“Not our fate,” sang Hendrix. “Not not not.”
The spook’s head broke the water before him.
“What were we doing?” Winslow asked.
Caruth said nothing.
“Don’t give me that,” said Winslow. “Tell me—what the fuck did we come all this way for?”
Caruth said nothing.
“Bastard spook dipshit asshole,” said Winslow. He pushed the paddle harder. He felt himself nearly tumbling into the water and fell flat, his face hitting the edge of the raft. It was soft. He lay there as he might lie on some mamasan’s boobs, some geisha’s belly. A warm bath engulfed him, easing out the knots in his muscles.
Yeah, baby. I can’t wait to get back, get laid. Party. Gonna party for a week, surface, party some more. They owe me big time on this.
A high-pitched whine in the water. A patrol boat heading for him.
“Hey Caruth!” he yelled to his dead companion. “Now what the fuck do I do?”
Something flashed beyond the shadow of the American diesel submarine that had surfaced. Two pops, then darkness.
Though it had taken less than a minute for the Swordtail to reach the surface, the diesel had begun to dive just as they broke water. By the time Ward reached the conning tower, it was gone.
Hopefully, he had managed to escape. There was nothing more to be done for him now.
“We have a raft in the water, sir!” shouted the lookout next to him.
The SEAL and his master.
“Recover them,” said Ward. “Target the patrol vessel that’s approaching the channel,” he added. “Sink it.”
Winslow pushed the paddle into the water for several more strokes before he realized that it had fallen from his hand. Somewhere in the dark haze of his failing consciousness he felt the enemy patrol craft taking aim at him, training its guns on his small, helpless shadow. He wanted the son of a bitch to fire.
“Kill me now you bastard. Blow me up before I bleed to death.”
Caruth appeared again, floating in front of him. The spook shook his head slowly.
“Sure—let ’em kill me,” Winslow argued. “Why the fuck not? What the hell were you doing on that ship? Why didn’t we blow it?”
Hell opened behind him. Red flames split the sky and the small raft hurtled forward on a tsunami. Winslow felt himself spinning down a drain. The pain in his leg increased and he felt something press him hard from behind.
Caruth appeared again in the water.
“You bastard,” he said. “You could have at least told me what the hell we were doing.”
The spook reached from the water and grabbed him.
Not Caruth. A devil. Two devils, taking over his boat. Winslow struck out at them, but he was too weak now, too tired, too drained—they grabbed him and carried him down into the whirlwind, into their version of hell.
“You’ll be fine,” said one of them. “Just relax. We’ll get morphine for your leg.”
“Fuck you.”
“Morphine.”
When they were an hour and a half off the Korean coast, Ward surfaced the boat so they could survey the damage from the collision. The sun had just broken the horizon; there were only a few puffy clouds in the distance. Despite the frigid temperature, it would be a beautiful day.
The diesel had only grazed his boat. More than likely it hadn’t been badly damaged itself, though he’d have to wait until they reached port to find out. Even then, he might not have a definitive word for some time.
What had it been doing there? Trailing Harry—or trailing him? Sent on his own covert mission, depositing his own team to examine or destroy the hijacked American ship?
Or just in the wrong place at the wrong time?
Ward went to the sick bay to check on the SEAL who’d been recovered. The corpsman on duty told him he’d finally fallen asleep only a few minutes before.
“He was talking nonstop from the moment they got him down,” said the corpsman. “Gibberish mostly. Kept asking why they didn’t blow the ship.”
“Which ship?” Ward asked.
The corpsman shrugged. “ ‘And the American—did you kill him? Guy in the galley—he was American, right?’ He kept saying that a lot, too. Is it supposed to mean something?”
“Nothing,” said Ward. “His leg?”
“Doc amputated it a few minutes after they brought him in. Way, way gone.”
Ward nodded.
“He just kept asking questions,” said the corpsman. “If he wakes up, he’s bound to ask more.”
“Yes,” said Ward.
“What should I say?”
“If you have answers, you can give them,” said Ward. “I haven’t a clue what he was talking about.”
“Then say nothing. I frankly doubt he’ll have any questions.”
“Yes, sir.”
Later in his cabin, Ward lay back on his thin mattress. His doubts about leaving the service were gone. Nor did he worry about what he would do after the long vacation with his wife; there would be time to sort that out.
By most tallies, he had done his job well: depositing and recovering the two covert agents, possibly saving an American submarine, sinking three enemy ships. If this were World War II—the real war—the score would be obvious. But this was not the real war. You infiltrated agents who boarded a captured spy ship but did not blow it up. You sat beneath the waves next to your mortal enemy, who did nothing while you attacked his friends. You gave an order to save your countrymen, and your second in command eyed you as if you were Judas.
Perhaps the real war hadn’t been so clear-cut either. He’d been just another raw recruit then, green as seaweed, too dumb to know.
Winslow pushed into the girl again and again, his body erupting in pleasure. God it was good to get laid.
As he rolled off her, he felt his arm hit something metal.
A rack.
He was aboard a submarine, the sub that had taken him into the harbor. He wasn’t getting laid at all. He was dreaming.
Shit. He’d much rather get laid.
Caruth didn’t care about all those code machines and documents. He’d gone all that way to find someone aboard the ship.
Why?
To kill him. Had to be—they hadn’t brought gear to take him out.
Fuck.
Fuck shit hell.
Hendrix played again, a long, long riff this time, a cool, groovy rip that split across Winslow’s mind. His leg didn’t hurt anymore. He’d be dancing soon, dancing with some pretty chick all night, fuck her, dance some more. Set the watchtowers on fire and fire and fire.
Yeah, baby.
Valley of Death
R.J. PINEIRO
R.J. Pineiro is a nineteen-year veteran of the computer industry, where he works on leading-edge microprocessors. He is the author of several internationally acclaimed novels, including Shutdown, Breakthrough, Exposure, Ultimatum, Conspiracy.com, and Firewall as well as the millennium thrillers, 01-01-00 and Y2K. His new novel is Cyberterror. R.J. Pineiro was born in Cuba and grew up in Central America. He is a licensed pilot, a firearms enthusiast, has a black belt in martial arts, and has traveled extensively through Europe, Asia, and the Americas both for his computer business as well as to conduct research for his novels. He makes his home in Texas, where he lives with his wife, Lory Anne, and his son, Cameron. Visit him on the World Wide Web at: www.rjpineiro.com. He receives E-mail at: [email protected].
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
—LORD ALFRED TENNYSON,
“CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE”
The pressure starts slowly, gradually, compressing your ear canals as the captain takes her down to one hundred and thirty meters.
And deeper.
One hundred and forty meters.
Deeper still.
Just a few weeks inside a type VII
C U-boat and I already know we have to push the design envelope of this vessel if we want to get beneath the depth charges those British and American pigs keep dropping on us.
I sigh.
American pigs.
It wasn’t that long ago that I was one of those American pigs, the son of German immigrants who had settled in Connecticut in the 1920’s. I foolishly chose to answer Germany’s patriotic call back in 1938, the year I earned my bachelor’s in journalism from Yale and left my comfortable American life and excellent job prospects to pursue a juvenile ideology.
“One hundred and seventy meters,” reports Oberleutnant Thomas Mueller, our Leitender Ingenieur, or chief engineer, standing behind the operators controlling the planes. He is very tall and muscular, but still quite young, with less than one year of experience, and half of that in a training boat—though you wouldn’t know it. He handles himself like a veteran officer.
“Hold depth,” the captain whispers, beads of sweat forming over his brow line. His name is Kapitänleutnant Georg-Werner Fraatz, and at twenty-four, he is just a year older than Mueller, but about half his size. Fraatz also has mastered the steel-eyed stare and the utter calmness of the stereotypical seasoned submariner. At the beginning of the war the minimum age of a U-boat commander was twenty-five, a restriction that BdU, the U-Boat High Command, lifted last year when the shortage for commanders skyrocketed from a combination of combat deaths, accidents, illness, suicide, and even commanders sentenced to death because they dared challenge their orders—orders which as I’m now finding out tend to be quite insane at times. Under no circumstances should U-529 have been directed to carry out a surface attack alone against this convoy, especially with so many British and American escorts roaming the area, and particularly with such young crew and armed only with a third of the regular load of T2 torpedoes because of a shortage at Hamburg. BdU’s theory assumed that using our diesels on the surface rather than the electric motors while submerged would allow us to get to the cargo ships much quicker, fire our torpedoes, and then execute our dive-and-evade tactics. As it turned out, we were spotted well before we got within torpedo range and were forced to dive right after rounds fired by an approaching destroyer blasted columns of water all around our vessel. We have been on the run since with escorts on our tail.
Most of the officers aboard and about half of the crew members are roughly the same age and skill level as Fraatz and Mueller. The rest are still in their teens, pulled straight out of the Hitler Youth ranks, and you can read their lack of experience in their terrified stares.
At twenty-seven years of age, I’m the oldest man aboard, amidst a generation of young men forced to grow up in a hurry by Germany’s insatiable war machine—
though I’d never write such claim, lest I wish to end up shot like so many other German officers who dared speak their minds.
“Planes on zero,” Chief Mueller mumbles after getting the submarine leveled. Both motors run at fifty RPM, or silent speed. Steering due north. The radio man, using the hydrophone device, reports two contacts, one from the stem and another from the bow, both closing in on us again, both determined to make us pay dearly for trying to get near the supply convoy, marking another chapter in the string of rotten luck plaguing this ship since leaving Hamburg on that cold New Year’s Day five weeks ago, a month after I volunteered to join them as war correspondent officer, tasked with writing an article about submarine life. First, our diesels began to overheat, forcing us to hang loose at sea for three days while the chief and his crew fixed them. Then we missed the chance to reach three separate convoys for a variety of reasons. Then we got hit by three storms back to back. And when we finally got orders to attack a convoy, we had to do it on the surface.
I tell you, after this past hour, I have been seriously wondering if I made the right decision by signing up for this assignment, but at the time it had seemed like a good idea, especially when my other option was to go to Stalingrad and cover our Sixth Army’s fierce battle with the Russians. Two of my dear friends and journalistic colleagues had been killed recently in Stalingrad following weeks of harsh conditions, from extreme cold to lack of basic supplies. I tried to avoid making the same mistake, wasting no time in volunteering for the submarine job, especially when the standing rumor at the war correspondence office in Berlin was that being a part of the U-boat fleet meant a guaranteed bed, long periods of inactivity to write, and also good food. It was no secret that the U-boat men ate the best food of all the German forces, and our propaganda machine glorified these heroes of the deep, hunting the vessels sent by the United States to keep Britain in the war. But I was also aware that life aboard a U-boat wasn’t all rosy. There are cramped quarters; there is a lack of mail and phones, a lack of privacy or showers, and also the stench that typically starts on the fourth day of the cruise, a mix of body odor, vomit, dirty clothes, diesel fuel, and engine grease, which even the new-generation ventilators cannot extract.
Still, it beats freezing to death and eating rats in Stalingrad while surrounded by a million pissed off Russians.
However, no one warned me about moments like this, stuck deep beneath the dark waters of the North Atlantic while getting hammered into oblivion by a stubborn enemy who has apparently stopped making mistakes. The British and the Americans have gotten to the point that they can almost predict what we’re going to do, eliminating the U-boat’s number one weapon: the element of surprise.
I stare at the array of pipes lining the ceiling of the vessel, my mind going further, reaching the surface, wondering how long it would be before the explosions resumed. The silence prior to a depth charge attack is probably worse than file blasts themselves, which Oberleutnant Fredric Jurgen, the Wachoffizier, has counted as seventy-two since the pounding began thirty minutes ago, half of them detonating close enough to bust loose a number of rivets, triggering leaks, which the crew is quite adept at plugging in record time.
The high-pitched pings of the escorts’ search sonars echo against our hull, a single note played over and over by this deadly musical instrument of the sea. The pings are distant and spaced out as the search vessels perform a wide-area sweep.
“They are looking for us but haven’t located us, Captain,” offers the sonar operator, a guy from Berlin named Hans—never learned his last name. He wears only the right side of the hydrophone headgear to be able to listen to Fraatz’s orders with his left ear.
The captain, sporting an unkempt beard just like the rest of us, keeps his arms crossed, nodding ever so slightly while raising his chin, listening to the weak contacts.
“Deeper, Chief,” he finally orders. “We need to get beneath the thermocline,” he adds, referring to the layer in a body of water separating the upper and warmer zone from the lower and colder zone, where sonar signals will have a harder time locating their vessel.
“Bow planes at ten,” Thomas Mueller orders in the deep Bavarian voice that matches his physique, watching the depth meter before reporting, “One hundred and eighty meters . . . one hundred and ninety meters.”
The sonar contacts get dimmer but the hull begins to protest the pressure, crying out in deep, hornlike sounds that remind me of an orchestra warming up before a symphony.
BANG! BANG!
Rivets explode out of the walls like bullets, followed by horizontal streams of seawater. One of the rivets strikes a crewmate in the face, dislodging his right eye, splattering it against Mueller and Jurgen.
The sailor screams, falling to the floor, thrashing by our feet while clutching his bleeding face. Jurgen drops over him and clamps a hand over the young man’s mouth, urging him to be quiet. Water is an excellent conductor of sound. Any loud noise could be picked up by the enemy, betraying our position. But the rookie sailor isn’t responding. He’s in shock. Chief Mueller leans down and punches him in the face, hard, knocking him out.
“Hold depth, Chief!” hisses Fraatz with urgency but calmness, before adding, “Plug those leaks . . . and take the wounded to the tor
pedo room. Send the medic.”
“Planes on zero,” reports Thomas Mueller after getting back up. “Holding at two hundred and ten meters.”
I’m staring at the eyeball washing away in the seawater swirling by Fraatz’s feet, and I feel a cramp in my stomach.
While two sailors carry the unconscious man away, three more head our way hauling tools to work on the leaks.
A minute later the control room is back to normal again, and once more we’re listening to the distant contacts. The submarine’s hull has adjusted to the new depth and is no longer creaking, but I can sense that we’re on some edge at this depth. I can see it in the eyes of the chief, of the watch officer, even on Captain Fraatz as he scans the room and does his best to give us all a comforting nod.
“Captain . . . there is a third contact . . . closing in fast,” Hans reports, hands slowly turning the large wheel of the hydrophone listening device.
He had not even finished saying that when the faint sound of propellers invade our world, getting louder.
“American destroyer,” Hans reports. But there is no increased pinging, no additional sonar contacts.
American?
It dawns on me that this is the first time I have come anywhere near an American vessel, and I can’t help but wonder if any of my old buddies from New Haven, Connecticut are aboard ready to blow me into kingdom come. Heck, for all I know my kid brother is up there.
He was sixteen when I left in 1938, which would make him twenty now—right around the average age of the soldiers fighting this war.
“The British search escorts are guiding it toward us,” explains Fraatz in his monotone voice.
A distant explosion makes Hans cringe as he removes his headphones. The hydrophone device acts as a sound amplifier.
“What was that?” demands Fraatz as the radioman massages his right ear while making a face. “Depth charges?”
“No, sir,” Hans replies. “No depth charges have been dropped yet. The destroyer is still too far away. That was a torpedo hit.”
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