by Homer Hickam
Krebs went back to contemplating the crushed decking from the torpedoes, then recalled the prayer he’d flung up to heaven that he might receive more eels. Had God answered his prayer by providing the milk cow? It made him uneasy to think about it.
“Captain Krebs,” Vogel said, coming up behind him. Krebs turned to find Vogel accompanied by the marine infantry officer observed earlier. “Let me introduce you to Lieutenant Schlake, fresh from Germany. Lieutenant, this is the famous von Krebs, the commander renowned for his Fingerspitzengefühl.” The compliment was delivered in a subtly sarcastic tone.
Schlake was not at all what Krebs had expected. There was nothing villainous in his aspect, only a pleasant, pink-cheeked face that beamed cheerfully, as if he’d looked forward to meeting Krebs for ages. Give him a year or ten, Krebs thought, and he would make a good mayor of some Bavarian mountain village, all corpulent, filled with beer and hearty heigh-ho’s. There was, however, more than enough villainy in Vogel’s expression. “The lieutenant comes with good news,” Vogel said. “My plan has been approved at the highest level.” He placed a finger to his lips, an indication that the news was to be kept secret. “The highest level,” he repeated, this time with great emphasis on the adjective.
Krebs assumed Vogel was referring to Hitler. Still, he kept his expression bland and waited to hear what came next.
Schlake clicked his heels. “Captain, it is an honor.”
“Welcome to America, Lieutenant,” Krebs replied.
Schlake was a spirited man. “I find this sea air most invigorating!” he exclaimed. “Especially after a week inside a submarine smelling farts. I must say I was terribly seasick until I managed to get my sea legs. I cried out to Neptune more than once!”
Schlake opened his mouth to go on but Vogel interrupted him. “Let us review the plan. Lieutenant Schlake, I have already selected the men who will go ashore. They are men loyal not only to the fatherland but especially the party. However, they are sailors, not soldiers. How much training do you anticipate they will require?”
“Did you say go ashore?” Krebs asked.
Vogel had gotten Krebs’s attention. His reply was a satisfied smile. “Go on, Lieutenant,” he said.
“Well, sir, training will be minimal,” Schlake replied through his goofy grin. “I assume your sailors are familiar with the rifles. It was required of them during basic training. The machine guns we can set up on deck and fire off a few rounds for practice. The main concern I have is that they will respond quickly to my commands once we’re ashore. It is one thing to study a map and quite another to put a plan in practice. There will always be surprises.”
Vogel nodded. “You have my permission to work the machine gun. Brief the men thoroughly and I am confident they will follow your orders. The operation will occur one week from today. Krebs, your boat will take up a station so as to block off interference seaward. Lieutenant Schlake and his party will make the landing at midnight, local time.”
“Perhaps you would be so kind as to explain the ground operations to me, Captain Vogel,” Krebs interjected. “Then I might understand the blocking operation you have in mind.”
Vogel studied Krebs, as if looking for treachery. After a few uncomfortable seconds of silence, he said, “We are going to land a dozen men ashore on Killakeet Island, specifically at the Coast Guard station known as Doakes. We will blow up the facilities there and take over the town.”
Krebs had to admit he was impressed by the audacity and ambition of Vogel’s vision, except he immediately saw a flaw in it. “Why don’t you just sit off the island and fire your deck gun into the base? You could destroy it with just a few rounds and not have to risk a landing.”
“I have orders to search the base for intelligence information, documents, perhaps a decoding machine,” Vogel replied.
“I see,” Krebs said. “But why are you going to take over the town? It is only a fishermen’s village, according to my understanding of the place.”
“And here I thought you had such a great imagination, Krebs.” Vogel shook his head as if he considered it quite sad that Krebs couldn’t figure it out for himself. “Destruction and intelligence are two of the objectives of this raid. But terror is its primary purpose.”
Krebs had a sinking feeling but he kept his expression bland, his voice relaxed. “And how will this terror be accomplished?”
Vogel’s expression was triumphant. “What I intend to do, Kapitän Krebs, is to invade the United States.” He paused to let his utterance sink in, then nodded toward Lieutenant Schlake, whose round, pleasant, somewhat goofy Bavarian face brightened at the attention. “And utterly destroy an American town.”
39
The first night in the mess room aboard the Piper, Again had to get a few things straight with a sailor the others called Mudball. Mudball shoved up next to the mess table and said, “I ain’t sitting down to eat with no boy what takes orders from a nigra.”
It took Again a few seconds to realize Mudball was talking about Bosun Phimble. “Then don’t sit down with me,” Again said to Mudball, hoping that Mudball would see the logic of it.
Mudball, however, was a disappointment. He apparently wasn’t much interested in logic. All he said was “Coast Guard boy, I guess I might have to whack you good.” Mudball was an ugly man with a scar that went across his forehead and down his cheek. Again wasn’t much impressed by the scar, but he was pretty sure he would be impressed by the man who’d supplied it.
A bosun’s mate by the name of Cracken said, “You boys want to fight, take it outside.”
“I don’t want to fight,” Again said.
“Nigras are cowards,” Mudball sneered.
Again doubted that Bosun Phimble would approve his fighting over such a stupid statement, so he said, “I tell you what. I’ll take my plate to my bunk and eat my chow there.”
Even that, for some reason, did not satisfy Mudball. He said, “That sure is a pissy-ant boat you came off of.”
Again had already picked up his plate to leave the mess room, but now he put it back down. “What did you say?” He hoped he’d heard Mudball wrong.
“That boat of yours looked pissy-ant to me. And all those boys on it looked like piss-ants. And your cap’n, there’s a piss-ant if ever I seed one. Not to mention that piss-ant nigra bosun.”
Again had no choice in the matter now. He walked around the table and stood close to Mudball and waited. Mudball raised his fist and threw it at Again’s head. Again easily dodged it and then socked Mudball as hard as he could. He knew a glass jaw when he saw one, and sure enough, Mudball fell like somebody had kicked his feet out from under him. He lay flat on his back on the steel deck until Bosun Cracken threw a pitcher of water on him. Mudball sat up and shook his head, throwing out spray like a wet dog.
“I thought I told you boys to take your fight outside,” Cracken said mildly.
“I didn’t want to fight at all,” Again pointed out.
“I’m glad you didn’t,” Mudball said, looking up from his position on the deck. “I’d hate to take you on if you did.”
“Well,” Again said, “I just didn’t like much what you said, about Bosun Phimble and about piss-ants and all.”
Mudball nodded. “Now that I think on it, that bosun of yours sure seems like a good one to me.”
“How about the piss-ant thing?”
“Your boat don’t look like no piss-ant, that’s for sure. Nor your crew or your skipper much like piss-ants, neither.”
Again, a stubbornly friendly and forgiving boy, reached down and took Mudball’s hand and helped him to his feet. He sensed that Mudball hadn’t really wanted to fight, either. It was just something inside him that made him have to say what he’d said. Now, all his confusion had been cleared up by a sock in the jaw. That’s what it took with some fellows.
Since they’d already gotten their fight out of the way, Bosun Cracken assigned Mudball to take Again under his wing and show him around the destroyer. One thing
Again noticed was that everybody was always drinking coffee. “We stand so many drills, we have to, just to stay awake,” Mudball said. He was drinking a cup himself at the time.
“Guess everybody’s pretty jumpy with all that coffee,” Again said.
“Oh, we’re jumpy,” Mudball agreed, “but nothing like the old man. He’s been scared out of his wits since the Jacob Jones got sunk up by New Jersey. Her depth charges went off when she sank. All her crew was in the water and the explosions busted them up inside. Must have hurt like hell, dying that way.”
“I guess your captain’s got a right to be nervous,” Again allowed.
“I guess so but he’s wearing us out. Every time sonar gets a hit, he calls general quarters and starts dropping depth charges. I bet we’ve blown up every sandbank and old wreck along this coast.”
Just as Mudball said it, the alarm rang. “General quarters, general quarters, this is not a drill!” came the tired voice over the loudspeaker.
Again had headed for the wheelhouse for that first general quarters just as Ensign Thurlow had told him to do and had continued to go there every time it was called over the next two weeks. It seemed as if every hour, the alarm sounded and the call was made. Nobody was getting any sleep, too much coffee was being drunk, and nerves were raw. There were a lot of fights amongst the crew. Again managed to stay out of them, mostly by sneaking off on his own to catch naps here and there. He was a good sleeper, a habit acquired by a lifetime on bouncing Killakeet workboats. As soon as he would lay himself down, and it didn’t much matter where, he’d be snoring. One of his favorite places was on top of the wheelhouse, curled up inside a lifeboat near a big searchlight.
After Again had been sixteen days on board the destroyer, he came to the conclusion that he might be there more than a week. He had hoped Captain Dekalb would take him back to the Maudie Jane, but it didn’t happen, wasn’t even brought up. Again assumed that he’d been permanently shanghaied. Other than he was somewhere he didn’t want to be, he didn’t have much room to complain. He had no real duties on the Piper and could pretty much come and go as he pleased. Captain Dekalb chose to ignore him, as if he didn’t exist, even though he stood on the bridge in front of God and everybody, ready to offer advice. The only officer that paid any attention to him at all was the executive officer, a Lieutenant Flagston, who was a decent sort.
Again noticed that as long as Flagston was on the bridge, everything went along pretty smoothly. But when Dekalb came up, everybody would get tense, and pretty soon he would squawk general quarters. That meant the crew had to stand at their stations for at least an hour and sometimes longer.
It was Again’s opinion that Dekalb was falling apart. His skin was sallow, and great, fleshy bags hung beneath his blood-rimmed eyes. He looked like a sick bulldog. He also slurred his words as if he were drunk, but Again didn’t think he was drunk. There was something else wrong with him. After listening in to the conversations between Lieutenant Flagston and the ship’s doctor, Again came to realize that Dekalb’s problem was that he needed sleep. In fact, the doctor allowed as how he didn’t think Captain Dekalb had slept much at all since the Jacob Jones had been sunk. “He’s grieving for the Jakie, Doc,” Flagston had said. The doctor replied that he’d given Captain Dekalb some sleeping pills and that was all he could do. Flagston suggested whiskey and the doctor went away, shaking his head.
On his seventeenth night aboard the Piper, Again was in the wheelhouse for the lack of anything better to do. Lieutenant Flagston had the bridge. It was near midnight and the Piper was steaming off Nags Head when the radar operator yelled out a report. The big, clumsy radar machine was in a corner of the wheelhouse with a curtain drawn around it. Again had looked at its screen a few times, but all he could make out of it was a bunch of humpy lines, sort of what you’d expect static to look like. The operator had claimed, however, that he could tell what they meant.
“There’s a solid contact here, Mister Flagston!” the operator said.
Flagston had been jawing with one of the chiefs but he immediately became all business and went over to the radar machine. “Where away?”
“It’s just ahead of us, sir. It’s about as solid a return as I’ve ever seen. It’s dense but not too big.”
And just like that, Lieutenant Flagston had said, “It’s a U-boat conning tower,” and set the Piper after it. He called Again over. “Go up on the wheelhouse and tell the boys to turn on the searchlight.”
The chief the lieutenant had been talking to asked, “Ain’t you gonna tell the captain, sir?”
“No, let him rest until we’re sure what we’ve got.” Flagston left unspoken what everybody was thinking. As scared as Dekalb was of U-boats, who knew what he might do?
Again went outside into the cool night and climbed up on the wheelhouse and told the boys there what Flagston had said. They switched on the big light and its beam cut through the darkness beyond the destroyer’s sharp bow. Before too long, Again saw what appeared to be the phosphorescent wake of a small boat. “A workboat, that’s all it is,” he told the searchlight boys. “Some Hatterassers doing some night fishing.”
But then the wake started to twist and turn. “It’s running from us,” one of the searchlight boys said. And then the light picked up another track, this one coming in. Somebody yelled out what all of them were thinking: “Torpedo!”
Lieutenant Flagston had apparently seen the torpedo. The Piper turned aside and then got back on track. Five minutes later, the spotlight lit up a U-boat. It started to turn and the Piper turned with it.
Again thought he might be useful to Lieutenant Flagston. As he came down, he saw Captain Dekalb barge into the wheelhouse. “What the hell is going on, Lieutenant?” Dekalb cried while pulling on his jacket. His thin hair was a mess of gossamer white strands.
“I was just going to call you, sir,” Flagston lied. “We’ve run down a U-boat.”
“The hell you have!” Dekalb’s eyes bugged out. Again had never seen a man look so terrified. The captain croaked, “General quarters!”
The alarm sounded, the this-is-not-a-drill command was made, and the 206 men of the destroyer struggled wearily to their assigned positions. Some were putting on their life jackets as they went but many already had them on. A lot of Piper’s men had taken to sleeping in the damned things to save the trouble of having to put them on and take them off again. Mudball was the captain of one of the three-inch guns, and Again thought that might be a good place to see the action. He sensed it was best to stay as far away as possible from Captain Dekalb. He raced down and stood behind the big gun, figuring to act as an ammo carrier if Mudball needed one.
Mudball looked over his shoulder. “Hey, Again, another damn crazy nothing call.”
“Not this time,” Again replied. “There’s a U-boat out there. It already shot a torpedo at us!”
“No shit!”
As if in confirmation, the U-boat suddenly appeared, lit up by the searchlight and directly in front of Mudball’s gun. Mudball yelled for his boys to load a round, then cranked the barrel down, aimed, and fired, all in the space of less than ten seconds. Mudball was a good marksman. There was an explosion right in the middle of the conning tower, a big burst of yellow and red flames gushing from the resulting hole. Then the most amazing thing happened. Men started pouring off the U-boat tower and jumping into the ocean. The destroyer crew cheered.
The searchlight stayed on the U-boat until it disappeared beneath the waves. The Piper came about, then stopped dead in the water. There was a lot of mumbling amongst the crew. “What the hell are we doing?” Mudball demanded. “We got to make sure that sumbitch is sunk.”
“I’ll go find out,” Again said, and sprang up the series of ladders to the wheelhouse. He sneaked inside the open door to find Captain Dekalb nose to nose with Lieutenant Flagston.
“You may write it down if you like, Flagston,” Dekalb was saying, “but my order stands. We will make a depth-charge run on that U-boat.”
Flagston said his piece. “For the record, here is the situation as I see it. The U-boat is sunk. Its crew is in the water. If we drop depth charges, they will likely be killed.”
“Just like the boys aboard the Jacob Jones,” a chief said bitterly.
A bosun’s mate said, “They deserve it, those kraut bastards.”
Dekalb pointed a trembling finger at Flagston. “Follow my orders!”
Flagston’s lips were pressed together so tight they’d disappeared into a straight line. Finally he opened them and said in a bitter tone, “Ahead one-half.”
“Ahead one-half,” a seaman replied in a mechanical voice, and threw over the annunciator lever, ringing its bell. Shortly, another ring announced the order had been received below by the engine crew.
Flagston picked up the internal-communication microphone. “Drop a diamond pattern, set at eighty feet, on my command,” he said. Then he turned and faced forward, staring into the bow portals. His reflection revealed his thin face held taut, as if he had to make every muscle strain to keep it from crumbling.
The Piper began to move, at first slowly, then picking up speed. Clouds of smoke poured from her stacks. Again left the wheelhouse and went back down to Mudball’s gun and saw him and all the others just staring out to sea. There were a lot of glowing shapes in the water. He worked his way forward to the bow and then he saw that the shapes were men, their frantic movement stirring up the phosphorescent plankton that thrived in the Gulf Stream. The spot of the searchlight played over them. The Piper kept coming and then Again heard the Germans start to scream. He looked over the rail and saw one man clawing at the Piper’s side as she passed. A voice carried across the water in perfect English: “Save us! We are just sailors like you!”
No one answered. Depth charges rolled off the Piper’s stern and her Y-guns discharged more. The Germans quieted as if waiting, and then the charges detonated in great turquoise sheets beneath the sea.