Sloan Wilson - Ice Brothers

“What happens when I get radar? You’re not the only one who can kiss ass for a thing like that.”

“I think you know, Cliff, why they gave me radar. You better hope you don’t get it.”

“You mean they have more fog on the east coast than on the west coast?”

“I think you know it’s not fog that has me worried.”

“You guess there’s no chance of us getting Germans on the west coast? Everybody thinks they’re on the east coast, so why wouldn’t they come to the west?”

“I think you understand the logistics of the situation. You’re too big a man to be a dog in the manger, Cliff.”

“Now don’t call me no dog. Mad I might be, but the last man who called me a dog still can’t bite apples.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Maybe, but I always say you can’t get a better supply officer than a Sheenie. My Yale ain’t much good, but at least he’s not a smart-ass like all them Academies.”

“I’ll trade you one for one or two for two, any way you want. The guy with the radar should have the radar specialist. Even Headquarters could see that.”

“Headquarters ain’t going to do a damn thing with my officers without my approval. You know that.”

“I think I know you too, Cliff. Crazy like a fox is what I always said. What else do you want to sweeten the deal?”

“Maybe some of your lead ballast if I’m interested at all. We was rolling thirty-five degrees in no sea hardly at all. You got a diesel engine in your motorboat?”

“Yes.”

“They gave me gas. We might do some swapping around. Let me think about it.”

“When will you make up your mind? They’re liable to shove us out of here tomorrow.”

“The first stop for both of us will be Narsarssuak, I’m sure. We’ll see each other there before you go your way and I go mine.”

“The paperwork will take time. Look, Cliff, if they’re going to send me after a German weather ship, I don’t want to go without radar. The Krauts are sure to have it. How else do they have such good fire control?”

“They got other kinds of range finders. Now don’t get your ass in a swivet, Wally. You can’t come on here and buy me out like this was a candy shop.”

“We all will await your pleasure,” Hansen said wryly. “It’s quite conceivable that a good many lives and the success of a whole mission could depend on it.”

“Wally, don’t try to hurry me just because you’re afraid to sail without all the newest gadgets going for you. I told you I’ll let you know. I just want to think on it!”

With a sigh Hansen put the glass of whiskey, which he had hardly touched, on the chart table and left. Mowrey tossed off the scotch, put the unwashed glass back in his drawer and settled down for a nap.

Hansen immediately asked both Paul and Nathan to his cabin. After explaining the situation, he said, “Cliff has always enjoyed the sensation of having power over other men. I think he will toy with us for a few weeks.”

“Do you think he’ll finally let us go?” Nathan asked.

Hansen shrugged. “Ordinarily he gets a kick out of just being contrary,” he said. “This time I may have a trump card. Before I sail I’m going to try to arrange to pick up about a dozen cases of scotch. That ought to sweeten the deal.”

“This all makes me feel that I’m a little like a slave on the block,” Nathan said with a smile, “but it’s the first time that anyone in the service has ever wanted me. I feel like a wallflower who’s being asked to dance.”

“Do you understand that my mission is probably going to be a lot more dangerous than Cliff’s?” Hansen asked.

“I’ve heard a lot of scuttlebut, but I think I get the general trend. To tell the truth, I don’t think anything could be more dangerous for me than the feeling that I’m simply of no use in this war at all, no damned good.”

“Christ, it’s not your fault that they put a radar specialist on a ship without radar. Paul, how do you feel about all this, now that you’ve had a chance to think it over?”

“All I’m ever going to get out of Mowrey is a bad fitness report and the worst assignment he can find for me, no matter how hard I try,” Paul replied. “I’ll be glad to take my chances with you.”

“I hope that Cliff lets us work it out and that you both won’t be sorry.”

Paul still was not sure how he really felt about requesting a transfer. Sure, the idea of an endless tour of duty with Mad Mowrey seemed unbearable, but the thought of chasing some huge German icebreaker with six- or even eight-inch guns wasn’t too attractive either.

And there was also the nagging feeling that there was something wrong in this maneuvering. Mowrey was a tyrant, but that was the luck of the draw. Shouldn’t he shut up and stick it out and get on with it …?

The next afternoon the two trawlers got orders to sail to Greenland, there to wait at the edge of the icepack for the troopship Dorchester , which they were to escort through the ice to Narsarssuak Fjord.

The two sister ships took on fuel and cleared Argentia harbor at a little before ten on a sunny northern night. Mowrey was in a rage, for Hansen, presumably because his ship had radar, had been put in charge of the operation, despite the fact that Mowrey outranked him.

“Follow me at a distance of one thousand yards,” Hansen blinked with his signal light as they steamed abreast out of the bay.

“Follow me!” Mowrey growled to Paul. “Follow me! The bastard always did think he was Jesus Christ!”

Defiantly Mowrey stayed abreast of the Nanmak for several miles before falling, almost by accident, into her wake.

As they approached the broad Atlantic they could see the fog banks lying across the mouth of the bay like an endless range of snow-covered mountains. Soon the Nanmak appeared to dissolve in the mist ahead and once more they could hardly see their own bow. Since whole convoys might be expected to be heading toward Argentia, Mowrey told the quartermaster to sound a blast on their air horn every two minutes, and reduced his speed. Only a few minutes later they could see Hansen’s signal light blinking from his invisible ship only a few hundred yards ahead in the fog.

“No danger of collision or of navigational error now because my radar is working fine,” Hansen signaled. “Resume speed of eight knots. Cease whistle signals.”

“He’s like a kid with a new toy,” Mowrey grumbled. “If he thinks I’m going to trust my ship to him and his goddamn magic box, he’s crazy.” Nevertheless, he soon told the quartermaster that they might as well save compressed air on the whistle and gradually build up to eight knots, the top cruising speed of those trawlers.

As they emerged from the bay, Paul, Nathan and many other men aboard waited with a kind of horror for the vicious rolling to begin again, but the North Atlantic fooled them by remaining curiously quiet, leaden in the fog. Enlivened by the hope that they might actually be getting their sea legs, Paul and Nathan took sights with a bubble sextant whenever they could see the dim outline of the sun in the fog and worked them out in the wardroom. Nathan, Paul discovered, quickly learned how to use the logarithmic tables which had been devised to make any knowledge of spherical trigonometry unnecessary for navigators, but he was a highly trained mathematician and embarrassed Paul by asking questions about theory, then answering them himself.

After they had been at sea only about twenty-four hours, the ships received a radio message which gave the positions of enemy submarines that had been detected by radio direction finders or aircraft. After Nathan decoded the message, Paul plotted them on a small-scale chart. Two of the submarines were near the Straits of Belle Isle, near which they were to pass.