Riley reached out and wiped a tear from her face. “He was brave. He saved me and Jack. He saved all of us, really.”
She pursed her lips, stifling a sob. Julie and Carmen hugged her. Wiping her tears, Elsa took refuge in silence, watching the horizon.
“By the way, Captain,” César said, awkwardly clearing his throat. “There’s something that . . . well, you’re not going to want to hear.”
“If you’re gonna tell me you crashed my boat, it’s a little late for that.”
César scratched his neck, not looking Riley in the eye. “Look. The thing is . . .”
“We lost all the papers from the Phobos and the advance from March that was in the safe,” Julie said. “In the rush to load the boat and launch it in the dark before they saw us, we didn’t think of it.” She gave an apologetic shrug. “We all forgot.”
Riley thought about what to say to scold them, the problems their oversight would cause, and the amount of money they’d lost from such carelessness. But all he did was sigh. “It’s okay . . . The main thing is you’re all okay.”
“Seriously?”
“Of course not, damn it. But what are we going to do? We’ve been lucky enough so far, much more than usual.”
Everyone was silent for a while, as if they were afraid Riley would throw them overboard.
“What happened on the Deimos?” César asked quietly. “Did you find the bomb?”
Riley had already forgotten about the uranium bomb and was almost surprised the others didn’t know the truth about Operation Apokalypse. There was a lot to explain, and he wasn’t sure they’d even believe it, but after gathering his thoughts, he looked at them one by one and started to tell them everything that had happened inside that cursed ship.
About an hour later, when the afternoon sun was high, Riley was still sitting in the same position, explaining how they’d survived thanks to Helmut’s courage.
“And then,” Riley said, making his left forearm the Deimos and his right hand the Pingarrón, “it came full speed, invisible, its lights out, and once the Nazis figured out what was happening, they couldn’t do anything. It destroyed the whole rear and flooded the engine room, and their ship went down. They had no time to launch a lifeboat.”
Everyone had listened in amazement to Riley’s story, interrupting him to clarify things, like Fromm’s assassination of the captain and their strange escape through the torpedo tubes. The part that got the most questions was the terrifying Aussterben virus and its ability to kill 90 percent of humanity.
Elsa said that a few months earlier she’d been ordered by the SS to get a typhoid vaccination. Maybe it was actually the Aussterben vaccine. “Even though I’m a vet,” she said with a hint of shame, “I don’t think they were interested in saving me for my brains.”
Marco, who’d been listening closely from the other end of the launch, laughed drily and made a lewd comment.
Riley ignored him. “By the way,” he asked, “where are we heading? Are we going to the Azores?”
Julie squinted, looking amused and embarrassed. “No, Capitaine. Actually, we’re not going anywhere.”
“What?”
“Look behind you, Alex,” Carmen said with the hint of a smile.
Riley realized that for the whole two hours he’d been awake, he hadn’t looked behind him. Suspicious, he turned his stiff neck slowly to the west. He shook his head as if what he saw was nothing more than a figment of his imagination or a strange side effect of hypothermia.
“It’s impossible . . .”
César came to his side and smiled with paternal pride. “Hard to believe, eh? The stubborn bastard refuses to sink.”
Three hundred yards away, the Pingarrón was somehow still afloat.
The flotation line was a couple of yards higher than it should have been, and the smashed bow was even deeper in the water, pointing down like it might sink at any moment. But there it was. Tilting, drifting, with a charred superstructure, but still afloat.
“We don’t have enough fuel to reach land,” César said, “so we thought it’d be best to stay near the ship in case someone heard the SOS.”
Riley looked at him. “You fixed the radio?”
“No, actually, but we got it to send simple electric pulses. Julie sent an SOS and the name and position of the ship in Morse code.”
Riley turned to her, impressed.
“I could do it only a couple of times, Capitaine,” she said, “and I don’t know if anyone heard it. But at least there’s hope, no?”
Riley suppressed his urge to hug them all for their bravery and brilliance. “You’re incredible,” he said, “without a doubt the best crew anyone could have, and the bravest people I—”
“Shut up!” Marco said.
Riley was speechless, but when he raised a finger to reproach him, Marco put his finger to his lips and looked up like a fox hearing dogs in the distance.
Silence came over the boat. Carmen was the first to break it as she pointed toward the sky. “There! It’s a plane!”
“A plane!” they all joined in joyfully on seeing the black dot coming in a straight line toward them.
Riley squinted, trying to see whose it was. The only thing he could be sure of was that it wasn’t a German plane, since the skies over the Atlantic were the exclusive domain of the Allies. Given his latest experience with the British, it wasn’t exactly a consolation.
The dot grew larger, and when the sound of its motors grew clearer, it took on a definite form and descended.
“A Consolidated PBY Catalina!” Riley shouted. “A Navy surveillance and rescue plane!”
“American?” Julie asked eagerly.
Riley allowed himself a smile of relief. “American,” he said, turning to his crew. “I think we’re saved!”
The bright-blue twin-engine seaplane flew less than a hundred feet above the ocean at 185 m.p.h. while they all waved their arms wildly—more from happiness than as an attempt to make themselves seen.
“It’s a miracle!” César yelled, hugging his wife. “It’s a mir—”
Just then, a hundred yards away, a gray mast broke the calm surface of the sea like the telescopic eye of a giant sea monster.
They all turned.
The glass lens at the end turned 360 degrees on its axis and fixed itself on them. Then, spitting jets of water, a familiar silhouette broke out from the depths. The U-boat—bristling with antennas, an 88 mm barrel on the foredeck, and the Nazi emblem shining proudly on the front of the tower—arose from the abyss like a nightmarish creature they’d apparently never escape.
Breathless, Riley wondered how it was possible for that submarine to show up again in the middle of the Atlantic 1,500 miles from where they saw it sink off the coast of Morocco.
It was hard to accept the possibility of this dreaded encounter. Just as they were about to be saved, he had to come back.
Once the sub had fully emerged and a metal hatch moaned open, they knew who would appear.
65
Even at a distance, it was impossible to mistake that unsettling face, white like snow against the black uniform. They didn’t need to see his light-blue eyes with black pinhead pupils or the silver skull on his cap to know, for the third time, they’d met Captain Jürgen Högel of the Gestapo.
From the tower of the Type VII U-boat, accompanied by a small cohort of officials, Högel looked at the sky, watching with concern as the Catalina increased altitude and circled farther from the submarine. He then looked at the still-smoking Pingarrón as his sailors took their posts at the machine gun and deck gun. He looked at the occupants of the launch and burst out laughing, shaking his head in amazement as if he’d heard a damn good joke. “What a lucky coincidence!” he said with his harsh accent. “Did you miss me?”
Riley waited a moment before answering. “Helmut died,” he said firmly and clearly.
“I admit,” Högel went on, “that at first I doubted my good luck. But when last night the radio operator re
ceived an SOS and coordinates from a ship called Pingarrón, to be honest I could not believe it. It was as if the gods of Thule wanted to give me a present, too good to be true.”
Marco muttered thanks to Julie.
Riley looked up for the Catalina, whose motors sounded farther and farther away.
“Forget about it,” Högel said, pointing to the sky. “You already know the US is neutral, and your pathetic Roosevelt wouldn’t dare provoke the Führer. Your countrymen, Captain Riley, will not lift a finger to save you.”
Despite the anger burning in his chest, Riley knew he was right. They were alone. The plane’s pilot would receive an order from headquarters to stay away and avoid any altercation with the Nazi sub. For all the pilot knew, the castaways on the wooden launch were survivors of a German ship. By the time he’d figure out that wasn’t the case—when he got shot down—it’d be too late.
“Maybe they won’t do anything,” César said defiantly, “but you can be sure they radioed your position, and someone will come put a torpedo in your ass and wipe that stupid smile off your face.”
Högel smiled wider. “Captain Riley, tell your trained monkey not to interrupt me.”
The sub officers laughed, and Julie had to keep César from jumping overboard to swim over and strangle the Nazi himself.
Forcing himself to stay calm, Riley brushed off what Högel said, knowing he was just dragging things out for his own enjoyment like a child pulling the legs off a grasshopper one by one.
“I thought you were on the bottom of the ocean,” Riley said flatly, playing the game to gain time, “serving as food for your worm friends.”
Högel waved the insult off like a mosquito. “Did you really think you would sink a U-boat by making a hole in the ballast tank? That only set us back a few hours.”
Riley smiled. “Well. Seems like that was enough in the end, huh?”
“Enough? In less than a minute none of you will be alive. Clearly, it wasn’t enough.”
The occupants of the launch looked at each other with surprised satisfaction.
“You don’t know, do you?” Elsa said, gripping the edge of the launch with both hands in glee. “You have no idea.”
The Gestapo captain fought a brief battle with his curiosity, which he ended up losing. “Know? There is nothing I need to know that I do not already.”
Captain Riley and his crew laughed hard.
The unexpected reaction got under the Nazi’s skin. He couldn’t imagine that a group of people about to die would dare make fun of him—even worse, in front of the officers on his submarine. Red with anger, he shouted an order at the sailors on deck. They responded immediately, readying their weapons and taking aim at the launch.
Time was up.
Whatever Riley said or did, they’d be thoroughly gunned down until there was nothing left but little pieces and bloody limbs floating in the water.
They had no cards left to play. They’d lost.
Riley looked up, searching for that distant point flying above them. But the seaplane had disappeared for good, taking with it all hope, and now the sky was an unblemished sheet of blue.
“Time to die!” Högel yelled, licking his lips. He lifted his arm to give the order to fire . . .
As if a volcano had gone off, the tower exploded in a ball of fire that volatized the steel of the sub and the human bodies in it, launching debris hundreds of yards in the air. The shock threw Riley and Elsa overboard.
Riley stuck his head out of the water a moment later, still dazed. The whole midsection of the submarine was gone as though it’d never existed.
The U-boat’s burning wreckage started to sink right away, and Riley, still trying to figure out what had happened, was looking around for an explanation to that miracle when the mighty roar of propeller engines made the air vibrate. Appearing on the other side of the submarine, flying about ten feet over the water, the Consolidated PYB Catalina soared over their heads like a thundering blue bird.
A few minutes later, the seaplane touched down nearby and idled with one of its lateral compartments open. The launch drove toward it.
A young man in a pilot’s uniform appeared in the door with a big smile. “Need a lift?”
The answer was a round of cheers and applause from the survivors. As soon as the launch got to the plane, they all embraced the pilot, who was overwhelmed by so much thanks. He couldn’t hide his surprise to find three of those he’d rescued were attractive women. Two of them, despite their disheveled state, would rival any Hollywood star he’d seen on the big screen.
Riley was the last to introduce himself. “Alex Riley,” he said. He saluted, trying to contain his emotion. “Captain of the freighter Pingarrón.”
“Lieutenant George Pitt,” the pilot answered, saluting back. “United States Air Force. And let me tell you,” he added with a wink, “this is the most put-together shipwreck I’ve ever rescued.”
Riley glanced at Julie, Elsa, and Carmen with a nod and a hint of a smile. With a foot still on the deck of the launch, he motioned behind him to the burning wreckage of the submarine. “You don’t need me to tell you your timing was impeccable. Though to be honest, I thought for a minute you’d abandoned us.”
“I don’t blame you. The first thing I had to do was get out of the range of their antiaircraft guns.” He tapped on the doorframe. “This bird’s durable and reliable, but too big and slow. Luckily, the Nazis were so worried about y’all, they didn’t realize I made a loop and launched a torpedo.”
Riley offered his hand. “Well, on behalf of my crew and myself, thank you for saving our lives.”
“Don’t mention it,” Pitt said. “We just did our job. Yesterday we got your SOS, but it was a tough night, and we didn’t have time until a few hours ago to come check it out.”
Riley nodded before narrowing his eyes. “It’s not that I’m not happy you blew up that sub, but since when is your job to torpedo German boats?”
Pitt looked surprised. “I see you haven’t heard,” he said, his face suddenly serious.
“Heard what?”
He sighed. “Yesterday, on December 7, Japan attacked our base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. That same morning, President Roosevelt declared war on Japan, Germany, and all the Axis powers.”
A shiver ran down Riley’s spine. “Then,” he said, trying to take it all in, “we’re at war.”
Pitt nodded gravely.
The rest of them were silent, considering the implications.
The silence was broken when a sleepy voice called from the launch, “Wh-where am I?” Jack, struggling to sit up, looked in bewilderment at the plane. “Did I miss something?”
The Pact
A thick blanket of snow covered Washington, DC. The cold of the mid-December afternoon was uninviting to pedestrians hoping to stroll the streets of the capital. The lights and wreaths adorning the streets for the Christmas season seemed somewhat pathetic, covered in snow with no one around to admire them.
Or maybe it was the worried atmosphere all over the country. America had barely recovered from the crisis of ’29 before it’d found itself back at war, in a terrible fight that had already claimed millions of lives in Europe. Now it would claim new ones, and they’d come home wrapped in the Stars and Stripes.
Not far from the Jefferson Memorial, Julie, César, Elsa, Carmen, Marco, and Jack sat drinking coffee in a simple place with rickety wooden tables and cakes for sale in the windows. Their deceptively thoughtful demeanor hid their uneasiness. Some focused on the steaming cups in their hands, while others looked out the window at the twisted silhouettes of the cherry trees edging the bank of the Potomac River.
“Did you know,” Jack asked without much enthusiasm, looking at the trees hidden by a fine curtain of snow, “those cherry trees were a gift from the Japanese government? Ironic, isn’t it?”
No one answered, and the former second officer of the Pingarrón didn’t expect them to.
“I hate this cold,” murmured César,
wrapping both hands around the cup.
“Drink your coffee, mon cher. It’ll help warm you up.”
César brought the cup to his lips, took a little sip, then grimaced and put it back on the table as if it were poison. “I prefer the cold.”
Elsa agreed. “I thought German coffee was bad, but after this . . .”
The people sitting at the tables nearby turned their heads toward them with interest.
“It’d be better if you keep quiet,” Carmen told her. “I don’t think your accent is too popular these days.” She was almost unrecognizable in a nondescript long dress that hid her curves and a matching beret that covered her dark hair, twisted into a bun.
Since arriving in the US, Elsa had kept her distance from Riley while growing closer to Jack, perhaps finding in him the emotional support she needed after Helmut’s death, or perhaps because something was going on between them. Who knows, Carmen thought. Stranger things have happened.
Meanwhile, Marco was playing idly with his napkin, looking up only to leer at the waitress. No one paid attention to his poor manners, which were certainly only expressions of fear and insecurity.
Julie was as cheerful as usual, always ready with a smile or positive comment. Her bond with César was as strong as ever. A quiet man, incredibly loyal to his wife and friends, he had been the first to suggest they disobey the order to head to the Azores, and he’d threatened Marco with a gun when he’d refused to help hunt the Deimos.
Jack was watching the snow fall outside. He’d made another wool hat—this time without a tassel, thanks to Elsa’s insistence—and between the thick beard he’d grown and several layers of clothing, he looked like a bear.
Carmen knew Jack wasn’t her biggest fan, but they maintained a mutual respect, and their shared experience seemed to have planted the seed of a future friendship. As for herself, everything that had happened in the first forty-two years of her life was gone forever. Her life of luxury, glamour, and sex in Tangier was just a memory, a stage of her life that had ended. Her luck had changed completely, but she wasn’t going to cry over spilled milk. Of course, if she wanted, she’d have no trouble picking up her trade in the land of opportunity. The more puritanical a place was, the greater the need for paid romance. Even though she was still pretty, and would be for many years, she knew Vishnu, Devi, Shiva, or the whole Hindu pantheon together were taking her down a new path, providing her with a unique chance to mend her karma. She wasn’t going to waste the opportunity to do so.
Captain Riley (The Captain Riley Adventures Book 1) Page 39