'Must've had a broken neck,' Jeffrey said, looking at the corpse.
'They don't smell bad enough,' Clayton said. He used his strength to rearrange one dead man's arms and legs; the limbs were stiff.
'Get some garbage from the compactor room,' Jeffrey said. 'That and a soiled bedpan, with the lid up, should do the trick. Put them behind that mess booth in the corner.'
'Right.'
'And have the SEAL team use silvered blankets from the corpsman's cubicle. To suppress our infrared signatures.'
Jeffrey put on his battle helmet and lowered the visor. The other SEALs did, too.
'Gas masks,' Montgomery said.
Jeffrey lifted his helmet and pulled on his mask.
'Try to breathe real quiet when the time comes,' Montgomery said. His voice was muffled.
Jeffrey nodded.
Clayton told the enlisted SEALs to get sacks of flour and oatmeal from the galley, to use as sandbags.
Montgomery handed Jeffrey an ammo clip for a spare electric machine pistol. 'Hollow point only,' the SEAL chief said. No armor-piercing rounds. 'For use in an SSN's hull.' Jeffrey raised his eyebrows.
'We made these just in case.'
Jeffrey charged his weapon, then used the growler phone. 'Captain Taylor,' he projected his voice through the gas mask, 'cut all power to the mess deck.' The bug juice machine stopped gurgling, and the lights went out; the emergency battle lanterns came right on. Montgomery's men went around and smashed the bulbs with their weapon butts. Diodes still glowed to show the lanterns' batteries held charge — this gave the team's image- intensifier visors enough photons to see.
Clayton and Montgomery pointed to where each man should hide.
Jeffrey's heart was beating extraordinarily loud. 'Weapons off safe,' Clayton whispered.
'Selectors on semiauto.'
'When you hear me shoot,' Montgomery whispered, 'everybody shoot.'
'Make every shot count,' Jeffrey whispered. 'Make sure every bullet gets stopped by a German body.' He pointed aft. 'The watertight bulkhead's right there. Break the packing for a cable run, we flood the ship.'
Jeffrey took his position, huddled on the deck, just inside the galley. He arranged the blanket, silver side in, to cover his body, except for where he needed to see. He hoped that to an enemy IR visor, he'd look like a corpse, still somewhat fresh, cooling. Everyone waited. Soon there was another clunk.
Then Jeffrey heard more noises. The docking collar was being pumped dry… The upper escape hatch was being opened… Soon he heard the sound of many people coming down the ladder inside the trunk.
Jeffrey badly needed to take a leak. Very badly, all of a sudden. He decided he would, to add to the effect of a submarine full of dead men.
He felt better at once. The urine ran to the forward starboard corner of the galley, and puddled there. Jeffrey's gas mask kept out the smell. Someone undogged the lower escape trunk hatch from inside, and opened it just a crack. There was a long, pregnant silence, then Jeffrey barely made out confident, tough whispering in German. Something small sailed out of the air lock and landed on the deck. There was a brilliant blue-white flash, then a hiss as some kind of gas filled the air. It spread, a fine aerosol, and Jeffrey thought it looked like military tear gas.
Then there was silence. Jeffrey tensed.
Another flash-and-gas grenade. Jeffrey's visor pixel antibloom control kept him from being blinded.
The first Kampfschwimmer dashed silently out of the lock-out trunk. Jeffrey saw him through his visors, on infrared, through the intervening aluminum bulkhead. The man was a giant, easily six foot six. His posture showed he held a short-barrel, two-handed weapon. It traversed as he peered in all directions fast.
Jeffrey had left a dental mirror, a standard Special Warfare item, in the galley doorway, camouflaged with a shriveled banana peel. As the German came closer, Jeffrey could see in low-light high-def TV mode that the man wore flat-screen night-vision goggles himself, outside an evil-looking respirator hood, with a full-body nuclear- biologicalchemical protective suit. The thickness of his machine pistol's barrel showed it was silenced.
The German bent over and checked out the corpses, the real ones. Jeffrey worried he would think they were too cold.
The German turned and gestured to the lock-out trunk. Six more Kampfschwimmer appeared, just as tall and muscular as the first. One of them held something toward the stern, toward the reactor. A Geiger counter? Another held up something else — gas analyzer? Both men nodded to the others. One took out a long, thin wand — to check for trip wires in the dark? They advanced.
The SEALs were outnumbered. Besides Jeffrey and Clayton and Montgomery, only two had stayed behind when the rest went over to Challenger. The odds were seven to five against, and who really owned the element of surprise here?
Jeffrey wanted to move. The death-posture he'd adopted was dramatic, but his right leg had fallen asleep. The left leg, with his old war wound, started to ache horribly. He thought of what Ilse said, that it might be in his mind, from stress. He pushed her out of his thoughts. He wanted to shift his weapon for a better line of fire. He dared not move a muscle.
The first Kampfschwimmer came down the corridor, toward the mess and the galley. The Germans covered each other skillfully. Two of them pulled out large canisters, more gas. As one Kampfschwimmer came to the door of the galley, Jeffrey saw through his goggles that the canister bore a skull-and-bones. What was Montgomery waiting for?
It also bore a large white cross. Jeffrey couldn't remember if that meant mustard gas or chlorine.
Jeffrey realized it wasn't to kill any surviving Texas crew — for that they'd use an odorless, nonpersistent nerve agent. The noxious poison gas was to force anyone still breathing to put on respirators, so they'd have to move, make noise as air valves hissed, be slowed down and partly immobilized.
Of course. The Germans would want to take prisoners, for thorough interrogation. But mustard gas caused terrible burns to bare skin. What the hell was Montgomery waiting for?
Jeffrey heard a silenced weapon cough — his heart raced out of control. He brought his own weapon to bear on the Kampfschwimmer in the galley doorway. The man brought his weapon to bear on Jeffrey. The German fired first, hitting Jeffrey in the chest as Jeffrey tried to stand.
The force of impact against his flak jacket shoved Jeffrey backward. His weapon pointed wildly, and he saw the German's barrel aimed dead center at his face, but the German's neck exploded and blood spattered Jeffrey's visor.
Jeffrey tried to crouch but wobbled — his right leg was badly numb. He heard more weapons coughing, the thud and crunch of bullets hitting flesh and bone. He heard grunts and screams, then a whining ricochet forced him flat on the deck. Two bullets tore through the aluminum curtain wall, and zinged into the wardroom pantry where Clayton was firing steadily.
Two Kampfschwimmer charged the medical corpsman's cubicle and killed the SEAL who was shooting from there. The intervening bulkhead was structural, steel. They had the SEALs pinned down. The drinking fountain was hit and water sprayed. Jeffrey belly-crawled to the corridor. His aim was blocked by bodies. Jeffrey realized the SEAL who'd saved his life — by shooting that Kampfschwimmer in the back of the neck, between his flak vest and his helmet — had also been killed. His brains were smeared across the wide-screen TV at the front of the mess. The screen was spider-webbed with cracks.
The German minisub! Jeffrey was sure there'd be someone up there, who'd be calling their parent vessel for help.
While the surviving SEALs and Germans sniped at each other viciously, Jeffrey reached into the corridor and pulled dead bodies toward him. A hot bee snapped by his wrist, then another.
Jeffrey used the bodies as a bullet stop. More rounds hit home, making the corpses jump and twitch, as Jeffrey scrambled along the deck. Clayton saw what he was doing and threw a flash grenade of his own. Clayton and Montgomery pumped out rapid covering fire.
Jeffrey used the diversion to lunge into the air lock and slam the hatch. Bullets clanged against it a moment later, but it was pressure-proof high strength steel. Jeffrey started to climb. Someone with a carbine looked down at him and he shot the man in the left eye, through his goggle lens and respirator mask. The mask and helmet held
