“Everybody shut up!” Allenbee ordered but there was chaos in the room. He aimed the gun at the main chandelier and fired a burst into it. Crystal exploded. The bullets tore through the bracket anchoring the enormous light and it fell straight from the ceiling, crashing into a table.
“I said shut up!” Allenbee ordered.
The room got quiet.
“See here! What in hell do you think you’re doing?” Peabody demanded.
Allenbee glared at him and pointed the machine pistol straight at his chest.
“Sit down, Peabody, or I’ll kill you where you stand,” Allenbee said in a voice that meant business.
* * *
Captain Leiger held the sub at ten meters, its conning tower just below the surface, and watched the St. Simons light spin slowly around, casting its long finger of light across the dark, rain- swept channel. He inched the sub around the northeast tip of Jekyll Island and entered the deep channel.
He swung the periscope around, fixed it on the dark, brooding shoreline of the island, marking the distance. He would hold his course due west, five hundred meters off the shoreline until he reached the northwestern tip of the island, then surface and swing into the inlet. The yacht dock was a few hundred meters south of the point.
Because he had to maintain his distance from the island, Leiger could not check the bay and the sound. If he had, he would have seen Tully Moyes’s forty-foot shrimp boat, the Dolly D, chugging through the choppy waters, heading for the same destination.
Aboard the Dolly D, Keegan shoved shells into Moyes’s automatic shotgun, then checked his .45. He had two extra clips which he put in his jacket pocket.
“You mean to kill this man, Frank?” Moyes asked.
“I don’t think he’ll have it any other way. He’s not the surrendering kind.”
“You got a plan?”
“Nope. I’m going to get on that island and hope to hell I can get the drop on him.”
As they passed the northwestern tip of the island a blazing streak of lightning lit up the entire cove. In its garish white-hot light, Moyes saw a streak on the surface of the water fifty yards off the port side. Ripples running against the wind-borne waves. He peered through the darkness. Another crack of lightning and then another rent the sky. In the flashing lights of the storm, the ripples turned to waves, then suddenly the conning tower of the U-l7 broke the surface of the water.
“Christ a-mighty!” Moyes yelled, “A damn sub, fifty yards off our port.”
Keegan scanned the turbulent waters. As the sky continued to blaze with lightning, he saw the gray tower rising out of the water and slicing through the small breakers. Beyond it was Jekyll Island and the yacht pier.
“He hasn’t seen us yet!” Keegan yelled.
Moyes yelled back, “He’s heading for the Jekyll Island dock.”
The sub’s nose burst through the surface. The long eel-like monster bounded atop the inlet, heading straight for the dock. The Dolly D headed straight for her.
There was no turning back. If they tried to run, the U-boat would shoot them to bits. But, thought Moyes, if the U-boat’s rear ballast tanks were still full, he could ram her. A lucky strike on the conning tower could tip her over. If the hatches were still open, the sub would flood and sink. The dock approach was forty feet deep and the heavy shrimp boat would run right over the bastard.
Moyes’s decision was instantaneous. He slammed the throttles full forward.
“I’m gonna ram the son of a bitch!” Moyes yelled to Keegan above the howling wind. “Brace yourself.”
Moyes snapped on his floodlight as the hatch swung open and two German crewmen clambered on deck. Startled, they turned to see the bright single eye of light bearing down on them, closing fast. The first man ran toward the machine gun in front of the conning tower. Keegan focused the binoculars on the gray shadow, saw a face appear in the tower. The man was wearing a white, billed cap and he turned immediately toward Moyes’s boat, his eyes wide with surprise. He appeared to be shouting orders to the gun crew. Keegan swung the glasses down to the deck as the two gunners pulled a tarp off the heavy deck gun and loaded it. Keegan ran out on the slippery deck, steadied the automatic shotgun against the rail and fired two bursts. The first ripped into the deck a foot or so behind the German sailor. But as he grabbed the butt of the heavy gun, the second blast caught him in the chest. His arms flew over his head and he fell backward, sliding over the side. The sailor’s companion grabbed the heavy weapon, swung it around and fired a continuous burst into the cabin.
The windows exploded. Glass and bits of framing showered around Moyes. He wrapped his arms through the ship’s wheel to keep her steady but a moment later another burst tore through the small cabin, ripping into his shoulder. He screamed but it was an angry scream, a scream of challenge not pain.
Leiger saw only the ghostly light roaring down on him through the driving rain. Lightning split the sky again, the jagged streaks ripping into trees along the shore. In the glow, he saw the outline of the heavy shrimper as it chopped through the waves ten yards away. They were almost to the dock but the captain realized he would never make it.
Before he could duck back inside the tower, the Dolly D struck. The submarine lurched as the heavy wooden boat ripped into the conning tower. Leiger grabbed for the hatch cover but couldn’t reach it. He was thrown head-first down the narrow shaft. He plunged into the control room below as the shrimper’s heavy wooden bow ground up over the spire. The steel hull sliced through the wooden hull of the shrimper and tore it open. But the U-boat was already mortally stricken. The collision had ripped a jagged crack down the length of the tower; the sub was on its side and still twirling. The captain landed flat on his back on the floor of the sub as it tilted crazily over on its side. The crash horn was shrieking. Men were screaming. The sea poured into the stricken boat through two open hatches and the tear in its con. The one remaining gunner on the deck of the sub was thrown end over end into the inlet.
Debris flew through the air like shrapnel. Rivets popped. Maps, flashlights and anything not tied down was thrown into the narrow shaft. Lights flickered. As they did, the stunned captain felt the burst of cold water as it poured through the open hatchway. The sub kept rolling. Sparks showered out of shattered lamps. The fuses blew. The sub was plunged into darkness—a tomb filled with the screams of the men and the sound of water roaring into it from two open hatches.
The shrimp boat groaned as it rode up the side of the tower, slashing it down sideways into the inlet waters and slamming it into the Jekyll dock. Timbers cracked and snapped as the two boats crashed into it. Keegan was thrown against the bulkhead. Lines snapped and twanged past his ear. The shrimp boat rose high out of the water, riding up over the sub then slamming down on the shattered pier. Its weight and the water rushing into the sub slammed the mortally wounded steel fish down to the bottom, into mud and silt.
Inside the submarine there was chaos. The crew floundered in darkness and panic, disoriented as the big fish rolled over and its tower ripped into the muddy bottom. Throughout the slender boat, men tried in vain to find and close watertight doors but they foundered in the dark or were washed away by the torrents of water gushing the length of the U-boat. In the command center, the captain thrashed frantically, hanging on to a table leg. But as the underwater vessel rolled, he lost his grip and he too was washed like a leaf down through the bowels of the sub, bouncing off metal objects, carrying other crew members with him as he was washed toward the stern of the doomed vessel. The cries of the crew were drowned out one after another until there was only the groan of the sea monster as it settled into the muck thirty feet below the surface.