Specimen & Other Stories (10 page)

Sergeant Krause was a muscular blond with a
low forehead and eyes that squinted into the afternoon sun. His
crew – all in their twenties – were stamped from the same mold.

Krause asked the radio technician, “How long
will this take, Emil?”

“An hour or two,” Hoffmann said. “Enjoy the
fresh air while you can.”

The dinghy ran up on the beach. Voormann
stepped out, got his boots wet and pulled it onto the gravel shore.
Hoffmann and the others disembarked. Krause looked up and down the
beach.

“So, where are we going with this
apparatus?”

Hoffmann pointed. “Up there on the
cliff.”

Krause barked, “All right, boys, let’s see
some sweat.”

Henckel and Schmidt stacked the crates atop
each other and carried them up the beach.

Krause found a path to the summit. Once
there, he surveyed the high ground and looked down from the cliff.
Gulls shrieked on the wind as waves broke on the rocky beach below.
Voormann, left with the dinghy, had walked fifty meters up the
beach, perched on a rock to smoke a cigarette. Five hundred meters
offshore, the U-boat’s grey conning tower barely stood out against
the metallic sea.

Hoffmann arrived at the summit with antenna
in hand. He selected a flat expanse of ground and scuffed at a thin
layer of soil atop the rock. Henckel and Schmidt, winded from the
climb, clambered onto the summit with the two crates between them.
They set them down, slung their guns from their shoulders and
sat.

Hoffmann used a small crowbar to open the
first crate.

~~~

At the campsite, the baby wailed from its
basket.

Nuna set aside her sewing and held him
against her chest. He kept crying, more softly now. Nuna raised the
flap of her shirt and thrust the baby up inside. In moments he’d
found a nipple and begun to suckle.

Kanti watched awhile, then wandered off to
the water’s edge. She placed a wood chip in the water and poked it
with a branch. She followed as it drifted along the shore.

“Kanti, you stay close,” Nuna said. “The
bears will get you.”

Kanti, ignoring her, continued. The baby
fussed again, having lost the nipple. Nuna guided his mouth to the
other one. When she looked again, Kanti was further down the shore,
but still within sight.

“Come back,” Nuna called.

Kanti continued along the shoreline, picking
up seagull feathers. She looked back at the tent in the distance,
then toward the headland. Further up the shore, she saw a splash of
yellow at the water’s edge.

~~~

On the summit, the larger crate had been
emptied, turned upside down and bolted into the underlying rock.
The radio unit sat atop it, protected within its own crate, antenna
clamped to one of its corners. The weather unit sat beside it – a
metal box with vents and portholes, and a 60-centimeter spindle
topped by a directional vane, below which four anemometer cups spun
in the wind like a miniature merry-go-round.

Hoffmann finished wiring the radio to the
batteries. He flipped a switch on the weather instrument panel.
“Ready for a test.”

Krause thumbed a switch on his field radio.
“Seagull to Shark. Come in.”

The radio crackled and the operator said,
“Shark to Seagull. Loud and clear.”

Hoffmann said, “Tell him to take a
reading.”

“Got that?” Krause said into the radio.

“Wind velocity, eighteen knots, north by
north west,” the radio operator said.

“Perfect,” Hoffmann said, noting the
instrument panel.

“Temperature, eleven degrees
centigrade...”

After verifying the other readings, Hoffmann
secured the cover on the instrument panel. The weather unit and
radio worked perfectly.

“That’s it?” Krause said.

“Good to go,” Hoffmann nodded.

Krause clucked his tongue. Schmidt and
Henckel picked up their guns and stood.

~~~

Kanti approached the dinghy. She touched it
with her hand, found it springy. She sat on the edge of it and
bounced.

She climbed into the dinghy, and lay
amidships with her head against a rubber gunwale. She played with
the gull feathers and sang to herself. Then she heard someone
whistling. She sat up and saw a man in strange clothes appear from
behind some rocks near the base of the cliff.

Kanti jumped out of the dinghy and ran.

Voormann raised his weapon.

~~~

From the conning tower, Kapitan Wolff and
Leutnant Richter trained their binoculars on the beach. They’d
heard gunfire. On the foredeck, the gun crew stood ready, the 88-mm
cannon turned landward. Wolff picked up the microphone.

“Shark to Seagull. What’s happening?”

“Voormann shot a native,” Krause said.

In the background, Hoffmann’s voice screamed
in outrage: “A little girl. He shot a little girl.”

“The kid was in the dinghy,” Krause said.
“She saw Voormann coming and ran. What was he supposed to do? Let
her run and tell her family? It could have screwed up the whole
mission.”

Wolff shook his head in disgust. Shooting
civilians was a violation of the Geneva protocol. He’d discipline
Voormann later for his profound lack of judgment. “Seen any signs
of habitation?”

“No.”

“Better look around. Find the adults.”

“And when I do?” Krause asked.

Wolff grimaced. “Finish what you
started.”

“How much time do we have?”

“Twelve hours,” Wolff said. “We’ll go out
fifty kilometers, test the transmission and return for you in the
morning.”

“You will come back?” Krause joked.

“Yes, but we’ll leave Voormann,” Wolff joked
back as he signed off. It wasn’t funny, but what was done was done.
War was ugly.

~~~

Agatak and Shogan were returning to camp in
their kayak, towing the dead seal with the rope behind them, when
they heard the distant burst of gunfire. They stopped paddling and
traded puzzled looks.

They dug their paddles into the water and
ran the kayak up onto the beach. They pulled the seal above the
water line and headed inland, climbing the low ridge above the
beach.

As they headed north along the ridge, they
heard another brief stutter of gunfire ten minutes later. They
stopped, listened, but heard no more. They crawled on hands and
knees to the ridge above their camp.

Three men stood over the bodies of Nuna and
the baby.

Shogan drew an arrow for his bow. Agatak
laid his hand on Shogan’s arm and shook his head. Shogan bit his
lip.

“After dark,” Agatak whispered. He tugged at
Shogan’s elbow, and they withdrew from the ridge.

~~~

After Henckel shot the woman, Sergeant
Krause led him and Schmidt another kilometer down the shoreline.
Hoffmann had stayed back at the headland with the weather station,
Voorman with the dinghy.

They found a dead seal on the beach. Krause
crouched beside it, noting the deep slashes in its neck. There were
other puncture wounds, from arrow, knife or spear. He drew
binoculars and scanned the shoreline to the south.

“They’re gone,” he said. “Far away, if they
know what’s good for them.”

“The light’s fading.” Schmidt looked at his
watch. “We should make camp.”

They moved inland and followed the ridge
back to the headland. Hoffmann was sitting on a rock near the
meteorological installation. Voorman was still down on the beach
with the dinghy.

The sun sank into the Hudson Strait. It
quickly became cold.

They gathered a little driftwood and made a
small fire, more for the psychological comfort than its scant
warmth. They weren’t dressed for the climate, but it was only one
night. They ate some rations and established a schedule for guard
duty.

Henckel was dispatched 200 meters south on
the ridge to monitor that approach to the headland. Voormann was
told to stay with the dinghy. He’d done such a good job protecting
it, it was all his now. Krause, Schmidt and Hoffmann bedded down
near the fire.

By two in the morning, Henckel was cold and
sleepy. He’d watched the northern lights all evening, curtains of
light shifting across the sky, but the novelty had worn off. He lit
a cigarette and reminisced of life back home, of hot sausage and
cold beer.

Shortly before three, he rose from where
he’d been sitting. Time to fetch Schmidt to relieve him. He took a
last look along the southern ridge and was puzzled to see a boulder
where he’d seen none before.

From out of the darkness, an arrow flew and
buried itself in his throat. He coughed once as he clawed at it,
but his mouth flooded with blood from a severed artery and he
collapsed to the ground.

Schmidt awoke a few minutes later and
checked his watch. Oh-three-hundred hours. He got up, half numb
from sleeping on the ground, and slung his machinegun over his
shoulder. He headed down the ridge to relieve Henckel.

He approached a cluster of boulders. Henckel
was supposed to be just south of them. Before he had a chance to
call out to his comrade, a spear came out from the boulders,
impaling him in the guts. His machinegun clattered to the ground as
he gripped the shaft of the spear with both hands. He heard
something behind him and then a machete slashed into the side of
his neck.

Krause heard something and sat up. He saw
Schmidt gone and assumed he’d relieved Henckel. Probably sharing a
smoke now. Krause rubbed his hands together. It was cold. He tossed
a few more sticks onto the dying fire.

Hoffman opened his eyes. “What’s up?” he
said.

“I’m going to relieve Voormann. Poor bastard
must be half-frozen.” Krause took his machinegun and field radio
and descended the trail to the beach.

Hoffmann got up to check the weather unit
and its radio. The anemometer cups turned slowly in a light breeze,
the weather vane pointed like an arrow into the northeast.
Everything in order. He returned to the fire and stretched his
hands to the meager flames.

He lit a cigarette and savored the warmth of
the smoke in his lungs, thinking it would taste so much better with
a strong coffee. He looked at his watch. A galley breakfast had
never seemed so appealing.

Out in the dark, he heard a sound. Although
unsure of where it’d come from, he looked toward the trail where
Sergeant Krause had disappeared.

“Voorman? Is that you?”

~~~

Agatak wiped his machete blade on the sleeve
of the fallen man’s jacket. The man was not quite dead, and the
eyes behind his glasses darted wildly about, as if there was
someone who might stem the blood that gushed from his half-severed
neck.

Agatak squatted beside the man and plucked
the barely-smoked cigarette from his still-twitching fingers. He
took a long drag and let the smoke drift out his nose as he watched
the man die.

The last thing Hoffmann saw was a savage
with hollowed eyes, firelight glinting off his high cheekbones,
smoke curling from his nostrils like a demon.

Agatak pinched the ember off and put the
rest of the cigarette inside his jacket to save for later.

~~~

On the beach Krause found Voormann stretched
out and asleep in the dinghy. He prodded Voormann with the barrel
of his machinegun.

“Wake up, you idiot. If this were on deck
watch, you’d be shot.”

Voormann didn’t wake up. Krause slapped his
face. His hand came away dark and slick with blood. He tipped
Voormann’s head aside and saw the gore that had blackened his
collar. Krause wiped his hand on his pants and turned with weapon
raised.

The desolation mocked him. Waves slapped up
and down the dark shore. No enemy to be seen. He shuddered with a
sudden panic. The last time he’d felt like this, they’d lain at the
bottom of a Norwegian fjord as a British destroyer had dropped
depth charges around them.

Krause hurried up the trail. Just as he
reached the summit, an arrow slammed into his belly. His gut
reaction was to fire blindly in the direction from which the arrow
had come, spraying rounds like a raw recruit. He staggered
backwards, lost his legs and tumbled down the trail. His grip on
the gun involuntarily tightened, pulling the trigger, emptying the
rest of the magazine.

Krause crashed to a halt on the rocky beach.
The fall had twisted the arrow inside him but he managed to get a
grip on the splintered shaft and pull it out. He sat up and groped
in his field kit for a bandage. Stop the bleeding, he might survive
this yet.

Agatak came out of the darkness with a
spear. Krause ejected the machinegun’s spent magazine and grabbed a
fresh one.

Agatak rammed the spear into the hole left
by the arrow. Krause screamed. He dropped his weapon and seized the
shaft of the spear. Agatak twisted it in his gut.

Krause drew his combat knife and thrust it
at his attacker but his reach didn’t extend to the savage at the
other end of the spear.

Agatak leaned his weight into the spear.
This one wasn’t getting away.

Krause gave up trying to stab. He reversed
the knife to throw it at the savage. Six feet away, easy enough.
This was his last chance – his only chance.

Shogan came up behind Krause and seized his
knife hand. He swung the machete overhead.

Krause roared but there was no longer anyone
but Agatak and Shogan to hear. And then the blade hacked into his
neck.

~~~

At 13h00 Berlin Time, the U-boat
surfaced.

Kapitan Wolff and Leutnant Richter stood in
the conning tower with binoculars trained on the headland. On the
foredeck, the gun crew traversed the horizon with their gun, bored
to tears with daily drills, ready to fire on a real target.