by William Kerr
As he moved the light around, the nearest object was a periscope, its handles splayed outwards as if the ship’s captain had just used it. And strangely enough, looped over the handles and around the periscope was a leather strap, at the end of which hung a set of binoculars. Lifting them, he immediately saw in the glow from his light the word Zeiss printed on the top of one of the telescopic tubes. The temptation to take the binoculars entered his mind, but it was the feeling of eyes, hundreds of them, staring at him, that sent an involuntary shiver along his spine and forced him to let the binoculars fall free. Slowly he directed the light in a wide arc, allowing the beam to play along the bulkheads. Gauges, some with and many without their protective glass covers, seemed to glare at him from piping, from banks of electronic equipment, from every conceivable space in the compartment.
Calling on his sparse reservoir of the German language, he read Tiefenmesser, depth gauge. Its needle hovered right at 32 meters or a little over 100 feet at the keel if his rough calculations were correct. Schiffsmaschine, two of them, engine order telegraphs, one marked E. Maschinen for the battery-operated electric engines, the other D. Maschinen for diesel engines, each with dials indicating STOPP. Luftdruck, air pressure gauges, sequentially numbered, one through six, each associated with a grouping of different colored valves: red, green, blue, orange, black, and white. He hesitated for a moment. Strange, he thought. Several of the gauges, their needles far to the right, indicated something was pressurized. What? Matt’s brain swirled with the facts and near facts he’d learned about submarines over the years. Airtight compartments? Compressed air for firing torpedoes?
Oddly enough, however, there was nothing that specifically identified the name or number of the submarine. He remembered World War II German U-boats had numbers, but did they have names like their U.S. counterparts?
He shook his head and slowly finned his way around the compartment, his body horizontal to the deck. The trunk for the main periscope, its circumference, more than twice the thickness of his own body, was wrapped with a tangle of electrical cables and took up nearly a quarter of the space. Along one bulkhead, just aft of the main controls, were emergency oxygen tanks and controls for the snorkel mast. Against the other bulkhead were radio and radar antenna controls and large compressed air tanks. Moving forward again, he passed a chart table. With the cone of his light playing along the deck and around the chart table, he could see that the table’s drawers and two cupboardlike doors had been pulled open. Charts stored within or lying on the deck beneath the drawers rose and fell with the slightest movement of his fins. He held his position above the charts. Somebody searching for something, he decided, but what? Nazi gold in a chart table? No way, he reasoned, deciding they must have been looking for the ship’s log or some document that would identify the submarine.
At both ends of the compartment, watertight doors were open, but in each case, only darkness met his gaze. What lay beyond, he didn’t know, but curiosity prodded him. Which way? Unless he was completely turned around, the door to his right was forward; the door to his left, aft. Without thinking, he finned his way toward the door on his right. The beam of his light illuminated the way past various control stations, labeled plates above each indicating diving, hydroplane, and steering controls.
As he reached the door, his underwater light gradually penetrated the blackness beyond, and he promised himself, Only a look. Slowly, he edged past the doorframe and stopped. The swift intake of air through his mouthpiece was like a pressurized scream in his ears. He grasped the doorframe with his free hand, holding it tight for support as he forced himself to exhale very slowly in an effort to put a lid on the initial tinges of panic. For the first time, there was evidence of human life, or rather, death.
A narrow passageway lay before him. To his right, a toilet, basin, and tiny shower. Its entrance curtain swayed gently from the current created by his movements. Immediately to his left was a much heavier curtain, tied back to reveal an open compartment and a small desk, its drawers pulled out and empty. Slumped against the base of the desk, legs spread wide, hands positioned palms-up on the deck, lay the skeleton of a man amidst a shower of largely unreadable papers and notebooks. The clothing—an army rather than navy officer’s uniform, Matt was certain—was draped loosely over what had once been a tall, broadly built human being. The skull lay at a near 90-degree angle to the right shoulder, its front teeth cracked and broken, the top of the skull blown away.
Suicide? Matt asked himself. A weapon placed in the mouth between the front teeth, trigger pulled? Matt played the light along the surrounding deck. But where was the gun? Probably a souvenir for whoever opened the sub. But why was an army officer on a submarine? Without answers, he swung the light beam to the opposite side of the small compartment.
Again, the tingling sensation of death crept up the back of his neck and into the base of his skull. On a bunk lay another skeleton. A German naval officer’s service dress uniform covered its limbs, its arms folded across a chest layered with ribbons and badges, an officer’s sword at its side. On the coat sleeves, slightly tarnished, were three gold sleeve rings just above the wrist, two wide, one narrow: a rank Matt quickly recognized as the equivalent to Lieutenant Commander in the U. S. Navy. What caught his attention was a cross-shaped medal, similar in shape to a Maltese cross, but much heavier and thicker in design. In the center of the cross was a swastika; immediately below, a date which he couldn’t make out. The medal hung from what appeared to be a red, white, and black ribbon around the man’s neck. An oak leaf cluster and crossed swords were positioned on the ribbon immediately above the medal.
Moving his light in a circular pattern in search of something that would further identify the man, Matt settled the beam on a small shelf above the bunk. A lamp was bolted to the paneling. Beside the lamp were two metal picture frames, both facedown on the shelf. Sucking in another slug of air to further calm himself, Matt reached over and across the skeleton and lifted the first frame. Marred by the seepage of water, he could still make out the photograph of an officer in what looked like work khakis. With a white, peaked cap on his head, he was standing on the bridge of a battle-damaged conning tower of what appeared to be a much older and smaller submarine than the one he was on now. It looked like the boat’s number painted on the exterior of the bulwark protecting the forward part of the bridge, all but the numeral 8 obliterated by the water. At the rear of the tower and along the main deck, sailors at attention, all saluting someone or something as the submarine either entered or left port. With the apparent damage, it was probably entering. He opened the Velcro flap on one of his BC’s pockets and slipped the frame inside.
Picking up the second frame and aiming his light slightly off center to avoid the glare from the frame’s unbroken glass, he made out the water-soaked picture of a lake, mountains in the background, a young woman and two small children in a rowboat. They were laughing and pointing at someone behind the camera. Taking particular care not to break any of the bones, he raised the skeleton’s arms and very gently slid the framed picture beneath the dead man’s hands, close to where the heart once beat.
Again, the medal hanging from the skeleton’s neck caught his eye. He hesitated a moment, staring at the photograph of the woman and children, now tucked beneath the hands of their husband and father, or so he thought. Finally, he unsheathed the dive knife from the scabbard strapped to his left leg, cut the ribbon, slid it from around the neck vertebrae, and placed the medal inside the remaining pocket of his BC.
While the name of the submarine and specific identity of the two men remained a mystery, there were several things about which Matt felt certain. From the papers and documents torn from both the chart table and desk, whoever had entered the submarine before him had been looking for more than gold. The rest of what he’d seen was too neat by comparison. It was also the relatively intact condition of the two uniforms that provided further confirmation the submarine had been airtight until very recently—only d
ays, perhaps hours, before he himself had entered.
Shifting back to the skeleton of the army officer, Matt drew closer, moving the light beam along the uniform’s sleeves in search of something identifying the man’s rank. Nothing. As the light moved up the arm, he saw what appeared to be shoulder boards with lines of interwoven braid on top. Gold? He couldn’t tell. Rank designation? Could be, but he couldn’t be sure. The collar, designed to fit close to the throat, sported four diamond-shaped insignias on the left side. As he moved the light closer, he made out a skull-and-crossbones symbol on the right side of the collar. A death’s head! “No shit!” The words automatically sent a discharge of bubbles shooting out from his mouthpiece. “SS! On a submarine?”
He could see it vividly—the German Army officer’s saber his father had brought home from the war, the pommel end shaped like the head of an eagle. Bolted into the bone handle was a raised silver eagle superimposed above a wreath-encircled swastika. Below that, a silver death’s head and the letters SS, and he knew damn well what that meant.
He hadn’t noticed it earlier, but lying beneath the man’s right hand was an officer’s peaked hat. He slid it from beneath the hand. Turning it over in the light beam, he immediately spotted a not yet fully tarnished silver death’s head emblem on the headband above the bill. “You’re coming with me,” he said to the hat, savoring the sound of his own garbled voice in the deadly stillness of the submarine.
Squeezing the hat between his BC and wetsuit, he started forward toward the next compartment, following a trail of water-soaked papers when, suddenly, he heard a faint clanging sound, metal against metal. Not loud, but from where? He cocked his left ear toward the sound. Somewhere topside. And then he realized, Park! Matt quickly checked his watch and air gauge. “Damn!” he cursed into his mouthpiece. Only 800 pounds of air remaining in his tank, and the time? The bezel on his watch indicated he’d been down 40 minutes. His depth gauge indicated 80 feet. He pictured the Navy dive tables he’d damn near memorized years ago, tables he trusted a helluva lot more than the computers divers were now using. At this depth, he was already on the knife-edge of no-decompression limits.
With one final sweep of his light toward the skeleton of the naval officer on the bunk and a quick salute to a fellow man of the sea, he moved cautiously back through the doorway. Shifting his body into a position parallel with the deck, underwater light spreading its beam in front of him, he quickly finned his way into the control room and to the ladder. With both arms extended above his head, he angled his way up toward Park’s light beam, through the conning tower, and out the final hatch. As he’d expected, Park was waiting, impatiently tapping his gauges and pointing toward the surface.
CHAPTER 14
Last on the boat, Matt was the last out of his wetsuit and gear and into dry clothes, the University of South Carolina sweatshirt warm against the growing dampness and chill of the night. With the framed photograph, officer’s hat, and medal safely stowed in the boat’s cabin, he worked his way to the bow and slipped the knot on the line secured to the marker buoy.
“Line’s free,” he called over his shoulder from the bow to Park, already at the topside controls. Making his way back along the small walkway that ran alongside the boat’s cabin, he heard Park shout excitedly, “Hey, man, I think our problems are just beginning.”
“Whatta you mean?” Matt answered, hopping down onto the main deck, ready to rinse the salt from his dive equipment. Already he could feel and hear the growl of the big Detroit Diesel beneath his feet, but something wasn’t right. It was running rougher than he remembered when they were coming out.
“On the radar. Just outta the St. Johns. Heading our way at…” Park paused, then added, “…radar indicates right at fifteen knots.”
“So?”
“Blip’s pretty bright, which indicates a fairly large vessel. If so, it oughta be moving east to the normal shipping lanes. This guy’s headed straight for us.”
Matt hurried to the stern of the boat and swept the northern horizon with his eyes. “Don’t see anything. No running lights, but that’s a good seven to eight miles away. Anything visual from up there?”
“One light, probably a masthead light, just on the horizon. I’m getting underway. I’m gonna turn east and see if it turns with us. If not, we go home nice and easy. If it does, we better start charting a new course to somewhere.”
Matt felt the diesel engine cough and sputter several times before settling on a constant rpm as Native Diver leaned to port in a wide angle and headed out to sea. He allowed several minutes to pass while listening to the engine intermittently wheezing and coughing, like an asthmatic trying to catch a breath, before calling up to Park, “What’s happening with the contact?”
“Damn thing’s turned,” Park answered, “and moving like it’s gonna cut us off.”
“Still hitting fifteen knots?”
It was a good minute before Park answered, “Yeah, same speed, and at this angle, it’s getting closer.”
Matt scanned the northern horizon, this time off the port beam, finally spotting the running lights of a much larger vessel. Gauging the space between the now visible side lights, green to starboard, red to port, Matt said, “Damn thing’s too big to be one of the Coast Guard craft outta Mayport. The width of that thing’s gotta be a good sixty feet or more…” He thought a moment before yelling, “Aw, man!”
“What the hell now?” Park shouted.
“That line tied to the hatch wheel on the sub. That was a transmitter on the end. Had to be. Pressure controlled. When I raised the hatch, it must’ve broken surface and automatically transmitted a signal. Unless I miss my bet, that’s the Sea Rover, the AFI ship coming after us.”
Matt climbed halfway up the ladder to the control bridge and shouted above the wind, “Thought you said you could get up to eighteen knots out of this thing?”
“Not tonight. Diesel’s coughing and spitting like something’s in the fuel line. Looks like the best I’m gonna get is about twelve knots.”
“That won’t hack it. What’s the draft on this boat?”
“Three feet. Why?”
“Turn back to a southwest course and head toward the beach.”
“What good’ll that do? I sure as hell don’t wanna beach the Diver.”
“Just do it, Steve. I’ll be in the cabin with the chart. I’ll explain through the voice tube.”
Hitting only two of the four lower steps on the ladder, Matt swung down to the deck and bolted into the open cabin. “Where is it?” he yelled at the darkness, immediately switching on the red nightlight anchored to the overhead. “C’mere, baby!” He grabbed a rolled-up chart of the northeast Florida coastline and spread it over the flat dash just beneath the forward windows. Using a pair of dividers and a set of heavy-duty parallel rulers, he quickly determined distance and course from the sketch of the sunken barge on the map to a spot on the beach. Estimating their current position, he flipped open the watertight cover to the voice tube and shouted, “Steve, you hear me?”
“Yeah, barely.”
“Get on course two-three-five degrees. That’ll angle you toward what oughta be the Inn and Club in Ponte Vedra.”
“All right,” Park called back through the tube, “but tell me what the hell I’m doing and why? That sonofabitch is gaining on us.”
“Like I told you when we first saw it, Sea Rover’s an old Navy ASR, Pigeon class catamaran. Little over fifteen knots max speed and a draft right around twenty-one feet.”
“That means, if all we can do is twelve knots, we’ve gotta go where AFI can’t!”
“You got it!” Scanning the chart, Matt went on, “That means, approximately two and half miles and you’ll be crossing a ledge where the depth drops to between ten and seven feet. Get inside that, just before the surf zone and Sea Rover can’t overtake us.”
“Gotcha,” Park called back. “And with nothing but beach between here and St. Augustine, we head for St. Augustine Inlet and the Intraco
astal Waterway. Distance?”
Matt stepped off the distance with the dividers from where he’d plotted they would cross the ten-foot ledge to the entrance to St. Augustine Inlet. “Mouth of the inlet, between sixteen and seventeen miles. Got enough fuel?”
“No sweat. If big mamma down there keeps giving us the rpm’s, we’ll make it. If the bad guys are drawing twenty-one feet, they’ll have one helluva time following.”
“I’m coming topside and watch the fathometer for you,” Matt shouted back. At the same time he looked over his shoulder toward Sea Rover’s twin-hulled silhouette growing larger against the night sky, its running lights drawing closer and closer.
As Matt double-stepped his way up the ladder to the topside cockpit, he heard what sounded like a distant string of firecrackers going off: pop-pop-pop. This was followed immediately by dull thuds against the dive boat’s stern board and cabin. Swinging his body into the cockpit and hunkering behind the surrounding bulwark, he yelled, “They’re shooting at us, goddamn it. What’s the depth?”
“Thirty-six feet…twenty-eight feet,” Park shouted back.
“Actual depth or plus your three-foot draft?”
“Fathometer’s calibrated to account for the three feet. It’s the actual depth. Twenty-five feet now.” Another round of pops, but this time more like small weapons’ fire and not firecrackers, each pop followed by the distinct kerchunk of bullets gouging holes through the hull. “They’re gaining on us, Steve. Less than five hundred yards off our port quarter. We’ve gotta get to the shallows, or our ass has had it.”