61
The first thing Riley saw when he opened his eyes was Jack’s ruddy face looking at him with concern as he prepared to slap him again.
Riley gasped and began to convulsively cough out the freezing salt water burning his lungs.
When he was finally able to calm down and control the convulsions, he looked at the dark-blue sky above him and then at the orange sun hanging halfway behind the horizon.
Jack was floating nearby with both hands on his life jacket. “How are you?” he asked, trying not to sound too worried.
Riley did a quick mental check, noting his ribs and head hurt like he’d been hit by a train. “I’ve been better,” he said, running his hand over his forehead. “Were you slapping me?”
“I had to wake you up.”
“Fuck, Jack . . . You don’t hit someone who’s drowning to wake them up.”
Jack looked puzzled. “What did you want me to do? Mouth-to-mouth?”
“Woulda been a nice touch.”
“Oh yeah?”
Riley tried to smile, but could only make a tired face. “Are you okay? You didn’t get injured in the explosion?”
“I was already far away when the torpedo exploded. You on the other hand . . .”
“I still don’t know what happened, Jack.” He wiped his face and rubbed his temples. “I just remember I was drowning in the tube and a second later I got shot out. I think the explosion saved my life.” He was quiet for a moment. “Helmut did it.”
Jack didn’t answer. He just nodded. It was hard to believe the same man who weeks earlier had boarded the Pingarrón like a scared fugitive had ended up saving their lives, and a good portion of humanity’s.
“The doctor had guts,” Jack said. “I hope one day the world recognizes his sacrifice.”
“Hope so,” Riley said, silently praying for Helmut. “Did you see how he sunk the Deimos?”
Jack looked at him questioningly. “Sink?” He gave a crooked smile. “I think you should look behind you, Alex.”
Holding his breath, Riley moved his arms in the freezing water to turn himself around, and his eyes met the smoking bulk of the ship.
It hadn’t sunk.
The ship had gone on and stopped five hundred yards away. It now floated calmly in the last light of the evening, its stern and false Dutch flag facing them.
“How is it still floating?” Riley asked.
“I know as much as you. When the bow blew up, they turned off the motors, but kept going on inertia.”
“Did you see what the bow looks like?”
Jack shook his head. “No, but given the size of the explosion, I imagine it blew up into a thousand pieces.”
“But the boat still didn’t sink.”
Jack shrugged. “Maybe it will. It all depends on the size of the hole and what their pumps can get out.”
“Or maybe it won’t.”
“Come on, Alex. What’s it matter? Even if it doesn’t sink, we can’t do anything about it. We won,” he added with satisfaction.
Riley looked at him. “Won? Not yet, Jack. We haven’t won. What’ll happen if they’re rescued by an American ship? They could infect the sailors and spread the virus to the US.”
“Shit, don’t be so negative.”
“It’s a possibility.”
“Yeah, sure, maybe. But what else can we do? Swim over and ask them to let us blow up another torpedo?”
Riley was going to respond but realized he was right.
They only thing they could do was try to stay alive—which would be hard to do for long.
They’d been floating in the water for about an hour when the first signs of hypothermia started to show.
Their lips, ears, and noses turned blue. Their muscles responded late and poorly, and their shivering became more frequent and violent.
“Sh-shit,” Jack stammered, hugging himself. “I’m freezing.”
Riley, spasming uncontrollably, tried to talk without biting his tongue. “Well look . . . you have . . . extra fat . . . to insulate you . . .” He tried to smile, but the result was a grimace. “Imagine . . . how I feel.”
It took Jack a moment to answer. “Alex . . .”
“What?”
He stretched his blue lips. “Go . . . to hell . . .”
Riley nodded, shaking.
“Shouldn’t we . . .” Jack said, teeth chattering, “start swimming . . . to warm up?”
“It’s better to . . . conserve our energy.” Riley shook his head. “If we swim . . . we’ll feel better . . . at first . . . but we’ll freeze . . . much earlier.”
Jack made an unhappy face. “I wanted to . . . work on . . . my stroke.”
Riley nodded again with a weak smile. “There’s something . . . I need to tell you . . .”
Jack put a hand on his heart. “Are you . . . breaking up with me?”
Riley tried to smile again. Even on the brink of death, he felt a burning knot in his stomach. “I . . . I slept with Elsa . . . I’m very sorry . . . my friend.”
Jack nodded. “Elsa told me . . .” Seeing the puzzled look on Riley’s face, he added, “On the way . . . to Larache.”
“You . . . don’t care?”
“Now no . . . But I suggest . . . if we get out of this . . . not to use . . . your toothbrush.”
“My tooth—”
Jack waved awkwardly. “Trust me.”
Riley tried to act annoyed. It seemed like Jack was going to add something, but he went silent and gazed at the sun, which was growing redder as it dipped lower.
“We have . . . an hour . . . of light . . .” Riley said.
Jack nodded. Riley didn’t need to clarify that after night fell, they would certainly die of cold.
With as much concern as he could muster, Riley said, “You know . . . what we need . . . most . . . Jack?”
“A stove?”
“Your pancakes . . . with butter . . . maple syrup and . . .” He stopped babbling when he saw a look of shock come over Jack. Riley assumed a giant shark was coming right for them, and as he turned around, he thought how it would be a bad way to go.
Then he saw it.
It wasn’t a shark. It wasn’t an animal at all.
He hadn’t realized it up to that point, but, pushed by the wind and the current, the Deimos was moving toward them and had cut the distance between them in half. It had also turned ninety degrees sideways, revealing the profile of the blasted bow, which was reduced to a mess of twisted metal like a nightmarish jaw full of long, curved teeth, uneven and threatening. The sight of the corsair ship was both fascinating and terrifying, like a badly wounded predator fighting through the pain.
Now less than two hundred yards away, they could see the dozens of men that looked like repair teams busy mending the damage. Meanwhile, several silhouettes were visible on the balcony of the bridge, and Riley was sure they were watching the horizon for possible threats from the air or sea.
But there was nothing but Riley and Jack.
“What . . . do we do?” Jack said quietly as if he were afraid they would hear him.
Riley didn’t know what his friend was referring to. What to do about what? About them? About the Deimos? About the fierce cold that was gripping his muscles and penetrating his bone marrow? Regardless, the answer was the same. “Nothing,” Riley said, looking at the ship and savoring all the implications of the word. “Like you said . . . it’s all over.”
Jack glanced at him, then nodded and fell quiet, letting himself rock lazily on the waves, watching the antlike army repairing the ship amid bursts of sparks and hammering.
The Deimos was close enough that any sailor who looked their way would see them floating defenselessly in their bulky life vests. Luckily, the crew was too busy with repairs, and the officers weren’t looking for drifters with their binoculars. Also, the sun was setting, and in a few minutes darkness would fall over the ocean, hiding them from view for good.
Just then, as the last rays of the sun sowed
the sea with sparks of orange, one of the tiny silhouettes perched on the balcony of the bridge pointed at them and shouted over the din. Other figures immediately appeared next to the first and aimed their binoculars.
Riley and Jack were fully aware that survival time in that forty-degree water was measured in minutes. They were going to freeze to death anyway, so being discovered didn’t make any difference, except maybe it’d speed things up. So after looking at each other, they waved to the Nazi officers with their biggest smiles.
“How’s everything going there?” Jack shouted with his hands cupped around his mouth. “Need us to lend a hand?”
Someone yelled an order, and one of the casemates near the front underwent a sudden metamorphosis.
Its four walls fell down with a crash, and an 88 mm cannon appeared. Three soldiers swarmed around it, removed the cap from the muzzle, and turned various cranks until it pointed right at them. They were paralyzed with cold and shock as they listened helplessly to someone shout the order to open fire.
62
With a bang, a foot-and-a-half-long projectile flew a few yards above Riley’s and Jack’s heads, and, a second later, burst in a tower of white foam half a mile away.
“Jesus!” Jack shouted, putting his hands over his ears. “The sons of bitches wanna blow us up!”
“They can’t go any lower!” Riley said, pointing with satisfaction.
Jack saw the sailors trying in vain to lower the cannon. “What are they doing? Why use the cannon? Don’t they see we’re too close?”
“I think Fromm’s the type of guy who’d swat at a fly with a hammer.”
Jack was still shocked. “Why don’t they just turn on their motors and run us over? The explosion only affected the bow.”
“If they do that they’ll sink, Jack. If they start moving, the pressure against the hull will increase, and the water will enter by the ton. I don’t think they’ll move until they’ve sealed everything.”
“By the way,” Jack said, smiling, “did you notice we’re not shivering anymore?”
“True. Must be from the adrenaline, but I’m afraid it won’t last long.”
A group of sailors ran across the deck to the bulwark. Then they each raised a submachine gun and began showering them with bullets.
The two instinctively tried to duck underwater, but their life jackets kept them afloat.
“Take it off!” Jack shouted, untying his.
Riley grabbed his arm. “No! Wait!”
“For what?” Jack said, pulling away. “We’re sitting ducks!”
Riley held on to his arm as he pointed to the water between them and the Deimos. “Look, Jack.”
The surface of the water was bubbling from the bullets’ impact, fifty yards away.
“They’re short-range machine guns,” Riley said calmly. “At this distance there’s no force or accuracy. We’re pretty safe.”
Jack looked at Riley, then at the shower of bullets in the water, and finally at the Deimos. “Yeah, but what’ll happen when they come over in a launch?”
Flailing awkwardly because of the life vests and the cold, which was draining their bodies and minds with each second, Riley and Jack tried to get as far away from the ship as possible in the growing darkness.
They were no longer worried about the cannon with its explosive shells, much less the sailors who shot from the deck with their machine guns, which they couldn’t even see anymore. The immediate problem, besides the unbearable cold, was the launch that had left to look for them minutes before, its crew scanning the water with small lights.
“Good thing,” Jack said, coughing and swallowing water as he swam freestyle, “they’re rowing . . . and not using the searchlights.”
Swimming next to him, Riley glanced back. “I don’t think they will . . . the light would be seen from miles away . . . They’re vulnerable now . . . and . . .”
“What?”
“They don’t need it.” He paused again. “They know in this water . . . we won’t last . . . more than an hour or two . . .”
“Of course.” Jack coughed again and spat saltwater. “They’re in no rush . . . the bastards . . .”
They swam in a zigzag to throw their pursuers off, and a hundred strokes later they decided to stop to catch their breath. When they looked back they could see flashes of light glowing like fireflies on the prow, reflecting orange light on the dark water. From over half a mile away, the Deimos’s outline, blacker than the night itself, was cut out from a starry background. It reminded Riley of a giant sea creature infected by a swarm of industrious parasites. The launch was thankfully no longer visible, possibly having gone back to the ship for some reason.
“Do you hear that?” Jack asked.
Riley shook his head to snap back to reality and strained his ears. “I do . . . It’s like . . .”
“Engines . . .” Jack said quietly, unable to hide his frustration. “They just turned on . . . their engines.”
Riley doubted his sense of hearing for a moment, then saw the big white searchlights go on one after another on the Deimos’s superstructure. They illuminated the surrounding water, moving in precise, expanding circles.
“They’re looking for us,” Riley murmured.
The glare of the spotlights was weak but bright enough for them to see each other.
“What now?” Jack said, as much a complaint as a question. Then he sighed as deeply as his tight life jacket and shortness of breath would allow. “I’m tired, Alex,” he said, teeth chattering, “very . . . tired.”
Riley looked at him and nodded. “This is as good a place . . . as any . . . to rest a minute.”
Jack smiled and looked at the ship again, which was now moving, jets of foam spraying from the stern. The lights were sweeping the surface of the nearly calm sea, reaching farther and farther. The circles glided over the water like ghosts, moving away, coming back again, until one inevitably passed over them, shocking them for an instant.
They held their breath for a second, thinking they hadn’t been seen. But just then it went back and stopped right on them, drawing the other lights like vultures and blinding them. Shading his eyes with his hand, Riley could see the Deimos slowly turning until it faced them.
“Our luck’s run out . . . my friend,” Riley said as the ship started coming at them.
“They’re coming?” Jack asked, trying to see.
Riley’s silence was telling.
“That Fromm,” Jack said, “turned out to be . . . one vengeful bastard.”
Riley nodded. “Well . . . he’s got . . . good reason.”
“True . . .” Jack said. He chuckled, holding back a shiver. “We screwed them good . . . eh? And”—he raised a finger—“we saved the world.”
Riley nodded, watching the lights come faster and faster.
Fromm had decided to run them over with his ship, impaling them on the twisted metal sticking out of the bow. If he’d just wanted to kill them, he could have done it any other way. He wanted to see the look of terror in the eyes of the condemned right before they died.
He wanted to hear their screams of agony.
He wanted them to suffer.
And he wanted to enjoy it.
Meanwhile, Riley put his arms around Jack’s shoulders. “You’re right,” he said with satisfaction. “In the end . . . it hasn’t been a bad day.”
63
Knowing they’d done everything in their power, the two friends, shoulder to shoulder, watched stoically as the Deimos quickly approached like a giant mad bull ready to ram them.
The searchlights were still shining on them, and they could make out the sailors controlling them and the officers on the bridge who watched with the cruel curiosity of a child about to crush a beetle.
Although the deformed, foam-covered bow slowed the ship down, the Deimos moved fast enough to cut the half mile between them to three hundred yards in two minutes. They could feel the deep vibrations of the engine and its powerful propellers throug
h the water.
Two hundred fifty yards.
The ship was like an ocean bulldozer, her blunt bow pushing a mountain of foam like a waterfall.
Two hundred yards.
The growing black bulk of the ship seemed to roar with fury, a monster eager to devour them.
One hundred fifty.
Riley and Jack were silent, fearless. They’d said all that needed to be said, done what had to be done.
One hundred.
Fromm turned on the red combat lights of the bridge balcony just so Riley and Jack could see him. He wore his brand-new captain’s hat and a sadistic smile that anticipated the bloody spectacle of their screaming and dismemberment.
Fifty yards.
A scream—but it was in German. A scream of alarm.
“Achtung! Achtung!”
All the officers turned their heads, and before anyone could realize what was happening, a huge shadow came out of nowhere like a demon and struck the side of the Deimos.
A split second before the impact, one of the lights turned to reveal the bow of a ship rushing full speed at the Deimos’s port quarter. The sound of the brutal collision was followed by the crunch of metal against metal like a million fingernails on a million chalkboards. Although the attacking boat was much smaller, the violence of the blow cut the Deimos like a knife, almost severing the stern.
A second later the fuel tanks exploded in a giant fireball.
When the attacking ship finally stopped, an uneasy silence replaced the desperate screams. None of the Deimos’s officers could believe what had happened or knew what to do next. The situation was one they hadn’t prepared for at the naval academy.
But the silence only lasted an instant.
One of them, maybe Fromm, realized that a hundred-fifty-foot boat, blazing like a torch, was stuck in their rear, and began to shout orders. People cried out one emergency after another—injuries, out-of-control fires, and new leaks the whole length of the ship.
Then all the lights suddenly and simultaneously went off, and the sound of the motors faded completely. Only the voices of the shipmen and the muffled crackle of fire devouring both ships could be heard.
Captain Riley (The Captain Riley Adventures Book 1) Page 37
