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"Let's find the ore train," ordered Pitt. "We'd be smart to put it out of commission and cut all transportation between the mine and the ship."
Gunn nodded, and they moved silently along the wall of the dining hall, ducking under the windows and halting at a corner where they paused to cautiously scan the immediate neighborhood. Then they swung across an open space until they reached the railroad track, stepped across the rails and began sprinting between the ties.
A chill crept up Pitts back as he tailed Gunn, and he clenched his fists around the stock and forward grip of the Thompson with a growing sense of despair. The wind and rain had stopped and the stars were quickly fading in the eastern sky.
Something had gone terribly wrong.
To Hollis, it seemed hours since they had launched the boats.
The compact Carrier Pigeon helicopters had flown low along the rugged coastline and deposited Hollis's team on a small island at the mouth of the fjord without a hitch. The launching was executed smoothly with effortless efficiency, but the swift, four-knot tidal current was far stronger than anyone had anticipated.
Then the silent electric motor on the lead five-man tow boat had mysteriously quit after the first ten minutes. Precious time was lost as the Special Forces men broke out the paddles and put their backs into a desperate race to close on the Lady Flamborough before first light.
Matters had been worsened by the breakdown in communications. To his dismay, Hollis was unable to notify Dillenger or any of the land team.
He had no way of knowing whether Dillenger had boarded the ship or was lost on the glacier.
Hollis paddled and cursed the deceased motor, the current at every stroke. His carefully calculated timetable was down the drain. The attack was far behind schedule, and he couldn't risk calling it off.
His only salvation was the "fog smoke" Findley had described. it swirled around the small boats and the fiercely determined men, cloaking them like a protecting blanket.
The mist and the darkness made it impossible for Hollis to see more than a few meters ahead. He navigated and watched over his tiny fleet through an infrared scope. He kept them tightly grouped within a three-meter radius, quietly giving directions over his miniature radio whenever one began to stray.
He turned the scope on the Lady Flamborough. Her beautiful lines now looked like a grotesque ice carving floating in front of the cracked porcelain wall of an antique bathtub. Hollis judged her to still be a good kilometer away.
After exacting its toll, the tide suddenly began to slacken and their speed soon picked up almost a knot. The welcome relief came almost too late. Hollis could see his men were wearing down under the constant, arduous paddling. They were men hardened by rigid training, and all lifted weights on a regular basis. They dug the paddles into the water noiselessly and heaved against the merciless tide, but their muscles were beginning to stiffen and each stroke became an effort.
The protective mist was beginning to . lift In his mind was the fear that they would become sitting ducks in the water. Hollis looked upward, his confidence ebbing with the tide. Through the mist's open patches he could see a sky that was turning from black to an ever lighter blue.
His boats were in the middle of the fjord, and the nearest shore that offered any degree of cover was half a kilometer farther away than the Lady Flamborough.
"Put your backs into it, men," he urged. "We're in the home stretch. Go for it."
The weary fighters reached deep for their reserve strength and increased the length and speed of their strokes. It felt to Hollis as if the inflatable boats were spurting through the water. He put aside the scope and paddled furiously.
They might make it, just might make it, he thought hopefuly as they began to rapidly close on the ship.
But where was Dillenger? he wondered bitterly. What in hell had happened to the assault team on the glacier?
Dillenger was having no picnic himself. He was even more vague on the situation. Immediately after jumping from the C-140 wmsport, he and his men had been immediately hurle, all over the sky by the heavy, blowing winds.
Tight-faced, Dillenger looked up and around to see how his team was Managing. Each man carried a small blue light, but the driving sleet made it impossible for him to see them. He lost them almost the instant his chute opened.
He reached down and pressed the switch of a little black box strapped to his leg. Then he spoke into his tiny transmitter.
"This is Major Dillenger-I have turned on my marker beacon. have a seven-kilometer glide, so try and stay close to me and home in on my position after you land."
"In this crap we'll be lucky to come down on the island," some malcontent muttered.
"Radio silence except for emergency," Dillenger ordered.
He looked down and saw nothing beyond his survival-and-weapons pack that dangled on a two-meter line beneath his harness-He took his bearings from the luminous dial of a combination compass and altimeter that extended in front of his forehead like the mirror worn by ear, nose and throat physicians.
Without reference points or a homing beacon dropped on the landing zone in advance-a luxury too great to risk alerttng the hiJackers-Dillenger had to try and fly by the seat of his pants and mentally judge glide angle and distance.
His primary concern was overshooting the edge of the glacier and landing m the fjord. He hedged his bet and came down short-nearly a full kilometer too short.
The glacier materialized through the darkness, and Dillenger saw he was descending directly over a crevasse. A sudden side gust caught his rectangular canopy and it began to oscillate. He jockeyed the shrouds to compensate and twisted into a landing attitude just as his dangling pack struck the inner wall of the crevasse and bounced over the lip. A layer of snow cushioned his impact and he made a perfect landing on his feet, only two meters from the ice fracture.
