Ke was still sitting cross legged in the passage when the door creaked open and Perry stuck his head out. If it were possible for the diver to have bed head with his closely shorn hair he was certainly sporting it with a flattened portion on his temple. He gawked at Ke and the expression widened into a yawn and he tried to speak through it.
“You pull an all nighter?” He struggled out
Ke’s eyes continued to scan to a fro on the pages as she replied flatly, “Yep. You sleep well?”
Perry was absent mindedly scratching himself thoroughly as he replied, “like a baby in a giant rocker. Anything worth knowing from the logs, yet?”
She nodded quickly and spoke flatly, “We’re dealing with a James Bond level psychopath. He experimented on his own crew for decades. He was actually trying to create the next level of human evolution. Kept calling it the real Aryan Race.”
Wells spoke from behind Perry, “Sounds like my 8th grade biology teacher.”
Perry donkey-kicked behind to knock Wells back from breathing on his neck. The pair were as close as brothers and as a result would get uncomfortably close with one another at random moments in front of friends to give them a little “gay fright” Wells called it. If ever anyone looked squimish they would mock them mercilessly and call them a closet homo. Perry liked to think of it as tongue and cheek progressive thinking in the military.
“He was originally attached to the Kettle to teach the sailors how to use it, he kept all his previous theories to himself, no one knew it could do this. Nobody but him. He planned on making the Brunhilde his little monster machine forever it looks like.” She looked up to see Wells sprawled on Perrys back like a young monkey clinging to its mother.
The pair looked back with expressions of children busted with their hands in the cookie jar.
“It’s not gay if it’s underway.” Said Akin from up the hallway, a tray of steaming coffee carried carefully in his hands.
The small group went through their morning rituals and routines. Shaving, showering, shitting, and sometimes in that order. In the crowded locker room Ke would read different excerpts out loud, skimming and scanning some sections while focusing hard on others. The full picture of Burton was coming in light. He would speak emphatically on the need of racial purity and the inherent will of nature to ween out the weak to hone the gene pool. Burton would scribble notes in the margins about specific sailors that seemed to ensure prolonged exposure to the Kettle best and which ones seemed shy to get near it again after the scuttling issue. Then one detail came up time and time again, or rather didnt come up at all.
“So wait, you’re telling me three years passed by on the bottom and no one in that coffin asked why they weren’t underway again?” Wells barked over a shower curtain.
Ke had searched and searched and found no mention of effective repairs or even that the ship was mobile again. “If they did, they didn’t mention it. He complains some about the gyroscope being over engineered some but that’s about it.”
Perry spot out a heavy foam of toothpaste and rinsed with coffee, accidently, his expression twisted as he spat out the concoction and spoke, “The worlds most advanced German U-Boat was over engineered? Who knew?”
Akin felt as though he were understanding Burton more and more. A man of logistics and numbers, but not so much a leader. A man who yearned to be a bigger player in the world but was excellent at effecting change in smaller ways. Burton was a more fanatic version of Akin and for a moment, Akin was no longer even the slightest bit envious of having grown up in a different generation from his grandfather. “He couldn’t fix his machine, it would be his obsession, I’m sure.” Akin said dryly, fastening the belt to his blue coveralls.
“Commander to the bridge, commander to the bridge, incoming aircraft and US Navy vessels.” The voice on the intercom was alien for a moment, for the past dizzying hours it had only been Ke and occasionally one of the other three.
Akin began to head toward the door to leave the lockerrooms, stealing a quick peak at his watch as he did, “You two squids get top side quick, I suspect whoever these spooks are coming in are going to want a word with you.”
Perry and Wells had barely heard any news about how the rendezvous would go, let alone there would be ships and helicopters.
High above the sea, six CH-53 Sea Stallions thumped their way through the salted breeze towards the cutter. Large, strong men with black glasses, black face masks, and wide hands sat strapped in the thunderous machines, the golden eagle and trident barely noticeable on their shoulder patches. All but two bore the symbol of the Navy’s finest. The other two were without any noticeable insignia, equipment or weapons, they sat across from one another, re reading the name tapes that rested on their chests.
“HOCHBERG”
“KESSLER”