Mark of the Devil
Authors: William Kerr
CONTENTS
DEDICATION:
For Rebecca and Mark
Published 2009 by Medallion Press, Inc.
The MEDALLION PRESS LOGO
is a registered trademark of Medallion Press, Inc.
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment from this “stripped book.”
Copyright © 2009 by William Kerr
Cover Illustration by Adam Mock
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Typeset in Adobe Jenson Pro
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN# 978-193475553-2
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
I want to thank the following individuals for assisting and contributing to the factual accuracy of this novel: Dr. Roger C. Smith, Ph.D., State Underwater Archaeologist, Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research; R. A. Hanshew, United States Naval Historical Center, Washington, D.C.; my friend and Happy Hour
compadre,
Commander Luther Yarger, United States Navy (Ret.), for his expert knowledge of submarine configuration and operation; Dr. Klaus Fuest,
Deutsches Schiffahrtsmuseum,
Bremerhaven, Germany, for blueprints and technical data concerning Germany’s World War II Type XXI submarine; Sergeant Bobbi Schlatterer, Services Division, Jacksonville Beach, Florida, Police Department, for her insight into that department’s organizational structure and operation; Mr. Hans Kaunath for ensuring the few German words, phrases, and sentences used in the novel are accurately spelled and grammatically correct; my dear friend, Deacon Anthony Marini for making certain my sparse knowledge of the Catholic Church, its history, and proper titles are accurate; and fellow diver, Steve Park, who allowed me the use of his name and personality (or a fictionalized facsimile) as well as that of his dive shop and dive boat.
I also owe much to the
Uboat.net
and
Uboataces.com
Web sites for their vast wealth of U-boat history, to
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
by William L. Shirer (Simon and Schuster, 1960), to
The Camp Men—The SS Officers Who Ran the Nazi Concentration Camp System
by French L. MacLean (Schiffer Publishing Ltd., 1999), and to
German U-Boat Type XXI
by Siegfried Breyer (Schiffer Publishing Ltd., 1999).
And of course, to my beautiful wife, Rebecca, who struggled through numerous editing sessions with me. An overwhelming vote of thanks must also go to the extremely talented members of the Ponte Vedra Writers Group, Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, who kept me grammatically and structurally honest through their lengthy review of the manuscript.
My thanks to all of you.
5 May 1945
2100 Hours
Off the Northeast Florida Coast
Its bow cut sharply through the night-blackened waters of the Atlantic, leaving only the pale green glow of phosphorescent plankton spreading outward in its wake. Painted on both sides of the U-boat’s conning tower were the emblems of a conquering eagle, its talons fastened onto a globe of the world. The words
Deutschland über Alles
encircled the eagle, with
Kriegsmarine
printed beneath the globe. There was, however, neither name nor numerical designation identifying the submarine.
A lone officer, the U-boat’s navigator, and two lookouts stood in the cockpit area atop the conning tower. They were positioned just forward of the submarine’s two raised periscopes and snorkel, the latter scooping in much needed fresh air for the spaces below.
In the submarine’s control room, officers and crew listened to a declaration by Admiral Karl Doenitz over the BBC following Hitler’s death. Instructing Germany’s war machine to lay down its arms and prepare to surrender, he ended with
“…And finally, to my brave U-boat men! Six years of U-boat warfare lie behind us. You have fought like lions. Unbroken in your warlike courage, you are laying down your arms after an heroic fight that knows no equal. In reverent memory we think of our comrades who have sealed their loyalty to the Führer and the Fatherland with their death.” Comrades, maintain in the future your U-boat spirit with which you have fought at sea, bravely and unflinchingly during long years for the welfare of the Fatherland.
“Long live Germany!”
Korvettenkapitän,
Helmut Strobel ordered, “Enough! Turn it off!” Gritting his teeth, he exploded, “Here we are, six thousand miles from home. Another six thousand to go. Errand boys for some Nazi bigwigs, most likely already sitting in Buenos Aires and waiting…for what?”
Strobel turned on
SS-Standartenführer
Jürgen Krueger. “What are we carrying in those crates and burlap bags of yours, Colonel? Huh? Not pickled herring and sauerkraut, I’ll wager. Four torpedo racks I sacrifice for their stowage. Something to feather the nest of SS butchers like you who have already escaped? An impossible dream to establish the Reich at another time, another place?”
“Carry out your orders, Captain,” Krueger snarled. “That’s all you have to do. If you so much as—”
“Captain to the bridge,” the navigator’s voice was heard calling through the voice tube. “Captain to the bridge.”
The urgency in the voice pushed Helmut Strobel up the ladder and through the conning tower. Within seconds he was on the bridge.
“There,” whispered the navigator. “Off the starboard quarter. Through the jetties at the mouth of the river.”
Strobel jammed the rubber eye guards of his binoculars over his eyes, ignoring Krueger who edged in beside him. “What is it?” Krueger asked, his voice low. Adjusting the binoculars, Strobel focused on the ship’s lights as it passed the final channel buoy and turned to starboard, heading in the direction of the U-boat. “Running lights, eh?” he grunted. “If the Führer is dead, they must also think the war is over.”
“What is it?” Krueger demanded, grabbing Strobel’s arm.
Strobel jerked away. “Keep your voice down.” With eyes still pressed against the binoculars, he said, “A tanker. Low in the water. Fully loaded.”
As he studied the tanker, he envisioned the allies’ indiscriminate bombing raids of Stuttgart: his wife and two children screaming in fear; his own harrowing escapes from pursuing aircraft and destroyers with their damnable depth charges. His fellow submariners, so many dead. Only the previous December he had learned of his family’s fate, perishing in the firestorms of Stuttgart. And now he was alone with only a photograph and bittersweet memories. It was not simply the growing shroud of helplessness that had wrapped itself about him, but the deep-seated hatred of the Americans and the English that had eaten its way into his soul.
Tortured by those thoughts, thoughts that really never left him, he said, “The war is not over. Doenitz said only to prepare for surrender. One last shot, and then we’ll prepare.”
“No!” Krueger shouted. “You can’t! You’re too close—”
“Shut up! This is not your concentration camp, Colonel, and we are not your Jew prisoners. On this ship, I am the one to give orders.” Without taking his eyes from the tanker, Strobel directed, “Lookouts, take the Colonel below.”
The two lookouts grabbed the struggling Krueger by the shoulders and forcibly pushed him down through the hatchway in the deck. At the same time, Strobel ordered the navigator, “Franz, come about. A wide circle to seaward and then back, our final heading just forward of the tanker’s beam.”
Immediately, the navigator called down through the voice tube, “Battle stations! Man battle stations!” Snapping shut the voice tube’s watertight cover, the navigator slipped a sound-powered telephone set over his head and ordered, “Helmsman, ten degrees left rudder. Come to new course two-nine-five.”
The U-boat leaned to port in a wide circle, swung seaward, then, minutes later, nosed its way back toward the coast. Strobel gave the order, “Prepare to dive. Clear the bridge. When on course, take her down.” Once the navigator repeated the order to those below, Strobel descended through the conning tower and into the control room. As both hatch covers slammed shut above his head and the navigator dropped down the ladder to his side, Strobel called, “Shift to electric motors. Periscope depth, Chief.”
“That’s only five meters above the bottom, Captain.”
“I said, periscope depth. Constant readings to the bottom.”
With the submarine settled on a 295 degrees heading and tilting forward at a slightly less than 10-degree angle, nose slanted toward the ocean’s floor, the hydrophone operator called, “Aye, Captain. Fifteen meters…twelve meters…”
“Very well,” Strobel acknowledged. “Flood tubes one and two.” With the U-boat leveled off and running on electric power at slow speed less than three miles off the coast, Strobel swept the horizon through the periscope. He quickly picked up the tanker’s running lights, its outline silhouetted against lights ashore.
Now or never again,
he thought. The last opportunity to strike for Germany, for his family, for his men.
“Come left to two-nine-zero degrees,” he directed. “Open outer doors one and two.”
A momentary hush fell over the compartment. Each crewman’s face spelled the risk they knew was being taken, but he was their captain, their leader, the man who had never failed them, the man they would follow to the death. And suddenly, the control center was alive with action.
“Doors one and two open,” came the response.
“Range to tanker, Chief?”
“Twenty-two hundred meters, Captain. Firing angle, zero-one-zero degrees.”
“Locked on!” called the weapons controlman.
“Set spread at four-zero meters,” Strobel barked. “Tubes one and two, prepare to fire on order!”
“Tubes one and two ready, Captain!”
“Tube one, fire!”
The explosive
kerschu-u-unk
of the torpedo being ejected by a massive charge of compressed air was followed immediately by a shudder through the ship.
“Tube two, fire!” Again,
kerschu-u-unk
and another shudder.
“All engines stop. Hydrophones?”
“Both torpedoes hot, straight, and on target, Captain.”
The navigator stood next to Strobel, stopwatch in hand, counting softly, listening, as Strobel slowly turned the periscope to keep the tanker in sight.
A muffled Barooom!
The navigator whispered, “That’s one,” his hand in the air, signaling silence. “It hit where, Captain?”
“Amidships.”
Barooom!
“That’s two,” Strobel said, his words followed immediately by another less thunderous
barooom!
“And a secondary explosion. Must have hit the engine room.” With a fist thrust upward in triumph, he hissed through clenched teeth, “We did it!”
Quickly pushing away from the periscope amidst the cheers of the crew, Strobel ordered, “Here, Chief, you and Navigator take a look. Perhaps the last shots of the war. Let the men also have a look before she goes down.”
Already, the grinding and groaning of metal could be heard as the tanker quickly settled in the water. This was followed by sharp bangs and giant thumps. Like the slamming of a fist against a table, weakened lower bulkheads collapsed under the increasing water pressure.
“Engines ahead, slow speed. Helmsman, left rudder, steady on course—”
“Captain,” the hydrophone operator called out, “I hear something. From astern. Our starboard quarter. Destroyers, I’m sure. Two. Coming fast.”
“Shit!” Strobel cursed. “The colonel’s intelligence report mentioned nothing along this part of the coast. Only their base in Key West. Down periscopes, down snorkel. Navigator, pick a course.”
From the far end of the control room a voice called out, “Captain, the intake is secured, but the snorkel is stuck halfway.”
“Keep trying,” Stroebel ordered over his shoulder as he rushed to the chart table. “What do we have, Navigator?”
Leaning over the chart table, compass in hand, the navigator responded, “There’s a narrow trench more than two thousand meters long and at least twenty meters wide according to the chart. It leads to deeper water. Depth, approximately thirty to forty meters. If we can get to the trench, we can hide within its walls. There’s a sand bottom. On dead reckoning, we’ll be threading the needle, but otherwise—”
“I know the
otherwise.
How far to the trench?”
“Six hundred meters. On course…one-one-zero.”
Aware he had no other choice, Strobel ordered, “Helmsman, come to course one-one-zero. All ahead full!”
As the sub lurched forward, accelerating to the maximum underwater speed of 17 knots, Strobel knew the U-boat was no match for American destroyers approaching at almost twice the speed. And with the snorkel still raised, even partially, there would be additional drag through the water-stream. Already, he could hear the familiar sound of sonar waves pinging off the hull, the time interval between pings becoming shorter and shorter.
Was it his imagination? Not only could he hear, but he could almost feel the pinging become louder. “How much farther?” he shouted. “Depth beneath the keel?”
With eyes moving from depth gauge to chart, the navigator sang out, “Four hundred meters to the trench…five meters beneath…no four meters beneath the keel. Come right five degrees, Captain. Hurry!”
“Course one-one-five, Helmsman,” Strobel ordered. “Distance to trench?”
“One hundred meters. Depth beneath the keel, ten meters, twelve, fifteen. We’re over the trench, Captain. Depth thirty meters and slowly increasing. This matches the chart.”
With the
tinkkkk, tinkkkk, tinkkkk
of approaching sonar getting louder, Strobel ordered, “Both engines ahead one-third. Take her to twenty-five meters, Chief, then slowly settle to the bottom. Secure active hydrophones. Both engines stop. Brace yourselves!”
Crew members grabbed deck-mounted chairs and equipment for support as the U-boat’s bow and bulbous hydrophone echo chamber positioned beneath the torpedo tube doors dug into the sand floor. Upon impact, the grinding and scraping of the outer hull as it slid along the bottom, over bank after bank of underwater sand dunes, clawed at Strobel’s ears. He could feel the boat’s pain as if it were his own. Without warning, like a rope pulled taut, the U-boat jerked to an abrupt halt.
Cries of pain filled the control room as bodies were flung forward, like dolls in the hands of an angry puppeteer. And there she sat, the keel resting in just over 32 meters of water, nose extending over a mound of sand and canted upward at a near 20-degree angle. With less than 7 meters between hull and the cliff-like sides of the trench, the walls rose to more than 6 meters above the top of the U-boat’s conning tower.
The watertight door leading forward suddenly flew open as SS Colonel Krueger burst into the control room, a nine-millimeter semiautomatic Luger in his hand. Pointing the pistol at Strobel, he shouted, “I’ve heard everything that’s happened. You disobeyed my orders, Captain. Now see where we are?”
“Shut up, you fool,” Strobel hissed, his voice little more than a loud whisper. “They can hear you. Quiet, you men. Everyone, on the deck. No movement. No sound.” Strobel watched as his men dropped to the deck, already sweating, some shivering in anticipation of what they knew was about to happen.
While the pinging of sonar had grown fainter as soon as the submarine settled into the trench, the
vlhoom, vlhoom, vlhoom
of the destroyers’ prop wash grew louder and louder. Suddenly, Strobel heard the scouring grind of air bubbles rushing toward the surface, followed immediately by high-pitched hissing sounds, one after another. Sounds he knew as well as he knew his name. Depth charge cans! “Bastards!” Jaws clinched tight, he waited for the inevitable, counting the seconds in his mind until…
The first explosion was immediately followed by a second, a third, a fourth, each one closer, directly above the U-boat. Each detonation inflicted more and more damage as water erupted in powerful sprays from loosened pipe connections and around electrical cables punched in through hull glands. Lightbulbs burst and gauge faces exploded, showering glass across the compartment. Fuses erupted from equipment and, like tiny missiles, crashed into the opposite bulkhead.