Authors: Sloan Wilson
A commanding officer isn't much if he starts a long voyage looking and acting as though he was sure he was heading toward certain doom, Paul thought, and forced himself to smile a lot, his lips feeling tight and unnatural. Restlessly going to the flying bridge, he saw that Nathan had found someone to print a picture of a rattlesnake on the stack with the words
DON
'
T TREAD ON ME
. The trouble was that the amateur artist had made the snake look rather like a worm, and the motto seemed like a plea. Probably the Krauts could step on this worm without even leaving much of a smear, Paul reflected. All that had been left of the
Nanmak
had been a few scorched timbers and a bullet-ridden boat full of corpses. The idea that Hansen could still be hiding out in the ice with a few survivors was almost certainly sheer fantasy.
Paul was still unable to get his mind off these grim thoughts several hours later when they came within sight of the wreck of the destroyer. As Mowrey had predicted, the wind had driven ice into the mouth of the fjord, and several bergs bigger than the destroyer had pressed the abandoned ship higher onto the rocks, tilting her bow up so that she seemed to be climbing a high sea, with her lethal but now useless guns pointing at the low scudding clouds overhead. Nathan climbed to the flying bridge and stood beside Paul, examining the wreck through binoculars.
“I wonder if they stripped her before abandoning her,” Nathan said. “Or do you suppose they left a few men aboard?”
“They'd probably signal us. Flash a light at them and see if anyone answers.”
For five minutes Nathan clacked the shutter of the signal light, but there was no flash on the bridge of the broken destroyer. Picking up his binoculars he continued to study the derelict as Paul altered course to come closer.
“Maybe they're all asleep,” Paul said. “When we get closer we'll blow the whistle and wake them up.”
“They didn't strip her radar gear,” Nathan said. “Not the stuff on the mast, anyway. Do you suppose the whole radar room is intact?”
“They might have abandoned ship in a hurry when those bergs closed in. There isn't a chance in the world of putting big stuff like that on this ship, is there?”
Nathan's face suddenly lit up. “Their big air-search radar for aircraft probably would be more than we could handle, but they're carrying a smaller antenna for navigation. If it's all still there, I bet I could make it work here.”
“Hell, let's try!”
“And they're sure to have something for radar detection. But this is all secret stuff. They wouldn't just go off and leave it.”
“Who the hell would steal it here, the Eskies? Probably they intend to send a salvage ship in as soon as the ice moves out. No ship could get alongside her now.”
“But the whaleboat could, and it could handle anything we need,” Nathan said. “Put me aboard there, skipper, there's sure to be all kinds of stuff we can useâ”
“First we better make sure there isn't a guard aboard.”
After coming closer he blew the whistleâone prolonged blast. It echoed through the fjord, and there was no sign of life aboard the ship.
“Maybe they're all drunk,” Nathan said.
“We'll soon find out. Get ready to go aboard. I'll anchor as close as I can. Take Guns with you. There's a nice 40-millimeter there on his fantail. Do you suppose we could find a way to put that on our well deck?”
“We might be able to hide radar when we were in port, but how would you explain an unauthorized forty?”
“The Krauts won't ask for explanations and that's all I'm thinking about right now. Do you think we could bolt that thing to a wooden deck?”
“We could probably fix it so we could get off a few rounds, anyway. Hell, if you don't mind getting court-martialed, we could steal enough here to make the old
Arluk
a regular pocket battleship!”
“Are you really an engineer?”
“I got a diploma that says so.”
“So engineer me a plan to put as many guns as we can on here without turning this bucket over in the first gale. We could fill the hold with ballast to make up for some of the top weight.”
“Just let me go in and see what's there,” Nathan said. “I hope we don't find somebody asleep below. They couldn't just go off and leave all this stuff!”
“One thing I believe is that the navy can screw up,” Paul said. “If they can let the Japs sink their whole damn fleet in Pearl Harbor the first day of the war, they can run off and leave a beached tin can. Probably the only thing they took with them is their ice cream freezer.”
Paul reduced speed and took the
Arluk
close to shore, where a row of big icebergs was grounded in a hundred feet of water. He anchored behind the biggest of them. If he was going to engage in illegal salvage, he better learn to hide like a pirate.
CHAPTER 29
Paul ached to go aboard the destroyer, but the weather did not look settled and he decided that he better stay aboard his ship. Flags had overheard some of his conversation with Nathan, and word of their plans quickly spread through the ship. The mood of the men was exuberant as they lowered the whaleboat. Guns carried a sledgehammer, a crowbar and a huge monkey wrench tied up in a bundle as he climbed into the boat. Everyone wanted to go on the raid, and the men Paul told to stay aboard the
Arluk
smiled only when he added that they could go later.
Bob Williams, the new ensign, was one of those kept aboard, and he looked puzzled as he approached Paul on the bridge soon after the boat cast off.
“Sir, may I ask why we're sending a boat in there?”
“To see if we can find anything we can use.”
The ensign looked worried. “Pardon me for asking, sir, but is it legal to take stuff from the navy?”
“Call it salvage.”
“Couldn't we get in trouble?”
Paul gave him his newly acquired sweet smile. “Mr. Williams, everyone aboard this ship is in trouble. I suggest that you just get used to it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“But it's our business to survive trouble, and so far, we've done all right.”
“Yes, sir.” Looking a little more hopeful, Bob Williams went to the forecastle for coffee, and, no doubt, deep thought.
As the whaleboat steered a circuitous course through the ice, Nathan kept studying the destroyer with his binoculars. The fear that men would suddenly appear on deck to forbid all depredations grew in him, for this discovery of a goldmine of military hardware seemed much too good to be true. Nothing moved on the decks and a thin layer of snow on the top deck there was innocent of footprints. As the whaleboat found a narrow lead it could follow through the ice directly to the waist of the destroyer, Nathan could see why the ship had been abandoned. From a short distance she looked intact, but the big icebergs had pressed progressively smaller ones against her, and some flinty blue growlers had been shoved right through her surprisingly thin steel skin, ripping it open in jagged slits both above and below the waterline from bow to stern. The torn metal was already rusty, and Nathan could see why destroyers were called “tin cans.” Caught between the rocks and the ice, the whole hull had been bent as though it had died writhing in a desperate attempt to escape.
The ornate boarding ladder had been left over the side, but it led only to crushed ice. Coming alongside the derelict thirty feet farther forward, Nathan told Guns to climb aboard, which he did, after tossing his tools to the deck, where they clattered loudly enough to awaken anyone sleeping below. No head appeared above a hatch as the men of the
Arluk
tied up their whaleboat and swarmed over the rail.
“Stick together,” Nathan said. “We'll start aft and examine everything, first on deck and then below.”
Although the light covering of snow at first concealed it, the deck was littered with articles of clothes, life jackets and other objects which had been dropped in an apparently hasty abandonment of the ship. Perhaps the ice had closed in on her suddenly in a fast midnight gale, Nathan thought, imagining how the rending of all that steel must have sounded. No boats were in the davits and the empty falls swung in the wind. Probably the boats had ferried the crew to the waiting tanker, or the salvage tugs if they had ever arrived.
The destroyer's depth charges, 600-pound monsters twice the usual size, were still on their racks at the stern. They would have been removed if anyone had taken Mowrey's drastic plan seriously. Several hatches had been left open, more evidence of panic. On the bow a short length of the steel towing cable lay in a tangle, its broken end exploded by strain into a huge cone of wire splinters. Apparently the salvage tug had arrived and had towed with all its power.
Returning to the stern, Nathan led his men down an open hatch to the petty officers' quarters, a confused mass of overturned chairs, mattresses which had slid from the upper tiers of bunks, half-packed seabags, blankets and a scattering of playing cards. Apparently there had been quite a jolt when the ice ground into the hull.
Suddenly impatient with an orderly search of the derelict, Nathan led his men directly to the bridge, which was as neat as that of a ship under way. His eyes went directly to a gray metal box on a pedestal near the wheel. A black plastic cone extended from the top of it. Nathan's heart beat fast as he ran to it and put his hands on the knobs on a control panel. Peering into the cone, he turned the set on. There was no hum of electricity, no trace of a glow on the screen. Of course the batteries and generators were dead, but the set certainly looked intact.
“Hell, we can hook it up on our ship,” Nathan said. “Let's get it off here. I'll make it work!”
Eagerly the men of the
Arluk
started to help him to dismantle the set. While they were disconnecting it, Nathan went to the radar room directly abaft the bridge. The big radar set for scanning the skies for planes had been smashed with mallets, one of which lay on the deck. Before abandoning ship, all such secret equipment should have been destroyed, but in the confusion the little navigational radar had been forgotten. Nathan thanked God for the ability of the navy to foul up and began looking for spare parts. He soon found lockers and drawers full of them, and with a variety of tools.
“Mr. Green, can you really make that set work aboard our ship?” Guns asked.
“You bet your life,” Nathan replied with a grin. “With this stuff, I could build a set.”
“Can you keep it working at sea?” Boats asked.
“Damn right!”
“Will we have enough juice for it?” Sparks asked.
“Sure, but we'll steal a generator if we have to. Now you guys get this stuff into the boat as soon as you can. Guns, you come and help me inspect the rest of the ship.”
Everywhere they went aboard the destroyer they saw equipment and supplies which would be useful aboard the trawler. The destroyer's freezers had not thawed in the Greenland air and still held enough steak to feed the
Arluk
's crew for years, as well as countless gallons of ice cream. Cookie exclaimed in delight when he saw racks of new kitchen equipment in the galley. The quartermaster found sextants and range finders far better than anything which had been issued by the Coast Guard. The most delighted of all was Guns, who got Nathan's permission to stay on deck, examining the armament. His striker, a boyish seaman named Blake who wanted to be a gunner's mate, accompanied him. In awe they stopped by the turret of a double five-inch gun which was the size of a small automobile. The wind had loosened the lacings of the canvas cover, and on impulse Guns took it off to admire the gleaming beauty of the polished barrels.
“Boy, I wish we could get one of those babies aboard our ship,” Blake said. “Then we could talk in a language the Germans understand.”
Guns opened a door to the turret and went in. Blake followed and they sat in iron bucket seats, fingering the polished controls and peering through the sights.
“Could you sink a battleship with this?” Blake asked.
“Damned near, if you got close enough.”
“How far can this shoot?”
“A good five miles,” Guns replied, though he was not at all sure.
“Boy, I really wish we had one of these. With this I guess we could fight the devil himself.”
“Come on, we got to go look at the forties,” Guns said. “We actually might be able to use one of them.”
“What can a forty do?”
“It's good against planes, not much else.”
Guns found it difficult to tear himself away from the lethal five-inchers. Since his father had given him his first .22 for hunting squirrels in Vermont, he had been fascinated with anything that could shoot, and this was the finest engine of destruction he had ever been privileged to touch. Although he had been barely able to get through high school, his intelligence was surprisingly quick and his knowledge extensive when it came to guns of any kind. Lovingly he explored the recoil mechanism of these monsters, the machinery for pointing and training them by electricity or by hand.
“Ain't nothing really but a damn big twenty-two,” he said to Blake.
After inspecting the 40-millimeter guns, which looked like toys after the five-inchers, Guns returned to his loves. With a little experimentation, he learned how to disengage the power mechanisms and train the guns by hand, marveling at the ease with which it could be done. The breech mechanisms were complex, but not really difficult for him to understand.
It did not take Nathan long to detach the radar set on the bridge of the destroyer. While he worked at that, Boats and Sparks climbed the mast and took off the revolving metal mesh crescent which emitted the high frequency waves that produced the echoes which the complex device timed to ascertain distance. They worked so eagerly that the whole job didn't take them much more than an hour.
When the radar with all its components was safely loaded aboard the whaleboat, Nathan went looking for Guns and Blake. He found Guns leaning against a bulkhead staring at the five-inch guns almost in a trance. Blake was standing nervously beside him.