Harro responded with an affirmative and then called, “Another set of propellers coming our way, sir.” He listened for a moment. “Also from the north. Sounds like something big. Not a freighter or tanker, I don’t think. Something different.”
The lookouts all aimed their binoculars farther out but not Krebs. He kept his focus closer in and saw a single streak of white foam, just for an instant, on a patch of otherwise clean ocean. A periscope. Vogel was lining up. Then his attention was taken by a lookout’s cry. “Destroyer, sir! Coming hard at us!”
Krebs looked in the direction of the lookout’s point. It was indeed a destroyer, sharp at the bow, narrow at the beam, a big crow’s nest with what looked like mattress springs mounted on her mast. She was studded with guns, torpedoes, and depth charges. It was the old World War I–era destroyer observed in February. He put it at about six miles away but coming hard. It would be on them in a matter of minutes. “Chief, how deep is it here?”
The Chief called up, “Forty feet, sir, maybe less.”
“That destroyer will pound us to oblivion at this depth,” Krebs said, thinking out loud.
Max didn’t bother to lower his voice for the lookouts. “Let’s scuttle, sir. The Americans will pick us up.”
Krebs did not reply. He was letting the situation run through his mind, sorting out all the variables, possibilities, and probabilities. Vogel had been lining up to attack, but that had surely been interrupted by the appearance of the American destroyer. “What do you hear, Harro?” he called, to confirm his hunch on what Vogel would do.
“Destroyer propellers getting louder. I don’t hear the U-boat anymore.”
“Vogel’s dropped to the seabed,” Krebs said, “to let the destroyer take care of us.” He called through the hatch. “Chief, left full rudder, take a course due north. Go to the electrics full throttle and prepare to dive!”
The Chief echoed the command and then gave the alarm. The lookouts descended to the stutter of the diesel exhaust winding down, leaving Krebs and Max alone on the tower. Max had been studying the destroyer. “She’s an old girl.”
“Let us hope she still has her teeth,” Krebs responded, which Max thought a most curious thing for him to say since she was hauling her bulk as fast as she could for their murder.
It was near a full moon or the tide wouldn’t have reached her quite so bursting, but luck held and the Maudie Jane floated and she didn’t leak. Her diesels were fired up and she backed away from shore, alive once more, anxious for the sea. Phimble took the wheel on the stoop bridge and jammed the throttles hard against their stops. Stobs switched on his radios and was gratified to see their needles twitch and their dials come aglow. “All I needed was to get some power,” he said to Josh as he came inside. “God bless American engineering. What’s the word, Skipper?”
“Call Morehead City and hand me the mike,” Josh said. Stobs did both and Josh quickly went through what had happened. As always, he didn’t expect any help. He was just providing information.
“Be advised,” the answer came back, “the wind is turning.” The last four words were said cryptically.
“What does that mean?” Josh demanded.
The Morehead City radioman sounded disappointed. “It’s in your codebook, sir.”
“I don’t have a codebook, you dit-dot!”
There was a long pause. “Well, you’ll see soon enough. I’ll pass along your information to Captain Potts. Out.”
Josh shook his head. “I would like to know just once what the hell is going on in this war.”
“Maybe we’re too far out in front of it, sir,” Stobs suggested. “Everybody else is still trying to catch up.”
“You might be on to something,” Josh grumbled, then went outside to make certain the boys were assigned to their proper stations. That was when he noticed the boy in a slicker atop the wheelhouse manning the machine gun. Josh couldn’t quite tell who it was but he had his suspicions. He clambered up and pulled back the hood of the slicker, only a little surprised by who it turned out to be. “Dosie.”
“Corporal Crossan of the United States Beach Patrol reporting for duty, sir,” she said smartly. “I heard you needed a gunner.”
“Get below and stay in the galley. Either go on your own or I’ll carry you down there.”
“I have a right to be here, Skipper.”
“You have no rights except the ones I say. I’m the captain of this lash-up. Now, get below.”
Dosie clamped her hands on the machine gun. “Make me,” she growled.
“Skipper!” It was Once, on the bow. “There’s a destroyer coming in from the northeast.” He paused to look a fraction longer. “And it’s bearing down on that there U-boat.”
Herman agreed to help Willow haul the kerosene, step by step, up the spiraling staircase. Willow had seen the lamp lit often enough over the years when her daddy had visited Keeper Jack. She guessed she and Herman could do it if they had to, and they had to. It wasn’t that difficult. Into the watch room, open the can, pour it into the tank. Crank up the weights. Up the steps into the lantern room, pull back the curtain. Light the spirit lamp, warm the kerosene flow, light the mantle. Release the mechanism and get out of the way. Herman and Willow made a good team.
Willow was gratified when it all worked and the great lens began to turn. She and Herman stepped out on the parapet while behind them, for the first time in all its existence, the Killakeet light flashed across the sea in the middle of the day. It was overcast but there was no haze from burning oil. They could see for nearly forever, and what Willow saw frightened her.
There was her Jacob, surely on that submarine that was slipping under even as a big gray ship bore down on it. And there was the Maudie Jane batting along toward them.
“See the light, Jacob,” she said. “See the light and come home.”
“Take us under, Chief!” Krebs yelled, sliding down the ladder, careful out of habit to land on one foot to avoid his bad knee. A petty officer slammed the hatch shut just as the ocean flushed across it and a gurgle of foam and water announced itself over the length of the boat. The deck was under but the top of the conning tower, even if the U-560 scraped the bottom, was only going to barely get wet.
“Now, we see,” Krebs said. All of his doubts about his own ability were swept away. He felt his old confidence suffuse his mind. “Easy on the turns, Chief. Slow speed, let momentum carry us along. Let’s give that destroyer a nice, easy target.”
“The destroyer is turning toward us, Captain,” Harro called from the hydrophone set. Then he didn’t need to call anymore. The swishing of the destroyer’s propellers became obscenely loud.
Krebs had been silently counting the seconds. “Now!” he commanded. “Hard a-port, Chief, and full ahead for a count of five, then shut down the electrics!”
The U-560 responded, although the port drive thumped like a drum. But then the U-boat struck something on its starboard side, a jarring glance followed by a terrible squalling sound like a giant animal dragging a terrible claw down the length of the hull. There was a sudden clap of shattering metal astern and the boat slewed even harder to port before grinding to a stop, the stern lifting, the bow pounding into the bottom sand. Men and stores were thrown forward. The bilge water ran toward the bow in a brown flood.
Max climbed to his feet. “What happened?”
“I figured we’d get close to it,” Krebs said in some awe. “I didn’t figure we’d hit it.”
“Hit what?”
“Vogel’s boat.” Krebs yelled, “Get us moving again, Chief!”
“Starboard drive’s busted, sir. I think we broke the propeller off. We’re taking on water through the packing.”
“There’s irony for you,” Krebs said. “We lost our good propeller. Chief, full electric power on the port shaft for a count of ten! We want Vogel to get the goods from the Americans, not us!”
Now Max understood. Krebs had led the destroyer to Vogel. The sound of the destroyer’s propell
ers pounded overhead, followed by a series of splashes. Max counted them. One, two, three, four—oh no—six, now eight depth charges. “Holy Mother of God,” he breathed as the noise from the engine room sounded as if every mechanical piece of equipment back there had decided to tear itself apart. The boat seemed to wallow, but then he felt a scraping noise beneath his feet. “Are we moving?” Max cried.
“We’d better be,” Krebs answered just as the depth charges exploded, pounding the U-560 like giant sledgehammers.
Once was pointing off the bow and was jumping up and down in his excitement. It wasn’t the depth charges being dropped on the U-boat by the destroyer that had stirred him but what he was seeing on the horizon, one by one by one as they popped up. Ships—tankers and freighters by the dozens—but more than that. There, finally, was the big bad blue-water United States by God Atlantic Fleet, and the cutters of the Coast Guard, too, the big girls, 165-footers, a slew of ’em.
“It’s a damned great convoy,” Phimble admired. “About time they got one organized.”
Josh went forward and admired the numbers of the vast fleet, which kept coming. Stobs stuck his head outside the wheelhouse. “What does it mean, sir?”
“It means,” Josh replied, “that for the U-boats around here, the wind just turned.”
52
The U-560 was canted over on her starboard side, lying hard on the sand. Around her, diesel fuel spewed, a steady stream of rainbow bubbles flowing out of her to spread above in a great stain on the flat sea. Although the crew inside could not see the slick, they could hear the wash of the fuel streaming across the hull and knew it was making them an obvious target. Each man braced for it but no depth charges came raining down. Instead, the explosions were moving away. “Vogel has moved off,” Krebs said. “But if anyone looks, they’ll be able to see us. We’ve got to snake for deep water.”
The Chief came sloshing through the bilge water into the control room. “The electrics are still on-line, sir, but if we can’t stop these leaks, they won’t be for long.”
“How about the diesels?”
“They should work but we only have one propeller. And we’ve lost almost all our fuel.”
“Good news all around,” Krebs replied.
Another thunder of exploding depth charges rattled the U-560’s hull. “Vogel’s really taking a pounding,” Max said.
“I still hear U-boat propellers,” Harro called.
“Tough things, these iron coffins,” Krebs said. “Imagine, surviving all those explosives in this shallow water.”
“The destroyer is moving farther away, sir,” Harro said.
The crew was quiet, each man praying or thinking or simply waiting for Krebs to tell them what next to do.
“Now I hear many screws,” Harro suddenly called. “An armada!”
“A convoy, I’ll warrant,” Krebs said. “The destroyer was an advance guard. That’s why the sea was so empty. They were holding them back for the convoy.” He gave the situation some thought. “The destroyer’s sonar won’t work well in this shallow water. Vogel might get away.”
“Too many propellers now to tell anything,” Harro announced.
Krebs threw his leg over the periscope tractor seat. “Give us a little buoyancy and straighten us out, Chief. Let’s see what we can see.”
The Chief directed the proper turning of the valves and the U-boat rolled into an upright position. The whir of the periscope’s motor was surprisingly smooth and had a calming effect on all who heard it. Krebs took a quick sweep, saw the convoy he expected off in the distance heading determinedly south, then the Maudie Jane, and unexpectedly, the pulsing lighthouse. He called out each of his sightings as he swiveled.
In the radio/hydrophone closet, Harro smiled at the announcement of the light. Pretch glanced at him. “What’s so funny?”
“My girl’s calling me home,” he said.
“Your girl? How long were you on the island? Two days, if that!”
“We U-boaters work fast.” Harro grinned and Pretch clutched his shoulder and laughed with him.
Jimmy had given up on the sonar machine. The water was too shallow. He was getting echoes from every direction. But the hydrophones were still working, though nearly overwhelmed with all the noise from the convoy. Through all the clutter, he thought he heard the whisper of something familiar. “Skipper,” he called, “I think there’s a U-boat still moving out there. I put it northeast of us, about twenty degrees off our port bow, maybe a mile away.”
“Ready,” Josh said from the stoop bridge, “is the three-inch gun loaded?”
“Loaded, Skipper.”
He recalled Dosie was still on the fifty caliber on the bow. “Once, take over for Dosie, won’t you?”
“I tried already, Skipper. She said she was going to slap my face if I tried again.”
“Josh!” Phimble called out, so startled by what he had seen that he called his captain by his first name. “U-boat. Just there. It’s the black one!”
Through the periscope, Krebs saw Vogel’s boat rise, men tumbling out of the tower to man the deck gun. “What’s he up to?” he asked and then told Max what he had observed.
“He’s going to sink the patrol boat,” Max said.
“Why not use his torpedoes?” Then Krebs saw the reason. “His bow is a mess. He took a hit there.” Krebs looked farther out. “The convoy is still running, ignoring this little battle. Odd. I guess they’re following their orders exactly. Protect the tankers and freighters, never mind anything else. Wait!” Krebs pressed against the periscope eyepiece. “There’s why. The convoy is being attacked. A tanker just took a hit.”
The crew of the U-560 cheered. “Give them hell, boys!” the Chief yelled. Despite all that had happened, this was still a German U-boat. Destruction of the enemy was its aim and that of its brethren.
“Kaleu,” Max said, suddenly caught up in the moment, “can we get out there and attack that convoy, too?” He saw a sudden hope, that perhaps if the U-560 joined the battle, the charge of treason might be swept away.
Krebs didn’t reply to Max’s idea. He pulled down the periscope. “Let’s surface and see if we can maneuver. We’re half out of the water, anyway.” He looked around the tower control room at the lookouts. “Go ahead, crack open the hatch.”
A petty officer sprang for the lever and threw it over. A flush of blue-green water dropped around the edges like a circular waterfall, then subsided. Krebs went up first, throwing himself against the shredded fairing, and saw with some relief that the U-560 had become a sideshow. Miles away, the convoy and its escorts were still charging south. Destroyers, their alarms whooping, were dropping depth charges. Closer in, the American patrol boat, the Maudie Jane, was rushing headlong toward Vogel’s boat, her machine gun chattering and Vogel answering with a salvo of artillery fire.
Josh had to admire how Dosie immediately let fly with the machine gun even though its powerful recoil made the barrel pitch up, its tracers screaming skyward. Once helped her and together they got control of the gun and sent a stitch of bullets at the deck-gun crew. But the Germans bravely stood and started firing back. Phimble put the Maudie Jane through a series of sharp turns, speeding past geysers of water where the German rounds had struck. Then he aimed the patrol boat’s bow straight at the U-boat.
Ready fired the three-inch gun and struck the black U-boat’s mangled bow. A puff of smoke billowed and decking flew into the air. Then the Germans returned the favor, their round striking the Maudie Jane. Her stern exploded, the empty depth-charge racks hurled overboard, a hornet’s nest of steel scouring the deck. Bobby fell, groaning and clutching his legs, and the Maudie Jane went dead in the water and started settling, her bow lifting. Vogel’s boat moved ahead, then its stern torpedo-tube door swiveled open.
The Keeper had joined Willow on the parapet. Together, they watched the battle from the height, the light flashing behind them. The townspeople gathered around the base of the lighthouse. One by one, they began to sin
g the old hymn:
For all of us who are on the stormy deep,
For all of us who ’neath the ocean sleep,
Thy mercy now we pray on high,
Great God of wave and wind and sky.
Krebs watched as Vogel’s U-boat continued its turn until its stern torpedo tube was pointing not at the American patrol boat but at the U-560. “So, I’m more of an enemy than the Americans, eh, Vogel?” Krebs whispered.
When nothing immediately happened, Krebs supposed that Vogel was having some trouble readying his eel. Not surprising considering all the depth charges his boat had endured. “Ready the bow tubes,” Krebs ordered. U-boat against U-boat. The first one to launch a torpedo would win.
“They’re jammed, sir,” the Chief called.
“The stern tube, then.”
“We’ve lost power there,” came the reply. “The boys are working on it.”
“Then full ahead!” Krebs demanded. “Use the rudder to counter the starboard propeller. Sound the collision alarm and bring up the machine gun!”
The U-560 began to push through the water slowly, then increased its speed. The Chief clambered up to the tower. “The bow-tube packing has given away. The pumps can’t keep up. I’m afraid we’ve had it.” Just as he spoke, the diesels failed, sending out a last puff of black, oily smoke.
Krebs, at long last, had nothing left to do except what he’d always believed unacceptable. “Abandon the boat, Chief,” he said calmly. “Get the men going and hurry. I don’t think Vogel is going to give us much more time.” He pointed toward Vogel’s boat. Her deck-gun crew was frantically turning the 105 millimeter toward them.