“Put out that fire!” Beauchene shouted to his crew, and then he staggered forward across the pitching deck to do it himself.
A shell hit the side of Sofia just aft of where Michael was standing. The impact lifted him up and threw him to the boards. The sound of distressed steel screeched in his ears. He lay dazed for a few seconds, feeling the wolf wanting to burst from its soul cage.
When he reached up for the hand that reached for him, he thought his own fingers might already be hooking into claws. But he was wrong.
Billy pulled him up. “You all right?”
Michael nodded. Were his ears bleeding? No.
Another shell struck toward the stern and Sofia shivered in agony. Then the rain began falling in sheets. Visibility was drastically cut; Michael could no longer see the Javelin through the gray curtains. Whether the lack of visibility affected the range-finders or not, he didn’t know, but the guns had ceased firing.
“Damn,” Billy said. Michael saw that his eyes were wide and his face bleached. Rain dripped from his chin. He was a kid trying to play a man’s part. “I’m sorry,” he managed to say, and then he lurched forward and threw up over the side.
A group of men were fighting the blaze and beating it down as Beauchene hollered and raged. Extinguishers sprayed. The flames sank away, and in a moment only black smoke curled up into the rain.
Michael stood over the body of the dead Spaniard. Several other crewmen, including Olaf Thorgrimsen and Dylan Custis, were silently staring down at the carnage. The presence of violent death among a member of any tribe, Michael knew, had the effect of piercing the hardest heart. Rain slashed across the dead man’s face and open eyes. “Would someone find a canvas?” Michael asked, and Olaf immediately trudged off to secure one.
The captain appeared on the scene, his hair plastered down and face smudged with smoke. He pushed at the brains with the toe of his shoe. “Somebody get that up!” he ordered. No one moved.
Then someone did come forward.
He bent down. A pair of black hands scooped up the essence of a man, and then Enam Kpanga walked to the gunwale and dropped his burden into the sea. When he turned again toward the ship, his face was devoid of all emotion and his eyes were unknowable beyond the rain-wet glasses. He wiped his gory hands along the sides of his black trousers, and then he passed on by Michael and through the gathering of men like a silent spirit.
“Wrap him up,” Beauchene said when Olaf returned with the canvas. “Anybody who wants to say something, say it now. I didn’t know him. When you’re done, put him over. Somebody pick up his rifle and shells. Comprenez?” He swung his gaze upon Michael. “I need you,” he said, “to get up to the wheelhouse. Tell Medina I said to keep the engines at full speed. Tell him I said to come back to course two-four-zero. Go!” He may well have been urging himself onward, for he hurried off with a heavy-set gray-bearded man, one of the two engineers.
Michael climbed the stairs to the wheelhouse. The repugnant but obviously capable Swede was still at the helm. Rain whipped against the windshield. Though dawn had broken, visibility was limited only to the foam-streaked gray waves twenty meters beyond Sofia’s bow. Medina sprawled in a brown leather chair with his hands to his face. “Get on duty!” Michael snapped at him, and he relayed Beauchene’s commands.
Medina’s eyes had sunken. He’d aged ten years in the last thirty minutes. “We’re all going to die,” he said.
Michael put his hand on the revolver’s grip in his waistband. “Give those orders or you’ll go first.”
The orders were given and carried out. Sofia, a tougher lady than she appeared, slowly swung back on her course for England.
“Mr. Medina!” It was the Russian radio operator, calling from his station. “Message for the captain!”
Michael didn’t wait for the second mate to respond. He walked back to the radio room. The bizarre noise of static, bagpipe drone and cat squall was pulsing from the speaker.
Michael asked in Russian, “Still jamming?”
The radioman looked at him in surprise. He was smoking a cigarette, and now he blew smoke through both nostrils. He gave a faint smile and said, also in Russian, “Jamming, yes. They drop the interference a little to send messages and receive from us, then they power it up again. A noise generator. Very wicked device, this one.” He stared at Michael with new respect. “What’s your home?”
“I was born in St. Petersburg.”
“Ah!” He tapped his heart. “Stalingrad. Well, it was Tsaritsyn when I was born. Hey, you speak good English!”
“You also.”
“Yes, we don’t waste our Russian on those with inferior ears, huh?” He grinned and reached over to a shelf that held tubes, wires, other radio parts and various tools of his trade. He flipped open a small leather case and offered Michael a hand-rolled cigarette.
Michael said, “Thank you,” as he accepted it. Not because he planned to smoke it, but because it was a comrade’s gift.
The jamming noise quietened, if only enough for that clipped voice to come through: “From the German vessel Javelin to the Norwegian freighter Sofia. Repeating our message. Captain Manson Konnig requests a meeting between brothers of the sea. He regrets your escalation of violence. Captain Konnig requests that you allow him to board your fine ship at your earliest invitation. Captain Konnig will arrive in an unarmed motor launch, with only the necessary crew. He will bravely and resolutely board your ship alone and unarmed. Is this agreeable to the captain of the Sofia?”
Michael tapped a finger against his chin.
The jamming was still at a lower volume. They were waiting.
Michael was about to do something that would get him hanged in a naval trial a hundred times over. But as far as he was concerned, and with the lives of the Wesshausers in the balance, at this moment he was in charge.
“Tell them to come ahead,” Michael directed.
“I can’t do that,” the radioman said, still in Russian. “I know you’re a big man here, but you don’t have the authority.” He let his gaze pass over the revolver. “Unless you force the issue.”
“All right.” Michael drew the weapon and held it between himself and the radioman. “Tell them to come ahead. I presume they’re still off our portside. Tell them we’ll treat Captain Konnig fairly. But tell them we’ve set up our own machine guns and if there’s any hint of trouble we’ll blow that launch to splinters. And tell them we’re not cutting our speed. Go on.”
The radioman sent the message. His German was not excellent, but it was very good.
There was a pause of maybe two minutes, during which the jamming noise increased. Then the clipped voice came back through the aural onslaught: “Agreed.”
The static and pulsing noises swelled louder. The radioman again had to dial down the volume.
“On their way,” he said, with the ironic fatalism of a true-born Russian.
Eight
The Mellow Moment
“You did what?”