The Prize Rules Ch. 07

He saw the angry retort on Bucher's features, but he knew that his useless student could bite it back - at least for now. He also knew that sooner or later, something was going to have to be done about this fool. He intended to make his objections very clear indeed in his report. This was not a man fit to lead other men in his opinion.

He placed his other hand above his forearm at about a forty-five degree angle. "They are directly above us, sitting like this. There must have been less than a meter of air between the lens of the scope and the side of that ship. Too close to focus. In terms of depth, there can't possibly be more than one meter of water over our scope when it is fully down. They'd have hit it if they came just a little to their left on the way in. They'd have sheared off the radio masts, the scopes, everything."

He smiled that smile again, "They'd probably have bent the damn hand-railings too. Right now, they're sitting just behind and above the rear of the conning tower, over our rear deck."

"Wh-what are we going to do?"

It came out of Bucher sounding like something from out of a frightened eight year-old. He didn't see it, but most of the others were looking at him with varying degrees of disgust on their faces.

Hans-Joachim sighed, "Right now, I'm going to do the only thing that I can do."

He looked at Weisenkopf, "Do you think that the cook still has any of those sausages left over from dinner? I didn't get a chance to eat anything. They smelled really good, I thought."

--

CG-4995

It was after eight in the morning and Eden walked onto the deck, looking up. Gerry was getting near done with the repairs and he'd smiled and told her that there wasn't anything that she could help him with at this point. So, wanting to do something rather than stand around and swat at the bugs, she decided to get the one remaining dead bulb replaced on their main mast before the day got much warmer.

She slipped a screwdriver and a couple of small wrenches into the cargo pocket of her trousers and pushed the replacement bulb into the pocket on the other side for the climb up. It was something of a slightly tight fit and she reminded herself to be careful not to knock her leg against anything hard on the way up.

-

Unseen by anyone, the British submarine HMS Una was a handful of miles down the coast, running at two-thirds speed on the surface. The captain consulted his chart again, looking at the array of small bays here along the shoreline of the main island, and trying to decide which one that he would pull into if he wanted to hide for a little while.

It had taken a lot of quiet contemplation to decide that this was what was happening. He had no idea as to whether their quarry was aware that they were being pursued and his sense told him that the answer was more than likely that they were not.

But placing himself in the shoes of the commander of one of the raiders in this, he thought that, nearing the end of his supply of torpedoes and given that their actions had stirred up the whole of the Caribbean, he could see that he'd want a day or so of relative peace.

He'd want to be holed up in a little place while everyone took a breather before heading back out to traverse a sea and the ocean beyond that where the combined antisubmarine assets of several nations would be beating the bushes to try to find and kill at least one of the raiders.

Several of the bays looked interesting on his chart and not one of them showed any human settlement, but a little thought made almost all of them seem unsuitable to varying degrees. There was the one up ahead, maybe five miles, and from the map it looked like a bit of a natural - if he tried to think of things from the view of the U-boat commander.

He ordered the diesels stopped and when they'd almost stopped coasting, he switched over to his electric motors and cruised along slowly.

Aboard U-161, Kurt noticed the change instantly.

Almost an hour later, Una began to ease cautiously into the mouth of the bay that her commander had been looking for. From what he knew, he was after a newer class of U-boat, much larger in comparison to his own ship. He felt some confidence that it would afford him an edge in maneuverability.

And there, quite unexpected in all of this, he saw a US Coast Guard ship, moored over near the opposite side.

-

"They are here, Herr Kaleun," Kurt said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He was still nursing the cold cup of coffee that the Kaleun had ordered to be made ready for him as he relieved the other man at the station more than two hours before.

"They are just entering the mouth of the bay on their electric motors."

"How do you know it's them if they've switched over?" Wilhelm asked.

Kurt looked over, careful not to show what he thought in his expression, "They have switched over, Kaleun Bucher, but those motors still drive the same shafts just as ours do, no? They have the same quiet little squeak on the one shaft either way."

Ullmann asked for the main scope to be raised, but he caught one of the handles much nearer to the floor than was normal and folded it down as he risked a quick look for a moment and then ordered the scope to be lowered again. Looking up, he nodded, "A British submarine, Undine class." He smiled over toward his radioman.

"Very good, Kurt," Hans-Joachim nodded, "If I get the chance, I'll be sure to tell them that they've made good time getting here."

He looked around the control room, "Well? Are we all ready to make our grand exit? This might get nasty in a few minutes, since I didn't expect an American ship to arrive in here, but I want to make it so that we are not followed back out."

He turned to Weisenkopf, "Battle stations, Helmut, but have the men do it quietly, if you please."

"What about the Americans?" Bucher demanded.

"What about them?" Hans-Joachim smiled, "They are here because they have some engine problem, no? I would not want to disturb them at all. There will be some sort of meeting between them and the English shortly - by radio, I imagine. While that is going on, we will begin to take our leave."

"But they won't just let us walk away!" Bucher sputtered.

Hans-Joachim looked back, "Wilhelm, relax. The Britishers don't know that we are here; they can only hope and guess that we might be. They see the American ship, so they might likely think that we cannot be in here or that cutter would have noticed us - and they don't know that the cutter only arrived last night.

The Americans don't know that we are here either. It's a coastal patrol boat and by the time that anyone notices us - if they even do before we say our farewells - there will be a Royal Navy submarine in the way, won't there?"

He turned away, "If I can just get my way in this, it will be sinking soon and the Americans will have their hands full with rescuing the crew. We need to be quick here. I do not want the submarine to learn that the cutter has not been here long themselves - and we have to be gone from here before someone else pisses over the side and looks down as he does."

He looked back, "Or should I wait while you give them your autograph as well?"

After asking Weisenkopf to just barely raise them off the bottom, he gave the orders to begin to move. "Rig for silent running.

"Both machines ahead slow when you're ready, Helmut."

-

CG-4995

Eden finally had the old cover off the lamp. It had put up a grand fight, but she was holding it in one hand while she stood on the crosspiece welded there for the purpose with one foot and her other leg was around the mast to steady herself.

There was a submarine slowly making it's way into the bay, so she wanted to be done with this as quickly as possible. The only good thing that she could see about everything was that she could make out the small Union Jack insignia painted on the side of the conning tower.

She was sweating as she slowly worked the dead bulb out of it's socket.

It left her with a bit of a problem, really. She didn't have enough appendages to hold herself here, hold onto the cover, hold the old bulb and work the new one out of her pocket to screw it in.

Where to put the old bulb - other than trying to hold it in her teeth while she screwed in the new one? The fact that she was near the very top of the tallest mast, most of sixty feet above the deck below was just adding degree of difficulty points to all of this.

Not arriving at a solution, Eden shrugged and looked down to try tossing the old bulb as far as possible away from the ship. Wouldn't want to have it hit anything on the way down, like say ... Lieutenant Harris, would we?

But after a second, her eyes began to fit things together in what she saw down there below the surface, finding shapes that didn't belong in the dark and semi-murky water down below.

Her mouth opened in shock and amazement at what she saw.

Whatever it was, it hadn't been here long enough to be an old sunken wreck. The next question was - what was it?

The obvious - and worst thing that she could think of - was that it was a submarine, if she had to guess. She had no idea what they looked like from directly overhead, but she couldn't think that it could be anything else, really.

The next question was a natural, given the circumstances. Whose submarine was it?

She couldn't answer that one either.

She threw the bulb and began to climb down as quickly as she could, yelling the whole way. True to form, nobody paid her the slightest attention.

When she reached a place where she could stand without needing to hang onto anything to keep herself there, she looked again - still yelling while she felt the pit of her stomach begin to fall away as she stared.

It was like watching a huge snake slowly uncoil itself and begin to move slowly and silently toward it's unwitting prey. Without very much imagination, Eden could appreciate - from that fearful prey's side of things how it felt to see death come slowly yet certainly nearer.

The submerged submarine was moving slowly out into the main part of the bay, slowly disappearing into the dark water as it went. She began to scramble down once more, as fast as she could go.

--

Hans-Joachim was sweating.

It had been a bit of a swine show to get himself positioned, and it had taken a lot of patience and careful orders to get them out a little into the bay, and then slowly turned so that they faced the British submarine's side. All of it had required careful and very slow and quiet maneuvering in a limited space so as not to alert their opposite numbers with the noise.

But he'd gotten it done, nonetheless. He'd even had the time to reverse a little in order to open up the space between them just a little more.

And all of it had been done with Bucher peppering him with stupid and inane questions at every turn. Finally, Hans-Joachim had pushed Bucher away and ordered him to sit down and remain still.

Even still, there was something of a risk here. There was only a little over two hundred meters between the boats. Hans-Joachim thought furiously, trying to remember the exact minimum distance which the fishes needed in which to arm themselves. If what he had was not enough, all that would happen would be that someone might spill their coffee when a dud torpedo clonked harmlessly against the side.

Worse still perhaps was the possibility of one or both of the fish being deflected somehow. The thought of being trapped in this salad bowl with a pair of angry eels flitting around ...

He'd have rather surfaced and begun this chapter using only his deck gun, since the Undine class boats didn't have any.

But he couldn't predict what the Americans would do and on the whole, it just seemed like a better plan to use the fish against the other submarine before dealing with the Americans, if it came to that.

There was also the slight problem of their exit itself. As it was, his charts were unclear about the depth of the entrance. Hell of a thing to get hung up there with a cutter shooting it's deck gun at him and his own gun impossible to use, since it would be on the far side of the conning tower. He'd have to be on the surface in order to leave.

No, if it had to be a gamble, then he'd trust in the torpedoes and deal with the exit afterwards.

-

CG-4995

Eden was out of breath as she ran onto the bridge of the cutter. Harris was in the middle of a conversation in Morse code with the surfaced submarine. She tried, but it took an agonizingly long period to get him to listen to her.

He just looked annoyed with her. "Yeah, I KNOW there's a submarine," he said, as he looked toward the ceiling, his face saying clearly that he wished that she was not there at the moment.

Eden had no time for this. She grabbed him by the collar and pulled them together so that she could yell into his face.

"You stupid ASS! There is ANOTHER submarine in this bay!

"A SECOND SUBMARINE!

"Right now! Right over there somewhere not far away. We were right over it the whole night long!"

Finally, she had at least some of his attention.

"What?"

She tried again; though at least this time, Eden knew that she had his undivided attention by the time that she was done saying it

.

"Where is it now?" he asked.

She shrugged, "I saw it from the rigging." She pointed, "It went off that way, very slowly."

She didn't think that Harris could be any dumber, but apparently, she'd been selling him short in that regard. He actually looked at her - right in the eye - and asked her.

"Are you sure?"

She nodded confidently, "As sure as I am that you're an idiot for just asking that question, yes.

"I'm not talking about a whale with tattoos Lieutenant! It was nearly as wide as this ship and it was almost TWICE as LONG!"

She drew a deep breath and just told him, "THERE WAS A SUBMARINE - RIGHT THERE!"

She pointed at the British submarine, "TELL THEM! They need to KNOW right NOW!"

-

The mantra was almost complete. Hans-Joachim had specified the range and the running depth of one meter for tube 1 and two meters for tube 2, adding that they were both to be straight-out shots with zero deflection.

When the hushed confirmation came back to him from the control room, he nodded and looked down for a moment, running the plan through his head and looking for rough spots.

When he heard that the forward tubes were loaded and their courses set, he nodded and acknowledged. "Flood tubes 1 and 2. Open the outer doors as quietly as possible." A moment later, he sent additional orders.

"Load tube 6. Depth of run, one meter. Straight-out shot, zero deflection."

As the commands were said back to him and the men in the rear torpedo room set to the task, Hans-Joachim looked over to see Weisenkopf looking back at him thoughtfully.

Ullmann shrugged, "I have no sense of the man running things on that old boat. When we turn to leave, we might need a snap-shot out the back door to show him that we are serious."

Weisenkopf nodded his agreement but said nothing.

-

HMS Una

The radioman stared at what he'd copied. He'd been just finishing up his question to the American ship when he noticed that they were sending "Break-Break-Break".

After that, he began to listen to their hasty transmission, scribbling as fast as they could send details.

He called out to the watch officer, who listened as he began to turn white and hurriedly ordered the radioman to check his hydrophones.

-

U-161

"Fire 1."

Without waiting for confirmation, Ullmann went straight on. "Fire 2."

When he'd heard that both of the eels were away, he nodded, "Close outer doors, tubes 1 and 2. Have the boys in the forward torpedo room begin reloading."

-

CG-4995

Harris was still trying to reason with this obviously deranged woman in front of him, "Whose was it?"

Before she could ask how in the hell she was supposed to know that from above, one of the other men began to shout, pointing out of the window.

Eden couldn't make out what he was saying in the confusion, since by then; the others there had joined in.

She ran to the window and saw them; two silvery-white streaks rushing along under the surface and headed straight for the British submarine.

Well, Eden thought, this ought to settle Harris' issue over the mysterious sub's ownership.

-

HMS Una

The deck watch had seen the torpedo wakes by that time; seconds after the radioman listening to the sounds around them in the little bay heard the chilling sounds of torpedoes rushing out of another submarine's tubes from not very far away.

All of them shouted out their warnings but there was little that could be done. The commander did his best with the only option that he saw open and he commanded them to go ahead at flank speed on the electric motors to get them out of the way since the electric motor were coupled to the propeller shafts at the moment and would respond instantly.

They'd made only about a meter and a half of progress when the first of the torpedoes arrived and clanged against the side, detonating as it did.

There was a great gout of water thrown up, but the torpedo's charge exploded their port side air reservoir and penetrated the inner hull. The boat had just begun to tilt to the left a few inches when the second torpedo arrived and detonated.

The second hit at the lower depth broke HMS Una's back and she began foundering in seconds.

There were men in the water instantly just from the party on the conning tower. From what he could see through the periscope, Hans-Joachim saw that very few of them were moving.

--

CG-4995

Lieutenant Harris' jaw hung open.

"Mother of God ... " was all that came out for a moment, but he recovered in an instant. He grabbed one man and told him to get below to find out if MacLauchlan was anywhere near done with the repairs.

"No matter what he says," Harris bellowed, "I need one or both of those engines running. Go!"

Turning to the others, he sent someone to scare up enough men to crew the deck gun.

"What are you going to do?" Eden demanded, but Harris ignored her.

She asked him again as he was reaching for his binoculars. At least he looked at her the second time.

"The way that I figure it, he's gotta surface if he wants to get outta here. I want to be ready for him when he does."

Eden stood in shock for a moment. She pointed, "There are men in the water! They need help!"

Harris turned toward her, "And I need to make sure that when he comes up, we put enough holes in him to either sink him or make him want to keep going. Then we'll go back and do what we can here."

He looked at her, "Ma'am, I know you don't like this, but it's the only way - or there will be more people in the water."

Eden shook her head, trying to clear the garbage that she thought that she was hearing. "So you're going to try to engage that sub? Lieutenant, it's going to have to try to leave the bay! You want to chase it over the men there in the water? How will that help anything?"

"I'm going to use the gun out there on the deck. If you've got what you think is a better idea," he growled, "I don't wanna hear it."

He pushed her away and tossed some keys toward one man, telling him to open the small arms locker and get the men some weapons.

"Lieutenant Harris," Eden said, "If he makes it out of this bay he has no reason at all to fear us ..."

"He won't - if you'll just shut up and get out of my way," Harris snarled.

-

U-161

"The Americans are starting their engines, Herr Kaleun!" Kurt called out.

Hans Joachim nodded, "It makes sense. I just don't know what for yet. To see to the swimmers, I would hope."

He swung the scope around and looked at the cutter, just beginning to move. He saw men moving forward toward the deck gun. After a second, he looked in almost the opposite direction at the opening of the bay. He now doubted very much that the cutter would allow him to leave unchallenged by that point, whether they were equipped to fight him or not.