Authors: Joe Buff
Beck saw a sudden blur of frantic motion. Someone shouted, but the words were lost in a roar of glaring, angry, bright red flames.
Beck flinched involuntarily against the radiant heat as men rushed to douse a fire by the refueling station. Other men dashed for more hoses. A special team in silver reflective flame entry suits moved in with their foam applicators.
Beck knew immediately that something was terribly wrong. The fire grew hotter and brighter, and as he watched, the visible front of the flames engulfed a wider and wider area. Beck’s heart pounded hard—the men were being driven back, and their firefighting hoses were burning through. Beck heard more garbled shouting and screaming. He bellowed orders of his own, but the
von Scheer
’s crew were already racing to disconnect the fueling hose.
The heat in the enclosed space of the pens began to mount frighteningly. Burning rubber, lubricants, paint, even clothing gave off sooty, choking clouds of thick black smoke. The smoke mixed surreally with the fluffy billowing white of searing live steam from fast-combusting hydrogen. Beck watched in disbelief as someone in the distance collapsed, his whole body on fire.
Beck desperately wanted to help, but the scene was almost the length of two soccer fields away and there was nothing he could do. The
von Scheer
’s hatches stayed sealed up—Beck dared not try to have one opened lest he endanger his ship catastrophically. Beck turned to Werner Haffner, standing there mesmerized. He shouted, “Come on!”
Both men ran to the far end of the pier, beyond the
von Scheer
’s bow—away from the fire. They were confronted by the huge steel interlocking blast doors leading out to the fjord; the way was barred completely.
Beck glanced back in abject terror. Hungry flames like living things were leaping to more and more cartons and crates of provisions, feeding hungrily on hydraulic fluid in cranes, or licking seductively at oiled machinery.
Steam lashed Beck’s skin and throat. Smoke hurt his lungs. His eyes stung blindingly. Roaring and crackling punished his ears. He felt unbearable heat on his face, felt heat right through his uniform. The fire was out of control.
Beck tore off his sword belt and urged Haffner to do so as well.
There’s only one thing left.
Beck shoved Haffner into the water in the dock and jumped in after him. Both men went far down before they could fight their way upward for air—from below, Beck saw eerie red and orange glows flicker and glint off the water. At last his drenched head broke the surface.
The water was salty and bitterly cold. Beck coughed as it went up his nose. His eyes burned even more, from the salt, but at least he and Haffner were protected from some of the heat. The air this low was more breathable. Beck felt his woolen uniform begin to soak through, chilling him—in the wintry fjord, just outside, floated many big chunks of ice. Then the cold hit with full force. Through his sodden white dress gloves Beck’s fingers ached with a throbbing pain. His breathing came in uncontrollable, overrapid gasps. His clothing grew heavy from the weight of added water, and he knew his attempts to swim were getting clumsier. He began to fear hypothermia as much as he feared the fire.
Beck saw Haffner also struggling to keep afloat. Neither man wore a life jacket. Beck summoned the last of his strength. He grabbed the lieutenant and together they worked their way to the first of the big rubber fenders that cushioned the
von Scheer
against the pier. There were no steps or handholds for them to climb onto the fender. Its top was much too high for Beck to reach. Beck floated like an insignificant speck next to his ship. He looked longingly up at her massive hull: immense and round and smooth, inhuman, uncaring, and slimy from immersion in seawater during the latest shakedown cruise. It was impossible to get up that way without help.
Beck’s fingers were completely numb from the cold, and he’d lost most of the feeling in his groin and in his neck. His eardrums hurt as he heard a dull thud, then a sharp bang, from the direction of the fire. Above him a layer of smoke and steam grew thicker, reaching lower and lower each second. Beck wondered if he’d drown first, or asphyxiate. He and Haffner huddled their freezing bodies together for warmth, their arms hooked through fittings in the fender to keep their heads from going under. At the same time, in mind-twisting contradiction, the exposed top of Beck’s head and the tips of his ears suffered more and more heat. In the distance men continued to shout or scream unintelligibly.
Beck waited for the end, for a final blast of liquid hydrogen flash-boiling into gas and detonating inside the U-boat pens like a hyperbaric bomb.
But the pitch of the fire sounds altered, becoming more defensive and subdued. The loudest roaring now was the blasting of water from firefighting nozzles. The shouting Beck heard was much more confident, not panicky…even triumphant.
The noise and heat began to diminish.
The roaring changed pitch yet again. Ventilators on full power drew fresh air in from outside and the smoke was expelled. At last crewmen appeared on the forward part of
von Scheer
’s hull. They lowered a rescue team on ropes, and these men pulled Beck and Haffner out of the oily, stinking water.
Someone put a thick wool blanket around Beck’s shoulders and gave him a glass of medicinal brandy. He gulped it gratefully, but shook off any offers of further help. Now he was very angry, angry that something had gone wrong that might have harmed his beautiful ship. Angry at himself, for being caught so useless. Then he saw dead bodies on the pier, some of them charred, and wounded men, some with serious burns. Now Beck was even angrier, because in the crisis he’d run for his life while others bravely battled the fire. The fact that there was nothing he could have done did little to ease his mind.
The ship’s medical corpsman came out of a hatch, with spare sets of winter coveralls and seaboots and towels.
“Get out of those wet things immediately, sir,” the corpsman told Beck. Beck and Haffner stripped and dried themselves, putting on fresh clothes right there atop the hull. An assistant corpsman climbed out of the hatch and helped Beck don a thick orange parka for added warmth. Beck felt better physically, and the brandy and the anger he was feeling restored his mental strength. He had a thousand things to look into.
“How many of the crew are hurt?” Beck demanded.
“No one below, sir,” the corpsman said. “Topside, I don’t know yet.”
The chief of the boat stuck his head out of the forward hatch. He was the highest-ranking noncommissioned officer aboard, and overseeing the day-to-day well-being of the ship and her crew were significant parts of his job. “Negligible damage below, Einzvo. Engineer reports he’s inspecting the outside stern right now, but so far just a few nicks in the anechoic coatings.”
Beck breathed a sigh of relief.
“Sir!” called the senior chief whom Beck had talked to before, the leader of the refueling party. The man walked up the aluminum gangway from the pier. “You better come and see this.” The chief’s jumpsuit was covered in soot; his eyes were red and his nose dripped black snot. He sounded hoarse, and Beck could see the marks from a firefighting respirator mask against his face. But at least the chief was all right, which seemed to suggest the other crewmen at the back of the hull might be safe.
Beck eyed Haffner. “Sonar, go below and get some rest.”
“But, sir—”
“A direct order, Sonar.” Beck pointed at the open hatch; Haffner climbed down. Beck envied Haffner his energy, the resilience of youth, but he knew that with Haffner’s wiry, birdlike build delayed shock could set in soon.
Beck followed the senior chief wearily, and warily. The chief’s whole manner told Beck it would be bad news. They walked toward the dockyard’s refueling station.
The station equipment was charred, though the main liquid-hydrogen containment hadn’t been breached—Beck knew they’d all be dead now if it had. The ceiling everywhere was blackened, and twisted aluminum ducting and broken wiring conduits hung down. These swayed weirdly in the artificial and icy wind from the forced-ventilation ducts.
Overhead lightbulbs were shattered, and Beck felt bits of broken glass as they crunched beneath his boots. Emergency floodlights bathed the scene. Paint was burned and peeled from structural beams; the naked steel was oxidized to rust. The concrete floor was slippery from firefighting foam. Mounds of debris from once-neat stacks of spare parts and supplies and food still smoldered or dripped; firefighters methodically hosed down stubborn sources of smoke. Two forklifts and an overhead traveling crane were total losses.
Despite the ventilators going all out, the smell was terrible. Beck saw men using digital cameras to record everything they could. He saw other men fill body bags, or lay white rubber sheets over smaller pieces of flesh.
“Here, sir,” the senior chief said. He had to raise his voice above the continuing roar of the ventilators. The chief led Beck to a body bag. Rescue workers stepped respectfully aside. The chief unzipped the bag.
The thing inside looked barely human. Blood oozed where there once had been skin. The clothing was either dark ash or was soaked with the bright red blood. The stench close up, to Beck, was much too familiar.
The body was burned beyond recognition. The chief reached down and lifted the corpse’s identity tags, on a chain around what was left of the neck. Ernst Beck knelt and read the metal tags; someone else had already scraped off the ashes and clotted blood. This was the corpse of Beck’s captain, caught on his way from the base admiral’s office, in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Before the dismay and grief had a chance to sink in, the base admiral himself strode up.
“Sabotage,” the admiral snapped. Almost two meters tall, he towered over Beck. His eyes were hard and his lips were mean and his whole manner said he was not used to being questioned by subordinates.
Even so, Beck asked how he knew.
“The valves for the foam were all chained in the off position. They were chained
on,
like they should be, when inspected half an hour before the refueling started…. And the water deluge system, it’s fed by gravity alone, it’s supposed to be foolproof. But something, someone, put obstructions in the holding tanks. Waterlogged wooden plugs dragged into the distribution pipes the moment the teams yanked the emergency downpour.”
“But somebody still had to start a fire, Admiral,” Beck said. “Didn’t all the equipment get checked?” For incendiaries, or time bombs, he meant.
“A suicide arsonist. That was the easiest part for them to arrange…. We were infiltrated. Norwegian freedom fighters.” The admiral surveyed the scene, which Beck now realized was being treated like a crime scene. “One or two of these bodies…The saboteurs were probably the first to die. If my firemen had been one jot less aggressive attacking the flames with what little they had until we could fix the main problems…We averted a total disaster by seconds.”
Beck felt stunned and violated that this secure base had been so brazenly, easily penetrated. But he also had to admire the skill and self-sacrifice of the partisans.
“Did they know the
von Scheer
was here?”
“We have to assume so. It can’t be just chance, that all this happens right as you’re fueling your missiles.”
Beck nodded grimly. “That means the resistance knows all about us.” The
von Scheer
’s location in northernmost Norway was one of Germany’s most closely guarded secrets.
The admiral’s face hardened even more. “Yes. Which means the Allies might know already, or they’ll find out very soon. You must get under way at once.”
“But what about the captain?”
“You assume command. Get the
von Scheer
out of here. She’ll be much safer at sea.”
“Are those my formal orders, sir?”
“Yes. Verbal, but formal. You’re by far the best qualified. I’ll send you a messenger with spare keys and the combinations for the commanding officer’s safe. Meantime finish inspecting your ship for damage, then begin reactor start-up. You can study your deceased captain’s mission orders once you’re under way.” He nodded to an aide, who handed Beck a thick sealed packet marked in red
MOST SECRET
.
Beck took it. “Er, yes, Admiral.”
“Manage as best you can. This is not your first patrol.”
No. Just my first patrol as a captain.
“Yes, Admiral. Of course.”
The admiral shook Beck’s hand gruffly, then glanced around again at the death and the wreckage. “Such a waste of good men. I’ll never hear the end of this from Berlin.” Members of the admiral’s staff, and shore-support logistics officers, were already gathering, seeking the admiral’s attention on urgent details. Standing around, they gaped at the gore and destruction. But Beck had seen more than enough.
He turned to walk back to his ship.
“Wait,” the admiral called. “One other thing. You wouldn’t have known.”
“Sir?”
“Berlin has a passenger for you. That’s him now.” The admiral pointed to a figure walking down the ramp from the upper, administration level, now that the automatic fire-containment doors had all been raised. Beck saw a civilian, carrying a small suitcase.
The civilian came closer. He wore an expensive business suit and a fine silk tie. He glanced at the blood and burned flesh all around with a look more of disgust than of horror.
“Are you the
von Scheer
’s captain?” the man asked Beck. His voice was very refined. There was a certain aristocratic hauteur to his expression. His posture, his movements, were polished and smooth. And also subtly condescending.
“No. The captain is dead. I’m first officer.”
The admiral overheard.
Admirals always do have eyes and ears in the back of their heads.
“I said you’re commanding officer now,” the admiral snapped. His tone conveyed,
So act the part and get on with it
.
“Indeed,” the civilian commented, taking this interplay in. He held out his hand and Beck shook it as firmly as he could. “Rudiger von Loringhoven,” the civilian said, by way of introducing himself.