Ice Brothers (52 page)

The plane droned away above the clouds and Arctic silence reigned again.

Climbing into his bunk, Paul wondered whether the German skipper was doing
that
too. Did he have a wife who often did not seem to love him and another girl he had briefly met in some port who made him feel marvelous?

The coffee did not arrive. Restlessly Paul walked to the galley, where he found Cookie cleaning the range.

“I'll have your coffee in a minute, skipper. Damn fool Blake let the oatmeal boil over.”

“No hurry, Cookie.”

The men off watch in the forecastle were playing cards, reading well-thumbed magazines in their bunks and listening to a radio announcer who was telling about German defeats in Russia and in Africa. For those Germans who understood English, these American news broadcasts must sound like the voice of doom. Did they stay tuned to German broadcasts which gave them only news of victories? Did they too feel certain that in the end they would win the war?

Returning to his cabin, Paul realized that he really knew nothing at all about his enemies. If they were unlikely to resemble movie villains, they also were unlikely to be exactly like himself, despite his German blood. What must it have been like to grow up in Germany during the much worse depression that that country had had ever since the end of the last war?

Maybe the Germans were just dumb, people who did what they were told without asking why. That was one common conception of them and maybe it was true. What American really knew or much cared when the chips were down? Life was like a cowboy movie after all, and the only important question was who got the draw first.

But he would like to talk to them in their own language. “Say, fellows,” he would begin, as he came wandering in from the foggy ice floe. “Let's talk a bit. Would you like to give up instead of die?”

Even if he could walk through the ice floe, such a visit would be as absurd as it seemed sensible. But why not try on the radio? The idea startled Paul. Why hadn't such an obvious move occurred to him before? Getting out of his bunk, Paul went to the bridge, where he found Nathan still glued to the radar set.

“Nathan, could you come in here a minute?”

When they were both in his cabin, Paul shut the door.

“Nathan, that Kraut doesn't have too much of a chance. He can't run and he won't fight long when the Lightnings get him.”

“Maybe,” Nathan said. “Don't be too confident—”

“I'm just trying to figure out the truth of it. What would you think of radioing him and asking if he wants to give up?”

Nathan's lips tightened.

“I wonder if they gave the
Nanmak
that chance? Or the men in her boat?”

“Hell, maybe this isn't even the same ship that got Hansen. Anyway, shouldn't we try to take prisoners? Wouldn't that be the best way to find out about any base they've got ashore, their whole weather operation?”

“I guess so,” Nathan said. “Maybe we should ask GreenPat about that. The Krauts could say they were going to give up and then clobber us when we came near. Didn't you have something like that in mind, if we could pull it?”

“Yeah, but we could wait until the weather clears and there are planes overhead. We could order them to take to their boats or walk out on the ice.”

“They could still leave a few men behind to clobber us when we got near.”

“The planes could sink their damn ship as soon as they'd abandoned it. We could just pick up their boats.”

“Which might blow up in our faces. I'm sorry, Paul, but I don't trust the bastards.”

Nathan was about to go on and tell Paul about his wife's disappearance in Poland, the near certainty that she had either been killed by the Germans or put into a concentration camp. Or a brothel—the Germans had put many Polish women into their military brothels. Nathan's whole body contracted every time that thought came to him, as it did now. How could such an emotion be shared?

“You told me once never to forget that war is a game of hard ball,” he said. “If we get a chance to kill Germans, I say kill 'em. If you give them the slightest chance, they'll throw a hand grenade right down your throat.”

“We could make 'em stand naked on the ice and wait for us to pick 'em up. And it would be easier to get them to tell us what they've got ashore than to go look for ourselves.”

“They wouldn't tell you.”

“Aren't they the ones who are so proud about being able to make people talk? Maybe they'd tell me where their harbor is mined if I put a bunch of them on the bow of my ship as I headed in.”

Nathan shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “In any case, I'd ask GreenPat before making any direct contact.”

“Let's do that,” Paul began, and at that moment they heard the roar of a distant explosion, followed by three more. Paul's first reaction was that the Germans were shooting at him, but they were too far away for that. Had they blown their own ship up? No, of course they were trying to dynamite their way out of the ice, a maneuver of desperation that had often been tried and seldom worked.

Nathan ran back to his radar set. “They're moving so much ice, I can see it here,” he said. There were three more explosions. “I think they rigged up a whole string of depth charges,” he said. “Look.”

There were two more explosions as Paul bent over the hood of the radar. He could see blips appear for a fraction of a second to the east of the blob that was the ship. “Hey, he's starting to move,” he said. “Maybe he did make it work. Have a look.”

“He's got a couple of miles to go before he finds any kind of a real lead,” Nathan said. “But I guess he's got plenty of TNT—”

“We better get closer to him,” Paul said.

“I wouldn't want to be too close when the weather clears,” Nathan said. “I don't think the aim of our fly-boys is all that good.”

“Right. We better break out every American flag we have and spread them on the deck of the bridge. Those fly-boys are apt to sink us and congratulate the Kraut for spotting us.”

“I'll see to the flags,” Nathan said. “What will the fly-boys do if the Krauts spread out American flags too? I wouldn't put it past them.”

“We better tell GreenPat to tell the pilots that the Germans have the bigger ship. Are you sure of that, by the way?”

“I'm pretty sure it's a steel ship, but I can't guarantee how big it is.”

“Well, we might as well get close enough to take a look at him when the weather clears. The fly-boys rate a description of their target.”

“I wouldn't really know what the range of his guns are even if they knew how big they are,” Nathan said. “Sometimes I get so goddamn tired of my own ignorance—”

“Don't worry about it. There's always going to be an iceberg between him and us. Tell the engineroom to stand by. I'm going in close enough to get a damn good look at him when this fog lifts.”

As Paul backed the
Arluk
out of the ice and began exploring a narrow lead that wandered in the general direction of the German, he felt he could go quite close if he wanted to. The trawler could get through ice much better than a freighter could and he was quite sure that he was dealing with a freighter, because he couldn't have caught up with a trawler. The advantages of maneuverability and power would be his. The only advantage the German probably had was bigger guns, and in a game of cowboys and Indians, cannon rarely were decisive. Rarely …

As Paul pushed slowly from lead to lead through the fog, using the radar to pick the areas where the pack was most scattered, he heard more explosions ahead. How were the Germans getting the depth charges, if that's what they were using, so far ahead of their ship as they inched along through broken ice? Had they rigged some sort of K-gun to throw heavy charges over the bow? If so, the charges must be fused to explode on the surface of the ice, a job Nathan had been experimenting with, and which he had found tricky, despite his ability to do almost anything with a pair of pliers and wire.

Maybe the Germans had worked out simpler solutions. A small boat couldn't get through the ice ahead of the ship, but in some ice formations men could climb up and down hills of ice, rolling or dragging heavy charges of explosive far ahead of the vessel. What a desperate effort that must be, yet it or something like it was succeeding. The German's motion was barely discernible, but the ice bridge between them and the nearest lead was narrowing.

If the German got in the clear he could still escape before the fog lifted, but the lead he was working so desperately to reach didn't go more than five or six miles before ending in a high ridge of ice castles jammed together. Maybe he didn't have radar after all, or maybe his set was as temperamental as the
Nanmak
's had been. It was hard not to feel sorry for the men sweating out there on the ice, stumbling and swearing over the heavy loads of explosives, cheering every time a short channel was blown clear, all apparently without knowledge that they were getting nowhere.

Anyway, the Krauts were trying—Paul had to give them that. Clearly they were not yet in a mood to give up. Everything in the world might be wrong with the Germans, except they rarely turned out to be cowards. After being ashamed of his German blood ever since he had first heard of Hitler, Paul was absurdly glad to find one small enduring reason for pride. The sons of bitches didn't have any idea in the world how to fight a war when it came to grand strategy, but when it came down to blood and guts, they weren't easy …

Just stupid, or so it seemed as the Germans kept blowing up the ice to reach a blind lead. The
Arluk
was doing fairly well in ice she could wriggle through, and the range shortened every hour.

“About six miles now,” Nathan called from the radar set, and later, “Five and a half. He's just about getting to that blind lead.”

“How far can he go in that?”

Instead of answering, Nathan said, “Say, skipper, some thing's happening here.”

“What?”

“He's like a damn amoeba splitting in two. I think there are
two
ships there, a big steel one and a small wooden one that we haven't been able to pick up until now …”

Of course, Paul thought—a supply ship with a trawler to escort her through the ice, as the
Arluk
had escorted bigger vessels. That would explain how the depth charges had been dropped well ahead of the larger ship. Two ships would be much harder to fight if they got close enough to the
Arluk
. Two would be just as vulnerable as one when the Lightnings finally arrived, but before that there was always the possibility that the German trawler would come looking for her tormentor. In the ice she would be just as maneuverable, and might well have bigger guns, though she might have to stand by her supply ship …

“Stop the engine,” Paul said. “We'll just stay close enough to keep them both on the scope. Nathan, tell Green-Pat that we've got two of them now.”

The thought that the smaller German ship might come looking for him before the fog and night cleared sent a chill through Paul's belly, but he was quite sure now that neither ship had radar that was working. If they did, why had they labored so hard to blast their way into a dead end? Without radar they were blind in these conditions, but the blessed gray box at least enabled Paul to see.

“Get Boats up here,” he said suddenly to the quartermaster.

Boats soon appeared. “Boats, we got what looks like a trawler up ahead there with a supply ship. I suppose he might leave his big baby when there's no chance to save her and come looking for us. I don't much like the idea of two trawlers close together out there in the ice—to the planes we'll look just the same. So get some red lead and paint the deck on the flying bridge and the forecastlehead red.”

“Sir, it will never dry with the weather like this. The men will track it all over the ship.”

“I don't give a damn. I want those fly-boys to know we're us before they get close enough to see flags. Don't paint the well deck or the fantail. We won't have to go where the paint is until it's time to use the guns anyway.”

“Aye, aye, sir, but it's going to be one hell of a mess.”

“Not as much of a mess as the Lightnings could make of us. Any more objections, Boats?”

“No, sir.”

“Get it done before dawn. And tell Mr. Green about it so he can tell GreenPat. Tell him to tell GreenPat to tell the fly-boys.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Boats said, and a few minutes later Paul heard him shout, “All right, you guys, grab paint brushes. You wouldn't believe it, but we're going to paint our fucking decks red right now.”

Paul went to the radar set. It looked as though it had gone out of adjustment. Instead of giving a glowing map of the surroundings, the screen showed nothing but a crazy pattern of pulsing green lights. With growing panic Paul turned the knobs which were supposed to focus the image, but they only made it worse. Forcing himself to sound calm, he said to Flags, “Get Mr. Green up here. Tell him the radar's out of whack.”

During the seconds that it took Nathan to run to the bridge Paul stared at the malevolently flashing screen and thought, of course—anything that can go wrong inevitably does go wrong at the worst possible time. The radar, like the big diesel engine, had always seemed a complete mystery to him, and it made him feel sick to realize that the safety of himself and the entire ship depended on such mechanical mysteries. He was helpless. He wished that he had been born in the years of sailing ships when there was nothing to worry about but the wind, the sea and men.

Nathan arrived, his open parka flapping, and Paul stepped aside to let him look at the screen. The gaunt face was grim as he adjusted the knobs.

“Something's the matter with it,” he said. “I'll get my tools.”

“Can you fix it?”