by Jack Du Brul
Anika lay awake in her bunk above Hilda Brandt’s. The tension of the past days, the horror of it all, was finally cracking her resolve. Erwin had his burning drive to prevent the meteorite fragments from falling into Kohl’s hands to give him strength. Marty sustained himself by knowing he’d become more of a man in the past week than he’d ever been. As a trained sailor, Ira Lasko seemed immune to the stress. She didn’t know how Hilda held herself together, her time in the Bundeswehr, Germany’s army, perhaps.
And Mercer? He accepted every situation so calmly that Anika couldn’t envision a crisis that would faze him. She was sure he was as scared as the rest of them but his impassive demeanor allowed him to work through it effortlessly. Anika recalled her first shifts on ER duty and the near-paralyzing fear she’d felt. It took months of experience to build the confidence necessary to overcome her anxiety. She wondered at Mercer’s experience — what he’d done in the past to let him handle bomb threats, plane crashes, infernos, and everything else thrown at them.
It was in the solitude of the nights that Anika realized she needed some of his strength. She paused to listen to the boat and heard nothing but drips and an occasional snore from Ira farther forward. She tossed aside the World War Two-era blankets and unzipped her sleeping bag. She slept clothed in everything but her boots, and she gave a little gasp when the cold of the deck plating leached through her socks. In the ruddy light from the control room she could see the curtain covering the entrance to Mercer’s cabin. She took a tentative step, wondering how far she would take this.
“Where are you going?” Hilda Brandt whispered.
Anika swallowed an unexpected jolt of guilt. “I have to pee.”
“The toilet is behind you past the wardroom,” Hilda reminded with a trace of humor in her voice. The chef knew where she was going.
Thankful for the dark because her face was flushed with embarrassment, Anika turned and padded to the bathroom.
“Better?” Hilda teased knowingly when Anika returned to her bunk.
“No.”
The first explosion came a little past seven the next morning. Mercer was alone at the chart table, cleaning Cosmoline from the pair of MP-40 Schmeisser machine pistols he’d found in his cabin along with a broom-handled Mauser — a pistol that had been an antique even when the sub was built. He’d already checked and matched the ammo. He looked upward as if he could see through the hull and the water. Not that he needed to see to know what was happening. “Garbage dump,” he said. At the second rumble he added, “Slave area.” The third would be the excavation that was already partially blocked, and then came the longest detonation, a rolling thunder that went on for five minutes, amplified by the acoustics of the cavern, the lagoon, and the U-boat. The main access tunnel had just come down, blasted into an impenetrable wall of rubble by explosive charges. Working around the clock the Germans had completed their task and sealed the cavern forever.
“What the hell was that?” Ira charged into the control room from the radio shack, where he’d been attempting to fix the wireless or the sonar gear. He’d had no luck with either.
“Gunther Rath burning his bridges, Chief,” Mercer replied passively. He’d started teasing Ira by using his former rank during their days of training. “We’ll give it an hour or two to let the dust settle and then surface the boat.”
“They’re gone?”
Mercer nodded. “Unless a few had a death wish.”
In a swirling vortex of air bubbles, the U-boat rose from the bottom two hours later, black water streaming off her outer hull. Erwin Puhl was in the conning tower and he threw open the hatch, not caring about the torrent of water that doused him. Although the cavern was pitch-black, he took the first deep breaths he’d enjoyed since losing the use of the periscope.
“How’s that?” Mercer asked from below.
“Heaven,” he sighed, fingering water from his glasses.
Within a few minutes, Ira fired the port diesel. The engine ran rough from fuel contamination and tar-thick oil, but he felt he could keep it running long enough to reach Iceland. Mercer went ashore to check the cavern, finding it much as he’d predicted. There was no evidence that anything man-made had ever been in the chamber, and all the alcoves were blocked with debris. Boulders and loose rock from the entrance tunnel spilled far onto the main floor, indicating a great deal of its length had been dynamited. He was confident that Rath and his men had collapsed a similar amount of the tunnel near the surface.
If they couldn’t negotiate the sub through the zigzagging underwater channel, they would die here in the darkness. He returned to the U-boat to help Ira fill the battery cells with acid. Once they recharged — if they recharged — they would be ready to leave.
After an hour of noxious work in the cramped aft battery room below the galley, Ira announced that they were in trouble.
“Considering our circumstances, you’re not telling me anything new.” Mercer’s eyes streamed tears from the caustic fumes.
Lasko’s normal humor had abandoned him. “I mean real trouble. Most of these batteries are worse off than I thought. The ones taking a charge leak like sieves. Once we close the hatches, the sub’s going to fill with chlorine gas a lot faster than I anticipated.”
Mercer tensed. “How long do you think we can stand it?”
“Depends on the individual. But after an hour or so the boat’s gonna be a coffin ship.”
“Can you rig some breathers for us?”
“I can, but that’s not the problem. With acid eating into the functioning batteries, the boat’s electric motor will lose power long before the first of us checks out. Have you figured out how long it takes to get through the tunnel and out to open sea?”
Mercer’s expression darkened. “According to the captain’s log, about an hour and a half.”
“Figures,” Ira said sourly.
“All’s not lost. All we have to do is push our speed over what he wrote to shave off some time. It won’t take me long to make corrections in the timing of our turns to compensate.”
“You’re forgetting that his figures are based on traveling a certain amount of time at certain RPMs before making a turn. Back then his boat was loaded with stores and a crew of fifty. We’re at least a hundred tons lighter, which will make us faster. I can double the RPMs but that won’t necessarily mean that you can halve the time.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Mercer admitted. “Any suggestions?”
“Factor in a speed difference of about half a knot faster than the captain used and hope to Christ you’re right.”
“What do you mean ‘hope I’m right’? It’s your idea.”
Ira smirked. “I don’t want the others blaming me when we plow into a tunnel wall because we missed a turn.”
It took a further two hours to get ready. Once the batteries were charged and any electrical faults repaired, Ira made certain that the air tanks were topped to their maximum pressure tolerance. Using the diesel, they swung the antique away from the pier and lined up with the entrance to the submerged channel out of the cavern. Hilda and Anika would operate the planes while Marty was at the helm to control the rudder. Ira had stationed himself at the ballast control. Mercer stood at the plotting table, where he could watch the gyrocompass. On the table were a pair of dividers and the captain’s log, which lay open to the chart of the submerged passage. The rough sketch of the tunnel showed a twisting tube filled with numerous obstacles the sub would have to avoid as it wormed its way to the outlet in the fjord.
“We’re in position,” Erwin called from the conning tower. He had noted their distance off the dock using the attack scope’s range finder.
“You know what you have to do,” Mercer shouted back up to him.
The scope sank back into its mount and a second later Erwin sealed them in. This time he actually walked calmly to the bathroom and had time to close the door before he began retching.
Without the pounding throb of the diesel, the boat was re
markably quiet.
“Chlorine gas is already starting to build up,” Ira said, though it would be a while before they would smell it.
Mercer consulted his chart, noting how sharply the cavern floor had dropped off from the pier. “Ira, make your depth sixty meters. Helm steady. Planes at neutral.” Mercer thought he sounded like an actor in an old war movie, but his crew responded to his orders without question.
“Hold there, Ira,” Anika called, her eyes riveted to the fathometer at her station.
“Gotta tell me earlier or else we’ll sink past our target depths,” Ira said, compensating for the mistake.
“Aye, aye. Okay, depth sixty meters.”
“Here we go, boys and girls.” Consulting his revised propulsion figures, Mercer spoke crisply. “Give me ninety RPMs for ten minutes starting” — he checked the ratcheting second hand on his TAG Heuer — “now!”
Silently the U-boat began to creep across the lagoon, a washing hiss sounding through her hull as she cut the water. “I’ll need two degrees up on the planes when I give the command in about five minutes.”
“We’re ready,” Anika said.
“I’ll be damned, Chief.” Mercer grinned, momentarily overcoming his uneasiness. “You actually did it. You got this thing going.”
“Don’t thank me. Wolfgang Rossler’s the man we owe our lives to. If the Nazis had had a few more like him, they could have won the war on maintenance alone.”
When it was time, Mercer gave the order to raise the bow planes to reduce their depth. Ira asked if he should vent water from the tanks, but the log indicated that this maneuver was done only with the planes. After another five minutes the tunnel took its first turn to the right.
“Marty, steer right ten degrees. I’ll tell you when to ease off.” This was a shallow turn in what the chart said was the widest part of the passage. Mercer wasn’t concerned about hitting anything yet. That fear would come later. He watched the compass next to him. “Okay, ease her back. A little more. That’s it.” He let out a breath. “Increase to one hundred and thirty revs and prepare for a hard turn to port in two minutes.”
They were well inside the sunken conduit, surrounded on all sides by rock and ice. A miscalculation in any direction would kill them all. No one knew if the tunnel was still wide enough to allow the sub passage, so they were forced to crawl along blindly, unable to reduce their speed because of the chlorine gas filling the bilge.
“Marty, coming up is a ninety-degree corner, so bring us to port as fast as you can spin the wheel. Now! Anika, ten degrees down on the planes. Make your depth eighty meters.”
“That’s two hundred and fifty feet,” she said. “Can this old hull take it?”
“We’ll know in a minute.”
Creaking like a sailing ship caught in a typhoon, the U-boat spiraled deeper into the abyss. Her moans reminded Mercer of whale song. “All right, straighten her back out. Reduce RPMs to one hundred. We’ve got a long stretch at this depth. Make sure she doesn’t drift.”
Like steel nails drawn across a chalkboard, the U-boat scraped against the side of the tunnel. The impact made them clutch their seats. The sub veered away from the wall and then drifted back again, harder, the hull plates screaming. Dislodged rocks hit the hull like cannon fire.
“Shit! Marty, bring us to starboard two points.” The unholy screeching died as soon as Bishop spun the wheel.
“What happened?” Erwin cried. He’d run into the control room at the first impact, too scared to remain in his bunk despite his claustrophobia
“We needed to scrape some barnacles off the side of the boat,” Mercer replied. “We should be back in our lane again. Marty, bring her back to eight degrees magnetic.”
“You did take the North Pole’s drift into account, didn’t you?” Bishop asked.
“And the fact we’re moving with the current, which according to the chart runs at two knots.”
They continued on this course for twenty minutes when Erwin, who was at the back of the control room, began to cough. Mercer looked over his shoulder and saw a sickly green mist rising from the engine room behind him. Chlorine gas. The first tendrils seemed to wrap around Erwin’s stooped form like tentacles of some wrathful creature.
“Hold out for as long as you can before using the air tanks I rigged,” Ira reminded.
Mercer got his first stinging taste of the chlorine. His eyes burned. They had another fifty minutes before they reached the open. It was going to be close. In order to protect their vision, everyone donned the protective goggles they’d used to combat the arctic weather.
“The tunnel floor’s about to rise,” Mercer said. “Prepare to blow tanks to bring us to fifty-five meters, ten degrees up on the plane. Marty, we’ve got a quick series of turns coming up, port, starboard, port. You just turn the wheel when I tell you. Increase to one hundred and thirty RPMs again when we level out.”
They went into the turns at the increased speed, the old sub tilting first one way and then the other on Mercer’s commands. He didn’t tell them that the channel through the S-turn was just wide enough to allow the maneuver.
The tail slammed into a rocky pinnacle coming out of the first curve, slewing the boat like it had been torpedoed. Mercer’s call for a quick correction wasn’t fast enough. They went into the second turn and the bows veered into the rock face, reverberations booming like the inside of a church bell. Erwin shrieked and Anika’s knuckles whitened on the plane control wheel.
“We’re doing fine,” Mercer said, choking when he took a lungful of gas. “Marty, bring us to port, bearing ninety degrees.”
Marty nodded, unable to speak around the accordion tube from his air cylinder. The hull creaked.
Mercer didn’t understand what had happened. The chart said that they shouldn’t have hit anything that second time. The pipe was supposed to have widened. The next turn was in five minutes, and he wasn’t sure if they were traveling in the middle of the passage or along one side. They didn’t have the luck to consider they were in the middle, so Mercer had two choices. Were they far left or far right?
The control room was filled up to their knees in heavy chlorine gas, wisps rising up like fog from a haunted moor.
“Marty, are you right- or left-handed?” Mercer asked and finally started drawing breath from his own cylinder. Marty held up his left hand. “Bring us two points to starboard for a minute and on my command crank us to port.”
If Mercer’s guess was wrong, they would plow straight into the far side of the turn at roughly six knots. That kind of blow would crumple the bow like aluminum foil. “Helm, steer us to one hundred and thirty degrees.” Everyone felt the tension in his voice.
Angled over so they had to brace themselves, the sub went through the turn, gas pooling against the bulkheads like a liquid. Mercer held his breath. They all did. The beat of the propellers through the water sounded like a distant drumroll. By Mercer’s watch they were halfway through the turn. He checked the chart and lurched. The bottom of the tunnel had dropped away and the ceiling had lowered. They were supposed to be at seventy meters!
“Dive!”
Ira twisted open valves to flood the bow ballast tanks at the same time Anika and Hilda cranked the dive planes as far as they could go. The sub seemed to stand on its nose, loose articles crashing to the deck all along the length of the vessel. Mercer’s feet came out from under him and he swung free, dangling from a steel pipe.
They didn’t quite make it. The top of the conning tower crashed into the underside of the subterranean channel, ripping away both periscopes in a wrenching squeal of torn metal. Water flooded the attack center located in the sail and would have filled the ship if it weren’t for one more watertight hatch. A wall of chlorine gas as dense as smoke raced down the boat, cutting visibility to almost zero until Anika brought the bow back up, leveling her out at eighty meters just as her keel began to scrape the bottom. The noxious cloud settled again, reaching up to Mercer’s waist.
�
��Bring us to seventy meters. Ira, neutral buoyancy again.” Mercer checked the compass and saw that Marty had them perfectly on course. “Good job. That was my fault. Sorry.”
Mercer paid for complimenting them. Seared by gas, his lungs went into convulsions and vomit shot from his mouth. He sucked great drafts from his air bottle, cleansing the tortured tissue. They had only one more change of depth to clear a peak in the channel and fifteen more minutes to go.
He knew they wouldn’t last that long. Marty had been on his bottle much longer than he had, and Mercer could imagine poor Erwin had been hyperventilating since they’d left the cavern. He changed the figures on the chart, making a quick guess rather than an accurate calculation. “Maximum revolutions!”
The tachometer peaked at two hundred twenty RPMs. “Bring us to thirty meters on my mark.” Mercer could feel the sub racing along the bottom of the tunnel, careening toward a bump on the seafloor that rose nearly a hundred feet. Come up too soon and they slammed into the ceiling of the passage. Too late and they would barrel into the mount. “Ten degrees up on the planes. Mark!”
Mercer made up for his earlier mistake. His timing was perfect. Like a crop duster swooping over a field, the two-hundred-fifty-foot-long submarine rose off the bottom of the tunnel and climbed the sloped side of the hill, her keel never more than ten feet from its irregular surface. At thirty meters, the U-boat cleared the top of the mound with the ceiling of the tunnel now only forty feet above her ruined conning tower. Level once again and her screws churned with every remaining amp in her batteries. From here it was a race to the open sea. Mercer’s gamble had saved them nearly eight minutes.
“When we surface,” Ira said and took another draw from his breathing tube, “I’m going to blow compressed air through the boat to vent the gas. Be prepared for a pressure change.”
Once he was satisfied they had cleared the tunnel and entered the fjord, Mercer ordered Ira to blow the tanks. The climb from a hundred feet seemed to take forever. His air supply was about exhausted, and each breath was a supreme effort that left his chest aching. Anika and Ira were in even worse shape.
