Between The Hunters And The Hunted

by Steven Wilson

  “Two hundred feet is just fine with me,” Cole said.

  “Coming up,” Peter said from the nose of the aircraft. “Ready, Prentice?”

  “All set, Peter.”

  Cole felt the rumble of the bomb bay doors opening and suddenly he was swaddled in frigid air. It swirled madly within the Astrodome, causing his eyes to tear. The roar of the air rushing into the airplane was deafening, the howl of some enraged beast. N-for-Nancy shook as her sleek lines were destroyed by the protruding bomb bay doors.

  “First one on three, Prentice,” Cole heard Peter say over the intercom. “One, two, three, release.”

  He didn’t know what to expect, but somehow Cole thought releasing the flare would be much more dramatic than simply words over the intercom. He saw a glint of light just to his left and realized that it was a reflection of the first flare in the Plexiglas dome.

  “On three, Prentice,” Peter said again. “One, two, three, release.” The only noise that Cole heard this time was the rumble of the bomb bay doors closing. The stream of cold air lessened and finally disappeared. He watched the searchlights frantically sweep the sky. If those glowing eyes locked N-for-Nancy in their gaze, every gun on the island would target them.

  “Here we go, chaps,” Bunny said as the aircraft banked.

  “Bunny?” Johnny said from the turret. “I don’t believe that we’re alone up here.”

  “Fighters?”

  “I can’t tell. Sorry, Bunny, but all I see are shapes. Two, I think.”

  “It’ll be a fine thing if we get caught in the glare of those lights and our own flares,” Peter said.

  “I’ll try to avoid that just for you, Peter.”

  Cole felt N-for-Nancy drop suddenly as he twisted around in the cramped quarters of the Astrodome. The flares spread an eerie, cold white light over the scene. It washed back and forth, as the flares swung rhythmically beneath the parachutes, so that shadows grew and shrunk at a fantastic rate. Cole shielded his eyes, trying to cut down the glare from the flares and the searchlights as they glowed along the soft curve of the dome.

  They were virtually at sea level now and the strange island that Cole had studied in the quiet of the photo analysis room was just several thousand yards away. With the searchlights behind the island and the slowly falling flares overhead, Cole saw that it was not an island at all but a vast network of camouflage netting suspended on huge pylons that jutted out of the calm, dark waters. But the most startling sight was what lay underneath the netting: nothing.

  “King!” Bunny shouted excitedly. “Time to go home.”

  Before Cole had a chance to answer, tracers filled the air in front of N-for-Nancy, bright streaks of angry light slicing across the sky. They looked like fiery baseballs to Cole, coming right at his head. For the first time he was frightened. But he wasn’t satisfied with what he’d seen, either. He wanted another look.

  “Take it around again,” he said.

  “You bloody fool,” Peter said as shells began to burst around them. “If you want to see it, get out and walk back.”

  A shell exploded to Cole’s right. The flash and boom were deafening and he felt the aircraft shudder violently. There was another explosion, higher than the first, but he felt the aircraft pushed down. The whole night was lights, noise, and movement—he felt as it he were in a cavern of the surreal.

  “Sorry, King. Too hot here. Time to go,” Bunny said. “Hang on, chaps.”

  N-for-Nancy began to dance wildly through the night, trying to throw off the searchlights and antiaircraft gunners.

  There wasn’t anything there, Cole thought. Nothing. Had there really been anything there to begin with? Was it built to receive something? Had the thing that it was built to hide never been created?

  The aluminum skin in front of the Astrodome erupted as pieces of it flew off into the night. Tracers ate into the fuselage, barely missing the Astrodome, and Cole saw Johnny swing the dorsal turret around and the muzzles of the machine guns flash angrily. The guns’ tracers flew impotently into the night and disappeared into the darkness.

  “Two Jerry’s above us,” the gunner called over the intercom.

  “I saw them well enough,” Bunny said. “They almost took my head off.”

  “We can’t outrun them,” Peter said.

  “Beam guns,” Bunny ordered. “We might get out of this yet.”

  Cole swung down and unhooked the left beam gun from its restraining straps. He worked the bolt twice, chambering a round. He’d seen that in a movie once; he’d never fired one of these things in his life. Prentice was at his back, manning the right-side gun.

  “Nothing to it, sir,” he said, “just remember to lead well ahead of the blighters and watch how the tracers fall. You’ll get the hang of it, I’m sure. I just wish we had another storm to hide in.”

  The German fighters swept by again, one after another. They were gone before Cole saw them. He heard the harsh clatter of the turret guns and frantically searched for the enemy planes in the darkness. N-for-Nancy was pitching wildly as Bunny tried to throw off the fighters, but Cole knew it would be only a matter of time before the enemy returned. He dropped the gun in its harness and made his way back to the Astrodome. Behind him he could see the vast canopy of camouflage netting and he knew that they had a chance, a very slim chance to escape.

  He squeezed past Prentice and into the foot of the tunnel that led to the bomb aimer/navigator’s position.

  “Get back to your gun,” Bunny said as he kicked the rudder and added 30 percent flaps. There was nothing else that he could do—just fly like hell and hope that his gunners could keep the fighters away.

  “I’ve got an idea,” Cole said.

  “I haven’t the time, King. You can see I’m busy.”

  “Turn the ship around and fly underneath the netting. Halfway in, cut the power and let the fighters overfly us.”

  “Don’t be foolish. I don’t want to go back and there may be a hundred cables hanging from that netting. Hold on.” He jerked the yoke to the left and eased it back.

  “Maybe,” Cole said calmly. He knew what Bunny knew: it was a chance—maybe a better chance than they had now. They wouldn’t last long with the fighters—the buzzing aircraft would chew them to pieces in minutes. The netting complex held out escape for them: safety, life.

  “Right,” Bunny said, banking N-for-Nancy sharply to the left. “We’re going back, chaps. Into the fire, out of the frying pan, to lose these bastards.”

  “Are you daft, Bunny?” Peter said. “They’ll get us for sure.”

  “King doesn’t think so, do you, King?” He turned to Cole. “Get back to your gun. If you’re wrong about this I shall be very disappointed.”

  “You and me both, brother,” Cole said. He moved behind Prentice, steadied himself, took the machine gun in his hands, and waited. He could see past the cockpit and through the windshield of the Hudson. The searchlights were out and there were no angry arcs of tracers feeling through the sky for N-for-Nancy. But there was a strange glow coming from the netting.

  What is that? Cole thought.

  “What now?” Bunny said. “More tricks?”

  Prentice’s gun erupted, followed immediately by the turret mounts. Cole suddenly found himself foolishly firing at nothing and jerked his finger away from the trigger.

  “It’s on fire,” he heard Bunny say as if the pilot found the point mildly interesting. Cole looked through the Plexiglas windshield and saw the camouflage netting burning fiercely.

  “For Christ’s sake, Bunny, hurry,” Peter said. “Those bloody bastards are on our ass.”

  “Here we go,” Bunny said as he dropped the aircraft to wave height. The burning web awaited them like a fiery cavern. Flaming debris dripped off of the mesh foundation while strands of glowing canvas hung like demonic fingers, ready to grasp N-for-Nancy.

  They were inside hell and could feel the heat and see the reflection of the burning structure in the water. The light was so brigh
t that every color was burned away and their eyes hurt because of it. Cole could not get his breath, the fire had consumed all of the air, and all that was left to him was heat and smoke. He felt light-headed and he found himself falling against the bulkhead. He saw a blurry figure move in front of him and felt something that tasted of rubber clamped over his mouth. Cool, blissful air flooded his nose and mouth and he gulped it greedily. It was Prentice and he had given Cole an emergency oxygen bottle.

  “Peter,” Bunny said, “where are they?”

  “Just over our nose, Bunny. Trying to beat us to the finish line.”

  “Let them run.” Bunny kicked the rudder and banked the aircraft to the left, barely missing two pylon supports. N-for-Nancy sped out of the camouflage netting, halfway through the structure as the two German fighters waited at the far end for the Hudson to emerge.

  Bunny kept the aircraft close to the water.

  “Peter?” Bunny said.

  “Circling like vultures,” Johnny said, studying the fighters from his position in his turret, “but they haven’t seen us.”

  “Too much excitement for you, King?” Bunny asked.

  “He just needed a spot of oxygen,” Prentice said as Cole struggled to his feet.

  “You’ll have a very nice headache in the morning, thank you,” Bunny said. After they flew on for a few miles, and the crew felt more relaxed, Bunny asked Cole, “Did you find what you wanted to find, King?”

  “No,” Cole said.

  “More’s the pity,” Bunny said. “But you have to understand that we won’t be going back.”

  “Yeah,” Cole said. There was more to be said but not here; not to Bunny. Cole would have to say it to his superiors. He would have to convince them that something had been under the camouflage and now it was gone. Of course they would be skeptical and rightly so. Tell me, Lieutenant Cole, what gave you the right to go flying off to Norway? And tell me, Lieutenant Cole, what do you think the Germans were hiding there? How do you know, Lieutenant Cole—are you an expert at such things? You’ve done a fine job at analyzing photographs, Lieutenant Cole, and His Lordships do appreciate your hard work and they suggest that you remain in the capacity of a photo analyzer with your feet firmly planted on the ground.

  N-for-Nancy flew on, occasionally encountering a patch of bad air that batted her playfully.

  Cole sat, silent, wedged against the bulkhead, thinking. There was no reason to consider that it was a capital ship; certainly no way to prove it. There had been no directives to look for additional capital ships; everyone had been accounted for—sunk, moored, or damaged. And these things didn’t just spring up, and to think that one had been built and hidden from the British was impossible. Impossible.

  How many times in history, the former history professor asked himself, had the impossible proved possible to the downfall of a foe? What could she be? How large was she? Forty—fifty thousand tons, nine hundred feet long? He’d remembered a conversation with Dickie.

  He’d sat down with Dickie Moore over tea and some sort of pastry that tasted like cardboard on a gray, rainy London afternoon and talked about things in general. Dickie, waving his ridiculously long cigarettes like a baton, and hurriedly slurping his tea as another bit of gossip came to mind, was anything but military. But Sublieutenant Richard Moore, behind his outlandish mannerisms and air of indifference, was the most intelligent person that Cole had ever met.

  “You know, Jordan,” Dickie had said, crushing out a cigarette and immediately lighting another, “we ought to speak in hypotheticals.”

  “What’s wrong with English?”

  “Droll,” Dickie had said, giving Cole a disappointed look. “Too, too droll. For a scholar you’re very much a man of the common people, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Cole had said. “It comes with being born in a log cabin.”

  “Of course,” Dickie had said. “So. Here is my theory. Dear Adolf causes to be built several capital ships, classes F, G, D, and E. Bismarck, Tirpitz, Scharnhorst, and Gneisenau—respectively. But wait. Dear Adolf, in a flash of Aryan pride, calls forth a behemoth—a capital ship that dwarfs all others.”

  “It was broken up, Dickie,” Cole had said. “It never got off the ways.”

  “Kindly refrain from interrupting me when I’m pontificating. It’s bad for my spleen. Remarkable things can be accomplished during wartime. Witness the miracle of Dunkirk.” Dickie paused. “Well, I’m sure that there were other remarkable triumphs for our side, but you see what I’m getting at, don’t you? The H-class lives some place in or around the Fatherland, waiting to make its presence known. It’s unleashed when needed and not before.”

  “Why?”

  “The ultimate gambit, dear boy. Don’t you Americans have any imagination?”

  “We don’t need imagination,” Cole had said, “we’ve got the movies.” He had studied his friend’s face and decided that there was enough there to warrant belief. “Okay, I’ll bite. From now on I’ll look for your giant battleship, but I’m not really sure what I’m looking for.”

  “You’re a smart lad,” Dickie had said with a wink. “You’ll sort it out.”

  “How are you, sir?”

  Cole looked up to see Prentice hovering over him with concern.

  “Okay,” Cole said and returned to his thoughts. Too big to hide? Hide it in plain sight. Whatever it was, hide it where no one would think to look, until it was time. Time for what? Why now?

  Chapter 12

  Coastal Command Photo Analysis, 1 August 1941

  “Good God, Cole!” Commander Harry Hamilton shouted. “Are you mad?”

  Sublieutenant Moore, standing uncertainly on his crutches next to Cole in the commander’s office, said, “Easy does it, Uncle Harry, you know what Aunt Mary said about your temper.”

  “Don’t call me Uncle Harry, Dickie.”

  “But what shall I call you, Uncle Harry? You haven’t disowned me, have you?”

  Hamilton glared at Moore, who offered nothing in return except a weak smile. “I’ll deal with you later, Dickie,” Hamilton said. “I’m sure your father would like to hear about this.”

  “Oh, don’t trouble His Lordship, Uncle. I’ve been such a disappointment to him all of my life.”

  Hamilton returned to Cole. “Well? You’ve got something to say, I imagine? Something that would explain you disappearing into the night with one of His Majesty’s aircraft?”

  “I felt it was necessary to observe the situation firsthand, Commander,” Cole said. “The photographs told me only so much. I had to see for myself.”

  “The photographs were supposed to tell you only so much, Lieutenant Cole. That’s what photographs do. The rest of it would have been decided through channels.” His voice rose in volume. “Through channels, I might add, in the appropriate manner. You jeopardized your life and the lives of the air crew.”

  “I felt that we had a reasonable chance for success, sir.”

  “That was not your decision to make, Cole,” Hamilton’s voice boomed in the tiny office.

  “Uncle Harry—” Moore began to caution.

  “Oh, shut up, you little twit!”

  Moore gave his uncle a hurt look. “Well, that was certainly uncalled for. Not even His Lordship calls me that and he has had ample reason to.”

  “Cole.” Hamilton rose from his desk, barely controlling his temper. “This is a serious infraction. Serious indeed. I’ve had Coastal Command on the line all day wanting to know why one of theirs was commandeered by one of mine.”

  “May I explain, sir?” Cole said.

  “Explain? Yes, explain. That’s what I’ve been waiting for.”

  “With your permission, sir,” Cole said, laying photographs of Leka Island on the commander’s desk. He relayed the significance of the small island and told Hamilton of his conversation with the Norwegian captain. He went over the flight and the existence of the massive camouflage netting system and the incongruity of the Germans expending resources to keep Br
itish reconnaissance flights away from an uninhabited island.

  “Surely it was inhabited if the bastards were shooting at you?” Hamilton said.

  “Unc—” Moore’s words were cut short by a curt glance from Hamilton. “Commander Hamilton, I believe Lieutenant Cole is on to something of immense proportion that deserves at least a proper hearing.”

  “Go on,” Hamilton commanded Cole.

  “The size of the camouflage complex, length, width, and height, suggests a capital ship of some sort, sir,” Cole said. “A large one. Larger than a pocket battleship.”

  “Both Tirpitz and Bismarck are accounted for, thank God,” Hamilton said, his manner softening. “So we can certainly rule them out.”

  “Yes, sir,” Cole said. “But what if it’s a ship that we’ve never seen before?”

  “What?”

  Moore laid a thick manila envelope stamped Most Secret on Hamilton’s desk and turned it facing the commander. He opened it and said, “You had better sit down, Uncle.”

  “An H-class battleship, sir,” Cole said. “I think that is what the Germans had hidden near Leka Island.”

  “H-class?”

  Moore turned the folder around and began to read: “‘Displacement over sixty thousand tons, length over nine hundred feet, beam 130 feet, main armament, twelve 406-millimeter cannons in four-by-three placement. She has twelve 150-mm C28 guns in a six-by-two arrangement.’” He looked up. “At least we think she does. Most of this intelligence is subject to change, you understand.” He flipped through the pages. “She has a complement of 2,600 officers and ratings and an estimated speed in excess of thirty-five knots.” Moore closed the folder. “Almost makes one think that she could fly, doesn’t it?” he mused brightly. His smile froze when he saw the scowl on Hamilton’s face.

  Hamilton studied the two officers before speaking. “Let me understand you,” he said, his voice low and cold. “You two think that the Germans have built and successfully hidden a ship the size of Scotland and that the Royal Navy and the Coastal Command, with all of the resources at their disposal, have failed to note its existence?”