When he got down, the airstrip was boiling like a pot of shchi forgotten over a roaring fire. Sergei hadn’t even climbed down from the bomber’s wing before a groundcrew man waved for him to get back into the cockpit. “What?” he said. “Why?”
“Because we’re getting the fuck out of here, Comrade, that’s why,” the groundcrew man said.
“Why?” Sergei asked again, still not moving.
Before the groundcrew man could answer, the outside world did it for him: shells burst only a few hundred meters from the edge of the airstrip. “That’s why, Comrade Pilot,” the noncom said. “The German sons of bitches’ll have the range on us any minute now. D’you want to get blown up?”
“They were nowhere near us when we took off,” Sergei protested. He looked at his watch, pushing back fur-lined gloves and sleeves to see the face. No, it really hadn’t been much more than an hour earlier.
“Yeah, well”-the groundcrew man shrugged-“the cocksuckers are fucking well near us now.” He sounded almost as foul as the Chimp. “And if we don’t haul ass right this minute, we’ll get to meet ’em in person, like. So quit dicking around and head for the motherland, right?”
“Right,” Sergei said dully, not knowing what else to do. He turned around-and almost bumped into Anastas Mouradian, who was right behind him. “Back in the plane, Stas. Back to Byelorussia.”
“I heard,” Mouradian said. “It’s not so good, is it?” More shells screamed in. These burst closer than the ones in the last volley had. If the SB-2 didn’t take off soon, it wouldn’t get the chance.
Sergei thought about fighting the Nazis as an untrained infantryman. He thought about trying to get back to Byelorussia on foot-or, if he was very lucky, in the back of a truck. Much too easy to think about a German tank, or maybe a Stuka swooping down from above, pumping machine-gun bullets into the back of a truck.
Off to Byelorussia it was, then, and now, too. “Not so good, no,” Sergei said. They returned to the cockpit and snapped their belts closed. Sergei had to tell Ivan Kuchkov what was going on.
“Happy motherfucking day,” Kuchkov answered. “The stupid pricks who’re supposed to be running things screwed it up royally this time, didn’t they?”
“It could be better.” Sergei left it right there. The engines, which had barely stopped, fired up again right away. That was something, anyhow-not much, but something. The SB-2 bounced down the runway and took off. It felt uncommonly agile; he couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone up without a full bomb load.
He had to swing back to the east and come over the airstrip again to head for Soviet territory. Shells were dropping on the dirt runway by then. Any of the planes still hiding in revetments would have a devil of a time getting away. Sergei wondered if groundcrew men would have to set them on fire to keep the Germans from grabbing them. He also wondered whether any groundcrew men were hanging around to take care of such things. Trucks kicked up tall plumes of dust as they hightailed it toward the old border.
“Well, we’re in it now,” he said to Mouradian as he checked six to make sure he had no Bf-109s on his tail.
“No. The damned Germans are in it now, and they aren’t screwing around the way they were before. That isn’t good, either, especially with Japan jumping on us too,” the Armenian replied.
“Not even slightly,” Sergei agreed. “But what can we do except fight as hard as we know how?” Anastas Mouradian had no answers for him. Sergei wished Mouradian would have, because he had no answers of his own, either.
* * *
The horizon wasn’t entirely empty when Julius Lemp swung his binoculars around the horizon. But that smoke didn’t come from a freighter bound for Britain. Nor did it rise from an enemy warship. There to the north sailed the Admiral Scheer. The pocket battleship was cruising the North Atlantic at fourteen knots, a pace the U-30 had no trouble matching.
A swell raised the U-boat, giving Lemp a glimpse of the Admiral Scheer’ s angular profile. She could do a lot of damage if she got the chance. If… Lemp couldn’t help wondering how many U-boats the Kriegsmarine could have built with all the steel and labor that went into the big armored cruiser, and how much more trouble they could have caused the British.
Well, too late for such questions now. There was the Admiral Scheer- and there, at the edge of visibility, was her signal lamp flashing urgent Morse. Lemp peered through the binoculars, but shook his head in frustration. “Can’t make it out,” he said, and then, to the bosun, who was up on the conning tower with him, “Tell them we need to approach, Matti. Let’s see if they can read us.”
“Aye aye, Skipper,” Matti said, and the louvers on the sub’s signal lamp clacked as they went up and down.
Lemp called down into the U-boat for a change of course. The boat swung north. He peered toward the Admiral Scheer through his field glasses again. With a wry snort, he said, “They say they can’t make out what we’re sending. They want us to come closer. Tell ’em we’re doing it, for Christ’s sake.”
“Right you are,” Matti answered. The louvers clacked some more. Lemp could read Morse by ear as well as by eye. The bosun said what needed saying as quickly and economically as anyone could want. He’d spent years in freighters before joining the German navy. He knew his onions, all right.
The pocket battleship’s lamp flashed again. Word by word, Lemp read off the message: “Smoke… to… northwest. Several… ships”
“A convoy!” Matti exclaimed.
“That would be good,” Lemp said. The other possibility would be several warships. The Admiral Scheer might fight off or escape from several British warships, especially with a sub on her side. All the same, freighters counted for more. Freighters fed England. Warships were nothing but nuisances: the dogs that kept sea wolves from feeding off the big, fat, slow sheep.
All the ratings up on the tower swung their glasses to the northwest. Closer to enemy shores, Lemp would have reproved them. An airplane could come out of nowhere and start shooting you up or bombing you before you even knew it was there. Not out in the middle of the Atlantic, though. Nothing that flew had the range to come out here and get back to land.
Back to land… What if one of those unknown ships out there was a carrier? Lemp spoke to the ratings after all. They resumed their usual scan. He peered intently toward the northwest, first with the binoculars on a strap around his neck, then with the more powerful pillar-mounted glasses each U-boat had.
He soon spied the smoke trails himself. He muttered to himself. If they were thick and black, he would have been sure they came from coal-fired steamers. Maybe they came from oil-burning freighters. Or maybe they poured from stacks that belonged to destroyers, cruisers, battlewagons-or a carrier.
No, probably not that last. The British would have seen the pocket battleship’s smoke by now, too. If they had a carrier out here in the middle of the ocean, its planes would already be buzzing around the Admiral Scheer like so many stinging wasps. One or two of them might have found time for the U-30 as well.
More signals from the Admiral Scheer. “Commencing… firing,” Lemp read. “Jesus Christ!” he added on his own. That answered all his questions. The Panzerschiff wouldn’t have opened up on freighters at long range-she would have closed to make her kills sure. Those were warships out there.
Smoke and flame belched from the pocket battleship’s six 280mm guns. Their thunder reached the U-30 several seconds later. It was still loud despite the kilometers between the pocket battleship and the submarine.
“They really mean it, don’t they?” Matti said.
“You don’t play skat with guns that size,” Lemp agreed. The bosun chuckled.
But it was no joke, and the British weren’t playing skat out there, either. Incoming shells splashed into the Atlantic several hundred meters short of the Admiral Scheer. They kicked up great columns of water: water dyed red, so the enemy officers would know which ship of theirs had fired them. A moment later, another salvo made green splashes. Lemp tho
ught by the size of them that they came from cruisers rather than battleships. He thought so, yes, but he wasn’t sure.
The Admiral Scheer fired again. She was fighting, not running. That also made Lemp believe she wasn’t facing battleships. She wouldn’t have lasted long slugging toe-to-toe against seagoing dinosaurs more heavily armed and far better armored than she was.
Off to the northwest, Lemp spied sudden heavy black smoke. “She’s hit something!” he said, and the ratings up on the conning tower with him cheered and pumped their fists in the salt-smelling air.
But the Royal Navy hadn’t quit. More shells came down around the pocket battleship. Around… Lemp ground his teeth. They’d straddled her. That meant they had the range. Sure as hell, one round from the next English salvo slammed into the German ship. More smoke spurted. The Panzerschiff kept on sailing and firing, though. Even if she wasn’t armored like a battlewagon, one hit -that one hit, anyhow-wouldn’t knock her out of action.
Distant across a much longer stretch of seawater, reports from the enemy’s guns also reached Lemp’s ears. And the Admiral Scheer sent another signal his way. “Turning… toward… you.” The words came out one by one, maddeningly slow. “Surprise… unsuspecting… targets.”
“Donnerwetter!” Lemp muttered. No doubt the order seemed easy to Captain Patzig-which only showed he didn’t know much about how U-boats operated. Could the Admiral Scheer bring the enemy warships by on courses that would let the U-30 get a decent shot at them? Or would the U-boat turn into a harmless spectator the moment it submerged? Only one way to find out-and an order was an order. Lemp nodded to the bosun. “Send ‘I shall conform to your movements,’ Matti.”
“‘I shall conform to your movements.’ Aye aye, sir.” Matti sounded much more serious than usual. And well he might, Lemp thought. The signal lamp’s louvers clacked yet again.
Lemp wanted to stay on the surface as long as he could, to get the best notion of what course the Royal Navy ships were sailing. That would tell him what he could do-and whether he could do anything. The English skippers wouldn’t notice him right away-he hoped. They’d focus all their attention on the Admiral Scheer -wouldn’t they?
If he turned out to be wrong about either of those, he’d have a thin time of it. He wondered if that bothered spit-and-polish Captain Patzig, with all the gold braid on his sleeves. Lemp doubted it. To a surface officer, a U-boat was as much a service vessel as an oiler.
No help for it. Here came the pocket battleship, firing as she fell back from the enemy. What was going through the English captains’ minds when they watched a stronger ship run from them? Contempt, probably. German U-boat commanders had an arrogant certainty that they were the best in the world. On the surface, that kind of pride had filled the Royal Navy since the eighteenth century.
Maybe it would come back to haunt them now. Their guns blazed as they pursued the Admiral Scheer. Like the Panzerschiff, they zigzagged over the sea to make themselves more difficult targets. They were firing faster than the German ship. Their guns were lighter, which made ammunition easier to handle. And they were English, damn them. Their ships undoubtedly had plenty of officers and sailors who’d fought in the last war. They had reason to be sure they were good.
Enough reason? Maybe not. Captain Patzig was doing a better job than Lemp had thought he would of leading the John Bulls onto the U-boat matador’s hidden sword. We might have good shots at them after all. I wouldn’t have believed it, but we might. All Lemp said out loud was, “Let’s go below, men.” He was last off the conning tower. As he dogged the hatch shut behind him, he called fresh orders: “Schnorkel depth! Up periscope! Ready forward torpedoes! Ready reloads!”
His men sprang into action without any fuss. Yes, they knew how good they were. He told the officers and chiefs what was up, and they passed the word to the ratings. The more you knew about what you were doing and why, the better you’d perform. That was U-boat gospel, anyhow. In the surface navy, the ideal still seemed to be turning men into blind, unthinking machines. It looked that way to Lemp, anyhow. He was willing to admit he was anything but unbiased.
He twisted dials on the gadget that helped him plan his shots. The targets would be at long range, and they were steaming ungodly fast. He didn’t have time to wait and plan perfect shots, the way he might have with a lumbering freighter. He had to find something that would serve, then do it and hope for the best.
“What have we got up there, sir?” Gerhart Beilharz asked. The storklike engineering officer wore a Stahlhelm to keep overhead fittings from knocking him for a loop.
As long as he kept the Schnorkel behaving, Lemp didn’t care what he wore. The gadget would give the U-30 twice the underwater speed it could get from battery power-if it worked. And the boat might need every bit of that and then some in the next few minutes. “Looks like two heavy cruisers, one light,” Lemp answered absently. “Now shut up and get out of my hair.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Beilharz said.
Lemp hardly heard him. He felt the diesels surge through the soles of his feet as the U-30 went into her attack run. He steered her himself, his eyes on the the periscope. The first ship was coming into range… “Torpedo one -los! Torpedo two -los!” he shouted.
Twin whooshes as the eels leaped free. Lemp forgot about them as soon as they were gone. He swung the U-boat to port, lining her up on the other heavy cruiser-or where the cruiser would be when the torpedo got there. If he had her range and speed right, if she didn’t suddenly swerve, if, if, if…
“Torpedo three- los!” he said. Away the eel went. Lemp steered to port again. The light cruiser was trailing the other two warships and making more smoke than she should have. Battle damage from the Admiral Scheer? Lemp could hope so. “Torpedo four -los!” One more whoosh. “Reload forward torpedo tubes!”
That was backbreaking work-each torpedo weighed close to a tonne. Till it was done, though, the U-30 had only the single eel in her stern tube with which to fight. The “lords”-the junior ratings who bunked forward-would be happy when it was done, though. Now they’d have more room in which to sling their hammocks. Nobody’d have to sleep on top of a torpedo any more.
An explosion shook the U-30’s hull. Sailors whooped. Lemp swung the periscope to starboard. The first English heavy cruiser lay dead in the water, though her guns kept firing. A few seconds later, another deep rumble rattled the submarine’s crew like peas in a shaken pod.
People pounded Lemp on the back. “Two, skipper!” Matti bawled. “Way to go!”
Damned if he hadn’t hit the second heavy cruiser. She was still moving, but down by the bow and slowing fast. Had he got the light cruiser, too? He waited for one more blast… waited and waited. It didn’t come. He swore under his breath. When you did well, you wanted to do better.
With the light cruiser still among those present, he couldn’t surface. She’d slaughter him if he did. Those 155mm guns weren’t much for a surface ship to carry, but they made his lone 88mm deck gun look like a cap pistol by comparison.
Water spouts suddenly sprang up around the less damaged English heavy cruiser. The Admiral Scheer must have seen what the U-30 had done. Now the pocket battleship was coming back to finish off her crippled foes. Hits brought gouts of smoke and fire from the damaged warship.
The English light cruiser charged the Panzerschiff, guns blazing, doing her best to protect her wounded sisters. That was brave-even heroic. She scored hits, too. Then two rounds from the Admiral Scheer ’s big guns slammed into her. She might have run headlong into a brick wall. Fire burst from her. She might almost have been broken in half.
“Skipper, we’ve got two eels in the tubes,” the chief torpedoman reported.
“Good job, Bruno.” Lemp hadn’t expected them for another five minutes. “We are going to approach the enemy cruiser that has stopped, and we are going to sink her.”
“Right,” Bruno said. “They’ll put a Ritterkreuz around your neck when we get home, too.”
They wo
uld do no such thing, and Lemp knew it. Nobody who was in the brass’ doghouse would win a Knight’s Cross. No point wishing for one or thinking he’d earned it, because he wouldn’t get it any which way. But he might get-partway-out of that damned doghouse.
Stubborn as any Englishmen, the sailors on the halted cruiser kept firing at the Admiral Scheer even as the pocket battleship teed off on a stationary target. Then the second torpedo from the U-30 slammed into her. This one broke her back. She had listed to starboard. Now she turned turtle and sank in a couple of minutes.
That left one Royal Navy ship still able to fight-but not for long. Even as Lemp turned toward her, a shell from the Admiral Scheer must have touched off her magazine. She went up with a roar that dwarfed the explosions from the torpedo hits.
“Der Herr Gott im Himmel!” Lemp said, shaken in spite of himself. How many men had gone up in that blast? How many more would struggle in the Atlantic-for a little while? The U-30 couldn’t hope to pick up survivors; the boat was packed to the gills as things were. Would the Admiral Scheer?
A question from the bosun broke into Lemp’s thoughts: “Uh, skipper, what just happened there?”
“Oh.” Lemp remembered he was the only man in the U-boat who could see out. “That was the last British cruiser, not our ship.” More cheers rang through the pressure hull.
He only half-heard them. If he commanded the pocket battleship, he wouldn’t stick around. The Royal Navy would know exactly where this fight took place. Every warship within a couple of thousand kilometers would be hustling this way at flank speed. If the Admiral Scheer wanted to see home again, she’d have to get out without wasting time.
And that was just what she was doing. When Lemp turned his periscope on her, she was speeding northeast as fast as she could go. He nodded to himself. That was only sensible. The U-30 would have to run the Royal Navy’s gauntlet to get back to the Vaterland, too, but it was easier for a sub.
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