Captain White leaned over the sailor at his sonar desk. They pair watched the lonely blip keep its depth at 200 meters, drifting forward slowly and steadily. The entire bridge was bathed in red light and no one spoke above a whisper. Miller leaned against the bulkhead with his arms folded tightly. The ship board medical bay only had one table for one seriously wounded patient at a time and only enough supplies and medical expertise to handle one or two trauma patients. They would have to call for a medical evacuation, but it would mean turning away from a rogue nuclear submarine. The special operations captain set his jaw tight and tried to think back to all his interactions with Kessler and Hochberg about the Brunhilde.
Both men had categorically and repeatedly stated that if U-5918 were ever found again it should be recovered and its crew stopped at any cost. The conversations had always been concise and to the point and the point had always been that the Brunhilde was to be salvaged for scientific gain. Miller couldn’t figure out the play, if they had wanted to double cross the US Navy in a long gamble of carrying out some Nazi scheme, why offload the wounded? If Kessler had been secretly hoping to reverse the mutiny of his old ship, what next? The only part of any of this calamity that was made clear was that the old captain clearly didn’t want anyone to have the ship but him and Hochberg. Then there were the two US service personnel still on board, a hostage situation from the outside, but Miller couldn’t wrap his head round it. The best he could do was convince Captain White to keep from sinking the U-boat until the last possible moment. The light flashed on the internal hardline phone and the second mate answered it, looking sullen. The skipper turned about and offered out his hand for the receiver, but the second mate had already hung up.
“Two of the casualties are probably an hour out from dying, sir.”
The captain’s lip curled at the edge in distaste of the situation and he turned his glance to Miller.
Miller returned the cold glare with his own ad repeated himself, “We don’t know anything yet, they aren’t sailing towards New York any longer, and they aren’t trying to escape. Let it ride.”
White turned back to the sonar screen and hid his barely managed rage. He disliked being at the mercy of his opponents, waiting for their play. It went against every textbook for surface warfare that had existed since the 1940’s.
Ke had climbed the ladder first, peaking over the rim of the deck and insuring the hatch to the engine room was still closed. Peering against the grainy darkness of her night vision goggles she could make out the edge of the hatch lined up with the bulkhead. Whoever was in the engine room was holding down their fort. She crept out of the ladderwell on her belly and propped up on her elbows to steady her rifle, keeping the hatch covered as Wells rose up next, coming to a kneel so that she could move on. Little by little, Hochberg hefted the bodies up the ladder and gently laid them on the next deck as reverently as speed allowed. In moments they were at the steeply sloped ladderwell to the main passageway. There were no sounds of gunfire from above, no clattering staccato of the MP40 or pops of the P38 pistol. The old chief didn’t show it, but his heart sank at the silence. Kessler had never been a great shot, a clever and noble sort of leader, but not much for technical skills of soldiering. Wells volunteered to go up first for the assault on the bridge.
As the sailor climbed up the narrow steps he looked down his rifle sights and followed the infrared beam as it splashed into the closed bridge hatch. Ke climbed up and slowly edged past Wells, giving Hochberg room to rise up with his noble cargo. The pair of confused and bewildered divers aimed at the bridge as the old chief carefully laid down the bodies of his fellow SEALs and lifted his rifle up. Without a word he guided the group up to the bridge entrance and waved Ke to the other side of the door, motioning for her to open it on the count of three.
Hochberg dreaded what would be on the other side. It was strange, a few minutes ago he was ready to drown in another part of the ship but he couldn’t fathom seeing his old friend dead. He looked across to Ke and then checked Wells, the sailor giving a dutiful nod. The old sailor held up three fingers, counting down to his thumb before quickly grasping up his rifle.
Ke wrenched open the hatch.