Assault in Norway by Gallagher Thomas

Author:Gallagher, Thomas
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781461745655
Publisher: Lyons Press

11

THE MEN HAD ALREADY DESTROYED EVERYTHING OF FOREIGN ORIGIN THAT might betray them: empty raisin, cookie, milk, and ration tins, the wrappings of fruit, chocolate, and pemmican bars, used jars of frostbite ointments, all from Britain. While Rönneberg stood outside the cabin for a moment, they sat with that earnest-eager look found in college locker rooms before a game. Talk stopped like candles going out.

“All right, men,” Rönneberg’s deep voice said when he came back, “let’s get going.”

Filing out under clouds scudding low above them, they instinctively squinted into the wind as if in appraisal of its obscure source, its scope, and hidden strength. Since sundown it had increased by at least fifteen miles an hour, and now it was picking snow off the ground and blowing it like picnic litter through the air. A storm was the one thing they did not need, but they said nothing as they fastened on their skis, strapped their rucksacks to their backs, and gripped their poles. Across the way, smoke was coiling from the chimney of the other cabin in the moonlight, but already they looked upon their encounter with the two young couples as something that might not actually have happened. It might have been only an apparition, it seemed so far removed from what they were about to do, or try to do. On Rönneberg’s signal, they glided off toward the Rjukan valley, led by Claus Helberg, who had a feeling for movement and terrain, the sudden graced and uninterrupted reflexes of a deer, and the ability to sense rather than decide what to do in an emergency.

The first mile down the mountainside was steep and straight, and everyone behind Helberg followed at a good pace in his tracks. Then the woods thickened; they were forced to carry their skis and climb down through the brush, where the snow was deep and loose, and the surface of it moved with the wind around their legs. Using as a guide the telephone lines connecting the mountain above with the valley below, they rammed their way through thickets of shrubs and lopped-off branches of trees, sliding and wading downward from one telephone pole to another. Though they tried to keep close together, it was difficult and sometimes impossible. One man might find himself caught by a branch hidden beneath the snow, while another, taking a free and unexpected ride downward, went flying past him into the darkness below.

“Along the telephone line it was very difficult, steep country,” Rönneberg said later. “we sank in the snow up to our waists.”

Above them the telephone wires, sagging beneath a clinging load of snow, swayed back and forth in the increasing wind until the weight of the snow overcame its cohesive power. Then some of it dropped off, lessening the weight on the wires enough to make them vibrate. This dislodged more snow, which in turn made the wires vibrate again and dislodge still more snow.

The men, struggling under the fifty-pound weights of their rucksacks, hardly

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.