Angler In Darkness
Page 21
“The kayak belonged to this man’s grandfather,” said Hallauk. “He’s dead now.”
“Did you kill him?” LeDuc asked, twisting open a small can of rations and dipping a tiny fork into it.
Hallauk stared.
“I mean,” said LeDuc around a mouthful of his noxious smelling food. “Don’t you Eskimos abandon your elderly when they become a nuisance?”
“This man’s grandfather was never a nuisance. When this man’s grandfather lost his teeth, this man chewed his food for him, just as his grandfather did for his father when he was a baby,” said Hallauk, looking into the fire. “Sometimes, if they can’t care for themselves, in lean times, the old ask to be killed. Usually, they decide to die. Where did your grandfather die, Major LeDuc?”
LeDuc stopped chewing for a moment and swallowed, a reflective look in his eye.
“In an almshouse in Fredericton,” he admitted.
“This man’s grandfather walked into the mouth of a monster.”
“You mean that storm?”
“No. A monster.”
Hallauk lay his head on the ground and said no more that night.
* * * *
In the morning, Hallauk woke to find the major already up and working excitedly.
There were a pair of binoculars dangling from around his neck, and the rucksack was open.
On the ground beside it was a pair of stubby, holey barreled rifles with drums of ammunition, and a blocky canvas satchel.
Hallauk sat up as LeDuc picked up the satchel and one of the rifles and slammed a drum clip into the underside of it.
“My friend, this is where we part ways. Fortune’s smiled on me this morning, somewhat.” He took the binoculars from his neck and tossed them to Hallauk. “Here. As thanks. You can take that extra Lanchester if you like, as well, but I’m afraid I’ll need the ammo.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Looks like the Nazis ran into the same flavor of trouble from your grandfather’s storm that we did. Take a look,” he said, gesturing down the boulder strewn shore.
Hallauk put the field glasses to his eyes and peered to the north.
In an inlet in the rocky shoreline, an iron boat longer than a whale floated. A yellow bearded kabloonak, almost like the kavdlunait of which his grandfather had spoken, in a black reefer jacket stained with sea salt, and a high necked white sweater and cap, stood atop a tower in the center of the boat, shouting guttural orders to a gaggle of men in dark peacoats hustling to repair a gash rent in the starboard bow. A group of men armed with rifles stood watch. These had red armbands over their left elbows, with white circles and strange black symbols within.
A trio of men in drab grey coveralls were working to erect some kind of long, slim metal apparatus fixed to the side of the tower on which the captain stood.
“They probably ran aground during the storm. As we suspected, the Nazis are using some kind of radio antenna to control their monster. They’ve only just erected it,” said LeDuc, sliding the action on his Lanchester. “Look there off that small island.”
Hallauk swung the binoculars to the indicated area, and saw a huge swell in the sea. Something was circling nearby like an orca, but bigger even than the iron boat. Its huge wake rippled white in the icy waters.
LeDuc patted his shoulder then.
“Wish me luck, my friend.”
“What do you hope to do?”
“Well, after I blow the control transceiver, there’s forty more sailors down in the belly of that U-boat. I’ve got a hundred rounds of ammunition. Maybe I can take ‘em by surprise, if they all line up, eh?”
A dark creature underwater, whatever it was, swam beneath the sheet of ice on their side of the strait, and with a flick of its head, thrust itself up through the frozen water.
What pulled itself from the hole and onto the shore a few yards north of the U-boat made both men shudder uncontrollably.
It was a thing of nightmares. A monstrous dripping black wolf head, the jaws lined with fangs each the size of a tall chest of drawers, between which a massive tongue lolled. Two sharp ears like the fins of airplanes protruded from its enormous black skull, and two unnatural, cloudy white eyes glistened in its horrible face. It looked about briefly, snuffling its black nose. Then a pair of long clawed feet smashed through the ice and hooked into the shore, pulling the rest of its bulk out of the water.
The body that followed that terrible head was even more horrendous to behold. It was nearly twice as long as the U-boat, and about midway down its torso its furry canine shoulders gave way to a greenish, scaly fish body that tapered into a serpentine, finned tail. Its two rear legs were scaled and clawed, like that of a dragon in a fairy book.
The hideous monstrosity shook its immense head like a wet dog and arched back its neck, eliciting a bone-chilling howl loud enough to be felt beneath their feet and in their very bones. When the terrifying cry finally died off, they could hear the distant rumble of avalanches in the Torngats.
LeDuc snatched the binoculars from Hallauk and stared through them.
“It has a collar. That must be the radio receiver,” he observed.
True enough, there was a metal collar around the creature’s neck, marked with the same bent black crosses as the arms of the German soldiers down below.
“And there’s our monstrumfuhrer on the conning tower,” said LeDuc, pointing to the U-boat as a bespectacled man with a red armband in a green uniform and black jackboots emerged from the depths of the tower. He had a complicated looking metal helmet on, and was shouting at the men adjusting the antenna.
“Wish I had a proper rifle instead of this little typewriter,” LeDuc said bitterly.
“This man thinks you will need help,” said Hallauk.
LeDuc looked at Hallauk.
“Well, it’s good of this man to offer, but unless he’s got a giant pussycat for that oversized mongrel down there to chase...”
“This man has something better,” said Hallauk, already digging through his pack for the mask.
Hallauk hesitated as he held the Nanuq mask in his hands.
His grandfather had told him just what donning it to call the Master Bear meant.
But he saw the thing on the shore, saw that it was an abomination, and that the strange kabloonak with the metal hat on the iron boat (the one LeDuc had called the monstrumfuhrer) commanded this thing by unnatural means.
This was no monster of the depths or the mountains. It did not belong anywhere. And LeDuc had told him what these Nazis intended to do with it.
He thought of his mother and father and his young brother.
His choice, after days of doubt, was as clear as the trackless fields of snow.
He placed the mask to his face and turned toward the mountains, raising his hands.
“Mighty Nanuq!” he roared. “Your people need you!”
LeDuc watched him sideways with a cocked eyebrow until he stood up and began shouting into the waste.
Then he cursed and skidded down the hillside in a clatter of stones, diving for the cover of an ice capped boulder on the shore asthe Nazis on the deck of the U-boat turned as one at the sound of Hallauk’s voice echoing down the hills.
LeDuc heard the clicking of their Schmeissers and the harsh bark of orders. But as the first rapid patter of machinegun fire ripped the length of the shore, a powerful wind kicked up, so icy and strong as to force LeDuc to grip the boulder or be blown out across the ice.
Hallauk stood with his arms spread on the hill, heedless of he Nazi bullets that were too weak to reach his position anyway and struck only the stones at his feet. The fur of his parka flapped about him, a gust of wind flinging back his hood and throwing his black hair in his eyes.
From the center of the cluster of the Torngat Mountains a funnel cloud of snow gathered and rose, as if all the cold in the area were drawn towards that faraway spot.
And in the middle of that maelstrom of ice and snow, a huge shape reared, indistinguish
able from the whirling powder but for a faint black spot in the center of its knobby peak, a hundred meters in the air.
There came a thunderous crashing noise, rhythmic and relentless, growing in power and sound, unimaginable footsteps that sent loose rocks tumbling down the mountainsides as if fleeing its dreadful approach.
The U-boat captain and the Nazi monstrumfuhrer raised field glasses to their faces and exclaimed.
But their shouts, already barely heard over the howl of the oncoming storm, were lost entirely by the cacophonous deep roar that resounded from the midst of the mountains, as if those prehistoric edifices themselves had found a voice.
And then Hallauk saw it for the second time, LeDuc and the Nazis for their first.
It would be the Nazis’ last.
Mighty Nanuq. The Master of All Polar Bears. The White God Bear.
A pair of luminous blue circles over the black smudge of its long nose shined through the storm cloud like the beams of lighthouses.
Its head bobbed curiously on its thick sloping neck. It walked upright on its haunches, the gargantan forepaws with their row of curling black claws pawing at the air.
Then, as its roar of challenge ended, it wavered and fell forward with a crash that churned the waters and broke the mountaintops. It began to run, an undulating lope over the spine of the Torngats, straight past Hallauk and for the U-boat and the Sea Wolf that snarled on the shore, kicking over boulders and smashing outcroppings to gravel as it came.
The Nazis on the slanting deck gripped the rails to keep from being shook off into the subzero waters. They screamed in abject terror at the approach of the monstrous polar bear.
Only the red armbands, the captain, and the monstrumfuhrer kept their heads.
The captain gestured at the large anti-aircraft gun mounted on a swivel mechanism midway down the deck, and two of the red armbands slung their machineguns and rushed to man it. Then the commander busied himself with rallying his panicked sailors, gesticulating for them to get below.
The monstrumfuhrer needed no such order. He snapped something at the captain, pointed to the Sea Wolf, and flicked a bulky visor on the helmet down over his eyes. In another minute he disappeared down the conning tower hatch.
The Sea Wolf snarled and slid like a seal off the shore, plunging beneath the water and coming up on the opposite side of the U-boat, interposing itself between the charging bear and its masters.
It pulled itself again on shore and half ran, half-slithered gamely out to meet its enemy.
Hallauk slid down the embankment and joined LeDuc behind the boulder as Nanuq reached the shore and skidded to a wary stop, kicking up an avalanche of stones, jaws popping like thunderclaps in anticipation of the clash.
“Great God, what is that thing?” LeDuc exclaimed.
“Mighty Nanuq,” Hallauk said, his voice muffled by the mask. He took it off, but kept it by his side.
“God, man! Don’t you need that to control it?”
“This man does not control it,” Hallauk said. “This man only calls it.”
The Sea Wolf let out vicious warning barks, which Nanuq answered by raising once more up to its titanic height and opening its arms as if to welcome an attack.
The Sea Wolf spun suddenly, and its lashing tail swept the bear’s haunches out from under it, sending it smashing on its back with such force that LeDuc and Hallauk both left the ground momentarily, along with every small stone on the shoreline.
Then the Sea Wolf pounced, its jaws seeking the bear’s exposed throat.
Nanuq’s paws clamped together, seizing it on either side of its head, and what followed was a savage clashing of teeth and claws. Clots of fur white and black flew into the air, along with gouts of blood that splashed all around like driving rain.
LeDuc peered around the rock past the battling monsters and saw the U-boat sailors regain their vaunted Kreigsmarine discipline.
They were filing in an orderly line into the hatches, glancing over their shoulders, riveted by the spectacle of the two immense creatures.
He also saw the SS men climb behind the deck gun.
“Your big friend’s about to take a pounding from that 105. And if that sub gets away from shore, we’ll never catch it,” LeDuc spat, fighting to keep the shakiness from his voice.
Hallauk’s concerns were his own, or rather, Nanuq’s. That tail lash. He’d never seen any creature fight like that.
“The monstrumfuhrer fights for the monster,” he mused out loud.
LeDuc shook his head and primed his Lanchester.
“God save the Queen,” he muttered, and broke from cover.
Hallauk watched the crazy kabloonak run past the wrestling monsters, splashing through the slick pools of blood, in full risk of being crushed or driven into the sea.
But the Nazis weren’t looking for a lone soldier anymore.
Their attention was on retreat and covering that retreat with fire from the deck gun.
Nanuq, Hallauk thought, as he slipped the mask over his face. You must break free from this creature.
But Nanuq was totally engaged in the combat. Though his claws had torn rows of slashes in the Sea Wolf’s black hide, his own shaggy white fur streamed with blood from his enemy’s reciprocation.
Nanuq was a ferocious combatant, but the Sea Wolf shared its master’s cunning. It ducked away from the bear’s snapping jaws and nipped beneath its arms and chin, drawing out the stronger fighter’s strength with bite after bleeding bite. Its claws raked and scrabbled at the bear’s chest, and its coiling tail kept it from being dislodged.
On the U-boat, the big deck gun lowered and swung its muzzle in the monsters’ direction.
Nanuq, roll. Take the fight into the sea, Hallauk thought.
The bear gave a colossal roar and did as Hallauk had suggested, feinting and rolling right in the wake of the scurrying LeDuc. It carried its snapping counterpart beneath is heavy bulk for a moment, and the deck gun opened fire, skimming Nanuq’s shoulder with a whistling round that tore a shallow red furrow in its heaving shoulder.
But then the Sea Wolf was brought on top again, and both were on the ice, which gave beneath their combined weight and plunged them underneath the surface of the water.
Hallauk rushed to the other end of the boulder, and heard a chatter of machine gun fire that made him flinch back.
He looked toward the U-boat and saw the man who had fired the deck gun flip over the rail and bounce off the grey hull before splashing into the sea.
The second Nazi unlimbered his own machinegun and got off a burst of fire before LeDuc’s Lanchester burped and flattened him.
Two lagging sailors reached the conning tower, but the captain had seen the lone commando and ducked below, the hatch slamming shut with a clang.
As the two stranded men fell to their knees cursing and banging on the hull, the U-boat’s engines gurgled to life and it began to slide away from the shore.
LeDuc dropped his Lanchester and yanked the satchel from his shoulder, running to the outermost southern tip of inlet.
As the U-boat swung past, he fiddled with the satchel, cocked it back, and flung it high.
The bag arched up and the whipping strap looped over the tall, quivering antenna and went taut, sliding down it length to come to a stop directly on the apparatus, bouncing against the conning tower.
The two sailors stopped what they were doing and went to leap over the conning tower railing, but only one crashed clumsily to the deck before the satchel charge exploded, blowing the other man into the water along with fragments of the control apparatus.
Hallauk smiled and almost gave a cheer. Then a tidal wave of icy water suddenly crashed over the boulder and himself, drenching him and washing the mask from his grip. He collapsed, shivering, the water on his mittens quickly icing over. He felt the swift onset of permeating numbness, and knew he was dead.
Nanuq and the Sea Wolf breached, locked in each other’s grip, biting and clawing with unfettered ferocity now,
kicking up waves and overturning icebergs in their fury.
The Sea Wolf clamped its muzzle down on Nanuq’s shoulder but the bear roared and took hold of it by the collar, wrenching it back and flinging it into the water.
The Sea Wolf rose again and swam at Nanuq like a hunting whale, closing the distance with a speed that seemed monumentally unfair given its size.
But the bear heaved its lungs and inhaled. All the snow ice seemed to be drawn into its gaping maw. Even the bobbing glaciers seemed to flake and crack asunder and flee into its yawning mouth.
Miraculously, Hallauk, close to the action, felt the bone chilling cold of death flee his body, and saw the white frost coating his mittens and arms fly off his parka, drawn into the bear’s lungs.
Then, as the Sea Wolf reached Nanuq, the mighty bear exhaled for all it was worth, and a shockingly white hissing cloud ofbreath struck the monstrosity full in the face.
When Nanuq ceased its exhalation and the freezing cloud dispersed, the Sea Wolf, and the water surrounding it, was encased in rigid ice, flash frozen in mid-leap.
The bear lowered its thick brow and stood bloodied, glaring at its incapacitated opponent with its emotionless blue eyes. It huffed contentedly.
“Hey! Hey!”
Hallauk looked down the beach again and saw LeDuc waving his arms and jumping to get Hallauk’s attention.
“The boat! The boat!”
The U-boat, smoke streaming from the destroyed control transceiver and dragging the broken antenna, was sinking beneath the water, diving for the open sea behind the triumphant bear.
Hallauk looked around and spied the mask lying a few feet away. He rushed over and snatched it up, slapping it to his face.
Nanuq, he thought. The iron boat must not escape!
Nanuq turned ponderously just as the U-boat’s tower dipped beneath the surface.
But the bear went down to its forepaws and dipped its head into water.
When it came up, the U-boat was dripping between its jaws like a doomed salmon, and with a single shriek and groan of metal, Mighty Nanuq bit down and snapped the vessel in two.