by Scott Cook
“I say, Pupson!” I called as I walked out and headed for the left door.
I stepped through and looked around the yard. I was a little surprised when he didn’t come running. That was usually his MO. Maybe I caught him in the middle of doing his business, though.
I stepped out into the yard and looked to the right where he usually went but he wasn’t there. I suddenly felt a pang of worry.
Had I left the gate open?
I went to the side of the house where the largest part of the yard was, which would be the left side if you were looking from the street. I saw him lying on the grass near the gate.
I suppose that your mind often hides the truth from you when it’s too terrible to contemplate. At least for a few seconds. Even as I walked toward him, the fact that he hadn’t moved or even lifted his head didn’t register for at least two or three whole seconds.
But every self-delusion shatters in the face of cold hard reality. Even as I covered the last few steps, I knew. I felt the pounding of my heart and the chilling tingle of fear flowing down my spinal column as I bent down and touched him.
There was no life in my dog.
I rolled him over and inspected his body but saw no indication of a wound anywhere. I put my head on his chest but there was no heartbeat. He wasn’t stiff, so this couldn’t have happened too long ago. Yet I also knew in my heart that there was nothing I could do.
I sat hard on the grass and stared in disbelief for a long moment. Then the tears came. They came hard and nothing I could do could stop them. My heart felt like it’d been cleaved in two.
I think sometimes non-dog lovers might not understand the level of emotion a dog can produce. They snicker when dog owners say that their dogs are like their kids. Or they roll their eyes at how silly we sometimes are when we talk to our dogs and treat them like people.
Yet the fact is that this behavior is more than simply we humans being ridiculous and anthropomorphizing our pups. Human beings, like dogs, are pack animals. We crave the attention of others and seek to form emotional bonds whenever possible.
The unique thing about dogs is that they’re the same way. They really do have emotions, and unlike we silly people, their emotions aren’t clouded by the complexity of modern life. Dogs feel, and they feel purely and totally.
When a dog loves you, you know he or she does and there’s no question on it. Their feeling for you and their loyalty is beyond question and as pure a thing as we humans ever strive for.
There’s nothing more important to your dog than you. They’ll comfort you, play with you, drive you crazy and protect you even at the expense of their own lives and do so without a single second’s hesitation.
I think it’s this purity that breeds such strong feelings in dog people. How can you not love something that loves you so completely and unconditionally?
So when your loyal friend is suddenly and brutally taken from you… it rips out a chunk of your soul in a way that you can’t prepare for. Sure, we all know that our dogs are only with us for a dozen years or so. It’s part of the deal. We are sad when they go, but we also had many years of joy because of them.
Yet when one dies early, without warning… you can’t prepare for it and even the strongest person can be transformed into a blubbering child whose heartbreak is inconsolable.
So I sat in my side yard and cried and sobbed and stroked Morgan for what seemed like a long time. When the first deluge passed, I went to gather him in my arms. There was an animal hospital on Lee Vista Boulevard not far away. They’d be able to do a necropsy and tell me what happened and also take care of him.
That’s when I saw the remnants of a paper bag sitting on the lawn near the gate. I went over and picked it up. Part of the words 5 Guys were still visible on the sack.
Inside were a couple of French fries and a small piece of a hamburger. What Morgan either hadn’t been able to reach or hadn’t wanted to finish…
Sprinkled on the food bits and on the slightly greasy inside of the bag was a fine powder that I suspected wasn’t salt or pepper. I noticed that some of this was visible on Morgan’s muzzle too.
Again, it took my addled brain almost five seconds to make the connection. Then it finally clicked. Somebody had thrown this bag of food over my fence and it had been liberally laced with something… something that had poisoned my dog.
Now the heartbreak was joined by another feeling. One just as strong.
Rage… murderous rage.
Chapter 15
Eastern Gulf of Mexico
October 11th, 1945, 0145 local time
They had the U-boat dead to rights.
The problem was that the sound signature of the enemy submarine was extremely faint, being well over two nautical miles ahead. Another problem was that at seven-hundred feet, the torpedo room couldn’t open the outer doors due to the pressure. Additionally, even if they could, there was no way to actually lock onto the other submarine. Even at what was considered point blank range, less than a thousand yards, it would be too easy for the German to evade even a spread of four torpedoes.
“God dammit!” Williams cranked
For the last hour or so, they’d been right in the son of a bitch’s baffles and couldn’t do a damned thing about it. It was a long hour, too. But at least the control room had been cleaned up.
“I’m open to suggestions,” Williams told his crew, including the Cob. He sipped a cup of coffee and nibbled on a sweet roll, “That bastard isn’t getting away. If we gotta ram him, then that’s what we’ll do.”
“We got six fish,” Cob said, Two aft and two forward. That gives us two chances, three at best.”
“Six fish…” Dutch sighed, “If we were both running on top, then I’d say that could do it. I sure as hell wish we hadn’t wasted…”
The new XO trailed off when he realized that what he was voicing could easily be interpreted as a criticism.
Williams smiled thinly, “its okay, XO. I wish I hadn’t fired now, too. But second guessing gets us nowhere. We’ve got what we’ve got.”
“If we only had some depth charges,” Cob said with a sigh.
Williams rubbed his chin thoughtfully, “Hmm… well we don’t… what we’ve got are four forward and two aft torpedoes with impact exploders… Sparky, is there anything we can do about that?”
Sparks frowned, “Hell, skipper… I don’t know. I can take a torpedo apart and put er’ back together… but as for rigging something new, I’m not sure I’ve got the skills for that.”
“Maybe Mr. Nichols can offer a suggestion,” Post said, “He knows more about electrical stuff than anybody I know.”
“That’s true,” Williams said, “Frank does have a degree in electrical engineering… phone talker, call Lieutenant Nichols to the control room.”
A minute later, Frank Nichols appeared. He was a wiry man in his late twenties whose wire rimmed glasses always looked odd on his chiseled features.
“We need your advice, Eng.,” Williams informed his chief engineer.
“Anything I can do, skipper,” Nichols replied.
“We’ve got that German boat in our sights, more or less,” Williams explained, “he’s about four thousand yards ahead and looks like at our depth. I want to shove our four forward fish straight up his Teutonic ass.”
Nichols grinned, “Agreed. But at this depth, we can’t even open the doors. And at this distance…”
“Right,” Williams said, “You see our problem. But that’s not our biggest problem. Our biggest problem is that our fish are rigged to explode on contact. That means if we miss, the torpedoes just swim away never to be seen again. And with only four of six tubes loaded… it’s just not enough for a proper spread.”
“It’s kind of ironic,” Sparks pointed out, “I mean that now that the navy finally admitted that the damned mark six exploder don’t work, we need something like it.”
At the beginning of world war two, the Navy was using a new torpedo exploder known as the ma
rk six. The idea was that using a magnetometer set at a certain sensitivity, the torpedo would home in on the electro-magnetic field created when a steel hulled ship moved through seawater. As this field was strongest along the keel, the torpedo would explode directly beneath the target. As water doesn’t compress to any appreciable degree, the entire force of the explosion would be driven straight up into the keel and break the ship’s back. Theoretically, only a single torpedo would be needed to sink even a battleship.
Unfortunately, in practical use, the mark six exploder failed miserably. It had a success rate of less than twenty percent. The fish ran too shallow and simply failed to explode. Many submarine captains reported seeing torpedoes simply bouncing off the armor of their targets.
It wasn’t until well into 1943 that the Navy finally began to accept the truth of the reports coming in from its submarine fleet. The reports of failures and how when the crews modified the weapons to use the older and more reliable impact exploder, their success rate went up to over ninety percent.
“It’s a great theoretical system,” Nichols said, “But as we all know, it didn’t work. Last I heard the ordinance department is still working on it. Remember, too, that the Germans started using an acoustic homing torpedo well over a year ago…”
“Shit,” Sparks remarked, “Hope they ain’t got any of them on board.”
Dutch shrugged, “They’ve got the same problem we’ve got. The thing is good for surface ships, but not a submerged target, really. Our Navy has that mark twenty four homer… the little one… but we don’t’ have any on board.”
“All great,” Williams said, “But we ain’t got em, so we’ve got to use what we’ve got. If we can get a good track on that boat, we can use the TDC to calculate a solution. At depth, though… so what we need is another option, gents.”
“We can’t guide the damned things,” Sparks groaned, “so that’s out. If we can’t control where they explode… then what we need is a way to control when they explode.”
“Yeah,” Post said, “Like a proximity fuse. Then we could fire a fish and at least have it go off close, maybe do some damage.”
Williams grinned and looked at Nichols. The engineer rubbed his chin in thought, “Well… our current exploders go off on contact. Compression fires the fuse… if we could set up a timer, then maybe we could make them go off when we want.”
“Problem is,” Sparks remarked, “Them fish ain’t designed for that. It’s not an electrical exploder but a mechanical one.”
“Yes…” Nichols said, still stroking his chin.
“Couldn’t we place a timed explosive somewhere in the nosecone?” Williams asked, “Set off a grenade or something that then sets off the main charge?”
Nichols smiled broadly, “I think we can, skipper! We’ve got some explosive ordinance aboard, right?”
“Yeah,” Williams said, “Grenades, limpet mines, fuses… can you rig something?”
Nichols nodded, “I think so, with Cob’s help.”
“Problem is,” Dutch said, “How do we know how long to set the timers?”
Williams sighed, “Well… I think we can do that math easy enough, even use the torpedo data computer… and I don’t think we’ll be using timers. Probably pencil fuses or something simple.”
“Christ…” Dutch groaned, understanding the problem immediately.
“We set the fuse, slap on the cone and then have to load the fish,” Sparks said, “All that’s gotta be taken into account.”
“Dangerous,” Nichols remarked.
“But if we know the timing,” Williams said, “We can set the fuses for a good length and simply use a stop watch. We fire the fish at the right time.”
“And hope the fuse isn’t defective” Dutch added, “Or that the timing is perfect… or it doesn’t go off prematurely…”
Williams shrugged, “Nobody said war was safe. Or easy. Let’s see it done, guys. I don’t know what this Krout asshole is doing up there, but he’s running for the middle grounds. He’ll have to come shallow eventually, and when he does, I want to be ready. Start with the two after fish first.”
That stopped Cob and Nichols in their tracks. Both men turned and looked at him with evident confusion on their faces.
“Call it a hunch,” Williams said, “We got a better chance with the forward fish as is. But I want those two astern ready just in case.”
“Aye, aye,” Cob and Nichols said in unison as they headed aft.
Ernst Schumer couldn’t stop fidgeting. There was nothing to do in this long and silent stern chase. There were two torpedoes loaded into tubes one and two and he and the reload gang had already prepared two more torpedoes as far as they could so as to be ready to reload when the word came down from the zentral.
At the moment, he sat on his bunk and chewed half-heartedly on a liverwurst sandwich. He wasn’t really hungry, but when the order came from the new captain that the men should eat something, Chief Kumans had insisted that every man fill his belly.
Now he sat, perched on his second tier rack with his feet swinging. The torpedo room was a crowded place, with weapons and men crammed together. Several dozen men slept here, their coffin-like bunks stacked four high between racks of torpedoes. Privacy was not something one got aboard a U-boat very often.
It was only in one’s thoughts where any privacy could be found. That was where Ernst dwelt at the moment. Thoughts of Herman and his mother… thoughts of Captain Reinhardt’s kindness and forbearance… and thoughts of his murder.
It was true that Ernst wanted to revenge himself on the Americans. His heart cried out for some retribution for the ache he felt when thinking of his beloved brother and his mother, who seemed to be a shadow of her former self. And yet…
Yet there was another part of him that doubted. What Reinhardt had said about Hitler pricked his conscience a little. There was truth in the great man’s words, after all.
Hadn’t Hitler started this? Wasn’t it he who had gone on the offensive? Could you blame Britain for fighting back after being bombed and attacked at sea? Could you blame the United States, who had initially tried to stay out of the European war?
It wasn’t until Japan made it impossible for them to stay neutral that America had decided to fight. And again the Japanese had attacked without warning.
Then there was Bausch. The very picture of a “good” Nazi… yet he wasn’t good, was he? He was a cold, hard and brutal man who had, if the rumors were to be believed… and by now there was little doubt… murdered the captain while he was negotiating with the Americans.
In cold blood and without warning…
Was this the Nazi way? Was this what being a good servant to the Fatherland really meant? Sneak attacks and murder?
“What is it, Ernst?” Kumans said, startling the boy out of his reverie.
Standing on deck, the chief was about eye to eye with the young man. Ernst swallowed the last of his sandwich, “Nothing, Chief. I was just thinking about… about home.”
Kumans nodded, his portly face and dark eyes held a note of kindness, “You miss your mother and your brother.”
Ernst nodded, “yes.”
“And that’s why you’re here,” Kumans said, “To make sure that he didn’t die in vain and so that perhaps your mother can find some peace knowing that we struck a devastating blow at those who helped take him away.”
Kumans looked toward the inner torpedo tube doors, where tubes three through six were labeled with a simple tag with the symbol of a skull and crossbones. Everyone, even Schumer, who was the lowest man on the ladder, knew what was in those tubes by now. Or at least they knew generally that there was some biological agent that was to be brought ashore in Florida. Like privacy, secrecy died a quick death in a steel tube.
Another sneak attack, Ernst thought.
Another underhanded trick made even more distasteful because it would be done under a flag of peace…
“Now you’re unsure of our mission?” Kumans asked.
“No…” Ernst said hesitantly, “Just wondering if we’ll succeed now… now that the captain…”
“You’ll have your revenge,” Kumans said, squeezing the lad’s shoulder, “With these new torpedoes… we can’t miss.”
Up in the zentral, Gunter Bausch was absolutely not having a crisis of conscience, even on a small scale. He was standing at the chart table with Yohan Verschmidt carefully moving the slide rules across the chart. On the paper was a straight pencil line leading just south of east, straight into Tampa Bay.
“The bottom is beginning to come up,” Yohan informed him as Bausch made another point on the paper and extended his track line, “We’re in one thousand meters now.”
“Perfect,” Bausch said, making a dot and drawing a half circle around it, “At current speed, we should arrive at this point in… eleven hours. This is where we face the American.”
Yohan studied the chart. The information provided was scant at best. It wasn’t even a German chart, but one created by the united States Navy itself. Yet despite this, the chart was woefully bereft of detail.
There were topographical lines indicating variable depths, but nothing in the way of bottom types. The only reference to anything of that sort was small print that indicated that the shallow bank nearly a hundred and eighty kilometers off the Florida coast was known as the middle grounds. Their information indicated a bottom of varied limestone and possibly coral reef formations, but nothing that indicated actual local terrain differences or depths.
“That could be dangerous, sir,” Yohan said, “We know little of the bottom here, except that it’s rocky and rises and falls. It’s said there is good fishing out here, which indicates structure. Unusual for this region, which is mostly sand and some low relief rock.”
