Alan Furst: Dark Voyage

“Your pistol and the rifle are hidden in a duct,” Ratter said. “Along with the minefield maps. Once I get them, we’ll have a pistol, two rifles, and the submachine gun. Was the signalman armed?”

“No.”

“Well, we better get moving. I was their prisoner for one afternoon, that was enough for me.”

When he’d left, DeHaan said to Kees, “What can we do about the minesweeper? Board it? Ram it?”

“We’ll never ram-she’s too nimble. And we’d have a dozen shells in us in no time at all, with fighter planes here in twenty minutes. As for boarding, I don’t see how we can get close enough, using the cutter. They have a searchlight, and machine guns. That’s suicide, DeHaan.”

Ten minutes later, Ratter arrived with the ship’s armory. Kees took the Enfield rifle, Ratter the submachine gun, DeHaan his Browning automatic. “We’ll give the guard’s rifle to Poulsen,” Ratter said.

DeHaan said, “Any ideas about them?” He jerked his thumb back over his shoulder.

“Call on the radio, tell ’em thanks for everything, we’re leaving.”

“Tell them we’re holding Schumpel and his men, and we’ll shoot them if they fire on us,” Kees said.

Ratter smiled a certain way- not worth an answer.

“That’s for later,” DeHaan said. “Now it’s the engine room.”

“Why not call them?” Ratter said. “See how they’re doing.”

Maybe not such a bad idea, DeHaan thought. He picked up the speaker tube and blew into it. When nobody answered, he used the whistle.

That produced a very hesitant “Yes? Who is it?”

“DeHaan, the captain. Feels like we’re losing way, is everything working, down there?”

A count of ten, then, “All is in order.”

“What about the engine? Working like it should?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, I know these engines.”

DeHaan hung the speaker tube back on its hook. “He knows these engines.”

“Not so different than what they’ve got on the minesweeper,” Kees said.

DeHaan held the Browning out in front of him, studied it for a moment, then worked the slide. “Time to go, gentlemen.”

When they entered the wardroom, Cornelius’s eyes glowed with admiration-his officers, armed and ready to fight. Ratter handed the German rifle to Poulsen. “Ever used one of these?”

“No. We shot at rabbits, when I was a boy, but we had a little shotgun.” He hefted the rifle and said, “Bolt action-the last war, looks like. Simple enough.”

Shtern rose to his feet, as though to join them.

DeHaan appreciated the gesture, but shook his head. “Better for you to stay here, I think.”

“No, I’m coming with you.”

“Sorry, but we can’t have you shot-people may get hurt, later on.”

“They’ll get hurt now.”

“Let him come, Eric,” Ratter said.

Then Cornelius stood up, followed by Xanos. DeHaan waved them back down. “You’ve done your part,” he said.

Single file, DeHaan leading, Shtern the last in line, they stayed tight to the outside bulkhead, moving quickly along the slippery deck to the midship hatchway, then descending to the deck where the crew lived. Ghostly and silent, once they got there, nobody in sight, the crew apparently locked up in their sleeping quarters. A second hatch brought them to another ladderway, a steep one, then to a heavy sliding door. On the other side, a metal catwalk, which ran twenty feet high around the perimeter of the engine room. The beat of the engine had grown louder as they descended until, outside the sliding door, it became a giant drum, riding over the steady drone of the boiler furnaces.

DeHaan beckoned the others to come close-even so he had to raise his voice above the din below them. “You slide the door open,” he said to Kees. “Just enough.” Turning to Ratter and Poulsen, he said, “You stay behind me. If you hear a shot, go out there and return the fire. But don’t hit the boilers.” They all knew what live steam could do to anybody standing nearby. He looked at each of them, then said, “Ready?”

Ratter raised and lowered a flattened palm.

“You’re right,” DeHaan said. Better to crawl, less of a target.

Kees slung the Enfield over his shoulder, took a tight grip on the steel handle, and slid the door open. DeHaan crouched, took a breath, then scuttled through the door onto the catwalk. He crawled a few feet, to where he could get a view of the engine room below, but he never saw a thing, because the instant his silhouette broke the plane of the catwalk, something hit the rim, inches from his face, and sang off over his head. DeHaan threw himself backward, into Ratter, as a hole was punched through the space where he’d knelt a second earlier.

DeHaan came up quickly, said, “Give me that goddamn thing,” and snatched at the submachine gun. Ratter handed it over, just as the voice of Kovacz came roaring up from below. “You dumb fucking idiot! That was the fucking captain you just killed.”

As DeHaan and the others climbed down the ladder to the engine room, Kovacz was waiting for them at the bottom rung, looking very relieved, his shirt and pants stained with black grease. “Where’ve you been?” DeHaan said.

Kovacz nodded toward a shadowed area beyond the boilers, pipes, and rusted machinery abandoned during one of the ship’s refittings. “Back there,” he said. “For a long time. But I got tired of hiding, so

…” He glanced at his crew, two oilers and a fireman, who had gathered behind him, and shrugged- we did what we did.

DeHaan saw what he meant-one of the German sailors was sitting propped up against a stanchion, his ankles bound with wire, while the other lay nearby, flat and lifeless, his cap at an odd angle.

To Shtern, Kovacz said, “Take a look at him, if you want.”

Shtern walked over to the man and placed two fingers on his neck, where his pulse would have been.

“He turned around when I came out of there,” Kovacz said. “And Boda hit him.”

“I’ll say he did.” Shtern withdrew his fingers and stared down at the man, whose cap was now part of his head. “What with?”

Boda stepped forward. A massive fireman, wearing a flowered shirt with the sleeves torn off at the shoulders, he reached in his pocket and showed them a sock, stretched from the weight in its toe, which bulged with the round shapes of ball bearings. “The other one hid behind the workbench,” Kovacz said. “He had a rifle, but we talked to him a little and he gave up. He’s a Serb conscript. A Volksdeutsch, but he didn’t want to die for Germany.”

“Was that him, on the speaker tube?” DeHaan said.

Kovacz nodded. “I had him do it. When the signal came, I thought they still had the bridge.”

“And who was the marksman?”

“I went to free a valve,” Kovacz said, “so I gave the rifle to Flores.”

Flores gave DeHaan a hesitant smile-part apology, part pride. He was one of the Spanish Republican fighters who’d come aboard with Amado.

“You were in the war, Flores?”

Flores held up three fingers. “Three aos, sir. Ro Ebro, Madrid.”

A sharpshooter on board. He’d aimed and fired in a heartbeat, and come close.

“How’d you get free, up there?” Kovacz said.

DeHaan told him the story, then said, “It was Kolb who planned it. And I took the radio office, so that leaves two of them, guarding the crew.”

“They can wait,” Kovacz said. “For now, the patrol boat.” He looked at his watch, thumbing the grease off its face-every few minutes they were a mile closer to the German coast.

“What would you do, Stas?”

“Back in there, that’s all I thought about. And what I thought was, maybe we can run away. Walk away. The Serb was a storekeeper, but he says she does ten knots, which I think too. Of course if we put a weight on the safety valve and get thirteen, more maybe, they’ll shell us when they figure it out. Not right away, their people are on board, so they’ll use the W/T, loud-hailer, signal flags. It will take time, maybe too much time, because of the weather, visibility nothing, and because we have a trick.”