Death wish?
Nah. Dex wasn’t big on pop psychology. Nobody wanted to die. But some guys just didn’t seem to be afraid of it. Regular life bored the hell out of them, that’s all. Traditional women, jobs, kids, families, and most of the stuff the rest of society broke their ass to obtain. None of it was all that appealing to guys like Tommy, who was: Get drunk. Get laid. Get your ass in trouble, then get your ass out of it.
A great life, but Dex was smart enough to realize nothing lasted forever. Too many guys had told him how things start changing real fast once you get past a certain point in your forties. It was funny how it happened — you grew up out of your teens and your body and your mind just kind of slipped into this rhythm, this high-energy routine, and everything seemed to run like a finely-tuned engine. An engine that ran for a quarter of a century without so much as a warranty check. For twenty-five years, you look in the mirror every morning and everything looks the same. Everything feels the same; everything works the same. Nobody can tell if you’re twenty-two or forty-two. And it is simply. Fucking. Great.
Then one morning, you see some lines around the corners of your eyes. No big deal. But they don’t go away, and they get matched up with a few gray hairs in your sideburns or your mustache or even an errant strand on your chest. That’s your first step onto the slippery slope. At first you don’t realize the lack of friction is so severe, or the angle of descent so steep. You ignore it because you can still drink ten pints of strong ale, pee it out like Secretariat, and top off the night with a couple shots of Jack D. You can still pound your date like a tent peg, wait an hour and do it all over again. You can still fall out of a boat and drop like a sack of cement into a hundred sixty feet of water so dark it could be the ninth circle of hell. You can do it like most guys step into the shower, but then the time comes when your pulse jumps around like it never did, and your breaths don’t seem to come as even. And when you get back to the surface, and you start bending and twisting and contorting your way out of your gear, you start to notice a twinge in a muscle you never knew you had, or a sharp little needle of pain in a joint that goes away faster than you can think to describe it or remember it.
But it will eventually come back, and it will bring friends.
Dex smiled. Yeah, that’s the way it started, and some guys did everything they could to fight it, stall it, delay it. Some guys ignored it. Nobody stopped it. And although it hadn’t happened to Dex yet, there came a point when you looked in the mirror and you knew you were no longer going to be confused with being a young guy.
That’s when you needed to ask yourself what you’re going to do with your new, less efficient and less functional you.
As for Dex, he had no real clue.
Chapter Ten
A giant hand grabbing the boat by its nose, and giving it a few snaps of the wrist.
That’s what it felt like when the cans detonated on each side and directly above the U-5001. Erich’s knees buckled as the deck heaved upward, flipping him and the rest of the crew into the air toward the bulkheads above them. The steel fittings of the hull had stopped groaning — now they literally screamed as every rivet and weld was being pushed beyond their structural tolerances. Any second, Erich expected the hull to crinkle inward and the cold sea crush them like a sardine tin.
“Damage?” he said as he struggled to his feet. The deck beneath him, surprisingly, felt more level than before.
“Not here, Captain,” said the helmsman.
“Bischoff!”
The communications man fought to keep his bulky earphones in place as he climbed back into his chair. Reaching for a series of toggles and rheostats on his board, he squinted as if that might force his equipment into a higher level of performance.
“Nothing, sir.”
“That was so close,” someone said.
No one had the nerve to agree or add their feelings. Everyone knew how true it was, and how helpless they all were to do much about it.
Returning his attention to the dive attitude, Erich joined the men at the helm, now looking less terrified and more resolute. “Can you maintain bubble?” he said to the nearest crewman.
“I think so, Captain. But I must tell you — it is difficult.”
Erich nodded. His boat and his crew were in trouble. She was not in condition to make the kind of quick maneuvers needed to avoid the enemy during an attack. Until he reached Station One Eleven he could not even attempt any repairs. If he could not make the secret installation, the weather, treacherous coastline, and threat of further detection or attack could combine to make the idea of their survival ever more remote.
And who knew if the secret Station was intact? Doenitz ordered him to affect “rescue and recovery.” That suggested there was trouble at the secret base.
“Screws waning, Captain,” said Bischoff. “The destroyer is heading off to starboard. We may have lost him.”
“Continue to level off,” said Erich. “Hold course. Engines ahead ten percent.”
Still too early, he thought. The American captain might be playing cat-and-mouse. By breaking off pursuit, north toward the shoreline, the enemy may be trying to set him up, to set a trap into which an unwitting and inexperienced U-boat commander might stumble. Erich was aware of this tactic because he’d been lucky enough to survive it in the past. Many fledgling submariners had not been so fortunate.
But he had other problems as well. The damage to the diving planes might prove fatal. Despite the claims of the helmsman, Erich’s instincts and highly tuned senses told him the submarine was still experiencing a “down bubble” which meant it continued to angle, no matter how slight, toward the bottom. If he were not able to correct for this descent, the U-5001 was doomed.
There was also the flooded hatch compartment, which would need addressing.
In order to maneuver the 5001 through the undersea cavern entrance to Station One Eleven, he would need his boat responding smoothly. Considering his options, he worked through the most obvious ploy first — reduce the weight in the bow.
“Herr Fassbaden,” he said to his friend, who had been standing at the ready. He was enough of a veteran seaman to know to remain silent until addressed when conditions were so critical. They now spoke in hushed tones.
“Yes, Captain…”
“If we had clear passage to aft torpedo room, we could move the bow fish to the rear of the boat — reducing our weight.”
“No way to do that now.”
“So,” said Erich. “I think we must fire off some bow torpedoes, then move the bow crew to amidships, do you think…?”
“It might work,” said the Exec. “They cannot, of course, be allowed to detonate. They will need to be disarmed. The action is severe.”
“In addition, if we survive this current situation, we will have less firepower out in front.”
“That is correct, Captain. But I also know it is a choice of damned if we do not, and slightly less damned if we do.”
Erich grinned. “Well said. I say we do it. Now.”
“You want me to take care of it?”
“Yes, I do. After I inform the crew personally.”
Snapping off a salute, Fassbaden turned to head forward, when Erich stopped him with a slight touch of his sleeve. “I almost forgot, with all the other things happening — what about that troublemaker, Liebling? Did you get him out of that aft torpedo room?”