Ice Brothers

by Sloan Wilson

  The three Lightnings broke their V-formation as they flew separate search patterns over the horizon and back again. Paul imagined the Germans in their ice-covered ship, checking to make sure they were emitting no smoke. He wondered whether he should remove the snow from his red decks to identify his ship to the pilots, but decided that the fly-boys might be too quick to attack the first speck they saw in the ice. These Lightnings were army air force. If his brother had the ill luck to be transferred from his duty as a flight instructor, he might fly one of them on missions such as this. The thought of his brother screaming overhead, or someone much like him, somehow did not increase Paul’s confidence in the operation. Bill would be just the one to shoot first and ask questions later, especially the day after a PBY had been lost.

  After about an hour of crisscrossing the ice field, the planes roared away to the west as quickly as they had come. Once more nothing could be heard except the howl of the wind. Paul went to the forecastle for more coffee. A dozen men were playing checkers at the big V-shaped table there. Flags, who had little signaling to do these days, had organized a tournament. He was manufacturing more sets by sawing disks off the end of a broom handle, and Blake was using a ruler to draw intersecting lines on squares of cardboard. His chef’s hat tilted to the back of his head, Cookie was in the act of demolishing a row of Guns’s men, and the crew cheered as though it had just won a battle.

  Returning to the bridge with a mug of coffee to warm his hands, Paul sat on a stool by the wheel staring out over the seemingly speeding Arctic wastes. Now that the planes had gone, the German was probably getting under way, using the daylight to get as close as he could to his base. Probably the German was smart enough to know that the captain of the American trawler was not entirely stupid. Quite possibly he would expect the Arluk to try to block his return. What would he do? Try to creep in close to shore, or make a bold, high-speed dash for port after sneaking as close as possible in the shelter of the ice? Either way, he could not avoid being seen or being picked up by radar and coming within range of Paul’s guns before he could duck behind the rocky points that formed the entrance to the fjord.… Sooner or later he will run out of fuel and have to come to me. He may fire his torpedoes, but he’ll play hell trying to hit a ship as small as this when I’m coming toward him. I’ll outgun him, and I’ll sink him.

  Maybe. Overconfidence could be lethal. Anything could happen. Guns could jam in such low temperatures, and the German captain knew this country, he might have been right in this part of the coast for the past six months or more. Maybe, like Mowrey, he was an ice pilot with a lifetime of experience. I hope the son of a bitch drinks, Paul thought, remembering the empty vodka bottle which the Nanmak had picked up. Dear God, let the son of a bitch get drunk.

  Even to Paul that seemed a curious prayer. Studying his chart, he tried to guess what strategy the German could possibly use, but could see no way the hunter-killer could sneak past the sentry outside her door.

  At noon, a fat-bellied twin-engined bomber approached from the west. Paul heard its engines first and gave the lookouts hell for covering their ears too well with their watch caps. It was clearly no light plane, however. Instead of flying out to sea, it paralleled the coast, turning to fly low over Supportup-Kangerdula several times. Undoubtedly it was taking more pictures. The army air force still was trying to pinpoint a target before sending in heavy bombers.

  Twice the reconnaissance plane roared over the fjord at what would have been treetop level if Greenland had had any trees. Probably they were trying to tease the German gunners into giving away their position, but it did not work. No tracers arched from the barren rock toward the plane. It might as well have been inspecting the North Pole.

  At two that afternoon three more Lightnings roared in to search the ice pack. Paul did not expect them to find the German, but at least they would make him hole up again. Soon it began to snow and the planes flashed away, disappearing into the murk over the mountains.

  Gradually the wind abated, but the snowstorm developed into a blizzard. Drifts mounded the well deck and had to be shoveled away from the guns. Good, Paul thought. No need to worry about being seen now. Curtains of snow enclosed the ship in a circle hardly wider than her length. The German would play hell trying to find the entrance to the fjord in this stuff.

  How long could he last out there in the ice pack? The old Norwegian had said the hunter-killer carried fuel only for about three days, and tomorrow would be his third. Of course, he wouldn’t burn much while lying motionless, but even his heaters eventually would drain his meager tanks. Sooner or later he would have to come in.

  All the next day the blizzard continued. Shortly after noon, Nathan came from the radio shack to the bridge, holding his clipboard in his mittened hands and a pencil in his teeth. “Message from GreenPat,” he said drily, and gave the board, with its paper flaked with snow, to Paul.

  “Yesterday’s air photos show no, repeat no sign of any German base at or near Supportup-Kangerdula,” Commander GreenPat said. “Camouflaged base is still possible. When present mission completed, return Angmagssalik and organize shore party for reconnaissance on land. Try to get help of Danes and native Greenlanders. Greenland Administration officials are ordering all Danes at Angmagssalik to cooperate. Keep me informed.”

  Paul had a sudden vision of himself and his crew struggling in waist-deep snow, falling through crevices in the ice and trying to scale icy mountains. What the hell did Green-Pat think his Coast Guardsmen were, Alpine troops? No one aboard the ship had any training or experience in fighting ashore anywhere, never mind the Arctic. Most members of the crew were Southerners, farm boys from Georgia and the Carolinas. Even without the dangers of battle, they could not be expected to survive long ashore in the Arctic. How could the Eskimos help them flounder through blizzards in temperatures like this? It was even colder ashore than at sea, much colder. The Danes usually stayed in their little houses in winter, and how could those old people be of much use, even if they could be trusted?

  The more he thought about it, the more GreenPat’s order seemed to Paul like a death sentence, but now was not the time to think about it. “When present mission completed …” GreenPat had said. What a polite way to say, “When you’ve killed the hunter-killer.” At least Green-Pat had said “when,” not “if,” as though the outcome was assured. How nice to make such plans in the warm office at the Narsarssuak headquarters.

  Was it really possible for the Germans to camouflage a base so well that even the sophisticated new methods of aerial photography could not detect it? Why was Paul so sure that the Germans were based at Supportup-Kangerdula, anyway? He had come to that conclusion simply because of the presence of the supply ship and the information he had got from a Norwegian who had thrown his lot in with the Germans long ago. Maybe the Germans were doing everything possible to make the Americans think their base was at Supportup-Kangerdula, while they were building a big installation somewhere else on the coast.

  Paul’s doubts were rising to the point of complete confusion when Nathan knocked at his cabin door.

  “Skipper, I’m getting very high frequency signals that are close. They’re too high for direction-finding, but I think the base is talking to its ship. If so, the hunter-killer must be within line of sight. Maybe the Krauts have a high tower ashore or even a transmitter on a mountain, but the guy they’re talking to still can’t be too damn far away.”

  “Then they do have some kind of base near.”

  “There’s no doubt about that. They’re blasting my ears off. Short messages in code, of course.”

  Paul again studied his chart. The Germans were near—of that at least he was sure.

  That afternoon Paul drank so much coffee that he noticed a slight tremor in his fingers. The snow fell heavier than ever, so thickly that he could hardly see his own bow. The hunter-killer couldn’t find her base now, wherever the hell she was.

  It was only midafternoon when darkness fell, the pure black
ness of an Arctic blizzard. Paul had just lain down for a nap when Nathan again knocked.

  “Skipper, their base is sending DF signals—they’re making no bones about it at all. They must be trying to give their ship a bearing.”

  “Can you pinpoint the base?”

  “Sure, it’s at Kangerdula. I can’t tell how far inland, but my bearing cuts right across the mouth of the fjord.”

  “They’re trying to bring him in,” Paul said. “He probably doesn’t know where the hell he is out there and is running out of fuel, so he just said what the hell and requested a DF bearing.”

  “Looks like it.”

  “I was right all along,” Paul concluded. “The son of a bitch is going to make a run for it. Ring up general quarters. I want all guns manned. You stick to the radar.”

  The men slid and a few fell on the icy, snowy decks as they ran to the guns. Nathan stood hunched over the radar set.

  “I can’t see anything moving,” he said.

  The wind howled and the men jumped up and down to stay warm. In only about ten minutes they began yelling for relief.

  The German could show up anytime, Paul reflected, but on the other hand, he still might be able to delay for hours or even days. There was no point in Paul’s turning his gun crews into ice statues. The lookouts couldn’t see anything through those driving curtains of snow anyway. Securing from general quarters, Paul told the men to stand by below for instant action.

  “Just unbutton your parkas,” he said. “Don’t take them off. He can flash by our bow anytime.”

  In the forecastle the men sat in their open parkas and took to playing checkers again. Nathan would not leave the radar set and Paul sat on a stool by the wheel staring into nothingness.

  For more than two hours nothing happened. Then Sparks reported another brief transmission of homing signals from the base.

  “He’s getting close,” Paul said. “He just wants a final check before making a run. Maybe he’ll use a star shell to see the entrance to the fjord.”

  At about eight-thirty in the evening Paul saw a flicker of light to the east. Pushing the door to the pilothouse open against the wind, he saw a signal light flashing through the slanting snow. It looked close, but if it was a very powerful light, it could be miles away, he realized. By the time Nathan got to the wing of the bridge to read the code, it disappeared. There was no answer from the shore.

  “I got a visual bearing on him,” Nathan said. “Zero nine eight. The radar doesn’t show anything out there but ice, fairly loosely packed. Do you want to go looking for him?”

  “Maybe that’s just what he wants,” Paul said. “If he could get us to playing tag out there with him, he could beat us in.”

  “That figures.”

  For an hour nothing more happened. Then more lights flickered, this time to the north. Either a very dim light was being used or it was far away, perhaps beyond the rocky point.

  “I think he still wants us to come out and play games,” Paul said, but the thought suddenly hit him that there might be several enemy ships out there signaling to each other. No, that was not reasonable. Where would all those ships come from on a night like this in such ice conditions? The Germans wouldn’t have a whole fleet of icebreakers!

  Plotting the bearings they had taken on the two lights, Paul saw that one ship making only about five knots could have made both signals if he was only about three miles away. In that case he could be using an ordinary signal lamp. Did he have any purpose except to lure the Arluk away from the entrance to his base and to confuse?

  Sparks telephoned from the radio shack to say that more homing signals were being sent from the base. They came every half hour for two minutes, Nathan soon figured. An hour of unrelieved darkness followed. Suddenly the lights flickered again to the east, seemingly very far away, but one ship could change bearings so fast only if he was very close.

  “Why aren’t you getting anything on radar?” Paul asked.

  “He’s damned good at keeping behind ice ridges and bergs, for one thing,” Nathan said. “Heavy snow confuses radar and a small wooden ship doesn’t make much of a blip. Wait a minute. Something’s moving on a bearing of a hundred and one degrees, range about two and a half miles, but there he goes behind a berg.”

  The telephone on the bridge rang.

  “Sparks says the base is sending steady homing signals now,” the quartermaster reported.

  “He’s about to make his run,” Paul said. “Sound general quarters. Send Guns up here.”

  Even the bleating of the klaxon alarm was deadened by the snow, robbed of some of its urgency. The men scrambled to their action stations and Guns came to the pilothouse. His black beard and mustache were streaked with snow, making him look curiously old.

  “Guns, the Kraut has been flashing lights all around us,” Paul said, “but he’s got to cross our bow if he’s going into the fjord in there. Forget the five-incher—he won’t be close enough, and he’ll go by too fast for a fixed gun. Use the three-incher, the twenties and the fifties. I’m going to close with him as much as I can. Tell the men on the guns to aim for the pilothouse and gun crews. I hope to surprise him. Good luck.”

  “Do you want the stern fifties, or shall I move them to bear over the bow?”

  “If you fire forward from the flying bridge, you better put a pretty good man up there. If he panics, he could shoot up the men on our own bow.”

  “I’ll put Blake up there, sir. I’ve trained him good.”

  There was a clatter as Guns moved the fifties on the flying bridge.

  “He’s got his bearing by now,” Paul said. “He’s ready to make his run. Can you see anything on the radar?”

  “No,” Nathan said. “Damn it, real snow makes electronic snow when it’s as heavy as this.”

  “Hell, he’s got to come to us in the end, no matter what he does,” Paul said. Going to the wing of the bridge, he shouted, “I know it’s cold, but stay on your toes. He’s going to cross our bow any minute.”

  Nothing happened. The wind continued to howl in unrelieved darkness. The men jumped up and down beside the guns, slapping their mittens against their thighs. Five minutes went by, ten minutes, half an hour.

  “Skipper,” Guns called. “We’re damn near freezing to death. How about letting half the crew warm up?”

  “Okay. Spell each other. Ten minutes below and ten on deck.”

  After an hour of the men scrambling back and forth, this procedure began to seem ridiculous. Maybe the damned Kraut is trying to exhaust us, Paul thought.

  “Guns, just have the men stand by for a quick call in the forecastle,” he said. “This may go on all night. You can sleep if you stay dressed.”

  The men hurried through the forecastle door, cursing as snow swirled after them. Two men had to struggle against the wind to shut it. Going to his cabin, Paul studied the chart which by this time he had memorized. Judging from the last lights observed, the German was due east, hiding in heavy ice about two and a half miles from the Arluk and a little less than five miles from the entrance to the fjord. Now he had his bearings from his radio direction finder, and he could judge his distance offshore by the depth of the water. Sure that he was in a position to make a dash for shelter, he would probably wait until the very first streaks of dawn gave him an outline, at least, of the fjord’s entrance. Dawn was not due for another eight hours. Would it be best for Paul to catch enough sleep to be alert then?

  Probably, but Paul was much too tense to lie down. Returning to the pilothouse, he sat on the stool by the wheel, nodding with his chin resting on the tightly buttoned collar of his parka. Flags was standing by the helm and the quartermaster was leaning on the engineroom telegraph. In their slow Southern voices they were discussing bars they had visited in New Orleans, rating them according to the availability of women. Paul dozed. Several times he awoke with a start as the wind died a little or increased its howl. Going out on the wing of the bridge, he stared into the pelting snow, saw noth
ing and returned to the stool. Time seemed at a standstill. The drone of the Southern voices never changed its tempo or its subject. Paul’s right toes began to itch. Too tired to take off his heavy felt-lined boot and double layer of woolen socks, he stood up to stamp on his right toes with his left heel. At this moment he was stunned by two sharp reports which exploded somewhere astern of the ship. The sounds came from the north, where he had least expected action. Running to the starboard wing of the bridge, he looked aft to see a stab of fire near the horizon as another report rang out. It looked as though he were being fired at from several angles, all to the north.

  It was not true that Paul panicked, as he afterward accused himself of doing. He simply assumed that the hunter-killer or another ship had worked into the ice to the north of him and was opening fire. In the light of that assumption, everything he did was logical. He rang up general quarters, called for full power astern, jerked the ship from the ice and turned her. Only about five hundred yards away there was a large iceberg, which he hurried to put between himself and the explosions. He had almost accomplished this when there was a deafening burst of machine guns from the east, the very direction he had first expected the hunter-killer to appear. Tracers were arching onto the deck of the Arluk. There was the sound of hundreds of bullets smashing glass and splintering wood. Someone screamed and finally the Arluk began to return the fire. Tracers arched back and forth. Suddenly a searchlight stabbed at the mouth of the fjord, and went out. Paul caught a glimpse of the hunter-killer speeding through broken ice toward the shelter of the land. Guns spat flame from her bow and stern. The tracers from the Arluk’s guns were falling short of her. The light flicked on once more for about three seconds, and the ship was gone.

  There was sudden silence, broken only by the sound of someone sobbing. Flames were climbing from the flying bridge.