“I know of him, sir.”
“He’s your combat engineer,” and, with a glance at the Commander, “the one who’ll do your math for you when the time comes to destroy the dam. Impeccable record. From South Africa—tough bastard. Royal Marine. Commando. Wound up with the LRDG in North Africa before he joined the SOE. He’s done a little of everything but he’s an expert with explosives, especially the newer Nobel plastics. You’ll have plenty.”
“Outstanding.” McKay was impressed. Royal Marines, Long Range Desert Group, Special Operations Executive—Graves seemed to have served with all the toughest outfits in the British military and intelligence services, units composed entirely of heroes on the order of Achilles. A man with good service in all three was godlike. “He’s been to Norway before?”
“Yes—his record isn’t all savannah and Sahara, thank God.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Colonel went on from memory, and McKay looked at the second sheet. The man in the photo looked ordinary, even friendly, despite the neutral pose of the dossier portrait. Even in black and white his face showed a healthy flush. He had light, tousled hair and wore American army fatigues. McKay looked at the dossier sheet. The typewritten name at the top read s/sgt ollila, olavi. McKay raised his eyebrows.
“The second is a sniper by trade. Finnish—has a name I can’t pronounce. Came to attention when Uncle Joe invaded Finland a few years ago, which we’re, uh, supposed to forget about now, I guess. Your man was a farmer and tanner with a twenty-year old rifle with iron sights, which he used to kill a hundred and fifty Russians. He said it was easier than hunting deer because deer are smarter than Russians.” McKay laughed. “Oh, and those hundred and fifty kills—all occurred within the span of about two months. He was wounded early in 1940 and spent the rest of the war recovering. Came down with pneumonia in the hospital. He hates the Russians but doesn’t like the way Finland is helping the Nazis, so he’s the man without a country right now. Been everywhere in the last few years. The Major here calls it freelance work. Keener met him while on assignment in Sweden and recruited him. Says he’s the best shot he’s ever seen.”
“Outstanding,” McKay said. He had known Keener in college, and, like Ollila, Keener had recruited him into the OSS straight out of the hospital after Guadalcanal. If Keener praised a man’s marksmanship, it was worth praising.
“His English is passable but not fluent, but he speaks German, Swedish, Russian, and Norwegian, all apparently very well. I figure if you can’t make yourself understood to him in English, you have several fallbacks.”
“Outstanding. And the third man?”
“Again, that’s at your discretion, but he needs to fit the qualifications for which we selected you, Graves, and the Finn, as well as handle radio equipment.”
McKay was surprised. The Major leaned forward.
“Our contacts in the resistance near Narvik lost their radio and need new equipment and someone to train them on it.”
“They lost it?”
They said nothing. The logs broke and settled in the fireplace and the light in the room flared as sparks rattled up the chimney.
“I’m sorry, sir. Did they get caught? The Gestapo? Quisling’s police?”
“That is unclear,” the Colonel said.
“What matters,” the Major said, “is that they need a new radio. The latest equipment, manuals, and training. They need an expert. Given the ranges involved, it can’t be just anyone.”
McKay nodded and said, “Keener. I don’t know a thing about radios. Keener’s the best radio man I know.”
“Unavailable.”
McKay, the Colonel, and the Major looked at the Commander again.
“Unavailable?”
The Commander cleared his throat. “Major Keener is unavailable—on a previous assignment. I’m afraid you must pick another.”
McKay looked at the Colonel and the Major, both of whom looked at objects on the desk. The colonel touched his hated glasses distractedly. McKay waited. They said nothing. Both had evaded his question about the radio, and now this.
“I’m sorry, sir,” McKay said. “Anyone y’all would recommend?”
“We’re spread pretty thin,” the Major said. “We have no one else. The main objective of the assignment is the destruction of Grettisfjord dam—I have a file for you to read here, by the way—and since this aspect of the assignment isn’t much more than delivering a package, you can always choose to take that on yourself. There will be manuals and diagrams for the radios—having a radio expert along is a redundant measure. Just to make sure. If you don’t want to take that on, you’ll have to find someone else. You have contacts in other special operations groups. I’m sure you can think of someone.”
McKay knew just enough about electrical engineering not to trust himself with signals equipment. But someone else? He had only ever worked with Keener on technological problems. Keener had been an expert with radio equipment of all kinds, the wires and dials and vacuum tubes that flummoxed McKay, had been since their days in the engineering courses at Clemson—
McKay thought of someone.
“And if this person doesn’t belong to any special operations unit?”
The Colonel shrugged. “I’ll take care of whatever paperwork you incur.”
“He’s a corporal in the Sixteenth Infantry Regiment,” McKay said. The Major made a note. “Big Red One. I’ll take a jeep from the motor pool and find him.”
“Take a driver,” the Major said, and held up the file on the assignment. “You have a lot of reading to do.”
“I’ll take Lieutenant Heyward with me,” McKay said.
“Heyward?” the Commander said. “That impertinent subaltern we sent to collect the Captain three hours ago?”
Everyone ignored him.
McKay made an effort not to look at the Commander and said, “Heyward has a skill I need—smooth-talking people.”
The Colonel grinned. “Fine.”
The Major, still jotting notes, said, “Check our list of what we’ve already got for you and get any additional requisitions in before you leave here. Better hurry, though.”
“Sir?”
“I’m sorry for the late notice, Captain,” the Colonel said. He did look genuinely sorry, and McKay felt dread overcome his excitement. “You fly north tomorrow.”
2
McKay had ten hours. His flight left at 0600.
He finished his briefing with the Colonel, the Major, and Commander Bagwell, put in his requisitions, changed out of his greens and into utilities, and rode into the darkness and wind-driven sleet with Heyward at the wheel. The 16th Infantry’s camp lay almost three hours away, not far from the southern coast of England, where, come spring, the regiment would board landing craft and repeatedly assault beach and dune and hill until they were ready to do it while Germans bombarded them. McKay shuddered. He had fought through two landings in the Pacific, on palm beaches with hills and forests full of Japanese inland from the strand, and those two were enough for any lifetime.
He used his time and an angle-head flashlight to go through the file the Major had given him. The file was fifty pages thick with information on the dam, the surrounding area, Narvik, its outlying villages, and any intelligence that might prove relevant to the mission, but included little useful detail about the dam—specifications. McKay had to settle for guesses about its size based on the photos he received and his own experience.
Grettisfjord Dam looked much like Tallulah Dam, the one with which McKay was most familiar, an arch dam with floodgates and a concrete deck wide enough for cars. But the Norwegian dam had a more pronounced arch and the water intake for the hydroelectric station appeared to be below the surface of the lake. The intake must be on the same side of the fjord as the hydroelectric plant, the northern side, but McKay had only the rough map of the dam’s environs to go by, no other photographs, and could only guess about the plant. And there was the dam’s size. Tallulah Dam stood 120 feet tall and w
as a little over four-hundred feet wide at the top. Having taken time to look closely at the human figures dotting the handful of photographs in the file, McKay felt even more confident in his initial guess—this dam was at least nine-hundred feet wide, possibly closer to a thousand, and over twice the height of Tallulah Dam. It was a monster.
“It’s a hell of a thing, ain’t it, Captain?”
McKay looked up from the stack of papers in his lap. He clicked off the flashlight. His eyes could use a rest.
“What’s that?”
Heyward gestured through the windshield into the snow. MPs in scarves and heavy brown coats waved and cursed their jeep through a snarl of US Army trucks. Cities of tents, snow gathering half-melted on the roofs, stood on both sides of the road.
“All this,” Heyward said. “I bet Hitler’s sorry he picked a fight with us. Sorry as hell.”
“If he ain’t yet, he deserves the surprise he’s about to get.”
Heyward laughed and slapped the steering wheel.
“This guy,” he said. “Who is he?”
“An old friend. We went to college together, us and Keener.”
Heyward nodded. “You graduate together?”
McKay thought about how to answer and finally said, “No.”
They neared their destination. The Major had said he would phone ahead and have McKay’s man waiting to talk. McKay felt tired again, and nervous. McKay made few friends and held those few close, but when contact fell away they became like strangers again—or more than strangers, so that running into an old friend left him at a greater loss for words than a chat with a grocer or newspaper vendor. Few—and mostly family—were the people he could strike up a conversation with after a long silence. And he had not spoken to Grover Stallings for five years.
Heyward steered the jeep off the duckboard road and stopped in the rutted mud at a gate. Four MPs in armbands and striped helmets hunched together on the porch of a small guardhouse, cupping cigarettes against the wind. One broke reluctantly from the group and approached the jeep and Heyward opened the door to speak. The cold air rushed in and McKay’s tiredness vanished.
The MP waved Heyward through after a short talk and they entered the camp.
The camp lay under blackout conditions—no lighted streets, only slits for headlights on vehicles—but McKay could feel its vastness around him, one camp among many in the terrible strength now gathering in the winter dark. Rows of tents on wide streets disappeared into the black left and right, behind and before him as they drove. The First Infantry Division had already fought in North Africa and Sicily and was only recently arrived in England, among the first of what would surely be millions of men crowding down on the coast, waiting for Ike to give the word. McKay thought again of landing craft, as Heyward pointed through the windshield.
“Jig Company CP. There ya go.”
Heyward parked the jeep outside a Quonset hut with a neatly hand-lettered sign and shut off the engine. McKay squared the stack of papers and handed the file to Heyward.
“Hang onto this.”
“You want me to do the talking, Captain?”
“Yeah. To anybody that wants to give us trouble, anyway.”
Heyward grinned. “All right.”
They stepped out of the jeep into the dark and cold and stopped at the door. They looked at each other. From inside came the muffled sounds of brawling and shouting. Something heavy struck the door and sagged away. McKay and Heyward ran to the door, threw it open, and rushed inside.
Grover Stallings lay facedown on the floor, kicking and heaving under two sergeants and a corporal. Another corporal squatted by the door, rubbing his forehead. A lieutenant braced himself against a nearby desk and stood wiping his brow when Heyward and McKay came in.
“Godalmighty, Hillbilly!” the lieutenant said between breaths. “I’m gonna make goddam sure you get shit-canned for good this time. What the—”
The lieutenant spotted McKay and Heyward and came to attention. He face glistened red and he choked back heaving breaths as he collected himself. His shirttail hung wrinkled over his belt.
McKay felt no surprise at any of this. He looked from the mass of swearing non-coms on the floor to the lieutenant and waved a hand.
“As you were. What’s going on?”
“Sir,” the lieutenant said, and hesitated. McKay saw the man recognize his uniform. Marine utilities were just different enough to confuse Army personnel, too, and there was the OSS shoulder patch. “Sir, I—this—we detained Private Stallings as requested, and caught him attempting to, to abscond just now. Little! Get him out of here!”
A sergeant sat up out of the pile, nodded, and the men dragged Stallings through a door deeper into the Quonset hut. McKay thought, So it’s Private Stallings again, is it?
The lieutenant wiped his brow. “I apologize, Captain—”
“McKay. And no need to apologize, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir. And it’s Roberts, sir. Sir, what’s he done, now? I mean, that son of a bitch has spent a lot of time in the stockade, but we’ve never gotten a call from higher up like this.”
McKay looked at Heyward and a grin passed across Heyward’s face like a memory. He nodded and stepped up to the lieutenant and began his work.
McKay took off his coat and cover and hung them on a hook in the outer office. When he stepped into the larger inner chamber of the hut, the non-coms had just shoved Stallings into a desk chair. The walls were lined with tables and desks, and McKay noted that the one before Stallings held a radio, a typewriter, and a stack of handbooks, manuals, and notepads. McKay stepped forward and the sergeant met him.
“You want us to stick around, sir?”
“No thanks, sergeant,” McKay said. He felt his nervousness, forgotten for a moment, returning. His stomach tightened. “Y’all can wait outside.”
The sergeant nodded to the others and they stepped into the outer office. McKay shut the door, turned toward Stallings, and waited.
Stallings did not immediately look up. He sat slumped in the chair, sweat stains at his neck and armpits, his blond hair disordered. One of the non-coms had punched him—a smear of blood started at the corner of his mouth and reached down to his jaw. At length, he laughed, rubbed his jaw, and looked up. He saw McKay and a carefully prepared smirk died on his face.
“Son of a bitch.”
McKay found himself grinning. “How you doing, Grove?”
It took a moment for Stallings to collect himself. When he had, he made a sweeping gesture.
“Swell.”
“Still your old self, I take it.”
Stallings grinned and drummed his fingers on the desk. “You drinking yet?”
“Nope.”
“See? Don’t nobody change.”
McKay produced a pack of cigarettes and his Ronson and offered them to Stallings. Stallings looked at them a long moment and nodded. McKay handed him a cigarette and lit it for him, then lit one for himself. Stallings said nothing for a moment, watched his own fingers beat a tattoo on the desk as he smoked. “Didn’t figure on seeing you show up.”
“Who were you expecting?”
“Hell, I don’t know. I been in trouble a lot.”
“Like I said—still the same old Grove.” McKay smiled and Stallings laughed.
“You marry that girl? What was her name—”
“Sally.”
“Yeah. You marry her?”
McKay shook his head.
“Shame. Well, don’t everything turn out the way we want. I made sergeant in Sicily, you know.”
“I heard.” Stallings gave him a curious look. McKay said, “Your mama writes me every once in a while. Lets me know how you’re doing.”
Stallings nodded. “Well, you know how that turned out then.”
“Yeah.”
Stallings’s mother had not given McKay details—and McKay doubted she had any of the pertinent ones—but there had been an incident in Sicily involving absence without leave and backtal
k to the company first sergeant and executive officer upon Stallings’s return. McKay could guess the rest himself. The backtalk had probably ended with at least one haymaker. And vino and an Italian brothel were almost certainly involved.
“Chickenshit officers,” Stallings said, and then, “No offense.” McKay laughed, and Stallings held up his sleeve, nodded at the single chevron there. “I just did get bumped back up. CO needs me on his radios. Ain’t nothing Lieutenant Roberts can do about that.”
“He the one that busted you?”
Stallings nodded. “Anyway, I figured if I was getting called into the CP at this time of night to meet some hotshot coming down from London—well… Why are you here, Joe? I mean—Captain, sir. Am I in some kind of trouble?”
“No. Not unless you choose to be.”
“How’s that? And what the hell’s a Marine doing here, anyway? Last I heard, y’all were out zipping Nips on Guadalcanal.”
“That was a while ago.”
“Yeah, well, what happened?”
McKay thought a moment. “I got wounded. Spent a while in the hospital. While I was there I got a visit from Keener.”
Stallings scoffed. “No kidding.” Keener and Stallings had known each other at Clemson, but been on less than friendly terms. Keener had gotten Stallings expelled.
“Nope,” McKay said. “He’d joined a new outfit and was looking for men who spoke German and weren’t afraid of a fight. He figured after what I’d been up to on that island, I was just the ticket. So here I am.”
Stallings regarded him a moment. He seemed unsure of what he was supposed to gather from their talk. “So, what have you been doing?”
“That’s what I’m here to talk to you about. This outfit’s called the Office of Strategic Services. OSS.”
“Yeah, I heard something about it.”
“I got an assignment that needs an expert radio man. I thought of you, but I need an answer tonight. Now.”
“You don’t say.”
“Resistance people somewhere lost their radio, and we need to deliver a new one along with instructions on how to use it.”
Dark Full of Enemies Page 3