Dark Full of Enemies(75)

McKay listened as the hammering of the engine diminished beneath the roar.

“Son of a bitch.”

Another flash, and the rail bridge stood brilliantly cast in silhouette for one moment, then the night boomed again and hundreds of feet of bursting rivets and twisting steel added a chorus of howls to the noise.

“Bally good work,” Graves shouted to the Norwegians, who cheered.

“Dammit, come on,” McKay said. He ignored the pain in his leg and compensated for it, hauled up under Stallings’s armpits with Magnus gripping his legs. They carried him bodily into the cabin and laid him on the floor, and Magnus returned to the deck. McKay dropped beside Stallings as the others crowded in from the cold.

“Graves?”

“Working on it, Captain.” Graves dug for his medical gear and looked at McKay. “You might look at your leg while I work at this lot.”

Graves bent to his work and got the Norwegians to help him—they applied pressure, opened bandages, spread sulfa powder. McKay leaned back against the wall and pulled his knee up to himself. The pain made him wince. He saw a hole in the back of his right pants leg, ragged and bloodied at the edges, and no second hole. McKay pulled the leg of his pants up out of his boot and thickening blood dribbled out. His whole calf was streaked with it, all the way up to a gash a few inches below the knee. He shook his head and got to his feet.

“I’m all right. I’ll be back. Take care of Grove.”

McKay left the cabin and limped across the deck. The water roared somewhere behind them. The sound grew in strength as it drew nearer. He moved around to the ladder and climbed up, held the wounded leg up free of the ladder like a hobbled dog and put the effort into his arms and back. He knocked on the door and Petersen opened it.

“The water.”

“I have the engine at full speed, Captain,” J?rgen said.

“Which is?”

Petersen answered. “About fifteen knots.”

McKay looked behind them into the darkness. A pale line had formed on the surface of the fjord far back in the dark and rippled and fussed over itself as it piled forward into the open.

“Y’all sail in a lot of storms before?”

J?rgen only looked at him and grinned.

McKay went below and grabbed the handle of the cabin door when the waters reached them.

The boat lurched up from underneath him and McKay fell flat on his back. Water crashed across the deck. He choked in it, swallowed the freezing brine, felt himself pressed against the deck and pushed and dragged across its planks. The boat lifted from stern to bow and rocked and yawed in the white surf. The waters on the deck sloshed and he lifted himself out of them. He coughed the water from his throat and the pitching of the boat knocked him down again. He lay still and let the icewater wash over him as the wave passed and they settled on the rushing aftercurrent.

Someone helped him to his feet, and he rubbed his eyes and coughed and thanked him. It was Petersen.

They stood looking at each other on the rocking deck, both blank, both sagging. After a time, McKay said, “Two of your men?”

“We shall see. They are well trained, and smart.”

McKay said nothing.

“One of yours.”

McKay nodded. He admitted, and was surprised at how thick his voice sounded, “I don’t think he’s gonna make it.”

“We are hurrying. It will still take several hours to rendezvous with the submarine.”

“I understand.”

“You are wounded, too, and the Finn.”

“Ollila?”

Petersen nodded. “In the shoulder. I noticed when we brought him aboard.”

McKay limped away to the cabin and stepped inside. The men huddled around Stallings. The copper smell of slaughter filled the room. The two Norwegians sat wrapped in blankets and their jackets lay in a puddle in the corner. Graves felt for Stallings’s pulse, murmured to himself, doublechecked the bindings covering Stallings’s belly. Ollila sat in another corner, tying off a bandage he had applied to himself.

McKay walked over to Ollila and Petersen helped him to sit. “You all right?”

Ollila nodded. “Shrapnel.”

“How bad?”

Ollila gave a dismissive frown. “They can cut it out on the submarine.”

“I might just let them do that myself.” He raised his knee for inspection, then lowered it and nodded toward Stallings. “Him?”

Ollila looked at Stallings, at McKay. He shook his head.





Stallings woke a little later, as they passed the end of Grettisfjord and the wreckage of the dock, the torn and wreckage-littered road and yard of the Petersen house. A wall had caved, a corner of the roof sagged to cover its ruin, but the house still stood in the flood debris like the lone surviving column of a temple. Yet more wreckage had shoaled against the wharf. Beyond, the waters spread and dissipated in Ofotfjord, and did little more than rock the boats at anchor in Narvik a little harder.

McKay sat tying off the bandage he had applied to the wound in his leg. He was about to go through his gear to see what remained to him and the team, when Stallings stirred and spoke.

McKay moved himself across the cabin and sat beside Stallings. He lay pale and wet, wrapped shoulder to groin in gauze and tape. His eyes had opened, his lips moved.

“Grove?” Stallings looked at him. McKay spoke without thinking. “How you doing, Grove?”