Michael Wenberg - The Last Eagle

“Just said, I hope not. How long, do you think it’ll be before we get there?”

Stefan thought for a moment. Hard to think. But he couldn’t stop now. “We’ve got 620 kilometers, give or take. We’ll do maybe 170 kilometers tonight, another 30 or more tomorrow…. We’ll be close in three nights. Maybe wait until the fourth night to give The Øresund a go. Of course, could be longer if we run into any trouble.”

“Of course,” Eryk repeated under his breath. “And to think I chose this instead of becoming an artillery officer.”

“If you’d chosen artillery, Stefan said quietly, “you’d probably be a prisoner now… or dead.”

“There is that,” Eryk said.

The weather began to worsen about midnight. By early morning, the Eagle was corkscrewing through heavy seas, and the foredeck was constantly awash. Long before that time Stefan had sent the deck gun crew below. The last thing he needed was a man, or woman, washed overboard.

The monotony of the night was interrupted about 3 a.m. by an appearance from Reggie, who needed a smoke. He stood the entire time, legs apart, back to the bullet- hard rain, hands cupped over his cigarette to keep it from fizzling out completely. As soon as it was done, he lit another. He smoked and talked nonstop for a half an hour about his family and friends in America, his job, his car, his wife’s sexual preferences. At one point, Eryk interrupted him to ask innocently enough about Kate.

“She’s busy working on her story,” Reggie said, staring suspiciously at him. “Something about finishing it before we get to England. When did you start falling for her?”

Eryk stumbled for a response.

Reggie cut him off. “Yeah, right. Don’t bother. Just get in line, bub. You don’t think there aren’t a dozen lugs just like you. She’ll break your heart, she will.”

“You sound like someone who knows,” Stefan interjected.

“Nope. Not me,” Reggie said bitterly. “I’m happily married.”

When Reggie finally left, hands shaking, teeth chattering from the soaking, both Eryk and Stefan were glad to see him go.

The Eagle submerged at dawn, though no ship or plane was in sight. Stefan didn’t want to chance discovery, and no one complained about his decision. The storm continued to increase in force, and they were all happy when the Eagle settled into calmer waters 60 meters below the surface. Anyone who wasn’t on duty fell immediately into his bunk, a few not making it even that far, simply curling up in an out-of-the-way nook or cranny, lulled into an exhausted sleep by the hum of the electric motors.

The second night, the Eagle resumed her race to the south on the surface of a still restless sea, but with the storm’s passing, she was without the protection offered by bad weather. As a result, the night was punctuated by crash dives and one heart-stopping moment as the Eagle rounded past the lighthouse on the southern tip of Öland and came upon a Swedish patrol boat, its spotlight sniffing the surface of the dark water. For an agonizing moment, the light caught Eagle in its beam. Like the angel of death gazing at us, Stefan thought to himself, as he held his breath, waiting for the patrol boat to erupt in activity, his eyes dazzled by the beam. And then it moved on.

“Jesus Christ,” Squeaky croaked, crossing himself quickly. “They had us….”

Stefan didn’t have time to think about why they had been missed. The night was dark, overcast, the seas unsettled. After a few hours on watch, it was easy to make a mistake. He leaned into the speaker tube, dictated a new course that would veer them away from the ships, and then following it with “Emergency dive!”

By morning, Stefan was so tired he felt numb. He turned over control of the vessel to Eryk, who didn’t look any better than he felt, and stumbled back to his cabin to try and get some rest. But sleep was elusive. He couldn’t ignore the tension that had been slowly building ever since they escaped Tallinn. His nerves felt stretched like steel cables on a bridge burdened to the breaking point. And yet, he couldn’t break. It just wasn’t an option.

He finally gave up on sleep, and turned to the captain’s log. He was nearly finished with entries from the previous night, when he paused, pen hovering above the paper. Something wasn’t right. He was already up from his desk when the shriek of metal against metal began to echo throughout Eagle . “All stop,” he bellowed, racing down the passageway toward the Control room in his bare feet. “Reverse engines, now.”

“Reversing engines,” Eryk repeated, his young face transformed by fear into that of an old man. “What the hell is that?”

The metallic howl slowly came to a halt as the Eagle’s forward motion stopped and then started up again, like an insane laugh, as the boat reversed direction.

“Course change?” Eryk asked.

“Steady,” Stefan said.

At the instant the sound ceased, Stefan yelled, “All stop. Blow tanks. Take us up.”

“Blowing,” Eryk repeated. “Aren’t you going to look around first?” He gestured at the periscope.

Stefan shook his head, watching the depth gauge spin toward single digits, hands on the ladder to keep them from shaking. He hadn’t answered Eryk’s first question, but he had a pretty good idea what caused the sound. The image of it filled him with dread. If he was right, they were lucky they weren’t already dead.

He was first up the ladder, spinning the hatch open, and vaulting out onto the bridge deck, still barefoot, followed close behind by Eryk, two lookouts and the conning tower gun crew.

“What have I done,” Eryk moaned, pointing at the round metal ball, studded with spikes and packed with enough explosives to blow off Eagle’s bow, bobbed on the surface like a rust-streaked prehistoric menace twenty meters from Eagle . Stefan did a quick scan. In the murky light of midday, at least a dozen more mines were visible, a web of death waiting for some unsuspecting prey to stumble into their midst and be destroyed.

“What do we do now?” Eryk said, his hands flapping helplessly at his side. Three mines blocked their escape. There were at least that many in any direction in front of them.

Stefan scratched his beard, looked up at the sky as if they would provide an answer to their dilemma. They could submerge, try their luck, but the chance of snagging a cable mooring a mine to the bottom was fairly high. They could try and detonate the mines ahead with the deck gun, but the explosion of the closest mine would probably kill or incapacitate anyone on Eagle’s deck.

Stefan didn’t like the answer he kept coming back to, but it was the best he could do.

“Get me a long pole,” he said to Eryk, stripping off his shirt. And then he explained what he wanted to do.

“You’re joking,” Eryk said.

Stefan shook his head, patted Eryk on the cheek. “Don’t worry. I trust you,” he said. “You have the helm.” He climbed over the edge of the conning tower, slid down the outside ladder and padded out onto the Eagle’s foredeck. The Eagle moved restlessly beneath his feet. Stefan windmilled his arms in the chill, hopping nervously back and forth on the balls of his feet like a prizefighter about to enter the ring.

“What’s going on?” Kate asked. She pushed up next to Eryk, leaning into him for comfort.

“We’re stuck in a mine field,” Eryk said, watching as one of the crew popped out of the foredeck hatch, leaned down to pull up a long pole. Stefan was right there to take it from him. He grasped the end of the pole, the muscles in his arms and back suddenly flexing like a bodybuilder’s. Stefan glanced up at Eryk, and smiled. He looked like he was enjoying himself.