Ice Brothers (59 page)

“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 nothing 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.

Paul's voice sounded reasonably calm when he called “Fire! Fire stations!”

Guns took the nozzle of a hose and started to scramble up a ladder to the flying bridge, followed by a half dozen seamen. Paul was still not sure what had happened, except that somehow they had been suckered and the German had escaped to its base. There was a lot of running and shouting on the decks. Nathan said, “We have a lot of men hurt. I'll see to them.” He was just leaving the pilothouse when Paul heard a roaring scream from the flying bridge, which he would never forget. Nathan scrambled up the ladder toward it, followed by Paul. Flames in the middle of the deck there were dying under spray from two hoses. In their ruddy glare Guns stood holding a body that was almost decapitated, and which was gushing blood. From the slender size of the body, Paul guessed it was Blake who had been hit by machine-gun fire. Hugging this corpse against his chest with one gigantic right arm, Guns pushed by Paul and somehow carried it down the ladder. Cradling it in both arms he dashed across the well deck toward the forecastle. Moving almost as fast, Nathan followed him.

After making sure that the fire was under control, Paul also went to the forecastle, which was now crowded with men. Guns had stretched Blake's body on the big V-shaped table. His own parka drenched with blood, he stood leaning over the boy's head, apparently looking for a face. When anyone else tried to come near, Guns emitted a roar and shoved him aside.

“There's more wounded in the wardroom,” Nathan said to Paul. “I'll take care of this.”

Still in a daze, Paul walked to the wardroom. Flags was ripping up a sheet and binding the upper arm of the quartermaster. Other men lay in the bunks.

“How many wounded here?” Paul asked.

“Four sir,” Flags said. “They're not too bad, but Sparks is dead. They got him right in the radio shack.”

Paul went to the radio shack. Its starboard bulkhead had been perforated by machine-gun bullets. Sparks sat with his hand resting on his desk, his earphones still on. His chest dripped blood. Methodically, Paul felt his wrist. There was no pulse. Feeling lightheaded, he went to the pilothouse.

Chief Banes stood there and that was very odd because the old machinist never came to the bridge. “Two dead and six wounded, captain,” he said. “I took a count.”

“Thank you, chief.”

“The fire's out and the ship's ready to get under way.”

“Thank you, chief.”

Paul stared into the hood of the radar. Nothing moved, to the north or anywhere. The illusion that he had been surrounded by ships lost its sense of reality. There had been two explosions to the north, but no shells or machine-gun fire had come from that direction. Paul sat on his stool near the wheel. Gradually his mind cleared. Apparently the German had created a diversion to the north of the
Arluk
, maybe by leaving explosives with time fuses on the ice set to explode while he dashed in from the east, or maybe with a small boat. Paul had been suckered, like a man with a gun who had been told by his prey to look behind him. At least, that seemed the most likely explanation. Only one thing was sure: the Krauts had clobbered the
Arluk
and had made it to their base, but the old trawler was still afloat and could fight again. Right now he ached to get to sea, away from the situation he still was not sure he understood. The ship's immediate need was a safe place where she could lick her wounds.

“Is there anyone in the engineroom, chief?” Paul asked Baines.

“I got my first class down there.”

“You take the telegraph and I'll take the helm. I want to get out of here. Ahead slow.”

Paul steered due east. As soon as he came to a good lead, he followed it slowly into the slanting snow. He started to call Sparks to the radar, but realized that Sparks was dead.

“Chief, you take the helm,” he said, and studied the radar screen himself. The lead circled north and seemed to show the way to an ice sound that probably was connected to the open sea. No noise but the steady beat of the engine and the howl of the wind could be heard as the
Arluk
beat her retreat.

Paul had just worked the
Arluk
free of the ice when Nathan came to the pilothouse. His tan parka was covered with dark stains.

“Are we going to Angmagssalik?” he asked.

“Yes,” Paul said, though he had been more intent on making his ship hard to find than on going anywhere.

“How long will it be?”

“About three hours.”

“What kind of medical facilities do they have there?”

“Damn little, but they must have some kind of equipment.”

“We've got two men with bullet fragments and all kinds of crap in their wounds. Guns is off his rocker. I've knocked him out with morphine. Maybe he'll be all right when he wakes up.”

“Sparks is dead,” Paul said.

“They told me. We should get rid of the dead as soon as possible. The prisoner with the bad burns died in the middle of all this.”

“Do you want to bury them at sea?”

“I don't think anybody's up to that right now,” Nathan said. “We can just put them ashore when we get in.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Nathan, I'm sorry,” Paul said. “They suckered me.”

“Nobody blames you. As far as that goes, I was no great help. I didn't know what in hell was happening.”

“I'm still not sure.”

“I think I heard an outboard out there,” Nathan said. “I thought I was imagining it.”

“Any damn skiff could have worked around us and set off some dynamite.”

“They're clever! I have to hand them that.”

“But not too clever,” Paul said. “They could have finished us off with torpedoes or just with gunfire. They'll find that was a bad mistake.”