Crush Depth

Bullets flew in both directions viciously now. The Land Rover bounced and sagged as its tires were hit and exploded. All the different noises hurt Jeffrey’s ears.

Henga fired his revolver twice at a distant clump of bushes. Jeffrey knew the weapon was useless at such range — and Kampfschwimmer wouldn’t be slowed by ineffective fire. But then Jeffrey had an idea. He turned to Clayton. “We don’t want the Kampfschwimmer knowing we’re SEALs.”

“Concur, Skipper. Let’s show ’em some sloppy fire discipline.” With difficulty, since the slightest movement drew more fire, Clayton tossed Jeffrey his pistol. It landed on the ground halfway between them. As Jeffrey reached, a sniper bullet almost took his hand off at the wrist.

Jeffrey grabbed the pistol and checked that the muzzle was clear of dirt. Like Henga, he fired two rounds. The AK-47s boomed, and the M-16s responded, but the outflanking enemy men advanced again. Soon the line of retreat would be cut off.

“Who do I call?” Harrison yelled from down inside the driver’s compartment. His voice sounded deep and confident; Jeffrey was very glad they’d had that talk in the minisub.

“Waitangi!” Henga shouted. That was the only town, in the middle of the island. “Tell the council duty clerk to sound the invasion alarm.”

Jeffrey waited impatiently — Harrison seemed to take forever. If that radio is busted we’re in very serious trouble. This was an uninhabited part of the island. Anyone who heard the firing from farther off might just think Henga was holding an exercise.

“I’ve got him,” Harrison yelled.

Henga shouted his orders. “Waitangi platoon to head here by the Tuku Road. Owenga platoon to come the way we came, and Saracen to follow the Naim River trail! Others to muster in place and hold the rest of the island!”

“Okay!”

Jeffrey and Clayton looked at each other. Henga sounded like he knew what he was doing. Reinforcements from Owenga would strengthen their hold on the satellite site. From Tuku, the militia could threaten the enemy from the rear. The Saracen, with its cannon and machine gun raking the Germans from off to the side, could tip the balance decisively.

But this would all take precious time, and the time factor favored the Germans. The SOSUS bunker itself would have made a beautiful defensive stronghold, but the path there was much too exposed for Clayton’s men to get inside — the door faced right at the enemy’s center.

Bullets continued to fly. One of Clayton’s spent shell casings burned the back of Jeffrey’s hand. There was a loud clang, then a screeching whine, as an incoming bullet ricocheted off the Land Rover’s engine block. In the far distance, carried on the wind, Jeffrey could hear air-raid sirens now.

“Tom,” Jeffrey yelled. “Get out of there before they hit the fuel tank!”

“Tom,” Henga yelled, “take my shotgun, under the dashboard! Shells are in the glove box!”

Jeffrey saw Harrison roll out of the Land Rover. As enemy rounds chewed the dirt near his feet, Harrison bobbed and weaved and dashed behind the outcropping next to Ilse. He was smart enough to hold his fire — a shotgun was a close-in weapon. Jeffrey urged him to fire a couple of rounds — again, the deception plan that they were rear-area troops.

The shotgun blasts were deafening crashes. Another sniper bullet barely missed Jeffrey’s head. He crawled and shifted position again. The firefight had been raging long enough for him to take stock of what was happening and why.

How did the Germans get here? Dropped from a secret compartment of a pseudoneutral airliner? High-altitude-low-opening parachute tactics at sea, then move inshore with the wind and tide, using rubber boats or even underwater scooters? Do they want to commandeer the SOSUS site to eavesdrop on the data? Use it to locate Allied subs, and then use that to help Voortrekker?…

So that’s what ter Horst is waiting for, our undersea fleet dispositions, before he tackles the Gap.

Yeah, that’s what the Germans are after. Even with all this shooting they’re leaving the satellite bunker untouched.

They’re clever, I’ll give them that.

Clayton fired another round from his smoking rifle, then ejected the empty magazine, his last. “Captain, we have to withdraw. We’re outnumbered and outgunned.”

“We can’t,” Jeffrey said. “We have to destroy the equipment bunker.” Jeffrey told Clayton why: the whole outcome of the battle between Challenger and Voortrekker could hinge around this little bunker.

Clayton told his man nearest the bunker to throw in fragmentation grenades.

As the man rose off the ground he screamed, hit in the neck by the sniper. Bright red arterial blood arced into the air and soaked the grass. Montgomery dashed to help the wounded man, dodging incoming rounds, and the chief was quickly soaked by the blood. From behind a boulder he looked at Clayton and shook his head.

That’s two dead, Jeffrey told himself, counting the SEAL killed by the sniper at the very start of the action.

Another enlisted SEAL made a try for the bunker. The distant sniper fired but missed.

A German light machine gun, held in reserve, opened up immediately. The SEAL was almost cut in half. He dropped both live grenades. They exploded next to his body. The double concussion through the ground made Jeffrey hurt. Intestines and body parts flew, but the bunker was undamaged. The corpse began to burn. The stink was unbearable. The dead SEAL’s ammunition cooked off like strings of firecrackers.

That’s three dead, one-fourth of our manpower, and it confirms they really want the bunker intact. The Kampfschwimmer flanking units were swinging wide now. Soon they’d surround Clayton’s team and hit the SEALs with fire from every direction at once.

Clayton lobbed a grenade, to try to cut Ilse’s cable that ran to the sea. The concussion flashed and pounded the earth and more shrapnel whizzed through the air. Jeffrey aimed at the satellite dish, and kept firing rounds from his pistol to try to knock the dish out. At this distance, he couldn’t tell if he’d done anything. He ran out of ammo, and Clayton threw him another clip for the pistol, his last.

“We have to withdraw!” Clayton repeated.

Jeffrey shook his head. “They’ll pick us all off if we move.” As if to emphasize, the German light machine gun fired again, peppering the SEALs and Jeffrey with dirt and fragments of rock. “We need a smokescreen or we’re finished.”

“We don’t have that many smoke grenades. Not with this wind, it’s too strong!”

“The truck’s fuel tank. We can use that.”

Clayton nodded. Jeffrey crawled flat on his stomach until he had a good line of fire. He shot at the underside of the truck. The bullet found its mark, and diesel fuel leaked in a widening puddle. Jeffrey fired again, at a stone under the vehicle, to make a spark. The diesel refused to ignite. Jeffrey signaled for Clayton to pass him his other grenade. Jeffrey set the timer to “Long,” seven seconds.

“Grenade!” Jeffrey shouted. He rolled it beneath the truck and scrambled away.

A split second after the grenade went off, the whole fuel tank exploded with a gut-pounding whump. Parts of the Land Rover flew through the air. Jeffrey felt a wave of blistering heat that didn’t diminish. The truck was giving off heavy gray-black smoke. It grew even thicker when all four punctured tires began to burn. The combined odors at this point were revolting.

“Pop what smoke you got,” Montgomery ordered at the top of his lungs. The chief was hoarse from shouting and breathing the smoke, and Jeffrey’s eardrums ached so badly it was hard for him to hear.

The surviving SEALs tossed the few smoke grenades they had. Clouds of chemical smoke puffed out in green and orange and purple. The different colors blended oddly with the oily, choking smoke from the burning truck.

Montgomery shouldered the nearest dead SEAL’s body. Henga was closest to the enlisted SEAL who’d been killed first — Henga crawled and grabbed the body and started to drag it along. Ilse, with nothing to do up to now, darted through the smokescreen and snatched the corpses’ intact M-16s. She threw one rifle to Jeffrey, then with the other began to send short bursts blindly through the smoke, toward the Germans.

The third SEAL, killed by the machine-gun fire, had to be left behind. The corpse had been shattered by the SEAL’s own grenades, and was self-cremating anyway.