White Shark (2 page)
Authors: Peter Benchley
Tags: #Science Fiction, #Mystery, #Suspense, #Thriller, #Horror
He thought of Mengele, Josef Mengele, his
personal friend and professional rival.
Had Mengele, too, escaped?
Was he
still alive?
Would they meet in
Mengele, known as
Der Engel des Todes
, the Angel of Death, because of his experiments
on human beings, had been contemptuous of Kruger's work, proclaiming it
fanciful, impossible.
But in fact,
Kruger's research had a very practical, and very deadly, purpose.
Kruger dearly hoped Mengele was still
alive; he couldn't wait to show Mengele his achievement, the ultimate
weapon:
Der Weisse Hai
.
He turned away and left the torpedo room.
3
As the U-boat rounded the tip of
hit a savage westerly gale.
Pitching and
rolling like an amusement park ride, it inched south, west of
On May 8, Hoffmann told Kruger that a
bulletin had come over the radio:
German
had surrendered.
The war was over.
"Not for us," Kruger
replied.
"Not for us.
For us, the war will never be over."
*
*
*
*
*
The days fell, like autumn leaves from a
linden tree, one after another, indistinguishable.
Hoffmann had avoided the shipping lanes, and
so encountered no Allied vessels.
Three
times the lookout had seen trails of smoke on the horizon; half a dozen times
Hoffman had ordered the boat to submerge, shallow practice dives rather than
emergencies.
For Kruger, time became a monotonous cycle
of meals, sleep and work in the forward torpedo room.
His work was crucial; it was the sole
motivation for his own life now, and for enduring this interminable voyage.
In the torpedo room, Kruger pushed a
release button hidden beneath a tiny swastika etched in the bronze.
The cover of the huge box opened; with a
magnifying glass he examined the thick rubber O-ring seals that kept the box
air- and watertight.
He applied grease
to any spots that appeared to be pitting or drying out.
Kruger's superiors had immediately grasped
the military applications of his experiments.
What he saw as a scientific breakthrough, they saw as a magnificent
weapon.
And so money was lavished upon
it, and Kruger had been pushed to complete it.
But then, with success so close, time had run out; the empire of the
Reich had shrunk to a bunker in
and Kruger had been told that the weapon would be transported, even though
programming was incomplete.
*
*
*
*
*
Four weeks into the voyage, Kruger was
summoned to the control room.
Hoffmann's
arms hung over the wings of the periscope, his face was pressed to the eyepiece
and he was turning in a slow circle.
He
didn't look up, but as soon as Kruger was in the room, Hoffmann said,
"This is the moment we've been waiting for, Herr Doktor.
It's
calm, it's
twilight and it's pouring rain.
We can
go topside and have a shower."
Hoffman looked away from the eyepiece and smiled.
"And in deference to your station, you
shall be on the first shift."
It had been more than a month since Kruger
had bathed, shaved, brushed his teeth.
The boat could store only a few gallons of fresh water, and that which
its desalinizers made every day was reserved exclusively for cooking and for
servicing the batteries.
He longed for
the feel of fresh water on his stinking skin.
"Is it safe?" he asked.
"I think so.
There's not much traffic this far south —
we're about two thousand kilometers east of the
Hoffmann returned to the eyepiece and said,
"How much water under the keel?"
"No bottom here, Herr Kaleu," a
sailor at a control panel replied.
"No bottom?
"
Kruger
said.
"How can there be no
bottom?"
Hoffmann said, "It’s too deep for our
Fathometer to get a return.
We must be
over one of the midocean trenches...
three kilometers, five kilometers...
who knows?
Plenty
of water.
We're not likely to hit
anything."
The rush of fresh air, as a crewman opened
the conning-tower hatch, smelled to Kruger as sweet as violets.
He stood at the base of the ladder, holding a
bar of soap, and savored the drops of rainwater that fell on his face.
The
crewman scanned the
horizon with binoculars, call
out, "All clear!" and slid
backward down the ladder.
Kruger climbed up, stepped over the lip of
the bridge and descended the exterior ladder to the deck.
Four crewmen followed him, scaling the
ladders as nimbly as spiders.
They
gathered on the afterdeck, naked, and passed a bar of soap among them.
The rain was steady but soft, not wind
driven, and the sea was sickly calm.
The
long, gentle ocean swell lifted the submarine so slowly that Kruger had no
trouble keeping his footing.
He walked
forward to a flat stretch of deck, took off his clothes and spread them on the
deck, hoping the rain would rinse the stench from them.
He lathered himself and spread his arms.
"Herr Doktor!"
Kruger dropped his arms and looked aft;
the four naked crewmen were rushing up the ladder to the bridge.
"A plane!
Hurry!"
The last
crewman on the ladder pointed at the sky,
then
kept
climbing.
"A what?"
Then, over the
sound of his own voice, Kruger heard the drone of an engine.
He looked in the direction the crewman had
pointed; for a moment, he saw nothing.
Then, against the lighter gray of the western clouds, there was a black
speck skimming the wave tops and heading directly at him.
He scooped up his clothes and ran for the
ladder.
His foot hit something, some
obstruction on the deck, and he sprawled forward onto his knees, scattering his
clothes.
The drone of the plane's engine sounded
closer; it had risen to a yowl.
Stunned by a sharp, hot pain that shot
from his big toe up through his calf, Kruger abandoned his clothes and
struggled to his feet.
He glanced
backward to see what he had hit; one of the deck plates just aft of the forward
hatch looked warped, as if a weld had popped and sprung one of the plate's
edges.
He began to climb the ladder.
The engine noise was deafening now, and
Kruger ducked reflexively as the plane screamed overhead.
He looked up as it began a long loop into the
sky.
One of the crewmen leaned down from the
bridge, reaching his hand out to Kruger, urging his on.
From somewhere inside the hull Kruger
heard the klaxon for emergency dive, and as he fell over the lip of the bridge
and sought footing on the interior ladder, he felt the thrum of engines and a
sensation of motion forward and down.
The hatch clanged shut above him, the
crewman shimmied past him down the side of the ladder, and Kruger found himself
standing on the bottom rung, naked, drenched, a film of soap running down his
legs.
Hoffman was bent over the periscope.
"Pull the plug, Chief," he said,
"we're taking her down."
Kruger said, "On the deck, one of
the—"
"Periscope depth," the chief
called.
"E motors half speed."
Hoffmann spun the periscope ninety
degrees.
"Son of a
bitch
," he said.
"The bastard's coming back."
"He didn't fire on us," Kruger
said.
"I think you—"
"He will this time; he was just
making sure.
He's not about to let a
U-boat get across the
.
Forward down fifteen, aft down ten.
Take her to a hundred meters."
Hoffmann slammed the wings of the
periscope up and pushed the retractor button, and the gleaming steel tube slid
downward.
He glanced at Kruger, noted
the stricken look on his face and said, "Don't
worry,
we're a needle in a haystack.
Night's
coming on, and the chances of his finding us—"
"Fifty meters!" called the
chief.
"On the deck," Kruger said.
"I saw a... one of the pieces of
metal... have you taken this boat to a hundred meters before?"
"Of course.
Dozens of times."
"Seventy meters, Herr Kaleu!"
*
*
*
*
*
At seventy meters below the surface, there
was nearly a hundred pounds of water pressure on every square inch of the
submarine's hull.
The boat had been designed
to operate safely at more than twice that depth, and had done so many
times.
But when the forward deck plates
had been removed to take on Kruger's cargo, one of the welders assigned to
replace them had worked too hastily.
A
few superficial, inconsequential welds had failed during the shallow dives, but
all the critical ones had held.
Now,
however, with thousands of tons of water squeezing the hull like a living fist,
one gave way.
*
*
*
*
*
There was a noise forward, a resonant
boom, and the boat lurched downward.
Men
were thrown from their seats; Kruger slammed into the ladder, bounced off and
then grabbed it to keep from pitching down the passageway.
Hoffmann's feet skidded out from under
him, and he clutched the periscope.
"Emergency surface!" he
shouted.
"Bring her up!
All back full!
Blow fore and aft!"
He shot a glance at Kruger.
Did you dog the forward hatch?"
"I can't remem—"
There was another boom then as the forward
hatch blew open, and a solid jet of water five feet high and three feet across
blasted from the torpedo room through the petty officers' quarters.
It rushed into the galley and the officers'
wardroom.
"Ninety meters, Herr Kaleu!" a
voice shrieked.
The boat continued down.
Kruger suddenly felt weightless, as if he
were in an elevator.
There were loud creaking noises; somewhere
a pipe burst; there was a hiss of steam.
The control room filled with the sour smell of sweat, then of urine,
and, at last, of oil and feces.
Another boom, at two
hundred meters.
Darkness.
Screams.
Wailing.
In the millisecond before he died, Ernst
Kruger reached a hand forward, toward the torpedo room, toward the future.
4
The submarine sank swiftly.
It
plummeted,
bow
first, to a thousand feet.
There, well
beyond its test depth, the pressure hull finally gave way, in a dozen places at
once.
Air rushed from ruptures of torn
metal, the boat shuddered and torqued.
Its hydrodynamics destroyed, it began to tumble.
