Ice Brothers

by Sloan Wilson

  As usual, the weather reports did not prove to be accurate, and they spent four days locked in this motionless struggle while the fog thickened instead of going away. Paul had never seen it so thick—from the gundeck he could hardly see the door to the forecastle. The men appeared to forget that the enemy was so near. Even Sparks, who had access to the radar images of the Germans, still kept complaining about the loss of the nude photograph of his bride when he was off watch.

  “Can’t you just shut up about it?” Boats asked.

  “Well how would you like it if you knew some guy was drooling over a picture of your wife, jerking off?”

  This really was a form of infidelity, Sparks obviously felt. He suspected Guns of stealing the picture, but the gunner’s mate was too big to confront directly. While Guns was on watch Sparks looked under his mattress but found nothing. Blake reported the search to Guns, who in retaliation hid Sparks’s mattress in the hold while Sparks was on radar watch. Paul had to take time out from trying to figure out what the Germans would do to make Guns bring back Sparks’s mattress.

  Did the Germans have such ridiculous problems while they waited in the shadow of sudden death? Paul guessed that they probably did. The possibility that they were sitting around praying was small …

  By the fourth day of waiting Paul had the curious feeling that he and the Germans would be locked into this frozen battle forever. He went soundly asleep, leaving Nathan at the radar set, and he was astonished when Nathan awoke him to say, “Skipper, the fog looks like it’s about to lift.”

  Paul rushed to the wing of the bridge. It was twenty minutes after ten in the morning. Heavy fog still surrounded the ship, but the rising sun was starting to burn a hole in it.

  “I’ve got some motion from the small ship,” Nathan said from the radar set. “He’s been hiding behind the big one all this time, but now he’s starting to work away from her to the south.”

  Nathan stared at the scope. “It looks like he’s got heavy ice for about five miles,” he said. “If he gets to that big lead he’ll be free if he can beat the planes.”

  Paul wondered whether the Arluk should stay near the larger ship or chase the small one. Deciding that this decision should be left to GreenPat, he had Nathan send a message. While Nathan was doing that, Paul followed the progress of the small ship on the radar screen. It crawled toward the beginning of a lead and suddenly began to move with astonishing speed.

  “Get Mr. Green up here,” Paul said to the quartermaster.

  Nathan arrived on the run and looked into the scope as Paul stepped back from it.

  “Boy, he’s really moving,” he said. “What the hell is it, a torpedo boat?”

  “Not in this ice,” Paul said. “Quartermaster, get Mr. Farmer up here.”

  Seth Farmer had been keeping to himself as much as possible for a long time, almost as though he had reached retirement age aboard the ship. He arrived looking flustered, still buttoning his parka, his face heavy with sleep.

  “What’s up, skipper?”

  “Seth, what kind of a ship can go damn fast in the ice, a small wooden ship?”

  “How fast?”

  “Fifteen knots, maybe even close to twenty,” Nathan said.

  “In pack ice?”

  “Dodging through storis ice,” Paul said.

  “It must be a hunter-killer. No other kind of vessel could do that.”

  “Hunter-killer?” Nathan said.

  “They were built for hunting whales,” Paul said. “I’ve read about them, but I’ve never seen one.”

  “They go out with a mother ship that supplies them and processes the whales,” Seth explained. “The hunter-killer has a harpoon gun on the bow, and he’s designed to chase whales in the ice.”

  “How big a ship is it?” Paul asked.

  “Not big, but it’s a ship, not a boat. The hunter-killers sail in company with their mother ship.”

  “Do you suppose that big vessel we have on the screen could be a whaler?”

  “Maybe the Krauts are using one for a supply ship. No one would be whaling out here in the middle of a war.”

  “Tell me as much as you can about the hunter-killers.”

  “Oh, maybe they’re sixty or seventy feet long. Deep with the screw well down to get it away from the ice, but very narrow and all engine to get speed. They don’t have to carry no cargo.”

  “How many men are on them?”

  “In peacetime, maybe only about five.”

  “What kind of guns could they put on one?”

  “No heavy stuff. Maybe a popgun like ours on the bow instead of the harpoon gun. Antiaircraft guns. Depth charges and maybe torpedo tubes. They wouldn’t make a bad torpedo boat, though they ain’t as fast as the light shoal-draft jobs.”

  “Have we converted any to war service?”

  “The navy tried to make sub-chasers out of some. The trouble is, they can’t keep to sea for long without a mother ship. They’re all engine and have hardly any fuel tanks. And they’re hell on their crew—a cramped, narrow, miserable little vessel, wet as hell.”

  “But good in ice.”

  “The screw is well down and they can turn to bite their own tail. They’re a hell of a lot heavier built than a plywood torpedo boat.”

  “What would be the effective range of their torpedoes?”

  “Hell, I’m not sure. Maybe half a mile if they got lucky.”

  “What’s their top speed?”

  “I don’t know, but you have to go some to catch a whale and that’s what they’re designed to do.”

  The small ship had placed an ice castle between herself and the Arluk. She had disappeared from the radar screen. At twenty knots she’d be a hundred miles away in five hours, Paul figured, and even if she had only an hour before the sky cleared, she’d have plenty of time to hide in the ice pack, a tiny splinter of a ship in a sea of ice mountains.

  “Nathan, tell GreenPat what we got out here,” Paul said. “Get Williams to do the coding—I need you up here. Tell him there’s no point in our chasing the hunter-killer. He’s gone off on a bearing of about one seven three, speed estimated at about eighteen knots. Tell him the sun is starting to burn through. It might be clear enough for the planes in an hour.”

  While the message was being sent Paul went up to the flying bridge, which had been painted as ordered with red lead. With his feet still on the ladder, Paul looked around. The fog was burning off fast—there were a few patches of blue sky directly overhead, although heavy gray curtains still surrounded the ship. A whaler, Paul thought—just because the small vessel was a hunter-killer, did the supply ship have to be a big whaler? If she was really a factory ship, she might easily mount eight-inch guns and would like nothing better than to use them on the trawler which had spotted her. But there was no real reason to suppose that such a monster had been sent to establish a small Greenland base. His original guess that the supply ship was probably a medium-sized freighter might still be right.

  Paul fought an impulse to push closer to the German just out of curiosity and a desire to be in on the kill. No, nothing would be gained by such risk. How strangely hard it was to do nothing! Going to the bridge, he tapped the barometer, noting that it was rising. The temperature was also rising with the sun, and was now hovering around zero, which seemed relatively warm. Now the fog ahead was really starting to thin. He could see a half mile over the bow, a jumble of icebergs about the size of the ship with veins of water twenty or thirty feet wide between them. A trawler could maintain a speed of four or five knots through ice like that. How fast could a hunter-killer zigzag through it? A new element of real danger had been added to his situation, Paul realized. At any time now, in fog or darkness, the hunter-killer could launch a torpedo attack. Of course, there’d have to be just enough visibility to allow the Germans to see their target and the Arluk’s radar should give warning—unless the hunter-killer darted from behind an iceberg. As long as that nimble little ship was on the loose Paul had an idea
that he was not going to get much sleep. If the weather cleared quickly, the planes might find him. If …

  The circle of blue sky overhead continued to widen. Paul imagined the officers aboard the big supply ship looking up at it, gauging the amount of time they had left before the Lightnings struck. Would they now be in a frame of mind to surrender? Should Paul ask? No, it would be dangerous to try to take them off their ship while the hunter-killer hovered nearby. If the Germans wanted to give up, they could easily initiate the process by radio. Except Paul had never heard of such a thing happening. The Northern Light had captured her trawler only after the planes had almost sunk it. When it was time to die, almost all crews just died without radioing any last pleas for surrender, pardon, or help, even if the odds were hopelessly against them. Naval warfare seemed as unforgiving and almost as formal as a bullfight.

  The curtains of fog around the Arluk kept retreating and with surprising suddenness evaporated, leaving the trawler in a sea of scattered icebergs of all sizes which glistened so brightly in the sun that the men went for dark glasses. Hurrying to the crow’s nest, Paul adjusted his binoculars and studied the sector where the radar reported the supply ship to be. For several minutes he could see nothing, but then dead white against ice which sparkled more, he saw the outline of a high bow, a pilothouse and a mast. The ship, a freighter, was about halfway to the horizon. At that distance she looked much smaller than he had expected, like a child’s ship model discarded in the ice. Her most prominent feature was her high, old-fashioned smokestack, which the heat from a steam engine had turned dark gray. As he was squinting in the glare, a puff of smoke appeared on the bow of the ship, and a fraction of a second later he heard a sharp crack.

  “They’re shooting at us,” Paul said, but it seemed that the distance was much too great for accuracy. “Nathan, we better go behind that big berg over there. He might get lucky.”

  Nathan got the Arluk moving. There were more blossoms of smoke from the bow of the supply ship, but no one aboard the Arluk could see shells landing anywhere. I guess it makes them feel good to shoot at us while they’re waiting for the planes, Paul thought—probably I’d open fire too if I were in their shoes—his feeling of tolerance abruptly came to an end when a shell blew the top off an iceberg about 300 yards to his right. The next shell was coming even closer … he heard its high whine but didn’t see where it landed.

  “Full speed, let’s get the hell out of here.”

  It took about ten minutes to gain the shelter of an iceberg big as a fortress. The taste of danger had whetted the crew’s appetites.

  “I wonder where the hell the planes are,” Paul said.

  “Sparks is down there sending out M’s for them to home on,” Nathan said. “That’s what they wanted and that’s what they’re getting. They’ll be here any minute. Boats, get a smoke flare ready. They want that too.”

  Nathan had hardly spoken when they heard in the distance an intense hum that quickly turned into a roar, more thunder than one would expect even from Lightnings. Low on the western horizon three dots hardly bigger than mosquitos materialized in the thin blue air above a ridge of ice. It was impossible to imagine how such tiny, almost microscopic objects could make such an all-encompassing noise. Rapidly they grew larger, materializing into what looked like model airplanes which had been painted an olive drab in defiance of Arctic camouflage.

  “Let go the smoke bomb,” Paul said.

  Boats threw an object like a yellow bottle as far as he could from the well deck. As it settled on a piece of flat ice, it started to gush torrents of black smoke. Seeing it, the planes altered course slightly. Growing to monstrous size as they approached, they roared only about 500 feet above the Arluk, waggled their wings in recognition, and sped toward the German supply ship. Figuring that the Germans would be too busy to shoot at him, Paul eased the ship from behind the iceberg enough to see what was going on. The three Lightnings, which had been flying in a V-formation, began to play follow the leader and sped in a wide circle around the German ship. More smoke puffs appeared on her bow and little catpaws of explosive dust appeared far below and behind the planes. Her smaller antiaircraft guns opened up, sending out a few tracers like Roman candles.

  “Jesus, I thought the Krauts were such hot shots,” Guns said.

  It’s all a matter of form, Paul thought—if you have guns you’re supposed to shoot, even if the targets are flying 400 miles an hour out of range. The Germans were doing what was expected of them, just as a well-bred bull paws the ground. The odd twin-hulled planes continued to speed at a safe distance around the supply ship. The lead plane let out a few bursts to check his guns, and the two others followed suit, falling a little out of their single line formation to do so. It was all very methodical. Paul wondered what the Germans were thinking as they saw the planes warming up to execute them. Did the whole life of a man about to die in battle flash through his mind as it was supposed to do in the brains of drowning men? Perhaps not. Probably the Germans were hoping to take at least one of the planes with them and the heat of even hopeless battle was enough to burn out any rational thoughts. If the Germans were like the American sailors Paul knew, they were more apt to die cursing than praying or thinking fond thoughts about loved ones.

  Suddenly the three planes went into a much broader circle, swooped down to a level only about a hundred yards above the tallest icebergs and headed toward the ship. The rattle of their guns was not as impressive as the other roars, hums and whistlings they made. Nothing seemed to happen as the three planes rocketed from the stern over the bow of the supply ship. The German guns kept blinking like signal lights in their wreaths of smoke. As the planes finished their run and turned into another wide circle, the smoke around the German’s guns suddenly rose higher. At the base of the gray stacks amidship there was a ruddy glow, but still the guns on the bow and stern continued to fire, even when the planes circled almost out of sight before they came back.

  On their second run the planes left the ship afire from stem to stern, but incredibly a few tracer bullets arched out of the smoke and flame in pursuit of the attackers. It was clear that men were dying on that ship and fighting heroically, but the whole scene was curiously lacking in dignity. After making each pass, the planes waggled their wings to each other, obviously an expression of sheer zest, and the men aboard the trawler cheered. Nathan stood on the wing of the bridge staring through his binoculars, his face a grim mask despite the fact that he always had been too softhearted, in Paul’s view, whenever an enlisted man received the slightest punishment. Paul tried to remind himself that the men aboard the supply ship might be the very ones who had sunk the Nanmak and gunned down her boat, but somehow on this sparkling morning, the two events did not seem to be related. Well, Paul reminded himself, the Krauts have played the butcher long enough … “Let’s move in closer. I want to take prisoners, it’s the easiest way to find out about their base,” Paul said.

  While the planes continued to strafe the ship Paul drove the Arluk through scattered ice toward the plumes of smoke. It was possible that the hunter-killer was lurking near enough to make a torpedo run at any time, but Paul felt that she would stay hidden until the planes left. Then anything could happen, unless the planes happened to find the little ship out there in the ice before they went home.

  Leaving the supply ship an inferno of flame and black oily smoke, the planes began flying a search pattern over the surrounding miles of ice. Separating, they each chose a sector to cross and recross, flying just above the peaks of the highest ice castles. Paul kept hoping that he would see one of them execute a little roll to announce the discovery of the hunter-killer, but they just wove back and forth between horizons, following their search pattern. Paul wondered how close they would come or had already come to the little German ship, which might even have worked her way under a projecting ledge of one of the mile-long icebergs near the coast. He’d stay there until the planes left.

  I undoubtedly outgun a little ship li
ke that, Paul thought, but he has torpedoes, and neither of us is worth a damn at a range of more than a mile. In the ability to destroy each other, we must be roughly equal. He has the advantage of speed and maneuverability; I have the advantage of being able to stay at sea almost indefinitely while he’ll have to get back to his base soon before he runs out of fuel.

  Suddenly Paul’s strategy appeared obvious to him: instead of pursuing the hunter-killer he would hide near the mouth of his base and let him come to him. Supposing that the base was in Supportup-Kangerdula Fjord, that shouldn’t be too difficult. But now was not the time to think that out. If he could rescue some survivors from the supply ship they might be persuaded to give all kinds of useful information …

  It took Paul almost an hour to reach the burning hulk of the supply ship. As he drew near he could see that her skipper had jammed her in the ice, where she lay nearly level, still belching smoke and flame, though not so fiercely now. No men could be alive at her guns or on her decks. Paul could see no life as he studied the vessel through the binoculars. She was more of a small passenger liner than a freighter, he saw now—one of those ships which had carried both freight and passengers before the war. She carried many more lifeboats than a freighter would. Three were burning in davits on her port side, four on her starboard. Apparently only one boat had been lowered. Had all but one boatload of men stubbornly stayed aboard long enough to burn?

  The one missing boat was nowhere in evidence as Paul stopped his engine and drifted a thousand yards to windward of the burning hulk in widely scattered storis ice. If the men of this ship had machine-gunned the Nanmak’s boat, they were more likely to hide in the ice than to rush out to be rescued. There was not much wind, and sometimes it backed enough to bring the men of the Arluk the smell of burning oil and perhaps, they imagined, seared flesh. The flames from the German ship made a greedy, sucking noise. The shrieking roars of the planes continuing to search for the smaller ship all around them made speech difficult. Paul climbed up to the crow’s nest to see where a lifeboat might hide. The Arluk was surrounded by bays and islands of ice, any of which could conceal a boat.