by Matt Killeen
Jansen threw up two hands in exasperation.
“Esser, take her and—” he exploded, and then stopped and gritted his teeth. “Just get her from under my feet. She can send her RT message, but it gets coded and done quickly.” He followed a crewman up the ladder, then stopped halfway. “If I have to dive before she’s done, then it’s done.”
Sarah nodded and Esser saluted.
When the Oberleutnant was gone, Esser swung on her with a look of undisguised antipathy.
“You better be the Abwehr’s top agent, or I will throw you overboard myself.”
* * *
The radio operator had spent many hours tending to Sarah, so he was unfazed, even pleased that it seemed his work hadn’t been wasted. He declined to accommodate Esser’s anger and began taking Sarah’s message like it was for the Führer himself.
“So what do you need to say?” he asked without looking up from the pad.
“Erm . . .” Even though a breeze had begun to blow through the vessel, Sarah still felt her brain was working two steps behind itself. “It’s to Admiral Wilhelm Canaris. Most urgent. Der Drei Hasen request the use of U-boat . . . what is this boat called?”
“U-one thirteen,” the radioman prompted and continued writing.
“The Three Hares request the use of U-one thirteen and for its crew and captain to render all possible assistance to them.” She paused. There needed to be something personal, that only Canaris would recognize. “For no war is pleasant though, surely, especially for our expanding clientele . . . can you emphasize those last bits?”
“Yes, I’ll think of something . . .” the Funkgast replied and did some arithmetic. “Two hundred twenty-eight characters, fifteen minutes to code, three minutes to send. Oberbootsmann, do we have time for this?”
“If we don’t, we don’t,” Esser replied. “Says the Schiffer,” he added for clarity.
“Fine, mach ich ja. Go,” the radio operator said, waving them away from his tiny room.
“How long will we be surfaced?” Sarah asked Esser.
“Fifteen minutes to get rid of the carbon dioxide, but then we’ll be running the diesel engines to charge up the batteries for underwater propulsion. We were down more than twenty hours, and they are flat. I suspect we’ll do that right up until they see us, or hear us.”
On cue, the hull shivered with the gentle throb of the pistons starting up. The rise and fall of its tone was like the rocking noise of train wheels on rails. The sound of the ocean on the hull grew.
Esser looked up.
“He’s a brave one . . . or a stupid one. Too early to tell yet.” He sighed. “Let’s just hope he’s a lucky one.”
* * *
The clock ticked on. Fifteen minutes became twenty. The carbon dioxide gauges dropped to zero, the oxygen reserve dial crept upward. The men who had gathered in the control room to breathe the fresh air began to fidget and drift back to their diving stations. Esser warned Sarah not to stand in the gangway when the alarm inevitably sounded, as the hands would run to the front of the boat to make it nose heavy for the dive.
Sarah looked at the battery gauge, and it had hardly moved. If the destroyer spotted them, they would have very little power to evade it underwater . . . they couldn’t hide.
Sarah climbed the ladder to the conning tower, waving away protests from Esser and others, and then pushed past the nonplussed crew at the firing station to mount the ladder to the bridge.
The first blast of cold sea wind reinvigorated Sarah in a way that she wouldn’t have imagined possible.
The darkness was total. Only the dim red light filtering up from the control room allowed Sarah to see the five man-shapes at the rail.
“I don’t want you up here,” the Oberleutnant said quietly. “It’s nothing personal, but if we have to dive, you will get in the way. You’ll get hurt, or you’ll slow us down enough that we all will.”
“I needed air,” Sarah said flatly. “Are they still out there?”
“Plenty of air on the boat now . . . and yes, off to starboard. That’s your right—”
“I know what starboard is,” Sarah said tersely.
In the vast swallowing blackness, there was a smear of gray, an Impressionist’s interpretation of a ship-shaped light on the horizon. Then it became two flashes and rays of dancing, piercing white. The sea danced briefly.
Ba-boom. Ba-boom.
“Chasing fish,” laughed one of the lookouts behind Sarah.
“I’ll give them one thing, they’re persistent,” the Schiffskapitän grunted. He mumbled something into one of the voice pipes, and a few moments later the light began to move to the stern.
“You really think we can just steam away, Skipper?” Another voice, that of a nervous man.
“Maybe. Maybe.”
The men needed certainty, Sarah thought. A comforting lie. Even naked optimism.
“RT message, Herr Kaleun,” a voice announced.
There was a pause in which Sarah’s heart began to race.
“I’ll read it later,” Jansen grunted.
Sarah grew angry and frustrated, not even knowing if the message signaled the end of her hopes. She looked at the flashing searchlights on the horizon and imagined Lisbeth there, believing herself safe and on the verge of achieving hers.
The messenger coughed.
“Herr Kaleun . . . the message is marked immediate.”
Jansen swore softly and moved to the hatch. “Come, Ursula Haller, let’s find out what your friends in high places think.”
* * *
Sarah watched the Oberleutnant’s expression carefully. Surprise. Confusion. And anger. In any game of bluffing, Jansen would lose heavily.
As he looked up, all those emotions had gone. He scrunched up the piece of paper in one fist. “It says nothing. They don’t know what you mean.”
“Show me,” Sarah insisted.
“No,” Jansen said, and he put a foot on the ladder to the bridge.
“Show me,” she cried and grabbed his arm.
He seemed to consider throwing her off, or even striking her, but instead he threw the paper on the deck and carried on climbing. She let him go and retrieved the message.
TO: U-113’
FROM: BdU
IMMEDIATE
U-113 AT USE OF THE THREE HARES
CAPTAIN AND CREW TO RENDER ALL POSSIBLE ASSISTANCE
INCLUDING LOSS OF BOAT AND HANDS
XX BEWARE THE NEST OF VIPERS XX
WC
Canaris’s exact words from the briefing. He had written this personally. Sarah was now in charge.
* * *
The Schiffskapitän’s shape did not move from the rail as she climbed onto the bridge.
“Oberleutnant,” she began quietly. “As you have read—”
“I have read something that could mean anything. Who are the Three Hares? Who says that’s you?”
“That is me,” Sarah said impatiently. “How would I have known the code otherwise?”
“I picked you up from a sunken British ship. You could be anyone . . . Élodie, Ursula, Sarah, whoever you are.”
Sarah squirmed as he used her real name.
“And if I message them back,” Jansen continued, “and say that Der Drei Hasen ask that we shut up and go home, what would my instructions from BdU be then?”
“Then you’d end up being court-martialed when you got home and probably shot.”
Sarah was just making it up now, but confidence, certainty, the comforting lie was the way to go. She couldn’t see his face, couldn’t read him. She didn’t know if he was about to cave in or become more belligerent.
“I could throw you back in the water, tell them anything.”
Sarah looked about her, at the rigid shapes of the lookouts and the ginger Wachoffizier
. Listening.
“Your orders, the orders of your crew are clear,” Sarah said loudly. “Immediate: U-one thirteen at use of the Three Hares. Captain and crew to render all possible assistance. Do you think they’ll take kindly to you ignoring orders from BdU?”
No one moved. No one breathed.
“If they knew it also said, including loss of boat and hands, then they might,” Jansen retorted.
“Isn’t that a standing order? Aren’t you always risking the boat, the crew? Isn’t that the job?”
“I’m steaming away, surfaced, from a ship I can’t beat in a straight fight. Captain’s discretion applies.”
“All possible assistance,” she hissed. “It says so right here. Engage that destroyer.”
“No.”
“Is that your last word?”
The Oberleutnant was silent.
Sarah looked at the unmoving gray smudge on the invisible horizon to the stern.
She lifted the Beretta into the air and began to fire.
FORTY-FOUR
THE GUN HAD remained untouched after her rescue. The crew had seen the sanitary belt and shied away from investigating further. It had dried out behind the Oberleutnant’s novel, but Sarah hadn’t been sure it would still work after all that seawater.
She fired three times into the air, three flashes that illuminated the bridge and three percussive, clapping grunts that seemed to die as soon as they happened. With her other hand she struck the flare she was holding. It ignited, a painfully bright red light burning white at its center.
The others had turned, but no one had moved.
Sarah leveled the gun at the nearest sailor, who moved away from her, and she lifted the flare to the sky.
“Nobody moves,” she hissed.
“What are you doing?” asked the Wachoffizier, aghast.
“Ensuring the orders of BdU are carried out. We engage the destroyer. Is it moving yet?”
There was a clamor below. Shouts of alarm. Frantic reports.
Sarah tossed the flare over the stern rail so it landed on the deck below them. The conning tower, the shape of the deck, the antiaircraft gun . . . everything was illuminated.
Sarah’s silhouette, gun in hand, waited.
“So we’re bait for you, is that it? Is that all we are?” the Oberleutnant sneered. “I should have left you in the water.”
“You’d have done your country a great disservice if you had,” Sarah declared.
“Herr Kaleun, the contact is turning,” the nervous voice reported, now with an equally nervous face.
“Have they got us?” Sarah asked.
A star shell streaked upward and exploded silently high above them, a small artificial sun.
Jansen stepped forward, and in the light he saw the slide of Sarah’s pistol was open. He put a hand on the empty gun and, tugging it out of her grip, tossed it over the rail into the sea.
He looked to the stern horizon and then bent down to the hatch.
“Alarm!” he screamed.
* * *
The boat protested as it sank steeply into the ocean, the hull clanked, and the water boiled around it, inside its tanks.
“Put her under arrest, right now.” Jansen looked at Esser and pointed to Sarah, a vehemence in the finger’s motion.
The Oberbootsmann stepped in toward his skipper.
“Herr Kaleun . . . I’ve read the orders—” Esser whispered.
“Screw the orders!”
That declaration was heard throughout the control room and the adjoining compartments.
But no one moved.
“Sonar contact, bearing one hundred seventy-six degrees, warship, closing fast,” a voice interrupted.
“You’ve a job to do, Oberleutnant,” Sarah stated. “Doesn’t matter how we got here. Just sink that ship.”
“Verpiss dich, little girl,” Jansen spat. “Batteries?” he called out.
“Twenty percent, Herr Kaleun.”
“You’ve killed us . . . we’ve no margin for error,” he whispered to Sarah.
“Then make no errors.”
* * *
The next few hours were hellish.
The U-boat drifted, sprinted, slowed, changed course and depth, stopped, and lingered.
In their red-lit steel coffin Sarah and the rest of the crew stood and crouched and sweated and prayed and closed their eyes.
The ping. The falling, high-pitched metallic ring of sound hitting hull.
Meaning that they had been found.
Ping.
Meaning they still had them.
Ping.
Meaning anything they did now until the destroyer was right above them was pointless.
Ping.
Ping.
Meaning they were attacking.
Ping.
Ping.
Ping.
Ping. Ping. Ping. Closer and closer together as the distance contracted and the net started to close.
The brief silence where they lost the boat.
The renewed urgency as it was reacquired.
The ping, ping, ping, ping—
In their shark-belly tomb, Sarah and the crew she had condemned waited, listening to the approaching pulsing pada-pada hum of the destroyer’s propeller, rising in volume until the rushing roaring vibrated the water overhead.
Then the orders. The frantic changes in depth, direction, the rush of speed, while their movements would be concealed by the exploding sea . . . and then the silence. Waiting for the noise of depth charges hitting the water and the call—
Wasserbombe im Wasser.
And the pause.
The pause.
The pause.
The fear.
Was this the one to—
The boom. The crashing. The crunch of metal.
The shudder, the shake, the beads-in-a-rattle movement, the walls moving so fast the eyes couldn’t focus and only darkness numbed the pain. The sway, the drop of the floor, the walls become ground, the ceiling the walls.
The bruising, bleeding, and falling, the dropping objects, and shattering steel.
The shouts, the screams, the murmurs, and the white-knuckle squeezes of the silent.
The second boom.
The third.
Fourth.
And the rolling thunderous impacts that just became one long and ceaseless cacophony.
The seawater jets and leaks, the hissing, the cries, the panicked joists and jacks, propping up cracking bulkheads and failing valves.
The repairs, the make-do, the brief calm—
And the ping.
Over and over again.
Over.
Again.
* * *
Sarah grew more and more frightened, with each and every sound, benign or malignant, making her flinch and sweat. The bulkheads seemed to close in on her, a mausoleum that she was locked into, another hell in the here and now. Eventually even breathing felt like an attack.
Then she moved beyond fear to a numb and quiet place, where she watched the jets of water, the bruises and blood, the swinging deck, and felt nothing.
No. Irritation.
The only thing that mattered to her was sinking Virulent. Stopping Lisbeth.
But they were just hiding and evading. A gamble had to be made . . . or rather the stake had already been placed. All that remained was to roll the dice.
She moved next to Esser, who was stretching by hanging on to one of the ceiling pipes in one corner.
“Thank you for the flare,” she murmured.
“Didn’t do it for you. Did it for him.” He nodded to Jansen. “The Schiffer is a good man, and he doesn’t deserve to end up in a concentration camp.” He shrugged. “We’ll probably end up dead instead, but . . .”
Sarah had watched the Oberleutnant. Throughout it all, he had leaned against the periscope, arms folded and eyes shut, like he was dozing. As each attack began, he had stirred and stretched, before looking at his watch and yawning. Then he’d quietly issue some orders and wait. She felt this calm radiate from him to the crew. He had learned to lie.
“Why are we just hiding?” she whispered to the Oberbootsmann.
“No choice, little girl . . . big girl, whatever you are.”
“You need to explain to me how we’re going to sink this ship.” Esser snorted derisively, but she pushed on. “Just talk me through it. Why don’t we shoot back?”
“By the time we get the periscope up, even at the end of one of her sweeps, she’ll be zigzagging and pulling turns in the water. They know we’re here, and until they think we’re not, we won’t hit them.”
“Is that why they’re not hitting us properly?” she asked. “Because they’re thrashing about?”
“They’re not hitting us because they are not good at this . . . yet,” he added. “When they speed up at the end and the pings vanish, they go in a straight line to drop the charges.”
“So . . . they’re vulnerable then,” Sarah exclaimed.
Every problem has an answer. It’s just a question of information.
“What? No . . . we can’t attack them then, that’s when we need to be diving and evading.”
“And what if we didn’t?” she asked.
“They’d ram us if we didn’t move, or drop a dozen depth charges onto us if we did.”
“Except, if we’d already sunk them . . .” Sarah mused.
“They’d be head on to us. You’re talking about a bow shot. The smallest possible target. Impossible.”
“At point-blank range?” Sarah said, envisioning a paper ball and a wastebasket.
“The torpedoes have to arm in the water, there’s a minimum range—they could be armed before firing.” Esser was thinking now. “Incredibly dangerous.”
