Dahlen considered this for a moment. “Fourteen torpedoes… say four a target… so you could only really sink three or four ships a patrol?”
Krauser had never really considered it like that. “Yes, I suppose so. Sometimes we are able to use the Deck Gun, or sometimes we bag more on a good patrol, but yes, three or four would be satisfactory to me.”
“So, it wouldn’t be unusual for you to return home with all of your torpedoes spent?”
“Uncommon, but not unusual. It certainly wouldn’t raise eyebrows, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“And the deck gun?”
“They’d be surprised if we’d burned through over two hundred rounds of the thing, but it wouldn’t be uncommon to have fired off more than a few.”
“And the radio is out, you say?”
Krauser flicked his cigarette butt into the sea, momentarily getting a vision of a toothed maw leaping from it to claim him, and suppressed a shiver. “Yes. No contact in or out.”
“Then why don’t we go fishing? We can spend a few days here… we could drop anchor, or whatever the submarine equivalent is. Whether or not we kill this thing, your commanders will think nothing of you burning through some rounds of ammunition. Time it right, and you’ll be back home when you should be. Who would be to know that you didn’t complete your patrol as planned? The men are hardly going to report that you ordered they spend several days in pursuit of a sea monster, are they?”
Krauser had to admit that Dahlen made a very strong argument. It was hardly within his mission parameters to eliminate marine life, no matter how much of a grievance he or the Norwegian may have against it. Hertz would be a problem, too. He may go along with it at the time, but as soon as they got back to dry land he knew Hertz would be filling in all kinds of reports and pushing for a court martial, just to be a pain in the backside and further his own career. He needed work – his wife and unborn child depended on that. Could he really stop and take a break just to hunt sea monsters?
“I’m sorry, Mr Dahlen, but we cannot do that. People at home are depending on these men making it back home alive, and these men are depending on me to get them there. The U-616 is critically damaged, and we need to go home.”
The usually laid back Norwegian man stiffened and his eyes widened a little. “Captain, this shark is hunting us. You know that. If we do not kill it, it will destroy the U-616 just as it destroyed the Freyr and God alone knows how many vessels before that. We are here, and we have the weapons to destroy it. You can save the lives of your men, and countless hundreds of others. Do you not see that this thing, this shark, this monster will continue to strike again and again?”
Krauser straightened and fixed Dahlen with a steely gaze. “Mr Dahlen. I like you. I like you, and I’m sorry for what happened to your ship, but the fact remains that you are a prisoner of war and you are aboard my boat, and I am the Captain. I have listened to your suggestions, and I have considered them… but we are going home. We are badly damaged, and if we do ‘hunt’ this shark… then people are going to die.”
“And people will die if we do not!”
“That is not my concern, Mr Dahlen! The men below are my only concern right now and I say we’re heading home.”
Dahlen stopped and composed himself. “I’m sorry, Captain. You’re right. We will do as you command.”
Krauser headed to the command room and issued his orders to Hertz, who was barely able to suppress a smile at getting his own way for once. Unable to be around the man’s smugness, and not especially wanting to be in Dahlen’s company after their tiff on deck, he headed to his bunk, and dozed fitfully for a few hours. Once again, he dreamed dark, terrifying dreams. Dreams of the white ghost of ocean’s past that followed them through the water, unseen.
-ELEVEN-
The next day, Krauser was working the command room with Kleiner and three of the men – numbers were naturally stretched thin, following the casualties that they had suffered – when they sighted the convoy. Convoys were a double edged sword for U-Boat crews. They were a target rich environment, full of large freighters and tankers, but they were almost always escorted by destroyers armed with deck guns and depth charges, capable of sending even the bravest submarine crew to the bottom of the ocean. Krauser was constantly aware that the submarine was in far from the best condition, and that a single run in with a destroyer could crush them with ease.
“As tempting as the targets may be, we cannot risk contact with the escort. Dive to periscope depth, and run silent. We shall wait until they have moved from visual range and then commence our journey home.”
The men nodded and ran off to carry out his orders. Shouts and klaxons and bells rattled up and down the length of the boat as the U-616 submerged. After a while, the submarine finally fell silent, and Krauser felt the humidity and closeness all around him. He felt sweat crawl down his back, itching and tickling. He whispered to Kleiner “I say we give them twenty minutes, and then see what we can see.”
Kleiner nodded, and stood silently, leaning back against the interior hull of the submarine, and closed his eyes. Even the purring of the electric engines faded and stopped. They were in silent running. The men were all quiet, either laying down, or standing still to conserve oxygen. So it remained for the next twenty minutes.
Krauser tried to keep his attention focused on the convoy, but twenty minutes was a long time to remain focused on one thing, and his mind naturally wandered. His thoughts turned to his arguments with Hertz, to his wife and family at home, to what would happen to Arild Dahlen when they finally reached home port. When he next checked his watch, he saw that it had actually been nearer to half an hour since they had submerged. He stepped up to the periscope, and span it up around the surface of the water, searching for the convoy. “There’s no sign of the convoy… but… there’s another ship.”
“Close, Captain?” asked Kleiner.
“Six hundred metres, maybe. Small Freighter. No sign of an escort.”
Kleiner hesitated before asking, “Should I prepare an attack, sir?”
Krauser knew that the ship would be easy pickings. It was a small vessel, only two thousand tonnes, if that. A direct hit from a torpedo – or perhaps even the deck gun – would smash it to pieces… but was that something that they could chance? “Negative, Mr Kleiner. We’re still too close to that convoy. If this ship is able to radio through to their escort, we’ll be dead in the wat-”
He hesitated as a faint rumble ran through the ship on the starboard side. Had one of the engines kicked back into life? No. There was no sound, or motion. Had they run aground? Against a rock, or something? Surely not.
“Did you feel that?” whispered one of the men in the reddened darkness of the silent control room. “Felt like a torpedo shot past us…”
Krauser felt a chill run through him.
“Could there be a Wolf Pack in the area we don’t know about? Perhaps they’ve engaged this freighter?” asked another.
Wolf Packs were teams of three or more U-Boats that operated in unison, rather than the lone patrols carried out by the U-616. They were able to co-ordinate their attacks to knock out larger or grouped targets, and their numbers made it harder for destroyers or aircraft to locate them for a counter attack. With the U-616’s radio being destroyed, they’d have no way of knowing if one was in the area or not.