Ice Brothers

by Sloan Wilson

  CHAPTER 42

  The relatively shallow bay which Nathan had chosen was about six miles up the fjord, west of the settlement. Just as they were arriving, the moon broke through the clouds and set the snowy banks and icy mountains all around them glittering more brightly than they did during many Arctic days. The anchorage was in a semicircular cove protected by a string of smooth-backed granite islands which under snow were almost indistinguishable from growlers, small icebergs. Since the chart showed only one channel deep and unobstructed enough for even small ships, it was an ideal place to protect with mines.

  “Nathan, we don’t have to mess with the mines tonight,” Paul said. “If he is going to come after us, he’ll have to figure out where we are first.”

  “It’s no sweat,” Nathan replied. “All we have to do is drop the stuff. I have everything ready. The only thing that will take any time at all is I have to lead wire to the nearest island and rig an aerial there. I’ll need the whaleboat.”

  “The wire goes from the aerial to the charges on the bottom?”

  “That’s right. It’s a pretty crude rig, but I guarantee it.”

  “Is the wire waterproof?”

  “Come on, skipper! Do you really think you have to tell me to be sure to put waterproof wire underwater?”

  “Where did you get the stuff?”

  “The tin can, of course. Do you think I got nothing but ice cream and steaks when I kept sending the boat over to her?”

  The diffident Nathan was fast disappearing, Paul noted, and was being replaced by a man damned near as cocky as Mowrey in his own way. Nathan was getting so he wouldn’t take any crap from anybody, including his about to be twenty-three-year-old skipper.

  The job of laying the mines did not take much time, but the men grumbled at the heavy work involved in dropping three 300-pound depth charges overboard without fouling the wire. “Christ, they don’t mess around with mines even at the big bases on the west coast,” Flags said.

  The aerial which Nathan placed on the icy rocks nearest the channel was as slender as a trout rod stuck in the snow and as difficult to see. When Nathan came back aboard, Paul towed the whaleboat to an anchorage as near to shore as possible. That would make the ship harder to see from the air, and he wanted to put as much distance as possible between the vessel and a total of 900 pounds of TNT. The spot he chose for dropping the anchor was about a mile from the entrance to the channel, far enough to reduce the shock and the vulnerability of the Arluk to the all too well remembered machine guns of the hunter-killer if she opened fire before the mines got her.

  As soon as the ship was anchored, Nathan set up a black box with an innocent appearing white button in the pilothouse near the engineroom telegraph. Paul assembled all hands to listen while Nathan explained that a touch of that button would blow up the whole entrance to the bay. A few of the men, including Seth Farmer and Cookie, looked impressed, but Chief Banes was skeptical and some of the men obviously thought it was, so to speak, going a little overboard.

  Maybe his precautions were excessive, Paul thought as he toured the ship before going to his bunk, making sure that a good man and an officer would always be on watch in the pilothouse, that the red decks on the forecastlehead and flying bridge were covered with snow, that the radar would always be manned in periods of bad visibility and the 20-millimeter antiaircraft guns at the ready whenever the skies were clear. With the sound of machine-gun bullets smashing into the superstructure of the trawler still reverberating in his ears, it was not necessary to remind himself that there was no such thing as excessive precaution.

  Lying in his bunk that night, Paul tried to imagine what the captain of the hunter-killer, the Valkyrie for Christ’s sake, was like and what he would do. In his mind, Paul even gave the man a name and an image: Fat Herman. Fat Herman had succeeded in outwitting Hansen and everyone else aboard the Nanmak. He had been ruthless enough to gun down the survivors instead of trying to cope with the problem of prisoners aboard a small ship. He had been clever enough to sucker Paul himself for fair with his damned outboard skiff or timed charges. What was he thinking now?

  Probably he’s as mad at me as I’m mad at him, Paul thought. After all, I called in the planes to sink his supply ship. Fatso must be aware that I know where his base is and am just trying to figure out the best way to attack it. He must know about all the air power we’ve got. Probably in the back of his mind Fatso even knows that Germany will lose the war. He thinks of himself as the underdog, just like all captains of small ships do, but with far more reason than I have. Being that the blimp boy is a Kraut, he will be both brave and stupid about everything in war except the mechanics of battle. He will love the idea of a last-ditch stand, dying for his fatherland, going down in a blaze of glory. Even in defeat he will long to show how well he can handle a bloody battle ax. So he will probably attack me. He will figure that I’ve crawled into the nearest port to lick my wounds and plan my next move against him. He probably knows this country well, or has good charts modernized with aerial photography. He has a fast torpedo boat. What could be more to his taste than a quick dash into the enemy’s fjord to catch him all unprepared at a wharf or at anchor and to sink him with a torpedo fired at point-blank range? German subs had sneaked into a great British naval base at Scappa Floe. Stealing into an undefended Greenland fjord to sink a trawler should not appear difficult to him. Maybe he had thought enough by now to be kicking himself for not finishing off the Arluk while he had a chance and was eager to complete his job.

  When would he come? He’d plan to arrive off the mouth of the fjord in darkness, but to enter at dawn or in bright moonlight. First he would have to make sure of the Arluk’s exact position. If his light planes were not yet ready to fly, he might have spies among the Danes or Eskimos, or he could send a scout to Angmagssalik, just as Paul had sent one to his base. If the Germans had not made friends with any Eskimos, one of them might know enough about the Arctic to try a thirty-mile journey on the ice himself.

  Of course this was all pure speculation, Paul reminded himself. Perhaps the hunter-killer was repairing her engines, perhaps she was preparing an elaborate hiding place in expectation of air attack, or maybe Herman was just drinking his Polish vodka and taking it easy for a few days. Even in time of war, nothing was what usually happened. Still, it was comforting to think that old Seth, who was now standing watch in the pilothouse, could blow up any ship that tried to get into their cove by placing one of his gnarled, arthritic fingers on a small white button.

  What if the damned thing didn’t work? No machinery could be counted on entirely and as far as Paul knew, Nathan had not tested his rig. Maybe Fatso would have the last laugh after all, and the last thing the men of the Arluk would see would be one more glimpse of that sleek, speeding hunter-killer with the machine guns blazing from her decks as a torpedo jumped from her bow.

  No, machinery could not be counted on, but some men could, and Nathan would not be suckered, not in his chosen field, Paul was suddenly sure. Feeling deliciously safe, he slept the sleep of the self-deluded.

  This time he was able to sleep his fill. It was dawn when he awoke, the start of a short but bright winter day. As the sun rose over the tops of the mountains, the whole fjord glittered so brightly that the crew began searching frantically to find enough dark glasses for all hands. Paul was drinking coffee in the forecastle and nibbling the end of a fresh croissant, when the general alarm went off and Flags came running in to shout, “Light plane, skipper! He don’t look like he could hurt a flea, but Mr. Green said to sound the general alarm.”

  Paul hurried to the bridge. He could hear the drone of a distant plane as he ran, but when he first scanned the sky, he could see nothing. Looking in the direction in which Nathan pointed, he spied a ski plane that looked hardly bigger than a fly as it flew just above the silvery ridge of the mountain across the fjord. It didn’t look as though it could drop a bomb much bigger than a hand grenade, but probably it was already radioing the positi
on of the Arluk to Fatso and it could send high-frequency weather reports great distances.

  “Can you take over, skipper?” Nathan said. “I better radio GreenPat. If he’s got a Lightning in the air, it might get here in time to catch the guy.”

  “Give it a try,” Paul said, but the ski plane had already disappeared on the other side of the mountain. When a Lightning roared in almost an hour later, its pilot had to content himself with swooping in futile circles over the frozen wastelands, the banshee shriek of his engines and wings echoing off the mountains loudly enough to rattle the dishes in Cookie’s galley.

  After the Lightning had gone, Nathan said, “Skipper, do you want to inspect the prisoner camp? Mr. Williams and Boats are kind of proud of the way they’ve set it up.”

  “I guess I should have a look at it,” Paul said, though the idea of seeing the prisoners for some reason upset him unreasonably.

  “Before we go, I’d like to do something that may seem silly,” Nathan said, looking oddly embarrassed.

  “What?”

  “I’d like to practice with this damn pistol,” he replied, putting his hand on the handle of the .45 automatic in the holster on his belt. “I keep carrying the thing around and I even waved it at a few of the prisoners when we were getting them settled, but I’ve never actually shot it. I’ve figured out how to put the safety off and how to change clips, but I wouldn’t know what the hell to do if it jammed and I doubt if I could hit anything I couldn’t practically touch. Do you mind if I get Guns to give me a lesson before we visit the prisoners?”

  “That’s a good idea,” Paul said. “I’ve shot mine, but I doubt if I could hit much of anything and I wouldn’t know what to do if it jammed. Let’s get Guns to show both of us.”

  For a few minutes no one could find Guns aboard the ship and Paul wondered whether he had gone crazy enough to jump overboard, perhaps in pursuit of Germans. Finally he was located in the engineroom. From Chief Banes he had got a big flat file, the hardest steel available aboard the ship, and he was in the process of grinding it down on an emery wheel to make a murderous knife. He carried this half-finished scimitar to the well deck, and before giving his officers a lesson in the care and use of .45 automatics, demonstrated how he planned to take off a German’s head with a single swipe.

  After discovering that the mechanism of the pistols was not as complex as it looked, Paul and Nathan engaged in target practice, blasting away at empty bottles and cans which Cookie provided. At first they could hit nothing, and the assembled crew mixed their laughter with jeers. After firing three clips, both Paul and Nathan could sink a can at a distance of about ten yards.

  “Do you want to practice quick draws?” Nathan asked Paul with a grin.

  “I’m still afraid I’d shoot my foot off. I’ll have a shoot-out with you, though. You take ten shots and I’ll take ten. Guns, throw the cans as far as you can. Nathan, I bet ten bucks I can sink more of the bastards with ten shots than you can.”

  “You’re on!” Nathan said. “You take the first ten. Get the cans way out there, Guns.”

  Guns went to the flying bridge to achieve more distance with throws. He managed to toss a big peach can so far that Paul needed three shots to sink it. Next Guns threw a catsup bottle even further.

  “Catsup bottles aren’t fair!” Paul said. “I can hardly see it.”

  “Have you got a catsup bottle for me?” Nathan asked.

  “I got two left,” Guns replied.

  “Then we each get one catsup bottle and nine cans.”

  “You can’t take your nine cans first,” Paul said after firing and missing the bobbing neck of the almost invisible bottle. “These things are almost impossible to hit.”

  After the fourth try, Paul shattered the bottle. His final score was one bottle and two cans. When Nathan’s turn came, he held his pistol in both hands and steadied the barrel on a rail.

  “No fair!” Paul said.

  “All’s fair in love and war,” Nathan replied.

  The crew cheered as Nathan won the contest by sinking a bottle and four cans. Paul took a ten-dollar bill from his wallet and gave it to him.

  They took the whaleboat about three miles in the direction of the settlement. The island lay only about a hundred and fifty yards off the end of a point, where Boats and Nathan had set up a .50-caliber machine gun to command the whole area. Fast tidal currents jostled small pieces of ice as they swirled around the island. Obviously this was a place from which no man could escape without a boat. Three sod huts with squat tile chimneys from which acrid coal smoke rose filled the middle of the island and no one was visible outside. The Eskimos had built a kind of igloo only about six feet from the machine gun on the point. They had inserted a pane of glass through which the guards could watch any activity on the island. A portable searchlight from the ship with its box of batteries was on top of this structure.

  “We don’t have any guards on the island at all,” Nathan said. “I figured it would be too easy for the Krauts to jump them and hold them hostage. I commandeered the Danes’ launch. It’s tied up on the other side of the point. I can’t see any way those men can escape.”

  Before visiting the prisoners, they stopped at the point. Boats, who had the watch, came to meet the boat and held the painter while Paul took a brief look into the ice hut. There was an oil heater there under a small hole in the roof, a tarpaulin on the ice floor, a canvas cot on which a seaman napped and packing boxes for chairs under the window overlooking the island. Six automatic rifles were stacked in a corner. The place hardly looked comfortable, but it at least was warm. As Paul and Nathan climbed back into the boat, Boats said, “I’ll pipe them out to meet you.” Putting his boatswain’s whistle to his lips, he blew a piercing blast. Immediately a parka-coated figure came from the door of each hut.

  “I’ve got them trained pretty good,” Boats said. “If they don’t come out smartly when I pipe for them I shoot a few rounds right around their damned huts.”

  “What do they do when they want to get in touch with you?”

  “I gave them a mouth foghorn. If they want something, they send one man out of the huts, no more. We send the boat in for him and talk here. That way they don’t have much of a chance to start something.”

  “Do they give you many complaints?”

  “They did at first.”

  “What did you do?” Paul asked.

  “I don’t know. Mr. Green talked to them.”

  Paul decided to inspect the prisoners from the boat without going ashore.

  Boats got a megaphone and yelled at the three men standing outside the huts. They came as close to the end of the point as they could to hear. In English Boats was telling them to have all hands line up on the shore of their island for inspection. They gestured that they did not understand.

  “Some of them know English and some don’t, skipper, or maybe they just understand when they want to. Can you tell them in German?”

  Paul repeated the order in German. The prisoners ran to their huts, and soon all the men tumbled out, buttoning their parkas and pulling on mittens. A limping figure whom Paul recognized as the lieutenant who had tried to escape gave an order, and the prisoners fell into a single file facing the machine gun, behind which Boats now stood. They waited, shifting nervously and rubbing their mittened hands together while Paul and Nathan got in the boat. The water obviously was deep right up to the icy beach of the island. Circling around to approach with his bow into the swirling current, Paul found he could parallel the shore only about fifteen feet from the line of men. Again he was struck by the fact that they resembled his own crew so closely. Most of them in their twenties, they stared stolidly at the two American officers in the boat. Neither fear nor anger showed in their faces, only discomfort from the cold. Only one man, one of the oldest and the fattest, returned the stare of Nathan and Paul with anything which could be interpreted as defiance. He stood near the end of the line, and when the boat came abreast of him, he spat and wip
ed his lips with the back of his right mitten.

  “That one always does that when he sees me,” Nathan said calmly. “I thought of having the boys throw a bucket of water on him, but what the hell. If I was in a concentration camp, I’d probably spit.”

  “And the Krauts would probably bash your face in with a rifle butt,” Paul said. “I don’t like it. I’m not in a mood for disrespect.”

  Paul slowed the engine enough to keep the boat stationary in the current before he called in German, “Lieutenant, bring your men to attention.”

  The lieutenant barked, and the men stiffened.

  “Lieutenant, tell your fat man near the end of the line that if he spits again in the presence of an American officer, we’ll have him wetted down with a bucket. He’ll make a nice ice statue. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, captain,” the lieutenant said with what appeared to be respect and he shouted at the fat man, whose face became corpse-like, pale and motionless.

  “Lieutenant, do you have enough food, water, shelter and heat?” Paul shouted.

  “A bare minimum for survival, captain, but conditions here are intolerable. I shall have to make a complaint through official channels as soon as I can.”

  “You’re better off than the men from the Nanmak. Don’t give me any shit, lieutenant. You might not live long enough to complain.”

  Paul gunned the engine of the boat and returned to the Arluk. Although he did not regret anything he had said, he felt shaken. Maybe I’m too damned used to thinking of myself as the underdog, he thought. Glancing at Nathan, he saw that he too looked unhappy. The role of the victor is hard to learn, but it’s better than being a loser, he thought. Still, how come there’s no pleasure on any side of this damn war?