Thunder In The Deep (02) (33 page)

Jeffrey's surviving men scrambled back around the cover of a structural load-bearing wall. They clambered over dead Germans, whom they'd killed just moments before. Among the lifeless navy blue, and the bright red blood, Jeffrey saw orange: dead Turks. Desperate for cover as more enemy closed in, Jeffrey gestured for his men to pile the bodies as sandbags. He noticed these dead guards wore bandoliers of beanbag rounds, with taser stun-guns on their belts. The Turks had already grabbed the riot guns and twelve-gauge killing buckshot loads.

Bullets snapped overhead, or thudded into the bodies. One Turk raised his head too high—his skull exploded. Jeffrey squeezed off three aimed shots with his pistol, using his helmet visor reticle, and hit one guard in the face. The German had pulled the pin on a offensive concussion grenade, but didn't live to throw it. It detonated under his belly. More gore pelted Jeffrey and his men, red and gray and purple. The deep puddles on the concrete floor were tainted with fresh blood.

Then Jeffrey saw something else among the dead guards' gear.

"Six, Four! Six, Four!" Nothing. More bullets snapped overhead. A Turk raised his shotgun blindly while he sheltered behind fallen friends, and answered with a deafening boom.

"Six, Four," Jeffrey repeated into his open mike. On his headphones he heard the others breathing, grunting, and cursing, and the sounds of battle in stereo. Up his nose he smelled spent high explosives, acrid bullet propellant, and pungent vomit and urine and shit.

"Four, Six. Go!" Clayton said at last.

"These dead guards have radiation detectors!" "What?"

"Six, Five." Ilse's voice sounded, above more firing and more grenades and screams. "I had to show that lady guard my laptop."

"Team, Six," Jeffrey heard. "They're on to us. Pick up the pace." Jeffrey's .50-caliber pistol was empty; the sound suppressor smoked. He loaded another clip. A grenade landed behind him. Its fuse train also smoked. A Turk grabbed the grenade and threw it back in time. Jeffrey ducked, and another searing shock wave overtook him—the engagement ranges were too short for fragmentation grenades. Burning debris pelted Jeffrey's legs, then was extinguished by the constant freezing downpour.

"Six and Four, Three," Montgomery said through the ringing in Jeffrey's ears. The chief was breathing very hard. "My flanks are linking up with yours." The sounds of German firing increased. Every second that passed, the two A-bombs came closer to detonation.

Every second that passed, German experts might find the bombs and disarm them—to prevent their going off too soon from blast shock from the firefight, Jeffrey had ordered their antitamper sensitivity set on low. The best way to protect the bombs, and the only way to escape, was to keep up the attack toward the front door of the lab. Jeffrey heard a grunt and a gurgle on his radio. Then he heard a Turk shouting in German on the circuit. "Two's dead!" SEAL One translated. "A Gastarbeiter has his helmet." Two Squad was leaderless now. "One, Four," Jeffrey ordered. "Have Two Squad merge with Eight! Then get Two's commo gear to Ten, to Salih!"

"Team, Six," Clayton snapped. "Next assault phase, commence." All the remaining lights went out. Battery-powered blackout lanterns switched on from the overheads. The Germans shot them one by one. Jeffrey realized what the guards already knew: The Turks had no way to see in the dark.

Jeffrey popped an illumination flare. It ignited and he threw it toward his front. It skidded and hissed along the concrete, then burned brightly even in the endless indoor deluge. Weird shadows flickered on the pockmarked walls.

Jeffrey traded his electric pistol for the Turk's captured twelve-gauge shotgun. He showed the man how to use the backup iron sights on the SpecWar weapon, with their tritium dots for night work. They traded ammo.

Jeffrey jacked seven fresh shells into the big pump-action magazine under the shotgun's barrel. He looped a bandolier with twenty over his shoulder.

"Forward!" Jeffrey screamed.

Jeffrey fired at the ground, halfway between himself and a group of German guards. The deadly pellets bounced hard off the concrete, then tore on at kneecap height—they knocked the Germans down. Some of Jeffrey's men threw

grenades. His squad hit the deck. Detonations flashed; the shock through the concrete punished Jeffrey's insides. SEAL One and his men dashed from around a corner. They poured fire at the guards from enfilade. Four Platoon had reached the air duct. They had to get through the air duct, or Montgomery's push through the interlock, to the other half of the lab, was doomed.

Another naval infantryman stuck an assault rifle out of the duct and sprayed Squad One. Two Turks fell, bellowing in pain, mortally wounded. SEAL One and his surviving squad returned the fire. The German's corpse dangled from the air duct.

"One, cover me!" Jeffrey shouted. Jeffrey grabbed an aluminum step stool, twisted and riddled from bullets and blast. Two of his Turks helped him toward the air duct. Jeffrey aimed his shotgun into the duct and fired and pumped and fired and pumped and fired and pumped. The bullets spewing at him from the other end of the duct subsided for a moment. He shoved the dead dangling German in front him as a shield, vaulted into the duct headfirst, and fired another blast. Two Turks came in right behind him with German assault rifles.

Jeffrey pushed the corpse-shield ahead. He crawled through slippery blood and gore. The Turks kept pace over both his shoulders, their bodies close, bonding in a way civilians could never know. The Turks kept firing toward the other end of the tunnel. Germans kept firing back. Bullets hit Jeffrey's helmet, his flak vest, with the force of baseball bats. One of the Turks was hit. Jeffrey fired another shell and crawled on; the dead guard he used as a mobile sandbag was being pulped. Another Turk took the place of the one left dead behind Jeffrey, and the threesome pressed on.

A German guard vaulted into the tunnel from the other end; he too used a dead man as a shield. Two other Germans climbed in behind him, and that threesome advanced. Halfway between them and Jeffrey lay the jammed-open blast door, the constriction giving a modicum of extra

cover. Whoever reached it first would have a razor-thin advantage. Jeffrey fired another shell, then another. The Turks on both sides emptied fresh 35-round clips, as the Germans fired back on full auto. Hot, angry hornets spat by in both directions; Jeffrey was struck by spent shell casings, and sand-blasted by concrete chips. His Turks died instantly; the Germans to his front also died.

The tunnel ahead was clogged. Jeffrey scrambled past the blast door. He tried to push the pile of bodies ahead of him, but they wouldn't budge—the Germans were barricading the air duct from the other side.

Jeffrey heard something on his headset. He was almost deaf; he turned up the volume.

"Four, Three! Four, Three!" Montgomery was calling him.

"Three, Four. Go!"

"You've got to take the far side of the interlock in enfilade! If my platoon goes through the blast doors unsupported, the interlock's a murder hole!"

"Three, Four. We're trying!"

Jeffrey reached to his load-bearing vest, grabbed a handful of C4 and a timer. "Back," he screamed to the new men crawling behind him. "Back!"

They understood. Jeffrey glanced over his shoulder, watched them pile out of the air duct entrance oh-so-far away, as their comrades beyond the duct mouth yanked them by the feet.

Jeffrey set the timer and shoved the charge into the jam-up of bodies. He crawled backward fast for all his life.

Men helped him down and they took cover and the C4 blew.

Flame and smoke belched from the air duct. More enemy fire belched from the air duct. A Turk aimed his rifle into the air duct. Automatic fire killed him instantly. Another Gastarbeiter took his place. His forearms were shattered at once, and he fell back in paroxysms of pain.

"Four, Three," Chief Montgomery called. "We're pinned down, taking heavy losses. We need support!"

SIMULTANEOUSLY,

ON THE LEVEL BELOW.

By the hot, smoky light of illumination flares, Clayton's platoon fought their way toward the entry to the test section. Ilse was their guide, keeping to the rear per orders, shouting directions to Clayton and SEAL Nine. On her headset she could follow the desperate seesaw battle raging on the level above. She heard the shouts and screams and weapon reports over the circuit, and felt the shock of grenades and C4 through the deck and through the air. The carpet here on level two was squishy from water and blood, and bodies slumped like tattered sacks of trash.

Resistance on the second level seemed weaker now. Were the Germans laying a trap somewhere ahead? Did they really know there was an A-bomb ticking, or more than one, or were they just not taking chances? Ilse was glad she'd _thought to hide her case behind a pile of water jugs: The H20 would help block gamma rays and neutrons. Ilse heard Montgomery shouting for reinforcements. Salih offered to take some men and head upstairs, and Clayton said to go.

Ilse moved closer to Clayton. She passed a badly wounded German writhing on the floor. He was pimply-faced and looked barely seventeen. He kept calling, "Mutti, Mutti." Mommy. Tears streamed from his eyes.

Ilse shot him through the forehead, under the lip of his helmet.

Ilse reached the heavy door to the test section. It was locked. Of course. Salih had said the whole area was armored.

Clayton's men, the Turks, diminished in number but almost all of them armed now, crouched on both sides of the

corridor. Two of them at the back, Ilse noticed, held big fire axes they'd broken from emergency-equipment cabinets.

SEAL Nine fixed lines of sticky detcord to the test section door. He started a timer and everyone pulled back around a corner.

The air itself seemed to solidify and heave. The door clanged to the deck. The men poured fire through the portal and charged inside.

Guards returned the fire and something knocked Ilse backward and knocked the wind out of her. She saw the stub of a bullet sticking from her flak vest, smoldering hot. Her breasts hurt. More automatic weapons spoke in both directions, but Ilse's throbbing eardrums barely heard. To one side of the control room a crowd of technicians took cover behind a barricade of desks and consoles, while a squad of naval infantry tried to hold off Clayton's platoon. Two of the guards, crouched behind overturned steel desks, had light machine guns mounted on bipods. They poured an endless stream of bullets at the SEALs and Turks, pinning them down. Through the armored glass of the wind tunnel beckoned the model missile.

Clayton and SEAL Nine crawled for the inner door to the wind tunnel chamber, below the arc of fire of the bipod MGs. More guards tried to head them off. Ilse saw SEAL

Nine clipped in the leg by a bullet. Clayton had one bootie heel shot off.

"Five," Clayton shouted, "use grenades!"

Ilse pulled two concussion grenades from her battle vest and pulled the pins and popped the spoons. She counted to three and threw them over the barricade. They exploded in midair. The MG fire ceased.

Turks charged the crowd of cowering technicians. For a split second the surviving guards were torn between who or what to protect, the staff or the missile. The Turks opened fire on the German technicians mercilessly. The guards cut down some Turks, till Ilse and Clayton killed them, too. A pair of scientists with nothing to lose lunged for the fallen guards' weapons. The pair of

Turks with fire axes blocked their path and cut them down. Ilse saw the ax heads rise and fall relentlessly, and red blood sprayed and bullets crackled.

The victims were in uniform. None had tried to surrender.

With a sharp crack SEAL Nine's detcord blew down the door to the test chamber. Ilse dashed inside: It was very warm in here.

She tried to lift the missile. It barely moved. She had to pull her gloved hands back—it was still scorching hot from the test.

"The fire nozzles!" she shouted, pointing at the overhead. She set the master selector knob to "Wasser." Water. Nothing happened.

SEAL Nine popped another illumination flare, and held it against a flame detector head. The water nozzles sprayed a freezing blast; the missile cooled. The Gastarbeiter dashed in and hefted the missile to their shoulders, then ran out like pallbearers with their prize. Seal Nine quickly bandaged his leg wound; it was minor.

Clayton and Ilse covered their rear as they withdrew. Ilse glanced into the corner of the control room. Blood dripped from the walls, and from the overhead. The Turks had left not one scientist alive. Ilse was revolted by the carnage. It was hard to tell where one corpse ended and the next began.

On second thought, Ilse ran and checked the light machine guns. "Light" was relative; these fired 7.62mm.30-caliber—rounds. One of the weapons was smashed, but the other worked. Ilse draped herself with belt after belt of ammo, till she could barely stand. She hefted the weapon and chased the rest of Six Platoon upstairs.

She passed some badly wounded Turks; it tore her guts to know they had to be left behind.

They pleaded for grenades, to try to take a German with them. She gave them what she had.

Jeffrey heard a strange whirring sound behind and wheeled in panic. He saw a huge pile of sandbags coming at him.

Salih shouted it was him, and Jeffrey realized he drove a heavy forklift. The bags held halite and rock salt.

"For the sidewalks and roads and parking lot," Salih said.

"I think they'll do."

Bullets poured steadily out of the air duct now, in short but vicious bursts. Jeffrey realized the Germans had set up a light machine gun on the other side.

"Six and Three, Five. Six and Three, Five."

"Five, go!"

"Shaj, Chief, there's no way we can make it through the air duct. The Germans have set up a static defense. We'll be cut to pieces."

"Five, Three, if we make a direct assault through the interlock we'll be cut to pieces."

"Maybe not," Jeffrey said while he rigged wads of C4 as booby traps around his side of the air duct. "Salih has something we can use as an armored car." Ilse watched Jeffrey and Salih pull up with the forklift. Again she surveyed to the front. Their side of the heavy blast doors gaped open. The doors into the other half of the lab formed a solid obstacle. Bodies of Turks and Germans littered the deck between the sets of blast doors. The walls were marked with bullet impacts and gore, and debris smoldered even with the sprinklers going.