«Here. It is waterproofed. You must go now, before they come. If you give me that-«he pointed at the submachine gun «-I stay here, put some of them down while you get away. I take a few of them, for Maria.»

«Who's Maria?» Blade asked. His briefing hadn't mentioned any such person.

«My wife,» said the man briefly. «She come with me, because I need a second gun after the Russlanders started landing on our shore. I had to leave her behind after the ambush.» What was in his eyes as he said this was far worse than any simple pain from a wound.

Blade hated the thought, but there was another question he had to ask.

«Was she alive?»

It was brutal, but Blade had to know if there was any chance the woman would be captured alive and made to talk. The man shook his head.

«No. Three bullets in her stomach and another in her head. She will not talk. Now you know everything. Go, please, now! It will all be wasted, otherwise.» He reached for the submachine gun.

Blade kept a firm grip on it and shook his head. He hated even more telling the man that his troubles weren't over. Again there was no choice.

«I can't leave. There's a Russland destroyer out in the channel, just a couple of miles away. We can't move until something's done about it.»

The man turned even whiter and his face crumpled up as though someone had stepped on it. Then he put his face down on his arms and began to weep, silently but desperately.

Blade thought of breaking out the first-aid kit and giving the man a sedative. But he didn't want to have to cope with an unconscious body along with everything else. As for slapping or punching the man to bring him around, Blade found he could not force himself to do that. The courier had obviously been through a nightmarish ordeal these past few days, and seeing his wife shot down before his eyes was only part of it.

In another ten minutes Blade at last heard the Russlanders approaching. It was hard to tell how many there were, but easy to tell that they had no fear of any opposition. They were tramping briskly along with a great thudding of feet and cracking of branches, shouting back and forth loudly in Russ. From time to time Blade heard the metallic clink and clatter of their weapons.

He picked up the file and checked to make sure the incendiary strip was in place. If he couldn't get clear, he could jerk the tab on one end of the strip and reduce the whole file to a charred and illegible mess in seconds. Then all he would have to worry about was not being captured alive himself, and he knew any number of ways to ensure that.

The approaching Russlanders seemed to have either stopped or quieted down. Now Blade could hear only an occasional footstep, and only once a human voice. He studied the woods. No sign of any worthwhile target yet. He wanted to wait until he could be reasonably sure of cutting down half a dozen with his first burst. That would-

In the distance, Blade heard the unmistakable cracking roar of heavy guns firing. A whistle sounded high in the air, rising to a scream. Blade turned in time to see a pillar of sand, gravel, and smashed trees rise from the far end of the beach. He ducked as bits of steel and wood kicked up sand all along the water's edge.

The courier jerked all over, buried his face deeper in his hands, and gave a faint whimper. Blade suspected he knew well enough what was happening, so that there was no need to tell him. The destroyer was going to bombard the beach and forest. The two of them might be blown to bits. Certainly they would be pinned down until their pursuers could launch an attack.

More shells, landing inland. Still more, on the beach but closer to where Blade crouched and watched. In the gun flashes the destroyer was clearly visible, almost dead in the water. Bow and stern turrets were firing alternately, hurling a salvo toward the land about every thirty seconds.

Two shells landed well short of the beach, throwing up tremendous pillars of silvery water. Then four shells burst almost together, raising a sheet of yellow orange flame and sending a wall of sand and smoke sweeping toward Blade. He closed his eyes and ducked down again, protecting the raft with his body. The last thing he could afford now was a puncture in it.

More shells, closer still, tossing a full-sized tree end over end into the air: It splashed down into the water as another salvo came in. The ground seemed to heave under him, the fallen tree jumped several feet into the air and fell back again, and shell fragments sailed past in a weird chorus of pipings and whistlings.

Before the chorus died away, Blade's mind leaped ahead, to realize where the neat shells would land-if the destroyer's gunners kept to their pattern. Being Russlanders, it was better than even odds-they would. The price of guessing wrong would be death for Blade and the courier, but at least it would be a quick death.

Blade tossed the raft over the tree and grabbed the courier by the collar. Half heaving, half pushing, he pulled the man to his feet and sent him sailing over the tree, to land on top of the raft. The whistle of incoming shells sounded in Blade's ears as he made his own leap. Their explosion caught him in midair. Somehow he managed to hit the ground in the shelter of the tree before the air was filled with enough flying steel to have torn him to shreds. Somehow he also managed to land holding the muzzle of the submachine gun up out of the sand. Beside him the courier lay full-length, as silent and nearly as stiff as a corpse. Blade kept his head down, too dizzy from the concussion to be able to rejoice that he'd guessed right.

There was silence for a moment, then more shells whistled in. Explosions crashed again, and Blade had to roll clear as the tree bounced several feet toward him. If he hadn't moved, it would have landed across his legs. He lay there, his hearing slowly returning, aware that blood was running from his nose, aware also that he was waiting for a particular sound. He knew it almost had to come.

It came. From the forest where trees now lay tossed and tumbled in mad heaps came a thin chorus of screams. The Russland gunners had carried their pattern too far, landing a full salvo squarely on top of their own infantry patrol. Blade looked over the tree, which was now well chewed on both sides by shell fragments. He could see a number of khaki-clad figures sitting or sprawling among the fallen trees. Someone staggered to his feet, raised a submachine gun, and let off a stream of tracer into the sky. He wasn't shooting anywhere near Blade. Apparently he was trying to signal the destroyer. Blade raised his own weapon and squeezed off a five-round burst. The Russlander fell back out of sight, his gun falling with him. It went on spraying tracer until the magazine ran empty, then fell silent. Once again the only sound Blade could hear was the moaning of the maimed and dying.

Beside Blade, the courier staggered to his feet. The sight of the smashed forest and the dying Russlanders seemed to restore both his wits and his courage. He turned to Blade and grinned savagely. «Nice shooting, for us, yes?»

Blade nodded, sprang over the log, and motioned the other man to follow him. They had to close in now and finish off any surviving Russlanders. Then they would have to get inland, away from the destroyer's guns and from the landing party that would almost certainly come ashore the moment the captain realized what had happened.

The courier was just sliding down to squat beside Blade when a machine gun went tak-tak-tak off to the right and bullets went wheeeet past Blade's ear. He dove for the ground, the courier only seconds behind him. Blade saw the courier spin around, drop to his knees, then collapse, blood flowing from chest, shoulder, and right arm.

Without raising his head, Blade pulled out his first-aid kit, then crawled over to the courier. The man had half a dozen bullets in him, and he was going to die without much better care than he could get aboard the submarine. That was obvious at a glance. Blade still worked furiously, disinfecting and injecting and bandaging. If the man would just live long enough to tell how he had been betrayed to the Russlanders-