I don’t know if I blacked out, or if I was just so confused by the blast that I didn’t know where I was at first. There was smoke everywhere, and everything seemed to be leaning. I was lying down, a sharp pain in one of my legs. Everything was muted, like being underwater. I could still hear guys yelling, someone screaming, but they sounded really far away. Then the boat shook with a second explosion belowdecks, and I felt myself tossed again and slammed into something metal—the bridge. I pulled myself up to a sitting position and rubbed my eyes. It was hard to see. I wished I had some water to throw on my face. I blinked and blinked. There was more yelling. There were guys staggering around me. I could see them dimly. My hearing was coming back, too. Someone was screaming—I crawled toward the sound, more feeling my way through the smoke than seeing where I was going at times.

But when I got to him, the screaming stopped. I held his hand and wiped his face clean. His eyes were closed, clenched tightly shut. He’d been hurt really bad. I couldn’t even recognize him. But as dazed as I was, I just didn’t want him to be alone, even though there wasn’t anything I could do for him. There wasn’t anything anybody could do. I said a prayer.

That’s where I was when Straub found me, still sitting there, cross-legged, holding the dead man’s hand. “Come on, Danny,” Straub said, taking hold under my arms and lifting me up. “We have to get off the ship. It’s going down.”

I couldn’t put any weight on my wounded leg. When I looked down I saw a jagged piece of metal that had stabbed into my thigh. For some reason I barely felt it, even though I could tell it went in pretty deep. I reached for the metal, but Straub stopped me. “You’re in shock. Don’t pull it out. You’ll bleed too much. You just have to leave it until we get on the lifeboat. We’ll get something to bandage you up there.”

I couldn’t speak, so I just nodded as he half carried me across the sloping deck. Some members of the crew were lying on the deck, not moving. Others were busy grabbing supplies, weapons, medical kits, blankets, radio equipment.

“There’s just the one lifeboat,” Straub said. “The other one got destroyed. We’re all going to have to get in. I don’t know how many guys are left.”

I struggled to say a name but could barely get it out. I must have inhaled a lot of smoke in the explosion. “Woody?”

Straub wouldn’t look at me. He just kept going to the side of the ship.

“What about Woody?” I asked, though it felt as if something was tearing inside my throat.

Straub shook his head. “The second explosion. It was the engine room. Nobody could get down there to help them.”

We were at the rail now, and other members of the crew helped Straub lower me into the lifeboat. Chief Kerr was there giving orders, though his face was burned. He had them lay me in the bow, took a look at my leg, and ordered a guy sitting nearby to make sure nobody bumped into me.

I squeezed my eyes closed as tight as I could. I never wanted to open them again. I didn’t want to see anymore. I didn’t want to hear anymore. I didn’t want to know anymore.

But it didn’t help. Instead, I saw a picture of Woody in my mind, that last time, just before everything happened, down in the engine room, grinning, telling me he’d never had pals like me and Straub, and me telling him the same.

*   *   *

Our ship didn’t give up easy. We’d seen cargo ships that got torpedoed go down in minutes, but our PC held on for a long time, as if refusing to quit until every member of the crew who was still alive could climb or be carried onto the lifeboat. There were so many of us crammed on it that it was hard to believe we’d lost anybody in the attack. But I knew we had. I’d seen them on the deck. And I knew no one had escaped from the engine room. Lieutenant Talley was dead, too.

Chief Kerr did a count once we were all settled, guys practically sitting on top of one another. There were thirty of us. The lifeboat was designed to hold twenty.

We finally shoved off from the ship, guys who were able paddling hard to get some distance in case there was another explosion, and to avoid the danger of a whirlpool pulling us under with it when the ship went down.

Chief Kerr was going man to man to check on injuries. One side of his face looked like burnt hamburger, but he didn’t seem to even notice. When he got to me he pulled a roll of gauze, sulfa packets, a needle and thread, and a syringe out of a medical kit.

“Two of you boys hold him down,” he ordered the guys squeezed in next to me. He didn’t hesitate, just immediately stabbed me in the arm with the syringe. “This is morphine. It’ll help you not feel too much.”

He waited a few minutes, then turned his attention to the metal shard sticking out of my leg. It was maybe the size of his hand, but it was impossible to tell how much was buried.

“It’s gotta come out,” he said, and once again didn’t hesitate. He pulled quickly and the metal slid right out. I threw up from the pain as blood gushed from the wound. Chief pressed gauze over it and held it there as tight as he could, which hurt almost as bad as when he pulled out the metal shard. I thought I was going to throw up again and I struggled to get away, but the two guys kept their tight hold on me and wouldn’t let me up.

Chief pulled back the gauze and coated the wound with sulfa powder—“This’ll help with any infection,” he said—and then, when the bleeding let up enough, busied himself putting in stitches to close the cut.

He grinned at me when he finished. “There,” he said. “Good as new.”

“Thanks, Chief,” I muttered. And then I blacked out again.

*   *   *

When I regained consciousness, the lifeboat was rocking side to side, and a steady spray was coming over and drenching us. The waves had picked up, and the sky was dark gray. Straub helped me sit and gathered a blanket tighter around me to keep me warm and at least somewhat dry.

“Here,” he said, holding up a small cup of water. “You need to drink. Chief says we have to ration everything but that you get extra water since you lost a lot of blood.”

I drank slowly. My tongue felt so thick in my mouth, swollen from smoke or from dehydration—I didn’t know which. Maybe both.

When I finished I felt even thirstier than before, but Straub said that was going to have to be it for now. “Don’t know when somebody will find us,” he said. “We thought one of the PCs would come back for us, but maybe they don’t know where we are. The radio worked for a little while and then stopped.”

I could only nod. And fight off the tears that were pressing against the backs of my eyes, threatening to pour out like somebody opening a faucet. I immediately started thinking about Woody, and what happened to him and the rest of the engine room crew. He’d been my friend since the very first day I showed up for the navy.

Straub must have been able to read my face. “I can’t stop thinking about him, either,” he said, patting me on the shoulder. “And Lieutenant Talley. And the rest of them, too. We lost half the crew.”

“Was it a torpedo?” I managed to ask.

Straub shook his head. “Chief doesn’t think so. He says the Germans—the officers, I guess, or whoever stayed below while the rest of the crew left on their inflatable lifeboat—they blew up their own U-boat, and that’s what sank our ship.” He shook his head as if he just couldn’t believe it.

“They blew themselves up so they could sink our ship and kill all of us,” he said. “It wasn’t a torpedo. It was a suicide.”