That was typical of the Russlanders. They were very thorough and conscientious in executing previously laid plans. They were also rather unimaginative in drawing up those plans, and slow to adapt to any situation not covered by the plans. This was a set of military vices very familiar to Richard Blade, and one he knew very well how to exploit.
Blade examined the little world that he could make out from mid-channel until he was quite sure no one was watching. Then he ducked down below the surface again.
The little electric torpedo was floating a few yards away, stabilized just below the surface by its buoyancy tanks. He gently pulled on the trailing line until he could reach out and grip the torpedo itself.
It was five feet long and eighteen inches in diameter, a fiberglass cylinder with controls forward and a rudder and propeller aft. It could carry Blade through the water at six knots for about ten hours. After that, if he needed to travel farther across the sea, he would have to inflate the life raft that was strapped to the torpedo.
Blade lay along the back of the torpedo, shoving his feet into the stirrups on either side of the rudder. One gloved hand moved to the controls. The propeller whispered into life and the torpedo began to glide forward through the green water.
Blade angled down until he was running thirty feet deep. He opened the throttle and felt the buffeting of the water increase against his arms and legs. He was aware of the chill of the water around him but not bothered by it. His dark green wet suit was as efficient an insulating garment as he'd ever worn, and his greased hands and feet felt no more than a faint nibbling from the cold.
He kept the torpedo on course at full speed for twenty minutes. The channel ran deep, with water a hundred feet deep only fifty yards from his beach. He hoped there would be a level place for him to park the torpedo that was also deep enough to make it invisible from the air.
When he'd counted off twenty-three minutes he slowed to half speed and began looking ahead and down, watching for the bottom to rise out of the dimness to meet him. At twenty-six minutes he saw it take shape, gray under the blue green around him. At twenty-eight minutes he cut the throttle completely. A moment later the torpedo settled onto firm sand forty feet down. Blade made sure that it was safely in place, then swam up to the surface.
To his relief he was no more than twenty yards from shore and a hundred yards south of the end of the beach that was his goal. He dove back down and started up the torpedo again. A few minutes at low power, and he set it down on the bottom again. This time he unhooked the anchor and dug it firmly into the sand. Then he unfastened the raft and the waterproof equipment pack from the torpedo and swam slowly toward the beach.
He swam until the water became too shallow. Then he began to walk, feeling out each step with his fins and meanwhile trying to look in all directions at once. For the twentieth time he told himself that the ideal soldier or secret agent would have eyes not only in the back of his head, but in the top and the sides as well!
Blade watched the trees on the shore with special care. For the moment he was virtually helpless in the face of an ambush, his torpedo out of reach, his raft uninflated, and no weapons ready for use except the sheath knife on his belt.
Nothing happened. He made it to the shelter of the trees and kept going for another fifty yards, until he was out of sight of the beach. Then he unslung his scuba gear and shoved his two packs out of sight under a bush. With his sheath knife he cut a branch from the bush, walked back to the beach, and with the branch brushed out his tracks. Now even a beach patrol would not easily realize that a man had come out of the sea and hidden in the forest. With that out of the way, he was finally able to strip off his wet suit and start unpacking his weapons.
He did not stop until they were all out and ready for use. A submachine gun, not an Uzi but another model with a folding stock and a barrel extension that could be screwed in place to give extra range and accuracy. Four fifty-round magazines of caseless 9-mm rounds. A flare pistol and six flares. Six hand grenades. Two knives, razor-sharp and balanced for throwing.
Blade checked all the working parts of the gun, then inserted a magazine and chambered a round. As it clicked into place he let out a sigh of relief. Now he was in shape to give anything short of a platoon of infantry a fight the survivors would remember all their lives. He hoped it wouldn't come to that. His mission depended on stealth and silence and speed, not on firepower and cutting down enemies in swaths. But it was never a good feeling to be nearly helpless, and it was always a happy moment when that helplessness came to an end.
Blade propped the gun ready to hand against a tree and stood up. Between the cool shade of the forest and sitting still in his damp underwear, he felt chillier now than he'd been in the water. He exercised for five minutes, made a quick tour of the area, then exercised for another ten. By the time he'd finished exercising, he was as limber as he needed to be and as warm as he could hope to be. He sat down again and started digging rations out of the pack.
He planned to keep most of the rations in reserve, in case he did have to spend a few days in the raft. But he needed some food now, to replenish the energy he'd used up making it to shore. He unwrapped chocolate and meat bars and began nibbling.
Over the next half-hour Blade slowly nibbled the ration bars down to crumbs. Then he carefully squeezed the foil wrappings into tiny balls, stowed them away in his pack, and relaxed. The courier with the files was not scheduled to make his appearance at the northern end of the beach until two hours after sunset. Sunset today was at 8:23. It was now just before eleven in the morning. Blade had nearly twelve hours of waiting in front of him.
Waiting, however, was another of the agent's skills that Blade had learned very thoroughly.
Chapter 8
Blade spent most of the day safely out of sight in the forest, sitting with his back to a tree and the submachine gun across his knees. Every hour he got up and made a quick patrol through the area around his hiding place. He didn't expect to find anything unusual or dangerous. He did want to make sure he knew the area better than anyone who might possibly sneak up on him.
Every two hours he slipped down to the beach and spent half an hour watching the channel and the sky above it. Once he saw three planes go over, three white vapor trails against the blue sky with a tiny metallic glint at the head of each trail. Both Imperial and Red Flame planes might have equally good reasons to fly high over this stretch of disputed land and water.
Another time he saw three fishing boats come down the channel, their engines puffing out blue smoke and their crews on deck laying out nets and buoys for the night's fishing. Blade scanned the boats from stern to stern with his binoculars, checking for signs that they might not be what they seemed. The Russlanders had taken over a good many Nordsbergen fishing boats and were using them to patrol the waters, which were rapidly becoming their private preserve.
Most of the confiscated boats were only lightly armed, so Blade doubted they could interfere directly with his mission. But they might put landing parties ashore, which would be a nuisance. They could also radio for help from the strong Russland naval and air forces only an hour or two away. That could be worse than a nuisance. Russland antisubmarine tactics were crude, but with overwhelming force against a submarine caught in shallow water they might be unpleasantly effective. Blade did not want to have to sail five hundred miles across the Nord Sea, bobbing along in his raft and living on ration bars and raw fish.