The Hunter From the Woods (11 page)

Two seconds after the searchlight’s death, a rifle was fired from
Javelin
. A bullet whacked the gunwale in front of Beauchene. Someone else on
Sofia
pulled the trigger. A bullet sang off
Javelin
’s superstructure. Then the shooting started overlapping each other, echoing between the ships. A porthole on
Sofia
was smashed. Everyone crouched down behind whatever cover they could find. A bullet zipped past Michael’s left shoulder as he knelt behind the gunwale. Beauchene’s Thompson chattered and bullets beat against steel.

Several shots rang out fast upon each other, and there came a cry of pain from one of
Sofia
’s crew. Michael got off two bullets at a man in a black rainslicker and cap who scurried up a stairway. He saw the man clutch at his left thigh. Bullets slammed into the gunwale before Michael, causing him to duck his head.

Suddenly from amidships on
Javelin
there was the noise of a bolt going back.

A belt-fed machine gun began to speak, its tone deadly. Bullets bit into
Sofia
’s deck, ricocheted off a capstan and pocked holes through a lifeboat. Michael lifted his head and saw the machine gun and its team up on a metal-shielded platform that a few moments before had been camouflaged with a gray canvas tarp. The gunner swivelled his weapon back and forth, spraying bullets across
Sofia
. Michael got off two more shots and saw sparks fly off the metal shield. Then the machine gun came hunting for him and nearly chewed through the gunwale in its enthusiasm.

More of
Sofia
’s bullets banged into the metal shield. The gunners shifted targets and fired at the annoying hornet’s nest. Michael squeezed the rest of his bullets off and quickly reloaded. A high-pitched klaxon alarm suddenly began, ear-cracking in intensity.

It was coming from an electric whistle atop the superstructure.
Javelin
picked up speed and began to move away, changing course to port. The firing kept on, even as the two ships widened their distance.

At last, there was no use in shooting because the range was too far.

Michael stood up. Gunsmoke still whirled in the air. He watched
Javelin
hurry across the gray waves. “Who’s hit?” he called, and Olaf shouted back that it was the Dutchman, shot through the right wrist. “We held them off!” Gustave Beauchane was on his feet but he was staggering with shock. “We held them off!
Mon Dieu, nous l’avons fait
!” Then he looked to one side and his giddy grin faded. He saw the Spaniard lying a few feet away with the top of his head blown away and glistening bits of brain laid out upon the deckboards.

 His eyes narrowed, Michael was watching
Javelin
continue to move away at about ten knots. He saw activity at the stern. A dark shape was rising from the deck. Something covered with another tarpaulin. He wondered if an electric winch was at work.

There was similar activity toward the bow. Something rose up on a platform to a height just above the gunwale. Men moved about in trained and deliberate order. The tarps were removed. Michael realized with a start that he was looking at the steel gun shields and the barrels of two five-inch cannons that had been artfully hidden below the deck.

Javelin
was not a freighter. It was a warship.

A wolf, he thought. Dressed in sheep’s clothing.

As he stared across the waves in what for him was nearly shock, Michael saw
Javelin
swing into a broadside position.

“Christ!” Billy Bowers said, standing a few feet away. He shouted the next: “
They’ve got big guns
!”

The forward cannon fired with a gout of smoke. There was a thunderclap and a waterspout rose up directly in front of
Sofia
’s bow. The freighter trembled in a sharp turn to starboard. There was the noise of everything loose crashing together and men lost their footing on the rainslick deck.

The cannon toward the stern fired. Hanging onto the gunwale, Michael felt the shell’s impact like a blow to the belly.
Sofia
gave a wounded cry. She’d been hit up near the bow. The forward cannon fired a second time. Michael heard the air sizzle as the shell passed just over the ship, and a waterspout shot up to starboard. Once more the stern gun spoke, and again
Sofia
was shaken by a hit. The ship was zigzagging violently; either the Swede or Medina was putting his back to the wheel.

A shell from the forward cannon punched through the superstructure. Portholes exploded and steel crumpled. “Get down! Get down!” someone was shouting, though it was hardly necessary; men were trying to fold themselves into smaller and smaller targets.

Except for three. Michael remained standing, so did Billy, and Gustave Beauchene aimed his Thompson at the now-distant
Javelin
and opened fire as he shouted blue curses into the rain. The warship’s guns fired almost in unison.
Sofia
lurched, struck in two places. A blaze had broken out toward the bow, the flames leaping up from the deck. Another shell crashed into the superstructure, dangerously close to the wheelhouse. The freighter veered again to starboard, trying desperately to escape the punishment.

“Put out that fire!” Beauchene shouted to his crew, and then he staggered forward across the pitching deck to do it himself.

A shell hit the side of
Sofia
just aft of where Michael was standing. The impact lifted him up and threw him to the boards. The sound of distressed steel screeched in his ears. He lay dazed for a few seconds, feeling the wolf wanting to burst from its soul cage.

When he reached up for the hand that reached for him, he thought his own fingers might already be hooking into claws. But he was wrong.

Billy pulled him up. “You all right?”

Michael nodded. Were his ears bleeding? No.

Another shell struck toward the stern and
Sofia
shivered in agony. Then the rain began falling in sheets. Visibility was drastically cut; Michael could no longer see the
Javelin
through the gray curtains. Whether the lack of visibility affected the range-finders or not, he didn’t know, but the guns had ceased firing.

“
Damn
,” Billy said. Michael saw that his eyes were wide and his face bleached. Rain dripped from his chin. He was a kid trying to play a man’s part. “I’m sorry,” he managed to say, and then he lurched forward and threw up over the side.

A group of men were fighting the blaze and beating it down as Beauchene hollered and raged. Extinguishers sprayed. The flames sank away, and in a moment only black smoke curled up into the rain.

Michael stood over the body of the dead Spaniard. Several other crewmen, including Olaf Thorgrimsen and Dylan Custis, were silently staring down at the carnage. The presence of violent death among a member of any tribe, Michael knew, had the effect of piercing the hardest heart. Rain slashed across the dead man’s face and open eyes. “Would someone find a canvas?” Michael asked, and Olaf immediately trudged off to secure one.

The captain appeared on the scene, his hair plastered down and face smudged with smoke. He pushed at the brains with the toe of his shoe. “Somebody get that up!” he ordered. No one moved.

Then someone did come forward.

He bent down. A pair of black hands scooped up the essence of a man, and then Enam Kpanga walked to the gunwale and dropped his burden into the sea. When he turned again toward the ship, his face was devoid of all emotion and his eyes were unknowable beyond the rain-wet glasses. He wiped his gory hands along the sides of his black trousers, and then he passed on by Michael and through the gathering of men like a silent spirit.

“Wrap him up,” Beauchene said when Olaf returned with the canvas. “Anybody who wants to say something, say it now. I didn’t know him. When you’re done, put him over. Somebody pick up his rifle and shells.
Comprenez
?” He swung his gaze upon Michael. “I need you,” he said, “to get up to the wheelhouse. Tell Medina I said to keep the engines at full speed. Tell him I said to come back to course two-four-zero.
Go
!” He may well have been urging himself onward, for he hurried off with a heavy-set gray-bearded man, one of the two engineers.

Michael climbed the stairs to the wheelhouse. The repugnant but obviously capable Swede was still at the helm. Rain whipped against the windshield. Though dawn had broken, visibility was limited only to the foam-streaked gray waves twenty meters beyond
Sofia
’s bow. Medina sprawled in a brown leather chair with his hands to his face. “Get on duty!” Michael snapped at him, and he relayed Beauchene’s commands.

Medina’s eyes had sunken. He’d aged ten years in the last thirty minutes. “We’re all going to die,” he said.

Michael put his hand on the revolver’s grip in his waistband. “Give those orders or you’ll go first.”

The orders were given and carried out.
Sofia
, a tougher lady than she appeared, slowly swung back on her course for England.

“Mr. Medina!” It was the Russian radio operator, calling from his station. “Message for the captain!”

Michael didn’t wait for the second mate to respond. He walked back to the radio room. The bizarre noise of static, bagpipe drone and cat squall was pulsing from the speaker.

Michael asked in Russian, “Still jamming?”

The radioman looked at him in surprise. He was smoking a cigarette, and now he blew smoke through both nostrils. He gave a faint smile and said, also in Russian, “Jamming, yes. They drop the interference a little to send messages and receive from us, then they power it up again. A noise generator. Very wicked device, this one.” He stared at Michael with new respect. “What’s your home?”

“I was born in St. Petersburg.”

“Ah!” He tapped his heart. “Stalingrad. Well, it was Tsaritsyn when I was born. Hey, you speak good English!”

“You also.”

“Yes, we don’t
waste
our Russian on those with inferior ears, huh?” He grinned and reached over to a shelf that held tubes, wires, other radio parts and various tools of his trade. He flipped open a small leather case and offered Michael a hand-rolled cigarette.

Michael said, “Thank you,” as he accepted it. Not because he planned to smoke it, but because it was a comrade’s gift.

The jamming noise quietened, if only enough for that clipped voice to come through: “From the German vessel
Javelin
to the Norwegian freighter
Sofia
. Repeating our message. Captain Manson Konnig requests a meeting between brothers of the sea. He regrets your escalation of violence. Captain Konnig requests that you allow him to board your fine ship at your earliest invitation. Captain Konnig will arrive in an unarmed motor launch, with only the necessary crew. He will bravely and resolutely board your ship alone and unarmed. Is this agreeable to the captain of the
Sofia
?”

Michael tapped a finger against his chin.

The jamming was still at a lower volume. They were waiting.

Michael was about to do something that would get him hanged in a naval trial a hundred times over. But as far as he was concerned, and with the lives of the Wesshausers in the balance, at this moment he was in charge.

“Tell them to come ahead,” Michael directed.

“I can’t do that,” the radioman said, still in Russian. “I know you’re a big man here, but you don’t have the authority.” He let his gaze pass over the revolver. “Unless you force the issue.”

“All right.” Michael drew the weapon and held it between himself and the radioman. “Tell them to come ahead. I presume they’re still off our portside. Tell them we’ll treat Captain Konnig fairly. But tell them we’ve set up our own machine guns and if there’s any
hint
of trouble we’ll blow that launch to splinters. And tell them we’re not cutting our speed. Go on.”

The radioman sent the message. His German was not excellent, but it was very good.

There was a pause of maybe two minutes, during which the jamming noise increased. Then the clipped voice came back through the aural onslaught: “Agreed.”

The static and pulsing noises swelled louder. The radioman again had to dial down the volume.

“On their way,” he said, with the ironic fatalism of a true-born Russian.

Eight

The Mellow Moment

“You did what?”

Michael faced Captain Beauchene in the hallway outside the radio room and told him again. It was about twenty minutes after the meeting had been accepted, and Beauchene had just come to the bridge from a variety of tasks designed to keep
Sofia
afloat and the men from casting their lives to the lifeboats.

After the second telling, the captain stared at the floor. Rain dripped steadily from his yellow slicker. “We’re not reducing our speed,” he said.

“I told them that.”

“You had no right.”

“I want to see what we’re dealing with.”