He dropped down onto the tower, landing with a thump. Steadying himself, Jonah carefully tapped his foot around the rusted platform. It seemed solid enough, the underlying integrity of the metal unaffected by the corrosion. He took a powerful flashlight from his pocket, shining it down the exterior hull towards the bow. The light revealed the submarine’s many scars, the rippling of steel from depth charges, the pucker-like craters from airdropped retro bombs. The aging U-boat had been through hell. Jonah couldn’t believe she’d made it halfway around the world in one piece.
Jonah tried turning the wheel to the conning tower hatch. It was permanently frozen shut; the wheel didn’t so much as rattle when he kicked at it. The exterior conning tower ladder was in similarly bad shape, the rungs threatening to give way at the slightest touch. Jonah hedged his bets, trying to place his feet as close to the hull welds as possible, keeping his weight where the metal was still the strongest. He wished he’d taken the time to grab rope and a proper climbing harness from the Scorpion, but it was too late now — he’d already begun his descent.
Crack—the rung clutched in his hand gave way. Jonah twisted as he fell, arms windmilling as he tried to regain his balance mid-air. He landed hard on the rotten wooden deck, the wind knocked out of him as he slid towards the edge, barely able to catch himself before tumbling over. Breathing hard, he tried to collect himself — the ten-foot drop had hurt, but nothing seemed broken.
Jonah snorted and giggled, his lonely laughs echoing throughout the empty concrete bunker. Fading waves of adrenaline surged though his veins as he clenched his left fist to keep it from trembling. His stupid, unnecessary risk had just put him a heartbeat from falling three stories onto hard concrete. Jonah stifled another snicker at the absurdity of it all. All of the close calls on the Scorpion, all of the insane risks he’d taken with his life, every time he’d nearly fucking died… and now, here he was, dicking around on a museum piece and nearly killing himself the process. And for what? The aft deck hatch was just as useless as the one in the conning tower. Rusted shut, just as he’d expected.
Jonah sighed, dropping to his ass as he slid his elbows over his bent knees. His mind went back to the old-timer wisdom he’d heard on his first expedition, advice that had kept him alive for years.
“The human mind sucks at crisis,” the boss had said, a quiet, weather-beaten survivor from the dangerous early days of saturation diving. “It fixates. Fails to notice patterns or obvious solutions. Fails to consider alternative options or adequately calculate risk. Always fall back on your training, your muscle memory, your checklists, and procedures. But even those won’t always keep you alive. After all, you can only train for the foreseen. Did you just have a close call? Got rattled? About to take a big chance? Smoke a cigarette first.”
Jonah had said he didn’t smoke.
“You goddamn useless needle-dick turd-chaser,” the old-timer had sworn. “It’s a fucking pretend cigarette. Gives you time to sort your shit out, unfuck whatever’s fucked, and plot a course of action that might — I repeat, might — save your sorry ass. I get paid for this rotation whether you’re in a dive suit or a black bag in the goddamn freezer. We don’t end early for funerals, not at an eighty-kper-day charter rate.”
Jonah finished his imaginary cigarette with a sheepish smile before shining his flashlight down the length of the stern once more. He could see for the first time that the collapsed concrete ceiling had torn away a small section of the outer hull as it fell. One of the primary welds had failed as well, giving the spreading tree roots all the opportunity they’d needed to force the metal pressure hull apart and creating a hole just large enough for one person to fit through.
His way in. Barely. Jonah held his breath as he squeezed through the narrow gap. The hole was a mess of rusting, razor-sharp steel and spider webs. Grunting, Jonah lowered himself into the dark interior.
Once again, he freed the flashlight from his pocket and aimed it into the darkness, revealing the crumbling remains of the battery compartment. He closed his eyes, imagining bearded, filthy sailors shuffling their way through the submarine, shoulder-to-shoulder in the dim and stifling air.
Six years of war lie behind you, he thought, remembering Admiral Doenitz’s surrender order to his surviving warriors. You have fought like lions.
But the sixty-strong crew of the U-3531 never made it back to Germany. He’d followed Alexis to the gravestone and paid silent tribute to the long list of sailors. Their journey had ended either at sea, or in a mass grave on a desolate island, both far from home. Jonah knew he could all too easily share their fate. He slowly scanned the deck with his flashlight, catching a glimpse of a captain’s crumpled visor-cap abandoned in a corner, the faint glint of the silver Eagle-borne swastika faded to the decades.
The end of the submarine was clearer than that of her captain. Her interior was all but picked clean; an entire bank of batteries missing, gauges pulled from their housings, rectangular samples of the pressure hull carefully drilled out and removed for analysis. She’d been stripped bare of her secrets.
Yet evidence of her final moments remained. Slivers of shattered glass glinted from beneath the grated deck like scattered diamonds. Jonah’s sweeping flashlight fell across a scattering of crater-like bullet divots in the walls. Dozens of 9mm rounds had torn through nearly every thin wall, stopped only by the thick interior bulkheads. The clusters were tight, methodical, fired by an expert hand. The U-3531 had seen a fierce battle within her hull, a battle perhaps similar to when he, Hassan, and Alexis hijacked the Scorpion.
Jonah moved forward to the command compartment. It was all but stripped bare. Every dial and gauge had been removed, and the periscope disassembled, all radio and code machines, maps, and logbooks were gone.
Shit. So much for finding a record of what had happened. The captain’s cabin was stripped with similar precision, every drawer empty. But the next cabin over was strangely untouched. It took Jonah a few moments of investigation to realize he was looking at a convertible medical compartment with an examination table that doubled as a bed. A single photograph still clung to a gap in the wall, long since faded blank. It crumbled as he reached to touch it, disappearing to dust as if it had never existed.
He pulled open drawers, but found only fossilized pills, disintegrating clothing, and corroded medical instruments. The lowest drawer was wedged. Jonah forced it open. Paydirt—a journal lay at the bottom, filled with page after page of tight Germanic script. Jonah brushed the dust off the leather jacket and stuck it in the back waistband of his jeans for safekeeping.
CHAPTER 16
Hassan grunted, pulling himself up hand over hand as he ascended the last stretch of the rocky coastal bluff. Alexis was in front of him, her long legs and cutoff shorts waggling tantalizingly in front of him. The doctor blinked, averting his gaze — the volcanic rocks were slippery, and it was a long bumpy fall to the black sand beach far below. Best to keep any distractions to a minimum, no matter how welcome they might be.