“Kapitan,” Kadow cried out, “she’s going to ram us.”
Mahlberg turned in disgust. “For God’s sake, Kadow, this isn’t the fifteenth century! What good would it possibly do her to…” Kadow saw the look of realization in Mahlberg’s eyes. “Hard aport! All back port engines, full head starboard engines. Get Frey. Concentrate on the cruiser. Stop her.”
Hardy squinted through the binoculars, following Prometheus’s path, watching Sea Lion’s guns turn her into smoking wreckage, pieces of flaming metal shooting high into the air every time she was struck. And yet the ship did not waver. He watched and was aware that he was quietly crying. He kept his glasses in place so that no one could see his tears.
When Prometheus struck Sea Lion just aft of A Turret, it was when the big ship was just beginning her turn. Prometheus’s bow dug deeply into Sea Lion’s body, the loud crash of the collision finally reaching Hardy long after the impact. The motion of both ships, coming at one another at high speed, combined to drive Prometheus’s knifelike bow into Sea Lion like a dagger. Hardy watched as the two ships shuddered from the crash, the bigger ship dragging the cruiser backward through the water, both twisting like wounded animals. Black smoke erupted around the cruiser’s bow, followed by a series of explosions.
She had crushed Sea Lion’s decks, Hardy knew, and ruptured fuel tanks, and mains and lines, and sprung watertight bulkheads and doors, and started cataclysmic fires deep within the ship. Hundreds of tons of ice-cold water tore into the interior, flooding decks and compartments, killing sailors, pounding at the weakened steel bulkheads. It was hell belowdecks for those poor bastards — enemy or not. They would drown or the force of the water jetting through the ruptured hull would crush them. They would die in the darkness with only the flickering red emergency lights to comfort them.
“Orders, sir?”
Hardy turned to find Land waiting. “Make to Eskimo, ‘Come up on her starboard side and attack with torpedoes. Be careful, she is still lethal. Firedancer.’ We will attack from the port side, Number One. Quick in, quick out. Please inform the torpedo stations of my intentions.”
“At once, sir.”
It was an explosion of some kind, Statz knew, a tremendous bang that shook the entire ship and threw everyone off their feet, splitting steam lines, blowing circuits, throwing tools and unsecured minutia in every direction. Smoke instantly filled the turret from below and the one sickening feeling that Statz had as he pulled himself to his feet was, the powder rooms. If they were damaged, there was danger of explosion and the blast would send Bruno tumbling end over end through the air.
“What happened? What happened?” It was Steiner, but his voice came from the ladder near the gun-control platform. “Were we hit?”
The others came around, frightened voices calling from somewhere in the smoke-filled turret.
“Statz?” It was Scholtz. “I think I broke my fucking leg!”
“Where are you?”
“Under the spanning tray. Get me out of here.”
Soon the cries for help began to fill the interior of the turret and Statz realized that he had to regain some control. “Shut up. Shut up, all of you. Answer when your name is called. Scholtz?”
“Here.”
“Steiner?”
“Here, Mien Fuehrer.”
“Wurst?”
No reply.
“Wurst?” he said again, urgently. There were a dozen places an unconscious man could fall within the turret and, in the darkness and smoke, remain hidden for hours.
“When we fall out I’ll look for Wurst,” Statz said. “Manthey?”
“I think I shit my pants, but I’m here,” Manthey said.
“Gran?”
“Yes. Here”
“Gran, contact Turm Befehishaber and let him know that we’ll have a damage report ready for him in five minutes.”
“Find out what happened,” Steiner said.
“That’s none of our concern,” Statz said sharply. “We man this gun, Steiner. Those who can, return to your stations and break out the extinguishers. Scholtz? Where in the hell are you?”
“In the same place, Statz.”
The smoke was becoming thicker and worse, yet it was coming from below. What had hit them? Certainly not an enemy shell, there was nobody out there but cruisers and destroyers. Suddenly it came to Statz; they’d been torpedoed. But that didn’t make any sense — Sea Lion carried a sixteen-inch armor belt at the waterline. He heard the hatch off the gun-control platform swing open with a clang and saw the head of one of the range-finder crew in the eerie red emergency light.
“We’ve been rammed!” he shouted down into the turret. “That bastard has rammed us.”
Then the air exploded with a rapid crescendo of gunfire.
The collision knocked everyone in the conning tower to the deck and suddenly the air was filled with the wail of a dozen alarm bells. Kadow spun the wheel on the conning tower hatch and made his way onto the deck. He couldn’t see anything through those devilish slits, but the scene that lay before him was indescribable. The enemy cruiser was buried deep into the starboard side of Sea Lion, listing slightly to port, and acting as a sea anchor, her length and bulk slowing Sea Lion’s progress to a crawl. Smoke poured from around the point of impact, obscuring the extent of the cruiser’s penetration into Sea Lion. But Kadow knew that it had to be at least fifteen meters.
Then he saw the cruiser’s guns elevating to bear on Sea Lion. She was still full of fight and at this range even her six-inch guns could cause considerable damage by raking the superstructure and upper decks of Sea Lion.
He ran back to the conning tower and was about to close and secure the hatch when he looked down. He was standing at an angle. He was a seaman so long used to this sort of thing, the constant roll and toss of a vessel at sea, that it came as second nature to him. But this was different. Sea Lion was listing to starboard, maybe as much as five degrees. She was taking on water.
The cruiser’s guns opened fire, cutting into Sea Lion’s bridge, forward fire-control centers, the FuMO 23 radar tower and masts, and sweeping the area around the conning tower. Kadow should have been safe. He was on the opposite side of the conning tower with the hatch partially closed, but an errant splinter slipped through the tiny crack between the edge of the door and the casing and buried itself in Kadow’s heart.
There was very little blood and as his hold on the door weakened and some odd, gray fog covered his eyes, he slid to the deck and died. His last thought was that he wanted to warn Mahlberg about the list, but that became impossible due to his death on the cold, steel deck of the conning tower.
Chapter 32
There was no noise, no thunder of guns, or the shrill screams of the wounded. For Hardy, it was as if God had lowered a shroud of silence over the scene and left only the image of two ships caught up in a death struggle; one embedded in another, a wounded hound valiantly tearing at a boar’s throat, trying to bring him down. It was the most fantastic thing that Hardy had ever witnessed and he had seen so much in this war.