"Take her west five miles at twenty knots," McCafferty ordered. It was a gamble, but a small one. On reaching station, they'd found unusually good water conditions, and the small move risked losing the contact temporarily. On the other hand, getting precise range information would give him a much better tactical picture and enable them to make a solid contact report-and make it by line-of-sight UHF radio before the Soviet formation got close enough that they could intercept the submarine's transmission. As the boat raced west, McCafferty watched the bathythermograph trace. As long as the temperature didn't change, he'd keep that good sound channel. It didn't. The submarine slowed rapidly and McCafferty went back to sonar.
"Okay, where are they now?"
"Got 'em! Right there, bearing three-three-two."
"XO, plot it and get a contact report made up."
Ten minutes later the report was sent via satellite. The reply ordered Chicago in: GO FOR THE HEAVIES.
The farm was three miles away, thankfully downhill through tall, rough grass. On first sighting it through binoculars, Edwards called it the Gingerbread House. A typical Icelandic farmhouse, it had white stucco walls buttressed by heavy wooden beams, a contrasting red-painted trim, and a steeply pitched roof right out of the Brothers Grimm. The outlying barns were large, but low-slung with sod-covered roofs. The lower meadows by the stream were dotted with hundreds of large, odd-looking sheep with massively thick coats of wool, asleep in the grass half a mile beyond the house.
"Dead-end road," Edwards said, folding up the map. "And we could use some food. Gentlemen, it's worth the chance, but we approach carefully. We'll follow this dip to the right and keep that ridgeline between us and the farm till we're within half a mile or so."
"Okay, sir," Sergeant Smith agreed. The four men struggled into a sitting position to don their gear yet again. They'd been moving almost continuously for two and a half days, and were now about thirty-five miles northeast of Reykjavik. A modest pace on flat roads, it was a mankilling effort cross country, particularly while staying watchful for the helicopters that were now patrolling the countryside. They had consumed their last rations six hours before. The cool temperatures and hard physical effort conspired to drain the energy from their bodies as they picked their way around and over the two-thousand-foot hills that dotted the Icelandic coast like so many fence pickets.
Several things kept them moving. One was the fear that the Soviet division they had watched airlifted in would expand its perimeter and snap them up. No one relished the thought of captivity under the Russians. But worse than this was fear of failure. They had a mission, and no taskmaster is harsher than one's own self-expectations. Then there was pride. Edwards had to set an example for his men, a principle remembered from Colorado Springs. The Marines, of course, could hardly let a "wing-wiper" outperform them. Thus, without thinking consciously about it, four men contrived to walk themselves into the ground, all in the name of pride.
"Gonna rain," Smith said.
"Yeah, the cover will be nice," Edwards said, still sitting back. "We'll wait for it. Jesus, I never thought working in daylight would be so Goddamned tough. There's just something weird about not having the friggin' sun go down."
"Tell me about it. And I ain't even got a cigarette," Smith growled.
"Rain again?" Private Garcia asked.
"Get used to it," Edwards said. "It rains seventeen days in June, on average, and so far this's been a wet year. How d'you think the grass got so tall?"
"You like this place?" Garcia asked, dumbfounded enough to forget the "sir." Iceland had little in common with Puerto Rico.
"My dad's a lobsterman working out of Eastpoint, Maine. When I was a kid I went out on the boat every time I could, and it was always like this."
"What we gonna do when we get down to that house, sir?" Smith brought them back to things that mattered.
"Ask for food-"
"Ask?" Garcia was surprised.
"Ask. And pay for it, with cash. And smile. And say, 'Thank you, sir,"' Edwards said. "Remember your manners, guys, unless you want him to phone Ivan ten minutes after we leave." He looked around at his men. The thought sobered them all.
The rain started with a few sprinkles. Two minutes later it was falling heavily, cutting visibility down to a few hundred yards. Edwards wearily got to his feet, forcing his Marines to do likewise, and they all moved downhill as the sun above the clouds dipped in the northwestern sky and slid down behind a hill. The hill-since they'd probably have to climb it the next day, they thought of it as a mountain-had a name, but none of them could pronounce it. By the time they were a quarter mile from the farmhouse, it was as dark as it would get, and the rain had the visibility down to about eighty yards.
