William Dietrich - Ice Reich

He dropped as a second flare arched skyward. Ten-minute intervals, he guessed. When the night darkened again he hurried forward, then sank to a crouch and crept the last several yards.

The sentry was hunched over with his back to the wind, a glow showing that he was drawing on a cigarette. Hart's feet crunched on gravel. The sentry turned, fumbling with a submachine gun caught under his parka. "Who's there?"

"Oscar," Hart replied.

"Thank God! We feared you'd- "

The pilot swung and the sock exploded on the storm trooper's temple, gravel spraying. The man sprawled and Hart was on top of him in an instant. He'd salvaged a sharp steel climbing piton from the cave, hard enough to be hammered into cracks of rock. Now he felt under the dazed man's parka hood with it, thrust, and cut. The squirt of blood splattered Owen despite his instinctive lurch back. Grimly, he let the sentry's head flop down.

There was another bang, and a lurid glow of red. Hart stood quickly to become the sentry to anyone watching from the submarine or above. The snow was thickening. As the flare died he watched the chain of bobbing lights climb up and over the crater rim. No alarm had been raised.

Owen could still hear the sentry's dying gurgle. He felt nothing except relief. That was four of the bastards! He yanked the submachine gun out from under the dead man, wiped it on the soldier's parka, and threw it into the boat. Pockets yielded a flashlight, dagger, an extra clip, and some papers. Hart took an envelope, emptied it, crouched, and slipped a pebble inside. Then he dragged the dead Nazi into the cold water, looping a mooring line around his torso. The pilot shoved the boat off the beach, jumped aboard, and pressed the button to start the engine, remembering the procedure the Germans had used. Backing out, he turned and headed toward the U-boat. At the halfway point he slowed and cut the mooring line. The towed body sank from sight.

When he banged inexpertly against the submarine a sailor on watch caught the boat. "Where are the others?" the seaman asked.

"Still searching." Hart prayed the man wouldn't recognize his voice. "The colonel sent a message for the woman." He handed over the envelope. "She's assembling additional supplies. She's to come up and confer with me." Hart dared not venture into the submarine with his recognizable face and his parka spattered with blood. The man hesitated. "I'll stand watch. Hurry, dammit! It's fucking cold!" The sailor disappeared down the hatch.

Hart hauled the submachine gun onto his lap and studied it. He'd never fired one before. He found the apparent safety but dared not squeeze the trigger to confirm his discovery, simply setting it aside where it would be ready. Then he bent to the emergency sailing rigging stored in the bottom of the launch and began taking it apart, fumbling in the snow and cold. The sail and its lines he set aside.

He looked restlessly about, hoping to see Greta, dreading their imminent goodbye. The necessity for her to ride home with the Germans, her only realistic chance, twisted his stomach. He wanted her. Needed her. Yet it was madness to go with him…

The hatch banged open and a pack emerged, falling over on the deck. Then a second. The sailor came out and then bent to offer his hand to Greta. And there she was, a slim silhouette, dragging the packs down the ash-and snow-crusted deck and heaving them into the motor launch. Hart started the engine, not knowing what to expect.

She jumped aboard. "Thank God you're here."

"Should I report anything to the captain?" the sailor asked from the deck.

"Only that you should have been quicker," Hart growled. "Get back on watch." He hoped he'd mustered the right tone of SS arrogance. The sailor hesitated a moment, resentful, then spat into the water and backed to the conning tower.

"Did something happen in the cave?" Greta whispered. "When that sailor told me the motor launch had returned I feared it was Jurgen to tell me of your death. And then when I opened that envelope I almost screamed for joy!"

Hart smiled. The pebble had scored again. "The soldiers tried to leave me in the lake and wired the cave with explosives. I got out just before the detonation. They didn't."

"So Jurgen lied about letting you go." She stiffened with resolve. "Owen, I've decided to come with you. We can just take this boat and flee. Jurgen's on shore. We'll maroon him there."

Touched, the pilot shook his head. "Greta, you can't. I'm going to try to cross the stormiest ocean in the world. It's impossible."

"Even more impossible to try alone."

"No. It's foolish for us both to die. Besides, they'd raise the alarm too soon if we took this launch. I'm going over the volcano, as we planned, and you stay on the submarine."

She shook her head. "Owen, I can't watch you leave me again. I won't. Whatever our fate is, please, let's face it together."

"No." He didn't want to kill her and had to dissuade her. "If you flee, they'll come after us."

"It's a big ocean, Owen, and, if Jurgen thinks I'm sulking and huddled in my cabin, there's a possibility I won't be missed for hours."

He looked at Greta's face. The certainty of staying together- even if it risked death- trumped the possibility of permanent separation. She wasn't going to take no for an answer.

"All right," he said finally, swallowing. His eyes were moist. "It's crazy, but all right. If we die, I'll still have you."

She nodded.

"We still have to leave this boat on the beach so they won't hunt for it with the submarine," he pointed out. "We still have to hike to the cove."

"I understand. So hurry, let's… wait." She sat straighter. "Wait, wait. You told me the cave was blown up. What happened to the last batch of lake organism?"

"Sealed with the Nazis, I suppose."

"My God." She seized his parka. "We can stop them!"

"What?"

"Don't you see? The only lake organism left is on the submarine and Schmidt hasn't locked that away yet; he's still expecting more from underground when Jurgen returns. If we destroy it they can't reproduce any in Germany! They'll have the disease but no cure, and unless they're totally insane they won't dare unleash it! We can beat them, Owen! If we hurry!"

"Go back inside? They'll recognize me, Greta. They'll ask too many questions."

"I know. I'll do it. It's late, people are asleep. I'll hurry."

"What if someone notices what you're doing?"

"I'll do it quickly, quietly."

"No, it's too risky…"

"Trust me, Owen." And then before he could grab her she was springing back on deck and trotting to the hatch. She yanked it open and disappeared inside.

The sailor came clambering down from the conning tower. The pilot's hand drifted to the submachine gun and he waited, tensely.

"I thought she was going with you?" The question was troubled, suspicious, the sailor's features invisible in the dark.

Hart shrugged. "She is. But she forgot something." He spat. "You know. Women."

Greta climbed down to the main deck and listened. The submarine hummed with the ceaseless, oil-scented drone of a warship, but was otherwise still. The desultory sailor on watch in the control room barely nodded as she slipped down the midships ladder to her laboratory, her pulse hammering. She opened the hatch cautiously. Empty. She closed it after her.

Despite her abortive efforts at straightening the lab, clutter remained. Schmidt's tank of drug was in plain view on a crate used as a makeshift table, the drug storage tubes he'd emptied into it scattered around. Remaining canisters of the organic sludge sat on the deck along one bulkhead. The workbench with its bacterial cultures of disease was on the other. Beakers and flasks and pots remained crusted with paste. The surviving rabbits skittered in their cages at her entrance, no doubt afraid of another needle. She'd thought she was done with this claustrophobic warren and yet here she was again.