by Joe Buff
"Six, Five!" Jeffrey shouted. "I see different insignia! We're meeting reinforcements!" More naval infantry had come into the lab, to engage the SEALs as forward as possible. Clayton, somewhere to Jeffrey's left, didn't answer. "Six, Five. We can't advance!" Still nothing. Jeffrey realized the guards were expendable, even if a nuclear demolition killed them all. It was far more important to keep Clayton's team from escaping with the missile and anything from the computer center, and let the remaining lab staff get away.
"Five, Nine," Jeffrey heard. "We're pinned down bad! Lieutenant Clayton's hit!" SIMULTANEOUSLY, ONE LEVEL BELOW.
The computer center, a dead end in the floor plan, was heavily defended.
"We can't get in without damaging the disk drives!" Ilse said.
"We have to flush the Germans somehow," Montgomery said.
"The fire suppression system for the mainframe. I saw it. It's poison gas!" It worked by blocking oxidation—fires stopped burning, men stopped breathing.
Ilse and Montgomery and SEAL Eight pulled on their dive masks and put their Draeger regulators in their mouths.
A handful of Turks grabbed breather packs from cabinets of fire-fighting gear. The others held back at a safe distance, based on Ilse's instructions.
"Move it!" Montgomery yelled to his assault team. Ilse and the men advanced, firing on the run, mowing down the guards who tried to protect the way into the computer center. SEAL Eight blew in the door with a deftly handled miniature satchel charge.
"Watch it!" Montgomery snapped. "Don't damage the disk drives."
"The emergency handle!" Ilse shouted. "There!" SEAL Eight broke cover and reached for the big red handle for the gas. German fire hit him in the arms and legs. He grunted and clenched his teeth. He lunged again and grabbed the handle. As more bullets pounded into him he pulled the handle hard. An alarm bell sounded and the invisible gas hissed. The guards tried to don their gas masks, but the masks did them no good: They asphyxiated. Other guards broke cover to reach the respirators stored in the computer center for just this reason. Ilse and Montgomery cut them down. The Turks in air packs moved in to mop up. Montgomery checked SEAL Eight. He shook his head.
Ilse ran to the main memory storage units. These were big white cabinets with seethrough doors, ranged in a circle so their fiber-optic interconnections would be as short as possible, and processor speed consequently high.
The superdensity disk drives themselves looked like stacks of platters, like old-fashioned records on a record-player changer; each drive wore a big number. Crude, but a way to prevent clandestine pilferage. Near the storage units were spare carrying cases, also numbered, locked inside another see-through cabinet. Montgomery broke open the doors of the floor-to-ceiling units. Alarms sounded immediately.
They had no idea which drives held what. Ilse and Montgomery took them all. They loaded the magnetic drives into the carrying cases.
They and the Turks with respirators lugged them out of the computer center and linked up with the rest of Three Platoon.
Ilse knew this was a desperate measure.' The disks were fragile, and not saltwater proof, and unshielded on the surface the magnetic storm might spoil them all. She hoped National Security Agency data experts would be able to decode and reconstruct the key information.
Over her helmet radio she heard that Jeffrey's platoon was halted by another wave of guards, and Lieutenant Clayton was down.
Jeffrey was in command now, and he'd run out of further options. He finished loading the back of the forklift with six small satchel charges. SEAL One jury-rigged connections in the battery box, to get enough current so the thing could move. The driver was a heavily bandaged Turk volunteer, already shot in a shoulder and one thigh, who knew he'd never make it far in any case.
Jeffrey yanked the igniter cords on the satchel charges together. He prayed the shock wouldn't trigger the A-bombs' antitamper. They had no choice. He fell back to where SEAL Nine was giving first aid to Clayton's pelvic wound.
The Turk driver screamed something and charged the German barricade. The German firing increased, and concussion grenades went off. There was a dreadful detonation, the loudest, hardest one so far.
Jeffrey charged immediately through the smoke. Now he held a German assault rifle in either hand, firing both at once. Ilse worked her light machine gun. Montgomery threw concussion grenades as far ahead as he could.
Surviving Turks charged after them. Others carried the
SEALs' packs, much lighter from their heavy use of ammo and explosives. Others brought the model missile, and the computer disks. Two men served as Ilse's ammo bearers now.
The combined satchel charges worked terrible havoc among the latest German position. Furniture and equipment were shattered beyond recognition. The blast broke so many overhead pipes, the sprinkler heads ran dry. Ammo cooked off as wreckage burned. The stench was sickening. Jeffrey's team paused to quickly salvage bullet clips and weapons—they were running dangerously low.
Jeffrey advanced again, firing and reloading constantly. He and Ilse and the rest of the team bled steadily from nicks and cuts: from bullets and broken glass, ricochet fragments, and flying shattered concrete and metal and wood. From the unending unbearable noise of battle they were almost deaf; Jeffrey's eardrums felt persistent pain and throbbing pressure. His rifle barrels were red-hot, and he knew they'd be drooping, making the weapons inaccurate—but at such short range it hardly mattered. The team came to one last German position, barring the main interlock to the surface. Jeffrey spotted the fat man—the security chief—firing a pistol.
Jeffrey eyed his watch: four minutes till the A-bombs blew. If the interlock was jammed, the SEALs were trapped. If it wasn't jammed, more German reinforcements could come through any moment. Both Jeffrey's rifle clips ran empty. Next to him, SEAL Nine's ran empty.
"Use cold steel!" Jeffrey yelled. "The Germans hate cold steel." He caught Ilse's eye and shook his head, motioning her to save her remaining MG ammo—hitting the armored blast door walls, the heavy-caliber ricochets would go everywhere. Behind a structural column Jeffrey fixed a captured German bayonet to a captured German rifle. He loaded a fresh clip, his last, and chambered a round.
Jeffrey tossed Ilse his other rifle. He watched her fix a bayonet. He heard Montgomery shouting orders to the Gastarbeiter in German; they, too, fixed bayonets. Some Turks grinned.
Jeffrey tossed smoke grenades. Through the smoke he threw illumination flares. Jeffrey cleared his throat. "Charge!"
Ilse lunged and parried and lunged and stabbed. Her rifle clip was empty; in closequarters hand-to-hand fighting there was no time to reload. Everywhere around her, men screamed and grunted. She heard rips and thuds and clicks and crunches, as butts and bayonets clashed with each other or hit home. These barely registered on Ilse, as her combat mind focused in a tight tunnel-vision toward the front. Also in her mind she heard a constant scream of fear and panic, her own inner voice, but she had to keep on fighting. Any second she might die in agony. She cringed in naked vulnerability as she worked: The difference between life and death was random chance. She had no time for praying now—God helped those who helped themselves.
The Germans' backs were to the wall, the inner doors of the last interlock. The SEALs'
and Turks' backs were to the wall, the A-bombs about to blow. Behind Ilse flames crackled, and harsh flares hissed. In front of Ilse macabre shadows danced. Ilse found herself face-to-face with the head of internal security. He realized she was a woman, and aimed his pistol at her head with obvious delight. The hammer clicked on an empty chamber.
Ilse jammed her bayonet way down in his groin, just above the pelvic bone. She dug and lifted and dug and lifted, pinning the man against the inner blast door. His eyes widened and his mouth gaped. She twisted her rifle and worked the muzzle back and forth. Pink foam issued from his mouth, and his face turned white. He began to collapse against Ilse'
s weapon, shuddering and convulsing. Bright red blood spattered her cammo sm
ock, and boiled against her overheated gun barrel.
She yanked free her rifle and plunged the bayonet into his chest, right at his heart. The weight of his body pulled
her weapon down with him. She tried to remove the rifle but the bayonet was jammed, tight in his ribs.
She jumped—Jeffrey was tapping her on the shoulder. "Next phase! We have to get through the blast doors now .»
Ilse looked around in shock. The Germans all were dead. SEALs and Turks worked over the latest bodies, reammunitioning.
A Turk ran up to the corpse of the security head, whom Ilse had left where he fell. The Turk gave back her light MG—she was still swathed in belts of ammo for it, though the belts were swathed in blood. Ilse stood under a broken water pipe to clean her gear. With a fire ax the Turk cut open the fat man's chest with a nauseating crunch, and freed the assault rifle. He grabbed it with a smile. A comrade tossed him a loaded clip. ARBOR, and the martyred Gastarbeiter, were avenged.
Again the surviving company squeezed into the space between the inner and outer blast doors, missile and computer drives and all. This time there was no time to lay out sandbags, and they had no idea what forces they'd face on the surface. Ilse lay flat behind her bipod-mounted machine gun. Montgomery opened the outer door a crack.
Cold air blew in. No snow There was a blinding flash and a deafening crack as something impacted hard against the outside of the blast door.
"They've got an armored car!" Montgomery shouted—"a real one." SEAL One retrieved his pack and pulled out two small shoulder-mounted antitank weapons.
"Watch out!" Montgomery said. "These have a back-blast!" Everyone scrambled aside. Ilse waited to be roasted alive by flame from the bazooka shells. Montgomery fired through the narrow space between the halves of the blast door. There was a roaring woosh, then a flaming blast outside.
The interlocking space was filled with plastic particles, not flaming gas—the recoilless antitank weapon was meant for use in confined space after all. The armored car was in flames—the shaped charge warhead burned through its thin armor. Its 75mm ammo began to cook off. The whole vehicle jumped and shivered, then the turret blew sky high. SEAL Nine opened the blast door wider and Ilse and the others charged. The air was crisp but still. The ground was covered with four or five inches of snow. The sky was clear and bright. Ilse lifted her night-vision visors.
Above her, powered by the solar storm, a brilliant aurora flickered and pulsated, dancing sheets in evanescent red and green and blue, forming arcs and curtains and long converging lines. From her left, tracer rounds arced in the SEALs' direction. From her right she heard another heavy motor, another armored car. She-saw the sparkle of its laser range-finder. SEAL One fired the other antitank rocket, but he missed. The armored car fired, and a high-explosive shell tore up the dirt—its shock wave made the aurora seem to ripple. Turks rose and charged the armored car from opposite directions, while its gunner hurried to reload. The commander stuck his head out, and reached for the top-mounted machine gun. Ilse cut him down; his body draped the top hatch. The armored car's hull-mounted machine gun opened up. One Turk lived to reach its engine deck. His satchel charge exploded. The armored car exploded. Jeffrey led his people instinctively to the right, away from the heavy machine guns and toward the bay, the water, a SEAL's best refuge. He knew his group was in the installation's parking lot. In the distance, by the auroral lights, Jeffrey saw people piling into buses. Some buses were already further off, on the road to Greifswald—surviving lab staff, rushing to safety. They were out of range of his weapons. SEAL Nine had said there was supposed to be a freight train.
Jeffrey knew from intel that many westbound trains here were laden with explosive ordnance, manufactured in occupied Poland. Helo gunships escorted the trains to protect them from local partisans. This train wasn't on any known schedule, but the enemy must'
ve seen the magnetic storm as a chance to sneak one through. Most trains used special radiophones that propagate along the rails. But now there'd be huge DC voltages coursing through, and the engineer was probably out of touch.
The German heavy machine guns on the left fired more bursts of tracer. In the parking lot, the SEALs and Turks tried to use the remaining vehicles for cover—their owners must have been killed, or told to get on a bus. Mercedeses and Porsches in the reserved section jumped and sagged as 12.7mm heavy MG rounds shredded their tires. Their windshields dissolved in greenish clouds of fragmented safety glass. Bullets clicked through sheet metal and clanged through engine blocks. Gas tanks blew, and liquid fire poured along the ground.
Jeffrey saw a neat row of BMW motorcycles, in gaudy colors. Tracers stitched them all, seeking out a running squad of Turks. Several men were hit. The 'cycles toppled like dominoes, then their gas tanks cooked off one by one, ignited by the heavy fire. The dead armored cars continued to burn merrily, throwing fireworks of their own into the air. Rubber, fuel, ammo, bodies, all gave off thick black smoke. Through the stinking fumes red tracers probed and pierced, sweeping back and forth, long killing bursts. Here on the Ryck River's floodplain, the land was flat; Jeffrey and the others were pinned down. They were all going to die, here in this parking lot.
Where the hell was that freight train? Had its helo gunship escorts spotted the action in the parking lot, and flagged the engineer down?
In the distance, from due north, Jeffrey saw a sharp flash. Instantly he heard a roaring sound, and a high explosive
shell hit the far end of the tot. Four thousand yards away, atop the cliff that overlooked a cove, the Kooser See, a main battle tank was firing at them. Another flash, another tearing roar, another shell—this time it hit much closer. Jeffrey knew Leopard III's had 120mm cannon, almost as big as a modern cruiser's five-inch gun.
Where the hell was that train?
Another flash, due east this time, and another big shell blew the burning motorcycles to fragments. There was another tank, at the edge of the cliff across the Danische Wiek. Jeffrey's team was surrounded, cut off on low ground.
In the distance Jeffrey heard a train's air horn, and the growl of mighty diesel locomotives. Finally. Then he heard the beating of helo rotor blades. He looked at his watch—the A-bombs should have blown already! Had they been disarmed by German nuclear-munitions disposal experts? How good were Clayton's backup antisabotage devices?
The tank on the Kooser See cliff fired again. Wounded Turks writhed and screamed. The tank across the Danische fired again. It almost hit the model missile. The diesel growl got deeper and louder. No! The train was going faster. They were rushing it on through, to escape this local threat. Once it passed the lab, the SEAL team's situation would be hopeless.
In a burst of anger and resentment, Jeffrey concluded the Joint Chiefs knew all along this raid would be a one-. way mission. We had to try, I guess. He thought of the SEALS, the Gastarbeiter, him and Ilse, all sacrificed on the altar of military necessity. Was it worth it?
Suddenly the whole world jumped, and there was an ungodly sound like thunder from below: Clayton's nuclear booby-traps had beaten the German experts after all. Atomic earthquake shocks repeated, and the ground began to move.
Ilse knew the soil at Greifswald was sandy, and the water table high. The lab structure actually floated in the soil,
with pilings driven deep for added stability. The shock of the atomic detonations drove down beneath the lab, hit the underlying bedrock, then bounced back, over and over. The frequency hit a natural resonance of the massive structure. The soil around began to ripple in waves, literally liquefying. The shattered asphalt of the parking lot heaved up and down like sea swell.
Jeffrey yelled for everyone to use these temporary hillocks as opportunistic cover, and make their way northeast. Ilse ran and threw herself to the ground. She rose and ran again, past a burning Audi. Its vanity plate said GAUBATZ. As she watched, the plate's enamel burned off from the heat.
In the distance, the train whistle blew again. Then Ilse heard a harsh screeching th
at went on and on: The train was trying to stop. Still more tracer rounds followed the SEALs and Turks. Some of the men carrying the model missile were hit. Others took their places. Still others helped Clayton, who hobbled and bled.
Mother heavy machine gun opened up from a different quarter. Ilse realized it sat on the speedboat pier that Jeffrey was trying to reach. Now they were caught in a terrible crossfire, between the MGs and the tanks.
Ilse rolled onto her back and reloaded in the snow She watched and felt red tracers snap by right above her. She watched veils and rays and streamers in the ionosphere shimmer and play, beckoning to her in eerie silence from a hundred or a thousand kilometers up. She knew they were glowing atmospheric molecules, excited by the massive charges of the solar flare, a record-setting aurora that easily outshone the setting quarter moon. Ilse knew the energies involved in this otherworldly celestial display vastly exceeded all the nuclear weapons ever assembled on earth.
Ilse finished changing belts. She rolled again and fired.
Through a pair of binoculars held to his night-vision visor, Jeffrey could see helicopter gunships peel off from escorting the freight train. He watched the headlight of the train, at the front of a line of ten throbbing diesel locomotives. The boxcars trailed off into the distance, to the east, Poland—there were over a hundred of them. Jeffrey saw that the helos were heading right for him now. Their gunners fired bursts of 30mm cannon shells from their chin-mounted gatling guns, to test the weapons and test the range. Jeffrey had to duck as more machine gun tracers probed in his direction from the land, first from near the road to Greifswald and then from the speedboat pier. White-hot razor-sharp shrapnel whizzed by from different directions, as the tanks kept shelling the parking lot. The earthquake shocks subsided. Jeffrey had a job to do, even if he'd never make it out alive. The lab structure, its massive roof jutting above the ground, seemed intact. He pulled out a handheld radiac. The radiation from the blast appeared to be contained—if there was a bad leak he'd know it, solar flare or not.