There was nothing more they could do in the U-Boat, anyway. The compartment hatch was welded shut. They’d need to blast it open to get to the device and the explosives had been left up on the ice, along with the rest of their equipment. The reconnaissance into the bunker was only supposed to be a search and recovery mission, securing the U-Boat against minimal resistance. They’d expected to encounter the two crazy men on the U-Boat but they hadn’t expected to come face to face with an attack submarine when they penetrated the concrete bunker.
Circling his hand anticlockwise and gesturing upward, Muller signaled his men to rally at his position then climb the ladder to the conning tower. There was no point risking radio communication if things hadn’t gone to plan up above. He’d follow right behind them, allowing them to draw any enemy fire on their position first, of course.
As the last man paused at the top of the ladder, Muller paused, too. So far silence.
He gave three sharp taps on the man’s leg, signaling for him to continue up.
Reaching the inside of the conning tower, it took Muller only a few seconds to assess the damage. Not a single man remained on post at the perimeter he’d ordered them to establish after disposing of the sailors on the American sub.
Someone had taken his men out. They were handpicked, elite soldiers and getting the better of them wouldn’t have been easy. Muller would not underestimate the Americans again.
Muller felt two taps on his shoulder and turned to the man next to him. Pointing to his own eyes, then to the sail of the American sub, Muller looked but couldn’t see anything. Then there was a slight movement. At least one man was sheltered behind the sail. But one man couldn’t take out thirty of his. There had to be others.
Another series of taps on his shoulder and he followed the raised hand of another of his men. An irregular shape against the hard and uniform edge of the concrete revealed another man, lying flat, sheltered behind some kind of depression or step in the concrete floor.
Muller didn’t want to risk damaging the American sub, so the man cowering there would live a little longer. The man on the ground wouldn’t be so lucky.
Muller unclipped something from one of the loops on his body armor. It looked small in his oversized palm and more like a piece of exotic tropical fruit than a weapon. But it was, indeed, a weapon and an extremely potent one at that.
Hand grenades haven’t evolved much since the First World War. They’re simple weapons. Pull the pin, then throw it and wait for it to explode. If the concussion wave doesn’t kill you, the shrapnel will, cutting both friend and foe to ribbons as it flies in all directions. A traditional grenade is as likely to kill your own men as it is the enemy. That’s what Muller loved so much about his Swedish designed and German built Rheinmetall SHGR07 Airburst grenades. Only the enemy was cut to pieces by the shrapnel or killed by the concussive blast. And it did the enemy no good to hide behind cover. The SHGR07 was purpose built to deal with that.
Vertical spring-loaded metal prongs running from top to bottom of the small grenade gave it an innocent look, but that was far from the case. Like a deadly spider with its legs curled into a ball, as soon as the 07 grenade hit the ground, the prongs or ‘legs’ would spring from the sides of the casing causing the grenade to stand up like a macabre robot spider. A small charge would then fire from the base of the grenade, shooting it six feet into the air where it would perform a neat crowd pleaser trick and explode, shooting a cone of lethal shrapnel directly below the grenade with no collateral damage. The target, even if shielded by low lying cover, like the man Muller could see below, and anything in a six foot radius, would be blasted to a bloody ruin by the most advanced hand grenade ever devised.
Muller pulled the pin and threw the grenade with uncanny accuracy to Jack’s position in the concrete drain. Muller didn’t even duck for cover behind the conning tower. Neither did his men. They had all seen the Airburst grenade in action. It was a devastating and focused weapon. As soon as it hit the ground, they all silently counted in their heads the five seconds until detonation.
Chapter 43
“Oh shit!”
Jack saw what was coming even before it hit the ground. His battle sharpened senses recognized the avocado colored grenade as it arced through its trajectory. He was toast. He’d seriously underestimated their firepower. All of it German. That couldn’t be a coincidence, but there would be time to analyze that later. Right now, he had no more than 5 seconds to live.
Jack calculated the distance from the nearest dead soldier to his position. The man had fallen in the shadows and having done so, rolled a few yards on the sloping concrete toward Jack. He crunched the numbers and angles and worked out that it was his only chance. The odds of success weren’t good, though. But what the hell…
Like a coiled spring, Jack leapt to his feet and made a furious dash toward the dead man.
Two seconds until detonation.
He threw himself down and slid the last couple of feet, outstretched like he was making a desperate attempt to slide into the home plate.
As soon as he slid into the fallen mercenary, Jack rolled the man over him until he was lying directly beneath, using the man’s dead body, Kevlar helmet and Schutzklasse IV tactical body armor as a makeshift shield.
The grenade exploded.
The blast was ear-popping and the shock wave brain jarring.
Jack was stunned and badly concussed, but alive.
Barely.
It hadn’t done him much good, though. He was still in the sights of the man who threw the grenade and the others with him in the U-Boat conning tower. They had the high ground and now Jack was pinned down by the deadweight of one of their men and his heavy gear.
“It’s time to give up, Rambo,” a voice shouted from the U-Boat. His English was clipped and precise, but he had a heavy accent nonetheless.
Jack pushed his weapon out of arms reach and raised his hands above his head as best he could. New mission — stay alive.
“Very wise choice,” the man commended him. “Tell your friend on the submarine to do the same.”
“It’s over Sam. Let’s focus on keeping the others alive,” Jack shouted in the hope that Sam would hear him and not play he hero.
“How do we know that they’re not going to murder us like the rest of the crew?” Sam’s booming voice echoed off the concrete walls and over the water.
Jack couldn’t argue with the man’s logic.
“By the way, my name’s Jack, not Rambo.”
“Alright, Jack and Sam, my name is Muller. Standartenführer Karl Muller. You are both clearly skilled and very resourceful, but the time for games is over. We have a mission to complete and we don’t have time for your American heroics right now. So, here’s what’s going to happen…”
Muller paused.
One his men unshouldered his pack and produced something that looked like an overgrown pistol whose oversized barrel was on a steady diet of steroids. He then pulled out a skeletal looking buttstock and rammed it home into the pistol. Now Jack recognized it, even in the less than ideal lighting conditions. He’d seen plenty of under barrel slung grenade launchers, but this was a H&K AG36 with its own buttstock. The man was holding a standalone compact grenade launcher.