Charles Taylor - First Salvo

Wally came to his assistance, firing until his clip emptied. Ryng recognized with anguish that one of his shots hit the Russian at the same time as Rick was hit.

Bernie saw the shoulder bag fall as Rick’s body crumpled, the precious grenades rolling out onto the runway. Each one was critical if they were going to blow those bombers and the decoys. Carefully, as precisely as a jeweler, Wally was picking off those Russians still without cover, moving closer to the planes as he did so. Ryng, running in a crouch, changed magazines on the move. He halted for a moment by Rick, saw death staring back at him, and scooped up the bag and the grenades in a single motion. Denny had moved up to the first plane, leaping up the ramp into the fuselage in one fluid motion. Ryng covered him, counting the seconds, amazed so few could pass before Denny leaped back out, avoiding the ramp, his feet already in motion as he hit the tarmac, body crouched as he moved toward the second.

He hit this one just as systematically as the first.

A foreign sound caught Ryng’s attention — once again, the single shots of a pistol. He whirled, eyes off Denny’s moving form, searching for the source. Wally, caught in the act of digging in his own bag for a grenade, was frantically bringing his rifle to bear on a Russian wildly firing from his hip with a pistol.

There was no match between a revolver and an automatic weapon at that range, unless the pistol was lucky. And it was. As the Russian was blown backward from the impact of a dozen slugs, Wally grabbed at his stomach. He doubled over in a curious slow motion, the shock lasting only a moment. Then he was erect once again, extracting the grenade he’d been after, yanking out the pin and lofting the grenade toward a scrubby hedge.

Ryng was riveted in stunned fascination as the hedge exploded in a cloud of dust and branches. It revealed four Black Berets immobilized by the blast. Wally sprayed them mercilessly with the AK-74.

Then a strange silence followed. No one was visible. Nothing moved. There appeared to be no more resistance.

Denny vaulted into the last bomber, breaking the momentary stillness, sowing the remainder of his incendiary bombs with the aplomb of a professional. It took less time than the first two planes. An expert at his trade, it was a matter of simply insuring that the time-delay devices came to rest within each fuselage where he wanted them. Experience already guaranteed what the effect would be.

How much time have we taken? Ryng wondered. Thirty seconds? Fifty? A minute? Two minutes? However long, as soon as their first shot echoed across the airfield, he knew Russian marines had dropped whatever they were doing. They would be automatically checking their weapons as they raced toward the field.

“I’ll grab the jeep,” Ryng called to Denny. “Blow the rest of those decoys.” Wally ambled toward him with a weird sort of gait, his rifle slung with military precision from his shoulder, both hands pressed tightly against his belly, shiny, dark blood seeping through his fingers. He nodded toward the jeep, indicating he would get to it on his own. As he shuffled along, he occasionally glanced down at the blood, then over at Ryng with a confused look on his face. He’d never been hit before, no matter how exposed he’d been. Now Wally was terrified. There was a dull hurt but no pain, no sensation that would tell him that everything was going to be all right — or that this was the end.

Wally eased into the adjacent seat. “I don’t know if I understand this, Bernie. It never happened before. I don’t know….” His voice trailed off.

“Just hold on,” Ryng answered. He shifted the jeep into gear. “Can’t do a goddamned thing until we get back to the fishing shack.” Then he recognized the anguish forming on the other’s face as he moved his hands from his belly. Ryng was embarrassed that he’d been so unfeeling. “We love ya, Wally. Just hold on!”

Denny methodically placed his incendiaries around the decoys, moving as efficiently as he’d done with the bombers. There was never a lost movement when he was doing the work he loved. He leaped gracefully into the back of the jeep, slapping Ryng on the shoulder. “Hit it! I don’t know what’s in those things, but if they’re explosives, it’s going to be awfully messy around here in half a minute.” They had made a decision beforehand — set longer timers inside the planes. They might catch someone poking around inside. But the decoys had to go first. As they raced away in the jeep, Denny methodically dropped his last fragmentation grenades behind one by one. They too had time-delay fuses which would make the Russians think a little before they went snooping around the planes.

Wheeling into the village, they heard the first explosion, followed by a second and a third, then a prolonged series of blasts. A column of smoke and flame roiled into the air. “Must be some special kind of fuel in those things. Look at the color of the smoke,” Denny remarked almost casually. “If those were warheads, they would have just blown themselves apart, no smoke like that.” He was very pleased with himself, grinning like a cat at his success.

They passed the building on the dock that held one of the Norwegian groups. Ryng once again waved to the guard in a friendly manner. He guided the jeep through the one main street, then turned off toward the old fishing pier outside of town.

The smooth gravel surface ended abruptly. Without warning, they were moving much too fast down a dirt path just wide enough for two wheels. The jeep bounced over a rock into the air, plunging down hard on the other side. Wally screamed with an unearthly wail, doubling over in agony, his body awash with the pain that had eluded him until then.

“Keep going,” he moaned between his teeth, his head turned to Ryng. “Get this son of a bitch to that pier, to the morphine!” he shouted in the next breath, his features contorted through waves of pain. The comfortable refuge of shock had left him. Then the spasms of agony brought a merciful loss of consciousness. Denny reached over the seat and held his shoulders until they pulled up beside the fishing shack.

They laid Wally gently on the floor of the shack. Blood pulsed heavily across his stomach, steadily pumping life out of his body. Denny, the team medic, administered the morphine first, then listened to the heart, checked the blood pressure, and finally cleaned the wound enough to determine the damage.

“Forget it, Bernie. Gut shot, not a chance.”

“Will he come around again?”

“He might. He’s lost so much blood already, I wonder if he’s got enough strength left to open his eyes.” He felt the pulse. “Hardly enough left to take a breath, Bernie.”

“Can you do anything for him?”

“Yeah. Another few hundred cc’s and Wally Land will disappear without a thought in the world.”

Ryng’s knuckles whitened perceptibly. “We’re down to minutes ourselves.” There were only so many people on the whole damned island, and the Russians would know there were no Norwegians that could mount an operation like the one that had just taken place. They had just minutes to escape. Ryng nodded, his eyes avoiding Denny’s. Wally Land’s face was tranquil when they left him in the shack. They crawled down under the old pier, making their way between broken-down pilings and remnants of fishing gear to the rubber boat. Their only purpose now was to escape — to survive. They kept two automatic rifles, their pistols, and a few fragmentation grenades. Everything else — food, medicine, electronic gear — was dumped. Ryng kept his radio.

They pushed off from the pier simultaneous with a succession of explosions from the direction of the airport. They could see tall, greasy tongues of flame erupting into the sky — burning aviation fuel. So much for the bombers. If Harry Winters was successful with that freighter…