It went on like that for the next several days: random shelling at all hours of the night and day. It wasn't anything like the usual methodical pattern of German fire. Maybe the regular German artillery commander had gone off with the tanks and left his halfwitted nephew in charge. If so, Junior was a damn pest.
And Denis Boucher went missing one morning. Luc glumly reported that to Sergeant Demange. "Maybe a German 105 blew him to kingdom come," he said. "But maybe he scooted off to see what was going on with his precious Marie."
"Well, if he did, he's not our worry any more," Demange said. "Let the military police get all hot and bothered about him. And if he does make it back to the mangy bitch, I hope she gives him the clap." The milk of human kindness ran thin and curdled in Demange's veins.
In Luc's, too, at the moment. He yawned till his jaw cracked like a knuckle. "I hope the Boches' artillery lets up during the day. I've got to grab some sleep."
"You get tired enough, you can sleep through a barrage. I did it myself, back in '18," Demange said.
"I believe you. I aim to try," Luc said. Maybe the generals should have sent armor surging forward to drive the invader from la belle France. Luc couldn't get excited about that, not right now. He went back to his hole and snuggled down in it. By now he was so used to sleeping on the ground, he'd decided mattresses were overrated. Exhaustion clouted him over the head with a padded blackjack. An hour and a half later, the German artillery started up again. Luc never knew it. AS HE ALWAYS DID while he was atop the U-30's conning tower, Julius Lemp scanned. The sun was going down, far in the northwest. At this latitude and this season, it would rise again in the northeast in a very few hours. It wouldn't stay dark long, and it wouldn't get very dark; the sun wouldn't sink far enough below the horizon for that.
This stretch of North Atlantic between Iceland and Norway should have been deadly dangerous for a surfaced U-boat, then. And it would have been, had any Royal Navy ships been close enough to spot the U-30. The submarine lay almost two hundred kilometers north of the Faeroe Islands. The English had to figure no one in his right mind would care to visit this lonely stretch of sea.
Lemp thought the English had a point. You could die of boredom before you saw a freighter plowing across these waters. Even if you did, it would be flying a Danish or Swedish or Norwegian flag: a neutral, and so not a legitimate target. Lemp had already sunk one neutral. What Admiral Donitz would do to him if he sank another did not bear thinking about.
Resolutely, then, Lemp didn't think about it. Or he tried not to. The thought kept making him notice it, like a chunk of gristle wedged between two back teeth. He longed for transcendental floss to make it go away.
The ratings up there with him were also peering through binoculars. As a wave crest pushed the U-30 up a meter or two, one of them stiffened and pointed. "Smoke, Skipper!" he exclaimed.
"Where away?" Lemp asked, but he was already looking north, following the man's index finger. He needed to wait for another wave to lift the U-boat before he spied the plume himself. It was in the right quarter, but… He frowned. Diesels were supposed to make less smoke than turbines. That he'd seen this ship's exhaust before the masts came up over the horizon wasn't a good sign.
"Is it ours, or does it belong to the limeys?" asked the man who'd first noted the smudge in the sky.
"It had better be ours," Lemp answered. By the time they got close enough to be sure it wasn't, a Royal Navy ship would be pounding them to pieces. He waited for the ship itself to come into sight, then spoke to the bosun, who stood behind the signal lamp: "Give 'em the recognition signal, Matti."
"Aye aye." Matti Altmark clacked the louvers. Three Morse letters flashed out across the water.
A moment later, three came back. Lemp breathed a sigh of relief. That smoked, too-even heading into June, it was cold up here. You didn't want to fall into the sea. You'd last only minutes if you did. "Alles gut," Lemp said, noticing the sailors staring anxiously at him. They didn't know what the answer was supposed to be. Lemp did. "That's the Admiral Scheer, all right."
They grinned and gave him thumbs-up. He made himself smile as he returned the gesture. The pocket battleship was loose in the North Atlantic. With any luck at all, the Royal Navy didn't know it yet. Commerce raiders had kept England hopping in the last war. These armored cruisers and their eleven-inch guns were supposed to do even better this time around. The idea was that they could outfight anything they couldn't outrun and outrun anything they couldn't outfight.
By all their specs, they could do both those things. They could get the Royal Navy scrambling like eggs. They could disrupt commerce between the USA and England and between South America and England. They could. That didn't mean Julius Lemp thought much of them. He was a U-boat man from stem to stern, from top to bottom. Couldn't submarines do the same job as big, fancy surface raiders, do it better, and do it cheaper? Of course they could-if you asked a U-boat man.
On came the Admiral Scheer. She was a hell of a lot prettier than the cigar-shaped, rust-streaked U-30. Even Lemp had to admit that. She looked like a sword slicing through the waves. But so what? They didn't pay off on looks, not unless you were a chorus girl.
His men kept staring at the pocket battleship through their field glasses. "Everything is so clean," one of them murmured. "Everybody is so clean." The submarine and its crew were anything but. They wore leather jackets to hide grease stains. They all smelled bad-you couldn't bathe properly in this cramped steel tube. Face fungus sprouted on their cheeks and chins and lower lips… and on Lemp's. The only thing that distinguished him from them was the white cloth cover on his officer's cap.
More signals flashed from the Admiral Scheer's lamp. "Captain… will… repair… aboard," Matti said slowly.
"I read it," Lemp answered. "Tell them Aye aye." The U-boat's signal lamp clacked again.
The pocket battleship lowered a motor launch. It chugged across to the U-30. Feeling like a man entering a strange new world, Lemp boarded it. The petty officer in charge of the launch saluted him. He had to remind himself to return the gesture. There was no room for such nonsense in the submarine's cramped quarters.
Up on the bridge, Lemp did remember to salute Captain Patzig, the officer commanding the Admiral Scheer, as he should have. The middle-aged four-striper wore decorations from the last war on the chest of his spotless blue tunic. He eyed Lemp as if wondering whether the U-boat skipper would sneak off with silverware from the galley. But his voice was polite enough as he said, "Welcome aboard."
"Thank you, sir. You can see a long way from here, can't you?" Lemp wasn't used to being up so high.
Patzig glanced down toward the U-30. He smiled faintly. "We spot the enemy sooner."
"Yes, sir." That reminded Lemp of something else. "Sir, you should know we saw your smoke before we spotted your masts."
"You did?" Patzig rumbled ominously, as if warning Lemp to take it back. But Lemp only nodded-it was true. The older man frowned. "Well. I shall have to speak to my engineering officers about that." By the look on his face, it wouldn't be a pleasant conversation.
"What do you want with us, sir?" Lemp asked. "My orders say I am to cooperate with you in all regards." He didn't like them, but he had them.
"We're both out here for the same reason: to disrupt shipping between England and the Americas," Patzig said. "We would do better working together than separately."