“No kidding?” Ensign Hawkins registered genuine surprise. “Another one in the Bay, that’s kind of cool.”
Dex managed a half-grin. “Yeah, like I said, we were hoping we could get a little time to knock around on it before everybody else got wind of it.”
“Yeah, I understand,” said Hawkins. “You get a name on it yet?”
“Well, we haven’t found anything official yet, we think it might be U-5001.”
“Yeah? How come?”
Dex mentioned the numbers stenciled on the interior hatches.
The Ensign nodded, checked his watch. His demeanor had become more relaxed, and now he continued with his by-the-book questions with an unspoken tone that said he just wanted to get it over with.
Ten minutes later, he looked into Dex’s face, nodded. “Tell you what, Chief… I’ll try to keep the… ah, exact nature of your wreck kind of vague for as long as I can. Maybe log the report with something like ‘World War II vintage’ or something like that. That might get you 24 hours — maybe more if none of my supes asks for a clarification — but a lot of times they have a poker up their ass about stuff like this. You can understand that, right?”
“Oh yeah…”
“I mean, I’m assuming you and your guys feel up to going back down on her.”
“We were planning on tomorrow. Thanks.”
The Ensign grinned. “That’s cool. After what you just been through, some guys aren’t up to it.”
Dex nodded. “Well you know the old saying about when you fall off a horse…”
“That’s the only way to look at it, I figure.” The Ensign extended his hand, shook with Dex. “Take care of yourself, Chief. I’ll be in touch if I need anything else. And… sorry about what happened, you know?”
Watching the Coast Guard officer climb into the launch and head back to his cutter, Dex felt uneasy. While he didn’t expect much follow-up from him, he doubted he actually might be able to keep a lid on the news about their sub for very long, if at all. It was too much of a unique event. Didn’t matter, though. Dex knew things had changed with Mike’s death, and he and the other guys would have to adjust to it.
Like, right away.
Dex and the rest of the guys cleaned up the decks as Don fired up the engines and headed back in toward the harbor. Nobody talked much, and it was a hell of a way to wrap up a weekend. Somebody was going to have to step up and notify Mike’s family, and Dex knew it wasn’t going to be him if he could help it. Doc had a lot more experience on that end, and that was that.
The next day was the last scheduled day for their dives, and Dex had a feeling if they didn’t do it tomorrow, they’d never get back down there on their own.
He knew there’d be a funeral to deal with and maybe some publicity about what happened to poor Mike, but that was not enough reason to postpone the next dive on the sub. No way he could count on a Coast Guard Ensign to protect their salvage rights. They weren’t going to have much time to get some answers, and he needed to know who he could count on.
After thinking about it for only a second or two, he realized there was only one person he could count on — Dexter McCauley.
Chapter Sixteen
Bischoff’s efforts to reach anyone at Station One Eleven had been met with silence — other than the white noise of an open channel. That could mean damage to the staff’s equipment, or an unattended radio room. The latter possibility bothered Erich. Communications facilities were never abandoned or ignored — unless some kind of catastrophic event had happened.
Bischoff had, however, acquired a fix on the open channel, and Erich’s rescue team would be able to home in on it.
His other concern did not appear as dire. The early report from the damage control team was not as bad as he’d feared.
As suspected, the diving plane on the starboard side had been bent just enough to affect its performance. Since it was located below the waterline, the repair would be troublesome, but not impossible. The breach in the escape hatch, which had cut off the aft torpedo crew, proved more of a problem. And once the U-5001 had surfaced, the water had to be pumped out of the flooded chamber. Kress had a team working feverishly to hammer and bang the hatch back into alignment, but Erich knew there would be no certain way to check the airtight quality of the seal until they were in the open sea, diving under pressure. Not the kind of test any submariner wanted to apply — especially when anything less than total success could be your your demise.
Before departing the boat, Erich sat in his quarters, staring at his personal journal rather than the boat’s official log. Ever since he’d joined the Kriegsmarine, he’d been keeping his journals — initiating a new one for each new boat on which he’d served. In the beginning, he believed he was doing it for his children. Having come from a military family, it had been a long and honored custom to compile memoirs of a man’s time in service to the Fatherland. But he had since stopped thinking about having a family, and was now recording his personal feelings and observations more out of habit than anything else.
Better to stop that line of thinking. He wrote down his experiences in self-defense. He needed rational thoughts to shield him from reminders of the terrible loss this war had exacted upon him. But he had no desire to actually test them out. He might re-read his journals on some far future day — if that day would ever come — but not any time soon.
He reached for a bottle of schnapps, and poured a small glass. He did not prefer the peppermint flavor, but it was all they had provided for the voyage. Erich would not complain because he really needed to drink some alcohol.
As he sat sipping and staring at the closed cover of his journal, he knew there was no time to make any entries at the moment, but he wondered what the next few hours would bring, what he might write in the next few pages.
Right now, he needed to face facts head-on. He and his crew had been thrown into a new mission that may change everything. He had no idea what kind of emergency had happened here, and how he dealt with it would surely be crucial. He needed to conclude business here as soon as possible before returning to his original mission, which was in jeopardy if he could not rendezvous with the cruiser, Sturm.
But as he sat there, trying to organize his thoughts in short, dry sentences, he realized he was ignoring his gut instincts.
Something about this place did not feel right.
It was more than its location or its extraordinary geologic profile, but Erich could not identify it any more than to say it disturbed him. Like some other creations of his country’s leaders, this one also… scared him.
And that was a big problem because he knew he could not let any of his crew know such a thing — not even his officers, except Manny, who would understand, and perhaps share his dark intuition. Newton Bischoff, who was so inflated with all the party hype, would assume there was nothing here beyond the scope of the Third Reich; Helmut Massenburg, being the perfect soldier in an imperfect world, would see this as just another mission to be completed; and Ostermann, with his heavily analytical mind, would see things more or less as a puzzle to be worked out — something no more threatening than a set of Chinese rings.
Erich, however, could not avoid the feeling it was a bit more complicated than that.
A knock at the door pulled him from his thoughts.
“Yes?”