Chandler sighed again as he clambered up the side of the
Seehund
and then levered himself into the cockpit. The SEALs handed him a GPS locator beacon, already activated and transmitting on a frequency that the
Polar Star
would be able to detect, then helped him close the dome and check that it was air tight before they leaped off the hull and stood alongside Ethan on the dock.
Moments later, he heard the rumble of the submarine’s engine and slowly it sank beneath the waves, Chandler’s nervous expression the last thing he saw before the
Seehund
vanished from sight.
‘Balls of steel, man,’ one of the SEALs said.
‘Let’s go,’ Ethan replied as he turned for the base entrance, Hannah with him. ‘Veer’s men will break through any moment.’
He had barely got the words out when the dock beneath him shook and the sound of violent explosions shuddered through the base.
***
XLV
Hannah ran behind Riggs and Ethan as they hurried up to the command center. Hannah staggered to one side in the control center as she felt the entire base shudder beneath her feet. A cloud of smoke drifted up past the shattered windows as a hail of gunfire swept the interior of the center and smashed out the remaining glass as she dragged herself to the entrance and looked down the corridor outside.
‘Return fire!’ Riggs yelled. ‘Ford, downstairs, support Sully and Del Toro at the blast hatch!’
Hannah pulled her pistol and dashed for the stairwell.
A roiling haze of smoke filled the corridor, the handful of glow sticks still working casting orbs of light into the tendrils as she got to her feet and started running. She reached the stairwell and heard a clatter of gunfire as she dashed down them two at a time, trying not to slip on the patchy ice as she hit the corridor at the bottom and immediately threw herself behind a bulkhead as she saw Del Toro and Sully heavily engaged as bullets whipped past her and clanged off the walls in showers of sparks.
The SEALs were holding the corridor, directing an almost continuous stream of withering fire out to where Hannah could see that the pressure door had been forced open by the blast of Veer’s explosives. She could not see if the latch was in place or whether it had been snapped off by the force of the explosion, but beyond the swirling acrid smoke she could see further down the docks to where bright muzzle flashes flickered dangerously close.
‘Grenade!’
Riggs bellowed the warning as he leaped down the stairwell as Del Toro hurled himself at a small black object that bounced in from the open doorway and skittered along the ground. He caught it in his hand in an act of supreme courage and tossed it out again. Hannah winced and covered her ears as a sharp explosion rocked the base once more, Del Toro and Riggs hugging the walls to avoid the cloud of shrapnel from the blast that peppered the walls.
Hannah edged forward, ten yards behind where the two SEALs were holding firm and directing their supremely accurate fire at every figure that loomed near the doorway.
‘Seventeen!’ Del Toro snapped.
‘Fifteen!’ Riggs replied.
‘Twelve!’ Sully yelled.
Hannah realized that they were counting down their rounds despite the chaos and noise around them. A gunman jumped through the doorway and fired from the hip as he moved, Hannah slamming her back to the wall as he hopped through the bulkhead and tried to dodge left.
Riggs hit him first, Del Toro a moment later, both men firing a double-tap that put two rounds in the gunman’s belly and then snapped his head left and right as the second rounds shattered his skull and he slumped back into the wall.
A second gunman loomed and Hannah fired without conscious thought, two shots echoing out above the roar of gunfire as the first bullet clipped the gunman’s shoulder and the second whipped his head aside as it smashed through his jaw and he screamed, a cloud of blood splattering onto the ice and his boots as he reeled away with his hands covering his face.
Del Toro hit him twice again and he collapsed onto the dock, partially blocking the doorway as his screams were silenced.
Riggs and Del Toro began advancing toward the open doorway under cover from Sully, gunfire from further down the docks whipping through the corridor but coming from too far away to pick them out as they moved, the smoke covering their advance now as they pushed forward. Hannah slipped past one bulkhead and moved to occupy their former position, aiming carefully at the open hatch but cautious of stepping out into the corridor.
‘Hannah, covering fire on my mark!’
Riggs’s voice carried clearly enough that she knew instinctively what to do. Del Toro switched to his 203 grenade launcher and fired two rounds out onto the docks. The grenades arced through the air, landing far enough away to be out of the reach of their immediate assailants either side of the door, close enough that the blasts would injure more men.
Caught in a perfect trap, the attacking soldiers had no choice but to break for cover.
‘Now!’ Riggs shouted.
Del Toro launched himself forward as Hannah opened fire through the hatch, aiming down toward the tunnel mouth. At this range she knew that she could not hope to hit anyone by design but with luck a bullet or two might pass close enough to Veer’s gunmen to force their heads down for a moment, enough time for Del Toro and Riggs to get the door shut.
Del Toro slid in behind the heavy hatch as bullets continued to fly through the opening, and with a wince of effort he heaved the door closed again and the heavy metal of the hatch slammed against the jam with a deep clang that echoed down the corridor.
Riggs leaped to his feet and slammed his weight behind the door as Hannah dashed forward and helped him, bullets clanging against the far side of the door as Del Toro grabbed the metal rails that had been used to keep the door closed. Both had been bent and snapped by the force of the blast, but he rammed what was left of them through the latches. The roar of gunfire was muted instantly as Del Toro turned to Riggs.
‘It’s only a matter of time,’ he said breathlessly. ‘They’re gonna get through here.’
Riggs nodded and looked at Hannah. ‘Good work. Let’s see how many of them we managed to pick off.’
Hannah led the way back into the control center, where Saunders was still manning his post and watching the docks below with his sniper rifle. Hannah could tell that the gunfire had ceased but the windows were now completely blown out, a gaping hole in their defense against even a single rocket propelled grenade.
‘Five,’ Saunders said without looking at them as they walked in.
‘Two,’ Del Toro added.
‘Two,’ Sully said.
‘Two,’ Riggs finished off the tally, ‘and Hannah here picked another one off.’
‘Twelve dead for no losses,’ Saunders grinned. ‘I’m liking that. Can we have another go?’
Ethan leaned against the wall and peered down toward the tunnel entrance. ‘I saw Veer and his team land and they had maybe a hundred men. They’re down to eighty now, still heavy odds, and I’m willing to bet they’ll use RPGs if they really feel that they can’t get in here.’
Hannah frowned. ‘That’s what doesn’t make any sense. ‘They could have fire balled us by now, so why are they making all these risky moves instead?’
Riggs looked about the control center. ‘There must be something up here that they want or need, something that they can’t afford to destroy or endanger.’
‘But the base is empty, abandoned,’ Hannah replied. ‘There’s nothing here except what the Nazis left behind before the end of the war.’
Ethan frowned as he walked around the control center and looked at the maps protected behind acrylic cases.
‘The Nazis went to a lot of trouble to build this place and to maintain its secrecy even after the war had ended,’ he said. ‘It’s not like they suddenly revealed to our government what had been done down here or we’d have found this base long ago.’
Hannah looked about her and began to wonder along with Riggs whether something else might be concealed right under their noses.
‘Maybe they used this base as a location to store secret papers, or money, or even their technology after the German surrender,’ she suggested. ‘The hardcore Nazis like the SS would have done anything to preserve something of the Third Reich in the hopes that one day they could resurrect their dream of an Aryan master race.’
‘How would Veer’s men know anything about any of this?’ Del Toro asked, gesturing around him at the base. ‘If our own government didn’t suspect the existence of this base how could they have figured out it was here at all, let alone contains something of importance? I thought Black Knight was what got us all out here?’
‘It was,’ Hannah agreed, ‘but Majestic Twelve goes back a long way. The DIA believe it was formed within a couple of years after World War Two ended, which would mean they would have had access to a great deal of what the Germans were doing in the late stages of the war. Maybe one or two of them did know about this base, or at least what might be inside it.’
Riggs turned to Del Toro.
‘Maintain the watch, but I want two men to scout through the facility again. Leave no stone unturned. Whatever might be hidden here will likely be well concealed if the Nazis were forced to leave in a hurry.’
Del Toro moved off immediately as Riggs looked at his watch.
‘We don’t have much ammunition left and there’s still no communication from our support team. We can’t hold this position forever.’
Right on cue, they heard a voice boom across the docks from outside.
‘It’s only a matter of time!’
Hannah listened to the voice echo through the darkness. Riggs shook his head to forbid anybody from replying.
‘The more silence he hears, the more angry he’ll get,’ Ethan whispered to her. ‘It might force his hand and cause him to make a mistake.’
A long silence enveloped the chamber as they waited for the big man outside to shout again. His voice, when it came, was laced with rage.
‘One way or the other, we’re comin’ through that door and there’s nothing you can do to stop us! We’ve got ammunition, food, water, supplies and reinforcements. You’ve got nothing!’
Veer’s voice echoed around the chamber, chasing around as though searching for them before trailing off into the distance.
‘We’re comin’ for you! We’ll get in there eventually!’
Veer bellowed from somewhere beyond the thick clouds of smoke billowing across the docks.
Riggs, bored already, grabbed his rifle and was about to head back to the rear dock when he looked at the smoke clouds filling the cavern outside. He turned to Saunders, who was still manning his position, the sniper’s rifle aimed down at the tunnel entrance where bursts of machine gun fire sporadically raked the walls of the base.
‘Anything?’ Riggs asked above the rattle of gunfire.
‘They’re up to something,’ Saunders replied, ‘but I ain’t sure what. If I were them I’d create a smoke screen and get under the walls then blow the doors, but maybe they ain’t as bright as us.’
Riggs didn’t buy that either as he peered out across the docks. He was surprised by the fact that Veer had not yet attempted to assault the base. The only explanation for their reluctance was that they had a better plan, and that made Riggs nervous. Veer had more men, more equipment, more weapons and an active although tenuous line of supply back to the surface, whereas his team had been specifically designed to infiltrate the base without support and hold their position until reinforcements arrived.
‘Anything on night vision?’
Saunders shook his head slowly, his gaze directed permanently down the barrel of his rifle.
‘The ice is too thick to get a good look at what they’re doing in there,’ he said. ‘Best guess?’
‘Go for it.’
‘They’re setting up a mortar to fire into this command center, forcing us out and letting them cross the dock. Once that happens, it’s only a matter of time.’
Riggs nodded. Veer’s team must possess heavier weapons than just small arms and rifles, and it suddenly struck him that they could have used rocket propelled grenades to attack the command center from afar rather than mortar units. Easily portable and quite accurate, they would be sufficient to cover a fire team’s ingress to the blast door. Sure, Veer might be concerned about explosions bringing down the cavern around them, but the blasts would be contained by the base itself if their aim was good. There seemed no good reason not to attempt it, unless they had a better route in figured out and…
Rigg’s eyes drifted down to the dock itself and the black water shimmering there. The gradual flow of water through the docks was joined by the flow from the fissure in the cavern wall to his left, and it flowed away both under the glacial ice and into the tunnel where Veer and his men were hiding.
‘You said that the channel runs right underneath the base?’ he asked Ethan.
‘Yeah, both ways.’
Hannah saw a sudden realization hit Riggs hard.
‘They’ll come in underwater!’ he snapped.
***
XLVI
Andrei Veer slid into the black water of the submarine pen as his men maintained a steady barrage of fire and a smoke screen against the upper levels of the base overlooking the dock. The water slid over him and the sound of gunfire became muted, distant flashes of light like distant lightning in heavy clouds shimmering overhead.
The bitter cold of the water bit through even the thick thermal lining of his suit as he descended into the deep, his men visible ahead as they swam. All of them had descended at least twenty feet beneath the waves: contrary to popular myth, bullets were rapidly slowed by water, especially cold water, and were useless for hitting targets below that depth. That, and the absolute blackness, was enough to conceal Veer and his men as they moved silently through the darkness toward the rear of the Nazi base.
Veer was not much one for interest in history, but he was none the less amazed at how the Nazis had been able to create such an extraordinary base in the vast natural cavern beneath the glacier. He could just make out the huge stanchions that were buried deep into the ice either side of the cavern, suspending the base above the murky, chill depths beneath it. Veer kept a close eye open for any sign of the leopard seals that patrolled the waters, his rifle held in his gloved hands. Again, contrary to movie myth, getting water into a rifle was pretty much enough to render it useless: most soldiers pulled balloons or condoms over the barrels of their rifles when entering the water to seal the interior.