Below them and in front of them, they could clearly see guards patrolling back and forth on the drawbridge and on the road leading to the hydroelectric dam. In the barracks next to the hydroelectric power station, more German soldiers were sleeping, others playing cards. It was 11:40 p.m.

As the intelligence provides, at 12 midnight the guards changed. They continued to lurk in the darkness for half an hour, making sure that the nerves of the new guards had relaxed. As the team members ate their rations in the dark, Renneberg approached each team member to make sure they had taken the specific instructions to action to heart. Planned action is paramount, and a momentary impulse can lead to serious consequences. As they sat there anxiously waiting, they felt as if they had gone back to the time when they were resting in place during training in Scotland, with the occasional joke or story to tell, and they could laugh to their heart's content if they wanted to, because it was so windy that it was impossible for anyone to hear us. Everyone looked confident, and that was the moment when everyone was confident that they would be able to complete the task successfully.

At 3 a.m., the squad advanced towards the target. Nine men silently crawled to the barbed wire fence 100 meters away, the covering team posed with "Thompson" submachine guns in hand to cover up, and Hawkreed ran forward to cut the chain lock on the door with pliers. The pliers only cut once, and then they took a few more seconds to pluck the surrounding wires, and the most strategic door of World War II was opened.

As soon as the gate opened, the cover team rushed in to reconnoitre, all with poison gas bombs (chloroform) in their pockets. At the same time, the raiding team passed through a second door 10 meters away from the basement, where the heavy water was stored.

Except for the rumble of cars in the distance, everything was calm at the hydroelectric power station. The only thing that worries us is that a bright moon flashes out from behind the clouds, and the dim light in the hydropower station suddenly brightens, and the natural cover of the action team members is gone. Renneberg gestured, and the covering team surrounded the entrance to the barracks where the Germans were, according to a pre-studied plan. In the action team, one person watched the wind, and the other four people were divided into two groups, each carrying explosives to sneak into the basement, in case one group failed, and the other group could still act according to plan. They went straight to the side door of the basement and found it locked; So they went to another entrance on the second floor, and the door was also locked. Members of the raid team looked down from the second floor and saw a scientist at work in the basement, but there was no sign of the Germans inside.

The only way to avoid firing with the enemy now is through a narrow ventilation tunnel into the basement. Thankfully, the lid of the ventilation duct is open. Renneberg looked around, only Frederica Kaiser was beside him, and the other two operatives scattered as they searched their surroundings. Every minute counted, so Renneberg and Kaiser climbed the short ladder, and the two of them crawled forward with their hands and feet on their hands, clumping through the clumps of lines and pipes. They crawled with their rucksacks and explosives in front of them and pushed them forward. From a vent in the roof, they could see that the target was beneath them. At the end of the vent, the two quickly slid down the stairs to the basement outhouse, subduing the night watchman inside.

They quickly locked the door, and Kaiser pointed a gun at the trembling night watchman, who had probably never seen a man in an English [***] suit, let alone two such men falling from the sky and appearing in front of him. Renneberg opened his rucksack, took sausage-shaped explosives from it, and glued them one by one to the jars of heavy water, which were exactly the same ones they had seen during their simulation training in England. When Renneberg installed about 18 detonators, he suddenly heard the sound of glass breaking. He looked back and saw Stromheim and Ayland climbing in through the window behind the hydroelectric power station. Kaiser also turned around and was about to shoot at an unknown target, only to realize that it was his own person. It was a tense moment, and both sides of the mission thought that the other was the enemy, and they were both tense and ready to attack. When Strumgem and Aylland failed to find an entrance to the ventilation ducts and lost contact with Renneberg and Kaiser, they decided that the only option was to do so. They acted bravely, but they also took great risks, and the sound of breaking glass may have alarmed the Germans stationed at the hydroelectric power station. Renneberg rushed to remove the remaining glass and let Strumhelm in, accidentally slitting his own hand in the process.

Elland stood outside the shattered glass window to watch the wind, and inside, Renneberg and Stromhelm were installing the remaining explosives, and while Rennebergra wired, Stromhelm checked again that the explosives were properly placed. Normally, they put two more wires for 30 seconds to prevent people in the factory from being alarmed and coming to stop the blasting. This was a contingency move, as it meant that once the enemy was disturbed, the explosion could occur before they left the hydroelectric plant.

Just as they were about to light the wires, the night watchman said, "Please, I need my glasses, which are not available in Norway now." This sudden request made the members of the operation stop what they were doing, and they did not expect him to make such a request at this critical moment. The operatives politely searched around the table for his glasses and handed them to the night watchman. "Thank you." The night watchman smiled and put on his glasses. As he spoke, the four members of the team heard footsteps approaching in the distance. They loaded their guns and waited. Did a German patrol pass through here? Fortunately, it was a Norwegian civilian who walked into the room, and when he saw three soldiers in British [***] uniforms in the room, while his colleague stood on the ground with his head in his hands, he took a few steps back in surprise.

Outside, the cover team began to get nervous. The assault team had been in for 25 minutes, and Stohelg had been instructed to keep an eye on the movements of the two sentries on the drawbridge. As he huddled in the dark, he could hear the two sentries talking, unaware of what was going on in the house.

Renneberg lit the wires, and Kaiser counted to 10 and ordered the two Norwegian civilians in the house to run upstairs, and the attackers rushed out of the door and ran out. When they ran out about 20 meters, they heard a dull explosion behind them. The explosion, blocked by the noise of hydroelectric power plant equipment and heavy concrete walls, did not sound loud. The cover team doubted that the explosives used by the assault team were properly installed. When Renneberg heard the explosion, he knew that the tanks that were holding 4,000 pounds of heavy water had been smashed — about four or five months' heavy water production — and were running down the basement sewers.

The dull noise is not surprising to the people who work and live at the Vimok hydroelectric plant, who are not yet aware that the heavy water reserves have been destroyed. Small, harmless explosions are common in the machinery and equipment of hydroelectric power plants, and similar noises can be heard when ice breaks and snow collapses on hillsides. The explosion itself wasn't very loud, it sounded like two or three cars crashing into each other.

When the members of the assault team heard the noise, they immediately hid and waited for the reaction of the German barracks. They stood or crouched when they saw the door of the barracks pushed open, and a German soldier appeared outside the door, disheveled and with a torch in his hand, and came out into the courtyard. He made his way slowly in the direction where Hawkreed was hiding, who was hiding behind an empty jar in the courtyard. He stopped when he was about 5 meters away from Hawkred, and the torch in his hand shone right on Hawkreed's head. If it weren't for the wind, he would have heard Hawkreed's heavy breathing. By this time, 3 Thompson guns and 4 rifles had been aimed at the back of the German soldier. As long as the torch in his hand is a few inches lower, the fire of the operatives will shoot at him together. But at this point he turned around, returned to the barracks, and closed the door.

The operatives began to retreat. Their composure shows their high level of professionalism. The ability to respond calmly and without firing when the Germans were only a few feet away from their hiding place could be called exemplary behavior in response to a threat.

The operation went smoothly in a way that no one expected. Only 3 of them were found - by the night watchman in the basement. Although they wore English [***] attire when they were on duty, the Norwegian language they spoke led to the belief that they must be Norwegians. Renneberg and Kaiser were wearing British [***] attire, and they left with some British tools and documents so that the Germans could later determine their "nationality". In order to avoid retaliation by the enemy, it is better to make the enemy think that sabotage was carried out by British special services, and not by local resistance groups.

The operatives have completed their mission, and all they have to do now is run away – run quickly. The problem is that it is impossible to escape quickly from the steep Zhekhand Valley. They should run as far as possible before the alarm goes off. Nine members of the team climbed down the canyon and crossed the river, which was higher and more turbulent than it had been two hours earlier. The water on the ice was a few feet higher, and in another hour, maybe a few minutes, the ice on the river would probably break and melt completely, leaving them to look across the river and sigh. The rate at which the temperature rises and the snow and ice melt is very fast will cause great trouble for the team to escape. The thick, wet snow was a huge obstacle to their quick escape, and they could already feel the snow under their boots getting thicker and the wind blowing in their faces warmer.

As they crossed the river, a loud alarm sounded, causing the ground to vibrate. They quickly climbed to the other side of the river. The first car from Dzhekhan was very slow at the bend in the mountain road, because the mountain road was very slippery, and they were hiding behind snowdrifts when the car whizzed past them. After the car passed, they crossed the road from the valley (the only road in the area) and returned to the place where they had earlier hidden their weapons and equipment, and found the equipment. When they looked back at the hydropower station, they saw that the hydropower station was brightly lit, and the railway tracks they had just passed had been lit by searchlights. A few minutes later, a convoy of cars and motorcycles whizzed across the drawbridge in the direction of Vimok. The race has begun.

For the next three hours, the team struggled along the cable car tracks, which were built to take locals to the top of the mountain to enjoy the sun during the polar night hours. The climb was extremely strenuous – especially for the few team members who had a bad cold – and the rocks made it impossible for them to use the sled. Throughout the climb, the team could hear the roar of cars and the noise of people in the previously quiet valley. They heard a gunshot coming from where they had just crossed the road. Strangely, it was still pitch black in the valley. At this moment, the Germans thought that the attackers were still hiding in the hydropower station, they knew that the attackers had not crossed the drawbridge, and they thought that only a madman would climb the cliff behind the hydropower station or the canyon under the drawbridge. They then concluded that it was impossible for the attackers to escape from the dam.

Most of the road leading to the summit is covered with dense pine trees, all of which grow along the cable car tracks, towards the windswept wind. Every few minutes, members of the action team look ahead to see if anyone is ambushing here. For the attackers, this was the logical escape route, and the Germans were in a mess like headless flies as soon as the alarm sounded, so they ignored the obvious. The main fear of the operation team was that the enemy turned on the searchlights in the valley and sent a patrol to search by cable car. With the gondola, it would only take a few minutes for the enemy to concentrate a large number of troops to the top of the mountain, and if that were the case, they would not have been able to escape at all. Because even if they can win the shootout, their tracks will be spotted immediately, and when the enemy planes are brought in to assist in the search, and when the locals are forced to come and encircle them, they will be cornered sooner or later.

Thankfully, none of this happened, and at 5 a.m., the exhausted team members reached the top of the mountain, and they could finally rest assured. At the top of the mountain, they were hit by a fierce westerly wind that almost lifted them to the edge of the cliff. When they looked down the hill, they saw that the Germans were still frantically hunting for them. When they stopped to rest and eat, they knew that crossing the valley greatly increased their chances of a successful escape.

The sun had risen, and it was a beautiful morning. The sky is dyed a lovely red by the sun. They sat there quietly, eating chocolate and buckwheat while looking at the summit of Mount Gosta across the valley. A small bird landed on a nearby tree and sang. Everyone was very happy. Although they all sat there and said nothing.

The Germans were in the valley below, but they were not worried now. From now on, the enemy they will face is the natural environment of Norway. The operatives should not rest too long, and they should distance themselves from the enemy as much as possible. The wind blew harder, and they began to move in the direction of the Lansgaard shack. As the day began to dawn, they were afraid that enemy planes would find out where they were, and then either machine-gun fire on them or report their position to enemy troops on the ground. They arrived at their destination at 11 noon. There was not a single plane in sight on the way. They hadn't closed their eyes in the past 36 hours, and they had to flee as soon as possible. They had been running since they had been on a sabotage mission at 8 p.m. the night before, and their bodies had begun to adjust to the load of excessive exercise, and they were all exhausted, and when they finally reached the shack where more food was stored, everyone was relieved and immediately collapsed on the ground.

So far, the attack sabotage operation has been one hundred percent successful, much better than what they had envisaged before that. They silently broke into the hydroelectric power station, smashed the storage tanks with heavy water, escaped without firing a shot, not a single person was injured, and they had everything cleaned up before the alarm went off. And they only destroyed part of the basement, and the explosion did not damage the rest of the hydropower plant, which also ensured that the local economic lifeline was not damaged.

In the hours after the destruction, the Germans must have been ashamed of their incompetence and arrogance. If the success of the operation was due to the luck of the attackers, it was also due to the arrogance of the enemy. The members of the squad lay in their huts resting and recalling what had happened, and they felt that God had done them a great favor.

Over the next hour, the winds were getting stronger, and a snowstorm was about to hit the Haldag region. It was impossible for them to leave the shack at all, and they had to cover their mouths with their hands to breathe. The blizzard will cover all traces left behind by the attackers, and the enemy will not know how they escaped. Once the enemy discovers the footprints and sleigh marks they left in the snow, the chances of them being found and arrested are very high. Now all traces were covered in snow, and it was as if they had disappeared from the face of the earth. The Germans will have to look for their way in a wide area.

At the Vimok hydroelectric power plant, Alfrassen engineers were among the first to arrive at the site of the destruction. "When I walked through the door, I saw that all the storage tanks had been blown up. The house was full of smoke, which was caused by the fire extinguisher when fighting the fire, and I felt as if I was standing in the shower, and the sabotage mission was carried out perfectly. ”

(To be continued)