“Oh,” Reggie said. “Good point. Perhaps we won’t changes ships, then. I don’t mind staying on board here for another day or two. Still a few more photographs to take, you know…”
There was a sudden change in the ever present sound and vibrations of the diesel engines.
“Duty calls,” Squeaky said, as the three officers of the Eagle stood.
“You have everything you need?” Stefan said, pausing as the others slipped out into the passageway.
Kate nodded. “Everyone has been gentlemen.”
Stefan acknowledged the complement with a nod. “Let me know if we can do anything else.”
“Why the sudden interest in my well-being, commander?” Kate asked. “I still seem to remember a growl about throwing us overboard if we got in the way.”
Stefan smiled broadly.
“Oh, there is one thing, if I may be so bold to suggest,” Reggie said.
“What’s that?”
“Get us out of here alive.”
Stefan blinked. “I’ll do the best I can,” he said evenly. And then he disappeared.
Eryk was already at work at his chart table as Stefan passed through the control room. He paused long enough to glance over his shoulder. “What are you doing?”
“Plotting our course. The captain wants us to spend the day here.” He stabbed so hard at the chart he broke the tip of his pencil.”
Stefan stared at the mark. “You sure?”
Eryk nodded.
“Where is he?”
Eryk pointed his pencil upward.
“I’m going to my cabin,” Sieinski snapped when Stefan appeared at his side. He pushed shakily away from the rim of the conning tower, and arms extended, shuffled toward the hatch.
“Sir?”
Sieinski paused, swaying back and forth with the movement of the ship. “What is it?”
“It isn’t deep enough.”
“What do you mean.”
“The position you gave Eryk. It isn’t deep enough”
“Are you going to question every one of my orders, commander.”
“No, sir, it’s just…”
“I know the rules and regulations as well as you do commander. Unless you have something else to say, I’ll be in my cabin.”
Stefan bit his lip, drawing the salty taste of blood. “Aye, aye, sir,” he said crisply, saluting. He watched his captain disappear into the bowels of the the Eagle. A moment later, Squeaky clambered up the ladder. He glanced at Stefan’s face and said, “What now?”
Stefan shook his head. Of course, the captain was exactly right. He was following protocol. Stefan, however, had grown up on the Baltic. He knew its moods, its looks, like a farmer can read the clouds over the distant mountains. The summer of 1939 had been unseasonably cold. As a result the waters of the Baltic were now colder, and clearer, than normal. Thirty meters might not be deep enough. That was the worry. Of course, it would require a lucky pass by a Nazi plane to come across their shadow on the bottom, but why risk it? Why not go deeper? That was all Stefan had attempted to point out. But Sieinski was in no mood. What had gone on with Sopocko? Stefan wondered.
Chapter Twenty-Two
It was an unmistakable sound. The click of a depth charge’s detonator, transmitted to the inhabitants of the Eagle courtesy of the unique acoustic properties of the surrounding saltwater. Once heard, it would never be forgotten.
Stefan was already rolling off the wardroom bench, his temporary quarters after volunteering his berth for Kate’s use, instantly awake. The Eagle shuddered, the sound of the explosion ringing inside the underwater cylinder like a thousand bass drums. A thin layer of dust was instantly airborne joined immediately by a snow of insulation falling from the ceiling.
When Stefan burst into the control room a moment later, everyone was standing motionless, still stunned, their faces even paler than usual. A boy at the helm controls was staring down at the dark, wet spot blooming on the front of his pants.
“Yeah,” Stefan bellowed, grabbing their attention, “I almost pissed my pants, too. But what the fuck, eh? Nothing to worry about. Just a puny-ass Hun depth charge. That’s all. I think we needed a reminder that we’re at war, and not on a Mediterranean cruise. So, Ears, you just sitting in that room with your thumb up your ass and let a German destroyer sneak up on us?”
The hydrophone operator nicknamed “Ears” for obvious physical reasons, and not just because he was the Eagle’s acoustic operator, leaned out of small room containing the Eagle’s underwater sensors just down from the control room and shook his head rapidly back and forth. “Nah, sir, All I heard was a bunch of dolphins fucking out there,” he grinned at this, “but that’s all until that detonator went off…”
That help loosen up the men. There were even a few tentative smiles. “Then it was a plane,” Stefan said calmly. “Must have seen us from the air. She’ll be coming around for another pass unless she has some friends flying along with her. If she does, they’ll take the next shot. In any case, we gotta get moving. Blow tanks. Take us up to thirty meters, and all ahead full. Helm, right 10 degrees. No sense going in the direction we were pointing. Eryk, where’s deep water?”
Eryk leaned over his chart table, pencil and ruler in hand. “Just a second.”
“We don’t have a second!” Stefan reminded his friend, quietly cursing himself for not having the sense to order Eryk to plot a course to deeper water ahead of time.
“Two-five-four.”
“Aye, helm right to new heading, two-five-four degrees.”
Squeaky repeated the command, as the two sailors on the bench in front of the periscope, turned their wheels to the right.
“How long?”
“Ten minutes,” Eryk replied, “and then it really drops off…. to 150 meters. Deeper in places.”
Stefan glanced at his watch. They’d make another course change in 30 seconds, zigzagging their way to deeper water. It might be enough to force the plane or planes to adjust their runs over the water, providing the time and space the Eagle would need.
“Plot the next course change.”
“Aye, sir.”
Sieinski appeared in the control room, breathing heavily, looking nothing like the rich, confident, captain of his imagination. There were bruises beneath his eyes, face pasty and coated with a thin layer of sweat. Dark circles beneath each arm stained his khaki-colored shirt. Open mouthed, spent from the effort it had taken making it the few meters from his bunk to the control room, he rested for a moment against the bulkhead,
Stefan’s warning was automatic. “Better not do that, sir. Compression from another blast while you’re leaning against the bulkhead could snap your spine like a twig.”
Sieinski grabbed the pipes overhead and pulled himself away just a moment before the boat was rocked by another explosion. Closer this time. Lights flickered. Somewhere toward the bow there was shout followed by the sound of blows as a seaman hammered a wood plug into a leaking pipe.
“I want that man on report, Mr. Petrofski.” Sieinski gasped, pointing a shaking finger in the direction of the hydrophone operator.
“Not a good idea, sir.”
Sieinski’s eyes flared with crazy light. “Dereliction of duty,” he spat. “That’s what it is. He should have heard the approaching vessel and warned us with enough time to take appropriate measures.”
Eryk’s eyes flickered in Stefan’s direction. But Stefan kept his tone even. “Yes, sir,” he said quietly. “But it was no destroyer. He heard nothing…”