Cayos in the Stream

by Harry Turtledove

Well, what do newspapermen know? Not very goddam much. You wrote for the papers. You get that if anyone does.

  You sweep the glasses along one more time. You are about to give it up and have someone else take a turn. Then-by themselves, it seems-the field glasses snap back along their track.

  The water seems to boil there, a couple of hundred yards to port. It is not a dolphin leaping for joy. You see that much right away. You need just a heartbeat or two to realize it is not a dolphin’s larger cousin, either. It is not a whale rising to blow, as it was before.

  It is a U-boat, a German U-boat. It dwarfs the Pilar. You knew it would, if you ever met one. As with so many things, knowing takes a back seat to seeing for yourself.

  You did not know the U-boat would be ugly as old sin. You have studied photos of German submarines. But those turn out to be like photos of Hollywood starlets. Their subjects seem prettier than they really are. Hollywood starlets already look good. Type VII U-boats damn well don’t. But this one is uglier than any photograph you ever set eyes on.

  That should not surprise you. A lot of your photos come from German propaganda pieces. Dr. Goebbels wants to make the Fuhrer’s subs look as good as he can. His pictures do not show quick, sloppy welds. They do not show peeling paint. They do not show rusty patches, either. If any barnacles grow like mange on the hulls Dr. Goebbels orders photographed, his retouchers have made them disappear.

  The sailors popping out of the conning tower are a mangy lot, too. They have not shaved in weeks-months, more likely. Where the face fuzz does not hide them, their skins are corpse-pale. They wear torn, grease-stained shirts and creaseless dungarees.

  They can kill you even so, of course. They have the machine gun on the conning tower and the deck gun. The deck gun is an 88. It is made to sink freighters so the U-boat does not have to waste torpedoes on them. One or two hits from it will not just sink the Pilar. They will rip her to splinters and everybody aboard her to cat’s-meat.

  Quietly, the men bring the ninos up where they can grab them in a hurry. Swaddled in goatskins, the Tommy guns could be anything. Sure as hell, Josep tips his to his mouth, pretending it is a wineskin. No one gets excited or afraid because a submarine is in the neighborhood.

  No. Nobody acts excited or afraid because a submarine is in the neighborhood. It is not the same thing. It is not even close. Your balls have climbed up into your belly. Your heart drums loud and fast in your chest. Beads of sweat dot your palms. If you try to spit now, what will come out? Dust, as in ashes to ashes, dust to.

  “Won’t be long now, boys,” you say. Despite your flannel tongue, you sound like yourself. It is a neat trick. You wish you knew how you did it.

  One of the Nazis on the conning tower wears a cap with a white crown. Not a very clean white crown, but still. . That is their captain. If he plays it smart, you have not got a prayer. He will not let you near the submarine. He will send over a boat and take whatever you have that he wants. The Germans at the deck gun and the machine gun will cover the Pilar. You will not be able to do a thing.

  That is, if he plays it smart. He had better not play it smart, then. The best way you have thought of to keep him from doing that is acting like an idiot yourself. Well, almost. The best way you have thought of to stop him is acting like a famous idiot.

  Who says you will be acting? You hear Martha’s acid voice inside your head. She is not aboard the Pilar. She is back at Finca Vigia. You hear her acid voice anyhow.

  If you are going to act like a famous idiot, the time to start is now. “Hand me the megaphone,” you murmur to one of the men who has put his life on the line along with yours.

  “Here you go, boss.” He gives it to you. He figures you know what you are doing. He would not be out here with you if he did not. Maybe he is the idiot. Or maybe you are, after all.

  You raise the megaphone to your mouth. It does not weigh anything much. It looks like one a high-school yell leader would use. The only difference is, it has no high school’s name painted on it.

  “Ahoy, the submarine!” you bawl through it. “Can you give us a hand, please? I’m Ernest Hemingway!”

  If no one on the conning tower speaks English, this will not work. It may not work any which way, but that will scuttle it for sure. But the Germans on the tower-and the ones at the 88 on the rusty deck-jerk as if you poked them with pins. The skipper calls something down the open hatch. After a minute, someone hands him a megaphone a lot like yours.

  “You are. . Ernest Hemingway?” he calls back to you. His English is accented. It is a hell of a lot better than your scraps of German, though. “The Ernest Hemingway? Do I hear this rightly?”

  “The Ernest Hemingway.” You try to sound like a proud, famous idiot. “See for yourself.” Proudly, you lower the megaphone.

  The U-boat skipper looks you over with a big pair of binoculars. “You are Ernest Hemingway,” he says through his megaphone. Even across that stretch of ocean, he sounds amazed.

  “Told you so.” If you are going to be an idiot, be a big idiot. Be a big, smug idiot, in fact. That makes you seem even stupider.

  “We are at war, your country and mine,” the skipper says. At his gesture, one of his men runs up a flag. Red, white, and black, sure as hell. An ugly old swastika-is there any other kind? — in the middle. The Nazis’ calling card.

  Oh, you bet we are, you think. “Well, so what?” you say. Yes, be a big, smug idiot. Who could want to hurt a world-famous writer? Except for some ex-wives and an editor or two, that is? Nobody at all. So you go on, “What are you going to do? Sink me?” You laugh as if the idea has never once crossed your mind.

  “It did occur to me, ja.” Even speaking a language not his own, the U-boat captain owns a dry wit.

  You laugh to show you notice. Always notice when they think they are funny, whether they are or not. Especially when they are not, in fact. It disarms them. Just for a moment, you eye the 88 aimed at the Pilar. If only you could literally do that!

  “What the devil for?” you say. “Our countries may be fighting, but I’ve got no beef with you. No beef-but I’ve got some marlin steaks in the ice chest.” You swell yourself up like a proud, smug idiot. “Caught the marlin myself.” You are not even lying. . there.

  All he needs to do is put some men in a boat and send them over to take the marlin steaks. Then they will see the ninos up close or the Huff Duff set. Then you will have to kill them. Then the U-boat captain with the dry wit will have to blast the Pilar to matchsticks. Incidentally, he will have to murder you and all your friends. It will be a shame, but it is part of the cost of doing business. He may even note what a shame it is in his log. Not that that will do you or your friends a nickel’s worth of good.

  You have to keep him from remembering that is all he needs to do. “You can even do us a favor, if you’d be so kind,” you shout across the blue water.

  “You mean, besides letting you live?” Yes, the skipper’s wit is dry-dangerously dry.

  You laugh as if you know he is kidding. Knowing he is not makes the laugh come harder, but you bring it off. “Of course, besides that,” you say easily. Your voice insists he has to be making a joke. Nobody but an ex-wife or an editor could ever want to harm the great Hemingway! “What happened was, my fire extinguisher pooped out. If we can get a fresh charge from you, that’d be swell.”

  If you can’t convince them, confuse them. Somebody in Hollywood said that while they were filming For Whom the Bell Tolls. You do not remember who, but it fits Hollywood much too well. And it fits more places than Hollywood alone. You need that fellow in the white hat-he would wear a black one in a horse opera-to forget he can do as he pleases with you. You need to make him think he is doing you that favor.

  Small in the distance, his mouth opens wide. He laughs, too. As long as the U-boat keeps that distance, your weapons are useless. His slay at far longer ranges. Out past a mile, in fact. You do not want to remind him of that. You want him to worry about your stupid fire extinguisher instead.<
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  You lift it off its mount and show it to him. The one you lift will not put out a fire, but the U-boat skipper does not have to know that now. You have found an excuse to get your hands on it, so maybe he will find out later. Maybe. If you are lucky enough. If you are distracting enough.

  He raises the megaphone with his right hand while he waves with his left. “Come alongside, then!” he shouts. “Slow and easy, mind you. And do not think we won’t clean you out of marlin, because we will.”

  The U-boat skipper has reached past the fire extinguisher you are holding. He remembers the fresh fish in your ice chest. Because he has had to reach past the extinguisher in his mind, the remembered marlin seems more important to him. A character you are writing might work that way. Nice to see it happen in real life.

  You hold the extinguisher with one hand to raise your own megaphone. “Coming alongside, slow and easy!” you bellow. You lower the megaphone. Softly, in Spanish, you tell Josep, “Lay us right next to that bastard, amigo. He’ll never know what hit him.” With luck, he will never know. Always with luck. You do not say that. It is one of those things that, yes, go without saying.

  “I’ll do it,” the pilot answers. He nods to you from the wheel. The little engine, the Lycoming, picks up revs. Slowly, without any fuss, the Pilar closes the gap to the U-boat.

  Your men have the ninos. They have frags, too, but the Tommy guns are more important now. You pick three to kill the krauts at the 88, two more to deal with the machine-gun crew. After that, they will rush the conning tower. So will you. The thing that goes without saying runs through your head again. With luck. Always with luck.

  “When I say now. Not till then, for Christ’s sake,” you tell them in English and in Spanish. They all seem to pay attention. You will find out when you say now. Or maybe you will find out a little before then. You hope not. Like anything, you hope not. But maybe you will.

  You shut up when you get close to the U-boat. The skipper savvies English. So do some of the sailors. Better to take no chances.

  The Pilar smells none too fresh. The breeze brings you whiffs of badly washed sailor. Short showers with saltwater soap do not get a man clean.

  But as you come up alongside the U-boat, you decide the Pilar might as well be drenched in Chanel No. 5 by comparison. The rusting German boat is a Sears, Roebuck catalogue of stinks. The poor, sorry swine aboard her cannot shower at all. They have to make do with basins and wet rags. Food spoils, all the faster in these latitudes. Better not to think about the heads, especially late in a long cruise. Bilge water traps all the stenches and makes sure they never go away.

  No wonder the white-capped skipper smiles, up there on the conning tower. The foul air still wafts up out of the hatch. You can smell it, so he can, too. For now, though, he is not trapped inside that stinking steel tube with the hatch dogged shut.

  He says something in German, too quick for you to follow. You tense. Does it all go sour here? Then two sailors step away from the deck gun and toss lines so the Pilar can tie up to the U-boat. You wave to the skipper. He does not suspect a thing. You have played the big, smug, famous idiot well enough to win an Oscar.

  Maybe you have even played the big, smug, famous idiot well enough to live.

  Waving still, smiling fit to break your face, you yell, “Now!”

  Things seem to happen very slowly. Only piecing them together afterwards do you realize everything that matters is over in a few seconds. If it were not, you would be much too dead to worry about piecing things together afterwards.

  All the Tommy guns start chattering at once. As if in slow motion, the Germans at their machine gun tumble away from it. Red splotches-darker than movie blood-spread across one man’s dirty white tunic. A.45-caliber round blows out the back of the other bastard’s head.

  Both sailors from the deck-gun crew who tossed lines to the Pilar’s men are down and bleeding. A glance shows you the rest of the Nazis at the 88 have fallen, too. Good. None of them had time to duck behind the mount. Thank you, Jesus. You remember your religion at times like this. Times like this are what religion is for. And one shell from that ugly chunk of steel would have mashed your boat and everybody on her.

  As soon as the German sailors at the guns are out of action-maybe even before they all are-your guys hose down the top of the conning tower with the ninos. The skipper goes down. Away flies his white-crowned cap.

  “Follow me!” you shout. “Frags!” You jump from the Pilar to the U-boat. The false fire extinguisher is still in your arms. The damned thing is heavy. Your breath sobs in your lungs as you scramble up the iron ladder at the rear of the conning tower. You are getting-no, you have got-too old for this kind of craziness.

  But here you are anyway, square in the middle of it.

  Blood and bodies on top of the tower. A couple of the bodies thrash. The Tommy guns did not kill clean. Human beings are harder to kill clean than anyone who has never tried it thinks. But the Nazis are out of the fight. That is what counts.

  A German sailor pops up from the hatch like a jack-in-the-box. He has a Schmeisser in his hands, but he never gets to use it. He needs to look around for a second to find out what the hell is going on. You already know. And your time in the ring pays off. You catch him smack on the button with the sweetest right uppercut you ever threw.

  His eyes roll up. He falls down the hatchway. A yell from below says he falls on top of the squarehead coming up behind him. They both fall the rest of the way together. More yells say they land on other people.

  You yank the fuse on the fire-extinguisher bomb. A frag arcs past you and down the hatch. It blows up no more than a second later. The yells down there turn to screams.

  You drop the bomb down the hatch. “Get away!” you shout. There is a lot more explosive inside that casing than in a grenade.

  You are on the ladder when the bomb goes off. Then, all at once, you are sprawling on the deck. Fire and smoke shoot out through the hatch. Blood runs into your eyes. You have a cut on your forehead. You must have banged it when your head hit the iron decking.

  Up on your feet. Not gracefully-you stagger as if you took one from the Brown Bomber. But you are moving. And your wits work. Smacking your head did not scramble them.

  “Back to the boat!” you call. “If any more krauts pop out of the hatch, we’ll shoot ’em from there.”

  As soon as all your men are aboard the Pilar, you cut the lines the helpful sailors tossed you. No more U-boat men come from the hatch. Only smoke pours out. It is thick and black-thicker and blacker by the second.

  When the breeze blows some toward the Pilar, it burns your eyes worse than your own blood did. Breathing it makes you cough as if it were poison gas. With all the rubber and paint and insulation burning inside the U-boat, it may well be.

  You tell Josep to bring the boat upwind of the stricken submarine. He sketches a salute to you. He has never done that before. “Senor, I will do it,” he says. His voice also holds something new.

  Only after a few seconds do you know that something for what it is. You heard it in your own voice in Spain. You were talking with Republican soldiers on leave in Madrid. They were men who had seen much and done much. You talked to them as an ordinary man talks to heroes.

  Now Josep talks to you that way. And damned if you have not earned it. All your hunting and boxing and fishing and tomcatting could not give it to you. Storming a U-boat and chucking a bomb down the conning-tower hatch did, though. At last, by God, you are a hero yourself.

  You radio Guantanamo. The pipsqueak lieutenant, j.g., who takes your call does not want to believe you. You give your position. You say, “Send out a PBY, you no-balls son of a bitch.”

  “I’ll have you court-martialed for that!” he says shrilly.

  Oh, how you laugh! “Good luck, sonny. You can’t throw me out of the Navy. I’m not in the Navy. Send out the flying boat. He can sink the U-boat-it’s dead in the water. Or if I’m lying, he can sink me instead.”

  You
wait. You cook up some more marlin steaks. Why not? The Germans never got the chance to steal them. And you break out the beer and the rum. No, you are not in the Navy. If you deserve a drink, you can have one. Or more than one, for that matter.

  The flying boat does not get there till the afternoon. Then the pillar of smoke from the U-boat guides it straight in. It drops its bombs. By then, you are half a mile off. The blasts stun your ears even so. The U-boat turns turtle and sinks.

  The PBY turns and flies low over the Pilar. It cannot be more than twenty feet over the flying bridge. The pilot waggles his wings to the boat in salute. You wave back to the plane. You hope its crew can see you. They can-another low pass, another waggle. Then the PBY roars off to the southeast, back toward Guantanamo.

  You nod to your crew. “Well, boys, we did it,” you say. “Now we go home.” For, you realize, this is the end of it. Publicity will mean you can never take the Pilar U-boat hunting again. Reporters and newsreel cameras will come down on you like vultures onto a dead cow. You will have to tell them something. You do not intend to tell them too much. You want to write about this yourself, after all-and to get paid for writing about it.

  “Right, boss.” “Sure thing, boss.” “Si, Senor.” Everyone on the boat talks to you the way Josep did. You are a hero to the crew. They are heroes, too, though they may not feel it yet. If they did not shoot straight and fast when you gave the word, you could not have done what you did.

  You are greeted as heroes when you come into Havana. Guantanamo must have spread the word. Tugboats blow their steam whistles. Fireboats shoot streams of water high in the air. American and Cuban Navy officers come aboard. They pound you on the back. They shake your hand. One of the Cubans quietly slips you a shot of rum. It is some of the finest you ever drank. It slides down smooth as mother’s milk, then explodes like a frag in your belly.

  As soon as you go ashore, the reporters jump on you. Flash bulbs pop as fast as a Tommy gun can fire. Movie cameramen grind away. You give them as much of the story as you want to let other people write. They want more, and more, and more yet. Soon, you almost wish you never set eyes on the U-boat.