As he cannonballed down the narrow corridor, he was buffeted by panicked sailors, sprayed with gouts of water from the cracked hull and broiled alive by sweat and humidity of that undersea hell.
Krauser and Spahn were left manning the deck gun, and found themselves desperately struggling to get it loaded and into a position to fire. They knew that they didn’t have many chances left, and it was likely down to them if the shark was to die.
Captain Krauser hefted the shell in, at last, as Spahn tried to make the last few desperate adjustments. Shutting the chamber with a clank, his eyes fell on the body of Dr Arnold, and his heart sank. The doctor had been a good man, and it was a shame that he had ended up this way.
“Hertz shot him.” shouted Spahn from the firing seat. “The poor doctor flipped his lid when he saw the shark, and, well, I guess that old Hertz just wasn’t in the mood for it. Shot him right there on the deck.”
“Goddamn it, Hertz,” muttered the captain. “I just thought I was starting to see the hero in him.”
Spahn laughed. “None of us are heroes, Captain. We blow up merchants and sailors and then we run and hide. Does that sound like heroism?”
Krauser said nothing. The shark was on them.
Kleiner grabbed two of the men working in the torpedo bay and chivvied them along, helping and bullying them into sliding the twenty foot long torpedo into its tube. Even with the pulleys, chains and belts there to make the load easier to manage, it was backbreaking work, and they all knew that time was against them.
Just as things seemed to be moving smoothly, several torpedoes broke loose, rolling across the floor in a chaotic flurry. One of the men was crushed and lay under its weight, screaming for help. Water sprayed in through the holes the shark’s teeth had ground and sliced through the U-616’s hull.
Finally, they pushed a G7a steam torpedo home, and closed the bulkhead. Spinning the bulkhead closed, Kleiner muttered a silent prayer, and gave the order to fire.
Krauser and Spahn both shouted in terror as the megalodon crashed its jaws down around the prow of the boat. The cleaver-like teeth sank deep into the hull, buckling and cracking the black metal of the U-616 as if it were cheap plastic. The colossal shark grunted out a belch of fetid air, and Spahn fainted dead away.
Krauser was the last man up on deck, and he was alone with the Shark of the North Sea.
Pure adrenaline fuelling his movements once more, he clambered into the firing chair, and made the final adjustments to the deck gun’s trajectory and aiming reticle. Thinking of his wife and baby, he muttered a final prayer before beginning the firing sequence.
-EIGHTEEN-
The White Ghost ground down its teeth as hard as it could against the hard metal of the submarine. This hunt had gone on for long enough, now – far, far too long. It was injured, and it was hungry and it was tired. It could feel the screaming of the men inside, and knew that the time had come. Still holding the submarine in its jaws, it kicked down hard with its tail and ploughed the submarine underwater, dragging it down to the depths.
Krauser was just centimetres from hitting the firing button when he found himself thrown onto the deck, and then – with a cacophonous splash – he was suddenly underwater. It took him a moment to realise what had happened. Satisfied that it had weakened the submarine enough, the White Ghost had grabbed the entire submarine side on in its jaws, and dragged them down into the depths to drown. Krauser’s lungs rapidly filled with water, having had no time to prepare himself, and he instinctively kicked up and away from the boat, towards the surface. He was desperate to take one last breath before he returned to finish the battle with the monster that had destroyed his submarine, killed his compatriots and terrorised these waters for far too long.
At last he broke the surface and gasped for breath, sweeping the salt water from his eyes. Looking around, all that he could see of the U-616 was a foamy wake, ringed by small pieces of debris that he could barely recognise: part of a strut, a plank of wood from the deck, a tattered piece of uniform.
He screamed in frustration and insolent rage, knowing there was nothing he could do.
He had failed his crew.
Kleiner was now up to his armpits in water, and the torpedo bay was filling fast. The shark was shaking the boat from side to side once again. Kleiner quickly learnt that maintaining his footing was almost impossible. He reached desperately for the torpedo firing switch, and was thrown back, falling hard and cracking his tailbone. He swallowed water before managing to stumble to his feet, and reach for the switch once more.
He spared a thought for his family, and all the friends he had lost – and would lose that day – and fired the torpedo.
The G7a steam driven torpedo travelled a distance of six inches before colliding with the hard palette of the roof of the shark’s mouth, and exploded with a warhead comparable to three hundred kilograms of TNT.
The shark never knew what hit it, and nor did Kleiner, or any of the remaining crew of the U-616.
Krauser was catapulted almost fifty metres through the air by the force of the explosion. He felt the air around him turning hot and dry, singeing his hair and toasting his skin. When at last he hit the water again, it felt like a solid wall, knocking all the breath from his lungs. He swallowed a deep gulp in shock, before managing to right himself and kick back up to the surface, spluttering for breath. He thought he was going to pass out, but knew that if he did he was as good as dead. He lay floating on his back for a while, trying to muster the energy to right himself and decide what to do next.
He felt the impact of debris and shark meat peppering the water around him, and knew that at long last, the battle was finally over. He didn’t know exactly what had happened; he could only hazard vague guesses. All that was certain was that his submarine was gone, and so was his White Ghost.
After what seemed like hours, he finally managed to muster enough energy to right himself, and so he did.
About a hundred metres away, the ocean was on fire, as some fluke of the explosion must have cast diesel fuel to the surface. The ocean was a vile, dark purple as the salt water had mixed with engine oil and the blood of the shark – and also of his crewmates, no doubt. A tattered skull and crossbones pennant floated past him, and he grabbed it and stuck it in his pocket without really knowing why.
He screamed suddenly, startled almost out of his skin by the blast of a ship’s horn. Turning in the water, he saw a fishing vessel of some kind. It must have been the vessel he had glimpsed briefly on the horizon what seemed like hours ago. It was a nondescript, battered ship, and he had no clue as to its nationality. It was backlit by the sun, and he thought for a moment that he had died aboard a boat, and that this was how a sailor would see heaven. That seemed plausible, didn’t it?
Eventually he heard voices, and the sound was familiar, though not a language he understood; Dutch or Norwegian, perhaps. He felt his eyes fluttering and he rose and fell in the twilight between sleep and wake.
Eventually the boat came alongside, and he felt strong arms reaching down for him.
The first thing he heard was a familiar Norwegian accented German.
“It looks like you have had an even worse time of it than I had, August.”
Krauser opened his eyes with a snap, gasping with delight at the sight of Arild Dahlen. The Norwegian sailor was alive, dry, and wearing what was obviously one of the fisherman’s spare clothes. Looking down he saw that he was wearing a similar thick, roll-necked sweater and black trousers. He looked up and around, seeing that he was in a two-man cabin, occupying the lower bunk. His tattered and singed clothes were hung up upon a line to dry. He blinked away the sleep and tried to ignore his pounding headache, not to mention the dull pain from the bullet wound in his arm. “Jesus, Dahlen, how long was I out for?”