Between The Hunters And The Hunted

by Steven Wilson

  “What?” Hardy said. He turned to Cole for confirmation. “Is he right about this? You Americans finally came to your senses?”

  “Yes, sir,” Cole said.

  “Well,” Hardy said with satisfaction, as if his comments had had something to do with the turnaround in attitude. “High time, I say. Puritans, wasn’t it? Mormons? Who brought about that silly practice in the first place? Methodists, by God, it must have been the Methodists. Never find a member of the Church of England even contemplating such a thing.”

  “You’re Methodist, aren’t you, sir?” Land said.

  “Shut up, Number One.”

  Cole watched as Land moved diplomatically back to the wheelhouse. He was on his own with this strange man.

  “I can’t say, sir,” Cole replied.

  Hardy gave his suggestion some thought before announcing his decision. “Puritans,” he said emphatically.

  “Fleet in sight, sir,” the starboard bridge lookout called out. “Green oh-two.”

  “There they are,” Hardy confirmed through his binoculars. “Mr. Cole, soon you will be introduced to Prometheus, Windsor, and Eskimo. The latter two are of no matter—only Sir Whittlesey Bloody Martin and his big cow.” Hardy lowered his glasses and fixed Cole with a hard glance. “Kindly note the ranker, will you?”

  “Of course, sir,” Cole said, trying to hide his amusement. This guy is a first-rate character, he thought. Probably a little insane.

  Number One handed Cole a pair of binoculars. “See for yourself.” Cole let his eyes adjust and swept the horizon with the binoculars. He picked up the vessels, thin black smudges on the gray-green tabletop.

  “You must not accept everything that our captain says at face value,” Land said with a smile. “He can be eccentric at times, but his skills as a seaman can’t be denied.”

  “The best sailors are a little odd,” Cole said, returning the binoculars.

  “He’s a fighter as well,” Land said thoughtfully, wrapping the straps around the binocular frame. “He’s had a bad time of it lately, but he’s a fighter.”

  “Dove?” Hardy called to the chief yeoman of signals. “When we’re within Aldis lamp range make to the flagship, ‘Mission accomplished. Two on board.’” He joined Land and Cole. “Your fellow survivor is resting comfortably, I’m told. No danger of a needle through the nose.”

  “That’s how we tell if a chap is dead,” Land said. “Destroyers don’t carry medicos, so we stitch a fellow’s nose closed and if he protests, he’s alive. A bit barbaric, but it does the job.”

  “Beats the alternative,” Cole said.

  “Beats the …” Hardy said and then laughed loudly. “By God, he’s right. It would be a crying shame to send a man to his doom when he wasn’t ready. Eh, Number One?”

  Before Land had a chance to answer, there was a loud whistle through the voice tube. “Bridge? W.T.”

  Land answered it. “Bridge here. What is it?”

  “Straight-out message from Prometheus, sir. Plain language. ‘Single vessel bearing 243 degrees. Unidentified. Rejoin with all dispatch.’”

  Hardy joined Land. “What’s that, W.T.? Repeat that.” Cole watched Hardy closely while the message was repeated. The captain turned to Land. “God’s holy trousers, it can’t be. We couldn’t have just run into her? W.T.? Send to Prometheus, ‘Will join you immediately.’” Hardy walked to the windscreen in thought before turning quickly. “Well, Number One. You heard him. Action stations and look lively.”

  “Yes, sir,” Land said and called for the chief bo’swain’s mate.

  “You had better retire below, Mr. Cole,” Hardy said.

  “I’d like to stay, sir,” Cole said.

  “This is a small bridge, Mr. Cole. There’s barely enough room for those who should be here when things get hot. And if you don’t mind me saying so, you’re a big man and you’d make a lovely target.”

  “I understand, sir, but with all due respect I’d like to stay,” Cole said. “After all, you said I was an observer on board Firedancer.”

  Hardy’s eyes narrowed. “You aren’t a barrister, are you? Turning my own words against me? I get enough of that from my own number one.”

  “No, sir,” Cole said. “Just a sailor.”

  D.K.M. Sea Lion

  Kommandant K, D.K.M. Sea Lion Kapitan zur See Mahlberg, had just dismissed his engineering officer and was about to send for his nautical officer to recheck the computations when the bridge telephone clattered three times in rapid succession. An Obersignalmaat answered it quickly. It was the Obersignalmaat ’s tone that caught Mahlberg’s attention.

  “Hydrophones, sir,” the Obersignalmaat said, cupping the receiver. “They say they are picking up high-speed turbines. Very faint, fine off the port bow.”

  Mahlberg smiled broadly. “Ahead of schedule. I must speak to the nautical officer about his calculations. How far is Prince of Wales?”

  “It’s not Prince of Wales, sir. It’s a smaller ship. Ships, sir.”

  “What?” Mahlberg snapped. “Where?”

  “He can’t be certain yet, sir. Perhaps eighty kilometers. There is a great deal of distortion. He estimates two to four vessels.”

  Mahlberg glanced at Kadow.

  The executive officer took the telephone from the seaman and identified himself. “Kadow,” he snapped. “Repeat.”

  Mahlberg watched his executive officer concentrate on the information.

  “What size?” Kadow said. “Are you sure? Could it be an echo of some sort?” Kadow listened. “I need the distance, man, make a guess if nothing else.”

  Another telephone clattered insistently and an Oberleutnant zur See picked it up.

  “Bridge. Yes? Please repeat that.” The Oberleutnant cupped the mouthpiece and caught Mahlberg’s attention. “It’s radar, sir. They report three vessels at sixty to eighty kilometers to the southwest. There appears to be another vessel just beyond them.”

  “Size and speed?” Mahlberg said calmly.

  Kadow hung up the telephone. “A cruiser, possibly Diddo class. Two destroyers, perhaps three.”

  “Possibly a cruiser,” the Oberleutnant reported. “Radar can’t determine the class. Likely three destroyers, one of those trailing the others.”

  “Prince of Wales escorts,” Kadow said. “Shall I set a course around them, sir?”

  “Around them?” Mahlberg said. “We’re going through them.”

  “Kapitan—”

  “My God, Kadow. A light cruiser and a handful of destroyers. The best they can offer are six-inch guns. They might as well spit on us as shoot at us.”

  “Torpedoes, sir,” Kadow said, but he saw immediately that his arguing only made matters worse.

  “They won’t get close enough to use them,” Mahlberg said tersely. “Twelve thousand meters? Is that their range? Every man aboard those vessels will be dead before they get close enough to launch torpedoes. This ship does not turn aside for any vessel. This ship will never run away or retreat. Is that understood?” Mahlberg looked around the bridge. “Sea Lion is the greatest vessel that has ever put to sea and I will never”—he turned to Kadow—“never order her to avoid battle. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” the executive officer said.

  “Kriegsmarschzustand One,” Mahlberg ordered Kadow, “notify Oberkommando der Kriegsmarine that we’ve run into an irritant.”

  The executive officer stepped to the bulkhead and pushed the large red button that set off the alarm bells throughout Sea Lion. The crew burst into activity, dropping whatever they were doing and rushing along corridors and through hatchways with a cry of “Warsaw! Warsaw”—make way. This was no Rollenschwoof—no drill. This was real.

  Statz was just coming on deck when the alarm sounded and he sprinted toward Bruno, dodging other sailors running to their stations. It was pandemonium to the uninitiated, but the men were trained to get to their stations anyway possible, in the fastest way possible. They knew which corridors to take, which to avoid,
and how to dash through the passageways before the heavy watertight doors were closed behind them with the warning shouts of “tuy-tuy-tuy-tuy.” Once those doors were closed, that way was denied to the sailors so that they had to find an alternative route, and God help them if they arrived at their battle stations to find their Oberbootsmannmaat waiting for them.

  Statz dropped to all fours and scampered under the turret counterweight, climbing into Bruno through the after hatch. He dodged pipes, ducked under the thick steel trunk of the range-finding mechanism, swung around the squat analog computer station that was used if fire control were denied them, turned sharply right, and slipped through the narrow hatch that led to the gun room.

  He was off the control platform in an instant, down the ladder, around the breech of the big gun, and at his station. As Statz smeared his face with antiflash cream and donned his flash gloves and hood he heard the others rush in.

  “You’re late,” he called to them good-naturedly. “Do you expect me to run this thing all by myself?” The gunners took their stations, preparing themselves for battle. Statz watched them appreciatively—they were good men and they had trained well.

  Matrosenobergefreiter Scholtz, positioned at the powder doors, pushed the button that let the powder rooms know that he was ready. Then he stood, arms folded, waiting patiently for whatever was to happen.

  Matrosenhauptgefreiter Steiner, who did his best to show disdain for Statz whenever he had an opportunity, checked over the spanning tray, the trough that dropped down to accept the shells and powder bags.

  Next to him was Matrosengefreiter Manthey, a naturally funny sailor who loved doing discreet impersonations of officers, and did them quite well. He was the hoist operator and it was his job to bring the one-ton shells from the shell rooms deep within the vessel and guide them onto the spanning tray.

  And Matrosengefreiter Wurst, the smallest and youngest man in the crew who suffered under Steiner’s attacks when Statz was not around, triggered the ramming mechanism, pushing first the shell and then the bags of powder into the gun’s breech.

  When the rammer cleared and the spanning tray was pulled back, Statz signaled to the gun controller, a distant man named Gran who never really seemed to fit in, and Gran turned the thick, black knob through the sequences on the gun-indicator of lock-ready-shoot. When Gran signaled that the gun was ready for action, it was up to the gunnery officer in his cathedral high above Bruno to find the target, and compute the half dozen variables that decided the gun’s elevation and position. After the speed and course of the enemy vessel, and after Sea Lion’s speed and course, deflection, the wind, the weight of the shell and the powder charge, even the relative humidity, had been calculated, there remained only permission to fire.

  “Is it Prince of Wales?” Wurst asked.

  “They’ll let us know in good time,” Steiner said, stifling a belch. “Just tend to your business.”

  “We’ll hear soon enough,” Statz said gently, hating to agree with anything that Steiner had to say, but it was true. Someone, probably the Kapitan, would come over the loudspeaker and tell them who they faced.

  Wurst merely nodded and joined the others in waiting.

  In the cluttered room behind the three gun rooms the gun layers, each man responsible for the elevation of a gun, and the turret trainer, who rotated the huge gun housing on the thick rollers secreted in the rings embedded in the barbette, waited. The gun sighters, who peered through the eyepieces, and the gun plotter, who stood by the tur-rine that bore the crude computer, waited. They were a redundancy because all of those actions were firmly and expertly in the hands of the gunnery officers in the forward, amidships, and aft fire-control centers. These three stations together, or any one if only one remained undamaged, could provide the information, sent through the transmitting rooms to the four turrets, that would give a coordinated fire at enemy vessels. Situated far above Sea Lion’s deck, the gunnery officers peering through their sensitive range finders could see great distances. No enemy ship could hide below the horizon. But if the fire-control centers were knocked out or their links to the transmitting rooms were severed, it was up to the men behind the gun rooms in Bruno to find the targets, calculate the speed and distance, make the necessary adjustments, and shoot the guns.

  “I wonder who it is,” Statz whispered.

  H.M.S. Prince of Wales

  John Leach, captain of the Prince of Wales, handed the message to Prime Minister Winston Churchill but didn’t wait for him to read it.

  “It’s from Prometheus,” Leach said. “She’s run right into Sea Lion.”

  Louis Hoffman watched Churchill roll the stout cigar to one side of his mouth, considering the news.

  “How far is Prometheus behind us?” Churchill said.

  “Just about two hours’ hard running,” Leach said, dismissing the yeoman who brought the message.

  “Then I suggest that you waste no time in turning this vessel about.”

  “No, sir,” Captain Leach said. “My mission is to carry you and the others safely to meet with President Roosevelt. I will not deter from that course until you are safely in Placentia Bay.”

  “Captain Leach, you seem to forget that I was once First Sea Lord and as such quite capable of making a sound tactical decision, and inasmuch as I am the prime minister and your superior, I order you to turn this vessel about and engage the enemy.”

  “With all due respect, Prime Minister,” Leach said, “I will not endanger your life and I will not forfeit my mission. There are seventeen hundred seamen aboard this vessel who would gladly join me in taking on Sea Lion, but I am not at liberty to do so. Those poor bastards out there won’t have a chance against that behemoth. It will be a slaughter. You will get to Placentia Bay, sir, to meet with Mr. Roosevelt and I will be haunted for the rest of my life by the souls of those seaman.”

  Churchill jerked the half-consumed cigar from his mouth and threw it to the deck. “Sir Dudley?”

  Admiral Sir Dudley Pound shook his head. “Not this time, Prime Minister. This time discretion is the better part of valor. Those ships might delay Sea Lion long enough for us to get away. They might, if one is to believe in miracles, so damage Sea Lion that she is forced to turn back. Regardless of the outcome of that contest, John is right. You will meet with President Roosevelt and Sea Lion will be dealt with another time.”

  Churchill patted his coat, searching for a cigar. “How I hate to turn my backside on the enemy,” he said, giving up the quest. He walked to the port wing, letting the stiff North Atlantic wind wrap around him. Hoffman joined him.

  “Do you believe in the Almighty, Louis?” Churchill asked him. “Pray to him in desperate times?”

  “Once every four years,” Hoffman said. “In November.”

  “I am thinking of your President Lincoln. During the Civil War.”

  “The one good thing that ever came out of the Republican Party.”

  “After the Battle of Fredericksburg, December 1862. After the terrible losses suffered by the Union Army of the Potomac at the hands of the more skillfully led Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, Lincoln, in deep despair over another Union defeat in a seemingly endless series of Union defeats, uttered, ‘What will the people say? What will the people say?’”

  Hoffman listened.

  “Sometimes, Louis, despite the public image of my iron resolve in the face of great odds, I despair, at times, as well.”

  “Prime Minister, I’m a cockeyed optimist. I don’t believe in that bullshit about going down fighting. I believe in winning. Like you. Like Franklin. You can’t win if you’re not in the game, that’s what your captain’s telling you. Let those boys behind us throw a few blocks and keep you in the game. Then we’ll lick those Nazi sons of bitches. That’s what I think.”

  “Well, Louis,” Churchill whispered, “I do pray that our chaps behind us live to see the game completed.”

  Home of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris,

  Kaiserstrasse, Berlin
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  Captain Eberhardt Godt stood uncomfortably in the library of the home of the Abwehr chief. He could hear the sound of a piano and the mingled voices of the guests invited to the Canaris dinner party. He was not a guest. He had come to deliver some rather bad news to his superior.

  The library doors were pulled open by a butler and Admiral Doenitz entered, obviously surprised to see his chief of staff. He waited until the doors were closed.

  “What is it?” Doenitz said.

  “Sea Lion is about to engage the Prince of Wales escort. We received Mahlberg’s message not an hour ago.”

  Doenitz looked away in thought. “This message cannot mean that our valiant Mahlberg is about to engage Prince of Wales? She has released her escort, has she not? Prince of Wales?”

  “Yes, some time ago. It appears as if they simply stumbled into one another.”

  “Mahlberg plans to engage those vessels before he reaches Prince of Wales?”

  Godt knew that it was a rhetorical question. He had been with Doenitz long enough to know that the slight admiral simply tossed questions into the air and then studied them as they floated to the ground.

  “Does Raeder know?” Doenitz asked.

  Godt nodded. “He is livid. He threatened to court-martial Mahlberg when he returns.”

  Doenitz shook his head in wonderment. “The gold ring within his grasp and Mahlberg’s vision is filled with the gleam of brass. Raeder has every reason to be concerned. The grand admiral knows that sometimes a warrior sees only as far as the point of his sword.”

  “Grand Admiral Raeder will surely instruct …” Godt offered.

  “Oh yes. Yes, he will. But will our headstrong Kapitan respond? Mahlberg would not be the first man whose ambitions led him astray. Still,” Doenitz said, “we want to be selective about the concerns that we address. Our world lies beneath the sea, does it not?”

  Godt suddenly realized that Doenitz had introduced his own interests into the conversation. “We are,” the vice admiral said carefully, “to concern ourselves only with the U-boats.”

  “Are we?” Doenitz said. “We are Kriegsmarine officers, Godt. Our loyalties cannot be divided between branches of the service. Of course we hope that Sea Lion accomplishes her mission, Godt. Our role, the U-boats’ role, is clearly defined. My hope is that the entire mission be a success.”