Brad Harmer-Barnes - North Sea Hunters

“Maybe they’re carrying something volatile? Fuel, or chemicals, perhaps? If a shipment like that were to go up, it wouldn’t leave a man jack of the crew alive to tell the tale.”

“I don’t know so much. You would think that they’d at least spend some time attempting repairs, or to… I don’t know. I mean, it’d take some serious damage before I gave the order to abandon our boat.”

“We don’t have the luxury of life boats, sir.”

“You know what I mean,” Krauser snapped, “These men are panicked beyond what you would expect. Do you think maybe one of the earlier torpedoes did hit, without us noticing?”

Hertz rubbed his straggly beard; shaving was forbidden while at sea, as a waste of water. “Unlikely, sir. We noticed that impact straight away, and the G7a torpedoes are a little… how can I put this… inconsistent?”

“You’ll get no argument from me on that matter, Mr Hertz. In any event, this ship is as good as sunk. Tell the men of our victory, and let’s get underway.”

Krauser was climbing back down the ladder to the control room, when Kleiner’s voice stopped him. “Sir? There’s something… strange, sir.”

Krauser looked over. He had once again forgotten his windbreaker, and didn’t appreciate the delay in getting back down in the warmth of the control room. However, Kleiner was not a man who was easily rattled, and his vision was second to none on board.

“The lifeboats, sir.”

“What of them?”

“They’re… they’re sinking, sir.”

Krauser didn’t quite know how to react to this news. He hesitated, half in and half out of the conning tower. “Sinking?”

Kleiner raised his binoculars back to his eyes and turned to the rapidly sinking Freyr . “Yes, sir… there goes one… my god!”

Krauser clambered back up onto the deck, barging past Hertz and snatching the binoculars from Kleiner, the poor chief engineer nearly choking as the strap was pulled against his neck. He swept his gaze across the length of the Norwegian freighter. The crew was still running back and forth in a panic, like ants whose nest has been kicked, scrabbling back and forth to protect their Queen and repair the damage as quickly as possible. Arms waved, and he could almost imagine that he heard the shouts and calls of the crew, though he was too far out to hear anything beyond a general cacophony.

He watched through the darkness as a lifeboat, loaded up with fifteen, perhaps twenty men, was lowered jerkily into the foaming sea. The small crew desperately tried to distribute their weight and settle supplies comfortably, then set to rowing, fleeing the sinking freighter.

“It just… disappeared,” muttered Kleiner, next to him.

Krauser shushed him, and continued to observe the sinking ship. There were now five lifeboats dispersed about a hundred metres out from the listing hull of the Freyr – some of the men panicked, others eerily calm. One boat, the nearest the stern of the freighter, was much more excitable. The men were all standing and pointing to a spot on the sea fifty or sixty yards from them. The crew were almost jumping up and down in their excitement. Had they perhaps spotted some supplies that were bobbing in the water? Or had one of their number fallen overboard and was in desperate need of assistance?

Hertz called him from near the entrance hatch, causing him to look away for a moment. “Sir, we need to move. The crew of the freighter may have already called for assistance. The Navy or the RAF could already be on their way, and we need to be long gone when they arrive.”

Krauser waved him away. “Head below and prepare to move out, Mr Hertz, but wait for us to return. Mr Kleiner and I will observe a little longer.”

Hertz hesitated, before replying coldly. “Your orders, sir.”

The dull clanging sounds as his second in command headed back to the control room felt like a physical relief to Krauser. He was beginning to feel increasingly tense whenever the man was around, as if preparing himself for another confrontation like earlier that day, or perhaps even for a physical attack. He made a mental note to suggest Hertz for promotion to another boat when he finished this patrol. Life was tough enough at sea without extra challenges.

Krauser looked back across the sea at the Freyr , the night time darkness that had aided their initial attack now becoming a hindrance as he tried to trace the movement of the lifeboats across the dark water. He again found the spot that the crew of the last boat had been pointing to, and tried to focus on what they had found. There, something flashed in the darkness, a little particle of white in a pot of black ink. The waves swelled again, obscuring his vision for a moment before the whiteness flashed again. He adjusted the focus and held his breath to steady his movements a little.

A white piece of driftwood bobbed up and down in the water, then another. The wood looked as though it had been shattered at one side, the jagged edge spinning this way and that in the water.

He panned quickly back to the nearest lifeboat. The crew were still pointing excitedly, some seeming to be shouting, while those at the oars rapidly rowed away from the driftwood. Krasuer felt the hairs on his arms rise as realisation dawned. The boats were the same colour and material as the gently spinning debris.

A scream echoed across the water towards them, and he quickly span to what he assumed to be the source. A large wake spread in between two of the other lifeboats… but one of them was gone! Rocked up and down in the large waves spreading from the centre of the wake, the men, like the crew of the other boat, started panicking and screaming.

“Did you see that?” asked Kleiner.

“Could they have been carrying explosives, or something like that? Not sea mines, but maybe Mills Bombs, or landmines? Perhaps the cargo broke loose and two of the lifeboats were unfortunate enough to bump into them?”

“No, sir… that last one… Hell, sir… it went straight down. There was no explosion, nothing like that. It just… sank. Down.”

“Then what the hell could cause that? A structural fault with the boat?”

Krauser trained the binoculars back on the new spot. White planks of wood surfaced… and then the chilling sight of a man, face down, his orange life jacket making him stand out in the darkness.

Kleiner managed to slip his neck out of the binocular strap and stand upright. “I don’t know, sir. Maybe… but with two of the boats?”

“A defective batch, maybe?”

He returned his gaze to the floating man in the water. He knew he had to be dead, but one of the lifeboats was rowing toward him, a man at the prow extending a billhook to try and fish the sailor from the water. It took a couple of tentative jabs – the billhooks were hardly precision instruments – but the sailor finally managed to catch a hold of the man’s lifejacket. Two more of the crew came to his aid in hefting him from the water, but the lone man could probably have done it himself.

The darkness and the moonlight made the sight of the man’s torso – raggedly cut off at the waist, the one remaining arm trailing in the water – even more ghoulish than it would have been in broad daylight. As one, the crew of the lifeboat screamed, the leader dropping the billhook in the water, and the men at the oars chaotically rowing away from the grisly scene.

“What the hell?” cried Krauser, dropping the binoculars to the deck.

“That’s no landmine, no mechanical failure…” gasped Kleiner. “That’s a shark attack.”

“A shark can’t sink a lifeboat!” shouted Krauser, heading for the entrance hatch.

“I saw one do it myself, sir. I was stationed in the Pacific and I saw one smash straight through the hull of a fishing boat.”