not tell—and then they shut their lights off. He heard the whistle again. The Germans had called up the rest of the garrison.

He looked back at the dam in time to see a few soldiers climb down the far bank and disappear behind the dam. He swore, out loud, the most terrible oath he knew.

He jumped up and ran across the face of the hill. The shreds of his suit flapped around him. He climbed over the ridgeline and ran farther, then crossed back over to a shelf where he could take up a new position. He threw himself down, spread out, steadied his breathing and put his eye to the sight and the sight to the dam. Just then, the cloudcover passed and faraway pinpoint stars came out. The darkness thinned, and Ollila saw.

Behind the dam walking flat-footed on the frozen lake, a German lieutenant led twenty men in white and camouflage. The Panzergrenadiers, the crack new men of the garrison. They moved at a shambling jog, widely dispersed. They had already made it halfway.

He heard submachine gun fire at the dam as he reloaded his rifle. He wanted to start with a full magazine and make all five rounds count. He clapped the bolt shut and found the German lieutenant and fired. His jacket puffed and he staggered against the dam. Ollila raised the rifle a hair—the Germans stood lined up before him, ready for his plunging fire—breathed, and squeezed the trigger. The bullet caught the fourth man in line in the neck. His next shot crumpled a man’s skull. The next struck a man flat in the chest. Ollila saw the breath thumped from his body in a cloud, and the man sat gaping and clutching at himself as Ollila sighted and killed a sergeant.

He reloaded. He kept firing. The Germans had stalled and looked for cover behind the pillars of the floodgates. They began moving ahead one pillar at a time. A few fired wildly upward at him as their comrades worked their way forward. Ollila fired and reloaded, and again. He heard the Hardr?de coming, and reloaded.





McKay heard Ollila firing again and looked up at the cliffs where they stood against the clearing sky. Ollila had shifted to the right. He understood immediately.

“They’re flanking us,” he said. He ran low across the path, past the bodies at the edge of the dam walkway and knelt by the parapet. A few rifle shots hummed well behind him. He checked the Thompson and leaned out. The Germans on the lake had taken cover but were moving steadily forward, leapfrogging from cover to cover. A few took potshots at Ollila but McKay knew the Finn would not be intimidated. He pulled out his binoculars and glassed the Germans on the lake, the command post, just in time to see another squad scramble down the snowy far embankment.

He dashed back to cover, squatted, and glassed the fjord. Out in the black he saw the Hardr?de coming, turning a white wake behind it. He heard the engine banging away at twice its usual tempo.

“J?rgen’s coming,” McKay said. “Grove, you okay to move?”

“Yes, goddammit.”

“All right. Petersen.” Petersen, facing the dam, submachine gun ready, turned his head and looked at him. “Get Stallings down the stairs. Graves and I will cover.”

Petersen nodded.

“All right, go. I’ll follow.”

Stallings looked at him. “What—”

“Go!”

Petersen grabbed Stallings and heaved him to his feet. Stallings swore. McKay turned from them, looked up at the cliffs, at the dam, and ran again to the parapet.

There were more rifle shots, now, and more accurate—the bullets snapped and zinged. He crouched at the edge of the dam and looked around the corner again at the Germans. The point man stood not a hundred feet from him. As McKay looked, the man glanced up—a babyfaced private who squinted ahead into the dim light and then gaped in surprise at seeing the enemy. McKay leaned back and pulled two grenades from the pouch on his belt.

He gripped the first grenade in his entire fist, the spoon in his palm, and pulled the pin. He took a breath, then stood and stepped fully into view of the men on the lake. The young private looked up at him again. The whites of his eyes stood out in the dark like the fishing boat’s wake. McKay put the whole strength of his arm into a baseball throw and ducked back.