by William Kerr
“What’s it say?”
“Unless I’m mistaken, it’s the Second Concordat with the Holy See—the Pope—and the German Reich, dated twenty-two May nineteen forty-two. If this is for real, you know what it means?”
“Not really, but I’m already on my second tank of air. If you think that’s what we came for, let’s—”
A shadow, followed by the swift movement of water, whipped by the compartment, grabbing both men’s attention. “What the hell was that?” Matt said, his light now piercing the darkness of the passageway.
Moving to the rapidly swaying curtain, Matt stuck his head into the passageway and looked in the direction the shadow had moved. Just as quickly, he jerked his head back, shouting, “It’s a fucking shark!” as a six-foot-long streak of silver darted past on its return to the front of the submarine. “A gray reef shark.” Looking at Davis, he asked, “You didn’t close the hatch when you came in, did you?”
Davis shook his head. “Guess I forgot. Too busy looking at the torpedoes.”
“Too late now,” Matt said, stuffing the pouch beneath the BC’s quick-release cummerbund and his wetsuit. “Hopefully he’ll find the hatch before we do. Let’s go.”
With no sign of the shark, they finned their way back through the forward crew’s quarters and to the doorway leading to the torpedo room. As Matt pulled himself through the opening, he came to an abrupt stop. Three powerful light beams suddenly hit him in the face. “I’m not believing this!”
“What’s the matter?” Davis asked from behind.
“Company.” With a familiar face framed in the glow of his headlamp, he added, “The sonofabitch Bruder I told you about?”
“Not friendly, huh?”
“I’d rather kiss a shark any day.”
CHAPTER 46
Inside the torpedo room, two divers hovered just behind and over Bruder’s shoulders, both carrying mini-spearguns for close-in work. With the guns’ 18-inch, steel-barbed shafts aimed in Matt’s direction, Bruder used his gun to motion Matt forward. As though Bruder knew Davis was still in the crew’s compartment, he moved his arm higher, still motioning.
Taking hold of the side of one of the empty torpedo racks, Matt shifted his body to an upright position. Before him were Bruder and the other two men. Two additional lights beamed down through the open torpedo-loading hatch. Speaking with as little lip movement as possible, he told Davis, “Three, plus one or two more topside. Not good odds.” He closed his eyes for a moment, tasting the sourness that rose in his throat as he thought, Versus two guys with dive knives, one of them seventy-seven years old. Bloody great!
As Davis eased through the hatch, Bruder motioned Matt forward with his left hand, his right hand gripping the handle and trigger of the speargun, the tip of its shaft aimed at Matt’s gut. With no more than four feet between them, Bruder reversed his hand, palms out, ordering stop. He pointed to the pouch secured between Matt’s BC cummerbund and wetsuit, then to himself before extending his hand.
Shaking his head in disgust, Matt removed the pouch and handed it to Bruder, who held it up to the light beam from one of the other divers. He turned it over several times, brought it closer, studied it for a moment, then nodded before tucking it inside his BC. Matt swore the gleam in Bruder’s eyes and the short spurts of bubbles exiting the exhaust port on the underside of his regulator mouthpiece meant the sonofabitch was laughing. It also confirmed the pouch contained the documents AFI wanted so badly, the secret that had been hidden in the U-2537 for the last fifty-six years.
Motioning for Matt to move back beside Davis, Bruder brought the speargun up to chest level and fired. Pushing Davis aside, Matt dropped to his left. He rammed hard against the lower torpedo rack as the shaft clanged against the steel door frame behind him. He watched as two other shafts sped through the water. One hit the bulkhead with a sharp ching. The other tore cleanly through the side of Davis’ left thigh, taking wetsuit neoprene and flesh with it. Blood created a blossom of red in the water as Davis grabbed his thigh with both hands and tried to cover the wound.
Instantly, shock cords attached to the blunt ends of the metal shafts sprang back to the individual shooters. At the same time, like the gray streak of a torpedo, the shark shot through the doorway leading from the crew’s quarters and slammed against Bruder, then swung wildly up between the other two divers. Bruder flopped around the deck like a wounded fish, trying to retrieve his speargun and shaft. Ignoring Bruder, one of the divers behind him finned rapidly toward the open hatch in the overhead. The second diver tried to follow, but the shark, crazed with fear, rammed him aside, quickly doubled back on itself and, before hitting one of the torpedoes, grabbed the man by the arm.
Matt’s movement seemed to be in slow motion, his fins caught beneath the outer lip of the lower torpedo rack. “Goddamn it!” he shouted, trying to break loose. Once he did, his first thought was Davis. “Roland?”
“I’ll make it,” Davis said, his teeth gritting against the pain. But where was Bruder? As Matt looked up, what he saw was like a nightmare unfolding before his eyes. First, the shark, thrashing wildly, had the arm of the diver in its mouth, the man’s facemask and mouthpiece already ripped from his face. Second, Bruder was halfway to the overhead hatch, his fins paddling furiously, the barbed tip of his speargun’s shaft alternating between Matt and the shark. With the diver’s arm clamped tight in its mouth, blood trailing from between its teeth, the shark went for Bruder’s light. The nose of the shark hit Bruder in the butt, lifting him on a violent ride through the hatch and out into the open sea.
The shark wasn’t finished. With its teeth snagged on flesh, bone, and wetsuit sleeve, and unable to break loose of the diver’s arm, the shark rammed the diver’s shoulder into the hatch frame on its way out. Still locked to the diver, the shark gave several bone-crushing shakes of its tail, ripped off the man’s arm at the elbow, and darted for safety. The diver’s body, trailing blood, floated free and out through the hatch.
Finally, with fins free, Matt pumped his way through a swirl of pinkish-colored water toward the hatch—but too late. The hatch slammed shut, the hand wheel turned, and from outside the sound of metal running against metal filled his ears. He grabbed the hand wheel and turned counterclockwise until it jammed tight against what he was sure was a chain binding the wheel on the opposite side of the hatch. He tried again, once, twice, three times. “Damn it!” Like the conning tower hatch, it was chained and locked.
Expelling the air that remained in his BC, Matt descended feet first to the deck and finned his way toward Davis. “Saved by the shark, but unfortunately, the party seems to have moved on without us.”
Removing one hand from his thigh, Davis lifted his air gauge and checked his air. “At twenty-five hundred pounds. Second tank. You?”
Matt glanced quickly at his gauge. “Yeah. A little less, but it doesn’t look like it’s gonna matter a helluva lot. And downtime wise, we’re already just under the forty-minute limit.”
“Back there.” Davis pointed over his shoulder. “The crew’s quarters. Get me a belt or a pants leg from one of the crewmen so I can tie off this wound and maybe stop the bleeding.”
“Why? Going someplace?”
“Just do it, Matt. As your favorite detective could have said, the game might still be afoot.”
“Whatta you mean?”
“If there’s still some compressed air in this thing, get me the belt and pants leg and I’ll show you.”
Matt worked as fast as he could. Pushing his way back to the crew’s compartment, he pulled the trousers off a crew member’s skeleton, cut off one leg with his dive knife, then freed the belt. Once back in the torpedo room, using both belt and trouser leg, he tied off the wound in Davis’s thigh as quickly and thoroughly as possible. Even so, five minutes of precious downtime had elapsed, not to mention the even more precious air. But if you can get us out of here, Matt thought, you’re worth it. Finished with the wound, he asked, “Now what do we do?”
&
nbsp; “First pull me up, and second tell me if I’m right,” Davis said.
“About what?”
“We’ve got a starboard list.” “Right.”
“And the bow of the boat is angled toward the surface.”
“Some ten to fifteen degrees. So?”
“Torpedo tubes. With more of the bow on the port side likely to be uncovered, that might be our best chance. Let’s go.”
Recognizing that Davis was weak from loss of blood, Matt took him by the arm and maneuvered him forward, past the empty torpedo racks to the two sets of torpedo tubes—tubes 2, 4, and 6 on the port side, stacked one above the other in ascending numerical order; tubes 1, 3, and 5 stacked on the starboard side.
Davis pulled loose from Matt’s grip and felt his way down to the lower portside tube. He chuckled as he went. “Girl’s names painted on each tube door. Like on the U-Twenty-five thirteen. Some of our boys did the same.” Checking the gauges on the front of the door, he said, “Tube two named Helena, empty. Probably one of the two fish you said hit the tanker.” He raised himself to a hand wheel numbered two extending from a large metal box on the bulkhead and tried to turn it.
“When there’s no ship’s power, muscle power,” Davis grunted, but nothing happened. “Outer door is either closed or still buried.”
“Hear that?” Matt asked.
“What? At my age, I’m lucky to hear myself fart.”
“That sound. Ship’s propellers. Sea Rover, she’s getting underway.”
“All the better. Now there’ll be nobody up there gunning for us if we do get out.” Davis popped some air into his BC, adding enough buoyancy to literally float upwards to the two higher tubes without physical effort. “Tubes four and six, Katharina and Ilsa, loaded.”
“If they’ve got torpedoes in them, what good would it do even if we can open the outer doors?” Matt asked.
“Gauges indicate there’s still several thousand pounds of air in the compressed air cylinders. Don’t know if that’s enough, but it’s worth a try if we can get an outer door open. Do you have anything better to do?”
Noticing Davis’ movements were getting considerably slower, Matt admitted, “Unfortunately, no. What can I do to help?”
“On the bulkhead, the hand wheel marked four, see if you can turn it.”
Matt worked his way around Davis, grabbed the wheel, and tried to turn, succeeding only in lifting his feet and fins from the deck. “No joy.”
“Try six,” Davis said. “With the way she’s lying on the bottom, let’s hope they cleared far enough down the side of the bow for number six door to be above the bottom. If that doesn’t work, we’ve bought the farm. How much air do you have?”
“Don’t know and not looking,” Matt answered as he grabbed hold of hand wheel number six. Bracing himself as best he could to get leverage, he turned. “Damn it!”
“I’ll help,” Davis said, easing into the cramped space next to Matt. With Davis pulling from one side and Matt pushing from the other, the wheel moved.
“We’re getting it, Roland.”
“More.”
Again, inch by inch, until finally, it would turn no more. Both men fell away, exhausted, allowing their bodies to float, arms and legs spread as though lying on a cloud of air.
Davis looked at his air gauge. “Five hundred pounds. That’s all I’ve got, Matt.”
Matt flipped his body in Davis’s direction. “Quit looking, damn it. What do I do next?”
Davis rolled to his side and pointed. “For manual operation, that lever on the side of the tube. Opens the compressed air cylinder. With enough air, it’ll propel the torpedo out, but it won’t go far. The torpedo’s batteries will have lost power long ago.”
“And if the outer door’s not open far enough?”
“If the torpedo’s armed, boom!”
“At least it’ll be quick.” Matt grabbed the lever next to the side of the tube named Ilsa, spat out, “Go, baby,” and pulled down on the lever. It stopped halfway. Matt waited. Nothing! “Damn!”
Pushing the lever back up to its original position, he yanked down again, this time with every bit of strength in his body, and counted. Compressed air—he could hear it, or was it his imagination? “C’mon, baby! One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississi—”
A loud kerschu-u-unk. Both men were thrown backwards onto empty torpedo racks by the shock of the torpedo firing out of the tube. They lay there a moment, dazed, until they heard a dull clunkedy-clunk-clunk!
“What the hell’s that?” Matt asked.
“Like I said, no battery power to run the torpedo’s engine. Probably didn’t go fifty yards, but it’s out and that’s what counts.”
“Too bad it couldn’t’ve hit the Sea Rover.” Pushing himself off the deck, Matt finned his way to the door of torpedo tube number six. He patted the name on the door, saying, “Thanks, Ilsa. I’ll remember you always,” and turned the hand wheel. As the door creaked open, he motioned to Davis. “Age before beauty.”
“I don’t want to slow you up,” Davis argued.
“Get up here, damn it. Take your tanks and BC off and push them in front of you. You slow me up, I’ll give you a good shove in the ass.”
“To the DPVs?”
“Forget ‘em. Not enough air. Head for the barge behind the conning tower and work your way up to one of the marker buoys.”
“What about Steve? Can we call him on these things?” Davis tapped the small radio transceiver at the side of his facemask.
“Not from in here,” Matt answered, “and not if he’s at the rendezvous point. That’s a half mile out, and these babies are only good to a distance of fifteen hundred feet.”
“Shit!”
“Agreed, but if I know Steve, with the Sea Rover gone, he’s probably on top of us right now, ready to beat feet to the nearest recompression chamber. Now go!”
Just under two hours later, Steve Park spun the wheel hard to port, at the same time decreasing speed as Native Diver pushed its way into the Mayport Naval Station’s ship basin. As he did, a voice crackled over the boat’s transceiver tuned to the local Harbor Common frequency.
“Small craft, this is Navy Mayport Harbor Control. You are entering prohibited waters. Turn around and leave immediately.” Park grabbed a tiny microphone from its nearby cradle and shouted, “Harbor Control, this is Steve Park on the Native Diver. I’ve got a dive emergency onboard. In fact, two of ‘em. We need help. Request permission to enter the basin.”
CHAPTER 47
Thursday, 8 November 2001
In addition to the network of gauges, cables, tubes, valves, and portholes on the side of the stainless-steel, cylindrical recompression chamber, a small, hand-painted sign above the chamber’s entry lock read:
UNITED STATES NAVAL STATION MAYPORT
WE PRESSURIZE TO REVITALIZE.
HAVE A GREAT DAY!
It was four in the morning when Roland Davis reached through the circular, 30-inch diameter entry lock at one end of the chamber, took Navy Master Chief McClellan’s hand for support, and worked his way out.
McClellan stuck his rawboned face through the opening. “You okay, Commander?”
“I will be once I crawl out of this thing,” Matt answered, coming out feet first. “Don’t know whether we would have had the bends or not, but better safe than sorry. Sure appreciate you taking us in like this, no pun intended.”
“To be honest, you almost got your ass shot off, coming into the ship basin like that. If the Harbor Master on watch in the tower hadn’t recognized your buddy Park, that boat would prob’ly be on the bottom of the basin. Since Nine-eleven, we don’t take kindly to strangers. And you can also thank that ID card of yours for keepin’ you outta the brig for trespassin’.”
“By the way, where is Park?”
“After we decided he was no danger to us or himself, he ran his boat back to the marina in Mayport.” Nodding to Davis, McClellan continued. “With Lieutenant Commander Davis’s leg like
it is, he needs to see a doctor. Since there’s no emergency room at the Branch Medical Clinic here on base, I can get one of our ambulances to carry him over to Beaches Hospital. Civilian facility, but what can I say? Any port in a storm, I guess.”
“Great,” Matt said, a chuckle in his voice, “and I’ll grab a cab from there after I make sure Roland’s taken care of.”
“You don’t have to hang around with me,” Davis said. “I’ll—” The muffled sound of a phone ringing interrupted Davis.
McClellan looked around. “Not ours. Sounds like a cell phone to me.”
Matt patted his jacket pocket. “Mine. Who would be calling at four in the morning?” Matt pulled the phone from his jacket, flipped the earpiece up, and punched the talk button. “Berkeley.”
Though slightly broken up with static, the voice in his ear was definitely familiar. “Matthew, it is Hannah.”
“Morning, Hannah. You’re lucky I’m still up and running,” Matt said. He looked at his watch, added six hours and laughed. “Ten o’clock in Germany’s fine, but it’s a little after four in the morning here.”
“Should I call back later?”
His laugh turned to a smile. “No, I’m okay. Old American saying, early bird catches the worm, but loses lots of sleep. Can you hold a minute?”
Turning to McClellan, he asked, “If you’d call for the ambulance?”
“Consider it done.”
Holding the phone from his ear, Matt said, “I’ll be outside. Hopefully better reception on this thing. And Master Chief, thanks. I owe you one.”
Master Chief McClellan waved goodbye from the recompression chamber’s control console. “Better make it quick. I’ve got orders to the Vicksburg. Report next week, and underway for the Med.”
“I know the CO. An old friend of mine from our Norfolk days. I’ll let him know he’s got a good man coming aboard.”
As Matt made his way down the hall and out to the building’s parking lot, he said, “I’m back, Hannah. You must have something, or you wouldn’t have called.”