Prehistoric WWII Read online

  *

  The forward main battery director, Robert Lucas, barked orders to the helmsman. The massive hunk of steel gliding the waters turned to allow the torpedo tubes unobstructed access to its target. Two crewmen atop the tubes sighted the enemy.

  The strange green clouds in the distance rolled in faster than he’d ever seen before. What kind of storm was this? It was as if an ethereal void quickly consumed both ocean and sky. His heart pounded faster. The small hairs on the back of his neck prickled. Inside his station, everything became electrified.

  *

  “Sonar has two torpedoes heading forward,” Stone said. “And….” Popping noises and glass shattering came from inside his console. He lurched forward in his seat, methodically twisting knobs. “Sir, radar and sonar just stopped working.”

  “Damnit! Inform the helmsman. Evasive Action,” Brazo commanded. The words he spoke dropped in volume in his head. Electricity crawled up and down his back. Others must have felt it, too. Everyone had frozen in position and looked bewilderingly about.

  The overhead lights went out. The engine hum stopped. The Sutton was dead in the water.

  *

  The two crewmen on top of the torpedo launcher looked curiously at each other. The green fog surrounded them, limiting visibility to only three or four feet.

  “What the hell is this? What do we do?” Pratt, the larger of the two, asked.

  “I didn’t have time to sight in the torpedoes. If we launch them now they’re sure to miss,” Cummings said.

  “Crap! Crap! Crap!” Pratt stood and put his hands on either side of his sailor’s cap. “There’s a sub heading for us. We’ve got to find it. It’s our job to shoot it. We’re gonna die. We’re gonna die!”

  “Get ahold of yourself, man! Acting like a mama’s boy ain’t gonna save our hides. Get your ass back over here. Just as the fog lifts, we’ll be ready. There’s nothing else for us to do. There….” Cummings words lodged in his throat, refusing to escape his mouth. Something reddish in color emerged from the green mist. It was shaped blade-like and had the width of three men. Suction cups the size of beach balls dripped with the ocean’s briny liquid. An aquatic funk rolled in as Pratt’s outburst subsided.

  Water dripped onto Pratt’s shoulders. His mouth dropped open, reading the fear on Cumming’s face. His upper lip rose as there was no escaping the strange odor. He slowly turned his head, eyes bulging at the horrific sight.

  The giant squid’s feeding tentacle collapsed around Pratt’s body. Fear became his master, and a high-pitched squeal emanated from his throat. Round, quivering suckers mashed against his skin like soft, wet rubber. Pratt struggled, but he was held fast in the grip of a prehistoric cephalopod. The tentacle plucked him off the launcher.

  The green fog sluggishly lifted, and Cummings watched as the tentacle slid across the steel deck with its prisoner. “Pratt! Pratt!” Screaming his mate’s name did nothing to stop the slow descent to certain death.

  Finding his legs, Cummings climbed down the launcher and ran toward Pratt. The tentacle slithered backward, nearing the ship’s edge.

  “Cummings!” Pratt cried. His right arm free, he stretched out his hand, clawing empty air for an invisible hold.

  “I’ll save you, buddy!” Cummings streaked over and grabbed onto Pratt’s right wrist.

  Pratt similarly latched onto his, and the battle was on.

  Cummings felt Pratt’s fingernails dig into his forearm. He brought his left hand over to double his grip, planted his feet as firmly on the deck as possible, and strained with all his might. He might as well have been pulling against a bulldozer.

  A sucker had Pratt’s left cheek in its vicious clasp. It pulled at skin, stretching it away from his skull. He yelled out in agony as the rest of his body suffered as if his blood was being sucked out through his flesh.

  Cummings dragged along until his body touched the deck’s rail. He put all of his remaining strength into one final tug as he came to a momentary solid halt.

  The sucker tugged so greatly against Pratt’s face that his left eye popped out the socket. The bloodshot orb dangled, oddly swaying like a grandfather clock pendulum bob, connected to the skull by the optic nerve. He disappeared over the rail.

  Cummings, still holding on, felt his feet leave the deck.

  *

  The emergency lights came on in the command room, giving enough light to quickly let the crew know how screwed they were.

  “Get those engines back on, now!” Brazo felt like a one-winged duck in a pond surrounded by hunters. “Weapons report. We need to fire torpedoes as quick as we can.”

  “Radio’s out, sir,” Slick said, the microphone clutched in his hand.

  “Damnit! I’ll fire those things myself.” As Brazo turned to leave, an explosion rocked the ship from underneath, sending him sideways. Before he righted himself, the second explosion sent him to his knees. A few seconds later, a bright flash in the command center and a crack of thunder blinded him, setting his ears ringing.

  *

  Unseen hands clamped down on Cummings’ legs as he nearly spilled over the deck. Pratt was in the unbreakable grasp of the giant squid. Cummings felt Pratt’s arm slip away forever, the warmth of life pulsing from his lost mate replaced by the cool dampness of ocean spray.

  “My gosh…look,” one of the three crewmen who came to Cummings’ rescue said.

  The squid’s stabilizing fin and mantle rose from the water, resembling a mountain shaped like the Devil’s horn. Its reddish skin glistened in the emerging sunlight, the green clouds and fog rapidly dissipating. The beast looked like something from another world. No, something more than that. A God. A being so powerful, so fearful, that nothing on Earth could be its equal.

  Its single eye left the deep, and the mighty creature floated as high as the ship’s two smokestacks. The eye had the power to peer directly into a man’s soul and slowly sip out his will to live.

  Pratt silently thrashed about, either not having the strength to cry out or having lost hope, knowing his end would soon come.

  The squid’s body tilted backward. Sections of its eight arms, looking like massive rubber hoses, floated to the surface. The feeding tentacle snaked toward the squid’s parrot-like black bleak breaking above the ocean’s surface. The obsidian mechanism pushed through white slimy muscle and opened wide. The beak looked strong enough to snap one of the Sutton’s guns in half with a single bite.

  Pratt entered the gaping maw feet first. Halfway in, the beak closed scissor-like, severing the unfortunate man above the waist. Face down, his arms slapped at the ocean’s surface in a hopeless attempt to escape. Suffering was short-lived as the beak opened again. The rest of the sailor disappeared into the solid black cage, never to emerge again.

  The feeding tentacle pulled away empty. The squid up-righted itself, seeming satisfied with its prize, and reached the tentacle up toward the deck for more.

  The crewmen backed away, never taking their eyes from the impending danger.

  Before anyone ran for their lives, an explosion reverberated from underneath. The enemy had drawn first blood.

  The second explosion had Cummings thinking the war was already lost. Before he had time to grieve, a bright flash blanked his vision, and a thunderhead clapped against both ears.

  Chapter 4

  Lt. Bach peered through the attack periscope and updated coordinates to the helmsman and weapons officer.

  Christoph stood with his eyes closed and back stiff. His mind’s eye mapped out the battle scene before it happened. The U-boat would target the Destroyer with two G7e torpedoes and deliver the first strike. The torpedoes would speed to their destiny as stealthily and smoothly as any other marine life carved from billions of years of evolution. If the Americans did have time to react with an attack of their own, the deep waters of the Atlantic would allow him to hide in wait. Patience, knowing the enemy, thinking like the enemy, who was trained to engage him as he thought. Christoph knew how the game was
played. He was not a commander to be stereotyped. Give the enemy what he’s looking for, and then turn his folly into his destruction. He had made nineteen patrols in the war, and hundreds of thousands of tonnes of merchant vessels and their cargo had become sanctuaries for ocean dwellers by his hand. British and US war machines had succumbed to his wits, too. How many mariners did he send to rest with Davy Jones and his lot? Christoph didn’t know, and he tried never to think of it. His orders were simply to find and sink his target, not take the lives of others. One wouldn’t happen without the other, but again, it’s a fact he didn’t dwell on.

  “In range and position,” Bach said in a crisp, affirmative tone.

  “Firing torpedoes,” the weapon’s officer said.

  Christoph opened his eyes and looked over at Bach. The lieutenant gripped the periscope’s handles, his body rigid as a rock. Seconds became hours in situations like these. It was as if the human spirit had some influence on future events. The wishing, the desire; unconsciously pleading for success to God, the Devil, the universe…it didn’t matter. Victory the only objective, and at any cost.

  “Torpedoes launched,” the weapon’s officer said.

  “Godspeed,” Christoph said, confidence in his voice.

  Silence in the command room became palpable.

  Faulk looked up from his sonar screen. “Commander, unknown approaching directly aft.”

  Slapped from his concentration, Christoph turned, narrowing eyes, and asked, “How far?”

  “Nearly on top of us,” Faulk said.

  “How is that—?” Christoph’s words stopped cold as small pops and shattering glass belched from the sonar station. The lights dimmed and pulsed, and the sub’s battery-powered engines struggled.

  The radar and sonar screens both went immediately dead. Faulk looked up with his eyes wide and a drooping lower chin. “The storm, it’s over us. It engulfed the screen, blocking the radar out just before we lost it. It’s affecting our electrical system.”

  Not forgetting the unknown streaking toward them, Christoph said, “Prepare to dive, then dive.”

  Bach was still behind the attack periscope. Christoph bee-lined over and pushed him aside. He turned 180° and lowered the periscope. The sub was still close enough to the surface to allow enough light for him to see a large creature coming toward them. It wasn’t swimming noticeably fast, and he wondered how something this large, most likely a whale, had approached that close before being detected by the sonar.

  “Controls aren’t responding, sir. We cannot flood the ballasts,” the helmsman said.

  Christoph tore his gaze from the periscope’s eye shield, and said, “Have the men do it manually.” The sea creature’s image remained in his mind. Something about it struck him as odd. A creature that size could only be a whale. Yet, while what his mind told him was logical, his eyes had told him something different.

  “Radio is inoperable, sir,” the helmsman said.

  “Battery power is diminishing quickly. I do not know what is draining it so fast,” Faulk said in a panicked tone.

  “Get orders to the engine room. We need to dive!” Christoph said.

  “Without batteries, we will not be able to pump out the ballast tanks and surface. Plus, we need power to generate oxygen.” Bach stopped short of canceling the commander’s order.

  The lieutenant was right. Christoph had lost his cool and made decisions without thinking everything through. Maybe the stress of a U-boat commander was finally taking its toll. “Take us high enough for the snorkel to catch air. Start the diesel engines and continue on the previous course to South America. If we cannot see the Americans in the storm, then they cannot see us, either.”

  He quickly returned his gaze back through the periscope. The creature was closer and much clearer, and what he saw, he could barely believe.

  The behemoth was not a whale.

  It was a shark, identified by its blunt snout and rows of sharp teeth. A shark half as tall as U-616 and a third of its length! How could such a monster exist?

  The megalodon eased past the U-boat like a creeping locomotive. Christoph watched in fascination at the meter-long teeth jutting from a mouth wide enough to swallow ten men whole. The vacant black eyes reminded him of a sailor’s stare into the unknown horizon after death. The gills opened and closed in constant rhythm as the tail propelled it smoothly through the ocean and past the U-616.

  Christoph had seen many sharks in his life. A sailor fears only the cold more than the ocean-faring predator if he found himself forced to abandon ship. One thing for sure, something this large would have little chance sneaking up on them, which didn’t explain why the sonar didn’t ping it sooner. Right before the storm overtook them, it was as if the giant shark was placed in the water right next to them.

  The diesel engines rolled lazily over, and the command room lights dimmed further. Either the batteries were too low to get them started or else something in the mysterious storm had affected their electronics.

  “It is no good, sir,” the helmsman said.

  “Crap,” Christoph said and stepped away from the periscope.

  “You saw nothing outside?” Bach asked.

  “Nothing to be concerned about. We have greater problems than marine life. It was a shark. A very big shark—as large as a whale. It moved past us, probably looking for deeper waters to feed.”

  “Orders, Commander?” Bach asked, a loyal sailor waiting to do the bidding of his captain.

  It always came down to the decision of one man. One man deciding the fate of fifty-two passengers in an underwater boat blinded by a storm, and losing power by the second.

  A thud and a groan of hollow metal told them the U-616 had bumped into something. The boat listed a few degrees to one side.

  Christoph and Bach locked gazes for a brief moment, and then the commander raced over to the periscope.

  The massive shark had returned and was directly forward. Damn the luck! Christoph imagined that the sputtering diesel engines had drawn its attention, and its primordial curiosity had it checking out the potential prey the only way it knew how: with its teeth.

  A SK C/35 naval gun mounted on the forward deck acted like a fishing lure. The megalodon had bumped it with its snout, and still not certain if it was food or not, bit down on it.

  Metal creaked, and the sub, though barely moving in the water, slowed enough for the sailors in the command room to check their balance.

  “That damn shark is back. It is attacking the gun,” Christoph said.

  “A shark?” the helmsman said.

  “I told you it was big,” Christoph said.

  The sub listed further, sliding the crew sideways. Options at this point were few to none. Christoph ordered, “To the surface, now! Use the last of the compressed air to empty the ballast. We’ve got to shake this thing.”

  A crewman waiting in the corner made an immediate exit to execute the order.

  It was a shame the gun wasn’t remotely operated. The 8.8cm shells fired into the belly of the beast, despite its size, would surely be the end of it. But it took a crew of three men to load and fire the weapon once on the surface. If they couldn’t shoot the shark, at least they could present less of a target to entice it.

  The U-boat slowly lifted, but it listed so much now that everyone slid toward the wall. The rear of the sub started floating upward, leaving the front end struggling past the weight of the megalodon. A bad situation had just gotten worse.

  Metal groaned again. What fascination did this shark have with steel? It couldn’t eat it. Then Christoph realized why. Anger. The shark saw the U-boat as a threat to its territory.

  The rear of the boat finally stopped rising. It had found the surface. Abruptly, the front end sprang up as the weight of the megalodon no longer held it in check. It had given up the battle, at least for now.

  As the U-boat stabilized, Christoph adjusted his trousers and straightened his collar. “You are in charge, Bach. I’m taking a look outside.”


  *

  Erik Neuzetser had remained in the narrow hall just outside of the sickbay. When the boat tilted, he laid on the floor and held on for safety. He had no idea what was going on with the US Destroyer but was confident that his father would save them. Erik trusted his father without question. His father loved him, shown by his actions if not by his words. Still, the man saw life through his own experiences, his own beliefs. Erik wasn’t his father. He was his own person, an individual. Did he have the fortitude to declare to his father that he was his own man?

  Despite his father’s vast knowledge and success, he just didn’t understand.

  Erik had been raised to be a man who could care for himself. That was fine, but when his views of life veered from what his father thought best, he lost favor. That wasn’t fair. A free thinker had to be allowed to think without limit, not confined to borders within a certain philosophy.

  He was a loyal German; no one could have said otherwise. But in Youth Camp, he had many questions that he could only ask his father. Moral questions, basic right and wrong. Yes, the Aryans were the superior race. But some of the rumors he overheard had him concerned. Even if the Jews were a blight to mankind, they were at least as valuable as animals. He had never heard of animals treated as badly as the rumors of what was done to the Jews.

  His father never directly answered his concerns. Instead, he advised him to follow the Führer’s plan and would understand when he was older. Understanding can come at any age, and Erik felt like he was capable now. Camp had taught him many things, including how to fight the enemies. If he was trusted to go to war and give his life, then nothing should have been held back from him.

  “It appears we have surfaced,” Adolf Eichmann said. The tallish man, dressed in a black suit, stood next to two cots. His face was thin and long, with a nose a bit too large, and bat-like ears on the sides of his head. The former Nazi SS lieutenant colonel had helped others in the room stabilize the cots when the boat rose unevenly to the surface.