Ice Brothers

by Sloan Wilson

  “How am I going to explain that we have a radar contact when we’re not supposed to have a radar?”

  “Tell him how we got it. This is no time to play games.”

  Nathan went to the wardroom to write the message. Word of a radar contact had quickly spread throughout the ship, and men were crowding into the pilothouse.

  “Clear the bridge,” Paul said. “There’s nothing within twenty miles of us.”

  It must be a trawler or an icebreaker or it wouldn’t be so close to the ice pack, Paul thought. Maybe six- or even eight-inch guns. But its job was sending weather reports or supplying shore stations, and it would probably rather run than fight. Once it knew it had been detected, it would probably try to escape in this fog before aircraft could find it. Probably the skipper of that ship would try to sink the trawler that had discovered him only if that wouldn’t take him far out of his way. The Germans weren’t crazy enough to risk air attack for revenge. Were they …?”

  Hurrying to his chart table, Paul plotted the position of the Arluk and that of the stranger. That put the German, if that’s what he was, about seventy-five miles off shore, and only about thirty miles south of Angmagssalik. Studying the chart, he saw a fjord named Supportup-Kangerdula. The ship could easily have come from there. Brit had told him that the place was known for frequent foehn winds, and that the Eskimos had superstitions which kept them away from it. Had she been trying to warn him away from it? Whether or not she knew it, had the Germans picked it for a base simply because they were aware they would not be bothered there? Paul felt suddenly certain that the German ship had just left this strangely named place. Probably it had supplied a base there for the winter before the weather got really tough and had been waiting for this fog to cover its escape to sea.

  And probably the people at Angmagssalik knew about the base only about thirty miles to the south of them. Maybe they were too afraid to tell the Americans about it, afraid of reprisals, and maybe they were active collaborators. The thought that Brit might be a traitor who’d made a fool of him cut deep, but now was not the time to worry about that.

  Mr. Williams suddenly appeared with a plain-language report that Nathan had written and was now coding. It started by giving the Arluk’s latitude and longitude. It went on to say, “We have radar contact in thick fog with unknown vessel bearing two-five-oh degrees, range twenty-three miles. Her course is about zero four five degrees, speed about eight knots. We have radar set because we took one from wreck of DD-77. Request air support as soon as weather permits and instructions.”

  Paul added two sentences: “Strongly suspect enemy base is established at Supportup-Kangerdula Fjord. Suggest air reconnaissance.”

  “Tell Nathan to send this with the addition,” he said handing the clipboard to Williams.

  “Are we going to close with the radar contact?” Williams asked.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  Paul wondered whether he really wanted to rush to meet a vessel that was bound to be more heavily armed. There could not be any real urgency in stopping an empty supply ship homeward bound, if he had guessed right about that, but maybe he should give it a try. Still, he’d done his main job of spotting what probably was an enemy ship and a German base. Now he should track the ship as long as he could and hope like hell for the sky to open up enough for the planes to get in their licks.

  The sky gave no promise of clearing. Nathan returned to the bridge, chased Guns away from the radar set, and stared at the glowing insectlike image of the stranger, who had made no obvious change in course or speed. As he studied his chart Paul realized that the Nanmak had been sunk at a spot only about twenty-five miles to the south of their present position in the early summer. Maybe she had blundered onto this German while he was on his way in to build the base.

  “I’ve got Sparks sending out the message,” Nathan said. “We’re using frequencies an ordinary ship wouldn’t monitor, but this guy may not be ordinary. If he picks us up, he may change course and speed.”

  For five long minutes Nathan peered into the radarscope. “There, I’m afraid he picked us up, skipper. He’s making a sharp left turn. He’s ducking right into the ice pack. Damn it, he’s going to be hard to track when he gets into that big stuff.”

  “Then we better follow him,” Paul said. “Give me a course.”

  “Two-five-five. He’s slowing down, skipper. He’s not going to be able to go very fast through that ice.”

  “Ahead slow. Come right to two five five. Come up to full speed. Tell the chief to give us everything he safely can.”

  “How close to him are you going to go, skipper?”

  “Close enough to keep tracking him. Hell, if he has six-inch guns and radar fire control, how close can we come to him without getting hit?”

  “I’d guess we’d be safe if we stay five miles from him,” Nathan said. “We haven’t been able to pick up any radar signals from him yet.”

  “So we’ll try to ride his tail. I don’t want to lose him.”

  “Skipper, there’s some scattered drift ice about three miles ahead. I may not be able to pick up all the growlers on this thing.”

  “Post a double bow lookout and tell them to look sharp. I want to close with him before we lose him in that ice.”

  It was almost completely dark now, as well as foggy. The old trawler trembled and leapt ahead as Chief Banes pushed the engine to flank speed.

  “Better come right about twenty degrees,” Nathan said. “There’s a fairly big berg dead ahead.”

  Paul changed course. A few minutes later he thought he could hear the waves breaking against ice a few hundred yards to his left, but he could see nothing.

  “You can come back on course,” Nathan said. “We’re beginning to close with him now. He’s down to about four knots, and he’s steering a crooked course through the ice.”

  “What’s the range now?” Paul asked a few minutes later.

  “Down to about nineteen miles. I’ve just lost him behind a big berg. He’ll come out. I think he’s trying to get back into a fjord.”

  “Growler,” the bow lookout called. “Dead ahead!”

  “Right full rudder.”

  The trawler’s bow swung. Going to the port wing of the bridge, Nathan saw a twenty-ton hunk of blue ice lying only a few inches above the black water. It was almost within spitting distance.

  “Come back to course now,” he said. “Ahead half. He’s not going anywhere very fast in that ice.”

  The distance between the two ships diminished slower now, but they still gained a mile and a half in the next hour. When the range was down to fifteen miles, Nathan reported that the edge of the ice pack was only a mile ahead, and Paul slowed down.

  “I don’t see any really good leads, but the stuff isn’t very close-packed on the edge,” Nathan said. “He got into it all right.”

  Paul climbed to the flying bridge, where he could see a little better. There wasn’t as much fog now and there was a trace of moonglow. He ducked around the end of a huge mass of ice looming ahead and twisted between two smaller bergs. He had become skilled at maneuvering his ship through ice. Damn it, I bet no Kraut can beat me at this, he thought, and rang for more speed.

  “We’re still gaining on him,” Nathan called a few minutes later. “He’s down to about two knots now. The ice is heavier where he is.”

  “Range?”

  “About fifteen miles.”

  Mr. Williams appeared on the flying bridge holding a clipboard under his arm as he climbed the ladder.

  “Message from GreenPat, sir.”

  “What’s he say?”

  Williams took a flashlight from his pocket.

  “Jesus, don’t put that thing on! Just tell me what the bastard says.”

  “Sorry, sir. He just says our radar contact can be presumed enemy. He wants us to keep tracking her but not to get closer than necessary. He says he’ll send air support as soon as the visibility improves, but according to his weather reports th
at might not be for twenty-four hours or more. Then he says that reconnaissance planes have photographed Supportup whatever-it-is fjord and found nothing, but there still could be a camouflaged base there. Then he ends with ‘Proceed to investigate when present mission is accomplished. More on this later.’”

  “Marvelous,” Paul said. “What are we supposed to do, steam right into an enemy base?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “Give the message to Mr. Green,” Paul said, and called into a voice tube, “Come right slowly. I see a pretty good lead. Ahead full.”

  With both ships in the ice pack, Paul found he could gain on the German at the rate of about one mile an hour if he pushed the Arluk as fast as he could. He was in a hurry because he was afraid that if the German reached the maze of fjords which were now about fifty miles ahead she could find a niche in some ravine where she could disappear entirely. The German skipper was adept at placing large icebergs between himself and his pursuer. He often faded entirely from the radar screen, and as he zigzagged from one lead to another he sometimes popped up in unexpected places. The thought occurred to Paul that he might suddenly double back to destroy his tormentor, but the radar would give warning of that. Although the German followed an erratic course, he was obviously trying to gain the shelter of the fjords as quickly as he could.

  The important thing was to keep track of his position so that he could report it to the planes, Paul knew, and the closer he could cling, the less the chance of losing him. He kept the Arluk barreling ahead.

  At about midnight the north wind piped up, scattering the fog and occasionally blowing the clouds away from the moon. The chances for a dawn clear enough for an air attack looked good. The Arluk men were excited, and even those off watch stood on deck. It was a wild night, with the ice on all sides of them glittering brightly for a few minutes when the moon sailed between the clouds, and the trawler careened through crooked channels which sometimes narrowed so much that she had to push her way through. Standing on the flying bridge and shouting commands through the voice tube to the helmsman and the quartermaster at the engineroom telegraph, Paul felt curiously elated, as though he were chasing something much better than a ship he did not really want to catch. Now for a while at least, the Arluk was really the hunter, an avenger of sorts. No man aboard would have admitted such a thought, but they all felt something like that.

  “Skipper,” Nathan called suddenly at about two in the morning. “It’s stopped dead. He’s in heavy ice. Maybe he’s stuck.”

  “What’s the range?”

  “Eight miles.”

  “Stop the engine.”

  In the sudden quiet Paul was aware that the wind was no longer blowing so strongly. The moon had retreated behind the clouds, and in the dim glow that was left he could see tendrils of fog advancing again like the scouts of a great army. He could see nothing ahead.

  “The visibility is closing in again,” he said. “So what? If he’s stuck, we can wait him out all winter.”

  “Do you suppose he knows we’re this close to him?” Williams asked.

  “I don’t know. Nathan, tell GreenPat the Kraut is stuck and get a weather report from him,” he said.

  GreenPat had apparently been sitting glued to his radio receiver. Without a moment of delay his answer came back. “As long as German is motionless, wait for weather clear enough for air attack. Best guess is that will be two days. Well done. GreenPat.”

  “Nathan,” Paul said, “maintain sea watches. Let’s you and me take turns on the radar. If he gets loose I want to know it right away.”

  “Sure, skipper. I’ve got it for the next couple of hours.”

  Paul returned to his cabin and lay down in his bunk. Well, he thought, we have met the enemy and he is stuck. So far the advantage is ours.

  And suddenly Paul wondered what it must be like to be aboard the enemy vessel. She probably was not an icebreaker, the ice was not thick enough to stop a ship of that kind. She probably was a big trawler, or more likely, one of the small freighters rugged enough for light ice conditions. A freighter would make a better supply ship. He might have just left his base after having waited for heavy fog to cover his escape through the ice to sea and home. Although Paul had fallen into the habit of thinking of the Germans in Greenland as sailing big ships with huge guns that made them almost invulnerable, in the short run, at least, this German must feel like the underdog, no matter what the caliber of his weapons. Greenland was already full of American air bases which sent whole flights of Lightnings roaring low over the ice whenever the weather cleared. Darkness and fog were the only friends of the Germans here, as they were the friends of criminals everywhere. With this heavy fall fog and the long nights of winter already on them, the German must have been confident as he started home. Then suddenly his radioman must have said something like, “Captain, I think I have something here …” Maybe they had radar and maybe they did not, but they certainly had picked up the Arluk’s radio, which had been close enough to blast the eardrums of the German Sparks if he had been monitoring the right frequencies.

  Had the German been scared? Had he felt that chilling of the intestines and testicles, that foretaste of death which Paul felt when he imagined a great enemy ship looming out of the fog? Or had he thought, hell, the Americans are crazy enough just to send little trawlers up here with popguns. I’d like to eat this fellow for breakfast, but my orders say to get out before he can call in aircraft without taking the time to fight.

  Maybe this German captain was the one who had sunk the Nanmak after managing to take her by surprise while the Nanmak’s radar was broken down. Perhaps he hadn’t been sure whether the Nanmak had had time to report him, and maybe he had gunned down the lifeboat as well as the ship because he soon expected to hear the roar of the Lightnings, as the German captured by the Northern Light had about six months before. Fear breeds hatred and hatred produces cruelty, a chemical formula they don’t teach in the basic ROTC courses. If this German captain had sunk the Nanmak and machine-gunned the survivors, he might feel guilt, and that might redouble his fear, his hatred and his cruelty. Even though he probably had orders to run not fight, he was probably itching to use those big guns he probably had if an American trawler were foolish enough to chase him too closely, unlucky enough to catch him.

  Perhaps the Germans had debated whether they should run or fight, but then in the murk of the fog they had seen the ice pack closing around them. A freighter could not twist and turn the way a trawler could, it could not push aside even the smallest bergs. The ice would grind at her sides. If the German panicked, as even Germans might, the captain would call for all the power he had. Then a thud as he tried one turn his ship couldn’t make and the bow glanced off one iceberg to hit another. He would try to back her down, but if he had hit with any speed, she would be too firmly embedded in the ice. The current and wind would soon move more ice into her wake, and she would be frozen in, stuck until the next gale broke up the pack or the spring thaw.

  But of course the German could not wait for the spring thaw, and probably not even for the next gale. His position had been reported to the airbases—the first crackle of the Arluk’s radio had told him that. And within an hour or a half hour of the time the fog lifted, the German would hear the distant roar of the Lightnings, which would shatter his ears as they approached, guns flickering on the leading edges of their wings, tracers arching toward the motionless ship.

  What kind of men were now waiting this kind of death only about eight miles away? It was nice to imagine them as movie villains, short, fat, bald Erich Von Stroheim with his monocle, the man you love to hate, or athletic wooden-faced men in Nazi uniforms giving that ridiculous stiff-armed salute, a gesture that made them look as though they were trying to push the world away from themselves. But probably they were not doing much saluting now as they waited in the ice to die. Probably they were wearing not fancy uniforms but foul-weather gear much like his own. And probably they didn’t look like movie
villains. In the first place they wouldn’t put a senior officer in command of a supply ship bound for Greenland. He was probably some young guy. Why did Paul imagine him confident, cocky, a little taller, a little stronger than himself, the image of his brother, Bill?

  Brothers, we are all brothers, Nathan had wryly observed when he had heard about the empty vodka bottle discovered by the Nanmak. Brotherly love—that had been a phrase which had struck Paul as ironic ever since he could remember, because his own brother had mostly loved beating him in the endless competition of their life together. But the Germans of course were not really brothers, not even distant cousins. They were simply enemies, legally declared such by the majesty of the United States government and their own …

  Love thy enemy—had Christ himself ever been able really to do that? Maybe that was why he had been remembered two thousand years—no one else had ever been able to manage it. Carefully as he might search his soul, Paul could find no trace of love for the men who had gunned down the Nanmak and her helpless crew.

  Love—the very word suddenly seemed to ring with irony.

  “I think I love you,” he had said to Brit, and she had told him, “Don’t be ridiculous, you’d love an iceberg if you could fuck it.” He sort of loved her for that reply, the kind of answer a woman would have to spend a year in Greenland to make.

  For the first time in his life Paul found himself wondering what in the world love really was. He had, in his fashion, loved Sylvia, loved her for years, no doubt about that, despite the fact that he had never really been convinced that she loved him, and their whole relationship had been mostly a study in frustration. And love or no love, he had been unfaithful to her the first chance he got. In his heart he suspected she probably would be no more faithful to him if some young officer danced with her very well at the U.S.O. and told her she was the prettiest girl in the world.

  Love. Maybe the reason everybody kept talking about it so much was that it was so rare. He didn’t love his enemy, he didn’t love his brother, he didn’t love his wife enough to remain faithful to her, and even his mistress, if that’s what Brit had briefly been, had told him that talk about love was ridiculous. Had he ever loved anybody? How about his own father and mother? Once he had loved them—it was oddly comforting to be sure of at least that. When Paul had been a small child, his father had been such a warm, exuberant man. Before the great crash had knocked out his business and before the Depression had taken all hope of making a comeback from him, his father had seemed to Paul to own the world, or at least run it. Aboard his big yawl Paul’s father had seemed to command the elements themselves, laughing at summer thunder squalls, always able to find his way in fog or dark of night. Paul never had been able to understand why the people of the United States weren’t smart enough to kick Hoover out and make his father President. If they did that, the country would have had no problem at all. And in those early days, before the Depression had changed his father’s swinging walk to the hesitant pace of an old man, Paul’s mother had also laughed and hugged a lot. While they had lived in the big house on Beacon Street, she had read Treasure Island and Tom Sawyer aloud to her sons on winter evenings in front of a glowing grate of pine logs in a marble fireplace, and had played a game called Mousie which mostly had involved tickling them.… “Money isn’t important,” his mother had often said. That had been her favorite sentence, along with, “We all must love each other,” but after the money had mysteriously disappeared and they had moved to the cramped cottage in Milton, love or most of its outward manifestations had also taken flight. The great lie, an affectionate deception no doubt, but a lie as hurtful as any other because it meant the truth could not be faced—the great lie about his father being an artist of genius had begun, had been started more by his mother than his father, but the whole family had gone along with it. And after giving up her circle of friends in Boston, such fine Boston ladies who valued friendship until a friend got suddenly poor, his mother had become president of the garden club in Milton, despite the fact that she really didn’t have a garden at all, and had gone on to more garden club triumphs, which took her mind off a husband who couldn’t sell his paintings, despite his genius, and two sons who were growing more and more difficult to handle each day—