The two patients, a man, and a woman sat up on their cots and looked around.
The man was bald, but it looked to Erik like his head had been recently shaved because there was some fine stubble returning. His face and neck, just like the woman’s, was heavily bandaged. The eyes, nose, and mouth were uncovered enough to function. A result of Allied bombing, or so he was told. His hands continually trembled.
The woman’s hair was an unnatural shade of black, obviously colored. Her gaze darted back and forth across the room. Erik wondered if pain medication had her incoherent.
Erik had learned the patients were Frank Viktor and his wife, Gisela. But at no time did anyone is sickbay call them by their names. This struck Erik as odd, for some reason.
“We will not surrender if we are captured,” Dr. Josef Mengele said, his eyes dark and sunk into the back of his head. He opened a cabinet and pushed some small containers to the side, retrieving a cobalt blue glass pill bottle. “Cyanide.”
“I have looked death in the eye many of times. I am not afraid,” Franz Stangl said. “I only wish I had my zither to play one last song.”
“I never figured you for the sentimental type, Franz,” Klaus Barbie said. “Tell me, did you play for any of your guests in the euthanasia camps?”
Stangl’s upper lip rose toward his nose, and with half-closed eyes, he said, “They would not have appreciated my efforts. The zither brings me peace. I learned to play to block the memories of my father.”
The male patient reached down the side of the cot and patted the head of a German Shepherd.
Erik had no clue of where Frank Viktor fit in the SS rankings. He knew the other men in the room had high credentials, and they catered to Viktor. Bringing a dog from Germany all the way to South America seemed ridiculous. Who amongst the elite would afford such privilege?
The Leader had a dog, it occurred to Erik, a German Shepherd. But the Leader was dead.
Who was the man underneath the bandages? Who was the woman? One had a shaved head and the other dyed hair. Yes, the man’s injury may have necessitated shaving of the head, but nothing associated with woman’s injuries mandated the coloring of the hair.
They had a German Shepherd.
Was it possible…?
“Good dog, Brandi...good dog,” the man in the cot said, and sighed deeply.
*
The U-boat’s conning tower hatch opened. Christoph looked into an ethereal sky of green clouds and fog hovering above the ocean. This storm didn’t seem to bring any rain with it. Because of how it had interfered with both radar and sonar, he wondered if the storm was electrical in nature. Was that even possible? None of his military briefings had ever warned of such.
The fog thinned rapidly. Christoph brought up his binoculars and looked forward. After scanning several seconds, he saw part of a huge dorsal fin heading out to sea. Good, the giant shark had lost interest in his steel fish.
A bright flash as invasive as someone shining a searchlight in his face in a pitch-dark room had his hands up to his eyes. Thunder cracked as if directly behind him. Christoph lowered himself a few steps down the ladder, wondering what had just happened.
The U-boat violently jolted, he almost slipped off the ladder as the world tilted sideways. This impact was nothing like what the shark had delivered. This felt like they hit something solid, maybe immoveable.
Things felt dead still. The slight ring in his ears from the thunder diminished. Christoph climbed the uncomfortable angle a few feet and looked about again.
There was a good reason why the U-boat felt motionless. U-616 rested atop a sandy beach. The ocean waves rolled and licked its hull.
Chapter 5
It took several seconds for Brazo’s head to clear after the shock of the flash and loud thunder. He was a bit surprised to see the command room intact and everyone more or less still at their stations. Alive, at their stations. He initially felt the last event had been a direct hit with an aerial bomb from a plane. That hadn’t happened. He wasn’t sure what caused the commotion, and he didn’t have time to play twenty questions.
“I’m going on deck,” Brazo said; there was no need for explanations. “You.” He pointed to one of the crewmen waiting for orders. “Follow me.”
“Yes, sir,” the crewman said, quickly following behind the captain as he fast stepped to the next compartment and up a ladder.
The Sutton had been hit. Two times for sure by torpedoes, and this wasn’t the first time Brazo had been in this situation. The question was, how bad was the damage? He had been an officer on the USS Kearny back in 1941 when it took a torpedo from a U-boat while patrolling off the coast of Greenland. Destroyers had their share of armor and other safety features, but nothing like battleships, cruisers, or aircraft carriers. Ships of those classes had heavy armor, anti-torpedo belts, watertight compartments, and elaborate damage control systems. Destroyers were commonly referred to as tin cans. Still, the Kearny, hit starboard in the forward fire room, avoided flooding by a fast-acting crew, and managed to escape safely.
Brazo exited to the deck under the pilot room. Black smoke rolled from one of the engine rooms near the middle of the ship, next to the fuel tank. An oily sheen spread across the surface of the water.
As bad as it looked, it only became worse when he saw smoke coming from the rear of the ship, right where ammunition was stored for the big guns. That’s a fire that couldn’t be quenched. The fire wouldn’t stop until every ounce of propellant went up in smoke.
His gaze drifted over to where he expected to see ocean kissing the horizon and got the biggest shock of all.
Land.
There was land not a half mile from the ship. Land with mighty trees and thick foliage growing past a sandy beach. Land with high hills and rocky formations. It was a virtual paradise. Land that shouldn’t be there, but none of that mattered. His ship didn’t have long before it would find the ocean’s bottom. There was no sense in wasting men’s lives trying to save an unwinnable battle. Brazo turned to the crewman, and said, “Pass out my order, abandon ship, abandon ship!”
The crewman disappeared down the ladder, excitingly hollering the captain’s order as he made his way back to the command center.
There was a megaphone in the pilot room above. Brazo grabbed the ladder leading up and headed for it.
*
The giant squid’s feeding tentacle unfolded as it rose toward the ship’s deck. Its suction cups bluish-white on the edges, quivering for a hold on its next victim. The ghastly one eye hovered from above, seeing all just like a God. The world was for its taking. It was hungry and would feed well this day.
Cummings and the other three realized the hunt began anew. The four turned and scattered, but one crewman had taken only two steps when he twisted his ankle and stumbled to his knees. The feeding tentacle scooped him up and dragged him across the deck, leaving a thin trail of slime. “No! No! Noooo….” His cry faded into the wind, echoing across the abyss of time to reside with the death cries of mariners before him.
Thick, black smoke billowed from the engine room. Cummings knew if the fire team didn’t get things under control in a hurry, then he had the choice of riding the Sutton to the bottom of the ocean or facing final judgment in the squid’s horrific beak. He had heard drowning was one of the better ways to die, although the thought of starving for air terrified him. But it wasn’t supposed to be like holding your breath, with your lungs crying out for oxygen. It was said, once you breached the fear of breathing underwater, the lungs quickly filled, and with that, death overtook you like a consuming sleep after working in the field for a long day.
“This is Captain Brazo. Abandon ship! Abandon ship!” Brazo’s voice sounded tinny as it belted from the megaphone. The train of smoke chugging from the fuel tank masked his location.
It was then Cummings turned his attention starboard beam and saw land. Land! They weren’t anywhere near land before. At first he thought it was just a small island, but as he turned
his gaze from side to side, the land stretched as far as the eye could see.
Sailors’ cries and screams rose as more advanced from the burning hulk and arrived on deck. Both of the giant squid’s feeding tentacles were up and busy gathering food for its belly.
The captain’s orders to abandon ship continued. Cummings heard the hiss of the compressed gas cylinders inflating as the life rafts hit the water. The crew was bailing opposite side of the giant squid. With the Sutton between them, it might buy enough time for the survivors to reach land. But there was no guarantee. The squid could dive beneath the ship, sensing them in the water. When it emerged on the other side, its massive weight could upset the life rafts and spill his mates into the deep.
Smoke rose from mid and aft of the ship. Sailors emerging onto the deck scattered like insects. None suspected the horror of the sea god as its tentacles delivered their deadly wrath.
Cummings was no hero and never pretended to be, not to others, and certainly not himself. Something inside grabbed his fear and quickly killed it. With his resolve hardened, his gaze turned to the 20mm anti-aircraft gun a short hike up nearby stairs.
With land so close by, he and the others stood a chance of making it off the ship safely. But not with this monster set to spoil the lives of others only to fill a gut that would be empty again the next day.
The aircraft gun sat five feet high and operated on a swivel. He quickly positioned the barrel toward the giant squid.
Another of his shipmates left the safe harbor of the deck, a feeding tentacle wrapped tightly around him. The sailor’s cry for help all but lost over the pandemonium and the captain barking orders over the megaphone.
He placed his body between the gun’s shoulder rest and cranked the elevation handle until sighting the squid between the shield.
There it was, that huge round eye trying again to steal his soul. Not this time. The squid would learn what it’s like to take on the US Navy. The 20mm shells could take a plane out of the sky. The squid was massive but still made of flesh. Cummings didn’t know where its brain resided to go in for a quick kill. Poking it in the eye and blinding it seemed like a good place to start.
He aimed, leaning into the shoulder rest, and squeezed the trigger.
20mm missiles ripped from the gun’s barrel straight toward the monster’s eye. A sailor trapped in a feeding tentacle flew through the air, only to crash on deck and land in a crumpled heap as the slimy appendage flung haphazardly about. An angry, hollow hiss of air bellowed out, mixed with gulps and gurgles of sea water.
The squid moved quickly, the eye no longer in his sights. The mantle provided a large target, and if the brain did hide somewhere in there, Cummings wanted to find it. Round after round pelted the nasty beast.
Tentacles crashed up and down on the deck. The squid might not be able to see, but it did stay to fight. Cummings cringed as one of the appendages swiped right above his head. That was close, too close, he thought. Didn’t matter, he would stay until every last shell had left the gun and it clicked empty.
The eerie hiss of air burped from the squid once more, sounding more like a whimper this time.
“That’s what you get for messin’ with the US Navy!” Cummings shouted among the gun’s rattle.
The squid’s mantle sank fast into the ocean, its feeding tentacles pulled from the deck and slithered back with it. The water turned jet black where it had been. A wake traced its path as it fled for the safety of the deep.
He did it! Ralph Cummings had won. He was a hero and he had earned it.
Fast stepping down the stairs and to the deck, he raised a fist and laughed.
The captain continued to give orders over the megaphone. The ship set noticeably lower in the water. More sailors bailed off the other side. It was time for him to leave, too.
Cummings took a deep breath of air, strangely mixed with the sea, squid funk, and burning petroleum. He took a few steps forward when something wet and slimy closed around him. His head reeled as he was lifted into the air and pulled backward. He was in the deadly grasp of a feeding tentacle. But how?
The ocean boiled underneath, and the drill bit-shaped stabilizing fin of a giant squid breached the surface. The massive mantle followed, and then the eye rose until it was dead even with him. The black orb stared back from a glob of clear gelatin.
The strength Cummins once had melted. A slow stream of urine trickled down his leg. The suctions cups drew tightly against his skin to the point he thought it would tear. He had wrongly assumed there was only one giant squid. His first battle had been for naught. He had failed his shipmates.
The squid’s curiosity didn’t last long. Cummings watched the sky pull away as the tentacle lowered toward the surface. The sharp beak, its pointy tips protruding from the sickening white membrane, opened wide for its first taste of human.
Cummings so now wished he had the opportunity to drown.
The beak came down, severing him in half. Just like Pratt, he found his arms fighting to paddle to safety. Just like Pratt, the second bite sent him to the belly of the beast.
*
Time was the enemy. The Sutton didn’t have long before she swallowed too much ocean and sunk. Still, it pleased Brazo to see numerous life rafts bobbing in the water and sailors quickly reaching safety. There were nearly three hundred men aboard the ship. The torpedoes from the U-boat undoubtedly had killed a number of men. The torpedo that hit the Kearny had snuffed out twenty-two lives. There was no way to know how many men had perished after the two torpedoes hit the Sutton.
He counted over twenty life rafts in the water and heard the splashes of more going off the side of the ship, each boat capable of seating fifteen sailors. Crews quickly loaded emergency supplies and weapons from the armory to the waiting rafts below. His men responded to the emergency like a well-oiled machine, despite the utter chaos of the situation. Sure, he had run the abandon ship simulation many times before. In real life, though, there was no way to know how the crew would respond. He couldn’t simulate a raging fire pumping smoke into parts of the ship. Nor the unnerving knowledge that some of their buddies had been pulverized and barbecued minutes before. Human nature programmed men to panic. The most important thing in an emergency was staying calm and rational. Despite all the screams and cries, the action of his crew proved they had received their training well.
Brazo had been so caught up in his overseeing that the bark of a 20mm gun had gone on for several seconds before it dawned on him. They weren’t being attacked by aircraft, were they? He quickly looked over in the direction of the gunshots, and then to the sky. The smoke walled off his view, preventing him from seeing what was going on that part of the ship. The sky, what he could see of it, was clear of aircraft. Who was firing the gun? Why? Maybe someone had lost their cool. Had the U-boat surfaced? Was it about to attack again?
Brazo left the pilot room to see for himself. The water was dangerously close to reaching the deck. There would be no time for him to do that now, and the gun had gone silent too.
He looked around and saw the last of his men climbing into the waiting life rafts. Is this everyone? he asked himself. An inner urge compelled him to search the ship one last time to be sure. That would be certain death, as time left him two options: go down with the ship or live to fight another day. He broke his reverie after a barrage of calls from XO Slick.
“Captain! Captain! Captain! We need to leave now,” Slick yelled.
“Is this it? Are any men left aboard?” Brazo asked.
“I believe all survivors are off, sir.”
Brazo looked deep into Slick’s eyes and believed the man was telling the truth. The weight of others’ lives was a heavy burden who only the pure realized. Three short steps down the rope ladder had him in the life raft with ten crewmen.
The paddles came out and dipped into the water. The captain and his crew bobbed on the ocean in a flotilla of yellow life rafts.
Brazo did a quick count and a crude estimation; fifty
or sixty of his men didn’t make it. It could have been more, but he seriously doubted it was less. His heart sank, and his mind flashed with the faces of all the brave men who stepped on the Sutton’s deck for its shakedown. Who of them had made the Sutton their sepulcher? Then, his mind saw pretty wives crying, clinging to their children, learning that their beloveds would never return home.
Letting out one huff of bad air, Brazo cleared his mind. He was the captain. The men who survived were in his command. His duty was to get them to safety, and from there, figure out a way to get back home.
Chapter 6
With the batteries dead and the U-boat listing at an angle, Christoph had given the order to exit and make camp on land. All fifty-two of his crew and passengers were safe. There was at least that consolation. Where they were, and the next move, was unknown. Their planned destination had contacts waiting for them with new papers, new identities, and locations where they could start over in life. Christoph looked forward to that. It was a bitter thing to lose the war, but now at least he had a chance to become closer to Erik. He would be there to guide him in his ascent into manhood, just as his father had done for him. It would take time, but time he would have. Christoph planned to buy a boat and catch fish for his new life’s work. Erik would be his first mate. They would have plenty of time to rub the rough edges of their relationship together until it became a smooth fit. All of that would have to wait. He was the commander, and other issues took precedent.
Several kilometers to the southeast, past a dense forest that hid anything from view, black smoke formed an ashen gray cloud against a clear blue sky. There was no doubt this was a petrol fire. He’d seen it too often in the last serval years. The U-616’s torpedoes had found their mark, hitting the Destroyer. This complicated the situation further. There would be survivors aboard the ship. A Destroyer’s complement of sailors greatly outnumbered the occupants of a smaller U-boat.
Prehistoric WWII Page 3