Ice Brothers (54 page)

Tired as he was, Nathan would not leave the radar set. To prepare himself for what might be a big day, Paul turned in. He had slept less than three hours when Nathan called him.

“Skipper, I've lost the little one,” he said. “She might be lying on the other side of the big one, or behind any of the big bergs.”

“Could she be headed this way?”

“She might dodge from berg to berg for a while, but I'd pick her up if she kept moving for long. Both ships are playing possum, I guess. The only reason I haven't lost the big one is that I've learned to recognize her blip even when she's not moving.”

They're playing a waiting game, Paul thought, but what did they have to wait for? Stepping to the wing of the bridge, he stared into the darkness. The fog was not quite as thick as before, not overhead, anyway. The moon was invisible, but a faint glow was managing to get through.

If the fog cleared before morning or on subsequent nights, the Lightnings could attack if Paul could illuminate their target with star shells. The tiny three-inch gun on his bow was the only one he had that could fire those, and he was ashamed to realize that he did not know its effective range.

“Quartermaster, get Guns up here.”

When Guns arrived on the bridge he was blinking sleepily. His long hair and black beard looked as though they had not been combed in weeks.

“Guns, how close do I have to be to a target before you can put a star shell over it?”

“Well, that three-inch twenty-three ain't much good, sir. A mile maybe? I don't trust it.”

“At a mile how many shells would you have to fire before you got one over the target?”

“You couldn't count on the first one, or the second. Maybe the third.”

“If the enemy has six-inch guns and good fire control, we wouldn't last long if he was only a mile away, would we?”

“Not if he could see us, sir, and not if he had radar.”

If there was no fog, the German would see the flash of the three-inch gun, and would be quick to respond. Why take such a chance when the Lightnings could do the job almost without risk on the first clear dawn?

Doing nothing was obviously the best course of action, if it could be called that. The large German ship almost certainly was stuck again and the smaller one was remaining motionless to achieve invisibility in the ice pack on radar. The
Arluk
remained within radar range, but too far away to hit or be hit. This was a battle without motion, without sound and without anything that could be seen, except for the glow of the
Arluk
's radar. The weather remained the same, foggy with some small evidence of clearing overhead. The weather reports GreenPat forwarded to them every hour kept prophesying continued fog for at least forty-eight hours.

The big question in Paul's mind was how long the small ship would stick with the larger one. Would the skipper of the German trawler, if that's what she was, feel obligated to aid his charge in a hopeless fight against Lightnings to the point of sinking with her, or would he cut and run? And
when
might he cut and run, at the last possible moment, or at the first sign of clearing skies? If he cut and ran, would he try to hide from the planes, a job which would not be impossible for a well-camouflaged ship in the ice pack? Or would he try just to put as much distance between himself and the doomed supply ship as possible? Would his main objective be to escape or to attack the
Arluk
when the planes returned to their base?

Paul tried to imagine what he would do if he was the captain of the smaller German ship. I wouldn't let myself be sunk with the supply vessel, he decided—that would be pointless bravado. As soon as I saw that the weather was starting to clear I'd run and hide. I'd jam the ship between two big icebergs, cover her decks with snow and hang white canvas or even sheets over the guns. As soon as the planes had gone I'd try to kill my enemy before he got to my base.

Of course the captain of the smaller ship probably would not be the man to make the final decision. The senior officer in charge of the whole operation probably was aboard the larger ship. If he were a coward he might order the smaller ship to stand by, but it was not wise to count on a Kraut senior officer being cowardly. Stupidity, Paul felt he probably could count on, though. A stupid, brave officer might decide to let both his ships go down together in a blaze of glory.

Except of course I really don't know what the hell they are going to do, Paul thought—uncertainty is my only certainty. Right now the odds are in my favor, or appear to be, and so I just wait …

Nathan did not sleep at all that night. He was so afraid that some motion of the ships would not be detected by others that he sat on the stool crouched over the radar hood until he literally could not keep his eyes open anymore. He did not trust Paul to take his place for the simple reason that as captain Paul had too many responsibilities and might be called away from the screen at a crucial time. After reminding Sparks of the necessity to remain alert, Nathan turned the machine over to him and staggered to his bunk. Only two hours later he was back on the bridge, drinking coffee and staring at the screen. Nothing on it had changed. The larger ship was still motionless, the small one invisible in the ice.

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.