jiggled wildly.
So much for my nerves of steel.
'Four and Five, Six,' Clayton called in Jeffrey's earphones. 'Status?'
'Ready,' Ilse said. She sounded like she meant it.
'Ready,' Jeffrey said, determined she wouldn't show him up. He heard the German footsteps now, and low murmuring voices. The voices stopped.
'They're still approaching,' One whispered.
'Team, Six. Weapons off safe, selectors on semiauto only, but hold your fire…. Break break. Nine, Six. Report when their point man gets inside ten feet of you.'
'Six, Nine. Understood.'
'Team, Three. Aim low, so our bullets won't carry.' Jeffrey shrank behind his pack as the soldiers approached.
'Wass ist das?' he heard, and not over his headphones. What is this?
A weapon coughed.
'Weapons free!' Montgomery hissed.
Other weapons fired. The Germans' rifles, with sound suppressors, clattered on full auto as their receivers cycled and spent brass cartridge cases flew. Bullets smacked into the cliff face. The SEALs' caseless electric ignition subsonic rounds were completely silent, until their.50-caliber bullets thudded and crunched into organs and bone. Ilse searched her front but had no targets.
'Five through Nine,' Clayton shouted. 'Flanking pivot left! Form an L-shaped ambush!
Rapid fire!'
Ilse rolled across the snow and sand, saw Jeffrey do the same and block her line of fire. She rolled again, and Seven crawled up next to her. She began to fire at murky shapes when she saw muzzle flashes aimed her way.
'Eight and Nine, Six, go full auto!'
Ilse heard their weapons puff-puff-puff behind her. When her visor switched to infrared she could see the bullet traces, red-hot metal in friction with the air. Some of them hit home, and Germans grunted or writhed. Eight and Nine fired in short bursts. Enemy bullets snapped by overhead.
Ilse aimed her pistol at another German, who'd been driven against the barbed wire along the water. Before she could fire his muzzle flashed and something whacked the side of her helmet. The helmet flew off and she saw double. SEAL Eight riddled the German.
'Cease fire,' Montgomery said. 'Cease fire.'
'Did they get off a warning?' Clayton said.
'Negative,' SEAL Two said. 'Nothing intercepted on my signals intel receiver. We didn't give them time.'
'Anyone hit?' Montgomery said. 'Team sound off.' The SEALs called in by number. When her turn came Ilse said, 'Five.' Then she heard, ' Six. Seven. Eight. Nine,' in different voices.
'Now what?' Ilse heard Jeffrey say.
'We have to make it look like partisans,' Clayton said.
'Concur,' Montgomery said. 'Eight and Nine, secure our rear. One and Two, hold point. Everyone else, police up the bodies.'
Jeffrey was glad the seven Germans were dead. The SEAL team couldn't take prisoners, and a wounded enemy soldier would be a major problem Jeffrey didn't want to think about. He surveyed the carnage. Blood soaked the snow and sand, looking black on his visors. On IR he could see the bodies were already starting to cool. None of Clayton's team were hurt, though Ilse had a gouge in the side of her ceramic bulletproof helmet, and two of the SEALs took enemy rounds in their flak vests. A quick check of the packs showed nothing vital was damaged.
'How do we make this look like partisans?' Jeffrey said.
'Disfigure the bodies,' Montgomery said.
'What is it about you and cutting with knives?'
'It's my training,' Montgomery snapped. 'I don't like it, sir. I just have to do it.'
'Sorry, Chief. What do you suggest?'
'Gouge out their eyes. Leave the corpses behind the bushes. Cover the blood with fresh sand and snow, but not too thoroughly.'
'So it doesn't look like SEAL work?'
'Right,' Clayton said. 'Psychological warfare by the Resistance instead…. Then make it seem like we, they, came down the cliff in ambush and egressed back that way. Toss the German weapons and ammo out into the bay, since the partisans would collect them.'
'Ilse,' Jeffrey said, 'how are you at climbing?' 'I like rock climbing.'
'Think you can make it to the top and back real fast?' 'Yes. What about our footprints?'
'Trackers would read them as captured Army boots.' 'Take these,' Clayton said. He handed Jeffrey crampons and climbing rope. 'Make it look good, plant them at the top. They're German brands.'
'German?' Ilse said.
'Bought before the war.'
'That's planning ahead,' Jeffrey said.
'The CIA has whole warehouses full of useful stuff they buy from, friends who might turn into enemies.'
Jeffrey glanced at the bodies as Montgomery and Seven-went to work with their K-Bar fighting knives. Jeffrey had to look away.
Jeffrey and Ilse climbed. The footing was uneven but firm, and the underbrush gave good handholds. The vertical set of the cliff precluded land mines — or so Jeffrey hoped. On the way down, he passed old bird nests in cracks in the rock. He knew the wetlands around Greifswald were an important breeding area in the spring.
In a few minutes he and Ilse were back on the beach. 'What do we do next?' Jeffrey said.
'Into the water,' Clayton said. 'We've covered about four miles along the shore so far. It's another mile to the Danische Wiek. We'd've gone back to Draegers there, anyway.' Montgomery came over. 'To hell with this humping infantry-style. It's way too dangerous.'
TWO HOURS LATER, UNDERWATER IN THE DANISCHE WIEK
'Team, Six,' Jeffrey heard by skullbone induction, above the sound of his own breathing through his bulky Draeger mouthpiece. 'Communications check,' Clayton said. 'Status check. Sound off.'
When Jeffrey's turn came, through the built-in mouthpiece mike he said, 'Four. Good to go.'
He heard Ilse say, 'Five. Good to go.' Although she was Clayton's swim buddy, Jeffrey had unclipped from Montgomery and fastened his lanyard to hers to form a threesome. Ilse was close enough for Jeffrey to see her cyalume hoop through the murk. The depth gauge on his dive mask read eighteen feet, salinity-adjusted. His dive computer told him the water temperature here was 37° Fahrenheit. The chronometer said that in barely sixty minutes, ARBOR's computer worm would expire. The team's unexpected extra swim had added more than an hour to their approach to the lab, burning up time they didn't have to spare. Once that worm went dormant and erased itself, any further intrusion by the SEALs would set off alarms.
Jeffrey floated horizontally, resting; to swim fast wearing a backpack, even one designed to be neutrally buoyant, was a bear. He listened as the team finished checking in.
The clandestine secure gertrude — the undersea counterpart to their frequency agile digitized-radar commo — worked well enough, even amidst the unstable haloclines formed by freshwater from the Ryck River's mouth, several thousand yards to the south. Jeffrey knew the Ryck skirted the north edge of Greifswald town itself. It emptied into the Danische Wiek, a small bay-within-the-bay, one mile wide at the point where the team swam across underwater.
The wind topside blustered again, stirring the shallow Wiek. Jeffrey was jostled by wave action. Now his dive display showed he had a sink rate of four feet per minute. He let more gas into his own and his backpack's buoyancy bladders.
'Six, Three.' Montgomery spoke slowly and clearly. 'First obstacle inspection complete. Confirmed the
