Final impact

Harry stayed low, shooting up, angling his fire across the Panzergrenadiers and hopefully not into St. Clair and the lads. Haigh had dropped to the floor beside him and cried out as he snapped a bone. He seemed a game type, though, and he’d started firing almost immediately.

The prince had been a bit luckier, landing on a couple of dead krauts who broke his fall quite nicely. He could hear the approaching bayonet charge as he slashed at the legs of the SS goons with a stream of automatic fire. The mкlйe played itself out in a series of jump-cuts and jerky, disjointed images. A glimpse of a German half turning toward them. His head flying apart as Haigh took him under fire. A leg cut in two by tracers. Blood splatters. Chunks of flesh blown free and flying up to stick on the ceiling. Guttural screams. Panic. Outrage.

The next shock came as his men arrived, crashing into the SS line. He took his own fighting knife in his hands, the ground-quartz grip inserts cutting into his palms, a flash of light on the laser-tooled blood grooves. He smelled the foul exhalation of somebody’s dying breath as he slashed through their throat. His gun, swung like a club, caved in a skull. Then there were fingers clawing at his goggles, hands at his throat. A clearing sweep of his arm and two short elbow jabs into his attacker’s nose.

He kept firing his sidearm, firing and firing until the hammer clicked on a dry chamber. Then he was struck by the sudden realization that quiet had descended and that, for a few seconds at least, nobody was trying to kill him, and he didn’t need to take anyone else’s life.

St. Clair appeared. Breathing heavily, grinning like a cannibal. “Nice one, guv.”

“Thanks, Viv,” he gulped, taking in the full extent of the carnage for the first time. “Best we get a move on before they regroup outside. How many did we lose?”

“Three, sir. Robbins, Jezza, and Haigh, I’m afraid, guv’nor. He copped one in the throat.”

“Bugger!” Harry grunted. “Okay. Make a note, Sergeant Major. We’re putting Private Haigh up for a DCM.”

“Very good, sir.”

Harry picked his way across the killing floor, his boots beginning to stick on the blood and gore that were already congealing. Two of his troopers were guarding the doorway, making sure the krauts didn’t get another look in. Ronsard and Claudel were smoking and chattering away quietly. They were both covered in blood.

He still had to get his charges up to the roof, and he had a squadron scattered all over the shop, but for the first time since they’d blundered into this five-star cock-up, he felt as if they might have a reasonable chance of pulling it off. He wished he could bring up a schematic of the building, not to mention the bio-indicators of everyone in his command, but he’d left that sort of convenience behind on the other side of the wormhole. He’d have to gather his forces piece by piece.

“Round them up,” he ordered, pointing to the German scientists.

“I’m afraid we had to neck a couple more of ’em, guv,” said St. Clair. “They got a bit uppity.”

“Fair enough. What about the principles?”

“Dornberger’s unconscious. Trooper Watson had to give him a smack. Von Braun is fine.”

“Okay,” Harry said. “Let’s go.”

7

D-DAY + 9. 12 MAY 1944. 1410 HOURS.

USS HILLARY CLINTON.

As the California coastline slipped below the horizon, a freshening breeze built out of the southwest, tugging at the overalls and colored vests of the crew while they wrestled with the never-ending traffic down on the flight deck.

A Seahawk chopper, one of the few remaining aircraft from the Clinton’s original complement, was disappearing down the number one elevator, while a pair of Skyhawks waited in front of the jet blast deflectors of catapults three and four on the angled runway. Another twelve of the fighter-bombers were chained down along the starboard rows. Kolhammer had a full-time job just keeping track of the technology mix on board these days. The FAX catapult systems damaged at Midway had been completely replaced by steam catapults, and he was only too glad to admit that they were more reliable than the skittish, high-maintenance beasts with which the Clinton had first been outfitted. And they weren’t exactly contemporary technology, having been redesigned by a specialist R D shop back in the Zone to handle much greater stresses than the “old” launchers on a ship like the Enterprise, which was plowing into the swell three and a half thousand meters to port.

The “Big E” was still throwing old-fashioned Corsairs into the sky, too, not heavier, more powerful jets like the Skyhawks. And like most of the U.S. Navy’s principal combatants, even the venerable Enterprise had been refitted with a suite of AT upgrades, such as simple rolling airframe missiles and radar-controlled Close-In Weapons Systems to protect her against the kamikaze attacks that had become a problem in the Pacific.