Ice Brothers (55 page)

The curtains of fog around the
Arluk
kept retreating and with surprising suddenness evaporated, leaving the trawler in a sea of scattered icebergs of all sizes which glistened so brightly in the sun that the men went for dark glasses. Hurrying to the crow's nest, Paul adjusted his binoculars and studied the sector where the radar reported the supply ship to be. For several minutes he could see nothing, but then dead white against ice which sparkled more, he saw the outline of a high bow, a pilothouse and a mast. The ship, a freighter, was about halfway to the horizon. At that distance she looked much smaller than he had expected, like a child's ship model discarded in the ice. Her most prominent feature was her high, old-fashioned smokestack, which the heat from a steam engine had turned dark gray. As he was squinting in the glare, a puff of smoke appeared on the bow of the ship, and a fraction of a second later he heard a sharp crack.

“They're shooting at us,” Paul said, but it seemed that the distance was much too great for accuracy. “Nathan, we better go behind that big berg over there. He might get lucky.”

Nathan got the
Arluk
moving. There were more blossoms of smoke from the bow of the supply ship, but no one aboard the
Arluk
could see shells landing anywhere. I guess it makes them feel good to shoot at us while they're waiting for the planes, Paul thought—probably I'd open fire too if I were in their shoes—his feeling of tolerance abruptly came to an end when a shell blew the top off an iceberg about 300 yards to his right. The next shell was coming even closer … he heard its high whine but didn't see where it landed.

“Full speed, let's get the hell out of here.”

It took about ten minutes to gain the shelter of an iceberg big as a fortress. The taste of danger had whetted the crew's appetites.

“I wonder where the hell the planes are,” Paul said.

“Sparks is down there sending out M's for them to home on,” Nathan said. “That's what they wanted and that's what they're getting. They'll be here any minute. Boats, get a smoke flare ready. They want that too.”

Nathan had hardly spoken when they heard in the distance an intense hum that quickly turned into a roar, more thunder than one would expect even from Lightnings. Low on the western horizon three dots hardly bigger than mosquitos materialized in the thin blue air above a ridge of ice. It was impossible to imagine how such tiny, almost microscopic objects could make such an all-encompassing noise. Rapidly they grew larger, materializing into what looked like model airplanes which had been painted an olive drab in defiance of Arctic camouflage.

“Let go the smoke bomb,” Paul said.

Boats threw an object like a yellow bottle as far as he could from the well deck. As it settled on a piece of flat ice, it started to gush torrents of black smoke. Seeing it, the planes altered course slightly. Growing to monstrous size as they approached, they roared only about 500 feet above the
Arluk
, waggled their wings in recognition, and sped toward the German supply ship. Figuring that the Germans would be too busy to shoot at him, Paul eased the ship from behind the iceberg enough to see what was going on. The three Lightnings, which had been flying in a V-formation, began to play follow the leader and sped in a wide circle around the German ship. More smoke puffs appeared on her bow and little catpaws of explosive dust appeared far below and behind the planes. Her smaller antiaircraft guns opened up, sending out a few tracers like Roman candles.

“Jesus, I thought the Krauts were such hot shots,” Guns said.

It's all a matter of form, Paul thought—if you have guns you're supposed to shoot, even if the targets are flying 400 miles an hour out of range. The Germans were doing what was expected of them, just as a well-bred bull paws the ground. The odd twin-hulled planes continued to speed at a safe distance around the supply ship. The lead plane let out a few bursts to check his guns, and the two others followed suit, falling a little out of their single line formation to do so. It was all very methodical. Paul wondered what the Germans were thinking as they saw the planes warming up to execute them. Did the whole life of a man about to die in battle flash through his mind as it was supposed to do in the brains of drowning men? Perhaps not. Probably the Germans were hoping to take at least one of the planes with them and the heat of even hopeless battle was enough to burn out any rational thoughts. If the Germans were like the American sailors Paul knew, they were more apt to die cursing than praying or thinking fond thoughts about loved ones.

Suddenly the three planes went into a much broader circle, swooped down to a level only about a hundred yards above the tallest icebergs and headed toward the ship. The rattle of their guns was not as impressive as the other roars, hums and whistlings they made. Nothing seemed to happen as the three planes rocketed from the stern over the bow of the supply ship. The German guns kept blinking like signal lights in their wreaths of smoke. As the planes finished their run and turned into another wide circle, the smoke around the German's guns suddenly rose higher. At the base of the gray stacks amidship there was a ruddy glow, but still the guns on the bow and stern continued to fire, even when the planes circled almost out of sight before they came back.

On their second run the planes left the ship afire from stem to stern, but incredibly a few tracer bullets arched out of the smoke and flame in pursuit of the attackers. It was clear that men were dying on that ship and fighting heroically, but the whole scene was curiously lacking in dignity. After making each pass, the planes waggled their wings to each other, obviously an expression of sheer zest, and the men aboard the trawler cheered. Nathan stood on the wing of the bridge staring through his binoculars, his face a grim mask despite the fact that he always had been too softhearted, in Paul's view, whenever an enlisted man received the slightest punishment. Paul tried to remind himself that the men aboard the supply ship might be the very ones who had sunk the
Nanmak
and gunned down her boat, but somehow on this sparkling morning, the two events did not seem to be related. Well, Paul reminded himself, the Krauts have played the butcher long enough … “Let's move in closer. I want to take prisoners, it's the easiest way to find out about their base,” Paul said.

While the planes continued to strafe the ship Paul drove the
Arluk
through scattered ice toward the plumes of smoke. It was possible that the hunter-killer was lurking near enough to make a torpedo run at any time, but Paul felt that she would stay hidden until the planes left. Then anything could happen, unless the planes happened to find the little ship out there in the ice before they went home.

Leaving the supply ship an inferno of flame and black oily smoke, the planes began flying a search pattern over the surrounding miles of ice. Separating, they each chose a sector to cross and recross, flying just above the peaks of the highest ice castles. Paul kept hoping that he would see one of them execute a little roll to announce the discovery of the hunter-killer, but they just wove back and forth between horizons, following their search pattern. Paul wondered how close they would come or had already come to the little German ship, which might even have worked her way under a projecting ledge of one of the mile-long icebergs near the coast. He'd stay there until the planes left.

I undoubtedly outgun a little ship like that, Paul thought, but he has torpedoes, and neither of us is worth a damn at a range of more than a mile. In the ability to destroy each other, we must be roughly equal. He has the advantage of speed and maneuverability; I have the advantage of being able to stay at sea almost indefinitely while he'll have to get back to his base soon before he runs out of fuel.

Suddenly Paul's strategy appeared obvious to him: instead of pursuing the hunter-killer he would hide near the mouth of his base and let him come to him. Supposing that the base was in Supportup-Kangerdula Fjord, that shouldn't be too difficult. But now was not the time to think that out. If he could rescue some survivors from the supply ship they might be persuaded to give all kinds of useful information …

It took Paul almost an hour to reach the burning hulk of the supply ship. As he drew near he could see that her skipper had jammed her in the ice, where she lay nearly level, still belching smoke and flame, though not so fiercely now. No men could be alive at her guns or on her decks. Paul could see no life as he studied the vessel through the binoculars. She was more of a small passenger liner than a freighter, he saw now—one of those ships which had carried both freight and passengers before the war. She carried many more lifeboats than a freighter would. Three were burning in davits on her port side, four on her starboard. Apparently only one boat had been lowered. Had all but one boatload of men stubbornly stayed aboard long enough to burn?

The one missing boat was nowhere in evidence as Paul stopped his engine and drifted a thousand yards to windward of the burning hulk in widely scattered storis ice. If the men of this ship had machine-gunned the
Nanmak's
boat, they were more likely to hide in the ice than to rush out to be rescued. There was not much wind, and sometimes it backed enough to bring the men of the
Arluk
the smell of burning oil and perhaps, they imagined, seared flesh. The flames from the German ship made a greedy, sucking noise. The shrieking roars of the planes continuing to search for the smaller ship all around them made speech difficult. Paul climbed up to the crow's nest to see where a lifeboat might hide. The
Arluk
was surrounded by bays and islands of ice, any of which could conceal a boat.

“Skipper, when the planes go maybe we should yell that we won't hurt them,” Nathan said. “I could rig a loudspeaker.”

“We'll try it.”

It wasn't long before Sparks came to the bridge to say that the planes were running out of fuel and were heading back to their base.

“The lead pilot called me direct,” he reported. “He said they can't find a damn thing out there, but a PBY will continue the search this afternoon.”

With more exuberant dips of their wings the three Lightnings went skidding low over the ice toward the Greenland coast. The sudden silence was like the end of intense pain. No sound could be heard except the licking of the flames aboard the gutted supply ship, and even they were subsiding. Sparks set up a loudspeaker on the flying bridge and handed Paul the microphone.

“I am talking to any survivors of the German ship,” Paul called, the mechanism making his voice boom out over the sea. “We will take you prisoner and will not harm you. Throw all arms overboard and row your boat toward our ship.”

After a brief silence during which nothing happened, Paul repeated the message in German, a procedure which caused a few members of his crew to look a little startled. He said it three times and had just given up when the bow lookout called.

“Boat, sir! Two points on the port bow.”

Coming from behind the point of a large iceberg, a gray ship's boat came into sight. She was crowded, and the men at the oars handled them raggedly, getting them all mixed up. A man in the stern stood and shouted in German through cupped hands: “We are the survivors of the
Norway
. Are you Americans?”

“Yes,” Paul said in German. “Do you speak English?”

“
Nein.
”

The boat struggled a hundred yards closer before the man standing in the stern shouted in German, “Do you promise to take survivors aboard and treat them as prisoners of war?”

“We're Americans,” Paul said in German. “We do not gun down people in open boats.”

The lifeboat seemed to hesitate before struggling onward. Through his binoculars Paul studied it. He could count twenty-six men. Dressed in parkas and foul-weather gear, they didn't look much different from his own men. About a third were bearded, Three were lying on thwarts and a few others wore makeshift bandages. Twenty-six men! It was at least theoretically possible that they could pull a surprise and try to take over the ship.

Paul had never thought of taking so many prisoners aboard, and realized that such a large number of men would always be a potential danger which was maybe why the Germans had gunned down the
Nanmak's
men. The supply ship, the one enemy he had been pursuing so long was in flames, but it had been replaced by three enemies: the hunter-killer, the shore base the
Arluk
was supposed to investigate, and potentially, at least, a whole company of Germans who would be living in their midst. Did enemies always multiply like that when you killed them?

CHAPTER 38

As the men in the lifeboat rowed clumsily toward the
Arluk
, Paul said to Nathan, “This prisoner business could be more of a problem than I thought. Where are we going to put them all? Maybe we ought just to tow them in their boat into Angmagssalik. Then we could keep a machine gun on them.”

“They have wounded aboard,” Nathan said. “We could put them under guard in the forecastle. The rest are probably cold, but I don't see how we can take care of them without risk aboard here. There's not much room in the hold, and one of them might be crazy enough to try to blow us all up with those depth charges.”

“We'll take the wounded aboard and give blankets to the others. In three hours I should be able to tow them into Angmagssalik.”

“Do you want me to try to raise the Danes on the radio and tell them to make ready for prisoners?”

“No—I'm not a damn bit sure whose side those people in there are on. We'll play it by ear. Meanwhile, I want all officers and CPO's to wear sidearms before we let that boat alongside. Put three men with automatic rifles on the forecastle head and three on the flying bridge. Tell Guns to stand by on the well deck with the Thompson and have Boats rig a boarding ladder.”

While these preparations were being made, Paul backed the trawler away from the lifeboat, a step which made the rowers and the man in the stern yell in protest.