“Here it comes,” Sieinski shouted, pointing to the approaching shadow.
It was a single plane. He snuck a quick look, and then returned his gaze to the obstacle course ahead of them. Messerschmitt. ME109, he thought they called it. The aft gun opened fire, barking rhythmically. And then it was roaring past them, banking gracefully and climbing steeply into the sun, a tracer trail, too slow to catch it, marking its path.
“It didn’t attack!” Sieinski exhaled with astonishment, turning to Stefan. “It didn’t attack.” The relief was almost too much for him. He clutched the edge of the conning tower, his mouth open, breathing heavily, shaking his head.
“Port 10 degrees. Now,” Stefan barked. The Eagle heeled over, the bow turning away from the side of a barge directly in their path, low in the water, burdened by a small mountain of gravel. The astonished men who had been sitting on the gravel flanks, holding shovels in their hands, watched the dagger prow of the Eagle turn away, waved and shouted as they passed. Stefan couldn’t hide the grin that tugged at his mouth. Probably thought they were crazy, or terrified. Might be a little of both, he imagined. But he had no intention of slowing down even if Sieinski ordered it. There would be more planes. And soon. They wouldn’t be safe until they made it to deeper water.
In the meantime, he realized he was enjoying himself for the first time in weeks. Sick bastard, he thought.
“Why don’t you go below, sir,” Stefan suggested. “You don’t look well.” And then seeing the look cross Sieinski’s face, he soothed the suggestion with a lie. “We’re going to need you later on.”
That killed the retort forming in the back of Sieinski’s throat. “Of course you’re right,” he croaked agreement, unable to keep the faint whine of a little boy from creeping into his voice. “No sense pushing myself too hard.” He moved carefully toward the open hatch and paused. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t it attack?”
“Single plane. Fast. Perhaps out of ammunition.” Stefan snapped his fingers at the sudden thought. “No, probably doing reconnaissance, taking our picture. Too bad we didn’t smile as it flew by. Or better yet, give it the finger.”
“There will be more.”
“No doubt,” Stefan said.
“I leave it in your hands. Have someone get me when we’re on station.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Stefan replied. He watched Sieinski’s head disappear. Given the size of the bruise on his forehead, Stefan wondered if the man was suffering from a concussion in addition to the usual penalties from the previous night’s frolics. How did one feel after opium? Stefan had tried and enjoyed nearly every type of alcoholic beverage ever created, even smoked cannabis one night in Manila. He had managed to avoid opium. One look at the sorry creatures living in the netherworld of that opium den in Hong Kong had been enough to immunize him.
The staccato rhythm of the Bofors interrupted his thoughts.
He glanced over his shoulder. No solitary fighter this time. The Stuka dive bomber was screaming out of the sun, two more circled like buzzards high above, ready to dip their wings and begin their own attack.
As the dive bomber grew in size, transforming from a distant toy into something real and deadly, he leaned into the speaker tube, holding another course change until the last moment. “Wait, wait, wait,” he chanted, his mind gauging the speed of the diving Stuka and the reaction time of the helmsman below. He waited another fraction of a second and then bellowed. “Hard starboard 15 degrees.”
The Eagle began turning to port, sheering away from a tramp freighter that was struggling to get underway, her captain standing outside the bridge, shaking his fist and screaming unheard profanities in Stefan’s direction. And then his mouth opening wide with astonishment as he noticed the Stuka’s bomb, released too late by the pilot, tumbling over the Eagle’s conning tower, directly toward his own ship. Stefan watched him disappear in an orange flash. He ducked down behind the steel lip of the conning tower as the blast washed over the speeding submarine. He felt it, like a rabbit punch in the gut. And then it was past, his ears ringing and the air raining hot metal and wood and the pulverized remains of what had once been human beings.
Henryk and the other gunner behind him began firing again. Stefan noticed blood running from a long jagged cut on the other boy’s face. He was concentrating so intently on the next onrushing fighter, he didn’t even notice the wound. It occurred to Stefan that he didn’t know this boy’s name.
Stefan barked another change of direction. The Eagle swung around the dying freighter, smoke and fire billowing from a jagged hole where the bridge had once stood. A steady, offshore breeze, pushed the oil-fueled smoke, thick and gray, like a midwinter fog, toward the harbor opening, There was a splash on his right, a sudden blast of spray as the next bomb missed, exploding harmlessly 100 meters away from its intended target.
“Pathetic,” Ritter remarked.
“You shouldn’t be up here,” Stefan hissed with surprise. He was about to order the man back below deck, when he noticed the gunner with the bleeding cheek slump suddenly over the grips of the Bofors engines. A beet-colored stain had blossomed on the side of his shirt.
Stefan pushed Ritter aside, wrestled the boy out of the seat and held him dangling feet first over the hatch. “Take him, take him,” he bellowed below. “And you,” he said to a white-faced Henryk, who was still sitting stiffly behind the gun, “make sure he gets help and then get back up here.”
Stefan felt a sudden release of his weight as the men in the control room began to grab hold of the injured gunner’s legs, and then pull him carefully into the safety of the sub. He stepped away, and Henryk dropped down the hatch. When Stefan wheeled around, Ritter was already settling into the gunner’s seat.
“Get the hell out of there.”
Ritter winked, swung the AA gun in the direction of the approaching bomber and opened fire.
Stefan was furious. First the injured boy. And now this civilian to worry about. But if he wanted to die, so be it. He turned his attention back to the submarine’s course. It would do no one any good if he was so distracted he ran the Eagle aground.
Stefan’s lips parted in a snarl as the smoke from the burning freighter obscuring the channel ahead parted, giving him what should have been his first unobstructed view of the open sea.
Unfortunately, there were two fishing boats in the way, one a medium-sized trawler, booms sprouting from her deck like teepee poles, the other a smaller, coastal purse seiner. The screws of both vessels were frothing madly like a pair of hyperactive ducks as they tried to escape the harbor. Fast but not nearly fast enough to clear the channel before the Eagle arrived.
Stefan barked another correction to the submarine’s course. No room to zigzag now. It was steady as she goes. He would have to rely on the smoke and the shooting of the Dutch engineer for cover. He glanced over his shoulder again. This Hans seemed to know what he was doing. He was even smiling faintly as he fired, his eyes narrowed with concentration.
Stefan clamped down tightly on the stem of his pipe, focused his attention ahead. It would be a tight fit. There would be nothing elegant in the maneuver. Stefan was going to part the two vessels with the pricklike prow of the submarine like they were the thighs of a beautiful woman. The Eagle would speed between them, and then out into the Baltic. If they were lucky, he wouldn’t shove either ship onto the rocks. If not? He didn’t want to think about that possibility.