Submerged

by Thomas F Monteleone

  And that was to never look back.

  “Ahoy, Seadog!” The amplified sound of the cutter’s bullhorn cut through his thoughts. “Permission to come aboard!”

  The cutter was in close quarters to their vessel, and four seaman were already motoring toward them in a small, sleek boat. Don signaled them over. As captain, he would handle the protocols; Dex was just another passenger, and that was fine with him.

  He stood there waiting for the routine questions. The Coast Guard dealt with water fatalities all the time, and this would only be unique because of the circumstances leading up to it—not many divers breathed their last in the passageways of a Nazi sub.

  Which changed everything.

  Until this moment, Dex hadn’t thought about it much. He’d just kind of subconsciously assumed the sub and its location would remain a…a secret, among him and the others. At least until they’d clocked its identity, picked over it for anything of value.

  But that was over now.

  There was bound to be publicity, which would attract other boats, other divers. Even the Navy would act like they were interested—even if they weren’t.

  It probably wouldn’t be such a big deal in the long run, but there was that small matter of that weird bar of Tommy’s. A subliminal alarm kept beeping at the base of his thoughts, suggesting it might be important. Important enough to keep quiet…for as long as they could.

  The rest of the guys had seemed to instantly sense the odd, delicate situation they were in. Nobody wanted to be interrogated because they had been in the vicinity of somebody dying, and they all probably figured Mike’s death had most likely complicated by their discovery of the wreck. Dex had mentioned the need to keep the news and location of the sub a secret for the time being for several reasons—one, other wreck divers and “treasure hunters” would descend on the boat and it would not only be an absurd circus, but also a lot more dangerous. Two, they hadn’t had enough time to solve some of the boat’s major mysteries—like discovering its mission, whatever was under that hangar-deck, and of course the bar of unrecognizable metal.

  When Dex tried to casually assume responsibility and do all the talking to the Coast Guard officer who needed some answers, none of the other guys acted like they wanted any part of it. After Mike’s body was hauled off, they all drifted away from the railing—a signal that Dex could tell the officer whatever he wanted and they wouldn’t be doing any editing or embellishing.

  Not even Tommy, and thank Christ for that. He strayed up to the bridge with Donnie and sat there keeping his hands warm around a mug of coffee.

  The Ensign with the clipboard and pen had the name Hawkins stenciled on his uniform; he started taking notes as he ran down the standard checklist of questions about the accident. The guy wasn’t overly wary or suspicious and Dex figured this wasn’t the first water accident victim he’d investigated.

  And when Dex gave him his full credentials, especially the part about being a master diver with the Navy, everything changed even more for the better. Their conversation became less of a formal inquest and more of a friendly chat between brothers on the sea. Finally, the talk steered around to the nature of the wreck itself.

  “What’d you guys find down there, anyway?”

  “Well, I was hoping we could keep it quiet for awhile—before the accident, I mean.”

  Hawkins kind of half-grinned sarcastically. “Why? Buried Treasure?”

  “Nah,” said Dex. “World War II wreck. But we wanted a little more time to poke around before it attracted a crowd.”

  “So what is it?”

  “U-boat.”

  The Ensign looked at him with a half-smile. “I’m assuming we’re not talking about ‘the Black Panther’?”

  Dex shook his head. Hawkins had referred to the U-1105, a well-known wreck off Piney Point near the mouth of the Potomac. The sub had gotten its name because of the black rubber coating on its hull to make it less visible to sonar. “C’mon. Of course not. We found a new one.”

  “No kidding?” Ensign Hawkins registered genuine surprise. “Another one in the Bay, that’s kind of cool.”

  Dex managed a half-grin. “Yeah, like I said, we were hoping we could get a little time to knock around on it before everybody else got wind of it.”

  “Yeah, I understand,” said Hawkins. “You get a name on it yet?”

  “Well, we haven’t found anything official yet, we think it might be U-5001.”

  “Yeah? How come?”

  Dex mentioned the numbers stenciled on the interior hatches.

  The Ensign nodded, checked his watch. His demeanor had become more relaxed, and now he continued with his by-the-book questions with an unspoken tone that said he just wanted to get it over with.

  Ten minutes later, he looked into Dex’s face, nodded. “Tell you what, Chief… I’ll try to keep the…ah, exact nature of your wreck kind of vague for as long as I can. Maybe log the report with something like ‘World War II vintage’ or something like that. That might get you 24 hours—maybe more if none of my supes asks for a clarification—but a lot of times they have a poker up their ass about stuff like this. You can understand that, right?”

  “Oh yeah…”

  “I mean, I’m assuming you and your guys feel up to going back down on her.”

  “We were planning on tomorrow. Thanks.”

  The Ensign grinned. “That’s cool. After what you just been through, some guys aren’t up to it.”

  Dex nodded. “Well you know the old saying about when you fall off a horse…”

  “That’s the only way to look at it, I figure.” The Ensign extended his hand, shook with Dex. “Take care of yourself, Chief. I’ll be in touch if I need anything else. And…sorry about what happened, you know?”

  Watching the Coast Guard officer climb into the launch and head back to his cutter, Dex felt uneasy. While he didn’t expect much follow-up from him, he doubted he actually might be able to keep a lid on the news about their sub for very long, if at all. It was too much of a unique event. Didn’t matter, though. Dex knew things had changed with Mike’s death, and he and the other guys would have to adjust to it.

  Like, right away.

  Dex and the rest of the guys cleaned up the decks as Don fired up the engines and headed back in toward the harbor. Nobody talked much, and it was a hell of a way to wrap up a weekend. Somebody was going to have to step up and notify Mike’s family, and Dex knew it wasn’t going to be him if he could help it. Doc had a lot more experience on that end, and that was that.

  The next day was the last scheduled day for their dives, and Dex had a feeling if they didn’t do it tomorrow, they’d never get back down there on their own.

  He knew there’d be a funeral to deal with and maybe some publicity about what happened to poor Mike, but that was not enough reason to postpone the next dive on the sub. No way he could count on a Coast Guard Ensign to protect their salvage rights. They weren’t going to have much time to get some answers, and he needed to know who he could count on.

  After thinking about it for only a second or two, he realized there was only one person he could count on—Dexter McCauley.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Erich Bruckner

  Under Greenland, May 1, 1945

  Bischoff’s efforts to reach anyone at Station One Eleven had been met with silence—other than the white noise of an open channel. That could mean damage to the staff’s equipment, or an unattended radio room. The latter possibility bothered Erich. Communications facilities were never abandoned or ignored—unless some kind of catastrophic event had happened.

  Bischoff had, however, acquired a fix on the open channel, and Erich’s rescue team would be able to home in on it.

  His other concern did not appear as dire. The early report from the damage control team was not as bad as he’d feared.

  A
s suspected, the diving plane on the starboard side had been bent just enough to affect its performance. Since it was located below the waterline, the repair would be troublesome, but not impossible. The breach in the escape hatch, which had cut off the aft torpedo crew, proved more of a problem. And once the U-5001 had surfaced, the water had to be pumped out of the flooded chamber. Kress had a team working feverishly to hammer and bang the hatch back into alignment, but Erich knew there would be no certain way to check the airtight quality of the seal until they were in the open sea, diving under pressure. Not the kind of test any submariner wanted to apply—especially when anything less than total success could be your your demise.

  Before departing the boat, Erich sat in his quarters, staring at his personal journal rather than the boat’s official log. Ever since he’d joined the Kriegsmarine, he’d been keeping his journals—initiating a new one for each new boat on which he’d served. In the beginning, he believed he was doing it for his children. Having come from a military family, it had been a long and honored custom to compile memoirs of a man’s time in service to the Fatherland. But he had since stopped thinking about having a family, and was now recording his personal feelings and observations more out of habit than anything else.

  Better to stop that line of thinking. He wrote down his experiences in self-defense. He needed rational thoughts to shield him from reminders of the terrible loss this war had exacted upon him. But he had no desire to actually test them out. He might re-read his journals on some far future day—if that day would ever come—but not any time soon.

  He reached for a bottle of schnapps, and poured a small glass. He did not prefer the peppermint flavor, but it was all they had provided for the voyage. Erich would not complain because he really needed to drink some alcohol.

  As he sat sipping and staring at the closed cover of his journal, he knew there was no time to make any entries at the moment, but he wondered what the next few hours would bring, what he might write in the next few pages.

  Right now, he needed to face facts head-on. He and his crew had been thrown into a new mission that may change everything. He had no idea what kind of emergency had happened here, and how he dealt with it would surely be crucial. He needed to conclude business here as soon as possible before returning to his original mission, which was in jeopardy if he could not rendezvous with the cruiser, Sturm.

  But as he sat there, trying to organize his thoughts in short, dry sentences, he realized he was ignoring his gut instincts.

  Something about this place did not feel right.

  It was more than its location or its extraordinary geologic profile, but Erich could not identify it any more than to say it disturbed him. Like some other creations of his country’s leaders, this one also…scared him.

  And that was a big problem because he knew he could not let any of his crew know such a thing—not even his officers, except Manny, who would understand, and perhaps share his dark intuition. Newton Bischoff, who was so inflated with all the party hype, would assume there was nothing here beyond the scope of the Third Reich; Helmut Massenburg, being the perfect soldier in an imperfect world, would see this as just another mission to be completed; and Ostermann, with his heavily analytical mind, would see things more or less as a puzzle to be worked out—something no more threatening than a set of Chinese rings.

  Erich, however, could not avoid the feeling it was a bit more complicated than that.

  A knock at the door pulled him from his thoughts.

  “Yes?”

  “Captain, I have news.” Fassbaden’s voice resonated through the cabin door.

  “Come in.”

  Opening the door, Manny leaned his tall frame forward, stepped into the cabin. “Busy?”

  Erich shrugged. “Close the door, Manny.”

  His exec did so, then pulled up the only other chair in the room. He sat with his hands interlaced in front of him as though he were in the waiting room of a doctor. “The rescue team is ready to depart. The hydroplane fix will probably hold, Kress tells me. The aft escape hatch may be a problem. The tolerances are small, and he cannot guarantee a proper seal.”

  Erich exhaled softly. “Without a machine shop and a foundry at his disposal, I cannot expect miracles. My only concern now is that we are seaworthy enough to continue the mission.”

  “I believe we are. We can always continue with only the exit chamber flooded and the lower hatch sealed.”

  “Good. Good,” said Erich, looking at his old friend with a sardonic grin. “The larger question is when we will continue the original mission.”

  Manny leaned forward, removed his officer’s cap and ran a large, bony hand through his thick hair. Like many of the crew, he had also stopped shaving and his beard was struggling through the stage that made any man look like an unkempt tramp. “I agree. How much time will we lose in this place?”

  “Exactly. Something happened here, Manny. And I have a feeling it was very bad. There may not be anyone left to rescue or recover.”

  “And I assume you want my input.”

  Erich nodded. “But quickly, we need to get ashore.”

  Reaching for a cigarette, he shook two out of his pack. After he and Erich had ignited them, they leaned back, watched the thin blue streams they exhaled.

  “All right,” said Manny. “As you may expect, I have been thinking about our situation. We are now in the month of May. Eisenhower is almost in Berlin, and if we are smart, we should be praying he beats the Russians to the Reichstag.”

  Erich knew where his friend was headed with the conversation. They shared a similar one in a bar called die Wharfratte in Trondheim before shipping out on the U-5001. There were many thousands of very unhappy Russian soldiers looking for some revenge against the Germans. If the communists gained control of the Fatherland, there would be a terrible punishment meted out, whereas the Americans would, in their patronizing way, believe they should spread their democracy over the landscape like so much fertilizer.

  “Are you suggesting we cancel the remainder of the mission?” Erich was not ready to admit he had entertained that very notion; he needed input from his friend.

  “No, I have not reached that point, yet. We need to see what has happened here. But we also need to consider all the implications, all the options.”

  “No doubt you have been thinking about them.”

  Fassbaden nodded. He held up his hand, ticking off each point, finger by finger. “One—we are expected to meet the Sturm in six days. Two—Ostermann says we are presently a little less than 1600 nautical miles from rendezvous at Montauk Point. Three—that means—even if we maintained a less than optimum submerged speed of 20 knots—we will need a minimum of four days to be in position.”

  Erich grinned. “It looks like you have given this very much thought. What about the maneuvers? The tests were never completed.”

  Fassbaden shook his head, smiled. “I think we can safely conclude this boat is seaworthy. Were it not, we would be dead by now.”

  “Agreed.” Erich stood. “Let’s get that rescue party off.”

  Manny hesitated.

  “What? More?”

  Fassbaden shrugged. “Not that much. I would never say this to anyone else, but what is the point of finishing this mission? We both agree the war is over. The ‘Bulge’ proved that.”

  “It was not von Runstedt’s fault,” said Erich wistfully. “It was a bad plan.”

  “You speak as if our ‘Fuhrer’ actually had a few good ones.” Fassbaden scowled. “Christ in heaven, how did we get ourselves into this mess?”

  “We would make ourselves crazy trying to answer that. Stay on course—we must decide if the mission is even worth completing.”

  Fassbaden looked at him like a detective sorting out evidence. “If you know more than the rest of us, then I am not qualified to give my opinion.”

  “Th
at is true. And there is one part of the mission entrusted only to me.”

  “Which is?”

  Erich shrugged. Given their current situation, did it matter if he shared top secrets with his friend? “Are you telling me you have not considered the facts you already know? Manny, you have probably pulled together all the final pieces of the puzzle.”

  Fassbaden nodded. “I have been thinking, yes. Let’s see… We carry a single plane and its payload, and we are to pick up its crew and an additional bomb. Close to New York. To what end? Why would we want to send a single plane to attack an American city?”

  Erich stared at him. “I think you know. Tell me.”

  “It is real?” said Fassbaden. “They did it.”

  Erich nodded. “My orders were to inform the crew at the rendezvous point. So what if I am a little early.”

  “Unbelievable!”

  Both men sat silently for a moment. They had both been privy to the rumors circulating through High Command that Heisenberg and the rest of German physicists were a lot closer to creating what was called a “fission bomb” than anyone imagined. Their quest had been called Project Norway, and the payload aboard the ME-5X was indeed a product of that secret weapons program.

  “They want us to drop a super-bomb on New York.”

  “Yes, and if it works, a second one on Washington. The Sturm is bringing it to us.”

  “Oh my God…” Manny looked pale.

  “The question begins and ends with us. Do we need to do this?” said Erich. “Will the killing of maybe 100,000 civilians change the course of the war, or just make us a special group of murderers?”

  “What about Dresden? Why did they do it to a place like that?”