"Laboratory secure!" she shouted at her turn, her voice breaking from the tension.
Then she sat on the box, heart pounding, one hand on the ladder to brace herself against the slope of the diving boat. She could hear the nervous rustling of the rabbits.
"Hi."
She jumped. He was sitting in the shadows at the rear of the compartment, half hidden by boxes.
"Owen! You're not supposed to be down here!" Her tone was delighted.
"By my reckoning I'm not supposed to be on this boat at all, yet I can't seem to get off it. The attack seemed a good opportunity to let people forget about me for a moment. So I decided to drop in."
She shoved off the ladder to grasp him. "Thank God!" They hugged fiercely. "I've been so lonely…" She buried her face in his chest.
"I know," he said, meaning it.
They kissed for the first time since the air raid in Berlin. For a blessed instant they could forget where they were.
The tilt of the boat continued to steepen. There was a thud from the first depth charge, and the hull lurched. "They're going to get closer," he warned. "Hold on!"
She nodded grimly, grasping a pipe, and watched his lips move as he counted the seconds. There was a second detonation, a throbbing boom this time, that jerked the submarine as if it had been rammed. She felt the shock punch her body and was thrown violently sideways, hitting the curved bulkhead hard enough to have the wind knocked out of her.
"Jesus…" Hart groaned. He too had been tossed. "They're right on top of us."
Another explosion rang the plunging submarine like a gong, rolling it sideways. A cabinet popped open and vomited a spray of supplies. The lights blinked and went out.
"Owen?" It was a pained gasp. The tilt of the deck was increasing.
"Greta, are you all right?"
"I think so, just stunned…"
The boat bucked again, shuddering, and then again. They could hear shouts from the sailors on the decks above. Yet these explosions were slightly less violent than before. Less close.
She found him in the dark and clutched at his clothing, crawling up his length so they could hold each other again.
"We've got to stop meeting like this," he whispered, more lightly than he felt.
They waited in the dark as time ticked by with agonizing slowness. They could hear a gush of water but didn't know what it meant. The hull creaked.
"We're going deep," she observed.
Two more blows, more distant now. The airplanes were depth-charging blind. The slope of the deck kept increasing and the ruins of Greta's laboratory cabinet slithered along the floor. The laboratory rabbits were scrabbling at their wire mesh. There seemed no end to the dive. "Owen, are we going down?"
He couldn't answer. The sailors above had fallen silent and the steel in the hull was groaning. There was a sharp report somewhere in the submarine, like the bang of a gun, and then another.
"What's that?"
"Something giving way, I think. Bolts, valves. How deep is the ocean here?" he asked worriedly.
She hugged him harder. "I don't know. Three kilometers?"
"Deep enough."
More explosions, but distant enough that they just echoed through the hull, making it quake. The submarine hull squealed.
"It sounds like a whale," she whispered.
Then the tilt began to lessen. It was as if Freiwald was hauling on the reins of a horse, bringing its head up. The leveling was agonizingly slow, but it was happening. The boat creaked like a complaining hinge. They were sweating, waiting for it.
Finally the keel was even.
"I think we've stopped sinking." He whispered as if a noise would point them down again. They sagged in relief.
"Now what?"
"We hide."
Suddenly blue emergency lighting came on. The glow was eerie. The chaos was not as bad as it had sounded while things broke in the dark, but the floor was littered with debris. They examined each other. "Your arm is cut," he said, pointing. She nodded numbly. He tore a scrap of clean rag and bound it and they began boxing what they could.
"It's stuffy. Can we open that hatch?"
He shook his head. "Not until we're safe. The air will get worse before it gets better." He used a folder to shovel up shattered laboratory glassware, then found a storage tarp to lay on the deck and protect them from remnants. The submarine, on battery power, was quiet now, the crew trying not to make a sound. The Germans were trying to creep away.
Having secured what they could, Owen and Greta sat companionably side by side. There was nothing to do but wait.
"Do you think they've given up?"
"No. They'll be orbiting overhead, waiting for us to surface. And calling for destroyers with sonar. They won't give up easily."
"How long?"
"Hours, I suspect. Hours and hours."
She leaned against him. "Good."
They were quiet for a while, slowly recovering their equanimity in the calm, then their conversation started up again, drifting lightly from topic to topic. They'd almost succeeded in blocking out the seriousness of their situation when, suddenly, they heard a ghostly far-off echo:
Ping.
"Uh-oh."
Ping.
"What's that?"
"My navy. We're still being hunted."
They listened, her head on his chest. She could hear the thud of his heart.
Ping… ping… ping.
"They're getting closer." He pushed her upright. "Grab the ladder again. Brace yourself."
She pulled away reluctantly. "If they hit us, will it be quick?"
"Yes." In truth, he didn't know.
Ping, ping, ping, ping … They could hear the screws of the destroyer.
The submarine trembled slightly. Freiwald was trying to accelerate and turn away.
Wham! A wrenching concussion as powerful as the first one, and then another, and then a third. The light went out again and Greta gave a short sob, involuntarily, as the U-boat heeled. Their bodies lurched sideways, feet kicking, hanging on with their arms.
"Owennn…" she moaned.
The deck began tilting again.
"God. He's trying to go deeper."
Ping, ping, ping, ping…
"Hang on!"
Twin thuds, shaking the submarine to its core. The power of the explosions throbbed through their bodies and Hart felt he was clenching his jaw to keep his teeth from rattling. There were more bangs and they could hear oaths on the deck above and a roaring hiss of water. The U-4501 was groaning, the depth squeezing it in on itself.
She crawled to him in the dark. "I'm going to hang on to you," she whispered.
Ping… ping… ping…
"We're pulling away from them, I think…"
Wham! The boat shook, not quite as hard this time.
"Maybe it would be best just to end it like this," she whispered. "In each other's arms. Easier."
"No. We're going to beat him." He did not mean the destroyer.
More explosions, farther away this time. Sluggishly, as if waterlogged, the deck once more leveled.
"I wonder how deep we are now." He could sense the sea pressing like a vise. Tons of dark water. It was oppressive.
Slowly the depth-charging receded. The gush of water and the cries slowed, then stopped. The boat was quiet again, a crypt.
He sank his face in her hair. She sighed, reaching up to stroke his head.
"Jürgen told me he's going to let us go."
"Oh really?"
"I asked him if he was going to leave us in Antarctica, abandon us. The question embarrassed him. He said if we do what he wants he'll put us off the submarine in a raft, near a foreign port."
"And you believe that?"
"I don't know what to believe. He seems unpredictable. I think he still loves me in a way. But I no longer know him."