Sins of the Fatherland (Scott Jarvis Investigations Book 6)

by Scott Cook

Yohan had his pistol trained on the would-be guard, “And you, Fuchs?”

  The young man let his own Luger clatter to the deck, “Thank you, sir. I’m with you.”

  Yohan nodded, “Pilot, make turns for maximum speed.”

  “Answering one-half,” The pilot said softly, obviously shaken by what had just happened.

  Yohan sighed. He was the captain now. And what would he do?

  “We’re on top,” Cobb announced, “There’s some leakage in the trim tanks, but I think I can keep us afloat, long as they get that flooding contained aft.”

  “Phone talker?” Williams queried, “Get me a report from after torpedo and maneuvering. Dutch, find me that son of a bitch and get a firing solution. I’m going topside. Get me somebody with a sharp pair of eyes, XO.”

  Williams climbed up into the conning tower and paused for a long second with his hand on the hatch dog. What would he see when he stepped out into the morning air?

  Logically, he knew there’d be nothing up there but what should be up there. He knew that all he’d see was the exterior of the conning tower, the cigarette deck, the bridge, the main deck and the guns… but he feared that Arthur Turner’s body would somehow have clung to the structure outside, his lifeless eyes glaring at him in eternal condemnation… his body a blue-green mess of oozing sores and powdered bones from being down over a hundred fathoms.

  Of course, this last horror was impossible. Even if the captain’s body had somehow managed to wedge itself into the railings or some other structure, seven hundred feet wasn’t enough to pulverize the human body into the grotesque Lovecraftian nightmare meandering all too realistically through Williams’ mind.

  The XO turned skipper gritted his teeth and opened the hatch, letting in a small rivulet of seawater and a breath of cool ocean air that was a blessing for the freshness it brought. The air in the ship had been getting stale and the temperature was well over one hundred degrees by that time.

  The corpse of Bull Shark’s captain was not glowering balefully at him when the new skipper stepped out on deck. Everything was just as it should be at first glance. At a second, though, Williams could see the telltale signs of the previous battle. A multitude of bright splashes dotted the metal surfaces on the deck and portside of the conning tower where German rounds had pinged off the paint and left a streak of bare steel exposed. But there were no bodies and no puddles of blood, thank Christ.

  As Williams toured the cigarette deck, a raised platform that surrounded the conning tower and contained the official “bridge” at its forward end, he caught sight of something astern that gave him pause. The sun had only just begun to peek over the eastern horizon and a light breeze was creating only a tiny swell of a foot or less in height.

  On the still indigo sea astern, a slick could be seen some way off along with what might be bubbles. Williams cursed himself for coming topside without a set of field glasses. He turned to retrieve the pair that should still be in the bridge console when he nearly slammed straight into young Hank Lambert.

  “Sir!” Lambert said, startled. He stepped back, holding up a pair of binocs, “Mr. Dutch said—“

  Williams patted the lad on the shoulder, “Good timing, Hank. Did you hot foot it all the way from forward torp?”

  Lambert nodded eagerly, “Yes sir. The chief said you needed a good pair of eyes and mine are pretty sharp, sir.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Williams said. He pointed aft, “See that… whatever it is back there? I think it might be our pal, so you keep your eyes glued on that area and report what you see, got it?”

  “Aye, aye,” Lambert said and continued to the after cigarette deck railing.

  Williams went forward to the bridge and picked up the water proof sound-powered phone, “Control room, bridge. What’s the track on our target? And I need somebody good up here to man the TBT, Dutch.”

  There was a short pause while his crew gathered information for him.

  “Sir!” Lambert called, “That disturbance… looks like an oil slick and bubbles. Headed for us I think.”

  “Bridge, control,” Dutch finally reported, “U-Boat is a thousand yards astern, headed topside. Making… six knots. Getting some transient machinery and hull noises. Assess leakage in multiple compartments and one screw out of commission. Possibly damaged stern planes, too… but that’s just speculation.”

  “Good, the son of a bitch,” Williams said, “What’s the status on our fish?”

  “Four loaded in tubes three through six,” Dutch replied, “outer doors open and ready to fire. Working on a track now… gonna need some data from the TBT, though.”

  “I know,” Williams said, “Who can you spare?”

  “Me, sir,” Dutch said, “On my way up.”

  “Sir! Sir!” Lambert nearly squealed from the after end of the deck, “I see him! U-boat astern!”

  It took a moment but Williams suddenly realized nobody was exiting the boat. Dutch was hardly more than a few feet away under Williams’ feet. He should’ve been here by now.

  “Control, bridge, what’s the holdup?”

  The speaker crackled and something that sounded like a string of curses followed, “God dammit! Bridge… hatch is jammed! I can’t get the damned thing open!”

  That figured. Williams would have laughed if not for the sight of the Krout ship bearing down on them. He sighed, “Forget it, Dutch. I’ll take the TBT. Increase speed to full. Standby for left rudder.”

  “We can only get about seven knots out of her,” The XO replied after a moment, “But ready on helm.”

  “Okay,” Williams said, excited now that he had a battle plan forming in his mind, “We’re gonna make a nice wide loop and fire through the arc. We’ll get that Jerry cocksucker this time. Helm, thirty degrees left rudder! Stand by at fire control!”

  There was an audible squeal as the vertical plane swiveled behind him. Not a good sign, either. Williams stepped up to the target bearing tracker and hit the switch and pressed his face up to the eye piece. He swiveled the device around as far as he could. It wasn’t enough to home in on the German yet, but he’d be ready.

  “Lambert!” Williams called, “Get up here with me and man the radio. Keep an eye on that bastard, too.”

  The ship had turned through ninety degrees now and Williams watched as the upper hull and conning tower of his enemy hove into view in his eyepieces.

  “Got you now, you Hun bastard…” Williams growled, “Phone talker… that’s you, Hank… report target in sight and transmitting.”

  Lambert repeated the words crisply and in a steady voice. The new XO had to give it to the kid, he had a pair on him.

  The U-boat was now off their port bow. Williams held a predatory grin on his face. He was finally going to get some payback.

  “Bridge… target range five hundred yards. Target bears two-nine-zero… angle on the bow three-one-zero port…” Williams was saying as he followed the other submarine in his viewer. Lambert was repeating everything almost instantly, “Set depth on all weapons to ten feet… set gyro on torpedo three to three-two-zero degrees… fire three!”

  The ship shuddered as a hammer blow of compressed air forced the thirty-three hundred pound weapon out of the tube. Williams and Lambert watched as it shot ahead and to the left, leaving a telltale trail of bubbles in its wake.

  “Set gyro on tube four to three-four-five degrees… fire four!” Williams said. He gave the next gyro setting and waited an additional three seconds, “Fire five! Gyro, tube six, zero-one-five degrees… shoot!”

  “Sir!” Lambert shouted, “German has fired!”

  “Bridge, control!” Dutch shouted over the speaker, “Torpedo in the water, constant bearing…”

  “Control, bridge!” Williams shouted, snatching the phone from Lambert, “Reverse your turn! Full right rudder, give me all the speed she’ll make!”

  “Who fired that eel?” Yohan roared.

  “Sir…” The phone talker said, “Chief Kumanz reports tube one fired e
lectrically!”

  “Damn him…” Yohan said, clenching his fists.

  Nothing they did mattered now. From the sound signatures and returns, the American’s spread of four torpedoes would get them no matter what they did. He hadn’t intended to fire. No sense in compounding his sins. Yet he’d been foolish enough to keep a hands free intercom line open to the torpedo room as a backup to the phone talker. That had obviously been a mistake.

  When the American submarine was almost dead ahead and no order had come, Chief Kumanz had acted. He’d either determined that Verschmidt wouldn’t fire or thought that perhaps he couldn’t. So the chief had done his duty to the Fuhrer. It would be his last, though.

  “Helm, hard left rudder!” Yohan said, “Steer directly for the American.”

  Yohan looked up at Schumer, who was peering at him from above with wide, frightened eyes. The once third officer nodded and waved a hand, “Go, Ernst.”

  The boy hesitated for only a moment and then climbed up the ladder and popped the hatch to the small bridge above. Yohan wished him well. The lad was too young to die as the last casualty of a madman’s nightmare.

  Ernst Schumer climbed up and over the bridge faring and down the short ladder to the deck seemingly without thought. He was driven more by terror now than anything. He could see the four bubble wakes of the enemy torpedoes headed for his ship. By now, he thought he could even hear the high pitched shriek of their steam-powered motors. Like the siren’s call of old, they seemed to sing Ariovistus’ death dirge.

  Schumer made it to the deck and headed aft. Just forward of the large loading hatch above the engine room was a smaller hatch that opened into a cramped compartment built into the void between the outer hull and pressure hull of the boat. In this hatch was what looked like a solid rubber square perhaps four feet on a side and half that in depth.

  Schumer managed to tug the heavy package out of its space and had it on the deck. By now, he could certainly hear the whining of the American torpedoes. He had only seconds now. He located the emergency inflation lanyard and pulled with all his might. The raft suddenly expanded in a whoosh of released air and it almost magically unfolded into a round craft more than ten feet in diameter. Lashed along the inner ring were several metal storage tubes that would contain the life-saving supplies the raft would need.

  Ernst dove into the center of the round raft just as several of the torpedoes rocketed past the ship. For a long moment, his heart leapt at the thought that maybe the American captain had miss-calculated. Until the giant’s hand slammed into the U-boat and Ernst’s world was turned into a blur of roaring fury and flashing colors.

  “Got him!” Lambert exalted.

  Williams couldn’t be as elated, because he saw what was coming for them. In spite of their turn and the slightly greater speed Nichols had managed to coax from the abused diesels, they wouldn’t escape the German’s final desperate attack. The torpedo that was steadily gaining on them had a new acoustic homing system. It couldn’t miss, and it was only a matter of time.

  “Hank…” Williams said, his guts churning, “Break out the emergency raft forward.”

  The lad’s smile vanished and his face went pale. He turned and followed his captain’s gaze. A tremendous fireball blossomed off their starboard quarter. A trail of bubbles extended outward from the explosion, inexorably growing longer like some finger of doom marking the progress of the German torpedo… and the amount of time Bull Shark had left.

  “Hurry!” Williams said. He swallowed hard, “Control… bridge…”

  There was a long and telling pause. Finally, Dutch’s voice came over the speaker. It was steady and strong, yet it contained a note of sadness, “Skipper… we have it on sonar.”

  Tears came to Williams’ eyes. Not for himself, as oddly he was neither afraid nor filled with self-pity. His thoughts and his heart were only for his men. He wept for Dutch, Sparky, young Post, Nichols and the rest. He wept for Arthur Turner and “Buck” Rogers and Carlson and those men who were murdered by the Germans. He wept for all the futures that would never be.

  And he found that there was even a little compassion for the dead Germans, too. Surely some of them weren’t evil. Some of them must have simply been young guys on their first cruise. Too enamored with going to sea and too wide-eyed to truly understand.

  Even through all of this, Elmer Williams found a little pride, too. Whatever the Germans had been up to in the Gulf of Mexico must have been something more insidious than simply one last unauthorized patrol. They’d planned something awful and he and his ship had clapped a stopper over it.

  Even as the torpedo struck, turning the after quarter of the submarine into an incandescent fireball, Williams felt no fear. Only pride for what they’d accomplished and sadness that they wouldn’t see the end of another day. Debris blasted into the air, the ship yawed and rolled wildly and something, perhaps a piece of decking or a steel hull panel, abruptly put an end to the young captain’s worries.

  Hank Lambert had just gotten the raft free of its storage compartment and had the inflation line in his hand when the boat was struck. A great hand lifted him, tossed him into the air like a ragdoll. The world was a confusing kaleidoscope of colors. A brightening yellow sun… the deep blue of the morning sky… the deeper blue of the ocean… they flashed and spun in his vision, until warm seawater engulfed him drawing him down… down… ever deeper.

  The young man kicked and thrashed, struggling for the surface. For a brief and horrible moment, he feared he wouldn’t make it, or that he’d pass out from lack of oxygen before he could reach the blessed circle of light just out of his reach.

  Yet he did break the surface at last. He gasped and spluttered, gulping in great lungful’s of air and shouting incoherently… his mind reeling with what had happened and for a moment, his fear absolute ruler over his thoughts.

  The sight of Bull Shark tilted nearly vertical only a handful of yards away snapped him back to reality. The ship loomed over him, nearly a hundred feet of her hull spearing skyward. Lambert felt numb all over, his mind suddenly sluggish. This was the sight of his friends and his crewmates dying.

  The ship groaned for a moment and began to slide down into the sea, churning up a froth of white water around her. Lambert knew, instinctively, that he was too close. A good swimmer, especially for a Wisconsin boy, he struck out along the path of the vessel’s track, toward the still evident smoke of the German U-boat’s demise, which was also far closer than he’d have thought.

  Something yellow bobbed in the sea only fifty feet ahead of him. He realized with shock that it was the raft, still compact in its un-inflated form. A freak of physics had flung the eighty pound object astern while he’d been thrown to port.

  He reached the bobbing block of rubber just as the submarine took her final plunge. Even from over fifty feet away, the suction of two-thousand tons tried to grip him, to pull him down with his lost crewmates. Lambert clung desperately to the raft, kicking and struggling to remain afloat.

  It passed quickly, however, and he found himself bobbing on a peaceful sea, alone. He located the inflation lanyard and pulled. The raft unfolded and expanded as internal compressed carbon dioxide canisters released their pent up gas and turned the half-submerged yellow block into a ten foot diameter life raft.

  Hank Lambert found the nylon boarding ladder and climbed up and over the twenty-four inch diameter tube and flopped bonelessly onto the rubber floor. Around him were strapped in canisters of food, water and other gear, which included a tarpaulin that would act as a sun shield. He breathed in deeply, his heart pounding in his chest and suddenly felt a tightness in his gut.

  The awful truth finally struck him now that he had a moment to spare. The hot tears came unbidden, his sobs unchecked. They were all gone. And he, only he, had survived. Not even the XO… the captain… had made it.

  Something broke through his tortured spirit. A sound that was out of place out there on the quiet sea finally pierced his consciousness
. Lambert felt a sudden surge of hope.

  Was that a voice? A shout?

  The young man crawled to the center of the raft and stood. The sea was calm and the raft quite stable. He stood bandy-legged and gazed around at the horizon, his eyes sharp and his ears tuned in.

  “Ahoy!” A thin voice shouted to his left.

  Lambert turned slowly to see the last wisps of smoke from the U-boat still rising into the morning sky. Between it and him, maybe a hundred yards away, a figure could be seen struggling in the water.

  There was not much he could do. There were oars on board, but without a second person to balance the thrust, he could only paddle in a circle. So he shouted back, “Hey! Come on! I can’t come to you, but you’re almost to me!”

  Lambert didn’t know who it was swimming toward him and at that moment, he couldn’t have cared less. It was another human being. Another person to share his sudden isolation nearly two hundred miles from land.

  As the swimmer drew near, Lambert could see that it was a young man. He had blonde hair, turned a honey color from being wet. The man wore a white shirt and looked very young.

  This was confirmed when the apparition clambered aboard and collapsed on the rubber deck. Lambert was more than a little surprised. He was a kid, maybe a year or two younger than himself. The kid was tall, lanky and had the same blonde hair and blue eyes as Lambert’s. They might’ve been brothers if not for the obvious fact that this boy was not from the United States.

  “Thank you,” The kid said in good English that was moderately tinged with a German accent, “Thank you.”

  Lambert wanted to hate him. He wanted to lash out and throttle this young man who’d been a party to his whole world’s destruction… yet he couldn’t find it within himself. This was just a boy, a kid who was so young he might have lied about his age to join the German Navy. Probably the lowest man on the totem pole, like Lambert himself. And like it or not, this was the only living person around for a very uncomfortable distance.

  “What’s your name?” Lambert asked.