CHAPTER 39

The sunset that afternoon was spectacular, but in the circumstances, it struck Paul as more eerie than beautiful. The gray clouds blooming on the horizon turned to ribbons of red separated by curiously even bands of fog on the western horizon. The veils of mist parted for just an instant, revealing the sawtoothed pattern of the granite mountains silhouetted black against the great dome of the ice cap. To Paul there seemed to be something infinitely ominous about that stark coast. Nothing could be trusted here in Greenland, not the weather, not the sea, the ice, the rocky shores … nor the people.

The icebergs were jammed more closely together as they approached Supportup-Kangerdula. The Arluk twisted through a maze of crystal castles which the dying sun bathed in its ruddy glow, turning them pink and gold with flashes of crimson. As they neared the shore a great many large white sea gulls with blacktipped wings appeared from nowhere and wheeled in circles over the ship emitting melancholy mewing cries that sounded more like cats than birds. Paul had always admired the freedom of the gulls over the ice pack, but now he remembered that Boats had said the gulls had been feasting on the eyes of the corpses in the lifeboat they had discovered, and suddenly the big birds appeared to be enemies patiently awaiting their death. The black tips of their wings, which he had never before noticed, seemed to be a bad omen. Were these the real Valkyries, the handmaidens of Odin who hovered over the battlefields, the “choosers of the slain”? Had the Vikings really believed such bullshit?

Paul shivered. He did not believe in crazy myths, the legacy of the bloody past of which the Germans were so proud. It was not the “handmaidens of Odin” who would hover over battlefields, choosing which men were to be slain and which would be heroes, it was the invisible, inaudible radar signals that would spot an enemy and give the range for the guns.

So much appeared to come down to numbers. How far offshore could the German artillery shoot? Even if he knew the caliber of their guns, Paul did not have enough expertise to know their range, and had to guess. Five miles at most? Everything in war was guesses when he came right down to it. The theoretical range of guns did not mean much in an ice field like a ruined city in darkness. Precision in war was an illusion even for experts.

When the last glow of the sun died there was an interminable hour of utter blackness until the moon rose enough to turn the clouds to silver gray and the surrounding shambles of ice to a sea of shadows. Using radar and that sea sense which he felt growing within him, Paul felt his way closer to the mouth of the Supportup-Kangerdula Fjord. As often happened, the ice thinned when he got about three miles from shore, and the radar showed a ribbon of clear water about a mile wide between the coast and the ice floe, which appeared to end a few miles to the north, where a long rocky point extended into the ice. The hunter-killer could hide in the ice or in any number of places in the lacelike coast near Supportup-Kangerdula, but if he was trying to get to his base, he would have to cross that belt of open water. Because of that long point to the north, he would probably come from the south or the east.

Paul found two small bergs lying close together in broken ice near the edge of the pack. He maneuvered his ship between them, sheltering her hull from viewers ashore, or from a ship to the east. His camouflaged bow would be hard to see from the south and because of the ice formation and the point, he did not think a ship could approach close to him from the north. The tip of his mast stuck high enough above the ice for his radar to work, and by edging the bow a little forward, he could command the entrance to the fjord and the southern sector with his forward guns. This was the best way he knew to set his trap, and the ship rested easy in her niche.

When he stopped the engine, there was nothing to be heard but the moaning of the wind and the strange catlike mews of the gulls in the darkness overhead. Clouds soon covered the moon and he could see nothing. The mercury in the thermometers and the barometer fell as the velocity of the gale rose. Good, Paul thought—a trawler was better able to endure bad weather than a narrow, crowded little ship designed to hunt whales, not men. What was the hotshot skipper of that ship doing now?

If he’s making a run for his base, he’s cursing this total darkness, Paul thought. Without radar or even with it, no ice pilot, however experienced would try to grope his way into the narrow, rock-strewn entrance to Supportup-Kangerdula in utter blackness. Almost beyond doubt, the German was sitting in the ice, just as the Arluk was, waiting for the first streaks of dawn. It was almost as dangerous to attribute magical powers to an enemy as it was to underestimate him. Until visibility improved, the Arluk was fairly safe. Except for a routine sea watch, the men should get some much-needed sleep.

Everyone off watch did sleep heavily, except Nathan who between short naps kept making sure that the radar detected no motion in the surrounding ice. Sparks nodded as he tried to monitor all radio channels they thought the German might use. Nothing but static and stuttering signals from great distances came to his earphones.

Paul told the quartermaster to wake him at the first sign of dawn. The call seemed to come only minutes after he closed his eyes. Buttoning his parka tightly, drawing a knitted watchcap over his ears under the hood of his parka, and putting on heavy mittens, he went to the wing of the bridge. His ears had grown so used to the pitch of the gale that he no longer was aware of it, but now he could see snow spume being blown from the peaks of the icebergs in the gray light. The whole ice field looked curiously as though it were speeding to windward. No longer did anything appear motionless. The stiff canvas covers on the guns appeared to breathe in the wind like the flanks of animals. The rigging and the aerials vibrated like plucked guitar strings. The leather on the palms of his gloves stiffened and cracked when he flexed his hands. His face stung. Hurrying into the pilothouse, Paul checked the thermometers. The temperature was fifty-three degrees below zero, their first real taste of a Greenland winter. Good, Paul thought. If that son of a bitch tries to go fast in this stuff with a narrow, wet little ship, he’ll have to keep chipping ice. No mechanism, including torpedo tubes, could be expected to work smoothly in such temperatures.

“Quartermaster, tell Guns to take the canvas off the guns.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Guns, Blake and three seamen had to cut the frozen lacings of the canvas covers and lift them off like big boxes, punching them with mittened fists to work them free. Cookie brought coffee and hot Danish pastries to Paul in the pilothouse.

“Cookie, you’ve got a little smoke coming from your Charlie Noble. If you can’t adjust your range to get rid of that, you’re going to have to turn it off.”

“I fix,” Cookie said, and ran across the well deck toward the warmth of the forecastle.

As the sun rose there was little change in the gray light, but the visibility increased to about five miles. Suddenly there was a high whine followed by a thunderous roar to the west and three Lightnings hurtled overhead only about a thousand yards above the ice. Apparently they did not see the Arluk as they descended to skim just over the tops of the tallest ice castles, seeking to avenge the lost seaplane. If they didn’t even notice the Arluk, how could they be expected to find the even smaller hunter-killer? The PBY had been too slow to escape antiaircraft fire, but the Lightnings were too fast to make a meaningful search. They should work in teams, Paul thought. Perhaps he should radio that suggestion to GreenPat, but he didn’t want to advertise his position to the Germans.

The three Lightnings broke their V-formation as they flew separate search patterns over the horizon and back again. Paul imagined the Germans in their ice-covered ship, checking to make sure they were emitting no smoke. He wondered whether he should remove the snow from his red decks to identify his ship to the pilots, but decided that the fly-boys might be too quick to attack the first speck they saw in the ice. These Lightnings were army air force. If his brother had the ill luck to be transferred from his duty as a flight instructor, he might fly one of them on missions such as this. The thought of his brother screaming overhead, or someone much like him, somehow did not increase Paul’s confidence in the operation. Bill would be just the one to shoot first and ask questions later, especially the day after a PBY had been lost.

After about an hour of crisscrossing the ice field, the planes roared away to the west as quickly as they had come. Once more nothing could be heard except the howl of the wind. Paul went to the forecastle for more coffee. A dozen men were playing checkers at the big V-shaped table there. Flags, who had little signaling to do these days, had organized a tournament. He was manufacturing more sets by sawing disks off the end of a broom handle, and Blake was using a ruler to draw intersecting lines on squares of cardboard. His chef’s hat tilted to the back of his head, Cookie was in the act of demolishing a row of Guns’s men, and the crew cheered as though it had just won a battle.

Returning to the bridge with a mug of coffee to warm his hands, Paul sat on a stool by the wheel staring out over the seemingly speeding Arctic wastes. Now that the planes had gone, the German was probably getting under way, using the daylight to get as close as he could to his base. Probably the German was smart enough to know that the captain of the American trawler was not entirely stupid. Quite possibly he would expect the Arluk to try to block his return. What would he do? Try to creep in close to shore, or make a bold, high-speed dash for port after sneaking as close as possible in the shelter of the ice? Either way, he could not avoid being seen or being picked up by radar and coming within range of Paul’s guns before he could duck behind the rocky points that formed the entrance to the fjord.… Sooner or later he will run out of fuel and have to come to me. He may fire his torpedoes, but he’ll play hell trying to hit a ship as small as this when I’m coming toward him. I’ll outgun him, and I’ll sink him.

Maybe. Overconfidence could be lethal. Anything could happen. Guns could jam in such low temperatures, and the German captain knew this country, he might have been right in this part of the coast for the past six months or more. Maybe, like Mowrey, he was an ice pilot with a lifetime of experience. I hope the son of a bitch drinks, Paul thought, remembering the empty vodka bottle which the Nanmak had picked up. Dear God, let the son of a bitch get drunk.

Even to Paul that seemed a curious prayer. Studying his chart, he tried to guess what strategy the German could possibly use, but could see no way the hunter-killer could sneak past the sentry outside her door.

At noon, a fat-bellied twin-engined bomber approached from the west. Paul heard its engines first and gave the lookouts hell for covering their ears too well with their watch caps. It was clearly no light plane, however. Instead of flying out to sea, it paralleled the coast, turning to fly low over Supportup-Kangerdula several times. Undoubtedly it was taking more pictures. The army air force still was trying to pinpoint a target before sending in heavy bombers.

Twice the reconnaissance plane roared over the fjord at what would have been treetop level if Greenland had had any trees. Probably they were trying to tease the German gunners into giving away their position, but it did not work. No tracers arched from the barren rock toward the plane. It might as well have been inspecting the North Pole.

At two that afternoon three more Lightnings roared in to search the ice pack. Paul did not expect them to find the German, but at least they would make him hole up again. Soon it began to snow and the planes flashed away, disappearing into the murk over the mountains.

Gradually the wind abated, but the snowstorm developed into a blizzard. Drifts mounded the well deck and had to be shoveled away from the guns. Good, Paul thought. No need to worry about being seen now. Curtains of snow enclosed the ship in a circle hardly wider than her length. The German would play hell trying to find the entrance to the fjord in this stuff.

How long could he last out there in the ice pack? The old Norwegian had said the hunter-killer carried fuel only for about three days, and tomorrow would be his third. Of course, he wouldn’t burn much while lying motionless, but even his heaters eventually would drain his meager tanks. Sooner or later he would have to come in.

All the next day the blizzard continued. Shortly after noon, Nathan came from the radio shack to the bridge, holding his clipboard in his mittened hands and a pencil in his teeth. “Message from GreenPat,” he said drily, and gave the board, with its paper flaked with snow, to Paul.

“Yesterday’s air photos show no, repeat no sign of any German base at or near Supportup-Kangerdula,” Commander GreenPat said. “Camouflaged base is still possible. When present mission completed, return Angmagssalik and organize shore party for reconnaissance on land. Try to get help of Danes and native Greenlanders. Greenland Administration officials are ordering all Danes at Angmagssalik to cooperate. Keep me informed.”

Paul had a sudden vision of himself and his crew struggling in waist-deep snow, falling through crevices in the ice and trying to scale icy mountains. What the hell did Green-Pat think his Coast Guardsmen were, Alpine troops? No one aboard the ship had any training or experience in fighting ashore anywhere, never mind the Arctic. Most members of the crew were Southerners, farm boys from Georgia and the Carolinas. Even without the dangers of battle, they could not be expected to survive long ashore in the Arctic. How could the Eskimos help them flounder through blizzards in temperatures like this? It was even colder ashore than at sea, much colder. The Danes usually stayed in their little houses in winter, and how could those old people be of much use, even if they could be trusted?

The more he thought about it, the more GreenPat’s order seemed to Paul like a death sentence, but now was not the time to think about it. “When present mission completed …” GreenPat had said. What a polite way to say, “When you’ve killed the hunter-killer.” At least Green-Pat had said “when,” not “if,” as though the outcome was assured. How nice to make such plans in the warm office at the Narsarssuak headquarters.

Was it really possible for the Germans to camouflage a base so well that even the sophisticated new methods of aerial photography could not detect it? Why was Paul so sure that the Germans were based at Supportup-Kangerdula, anyway? He had come to that conclusion simply because of the presence of the supply ship and the information he had got from a Norwegian who had thrown his lot in with the Germans long ago. Maybe the Germans were doing everything possible to make the Americans think their base was at Supportup-Kangerdula, while they were building a big installation somewhere else on the coast.

Paul’s doubts were rising to the point of complete confusion when Nathan knocked at his cabin door.

“Skipper, I’m getting very high frequency signals that are close. They’re too high for direction-finding, but I think the base is talking to its ship. If so, the hunter-killer must be within line of sight. Maybe the Krauts have a high tower ashore or even a transmitter on a mountain, but the guy they’re talking to still can’t be too damn far away.”

“Then they do have some kind of base near.”

“There’s no doubt about that. They’re blasting my ears off. Short messages in code, of course.”

Paul again studied his chart. The Germans were near—of that at least he was sure.

That afternoon Paul drank so much coffee that he noticed a slight tremor in his fingers. The snow fell heavier than ever, so thickly that he could hardly see his own bow. The hunter-killer couldn’t find her base now, wherever the hell she was.

It was only midafternoon when darkness fell, the pure blackness of an Arctic blizzard. Paul had just lain down for a nap when Nathan again knocked.

“Skipper, their base is sending DF signals—they’re making no bones about it at all. They must be trying to give their ship a bearing.”

“Can you pinpoint the base?”

“Sure, it’s at Kangerdula. I can’t tell how far inland, but my bearing cuts right across the mouth of the fjord.”

“They’re trying to bring him in,” Paul said. “He probably doesn’t know where the hell he is out there and is running out of fuel, so he just said what the hell and requested a DF bearing.”

“Looks like it.”

“I was right all along,” Paul concluded. “The son of a bitch is going to make a run for it. Ring up general quarters. I want all guns manned. You stick to the radar.”

The men slid and a few fell on the icy, snowy decks as they ran to the guns. Nathan stood hunched over the radar set.

“I can’t see anything moving,” he said.

The wind howled and the men jumped up and down to stay warm. In only about ten minutes they began yelling for relief.

The German could show up anytime, Paul reflected, but on the other hand, he still might be able to delay for hours or even days. There was no point in Paul’s turning his gun crews into ice statues. The lookouts couldn’t see anything through those driving curtains of snow anyway. Securing from general quarters, Paul told the men to stand by below for instant action.

“Just unbutton your parkas,” he said. “Don’t take them off. He can flash by our bow anytime.”

In the forecastle the men sat in their open parkas and took to playing checkers again. Nathan would not leave the radar set and Paul sat on a stool by the wheel staring into nothingness.

For more than two hours nothing happened. Then Sparks reported another brief transmission of homing signals from the base.

“He’s getting close,” Paul said. “He just wants a final check before making a run. Maybe he’ll use a star shell to see the entrance to the fjord.”

At about eight-thirty in the evening Paul saw a flicker of light to the east. Pushing the door to the pilothouse open against the wind, he saw a signal light flashing through the slanting snow. It looked close, but if it was a very powerful light, it could be miles away, he realized. By the time Nathan got to the wing of the bridge to read the code, it disappeared. There was no answer from the shore.

“I got a visual bearing on him,” Nathan said. “Zero nine eight. The radar doesn’t show anything out there but ice, fairly loosely packed. Do you want to go looking for him?”

“Maybe that’s just what he wants,” Paul said. “If he could get us to playing tag out there with him, he could beat us in.”

“That figures.”

For an hour nothing more happened. Then more lights flickered, this time to the north. Either a very dim light was being used or it was far away, perhaps beyond the rocky point.

“I think he still wants us to come out and play games,” Paul said, but the thought suddenly hit him that there might be several enemy ships out there signaling to each other. No, that was not reasonable. Where would all those ships come from on a night like this in such ice conditions? The Germans wouldn’t have a whole fleet of icebreakers!

Plotting the bearings they had taken on the two lights, Paul saw that one ship making only about five knots could have made both signals if he was only about three miles away. In that case he could be using an ordinary signal lamp. Did he have any purpose except to lure the Arluk away from the entrance to his base and to confuse?

Sparks telephoned from the radio shack to say that more homing signals were being sent from the base. They came every half hour for two minutes, Nathan soon figured. An hour of unrelieved darkness followed. Suddenly the lights flickered again to the east, seemingly very far away, but one ship could change bearings so fast only if he was very close.

“Why aren’t you getting anything on radar?” Paul asked.

“He’s damned good at keeping behind ice ridges and bergs, for one thing,” Nathan said. “Heavy snow confuses radar and a small wooden ship doesn’t make much of a blip. Wait a minute. Something’s moving on a bearing of a hundred and one degrees, range about two and a half miles, but there he goes behind a berg.”

The telephone on the bridge rang.

“Sparks says the base is sending steady homing signals now,” the quartermaster reported.

“He’s about to make his run,” Paul said. “Sound general quarters. Send Guns up here.”

Even the bleating of the klaxon alarm was deadened by the snow, robbed of some of its urgency. The men scrambled to their action stations and Guns came to the pilothouse. His black beard and mustache were streaked with snow, making him look curiously old.

“Guns, the Kraut has been flashing lights all around us,” Paul said, “but he’s got to cross our bow if he’s going into the fjord in there. Forget the five-incher—he won’t be close enough, and he’ll go by too fast for a fixed gun. Use the three-incher, the twenties and the fifties. I’m going to close with him as much as I can. Tell the men on the guns to aim for the pilothouse and gun crews. I hope to surprise him. Good luck.”

“Do you want the stern fifties, or shall I move them to bear over the bow?”

“If you fire forward from the flying bridge, you better put a pretty good man up there. If he panics, he could shoot up the men on our own bow.”

“I’ll put Blake up there, sir. I’ve trained him good.”

There was a clatter as Guns moved the fifties on the flying bridge.

“He’s got his bearing by now,” Paul said. “He’s ready to make his run. Can you see anything on the radar?”

“No,” Nathan said. “Damn it, real snow makes electronic snow when it’s as heavy as this.”

“Hell, he’s got to come to us in the end, no matter what he does,” Paul said. Going to the wing of the bridge, he shouted, “I know it’s cold, but stay on your toes. He’s going to cross our bow any minute.”

Nothing happened. The wind continued to howl in unrelieved darkness. The men jumped up and down beside the guns, slapping their mittens against their thighs. Five minutes went by, ten minutes, half an hour.

“Skipper,” Guns called. “We’re damn near freezing to death. How about letting half the crew warm up?”

“Okay. Spell each other. Ten minutes below and ten on deck.”

After an hour of the men scrambling back and forth, this procedure began to seem ridiculous. Maybe the damned Kraut is trying to exhaust us, Paul thought.

“Guns, just have the men stand by for a quick call in the forecastle,” he said. “This may go on all night. You can sleep if you stay dressed.”

The men hurried through the forecastle door, cursing as snow swirled after them. Two men had to struggle against the wind to shut it. Going to his cabin, Paul studied the chart which by this time he had memorized. Judging from the last lights observed, the German was due east, hiding in heavy ice about two and a half miles from the Arluk and a little less than five miles from the entrance to the fjord. Now he had his bearings from his radio direction finder, and he could judge his distance offshore by the depth of the water. Sure that he was in a position to make a dash for shelter, he would probably wait until the very first streaks of dawn gave him an outline, at least, of the fjord’s entrance. Dawn was not due for another eight hours. Would it be best for Paul to catch enough sleep to be alert then?

Probably, but Paul was much too tense to lie down. Returning to the pilothouse, he sat on the stool by the wheel, nodding with his chin resting on the tightly buttoned collar of his parka. Flags was standing by the helm and the quartermaster was leaning on the engineroom telegraph. In their slow Southern voices they were discussing bars they had visited in New Orleans, rating them according to the availability of women. Paul dozed. Several times he awoke with a start as the wind died a little or increased its howl. Going out on the wing of the bridge, he stared into the pelting snow, saw nothing and returned to the stool. Time seemed at a standstill. The drone of the Southern voices never changed its tempo or its subject. Paul’s right toes began to itch. Too tired to take off his heavy felt-lined boot and double layer of woolen socks, he stood up to stamp on his right toes with his left heel. At this moment he was stunned by two sharp reports which exploded somewhere astern of the ship. The sounds came from the north, where he had least expected action. Running to the starboard wing of the bridge, he looked aft to see a stab of fire near the horizon as another report rang out. It looked as though he were being fired at from several angles, all to the north.

It was not true that Paul panicked, as he afterward accused himself of doing. He simply assumed that the hunter-killer or another ship had worked into the ice to the north of him and was opening fire. In the light of that assumption, everything he did was logical. He rang up general quarters, called for full power astern, jerked the ship from the ice and turned her. Only about five hundred yards away there was a large iceberg, which he hurried to put between himself and the explosions. He had almost accomplished this when there was a deafening burst of machine guns from the east, the very direction he had first expected the hunter-killer to appear. Tracers were arching onto the deck of the Arluk. There was the sound of hundreds of bullets smashing glass and splintering wood. Someone screamed and finally the Arluk began to return the fire. Tracers arched back and forth. Suddenly a searchlight stabbed at the mouth of the fjord, and went out. Paul caught a glimpse of the hunter-killer speeding through broken ice toward the shelter of the land. Guns spat flame from her bow and stern. The tracers from the Arluk’s guns were falling short of her. The light flicked on once more for about three seconds, and the ship was gone.

There was sudden silence, broken only by the sound of someone sobbing. Flames were climbing from the flying bridge.

Paul’s voice sounded reasonably calm when he called “Fire! Fire stations!”

Guns took the nozzle of a hose and started to scramble up a ladder to the flying bridge, followed by a half dozen seamen. Paul was still not sure what had happened, except that somehow they had been suckered and the German had escaped to its base. There was a lot of running and shouting on the decks. Nathan said, “We have a lot of men hurt. I’ll see to them.” He was just leaving the pilothouse when Paul heard a roaring scream from the flying bridge, which he would never forget. Nathan scrambled up the ladder toward it, followed by Paul. Flames in the middle of the deck there were dying under spray from two hoses. In their ruddy glare Guns stood holding a body that was almost decapitated, and which was gushing blood. From the slender size of the body, Paul guessed it was Blake who had been hit by machine-gun fire. Hugging this corpse against his chest with one gigantic right arm, Guns pushed by Paul and somehow carried it down the ladder. Cradling it in both arms he dashed across the well deck toward the forecastle. Moving almost as fast, Nathan followed him.

After making sure that the fire was under control, Paul also went to the forecastle, which was now crowded with men. Guns had stretched Blake’s body on the big V-shaped table. His own parka drenched with blood, he stood leaning over the boy’s head, apparently looking for a face. When anyone else tried to come near, Guns emitted a roar and shoved him aside.

“There’s more wounded in the wardroom,” Nathan said to Paul. “I’ll take care of this.”

Still in a daze, Paul walked to the wardroom. Flags was ripping up a sheet and binding the upper arm of the quartermaster. Other men lay in the bunks.

“How many wounded here?” Paul asked.

“Four sir,” Flags said. “They’re not too bad, but Sparks is dead. They got him right in the radio shack.”

Paul went to the radio shack. Its starboard bulkhead had been perforated by machine-gun bullets. Sparks sat with his hand resting on his desk, his earphones still on. His chest dripped blood. Methodically, Paul felt his wrist. There was no pulse. Feeling lightheaded, he went to the pilothouse.

Chief Banes stood there and that was very odd because the old machinist never came to the bridge. “Two dead and six wounded, captain,” he said. “I took a count.”

“Thank you, chief.”

“The fire’s out and the ship’s ready to get under way.”

“Thank you, chief.”

Paul stared into the hood of the radar. Nothing moved, to the north or anywhere. The illusion that he had been surrounded by ships lost its sense of reality. There had been two explosions to the north, but no shells or machine-gun fire had come from that direction. Paul sat on his stool near the wheel. Gradually his mind cleared. Apparently the German had created a diversion to the north of the Arluk, maybe by leaving explosives with time fuses on the ice set to explode while he dashed in from the east, or maybe with a small boat. Paul had been suckered, like a man with a gun who had been told by his prey to look behind him. At least, that seemed the most likely explanation. Only one thing was sure: the Krauts had clobbered the Arluk and had made it to their base, but the old trawler was still afloat and could fight again. Right now he ached to get to sea, away from the situation he still was not sure he understood. The ship’s immediate need was a safe place where she could lick her wounds.

“Is there anyone in the engineroom, chief?” Paul asked Baines.

“I got my first class down there.”

“You take the telegraph and I’ll take the helm. I want to get out of here. Ahead slow.”

Paul steered due east. As soon as he came to a good lead, he followed it slowly into the slanting snow. He started to call Sparks to the radar, but realized that Sparks was dead.

“Chief, you take the helm,” he said, and studied the radar screen himself. The lead circled north and seemed to show the way to an ice sound that probably was connected to the open sea. No noise but the steady beat of the engine and the howl of the wind could be heard as the Arluk beat her retreat.

Paul had just worked the Arluk free of the ice when Nathan came to the pilothouse. His tan parka was covered with dark stains.

“Are we going to Angmagssalik?” he asked.

“Yes,” Paul said, though he had been more intent on making his ship hard to find than on going anywhere.

“How long will it be?”

“About three hours.”

“What kind of medical facilities do they have there?”

“Damn little, but they must have some kind of equipment.”

“We’ve got two men with bullet fragments and all kinds of crap in their wounds. Guns is off his rocker. I’ve knocked him out with morphine. Maybe he’ll be all right when he wakes up.”

“Sparks is dead,” Paul said.

“They told me. We should get rid of the dead as soon as possible. The prisoner with the bad burns died in the middle of all this.”

“Do you want to bury them at sea?”

“I don’t think anybody’s up to that right now,” Nathan said. “We can just put them ashore when we get in.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Nathan, I’m sorry,” Paul said. “They suckered me.”

“Nobody blames you. As far as that goes, I was no great help. I didn’t know what in hell was happening.”

“I’m still not sure.”

“I think I heard an outboard out there,” Nathan said. “I thought I was imagining it.”

“Any damn skiff could have worked around us and set off some dynamite.”

“They’re clever! I have to hand them that.”

“But not too clever,” Paul said. “They could have finished us off with torpedoes or just with gunfire. They’ll find that was a bad mistake.”

“What are you going to do?”

“No heroics. There was a minute there when I thought of charging right after him into his fjord. We won’t fight that way.”

“All we have to do is call in the planes when the weather clears.”

“I doubt if it’s going to be that easy. If they can hide a base they can hide a ship that small. Our first job is to get somebody in there who can see what they’ve got, and exactly where. That fjord is about thirty miles long. They won’t send bombers until we can pinpoint a target for them.”

“I’ll go,” Nathan said. “Just put me ashore.”

“I need you here. Anyway what the hell do you know about walking around in the goddamn Arctic?”

“I can learn.”

“No doubt, but frankly I’d rather send an Eskie if I can find one I can trust. Maybe an Eskie with one of our men, if we can find an athlete.”

“I can walk.”

“I got work for you here. Can you make mines out of depth charges that you can explode by radio?”

“Yes. I’ve already worked that out.”

“If we’re going to hang around Angmagssalik waiting for scouts and air raids, the smart Kraut might come in after us to try to finish his job. The chart shows a small shallow bay near the head of the fjord. There’d be too much ice moving with the tide for contact mines, but we could lay depth charges on the bottom if you could set them off at will.”

“No problem.”

“We’ll lie inside a screen of charges and hope he comes after us. His only choice will be that or waiting for the planes in his damned base.”

“You think the planes can wipe out the whole base?” Nathan asked.

“Maybe … if we can pinpoint it for them.”

“In Europe they bomb the hell out of cities, but they don’t kill everybody. The Krauts could go underground or beat it out to the hills. After the planes have left, they could rebuild.”

“So we’ll move in and mop up after the planes get done,” Paul said. “I have an idea that our men are about ready for an operation like that.”

“It could be rough,” Nathan said. “The planes can blow up buildings, but not many trained troops.”

“I promise you this,” Paul said, “they won’t sucker me again.” He hoped they weren’t famous last words.