Deutschland.
Beck watched as the fourth body bag came up the ladder. He knew it was the man he had cut free in the torpedo room. 'Twenty percent,' Beck said. 'Last brew-up, their great-grandfathers' time, the survival odds were twenty percent.'
'Look at them,' Coomans said. 'They're bloody children.' Soon the grim ceremony on Deutschland was complete. The deck hands went back to work.
The band began to play again. This time it was a celebratory, triumphal march — a tune premiered at Wilhelm IV's coronation.
'They change gears just like that,' Coomans said. 'It's all sheet music to them, I suppose.'
'They huff and puff and work their fingers. They go home and sleep in a safe, warm bed, probably not alone. Look at them, the Kaiser's tootlers, how chubby they are, how soft their faces! They wouldn't last one day on patrol. It's an insult for them to be here.' On a signal from her captain, the 212's crew rushed aboard her with military precision. Most of the men went below. Others took up the lines. Quickly the 212 started to move. The traction engines were towing her to the blast door interlocking. Once there she'd submerge, then transit through the deep fjord underwater. She'd come out in the Norwegian Trough, the same way Deutschland came in.
Beck made eye contact with her captain on the 212's bridge. He threw the man a salute. ' Where are you headed?' he shouted.
'Nash England!' To England.
'Good luck!'
'And to you, Herr Korvettenkapitan! Again, congratulations on your new record!' Beck turned away to get to work. As the 212 drew past Deutschland's stern, he glanced at the back of the captain's head.
The man sounded confident enough, Beck told himself. But then, heading out, they always did.
And the band played on.
FIVE MINUTES LATER. AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE SOUND, IN THE CAPTURED GERMAN MINISUB
Ilse stood behind Chief Montgomery as he piloted the mini. Outside the hull, small warships' screw-props swished, turbines sang, piston engines pounded, and active sonars whistled and chirped. Ilse's hair brushed the overhead; like Challenger's ASDS, the German minisub was barely eight feet high on the outside.
The control compartment was rigged for red. Lieutenant Meltzer, in the right seat, served as copilot: off watch, the last few days, he'd drilled to learn the German vessel's systems. Switches and knobs were labeled or tagged in English for him. Ilse glanced to her right. Jeffrey squeezed in next to her, half-standing behind Meltzer. Clayton and the enlisted SEALs and gear were in the transport compartment aft.
Ilse had a bad feeling. She wondered if she'd have to watch Jeffrey die, or one of the others. She wondered if the human soul is real, and whether it would have time to leave her body in that millionth of a second if she needed to set off an atom bomb in her lap.
She tried to shake her sense of foreboding.
Everyone studied the data on the mini's wide-screen displays. The mini sat on the bottom, in front of the choke point into the Sound. Threat icons littered the tactical plot and the nay chart.
'Mines, nets, wrecks, patrols,' Jeffrey said. 'German or Swedish, take your pick.'
'We're a German mini,' Meltzer said. 'Maybe we should go through on the occupied Danish side.' If Meltzer was nervous, it didn't show, except that his Bronx, accent was thicker.
'Problem with that,' Montgomery told him, 'is we'll be challenged. We don't have the current recognition codes for here.'
'What about down the middle?' Ilse said. 'It's the deepest part, and the seam between the two countries' forces, right?' She liked the tight-knit feeling of this foursome, heading into danger together, improvising as they went. Bonding.
'We could draw fire from both sides,' Jeffrey said. 'Which leaves Swedish waters,' Ilse retorted. 'You really think that's a better choice?'
'It's the least bad of the three. These minis were sold to the Axis by Sweden. Maybe they'll leave us alone.' 'I dunno, Skipper,' Montgomery said.
'Look,' Jeffrey said. 'In fourteen hours, tops, ARBOR's computer worm at the lab goes dormant again, assuming internal security doesn't find it first. After that, there's no way we'll ever get inside.'
Montgomery picked up the mike to the transport cornpartment. He asked one of the enlisted SEALs to come forward. Montgomery turned to Jeffrey. 'He speaks a little Swedish.'
Meltzer stiffened. 'Hydrophone line dead ahead.'
'I see it,' Montgomery whispered.
Jeffrey watched that screen, slaved to the mini's chin-mounted photonics sensor. The moored Swedish hydro-phone heads showed all too clearly on the bottom, swaying gently in the image-intensified moonlight.
'Dense mine field to port,' Meltzer said. 'Big wreck right to starboard. We can't maneuver to avoid.'
'Think they can hear us?' Montgomery said. He tapped the screen, one of the hydrophones.
'If we're close enough to see them through this turbidity,' Ilse said, 'they're close enough to pick something up from the mini. Main screw blade-rate, side thruster flow noise, machinery hum, something.'
'Pull back?' Montgomery said. 'Try again from more in-shore?'
'No,' Jeffrey said. 'Keep going or they'll be suspicious.' Montgomery worked his control joystick and the throttle.
Jeffrey watched the hydrophones disappear under the mini.
A light on Meltzer's console started blinking. 'Incoming message. Undersea acoustic link.' He brought it up on another screen. 'Digital, but not encrypted. It's Swedish, sir, I think.'
The enlisted SEAL, squashed between Jeffrey and Ilse, craned to read the message.
'It says, Identify yourselves.'
'Ignore it,' Jeffrey said. 'Keep going. Pilot, increase speed to six knots.'
'Aye, aye,' Montgomery said. The light stopped blinking.
'I doubt the local troops have authority to shoot,' Jeffrey said. 'They'll need to follow ROEs, chains of command, just like us.'
The mini kept moving south, toward the Baltic.
'So far so good,' Ilse said a minute later. 'The Sound gets much wider soon.' She pointed to the updated tactical plot. 'Our passive sonars say there are fewer ships patrolling ahead.' Suddenly Jeffrey heard a roaring, tearing noise, then a shattering explosion off the starboard bow. The minisub shivered and pitched — they'd been fired at by a shore-based naval gun.
The message light blinked again.
'It says, You are intruding in Swedish territorial waters. Surface and heave to for boarding or we will sink you.'
'Now what?' Montgomery said. 'We're boarded, we're finished.' Jeffrey ran his hand over his face. He worked his jaw back and forth. It was hard to think straight, amidst the reverb of the explosion and the vibrations from the shock. The others looked at him expectantly.
'Answer in German,' Jeffrey said. 'Say we're on a training run…. Say we thought this was Rugen Island.' Rugen was a. German island that formed one side of Greifswald Bay. Montgomery typed. The answer was in German. 'They say we're not even close…. Surface and leave our waters at once.'
Jeffrey heard another shell tear overhead and detonate in the water. He gripped the back of Montgomery's chair to steady himself. His ears hurt.
'They say that one went off due west of us. Head due west now or the next shell won't miss.'
'You heard the man,' Jeffrey said. 'Raise the photonics mast and use image intensification. Don't surface.'
Meltzer flicked a switch and the mast came up. He activated another screen to show the picture. The fog topside had cleared, but it was overcast. Jeffrey could see tall mountains on the Swedish coast, snowcapped.
Montgomery steered the mini due west. Meltzer adjusted the ballast and trim for the halocline — the
