Designated Targets

“Don’t worry, Herr Untersturmführer, we shall get you there alive, yes. Maybe nobody else will survive this fucking crossing, but you’re with the best fucking crew in the Kriegsmarine.” The man sounded genuinely crazy.

How could anyone survive this? Another barge was destroyed, this time a hundred yards in front of them. It didn’t go up in a spectacular detonation like the last one. A diving Spitfire poured hundreds of rounds of tracer into the luckless men trapped in the slow-moving, bucket. Iron splinters and hot flakes of metal erupted from stem to stern, but they were mostly lost in a storm of body parts and bloody ruin that had been an infantry company a few seconds earlier.

Gelder squeezed his eyes shut and tried to focus on his own purpose in being here. He mechanically ran through the mission brief.

He would set down on the coast of Kent. He would make contact with the agent Blair. Blair would take him to a safe house, where he would meet with others sympathetic to the National Socialist cause. Gelder would liaise between them and the SS Sonderaktiontruppen to liberate the leadership cadre of the British Union of Fascists from Holloway Prison.

Falling shells bracketed the speeding Schnellboot, slamming Gelder into a bulkhead and then throwing him to the floor.

He would set down on the coast of Kent. He would make contact . . .

A flash.

A roar.

And then.

. . .

. . .

. . .

Nothing.

HMS TRIDENT, THE ENGLISH CHANNEL

“My God,” said Halabi. “It’s a slaughter. The purest sort of slaughter.”

“Aye, ma’am,” said McTeale, her XO, as they sped back toward the relative safety of the English coast.

It was impossible to make any sense of the main display in the CIC. There were thousands of individual contacts throughout the battlespace. The ship’s Combat Intelligence was still tracking and analyzing every return. Her human operators were still assigning targets to the defenders forces’ as quickly as they could. But to have any chance of understanding what was happening on a human scale, you had to turn away from the electronic version of the battle—a vast, hypercomplex simulacrum of cascading data tags—and attend to the simple things.

The drone footage of a Heinkel breaking up in midair, punched apart by a four-inch shell.

The vision of a parachute half-deployed, trailing fire behind a plummeting body, spearing down into the pebbles and limestone scree at the base of the White Cliffs of Dover.

The distant bump and thump of floating corpses as they struck the carbon composite sheath armor of the Trident at 120 knots.

“Metal Storm at one-point-three percent, Captain.”

“Thank you, Mr. McTeale. Advise the Admiralty that we shall be withdrawing toward Plymouth and will need extra air cover, I think.”

“Fighter Command has already assigned three USAAF squadrons to cover us, ma’am. They’ll relieve the Canadians in eight minutes.”

“Very good, then. I think we’re past the worst of it, don’t you?”

Halabi and her executive officer stared at the main display. The red icons denoting German surface units were beginning to pile up in the southern half of the Channel. More and more blue triangles, marking Allied air units were streaming down from the northern airfields.

“For now, Captain,” said McTeale. “For now.”

BERLIN

“Tell me, Brasch, would you have turned traitor if it were not for your son?”

“Ha! You’re a fine one to talk, Müller. If I am a traitor, what are you? Skulking about in your stupid disguise. An assassin, that’s all.”

Müller sipped from the fine bone china cup. Coffee with real cream. Because of his trusted position, Brasch would enjoy many privileges denied to ordinary Germans. The full pound of Italian roasted coffee beans his wife had produced from a cupboard was undoubtedly one. The dollops of rich cream another. Manfred, the engineer’s boy, was no longer with them. He’d been put to bed an hour earlier. The three adults—Müller, Brasch, and his plump, pretty hausfrau Willie—all hunkered over the kitchen table, like card players protecting a hand.

They heard the muffled crump of far-off bombs only as an echo of thunder.

“So, Brasch. What say you?”