Michael Wenberg - The Last Eagle

“We’re going to try and get out,” Eryk said softly. “Stefan will use that pole to push off any mines that get close.”

Kate’s mouth opened, and then closed. There was nothing benign about the look of the mines, Kate thought, staring at the nearest one, lurking near the surface like a crocodile. They looked evil, craggy with barnacles, and shaggy with black algae. “Are those spikes what I think they are?”

“Yes,” Eryk said simply. “It’s a contact mine. The simplest type. Those are the detonators. He touches any one of them with the pole, and he’s vaporized, followed an instant later by us. You know, you may want to get below.”

“I don’t think so,” Kate said with a sharp shake of her head. “If I’m going to go, I’d just as soon do it up here and below.”

Eryk leaned into speaker tube. “All ahead slow, hard starboard rudder.”

As the Eagle moved ahead, her bow swinging to starboard, Stefan hefted the pole in his hands and began stalking the approaching mine like a hunting Neanderthal.

Eryk spoke again into the speaker tube. “Port rudder, hard. Reverse port screw. Dead slow.” The Eagle’s bow began to come about, while her stern continued to slide away from the approaching mine. “All ahead both screws; ease off the rudder,” Eryk said.

Stefan padded along the side, matching speed with the mine as it slid by the Eagle’s flank, ready to push it away if it came too close. He wasn’t needed. When it was passed, he almost skipped back to the bow, shouting up to Eryk: “Well done!” And there he waited for the next two mines, one more to follow after that, and then they were out.

On the bridge, Eryk was mute, his brain racing as he calculated course, speed, current, even the wind and then considered the fixed positions of the three mines anchored up ahead. His forehead was furrowed with strain, sweat gathering along his hairline. Some devil laid out this trap, he thought for just a moment. He glanced to the starboard and port at the band of mines curving off like a gill net in either direction. No, straight ahead was the way to go. In his mind, he could the see the path they needed to take. It was their only chance. He could avoid two of the mines, the first and last, but the middle one was the problem. Stefan would have to hold it off with his pole. He murmured instructions into the speaker tube.

Kate pulled out a cigarette. As she lit it, she noticed her hands remained steady. She wasn’t sure that was a good sign. Any sane person should be howling in terror right at the moment. Instead, she drew in the smoke, smiled as she watched Stefan began to bounce up and down with anticipation. Like a big kid, she thought. And then she turned his back on him, unable to watch anymore. She leaned into Eryk, finding comfort in the weight of his body against hers. He was so absorbed in the problem at hand, he didn’t even notice her. She glanced up the sky, marveling in the clouds’ delicate shapes, the wonderful hints at color, the smell of the sea air in her nose, even the tobacco’s rich taste in her mouth. There could be worse moments to die, she thought. She wasn’t done with her story of the Eagle and her crew. That was her one regret. It was a great tale. If that mine went off, no one would ever get the chance to read it.

As soon as they were past the first mine, Stefan could see what Eryk had in mind. It was like they were connected in some strange way. He could almost overhear his thoughts. The middle mine, the second one of the pair, was the problem. Once past that, they would be out of danger.

Stefan was enjoying himself. It was insane. And part of him knew it was the cumulative effects of stress and lack of sleep. But he couldn’t help himself. Prowling the deck half-naked, armed with a long pole, had ignited some long-buried memory instilled in the genes of every human male on the planet by 100,000 years of living. His ship, his home, his family, was about to be attacked by a creature of fierce power. And he had a fucking wooden pole to fight it off.

The Eagle nosed ahead, curved slowly around the first mine, closer than Eryk would have liked. He peered anxiously over his shoulder—one swell stronger than the rest was enough to push the Eagle into side—but the waves remained steady as a heartbeat. Stefan was ready as they came at the next mine; he speared it deftly with the pole, avoiding the detonators on the spikes, taking up the impact with his shoulders and then leaning into the mine’s bulky weight, every muscle on his torso quivering with strain, as he pushed it past the bow and then began to shuffle down the side, keeping the mine away from the Eagle’s unprotected flank.

Eryk wasn’t watching. Couldn’t. He knew that one stumble, one slip of the pole, and the mine would swing into the Eagle and explode with catastrophic consequences.

For Stefan, everything had slowed and then disappeared. Only the pole and the mine were left. He had an eon to consider the placement of each foot, the stress on the pole, and the angle of his body. He noticed every slight move of the pole’s tip on the mine, as they remained delicately balanced in a strange embrace, the mine’s single-minded purpose against Stefan’s will. He marched passed the conning tower, onto the aft deck, his bare feet beginning to slide ever so slightly.

Kate drew in another lungful of cigarette smoke, then exhaled as Stefan appeared below her, balanced on the deck’s edge like a tightrope walker. It was hard to imagine that he could hold off that massive steel ball floating just next to the submarine all by himself, but he was. An ox, indeed, she thought, remembering the nickname he had once been give by his men. Even from her perch on the bridge, she could see the strain in his arms and back. He must be getting tired. Not much more. Ten more steps. Then five. Just a few meters.

She watched Stefan gather himself, and then push with all his might. The mine swung away from Eagle’s iron side as she slipped past, and then began to come back as soon as Stefan released it, the suction of the submarine’s wake threatening to pull the mine into her stern like a tornado sucking up a house. At the last moment, it was pulled up short by its steel tether. And then they were free. Stefan flung the pole over the side in one last act of defiance, and then slumped to his knees, accompanied by slowly growing cheers from the crew, who began pouring out of the forward and rear hatch.

They still weren’t out of danger. Eryk ignored the celebration, intent on the last mine, quietly ordering a minor course change. He watched the mine pass by on the starboard and then sagged visibly.

“Nicely done, Commander,” Kate said, offering him a cigarette.

“I don’t smoke,” he said, slipping the cigarette into the corner of his mouth, and then leaning forward as Kate offered him a light.

“You do now,” she said.

Eryk was right in the middle of a hoarse cough when the lookout interrupted the celebrations on the deck: “Ships at nine o’clock.”

“Clear the deck,” Stefan shouted, struggling to his feet. The men began scrambling for the open hatches, their mob changing from jubilation to fear as quickly as if someone had flipped a light switch. Along the horizon, two shapes were quickly gaining definition. Stefan stared at them for a moment, as the dive klaxon began to sound below decks. Destroyers, by the look of them. German. Racing like greyhounds directly toward the Eagle . So much for sneaking into The Øresund. They’d been spotted.

“ Eagle … we’ve got her!” The radioman trotted up to the captain, handed him a slip of paper.

Ritter glanced up from a book he had found in the ship’s library. It was a copy of Hamlet. In German. He had already decided it was a poor substitute for Shakespeare’s original in English. Not something Hitler and his sycophants would ever like to hear, he was sure, but their zeal for all things Teutonic sometimes bordered on the ridiculous. He slipped off his perch on the far side of the bridge, crossed to the navigation table, set the book on the edge. “Where?” he said.