Dark Voyage (31 page)

DeHaan approached the door, listened, then pressed his ear against the iron surface. Silence. He put two fingers on the metal lever that worked as a doorknob, steadied the automatic in his right hand, and held the barrel up. Slowly, he applied pressure to the lever. It gave. Then he took a breath, pushed down hard on the lever, aimed the pistol at the interior, and threw the door open.

The signalman was sitting tilted back in Mr. Ali’s swivel chair with his feet up on the work desk and his hands clasped behind his head. He’d been staring at the ceiling, maybe dozing, but he was awake now. Eyes wide, he stared at the automatic aimed at his chest, then tried to sit upright, as the chair hung dangerously on its back wheel for an instant, then righted itself as he kicked his legs. He raised his hands in the air and said, “I surrender, understand? Surrender.” He waved his hands so that DeHaan would see them.

“Did you call your ship?”

“No. I was just sitting here. Please.”

“They call you?”

“An hour ago. I answered back, so they knew I was receiving, that’s all.”

“What’s their call signal?”

“Seven-eight-zero, five-five-six. At six point nine megahertz.”

DeHaan looked him over. In his early twenties, just somebody caught up in a war who’d joined the
Kriegsmarine,
then was lucky or clever enough to get duty on a minesweeper patrolling the Danish coast—
M
56, scourge of the herring boats.

DeHaan checked the radio, found nothing to provoke his interest, then walked the signalman back up to the bridge. “So, that’s two,” Scheldt said. Then glanced at Schumpel’s body and added, “Three, I mean.” DeHaan sat the signalman down next to the other prisoner, and tied his hands and feet. “I’m going to the wardroom,” he told Scheldt.

“Let me come with you, Cap’n. With the submachine gun.”

DeHaan thought about it, then said, “No, I’ll take Cornelius.”

On the main deck, one level below the bridge, the wardroom was next to the officers’ mess, down a passageway past the chartroom and the officers’ cabins. DeHaan paused out on deck, in front of the heavy door. “Cornelius, I want you to go the wardroom. Look around, see what’s going on in there, and where the guard is.”

“Aye-aye, sir,” Cornelius said. He was being brave, the fighting on the bridge had shaken him.

“You can do it,” DeHaan said. “It’s easy, just do what you always do, you don’t have to be quiet, or clever. Take a walk down the passageway, tell the guard that Leutnant Schumpel sent you.”

“Why did he send me, sir?”

“You’re the mess boy—you’re going to bring up something to eat. They haven’t had any food for a long time, so you’re there to, to count how many, and the cook is going to send up sandwiches and coffee.”

Cornelius nodded. “Sandwiches.”

“And coffee. Don’t be scared.”

“Aye, sir.”

When Cornelius reached for the door lever, DeHaan realized that he had to know what happened in the wardroom—in case the guard didn’t believe the story. He’d intended to wait for Cornelius on deck, but now realized he’d have to go inside. “I’ll be right down the corridor,” he said.

Cornelius hauled the door open and went inside. Behind him, DeHaan slammed it, and Cornelius, clomping down the passageway, made plenty of noise. He was halfway down the corridor, nearing the corner which led to the wardroom, when a German voice called out, “Who’s that?”

“Mess boy!”

DeHaan went down on one knee, making himself a smaller target, and held the wrist of his gun hand to keep it steady. If the guard put his head around the corner . . .

Cornelius turned right and disappeared. Then, from the wardroom, voices, but very faint. DeHaan glanced at his watch—eight-fifty, the radio had been left unattended for fifteen minutes. More voices. What was there to talk about?
Come on, Cornelius, count heads and leave.

Finally, footsteps. And a voice, just around the corner, where the guard would not lose sight of his captives. “Hey, mess boy.”

“Yes?” Cornelius’s voice was close to a squeak.

“Bring me two of them.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And hurry it up.”

Cornelius did as he was told, trotting down the corridor. DeHaan followed him out on deck and slammed the door for effect.

“Well?” he said.

“He’s got them lying down, on their stomachs, with their hands behind their heads.”

“One guard?”

“Yes.”

Undermanned.
He realized Schumpel had made a mistake—this was a boarding crew, not a prize crew. “What does he look like?”

“A sailor, sir. With a mustache, like Hitler. He pointed his rifle at me the whole time I was there.”

“Anybody say anything?”

“No, the guard asked if I’d talked to anybody, from the ship.”

“What’d you tell him?”

“Just the German officer.”

“Did he believe it?”

“He looked at me, Cap’n, scared me, the way he looked.”

DeHaan didn’t dare to send Cornelius to the galley—he needed someone to man the radio, and the mess boy’s normal round trip never took less than half an hour. So he waited, standing on deck in the slow rain, with Cornelius beside him. Eight fifty-five, eight fifty-eight.

“Now we’ll go back,” he said, checking the automatic one last time.

“To ask again?”

“No,” DeHaan said. “Just say who you are, as you go down the passageway, and run past the door. Quick. Understand?”

“Aye, sir. Are you going to kill him?”

“Yes.”

DeHaan opened the door, and followed Cornelius down the corridor. Such familiar territory; the chartroom, his cabin, Ratter’s cabin—strange and alien to him now.

In a whisper, DeHaan said, “Call out to him.”

“Hello! It’s the mess boy.”

“Now what?”

“Mess boy.”

They reached the corner, Cornelius hesitated, DeHaan let the guard have a look, then pushed him hard so that he went stumbling down the passageway. In three strides, DeHaan reached the open door of the wardroom, found the German sailor, pointed the pistol at him, and pulled the trigger. It was a double-action trigger so the shot didn’t come immediately, and in that tenth of a second DeHaan realized the man wasn’t who Cornelius said he was—yes he had a Hitler mustache but that was all. Tall and thin and nervous, he sat on the deck with the rifle resting across his lap. His mouth opened when he saw what DeHaan meant to do, then the automatic flared, and he yelped and threw the rifle out in front of him as blood poured down his face.

It was a mle after that, the officers struggling to their feet, Kees grabbing the rifle, Poulsen and Ratter grabbing the sailor—more because he’d held them captive than anything else, he was no threat to them now, breathing hard with his eyes closed. Dying, he thought. But he was wrong about that—DeHaan had aimed at his heart and clipped off a piece of his left ear.

2140 hours. At sea.

They now held the bridge and the top deck of the ship. Five and a half hours from Warnemnde, with the engine room and the crew’s quarters still under the control of the four remaining sailors from
M
56. DeHaan saw Maria Bromen only for a moment, in the wardroom, as she stamped her feet and rubbed her legs to get the circulation back. “You have the ship?” she said.

“Part of it.”

“What will you do now?”

“Take the rest, then deal with the minesweeper. We may be shelled, it’s likely, so I want you to stay in my cabin, and be ready to go to the lifeboats. On the first shot, go and wait there.”

“You plan this?”

“It’s one idea. In the darkness, one of the boats might get away, and make for Sweden.”

“Better than going like sheep,” she said.

Meanwhile, Shtern had torn the guard’s undershirt into strips, and patched up his ear, then DeHaan told him to remain in the wardroom, with Poulsen, and walked the guard up to the bridge. When he was secured, DeHaan handed the automatic to Mr. Ali and told him to go to the radio room, accompanied by the German signalman. “He’ll handle communication with the minesweeper,” DeHaan said. “Shoot him if he betrays us.”

“How would I know, Captain?”

“Cannon fire.” He then translated into German for the signalman, and the two of them left the bridge. Now there was one job that remained to be done, and DeHaan and Ratter rolled Schumpel into a length of canvas, traditional sea coffin, tied the ends with rope, and dragged him out to the port side of the deck. They briefly considered sea burial, then and there, but the iron weights normally used for the ceremony were in the engine room, and they didn’t want him floating past the
M
56 lookouts. When they’d sent Xanos and Cornelius down to the wardroom, to join the reserve force, DeHaan, Ratter, and Kees remained on the bridge.

“Next is the engine room,” DeHaan said. “Then the crew’s quarters.”

“Your pistol and the rifle are hidden in a duct,” Ratter said. “Along with the minefield maps. Once I get them, we’ll have a pistol, two rifles, and the submachine gun. Was the signalman armed?”

“No.”

“Well, we better get moving. I was their prisoner for one afternoon, that was enough for me.”

When he’d left, DeHaan said to Kees, “What can we do about the minesweeper? Board it? Ram it?”

“We’ll never ram—she’s too nimble. And we’d have a dozen shells in us in no time at all, with fighter planes here in twenty minutes. As for boarding, I don’t see how we can get close enough, using the cutter. They have a searchlight, and machine guns. That’s suicide, DeHaan.”

Ten minutes later, Ratter arrived with the ship’s armory. Kees took the Enfield rifle, Ratter the submachine gun, DeHaan his Browning automatic. “We’ll give the guard’s rifle to Poulsen,” Ratter said.

DeHaan said, “Any ideas about them?” He jerked his thumb back over his shoulder.

“Call on the radio, tell ’em thanks for everything, we’re leaving.”

“Tell them we’re holding Schumpel and his men, and we’ll shoot them if they fire on us,” Kees said.

Ratter smiled a certain way—
not worth an answer
.

“That’s for later,” DeHaan said. “Now it’s the engine room.”

“Why not call them?” Ratter said. “See how they’re doing.”

Maybe not such a bad idea, DeHaan thought. He picked up the speaker tube and blew into it. When nobody answered, he used the whistle.

That produced a very hesitant “Yes? Who is it?”

“DeHaan, the captain. Feels like we’re losing way, is everything working, down there?”

A count of ten, then, “All is in order.”

“What about the engine? Working like it should?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, I know these engines.”

DeHaan hung the speaker tube back on its hook. “He knows these engines.”

“Not so different than what they’ve got on the minesweeper,” Kees said.

DeHaan held the Browning out in front of him, studied it for a moment, then worked the slide. “Time to go, gentlemen.”

When they entered the wardroom, Cornelius’s eyes glowed with admiration—his officers, armed and ready to fight. Ratter handed the German rifle to Poulsen. “Ever used one of these?”

“No. We shot at rabbits, when I was a boy, but we had a little shotgun.” He hefted the rifle and said, “Bolt action—the last war, looks like. Simple enough.”

Shtern rose to his feet, as though to join them.

DeHaan appreciated the gesture, but shook his head. “Better for you to stay here, I think.”

“No, I’m coming with you.”

“Sorry, but we can’t have you shot—people may get hurt, later on.”

“They’ll get hurt now.”

“Let him come, Eric,” Ratter said.

Then Cornelius stood up, followed by Xanos. DeHaan waved them back down. “You’ve done your part,” he said.

Single file, DeHaan leading, Shtern the last in line, they stayed tight to the outside bulkhead, moving quickly along the slippery deck to the midship hatchway, then descending to the deck where the crew lived. Ghostly and silent, once they got there, nobody in sight, the crew apparently locked up in their sleeping quarters. A second hatch brought them to another ladderway, a steep one, then to a heavy sliding door. On the other side, a metal catwalk, which ran twenty feet high around the perimeter of the engine room. The beat of the engine had grown louder as they descended until, outside the sliding door, it became a giant drum, riding over the steady drone of the boiler furnaces.

DeHaan beckoned the others to come close—even so he had to raise his voice above the din below them. “You slide the door open,” he said to Kees. “Just enough.” Turning to Ratter and Poulsen, he said, “You stay behind me. If you hear a shot, go out there and return the fire. But don’t hit the boilers.” They all knew what live steam could do to anybody standing nearby. He looked at each of them, then said, “Ready?”

Ratter raised and lowered a flattened palm.

“You’re right,” DeHaan said. Better to crawl, less of a target.

Kees slung the Enfield over his shoulder, took a tight grip on the steel handle, and slid the door open. DeHaan crouched, took a breath, then scuttled through the door onto the catwalk. He crawled a few feet, to where he could get a view of the engine room below, but he never saw a thing, because the instant his silhouette broke the plane of the catwalk, something hit the rim, inches from his face, and sang off over his head. DeHaan threw himself backward, into Ratter, as a hole was punched through the space where he’d knelt a second earlier.

DeHaan came up quickly, said, “Give me that goddamn thing,” and snatched at the submachine gun. Ratter handed it over, just as the voice of Kovacz came roaring up from below. “You dumb fucking idiot! That was the fucking captain you just killed.”

As DeHaan and the others climbed down the ladder to the engine room, Kovacz was waiting for them at the bottom rung, looking very relieved, his shirt and pants stained with black grease. “Where’ve
you
been?” DeHaan said.

Kovacz nodded toward a shadowed area beyond the boilers, pipes, and rusted machinery abandoned during one of the ship’s refittings. “Back there,” he said. “For a long time. But I got tired of hiding, so . . .” He glanced at his crew, two oilers and a fireman, who had gathered behind him, and shrugged—
we did what we did
.