Chandler smiled unconvincingly. ‘And if the chamber comes down on me?’
‘It won’t because you’ll already be gone. The quicker you leave, the safer you’ll be, now go!’
Chandler sighed again as he clambered up the side of the Seehund and then levered himself into the cockpit. The SEALs handed him a GPS locator beacon, already activated and transmitting on a frequency that the Polar Star would be able to detect, then helped him close the dome and check that it was air tight before they leaped off the hull and stood alongside Ethan on the dock.
Moments later, he heard the rumble of the submarine’s engine and slowly it sank beneath the waves, Chandler’s nervous expression the last thing he saw before the Seehund vanished from sight.
‘Balls of steel, man,’ one of the SEALs said.
‘Let’s go,’ Ethan replied as he turned for the base entrance, Hannah with him. ‘Veer’s men will break through any moment.’
He had barely got the words out when the dock beneath him shook and the sound of violent explosions shuddered through the base.
XLV
Hannah ran behind Riggs and Ethan as they hurried up to the command center. Hannah staggered to one side in the control center as she felt the entire base shudder beneath her feet. A cloud of smoke drifted up past the shattered windows as a hail of gunfire swept the interior of the center and smashed out the remaining glass as she dragged herself to the entrance and looked down the corridor outside.
‘Return fire!’ Riggs yelled. ‘Ford, downstairs, support Sully and Del Toro at the blast hatch!’
Hannah pulled her pistol and dashed for the stairwell.
A roiling haze of smoke filled the corridor, the handful of glow sticks still working casting orbs of light into the tendrils as she got to her feet and started running. She reached the stairwell and heard a clatter of gunfire as she dashed down them two at a time, trying not to slip on the patchy ice as she hit the corridor at the bottom and immediately threw herself behind a bulkhead as she saw Del Toro and Sully heavily engaged as bullets whipped past her and clanged off the walls in showers of sparks.
The SEALs were holding the corridor, directing an almost continuous stream of withering fire out to where Hannah could see that the pressure door had been forced open by the blast of Veer’s explosives. She could not see if the latch was in place or whether it had been snapped off by the force of the explosion, but beyond the swirling acrid smoke she could see further down the docks to where bright muzzle flashes flickered dangerously close.
‘Grenade!’
Riggs bellowed the warning as he leaped down the stairwell as Del Toro hurled himself at a small black object that bounced in from the open doorway and skittered along the ground. He caught it in his hand in an act of supreme courage and tossed it out again. Hannah winced and covered her ears as a sharp explosion rocked the base once more, Del Toro and Riggs hugging the walls to avoid the cloud of shrapnel from the blast that peppered the walls.
Hannah edged forward, ten yards behind where the two SEALs were holding firm and directing their supremely accurate fire at every figure that loomed near the doorway.
‘Seventeen!’ Del Toro snapped.
‘Fifteen!’ Riggs replied.
‘Twelve!’ Sully yelled.
Hannah realized that they were counting down their rounds despite the chaos and noise around them. A gunman jumped through the doorway and fired from the hip as he moved, Hannah slamming her back to the wall as he hopped through the bulkhead and tried to dodge left.
Riggs hit him first, Del Toro a moment later, both men firing a double-tap that put two rounds in the gunman’s belly and then snapped his head left and right as the second rounds shattered his skull and he slumped back into the wall.
A second gunman loomed and Hannah fired without conscious thought, two shots echoing out above the roar of gunfire as the first bullet clipped the gunman’s shoulder and the second whipped his head aside as it smashed through his jaw and he screamed, a cloud of blood splattering onto the ice and his boots as he reeled away with his hands covering his face.
Del Toro hit him twice again and he collapsed onto the dock, partially blocking the doorway as his screams were silenced.
Riggs and Del Toro began advancing toward the open doorway under cover from Sully, gunfire from further down the docks whipping through the corridor but coming from too far away to pick them out as they moved, the smoke covering their advance now as they pushed forward. Hannah slipped past one bulkhead and moved to occupy their former position, aiming carefully at the open hatch but cautious of stepping out into the corridor.
‘Hannah, covering fire on my mark!’
Riggs’s voice carried clearly enough that she knew instinctively what to do. Del Toro switched to his 203 grenade launcher and fired two rounds out onto the docks. The grenades arced through the air, landing far enough away to be out of the reach of their immediate assailants either side of the door, close enough that the blasts would injure more men.
Caught in a perfect trap, the attacking soldiers had no choice but to break for cover.
‘Now!’ Riggs shouted.
Del Toro launched himself forward as Hannah opened fire through the hatch, aiming down toward the tunnel mouth. At this range she knew that she could not hope to hit anyone by design but with luck a bullet or two might pass close enough to Veer’s gunmen to force their heads down for a moment, enough time for Del Toro and Riggs to get the door shut.
Del Toro slid in behind the heavy hatch as bullets continued to fly through the opening, and with a wince of effort he heaved the door closed again and the heavy metal of the hatch slammed against the jam with a deep clang that echoed down the corridor.
Riggs leaped to his feet and slammed his weight behind the door as Hannah dashed forward and helped him, bullets clanging against the far side of the door as Del Toro grabbed the metal rails that had been used to keep the door closed. Both had been bent and snapped by the force of the blast, but he rammed what was left of them through the latches. The roar of gunfire was muted instantly as Del Toro turned to Riggs.
‘It’s only a matter of time,’ he said breathlessly. ‘They’re gonna get through here.’
Riggs nodded and looked at Hannah. ‘Good work. Let’s see how many of them we managed to pick off.’
Hannah led the way back into the control center, where Saunders was still manning his post and watching the docks below with his sniper rifle. Hannah could tell that the gunfire had ceased but the windows were now completely blown out, a gaping hole in their defense against even a single rocket propelled grenade.
‘Five,’ Saunders said without looking at them as they walked in.
‘Two,’ Del Toro added.
‘Two,’ Sully said.
‘Two,’ Riggs finished off the tally, ‘and Hannah here picked another one off.’
‘Twelve dead for no losses,’ Saunders grinned. ‘I’m liking that. Can we have another go?’
Ethan leaned against the wall and peered down toward the tunnel entrance. ‘I saw Veer and his team land and they had maybe a hundred men. They’re down to eighty now, still heavy odds, and I’m willing to bet they’ll use RPGs if they really feel that they can’t get in here.’
Hannah frowned. ‘That’s what doesn’t make any sense. ‘They could have fire balled us by now, so why are they making all these risky moves instead?’
Riggs looked about the control center. ‘There must be something up here that they want or need, something that they can’t afford to destroy or endanger.’