Nuclear security

The Race to a Norwegian Castle Fortress to Stop a Nazi Atomic Bomb

In a staggered line, the nine saboteurs cut across the moun­tain slope. Instinct, more than the dim light of the moon, guided the young men. They threaded through the stands of pine and traversed down the sharp, uneven terrain, much of it pocked with empty hollows and thick drifts of snow. Dressed in white camouflage suits over their Brit­ish Army uniforms, the men looked like phantoms haunting the woods. They moved as quietly as ghosts, the silence broken only by the swoosh of their skis and the occasional slap of a pole against an unseen branch. The warm, steady wind that blew through the Vestfjord Valley dampened even these sounds. It was the same wind that would eventually, they hoped, blow their tracks away.

A mile into the trek from their base hut, the woods became too dense and steep for them to continue by any means other than on foot. The young Norwegians unfastened their skis and hoisted them to their shoul­ders. It was still tough going. Carrying rucksacks filled with thirty-five pounds of gear, and armed with submachine guns, grenades, pistols, ex­plosives, and knives, they waded, slid, and clambered their way down through the heavy, wet snow. Under the weight of their equipment they occasionally sank to their waists in the drifts. The darkness, thickening when the low clouds hid the moon, didn’t help matters.