The captain pulled the man up and almost threw him toward the entrance hatch. “Go. Get below.”
Sessler slid down the ladder, still gibbering to himself. Krauser was hot on his heels and about to follow when he heard a sound like a thunderclap, and felt the cold water wash over him. The deck tilted under his feet, and he had to grab hold of the barrel of the anti-aircraft gun to stand upright. He blinked, wiped the water from his eyes with his sleeve, and turned to face the shark.
It was once again, attempting to climb up the side of the boat, tugging it on its axis. The jaws worked desperately trying to reach him, the teeth made even more horrific now by the pieces of Sessler and his uniform ground into paste between them. The leviathan made involuntary deep barking noises as it reached for him, oddly putting him in mind of the sighs and grunts of an old dog he had known on the farm he grew up on. Krauser wrapped one arm around a fixing, gripping it in his elbow, so that he could take his automatic pistol in both hands and fire precisely.
The shark thrashed and shifted around, emitting its odd, breathy barking, and Krauser had the sense that the shark was looking for him with its one good eye. He took aim, and squeezed off three rounds in fast but smooth succession.
He was rewarded by small puffs of red mist where the bullets struck the beast, but they made no impact on it. The shark thrashed, causing the deck to shake under his feet once more, pulling it forty-five degrees towards it, and he skidded on the sodden wood. He lost his grip on the strut and fell hard onto his backside, cracking his tailbone. He screamed as he slid down towards the vast, foetid maw, and knew his time had come. The deck was a ramp to death.
He screamed, took aim, and fired off three more shots from the Mauser, satisfaction of a sort filling him to see two of them strike it full on in the teeth, shattering bone. He was a mere two feet from the thing’s mouth when he stopped suddenly, his jacket caught on something.
“Captain!” shouted Hertz, who had caught hold of the collar of his jacket. “Get below now!”
Krauser was so close he could physically feel the air being pushed around by the monster’s desperate bites. He threw his pistol at the shark, watching it bounce harmlessly off the thing’s nose. With his hands now free he was able to get a grip on the planks of the deck and clamber backwards towards the hatch, Hertz desperately tugging him along all the while. At last he reached the hatch, and he felt himself pulled backwards through the bulkhead, both of them skidding down the ladder together. The boat rocked rapidly, righting itself as the shark disengaged the attack and swam off.
Krauser and Hertz lay panting together for a while, until some of the men came to their aid and helped them to their feet.
“Thank you, Mr Hertz. I would have died if not for you.”
Hertz breathlessly snapped a salute. “It was nothing. That was very brave of you to rescue Gerstner, not to mention launch a full on attack on the shark.”
Krauser doubled over, struggling to get his breath back, and suppressed the urge to vomit. “Where has it gone? What do we do?”
Hertz took Krauser by the arm, his eyes manic. “Captain… I have to say that I agree with our Norwegian friend. We have to kill this thing, and we have to kill it now. If we don’t then who knows wh-”
The shark took its opportunity when it could. Now charging the submarine directly side on from its starboard, it gripped the submarine in its jaws and wrenched it as hard as it could. The U-616 was rocked and thrown side to side and tossed in its jaws like a dog with a toy. Men screamed as they were suddenly thrown up, down and sideways in rapid succession. The monster’s teeth ground down hard and the hull screamed as if in pain.
At last the shark loosened its bite and the boat skidded sideways in the water.
There was a distant scream of metal, and a jet of sea water pulsed into the control room!
“Breach!” screamed Kleiner, who hurried towards it with another engineer to assess the damage.
“Torpedo loose!” came several screams along the length of the boat.
Bells rung and men shouted. Krauser’s head rang. He put his hand to his forehead and it came away slick with blood. His vision swam. He supposed that this was how it had to end. His last thoughts were of his wife and unborn child.
Dahlen splashed through the ankle deep water in the control room and pulled Hertz to his feet. “What do we do now?”
“I… I don’t know. If this were a depth charge or a bombing run, I’d give the order to submerge, but there is nothing we can do. The attack comes from below the sea.”
Dahlen shivered in the cold water and pulled Krauser up, throwing the captain’s arm over his shoulder to carry him out. “That is a bad head wound. We need to get him to the doctor.”
Hertz slid under Krauser’s other arm to aid him. He shouted for the men to clear the way as they hurried to Dr Arnold’s station.
“What would you do if we were being attacked by another submarine? Surely that is the same principle?”
They fell sideways as the shark rammed them again. The hull physically buckled around them, and Dahlen caught a gush of sea water directly in the face. Hertz alerted the men to the new breach and continued carrying the captain to the doctor. “It’s not the same principle at all. Submarines are almost stationary when they attack. This monster is faster than we are. It can attack from all angles. It can smash us at close range. At close range all we have are knives and small arms fire.”
They burst into the doctor’s station as the boat lurched sickeningly one more time. They kept their feet this time, but heard the bursting of steam pipes and screams of “Fire! Fire!” from the engine room.
Dr Arnold was as white as a sheet. “What in god’s name is happening? Is it an airstrike?”
“Shark attack, Dr Arnold,” replied Dahlen.
“Shark? Your shark?”
“Our shark.” He grunted, throwing Krauser onto a bed. “Is he dead?”
Dr Arnold began a rapid examination of the captain. “No, not dead. Unconscious, though. Probably a concussion. He’ll need to rest up for some time. Leave him with me. Mr Hertz, you’re in command until such time as I deem our captain fit for duty.”
“I know that, doctor. Please, do all you can for… wait…”
“What is it?” asked Dahlen, getting his breath back from the laborious rush to the doctor’s station.
“It’s stopped,” replied Hertz.
The doctor and Dahlen turned their eyes skyward, listening. A minute passed, then two.
“You’re right,” said the doctor, tying off a bandage he had quickly applied to Krauser’s head. “Does this mean we’re safe?”
“No, doctor,” said Dahlen. “It just means that the shark is resting. Predators sometimes like to injure their prey, so that it tires itself out and they can follow it at their leisure, rather than expend all their energy in an all-out attack. Perhaps sharks do the same. It’s certainly how it brought down the Freyr.”
Hertz nodded. “He’s right. What it means is that we have to take advantage of this time to repair our boat and prepare as many offensive capabilities as we can. Knives, guns, explosives, anything. We have to kill this thing before it kills us.”
Captain Krauser’s eyes flickered open. He couldn’t quite focus on the room around him, and when he went to raise himself up on his elbows, a friendly hand pushed him down again.
“You took a bump to the head, Captain,” came the familiar voice of Dr Arnold. “Hertz and Dahlen brought you here. How are you feeling?”
“Like I have a katzenjammer.”
Dr Arnold chuckled. “How is your vision?”
“Foggy. Like I can’t quite focus. It blurs and then refocuses, blurs and refocuses.”