by Nigel Seed
As the propellers started to bite they pushed the water backwards and the boat started to move slowly forward, scraping along the concrete dock floor. The noise inside the submarine was loud and unpleasant, although they knew it should damage nothing but the paint work. As they left the dock and entered the tunnel the noise level dropped as the boat slid along a layer of slimy river mud. The sides of the tunnel took up the challenge and the scraping of metal along the stone walls was as loud as the dock floor had been. Then the noise was gone. They were out.
The Captain took the boat to a point around five hundred meters from the shore line and ordered the periscope raised and the diving planes deployed. He tracked the scope around slowly. They were alone in the darkness. The boat surfaced and the watertight doors were opened. The Captain and Romanov climbed up into the conning tower and turned to await the arrival of V4-2. Romanov looked down the conning tower ladder and saw Jim in the control room below.
“Major!” he called, “Come up and watch this!” Jim climbed the ladder and stood beside Romanov in the cool dark night. “Major, without you this would never have happened. You should be here to share in this historic moment. Hitler’s Kriegsmarine is going back to sea!”
Jim stared into the darkness toward where he knew the tunnel entrance to be. The water was smooth and untroubled. There was no moon and the stars reflected off the surface of the still water. Then the water boiled and the reflections vanished as the second U-Boat slid up from the bottom. There was no cheering or exchange of witty light signals; this was to be a stealthy journey. Jim looked at Romanov. The Russian’s face was impassive. Unusual for a showman who had just had a major success, but maybe Romanov was so much more.
The two boats turned north and headed away from Kiel. While close to the city they used only the electric motors and traveled slowly to avoid drawing attention. It was a cold, clear night with no traffic and only the reflections from the lights of the city to keep them company. As the boats entered the Baltic the large diesel engines coughed into life and the two boats accelerated to their maximum speed of twenty-five knots. The boats slipped between the Danish islands without attracting attention. The channel widened out into the Kattegat and despite the increased traffic, the submarines, with their low profile and black hulls passed unnoticed. Even if they had been seen by any merchantman in this area they would have assumed them to be part of the modern German navy exercising in their usual training waters.
In the early hours of the morning the boats turned west into the Skagerrak, heading for the North Sea. Lying in the cramped bunk Jim could feel the boat make the turn and then feel the increased wave motion as they cleared the shelter of the headland. Once into the North Sea the boats turned North West to pass around the top of Scotland, keeping well clear of the Danish coast. With the wind and the waves no longer directly on the bow there was an uncomfortable twisting movement added to the fore and aft rocking motion of the long sleek boat.
Andrei, who now shared the fourth bunk in the Chiefs’ Mess was clearly no sailor and lay in the enclosed space of his sleeping pallet and groaned. He had yet to be sick, but had the plastic bag ready for the inevitable moment.
After a few hours of pounding Jim decided against staying in the enclosed space. Waiting for Andrei to reexamine his dinner was not his idea of fun. He climbed out of his bunk and headed into the control room. The Arabic crew noticed him and pointedly looked back to their instruments. He made it to the base of the conning tower ladder and called to the Officer of the Deck for permission to come up. The first officer he had spoken to at the briefing looked down at him and after a moment’s consideration gestured for him to climb up. Jim climbed the vertical ladder and entered the conning tower bridge. Two lookouts monitored the horizon left and right, the deck officer and a third lookout tracked their binoculars forward. Spray was breaking over the forward deck and the occasional wind driven wave covered it and ran toward the conning tower as a gray-green mound before striking the metal wall and breaking.
“Looks like we could be in for some lumpy weather,” Jim said to the conning tower crew.
He might have saved his breath for all the reaction. After a few moments silence the officer turned and handed him a pair of binoculars. Without a word he pointed over the port side of the boat. Jim looked where he was pointing. Through the binoculars and the mist he could see forbidding gray cliffs with the sea breaking at their base.
He looked at the Arabic officer who said, “Cape Wrath. The most northerly point of mainland Britain.” He pointed out into the mist to starboard. “Somewhere over there are the outer islands. It is difficult to believe that people would choose to live in such a terrible place as this.”
He turned away, the conversation was over. Jim took a few more breaths of the cold refreshing air, then took another look round at the angry sea before he climbed down into the muggy air of the boat.
He stood in the control room below the conning tower and looked around. The air smelled of diesel oil. Their clothes and bedding already stank of it and their food, such as it was, tasted of the stuff. The pipework around the boat dripped condensation constantly and even their bedding felt wet. He could not imagine how the U-Boat crews had stood this for weeks with the added threat of being hunted by the two most powerful navies in the world. They must have been remarkable men.
He kept looking around the control room as he passed through and again was studiously ignored by the operators at their wheels and instruments. The navigator pointedly turned his chart over as Jim passed, making sure it covered the screen of the newly installed satellite navigation system.
A little redundant since Jim knew exactly where they were. He had stood on those rugged cliffs looking out at these storm tossed waters with his wife, during their honeymoon, with just the melancholy cry of the seabirds to distract them. Those had been very different days; just married and just promoted to Captain, his life had seemed golden. When he got back to barracks his orders to move to Iraq had been waiting for him and the separations had begun. His marriage had started to go downhill from that point though he had taken years to realize it.
He passed through to the chiefs’ mess and found his two colleagues and Andrei lying in their bunks, keeping out of the narrow passageway that crewmen passed through to get to the engine room and the heads. Geordie and Ivan were reading while Andrei was clutching his improvised sick bag. His color was a little better; maybe he was getting used to the motion at last. Jim announced that he had seen the top of mainland Scotland through the mist, but was greeted with indifference.
“I’ll be happier when we see Gibraltar through the sunshine,” said Ivan. “Once we get to the Mediterranean I wonder if we can get dropped off somewhere warm with a large supply of icy cold beer that doesn’t smell of diesel.”
Jim shook his head. “I think Romanov wants us along until he gets to his museum so that we can help fix anything that goes wrong.”
Andrei looked up from his bunk, but said nothing and turned his face to the back of his bunk. Jim filed that one away for later; he had been managing men for many years and could see that this one knew something he wasn’t telling.
The tedium of life on board the U-Boat continued. The Arabic crew would have nothing to do with them and after a meal or two they became unhappy with the standard of the food coming from the galley. Andrei took over cooking for the four of them, more for something to do than anything else. The small German engine room crew asked if he would help them as well, so he was now cooking for seven. He was happier now that his mind and hands were occupied.
Romanov stayed in the old Captain’s accommodation and avoided them all; if the present skipper resented that they saw no sign of it. Visits to the conning tower were rare since they were clearly not welcome. On the odd occasion one of them went up for a breath of fresh air, the heavy Atlantic swells were sweeping across the casings and when they looked across at the second boat they could see it lifting and crashing in the waves. Communication bet
ween the two vessels was by hand held VHF sets with a range of no more than five miles. The stealthy cruise away from Germany was still in motion. Presumably Romanov wanted his prizes safely installed in his museum before the Germans found out they had lost these two spectacular pieces of their history.
The monotony was slightly relieved by patrolling the boat looking for leaks from the old pipework. Even when they found and fixed one there was no acknowledgement from the Arabic crew, even those who had been getting dripped on refused to notice the help they had received.
Every twelve hours they took turns to inspect the lower deck areas. Lowering themselves through the hatch between the electric motors then working forward through the machinery spaces, battery and air system compartments. Checking the batteries for signs of leakage to ensure no deadly chlorine gas was produced by contact with sea water was essential. With his marked dislike of dark enclosed spaces, this task was a trial for Jim but he steeled himself and took his turn, even though he returned each time in a cold sweat with trembling fingers and panicked breathing.
After the first two nights in his shallow bunk Jim started to experience the Coffin Dreams well known to submariners. He would wake suddenly in the middle of the night watch, with the surface of the upper bunk just in front of his face. Sweating and trembling, he would slide out of the bunk and prowl the control and missile compartments until he calmed.
When Geordie came back from one of his crawls and walks around the boat, he tapped Ivan and Jim on the shoulder and hunkered down between their bunks. “Just been through the control room,” he said quietly, “something isn’t right. I managed to get a look at the satnav screen as I passed and it’s showing our course as 278 degrees. That’s almost due west.”
Jim nodded. “According to Romanov’s plan we should have turned south a few days ago to travel down past Ireland toward Gibraltar. Maybe we were just turning to avoid some ship?”
Geordie shook his head. “I’ve been awake for the last couple of hours. If we had made a turn like that I would have felt the motion of the boat change. But the pounding from the waves had been constant.”
Jim looked across at Andrei who was lying quietly watching them.
“Time for you to tell us what you know, Andrei. You have been working for Romanov for a while. What is going on and what haven’t we been told?”
Andrei leaned out of his bunk and looked nervously up and down the passageway.
He swallowed, then whispered, “I do not know why we are doing this. I do know there is no museum on the Black Sea. Romanov is not the rich business man he claims to be. He is rich, that is true, but he makes his money from crime. He is Russian Mafia.”
The three engineers absorbed that for a few seconds.
Ivan broke the silence, “What the hell does a Mafioso want with a couple of old submarines and where is he taking them?”
Andrei shook his head. “I do not know. It is not wise to question him too closely. He can be quite ruthless if he is annoyed.”
“For the time being I think we will keep what we know to ourselves,” Jim said. “But anytime you are moving through the boat try to get a look at the charts or the satnav. It might give us a clue about just what the hell is going on.”
Chapter 17
Although they kept an eye on the control room they did not manage to check the charts or get another look at the satnav screen. The navigator was not careless again when they were around. Jim tried to go forward to speak to Romanov, but was told quite forcefully that he could not see him. The leather-jacketed bodyguards were quite adamant and even in Russian it was clear what they meant.
The heaving of the boat became more pronounced as the waves built up around them, and the crew was clearly getting nervous. Their experience of submarine work in the Middle Eastern waters had not prepared them for a storm in the cold, angry waters of the North Atlantic. Geordie stood in the hatchway that led to the control room watching quietly. After a while he came back and squatted between the bunks.
“They’re scared,” he said, “not scared of dying, but scared they will sink the boat before they achieve their aim. They are pleading with the skipper to take the boat down away from the storm.”
Andrei looked puzzled. “How do you know these things? They speak only in Arabic.”
Ivan laughed, “I don’t know how the Russian Army works, but in the British Army we train people to do all sorts of strange things just in case we ever need them. Geordie understands Arabic. He can’t speak it worth a damn, but he can understand what they are saying.”
Jim looked at Geordie, “Any clue about what the crew’s aim might be?”
“Nothing, boss. I’ll keep an ear out, but they are being careful. Every time I go near them they clam up. If I didn’t know better I’d say they didn’t like me and by the way, I speak Arabic perfectly well.” Geordie smiled. “It’s not my fault if Arabs don’t understand their own language.”
“Well, Andrei,” said Jim, “from what you know of Romanov and where we are do you have any guesses about what we are doing?”
“Major, if I knew I would tell you, but I have heard nothing. I am sure it will be about money or power or both. They are the only things that matter to Romanov. He will do anything to acquire more of both.”
Jim sat back into his bunk and looked across at Ivan. “Any guesses?”
“Not a clue. How he can make money in the middle of the Atlantic with two old U- Boats escapes me.” Then he looked up. “Unless he is going to sell them to one of the South American navies or to one of the South American drug cartels? They have been smuggling cocaine into the U.S. using small improvised submarines for years now. These two could carry tons of the damned stuff. The Argentinians could use them to replace that one they lost in South Georgia back in the eighties.”
“Possible, but if that is true we seem to be going the long way, judging by the course setting that Geordie saw. I wonder if those Germans in the engine room know anything?”
Ivan nodded at Andrei, “They might not speak to us, but they might speak to the cook when he next feeds them.”
Andrei looked surprised, but nodded, “I will try. Their leader, Hans, might know something.”
The next meal was yet another canned stew that came with dark, diesel tasting bread. The three engineers ate in silence and waited for the Russian to come back. Eventually Andrei reappeared and sat on the edge of his bunk.
“They know less than we do,” he said, “but Hans says they are uncomfortable with the Arab crew as much as we are. Nobody has told them anything except to keep the engines running at high cruising speed. The boat has been making fifteen to twenty knots for days now.”
As he finished speaking they heard the sound of a klaxon siren through the ship. Arabic crewmen dashed through the passageway and secured the watertight doors before heading forward again and securing the door between the Chiefs’ Mess and the control room. The sound of the big diesel engine died and the compartment tilted as the sound of high pressure vents came through the hull. Jim noticed Andrei clutching the edge of his bunk with white knuckles. Despite the sweat he could feel prickling between his own shoulder blades, he patted the Russian on the shoulder and winked to reassure him. The motion of the boat eased almost immediately. They had submerged.
“I wonder what finally convinced the skipper to take her down?” said Ivan. “Maybe they want to use the best china for lunch?”
They felt the floor come level again as the boat ceased its dive.
“Not very deep,” said Jim, “I thought they would go further down than that to avoid the weather and if it was just for an easier ride they wouldn’t have made it a crash dive.”
They could still feel the motion of the waves above them.
“Listen to that,” said Ivan.
They sat still and through the hull, they heard the swishing and heavy rumbling sound of propellers in the water.
“That must be something big to make that much noise underwater,” Jim said. �
��It seems we dived to avoid being seen. If that’s true we will be heaving about again shortly.”
Geordie smiled “That’s true, boss, but don’t call me shorty.”
It was an old joke and had never been that funny, but it eased the tension in the small compartment as they sat and waited for the next development. It wasn’t long in coming as the watertight door was opened and they were summoned into the control room. A number of seals had failed under the increased pressure and jets of icy cold water were shooting across the command compartment. They worked rapidly to stop them. Eventually the leaks were under control and they turned to look at the Captain who studiously ignored them.
“Don’t mention it. You’re welcome,” said Ivan, as they headed back to their bunk area.
No more than ten minutes later they heard the klaxons again and felt the deck tilt upwards. The motion of the waves increased and the heaving deck that they had become used to was back.
“My guess would be that its dark or the weather is really bad with low visibility.”
“OK, I’ll bite, how do you work that one out?” said Ivan.
“We were only down for a matter of minutes. If the visibility was good we would have stayed down for longer to avoid being seen. As it is we must be in reduced visibility so the skipper feels safe to come up quickly.”
As he was speaking they heard the first diesel rumble into life. They waited for the second, but no sound came. The wheel in the watertight door to the control room spun round and the hatch was swung open to let the Captain pass through. He ignored them as usual and went aft, opening the other watertight door as he went. They could hear the shouting from the engine room, most of it from the skipper. He stormed back through to the control room and the watertight door swung shut again. The dirty face and oil stained coveralls of one of the German engine room team appeared in their compartment.
