“Forty feet,” Bielski’s voice piped through Dex’s headset. “I don’t see a thing yet.”
“Be careful,” said Dex. “If there’s any superstructure, it could be showing up any time now.”
From the images Kevin had given them, there was no way to tell if the sunken ship was lying on its side or had settled to the bottom in a “sitting-up” position with its stacks, bridge, masts (or whatever it had) all pointing up at the surface. An unsuspecting diver could swim right down into a tangle of netting, cables, or other jutting debris that could be deadly.
Of course, it would help to know what kind of wreck they were homing in on. The Chesapeake Bay was littered with the broken hulls of ships from the past two hundred years. Lots of wooden ships went down during the Civil War and years afterward from the capricious storms that whip up the coast from the Carolinas. But the wood eventually rots away and all that’s left are the canons and the metal fittings.
So, from the signature of the sonar scans Dex had seen, they were most likely headed toward a steel ship. Its lines were too well-defined for it to be all that much broken up.
“Hey…” said Mike Bielski. “I think I see something… off to the right. Easy…”
Peering through the dark water, Dex panned his torch back and forth, stirring up all the floating particulate in the water. Even with the algae at its lowest point, it was still hard to see very far. “What’s it look like?”
Mike eased to a stop next to Dex, reached out and held onto the safeline. Even though only ten feet separated them, Dex could only see his black and orange drysuit dimly. Like swimming in pea soup.
“Just saw it for a second,” said Mike. “A mast or an antenna. Seems like it oughta be right below us. Careful we don’t get poked in the ass.”
“Okay, let’s just inch it…”
Hand over hand, Dex began to pull himself toward the bottom. Mike was only slightly above and off his right shoulder. He and Mike played their torchlights slowly through the murk below them. Had to be real careful now in case there was anything that could snag or tangle them. Dex had survived a few incidents like that; every time he’d thought he might die, and every time it was enough to make him wonder — did he really wanted to keep diving?
But that was before Jana walked out on him. For a while after that disaster, he knew he didn’t give a good Goddamn.
Funny, when he was down here like this, the “air world” (as an old Navy diver had referred to it years ago) seemed so far away, so alien, and almost unremembered. It was as if none of what went on up there had ever actually happened. As if the ex-wife had never even been a part of his life.
“Whoa!” said Mike, his voice knifing through the silence. “Watch it!”
Dex blinked, and was stunned to see a large shaft jutting up in front of his mask. Tubular, metallic, encrusted with the bodies and exoskeletons of marine life, it represented the topmost part of whatever ship they’d found.
“Hey, guys… everything okay down there?” Don Jordan’s voice crackled in Dex’s earphones. He hadn’t been keeping the guys back in the boat in the loop, and he couldn’t blame them for getting itchy. “Yeah, we just reached some superstructure — the boat’s obviously sitting upright. Depth: fifty-two feet at the topmast. Tell Kev he couldn’t have been any more on the money unless we were in his bathtub.”
There was a pause from Don, then: “He says there’s no way you’re ever gonna be there!”
“Okay,” said Dex. “We’re going to take it real slow now. Let’s see what we’re looking at. Looks like we’re going to be just below three atmospheres…”
He signaled to Mike and they began working their way past the mast-like extension. Whatever it was attached to, below them, was still mostly invisible beyond the limited wash of their torches in the soupy water. But they hadn’t eased down much farther before they encountered a second heavily encrusted extension, and then several others. There was a grouping of steel tubes and shafts, and one of them looked familiar.
“You see that?” he said to Mike, pointing at the long thick extension.
“I see it — is it what I think it is?”
Holding up his index finger to pause, then touching his Divelink phone, Dex spoke softly. “Kev, you still got us?”
“Oh yeah… what gives?”
“We’re a little farther down, looks like we have a sub…”
Chapter Three
The air temperature felt as if it dropped ten degrees in as many seconds. Despite his desire to be topside as much as possible, it was simply too damned cold. Adjusting his cap, Erich turned toward the ladder and nudged Manny. “Come, my friend, let us get some coffee.”
They descended the ladder to the control deck in the conning tower, which was considerably larger than the Type VII boats with which Erich had been so familiar. He approached the tiny console where funkmeister and Electrical Officer Leutnant Newton Bischoff hunched over a rack of instruments. Bischoff supervised the workings of all communications and detection gear, and would have been simply called a radioman in years past. The U-5001 had been equipped with a new, top-secret device that vastly improved their ability to discover if their position was being swept by radar. A bristling mast taller than the schnorkel and the periscope, it had been nicknamed “the Eye,” and was far more efficient than the old “Biscay Cross” the U-boats had been using in the earlier years of the war. Erich remembered how cumbersome the Cross had been, and how the enemy had soon learned to use the instrument as a reflective homing beacon, which had ironically made the surfaced U-boats even easier targets to find and destroy.
Newton Bischoff stood at the sight of his captain, despite the relaxed protocol undersea. Erich did not care for Bischoff personally because he’d swallowed the National Socialist Party’s philosophies so completely, but he had been the best available electronics man.
“Everything in order, Leutnant?” said Erich.
“Working perfectly. We are entering a very hot part of the grid,” said Bischoff. “I will be ready.”
Erich nodded. “I know you will.”
Turning back to join Fassbaden, Erich reflected on what Bischoff had emphasized. The allies had begun patrolling the mouth of the Skagerrak with impunity, as if daring the U-boat flotillas to attack the korvettes and destroyers. And all along the coast of Norway, it was becoming increasingly difficult to break through the blockades and into the deeper ocean waters. The allies had completely turned the tables on the U-boats over the last three years. Somehow, they had topped every new weapon, tactic, and technological development.
But even the enemy’s finest minds could not have imagined something so formidable as the U-5001.
As Erich moved aft toward the galley, Fassbaden close behind, the sturdy thrum of the big diesels sounded powerful and reassuring to him. It meant his boat was healthy and strong, knifing through the increasingly frigid waters of the northern open sea.
Entering the galley, Erich could not help but note again how everything still looked so new, so unused. The stainless steel, the painted bulkheads and hatches, the stoves and ovens, the floors — all unscratched, unstained or unblemished.
“This place looks too clean,” he said with a smile. “But I have a feeling we will be doing plenty to fix that quite soon.”
Fassbaden poured two mugs of coffee and slid one to Erich. Hot and full of sleep-depriving caffeine, it was just what he needed. How nice it would be to have a sweet linzertort to go along with it, he thought wistfully. It would be a long time before he had a chance to sample the favorite pastry of his youth. Perhaps never again…