back deep in the throat. Minefields shielded that territory from visitors like Lemp’s U-boat.
He respected those minefields without fearing them. He had good charts of where they lay. He didn’t know for sure, but he would have bet the Finns had contributed a lot to those charts. They didn’t love the enormous neighbor who’d ruled them till the Russian Revolution, and they needed to worry about the minefields, too, if their fishing boats and freighters were to stay safe.
But the Russians also sowed mines through the gulf at random. They’d sneak out under cover of darkness in fast attack craft, dump a few in the water, and run away again. They denied everything, of course. When one of those floaters blew a Finnish steamship sky-high, the Russians insisted the Germans must have placed it.
There were German mines in the Gulf of Finland, to make things difficult for the Soviet Union’s Baltic Fleet. Lemp also had charts showing their positions. Sometimes, of course, a mine would slip its mooring cable and go drifting with wind and wave. You might not think any bobbed close by, but you had to keep your eyes open.
At least one Soviet battleship, the Marat, lurked inside the minefields. If she came out, she could cause all kinds of trouble… for a while, anyway. How long she’d last against U-boats and bombers was anybody’s guess. Not very long was Lemp’s. The Marat was a dreadnought built before the last war: a dinosaur, in other words. New and more deadly predators prowled these days.
No monster from wars gone by put the U-30 in trouble. Another damned flying boat did. It came out of the sun, so nobody on the bridge saw it till it was almost on top of the submarine. The first clue Lemp had that it was there was tracers snarling past his face.
“Jesus Christ!” he yelled. Then he heard the growl of the Beriev MBR-2’s engine. The flying boat zoomed overhead no more than thirty meters above the sea. Bombs fell from under the wings. They didn’t hit the U-30, but went off close enough to her hull to knock Lemp down on the conning tower and almost drown him with two enormous gouts of seawater.
Coughing and spluttering and trying not to puke, he pulled himself to his feet. One of the ratings who’d been on the tower with him was down and moaning. His hands clutched his belly. Blood poured out between his fingers-a fragment must have got him. The moans turned to shrieks a moment later.
Curses and shouts of surprise came from inside the boat. How much water had suddenly flooded down the hatch? Much too much, by the noises from down there. But that, at the moment, was the least of Lemp’s worries. The MBR-2 was turning for another pass.
They couldn’t get down fast enough to escape it. The only thing they could do was bang away at it with the 37mm antiaircraft gun. “Take off the tompion!” Lemp shouted. Both the antiaircraft gun and the 88mm deck cannon had bronze plugs protecting the inside of the barrel from seawater. If you tried to fire one without removing that protector, you’d be very unhappy-but not for long.
Off went the tompion. It dangled from the barrel by a chain so it wouldn’t roll into the ocean. The gun roared. The flying boat fired back with its machine gun. Lemp had hoped the gunfire would scare it off, but no such luck.
Then he cheered when smoke and fire spurted from the Russian plane’s engine. The MBR-2 came down in the Baltic. Lemp hoped it would cartwheel and break to pieces. Again, no such luck. There it sat, on the water, and it went on shooting at the U-boat. Bullets clanged off the conning tower. Some bit through it. Those holes would have to be patched before the boat could dive again.
“Man the deck gun!” Lemp yelled down the hatch. He had to jump back as sailors sped up the steel ladder inside. The antiaircraft gun was still trading fire with the flying boat’s machine gun. Chunks flew from the plane’s metal wing and wooden hull, but the Ivans inside kept up their fire. No one could say they had any quit in them.
Then the deck gun roared. It wasn’t identical to the 88mm antiaircraft piece that was also a fearsome antipanzer weapon, but it came close enough. No plane could take that kind of pounding. A couple of rounds into the cockpit and the enemy machine guns went quiet.
Two more sailors were down, one at the flak gun, the other at the 88mm. The latter had taken one through the head. They’d bury him at sea, along with the poor devil with the belly wound, although that unlucky fellow might be a long time dying. The other wounded man had a neat hole through his leg. He’d probably live.
“Good Lord!” Lemp said, deeply shaken. “I hope we never have to do that again!” Everybody up on deck with him nodded. Several ratings crossed themselves. Lemp was no Catholic, but he felt like doing the same thing.
Peggy Druce had already voted for FDR twice. She had every intention of voting for him again. If ever anyone deserved a third term, Franklin D. Roosevelt was the man. It looked that way to her, anyhow.
Most of her Main Line friends and acquaintances were rock-ribbed Republicans. Rock-headed Republicans, as far as she was concerned. They seemed convinced the world ended right where good old American beaches gave way to the ocean. The sole exceptions they recognized were shopping trips to London and Paris and gambling junkets to Havana.
The only thing Peggy wished was that Roosevelt weren’t so coy about the chances the USA would get into the war. “On which side?” one of her friends asked, altogether seriously.
“Whichever side isn’t Hitler’s,” Peggy answered without the least hesitation.
“But-!” The other woman stared at her in horror undisguised. “That would mean fighting for Stalin and the Bolsheviks!”
“So what?” Peggy answered. “Winston Churchill said that if Hitler invaded hell, he’d try to give the Devil a good notice in the House of Commons.”
“He’s dead,” her friend reminded her. “He’s dead, and England doesn’t want to fight for Stalin. You ask me, Chamberlain’s no dope.”
Peggy didn’t blow up. She’d already had this argument more than once. By now, she was resigned to it. People who hadn’t been to Europe and seen what Nazi Germany was like for themselves didn’t-couldn’t-believe it. Russia was the devil they knew, the radical state that wanted to bury capitalism forever. To most head-in-the-sand Americans, anything that wanted to smash the Reds seemed swell.
Her friend went on, “I only wish Willkie didn’t sound so much like That Man in the White House. He ought to give the New Deal a good, swift kick, is what he ought to do.”
“If you say so, Blanche,” Peggy said.
“I just did,” Blanche replied. “And I tell you, we’re getting some very different people donating to Bundles for Britain these days. Not everyone quit after the Big Switch the way you did.” She raised her nose in the air-only a little, but it got through. It also let Peggy see the sagging flesh under Blanche’s chin. Since her own jawline was still pretty good, she soaked up some Schadenfreude on that score.
“I’ll bet you are,” she said, feeling the need for a saucer of cream. “The ones who stand up and whinny when the band plays ‘Deutschland uber Alles,’ I suppose.”
“It’s not like that.” Blanche’s voice went shrill. “But it is a different crowd. Hardly any of those people come in any more.”
“Why don’t you just call them Jews? The Fuhrer does. ‘The Jews are our misfortune!’ ” She did her best to thunder like Hitler on the radio. It wasn’t very good. That had to be just as well. She didn’t want people jumping to their feet and screaming “Sieg heil!” every time she opened her mouth.
“I suppose they have to live somewhere, but I wish they were better at knowing their place,” Blanche said.
“They do in Germany. One of them made a mistake-he sold me something when he shouldn’t have. Then some brownshirts went into his shop and beat him up. He won’t do anything that rude and pushy any time soon,” Peggy said.
“Oh, come on. I don’t mean that. You know what I mean,” Blanche said.
“I know what Hitler means, too,” Peggy answered. Outside the cafe where they were not enjoying time together, well-dressed, well-fed people hurried by. Shop windows promised the moon-and they’d deliver if you put down enough cash. Cars-so many cars!-whizzed up and down the street. Dealers were gearing up to start selling 1941 models. You could buy as much gas as you wanted, and for next to nothing. Rationing? Nobody on this side of the Atlantic had ever heard of rationing.
Blanche did have the grace to turn pink, if not red. “I don’t want to go as far as the Germans do.”
“I’m sure those people would be so glad to hear it,” Peggy said. The scary thing was that, in spite of being sarcastic, she was also right. Jews, these days, were pathetically grateful for any crumbs you threw them.
