by Jack Du Brul
The frigid water sucked his breath out the instant it reached his skin. The cold was solid, like ice, but much, much worse. It pounded against his skull and lanced into his joints. The wound in his leg went numb. Mercer’s clothes quickly became saturated, and he felt himself being dragged under the surface. Kicking first one foot and then the other, he managed to remove his moon boots, saving himself several pounds, but the swim back up was agonizingly slow.
His head broke the surface. He reached for and grabbed one of the many slits in the sub’s outer hull. The Bell Jetranger was showing her tail as she moved out of range again. Marty must have chased him off. Mercer struggled to climb the side of the boat, the rough edges in the slits digging into his stocking feet like razor blades.
A hand touched his arm and he saw Anika Klein reaching for him. She must have joined Marty on the bridge and jumped to the deck when she saw Mercer dive into the water.
“Tie off the landing line!” The shout sounded distant in Mercer’s frozen brain.
“Marty’s doing it.” She got a grip on Mercer’s forearm and heaved him up to the deck. A couple of feet away Marty worked knots into what little remained of the disappearing landing rope, threading the line through a number of larger hull slits.
It came taut just as he got the line secured to the sub. He looked up to see the rotor-stat come up short against its leash. Straining, the huge dirigible pivoted around its bow, losing altitude until her deadly cargo dipped into the ocean for a moment. Her engines screamed. “Got you, you son of a bitch,” Marty shouted.
“Let’s finish this.” Mercer stood. Above them the Schmeisser rippled again, and Hilda Brandt motioned them to hurry, the black gun smoking in her beefy hands.
Like a fish struggling for its life, the airship whipped back and forth on the end of its tether, straining to break free from the U-boat. Rath must have radioed the pilots and told them that if they released the Pandora boxes their survival would be short-lived.
Mercer’s hands were frozen claws as he climbed the ladder to the bridge under Hilda’s covering fire. Anika’s shoulder was under his backside as she headed to the top of the conning tower. Once they were safely on the bridge, Hilda directed them to get below. She would keep up a steady barrage to prevent anyone from the Njoerd launching a boat and cutting the line.
As he reached the control room, Mercer saw Erwin Puhl propped against the chart table. His shirt was off, and seeping bandages covered his shoulder and wrapped under his arm. The meteorologist was ashen, his lips pressed tight in pain.
“Are you okay?” Mercer asked through chattering teeth.
“Anika said I am. The first bullet went in and out under my arm. The other was a ricochet buried in my shoulder. It hurts but…”
“Ira,” Mercer gasped as he started stripping off his wet clothes. “Are you ready?”
“Say the word.”
“Close the hatch, Marty, and get down here.”
Anika helped Mercer remove the remainder of his clothes. He stood naked and dripping watery blood, his skin blue and puckered. “Don’t judge me in this condition,” he said when she glanced at his groin. She threw blankets over him as Hilda and Marty descended into the sub.
“Dive!” The ballast tanks gurgled as they filled with water, and the boat slowly began to sink.
Above them, the rotor-stat pilot saw the swirl of air bubbles around the antique sub and knew what was going to happen next. His loyalty to Rath ended at that instant, and he nodded to his copilot. “Don’t do it,” he heard Rath screaming over the headset. “The Njoerd is sending out a boat to cut the mooring line. You can hold on.”
“Dump it,” the pilot said. The copilot hit a switch that severed the cables securing the cargo nets to the airship. Thirty tons of gold plundered by the Nazis and a ton of the deadliest element on the planet fell away from the dirigible. It splashed into the sea and vanished.
The rotor-stat rose like a child’s balloon until it once again came up against the rope. Nose down and engines straining, she fought a tug-of-war against the sinking U-boat trying to pull her into the ocean. They would be free if they could hold out long enough for men from the Njoerd to cut the rope. The entire craft shuddered with the power of her four engines and massive rotors.
The pilot jettisoned fuel in an attempt to lighten his ship further, but it made no difference as the altimeter unwound slowly. He didn’t need to look out the cockpit window to know it wouldn’t even be close.
“What are we going to do?” his copilot asked.
Finally glancing out and seeing the smooth bay rising to meet them, the pilot’s answer was just one word. “Die.”
The bow of the airship struck in a colossal explosion of spray, and her remorseless downward plunge was checked. She continued to hang there, her nose like a dimple in the sea.
On the U-boat, they all felt the hull lurch when the rotor-stat hit the surface. Even with the ballast tanks full, the sub couldn’t overcome the buoyancy of 1.2 million cubic feet of helium. The tug-of-war had come to a standstill.
“What’s our depth?” Mercer gasped as he drew a mouthful of brandy to warm his insides.
“Forty meters and holding. We can’t pull her under.”
“We don’t need to.” Mercer’s expression was savage. “Blow the tanks and surface.”
Not fully understanding Mercer’s plan, Ira blew compressed air back into the ballast tanks and watched the fathometer as the sub ascended once again.
Because of the airship’s near-vertical position, the rotors were no longer adding lift, so when the sub rose and tension was released off the bow line, her tail dropped before the pilots could compensate. The massive underfin sliced into the water like a knife blade as she belly flopped and then she began a roll onto her side. Powered by jet turbines, the rotors sliced air in a blur, but when they came in contact with the water, the Teflon blades came apart like scythes. Hundred-foot slashes appeared in her skin and helium burst from the envelope in a screaming torrent. It was her death cry.
Half deflated and waterlogged, the airship settled into the water and began to sink, internal pressure pooling her lifting gas into pockets within her envelope that ruptured like boils. Part of her envelope fell across the stern of the Njoerd, Kevlar fabric tangling and snaring on her deck cranes. Men scrambled to cut away the entanglements before the huge weight capsized the ship. The airship’s other engine pods struck the ocean, and more pieces of blade ravaged the gas bag and the Njoerd.
A hundred feet from the dirigible’s limp bows, the U-boat appeared once again as plucky as a bathtub toy.
Gunther Rath had watched the destruction from a safe distance and when he saw the sub, he went berserk. “Get closer,” he shouted at the pilot, loading a fresh magazine into his Glock.
He could see movement in the conning tower as two people came out on the deck. One held an ax while the other had a Schmeisser.
“There’s nothing we can do,” the pilot said.
“Get me down there!” Rath screwed the gun’s muzzle into the pilot’s ear.
The chopper came at the sub like a hawk in a stoop and raced into a burst of 9mm rounds from the MP-40. Rath got off only one shot of his own before the charge carried him out of range. In the moments it took the pilot to swing around for another pass, one of the men had leapt to the deck and was hacking at the rope with the ax. It parted at the third swing.
“I’ll kill you!” Gunther Rath raged.
“I doubt it.” Klaus Raeder laughed over the wind swirling through the helicopter’s cabin. “You’ll get one more shot off while they pump a dozen rounds into us. And then they’ll close the hatch and there won’t be a thing you can do.”
“Darling, he’s right,” Greta said. “The boxes are gone, but we still have this one.” She nudged the golden chest at her feet. “We can land on the Njoerd and be far away by the time they reach civilization.”
For a second she thought he was going to shoot her for suggesting it. Instead, Rath r
eholstered his pistol and turned his gaze out to the ruined airship draped across the stern of the Njoerd. Greta wasn’t going to risk asking him to close the door, so she hunkered deeper into her parka. Rath looked across to Klaus Raeder, sizing him up as if he were a commodity. He said nothing, but Raeder recognized the feral look of a cornered animal.
Rath was about to lash out. The emotion was there, just at the surface and ready to explode. Gunther reached into his coat again and withdrew the Glock. With a casual flick he tossed it out the door.
“I would have killed you if I hadn’t,” he explained. “By the time they get Njoerd’s deck cleared enough to get under way, Mercer will be halfway to Kulusuk. We’ll never be able to catch him, so we’re altering our plans. We’re going someplace where I’m going to need you.”
It took twenty frustrating minutes for the helipad on the Njoerd to be cleared of debris from the destroyed airship. Once they were down, Rath learned that there wasn’t enough aviation fuel on the ship to use the chopper for the next leg of their journey. They un-lashed one of the powerful boats stored on the research vessel. By then the U-boat was long gone. An hour later, Gunther Rath, Greta Schmidt, and four of Rath’s best security men were aboard the sleek, oceangoing boat. Klaus Raeder was trussed in the hold with the last box of meteorite fragments.
At thirty knots, the boat had a range of three hundred miles. They would make their destination shortly before nightfall.
ABOARD THE U-1062
Oily smoke billowed from the port diesel and poisonous vapor rose from the battery compartment, forcing the crew to leave all the sub’s hatches open. Ira futilely waved a rag above the clattering forest of con-rods, cams, and lifters, trying to see what was fuming so badly. The noise of the faltering motor absorbed his string of curses.
“How’s it look?” Mercer shouted over the din.
Lasko wiped grease from his face. “Like we aren’t going to make it to Iceland, Kulusuk, or anywhere else.” He spat a black glob onto the deck. “Piston rings are shot in at least two cylinders, gaskets are failing all over the place, and if it weren’t for the oil I salvaged from the starboard engine, this pig would be dead in about an hour.”
“What can you give us?”
Ira scratched the stubble now fringing his otherwise bald head. “Four hours, maybe five. We can return to the Greenland coast, but we’ll be right back where we started from.”
“So we’ve got a decision to make.”
“Yup. Talk to the others. I’ll go along with whatever you decide. I have to stay here and coax her along.”
Mercer carefully backed out the narrow alley between the engines and ducked through two watertight hatches to reach the control room. He yelled up to the bridge at the top of the conning tower, where Marty was acting as lookout. Hilda Brandt sat at the helmsman’s station, making sure the boat stayed on course. Anika had just come back to the control room after checking on Erwin, who was resting in his bunk.
Marty clambered down the ladder and moved to Anika’s side.
“What’s Erwin’s condition, Doctor?” he asked her.
“He’s fine. I’ve got antibiotics keeping infection at bay and he didn’t lose enough blood for shock to be a concern. The bullet fragment in his shoulder should come out, but isn’t doing much harm in the short term. The one that passed through under his arm didn’t hit any major blood vessels or bone. I just wish there was something I could do for his pain.”
“Erwin’s a lot tougher than he looks,” Marty opined.
“That’s for sure.”
“Okay, folks,” Mercer began. “The good news is, we have enough brandy for an impromptu party. The bad news is, we can’t invite guests since it appears we won’t make it to civilization.” His tone then became serious. “Ira says the engine won’t last for more than five hours, meaning that if we continue east we’ll stop long before Iceland, and if we turn south we won’t reach Kulusuk either.”
“What are our options?” Anika asked, confident by now that Mercer would find a way.
“A: we don’t reach Kulusuk. And B: we don’t reach Iceland. That’s about it.”
“Can we return to the coast of Greenland to wait for rescue?” Marty asked.
Mercer shook his head. “I doubt anyone will find us. Remember, this is one of the most remote places on earth. Providing we find a suitable place to beach, our food’s just about gone, and without communications gear we’ll be marooned again.”
“We have guns. We can hunt seals,” Marty said reasonably.
“Once Rath gets the Njoerd under way, he’ll scour the coast looking for us. He’ll spot the sub from his helicopter on the first pass. If you think we can submerge until he flies away, you can forget about it. Because we know about the Pandora boxes, Rath won’t leave until he’s certain we’re dead.”
No one spoke for a minute because none could think of an argument. Their fear further chilled the control room.
“We have a third option.” It was Erwin Puhl. He stood at the hatchway connecting the crew’s quarters to the control room. His upper body was swathed in bandages. A wad of surgical tape at the bridge of his nose held the broken halves of his glasses together. “I heard you talking.”
Anika crossed to him in three strides, bracing his shoulder with hers. She led him to the seat behind the plotting table. Her expression was a mix of concern and annoyance. She didn’t want him out of bed, but the determination on his face led her to believe that any admonishments would be wasted. By the time she eased him into the chair, Erwin was trembling. In the dim light of the control room, his skin had become gray. A map of the Denmark Strait was flattened against the plotting table with the broom-handle Mauser pistol and the captain’s log. “Where are we exactly?” he wheezed.
Mercer indicated a spot about eighty miles off the coast of Greenland, a bit south of the fjord they had just escaped.
“And today’s date is the fifteenth, right? There is a ship coming through the strait tonight that will be about here in five hours. Well within our range.”
“There isn’t much shipping through these waters,” Mercer said. “How do you know?”
“Because another member of the Brotherhood of Satan’s Fist is on her to take possession of the last remaining icon that Rasputin commissioned — the one Leonid Kulik never destroyed.”
Realization struck like a punch. “The Universal Convocation aboard the Sea Empress?”
“Yes. The pope is returning the icon to the Russian Orthodox Church, and Brother Anatoly Vatutin is there to receive it.”
Mercer was silent for a second, thinking. “I remember when we first met you mentioned the Empress would be coming through the strait. I thought it was strange that you knew her route, considering it was supposed to be secret. Your colleague on the ship told you the sailing schedule.”
“That’s right,” Erwin agreed.
“Why is the ship this far north?” asked Anika.
“To take advantage of the spectacular aurora borealis created by the solar-max effect.”
Mercer didn’t like coincidences and he was suspicious about this one. He thought there could be another reason the Sea Empress happened to be in these waters, but he kept it to himself. “How sure are you of this information?” he asked Erwin.
The scientist’s voice firmed. “Positive. The top delegates had to approve the route long before they sailed. Brother Anatoly stole the schedule from Bishop Olkranszy, his superior at the convocation.”
After Anika translated the conversation for Hilda’s benefit, Mercer could see that the group was evenly mixed about their options and decided that this wasn’t the time for a vote. It would be smarter just to make the decision himself.
He had gambled many lives over the years, his own the most often, and the burden never got lighter. The five other survivors had put their trust in him and as their leader Mercer had to do what he felt was necessary. Life, he’d learned, wasn’t about making the most right decisions. That was simple. The tru
e test was being able to minimize the effects of the wrong ones. And he felt he’d made so many of the latter in the past weeks that just one chance remained to put everything right again.
He carefully worked out the vector on the chart. “Anika, have Hilda steer one hundred and four degrees. Marty, run back to the engine room and tell Ira to open her up as much as he dares.”
His orders were carried out instantly. “I’ll be topside,” he said, his voice suddenly becoming thick in his throat. “I need some air.”
Like the night the Titanic sank a thousand miles south of their position, the ocean was as calm as a millpond. Darkness was creeping across the cloudless skies and already faint waves of light were appearing high in the heavens. The aurora was going to be breathtaking. Its added illumination would also reveal any drifting icebergs in plenty of time to maneuver around them. Mercer tightened the hood of his parka, jamming his fists into his pocket.
He was left alone on the bridge for a half hour until Anika bobbed up through the hatch. Wordlessly, she handed him two protein bars for dinner. They munched in silence. The cup of water had a skin of ice when she took a sip. Her eyes rarely left Mercer’s face. “Pfennig for your thoughts.”
“With the exchange rate, that’s about half a cent,” he said darkly. “Sounds like you’re overpaying.” His words stung her. “Sorry. I’d like to be alone right now.”
“So you can brood?” she challenged.
“So I can think.”
“For you, I believe it is the same thing. Why do you continue to blame yourself? Without you, we’d all have been dead on the plane from Camp Decade. Because I interviewed Otto Schroeder, if anyone is to blame it is me.”
“No. It’s Gunther Rath.”
Mercer had fallen for her trap. Anika smiled, a kaleidoscope of color from the aurora shimmering off her jet hair. “See, you know the truth and yet you beat yourself up as if everything is your fault. That is foolish.”
