Jack Du Brul - Pandora's curse

“I just can’t believe it,” Erwin persisted. “My car won’t start after just one cold night.”

“You’re hearing and seeing the proof. The generator works like a charm. With proper care, you can leave an engine for decades and all you need to start it is a good battery. That’s what prevents your car from turning over. Cold temperature saps their power. Since the portable generator starts off a flywheel, all it required was about fifty pulls on the cord. It’s the lightbulbs that have lost their seals over time. The first one blew as soon as the electrical current hit it.”

“Well this changes a few things,” Mercer said as his original idea evolved. “I had a feeling we’d find a sub down here when Erwin first mentioned that’s how this base was supplied. The Germans would have kept one here at all times so they could transport the fragments as soon as they were ready, which means its crew would have died with everyone else. I’d thought that we could hide from Rath in it by submerging in the lagoon.”

“Without power how would we have surfaced again?”

“By opening a hatch and swimming out,” Mercer answered. “Can’t be that deep in here. Now I wonder if we need to hang around at all.”

Ira guessed at Mercer’s intention. “Just because I got a one-cylinder generator running doesn’t mean the sub’ll still work.”

“If the engineer took that much time on the generator, it stands to reason his U-boat is in excellent condition too.”

Ira weighed Mercer’s logic for a second and nodded. “Possibly.”

“You’re proposing we sail it out of here?”

“Without Ira I never would have considered it, but he used to teach submarine operations at the Navy’s sub school in Groton, Connecticut. If he can train teenagers to run a nuclear vessel, he can teach the six of us how to maneuver this antique. Correct me if I’m wrong, Ira, but the principles haven’t changed much in fifty years.”

“Haven’t changed much in a hundred years really,” Lasko agreed. “Nuke boats have a lot more automated controls. That fish over there is bare bones, uses muscles to open and close valves.”

“If nothing more, we can use the U-boat to hide ourselves. But if we can get her running, I think our best bet is to get the hell out of here.” Mercer looked each of them in the eye as he spoke. “Without Marty’s satellite phone we’re still stranded when Rath and his goons leave here. It’ll take weeks to walk the six hundred miles to Ammassalik. Considering we barely survived the past couple of days, I doubt we’d make it a quarter of that distance.”

“Why the hell did you bring us up here instead of having the pilot land us closer to Ammassalik?” Marty asked angrily. “None of this needed to happen. Radioactive bodies. Golden boxes filled with Christ knows what. Maybe Ingrid would have-”

“Marty, calm down!” Ira shouted right back. “Mercer had a good goddamned reason. The plane would have crashed a hundred miles from the town. We’d have died closer to it — that’s all. Ingrid would have been just as dead. I’m sorry. At least now we have a chance.”

“But my sat-phone?”

“Probably wouldn’t have gotten a signal until long after we froze,” Ira stated. “Mercer’s been buying us time every step of the way, so cut him some slack. All right?”

Marty fell silent.

Capping the brandy bottle, Mercer looked around the circle of expectant faces, proud of them all for handling the past days so well. “Here’s my plan. I would like Anika and Erwin, since you read German, to search the administrative offices thoroughly for evidence. I’ve noticed Kohl’s name is stenciled on a lot of the equipment lying around, and now I’m pretty sure Rath’s job is to destroy it and erase any link his company has to this place. We need paperwork and documents that implicate Kohl for when this nightmare is over. Just make sure you don’t leave any indications that we were here. Marty and Hilda can give Ira a hand with anything he needs.”

“What about you?”

“I’m going to work with Ira.” He looked at Anika. “As soon as your search is done, join us. We don’t have much time.”

“Okay, boys and girl, let’s get busy,” Ira said with the mock cheer of a drill instructor.

“What’s first?”

“I’m going into the boat to check it out. I want you three to start on the fuel. You need to drain the bottom few inches of water from each drum without stirring up the sediment. There’s a chain fall in the machine shop you can bring out to lift the barrels. Later, we’ll devise a filtering system. I should be able to jury-rig a preheater aboard the boat so we don’t need to cook each drum when we’re ready to load.”

“How much fuel do you think we need?” Marty asked, eyeing the hundred or more barrels stacked next to the U-boat. It would be an exhausting job.

“Let’s see. The typical type VII has two six-cylinder supercharged G.W. diesels that could push them along at about sixteen knots on the surface and double-commutator electric motors that produce about five hundred horsepower for a top submerged speed of approximately seven knots.” Ira looked upward as if doing mental arithmetic and then grinned sadistically. “That means we need all the fuel we can get into her.”

“I was afraid of that.”

By the light from the portable lamps wired to the generator, Mercer and the others got to work while Ira disappeared into the U-boat. After establishing a system and a rhythm, they had managed to prepare fifty of the drums when the slender submariner reemerged from the vessel. His parka and snow pants were streaked with grime, and his face was tiger-striped by smudge marks.

“How’s she look?” Mercer called to Ira, who stood atop the conning tower surveying their progress.

“That engineer knew what the hell he was doing.” He laughed. “I’ve seen new cars fresh off the assembly line in worse condition than this old girl.”

“You think this is going to work?”

“I honestly think it will. I was worried about the rubber gaskets and hoses, but they’ve been treated with something. While they’re stiff as hell, they should hold okay once they warm up. Just in case, I’m only going to run one engine and have the hoses from the other ready as spares.”

“What about the batteries? We’ll need to charge them if we’re going to get out of here.”

“He drained the hydrochloric acid from them and stored it in big glass bottles, so none of the batteries have been eaten away. I’ve just started refilling the sixty-three cells in the aft battery room. That should be enough juice to clear the tunnel and reach the surface.”

“Our priority is to make sure we can submerge her once Rath shows up. We’ll worry about getting out of here later.”

“In that case, we’ll start loading the diesel into her main tanks as soon as I check them for water seepage. This way we can use her Junkers compressor to fill the air tanks for when we want to surface again.”

Mercer checked his watch. He was stunned to see it was past midnight. Without the sun to guide his circadian cycle, he hadn’t realized that they’d been on the move for twenty straight hours. “We’ll start that after we grab a few hours’ sleep.”

Hilda sagged when she recognized the English word sleep. “Danke.”

“Where the hell are Anika and Erwin?” Marty asked, dropping to the stone floor and propping his back against a barrel.

“Obviously they found something of interest.” Ira climbed down the conning tower and crossed the gangway to the dock.

Hilda took over cooking duties from Mercer when he started gathering provisions from the packs, freeing him to find Anika. He found her slumped over the desk in the administration building’s largest office. Erwin Puhl was asleep on a threadbare couch. Mercer touched Anika’s shoulder and she came awake with a guilty start.