And now he was in a World War Two U-Boat heading toward what the charts indicated was described as a ‘bunker’ under the ice.
Nothing in his training or field experience had prepared him for anything like this. And he didn’t even know what this was. It was damn spooky, to say the least.
“We’re almost there, according to the chart,” Sam called through the engine room voice tube to the conn where Jack was manning the rudder.
It became clear very soon after damage control was squared away that they wouldn’t survive if they just bobbed aimlessly under the ice like a cork. With limited weapons and ammunition, surfacing and facing the army that awaited them wasn’t a very good plan. They needed a new plan. Any plan. It didn’t even have to be a good plan.
On the navigation chart spread out on the table, they noted a thick grease-pencil line showing the last course the sub had sailed … into the heart of an ice mountain. No explanation as to how the sub ended up where they’d found it, but answering that question didn’t help their chances of survival. That could wait.
The plan was far from ideal, but then again so were the circumstances. Sam would man propulsion in the engine room, with the chart in hand and Jack would man the rudder as instructed by Sam through the voice tube. As far as plans went, it was, like their vintage U-Boat, full of holes, but it was the only one they could come up with.
“Hold the rudder steady and I’ll reverse a third to bring us to a stop.” Sam’s voice sounded remarkably free of tension, Jack thought. That man was having way too much fun playing submarines. Jack never wanted to see another submarine as long as he lived.
The compartment hatch leading to the conn filled with Sam’s oversized frame as he squeezed sideways through it. “Ready?” he asked.
If the cramped sub didn’t already feel like the bulkheads were crushing in on him, having the big ginger headed giant fill what was left of the space really made Jack feel like he was suffocating.
“No,” Jack replied but squeezed his way to the confusing jumble of pipes and levers on the other side of the conn, regardless.
“I checked the compressed air tanks and we’ve got enough pressure for one emergency blow.”
“That’s all we need, then we’re out of here?” Hope hung in his words.
“Alright, you pull these four levers on my mark, right?” Sam indicated the four levers again, although they’d rehearsed the procedure before navigating their way to through the tunnel to the base.
“I’ve got these four, but we have to pull them at the same time so we surface bow first and don’t roll over on our back because we’ve lost trim,” the big man continued.
“You didn’t mention that before,” protested Jack.
“Didn’t want to scare your jarhead ass.”
“I’m not a marine —”
Sam cut him off with his countdown, “Three, two, one …”
That’s when Jack’s world went ass up. Again.
With speed and agility Jack thought wasn’t possible for such a huge vessel, the U-Boat changed attitude by at least twenty degrees and began to shoot to the surface.
“Hey, navy, what if we hit something up there?” Jack called over the riotous roar of the compressed air and seawater through the tanks on either side of the pressure hull.
“At this rate of ascent, you and I would end up a gooey smear on the upper bulkhead. At least I won’t have to listen to you whining after that.”
Before Jack could reply, the boat righted itself to what Sam had referred to during his explanation of the maneuver as ‘zero bubble’, but not before an almighty boom rang through the entire submarine as the bow fell down through the air and pounded back into the water.
Sam raised his hand to high five Jack, but Jack was already half way up the conning tower ladder, making a dash for the hatch. He hadn’t even bothered to grab his pack. Getting out of the sub was his new mission.
The hatch opened easily now that it was no longer frozen solid and Jack threw it back, scrabbling his way into the conning tower before his brain had time to register that he was seeing something he shouldn’t be seeing.
Light.
That was impossible.
Unless …
The thought that they’d escaped into the hands of a waiting enemy crushed Jack’s spirit, after all they’d bene through.
There was no way in hell he was going back into that submarine.
He didn’t want to die in a hail of gunfire in a battle he didn’t even understand, either.
There was only one choice left open to him.
Jack stood up in the conning tower with both hands raised as far above his head as he could manage. Surrender might not be in his DNA but survival surely was. That’s what he was trained to do — survive. If he could do that, then he could live to fight another day.
Not a single round was fired as he stood. That was a good start. Then he saw why.
Instead of being surrounded by commandoes in winter camouflage pointing submachine guns at him, an even more surprising sight greeted him.
A U.S. Navy submarine, a bunch of drenched sailors on the foredeck and a pair of young civilians near the sail. Not a single gun anywhere to be seen.
“Who’s the U-Boat commander?” he heard one of the civilians ask, a heavyset man wearing a T-Shirt two sizes too small.
The other, fitter looking civilian rolled his eyes.
Heavyset just shrugged. “Can you blame me? That’s one movie line I won’t get another chance to say for the rest of my life.”
Jack was surveying the entire cavern, subconsciously processing the input from his eyes and ears. The wheels inside his head were turning at lightning speed, an invaluable skill in his line of work and one that had been highly refined during a career making instantaneous life and death decisions. Sometimes saving your life or someone else’s came down to only a few seconds and the ability to assimilate information fast was mission critical.
The two civilians weren’t a threat.
The sailors weren’t armed.
The captain and the other officer each wore a sidearm but hadn’t drawn them, although their hands looked ready to do so at any time.
He was inside a mammoth concrete bunker of some kind. That’s what the chart had told them already, but the scale of what he was seeing was phenomenal.
Out of his peripheral vision, he saw something that didn’t belong. Something inconsistent with all the other signals his senses were compiling. An anomaly. An object bobbing around in the water between the two subs. The others couldn’t see it as it was out of their line of sight. The elevation of the conning tower gave Jack a clear view. As his eyes adjusted to the blazing floodlights on the other submarine, he saw what it was.
The woman’s blonde hair fanned in the dark water like a halo, catching the light and Jack’s attention. Her arms and legs were spread eagle. She was face down, unconscious and beginning to slowly sink. Jack instinctively calculated how long before she’d sink below the surface, the distance between himself and the woman and the time it would take to reach her to keep her afloat. There was absolutely no way he’d get to her in time. She was probably dead already.
Chapter 26
November 9, 2017, 04:30 UTC
U-Boot-Bunker (Submarine Pen)
Kriegsmarine Base 211
Ronne Ice Shelf (Antarctica)
77° 51' 19.79" S -61° 17' 34.20" W
She might also still be alive. Jack remembered his mission in Pavlovsk Bay. The Russian Admiral he’d kidnapped tried to escape and had thrown himself into the sea rather than be taken. Jack fished his lifeless body from the waves and was surprised to learn the man was still alive. He learned later that hypothermia actually preserves brain function, even when deprived of oxygen for short periods of time.
He had to try.
He kicked off his heavy combat boots, shrugged out of his tactical vest and let his belt fall at his feet. Like an Olympic gymnast, Jack grabbed the top edge of the sail and in a
blur of speed hoisted himself up and over, landing on the top rung of the outer ladder. He gripped the dripping wet handrails and found himself face-to-face with scars from bullets fired to kill. It wasn’t lost on him that he was on the very same ladder from which Sam had saved him from a fatal fall. There was something almost karmic about that, but he didn’t waste time thinking about it. He needed to move!
Gripping the side rails, he pushed his feet out so they, too, were resting on the handrails and he let himself slide all the way to the deck using his gloved hands to control the speed of his plunge. If he rolled an ankle when he hit the deck he’d not have a chance at saving the woman.
As soon as his bare feet hit the steel plate, he sprinted to the edge of the hull and without breaking stride, made a perfect shallow dive off the edge, arcing through the air with effortless grace before spearing into the water like a dart, barely making a splash.
With a half dozen powerful strokes from his muscular arms and broad shoulders, he intercepted the submerged woman just before she was out of reach and wrapped an arm around her, bringing her to the surface. Rolling her on her back, Jack kicked and stroked his way toward one of the low concrete fingers that bordered the nearest U-Boat pens. As he reached the dock a flurry of hands grabbed him and the woman and heaved them out of the bitterly cold water.
Jack was numb and shaking uncontrollably. He heard someone call out for thermal blankets. One of the officers was trying to revive the woman but she was already gone. He’d seen too much death not to be able to recognize it up close.
At least I tried, he thought as his body began to shut down and he slipped into hypothermia. One final thought clawed at his semi-conscious state before everything went black. He hadn’t seen the big man since they surfaced. What the hell was Sam doing?
Warmth. That was the first thing Jack noticed as he regained consciousness. Something he hadn’t felt since Pine Gap, which seemed like another lifetime ago. He opened his eyes and harsh lights forced him to squint. The room was so bright. After a few moments, he opened his eyes slowly and saw that he was in some kind of sick bay, but it was cramped. Maybe six feet across and barely fifteen feet in length. That was another thing he’d seen too many of in his career. Sick bays, medivac choppers, hospitals and rehab. Rinse and repeat. He wasn’t surprised that he made it to an infirmary on this mission as well. There’d be something wrong if he hadn’t. It would have meant he wasn’t trying hard enough.
Then he remembered the woman in the water. His stomach turned at the thought of his failure. So many missions, so much killing, he’d blown an opportunity to actually save a life for a change. He knew it was too late even before he threw himself into the water. But some small part of him hoped for a better result.
“Thank you,” a soft voice filtered through the hum of equipment in the sick bay. The narrow bunk in which he’d been shoehorned and wrapped in heated blankets made it difficult for him to move without rolling out of the bunk, but he managed to crane his neck around to see an attractive and familiar face poking out of cocoon of heated blankets.
She was alive. He hadn’t failed after all.
“I thought you were … you know ... ” he replied.
“Dead? Apparently it was touch and go but here I am. They told me I’d be dead for sure if you hadn’t grabbed me when you did. I might be an oceanographer, but I’d prefer to study the sea than freeze to death or drown in it.”
“Jack Coulson.” He held out a calloused hand.
“Leah Anderson.” She stretched her hand across the narrow space and shook Jack’s.
Her hands were soft and warm and felt comforting. Jack held on for a moment longer than etiquette would normally allow.
“What do you do when you’re not sightseeing in Nazi submarines?” Leah asked to cover the awkward moment. She felt it, too.
“If I tell you that …”
Leah held up a palm, “Please don’t say you’ll have to kill me. I’ve been cooped up with navy guys, tech nerds and conspiracy theorists for so long I’m ready to slap someone.”
He awkwardly withdrew his hand and tried to reposition himself on the bunk. As he sat up, the blankets pooled to the floor, leaving him naked apart from his shorts. Of course, they’d removed his wet clothing. He should have thought of that.
“Then I won’t say anything,” promised Jack.
He bent down to pick up the blankets so he could at least make himself decent. But it was too late. Her steel-blue eyes were already raking over his well-muscled torso and powerful shoulders before widening at the sight of the collection of ropey knife scars and puckered bullet wounds that formed a graphic representation of his life as a covert ops soldier. She wouldn’t be the first woman to sight his battle scars and make a run for it.
But she surprised him.
“Geez, what happened to the other guy?” she asked, tucking a strand of her blonde hair behind her ear.
Despite being half naked and in a closed in space with a woman who’d just had a near death experience, Jack Coulson laughed. It felt good, too. He couldn’t remember the last time something actually made him laugh.
“Glad we got that out of the way,” he said as he wrapped the blanket around himself. “Speaking of other guys, has anyone mentioned the guy I was on the sub with?” he asked.
“U-Boat. We are on a sub. You were on a U-Boat and that’s all anyone is talking about right now. Quite the grand entrance from what I saw before your U-Boat threw me into the water.”
“Sorry about that. We had no idea …” Jack looked sheepishly at Leah.
“Anyway, if that’s not enough of a talking point, apparently your buddy Sam discovered something on board the U-Boat while you were playing Baywatch.”
“Found something?” Jack sat bolt upright.
“I’ve no idea what, but it’s given my two scientists a hard-on like I never thought possible. They haven’t even been in to see how I’m doing. So whatever it is you two guys have in that U-Boat, it must be absolutely mind blowing.”
A pair of coveralls had been left on the end of the bunk for Jack, as he threaded his limbs through them he noticed an evacuation diagram on the wall opposite. He took a moment to commit the sub layout to memory, an instinctive impulse for a man in Jack’s profession. He wasn’t even fully conscious that he’d done it, the habit was so in-built.
Jack shook his head in disbelief. He couldn’t imagine the ham-fisted, red headed giant finding his own ass without a map, least of all something that got a couple of nerdy looking scientists all worked up.
Chapter 27
November 9, 2017, 05:00 UTC
Ronne Ice Shelf (Antarctica)
77° 51' 19.79" S 61° 17' 34.20" W
Karl Muller was built like a Russian war monument. He had a head like a cinder block mounted atop impossibly broad shoulders and crowned with a purposeful blonde buzz cut. He cut a fearful and imposing figure, even in the vastness of the Antarctic ice shelf. In fact, Muller made a hell of an impression wherever he found himself deployed. While the men he served with used their downtime to Skype with family or girlfriends back home, or just watch online porn, Muller spent his time in the gym, pumping iron. Lots of iron, in his case, and beating sparring partners to the canvas in brutal and bloody bouts of hand-to-hand combat. At 6 feet 5 inches tall and a well-muscled 230 pounds, he’d yet to find a sparring partner who could last a single round.
Muller had been born into The Brotherhood. He wasn’t a paid mercenary like many of the other soldiers who served the cause. Money didn’t mean much to Muller. All he wanted was to serve the Reich and see the pathetic, liberal world he despised bow before the new order. Standartenführer Muller, they would call him and that would be just the start of his rise through the ranks of the new Reich.
For ten years, at The Brotherhood’s behest, he’d served in the German army to learn the skills and tactics of a Special Forces soldier in the Kommando Spezialkräfte or KSK. Having spent much of his time in Afghanistan and Iraq with the K
SK before being given his own command within The Brotherhood, Muller was struggling to come to terms with the cold, harsh environment of the Antarctic. There was a time when he thought the scorching and barren deserts were hell on earth. Now he was finding out what hell was really like.
Weapons seized and became inoperable. Batteries barely functioned out in the open, so radio communications were unreliable. Aircraft couldn’t fly most of the time and even if they were able to de-ice their wings for take-off, the grease that coated vital mechanicals like landing gear and flaps would freeze solid, leaving the aircraft icebound. Their flight from Belgrano II to the drop zone had been delayed due to the blizzard, compromising the mission. But he’d known better than to try to tell Barnes about the unique dangers of Antarctic flight. That man was focused on one thing only and that was the U-Boat.
His years in the stinking desert fighting a bunch of camel humpers hadn’t prepared him for this glacial mission. And who knew the sub was going to be where it was, in full view of their enemy’s snooping satellites. They’d been waiting for 70 years for it to reappear, he’d been told and they’d expected it to return to the U-Boat bunker where they knew it had docked after the long and silent journey from Argentina. Something had gone wrong, but it wasn’t his job to work out what that might have been. His mission was to find and secure the sub at any cost. And then make sure the contents of the sub remained secret. No survivors. No witnesses.
Ice Fortress (A Jack Coulson Thriller) Page 11