North Sea Hunters Read online

  Krauser cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted through the wind and clamour that help was coming, hoping they could both hear him and understand German. When they were little more than a hundred metres from the lifeboat, one of its occupants looked up and saw him. Krauser guessed him to be in his early thirties, blonde and bearded. A mixture of relief, fear and resignation washed across his face. The man reached back, slapping a comrade’s arm, calling something to attract the rest of the crew. Two of them stopped to look over to the U-Boat and froze. Krauser shouted to his men to slow approach so that the submarine could be boarded easily by the survivors.

  The last crew member of the lifeboat, however, did not react to either the shouts of his friend, or to the diesel engine chug of the submarine. His gaze remained fixed at a point in the water a hundred metres away to the stern of the small vessel. Suddenly, his eyes widened, his jaw dropped, and his face paled. Losing his balance, he fell clumsily into the boat, setting it rocking up and down on the waves once more.

  The other three sailors staggered, grabbed their seats and shouted at their companion. Unheeding, still he gabbled and gibbered, pointing off to the stern of the boat. The U-616 was only fifty metres away now, and Krauser could just about hear them speaking, though he did not understand their language. The hysterical man’s voice was high and shrieking, as the others began gasping and looking in the direction he was gesturing. He turned to see what it was they had spotted, and adrenaline filled his own heart in a cold flush. His first reaction was that the massive, turbulent wake had to be a torpedo. He’d seen often enough the damage that these seven metre long weapons of destruction could wreak. Even if the lifeboat was the target of the attack, the shock wave could easily damage, and possibly even sink a U-616.

  The surf above the wave broke, and he felt his knees buckle, forcing him to support himself on the handrail. The shark’s fin that smoothly rose through the spray like a knife through butter had to be two and a half, perhaps even three metres tall. That would make the shark itself…thirty metres long. Impossible!

  Once, on shore leave, he had seen a Great White that a fisherman had caught and cut open. Even that monster of the sea had only been six metres in length; and all had said that was a large one. As the gargantuan fin sped towards the lifeboat, it slowly submerged again, the wake still speeding to the defenceless Norwegian crew.

  “Did you see that?” screamed Kleiner, standing next to him. “It’s a monster, sir!”

  Krauser suppressed a shiver and swallowed before replying. He had seen it, although he knew he had to be mistaken. “It’s still just a shark, Mr Kleiner. Get ready to take those men on board.”

  He turned back, just in time. The shark collided with the boat, causing it to splintering it into two. With a crash and a stifled scream, the men inside and all their supplies fell into the freezing cold North Sea. There was a momentary call for help, and then all were submerged.

  The deck fell silent for a moment. Everyone kept their eyes focused on the spot where the boat had last been seen - some hoping for the men to surface so that a rescue could still be attempted, others hoping for a better glimpse of the colossal shark that had claimed this area of the water as its own.

  Krauser scanned the debris. More white driftwood. A first aid kit. A duffel bag. The detritus of a failed escape.

  He let the binoculars fall to hang on the strap about his neck. The Freyr was halfway sunk by now, and there was no sign of any crew on board, or any lifeboats being evacuated. There was little now that the crew of U-616 could do. They had wrought their destruction on the freighter, and now they had to continue their patrol, on to the next target. “Prepare to move out,” he said to Kleiner. “We’re done here.”

  As he turned to head down to the control room, he heard a solitary cry for help. The others on the deck heard it, too. Captain Krauser ran to the prow of the U-Boat’s deck and thought he could see someone waving near the debris. Pulling the binoculars up, he hurriedly focused on the spot. It was the blonde man who had first seen them! Somehow he had escaped the carnage that the shark had wrought and was still alive!

  “Belay that last order!” Krauser shouted. “There is a survivor. Slow ahead and bring us as close as you can. I will not leave that man to be fish food!”

  The diesel engines shuddered into life once more, and the submarine slowly pushed towards the flailing man. His motions were already slowing noticeably from the cold, and Krauser knew that there could only be a short time before he succumbed to the sudden temperature drop.

  The man had managed to catch hold of a piece of driftwood, and lay still, hanging from it in the water. Krauser gritted his teeth as the submarine moved closer. They were only thirty metres from him by now. He shouted out to the man. “Hello, down there!”

  The man raised his head, but gave no other signal that he had heard, and remained silent.

  Krauser tried calling out to the man in English. He knew no Norwegian but was sure he remembered hearing from a fellow captain that most of the Scandinavian countries spoke English as a second language. He had joked that they spoke it even better than the English did, themselves. “Are you able to swim to us? We have food and medical supplies and will arrange for your delivery home, once we return to Germany.”

  The man nodded, and began to kick his legs in the water, propelling his small piece of driftwood toward the U-616. Kleiner hurried to his captain’s side with a length of rope, looped to act as an improvised lifesaver. As the man got within twenty metres of the submarine, Kleiner spun and threw it out to rest in the water.

  “We have Roy Rogers on board…” joked Krauser, under his breath. Kleiner gave a wry smile, acknowledging the joke, but still terrified for the man - and of the shark that, for all they knew, still loitered in the area, patrolling its home.

  The man reached the lasso, and pulled the heavy, wet rope over his head and slid an arm through, gripping it tightly. Kleiner and another of the men began to reel the survivor aboard. After what seemed like an age, the man – dripping cold, salty water - finally clambered up onto the deck.

  Krauser extended a hand. “Welcome aboard the U-616. I am Captain August Krauser, and I wish to offer you our hospitality.”

  The man shivered and accepted the proffered handshake. “Dahlen. Arild Dahlen.”

  They were interrupted by a massive metallic collision sound from the direction of the Freyr. The two thousand ton freighter was rocking back and forth in the water, sending waves spreading out and in their direction. The submarine was far enough out to avoid being tossed around, but the water still lapped up and over the wooden deck in places. Krauser wondered if the Freyr could have been unfortunate enough to have hit a rock, or perhaps even a sea mine, as it sank.

  The Norwegian man joined them in staring out over the water. “Captain Krauser, I strongly advise that you get your ship out of this area as fast as you can.”

  Krauser met his gaze, and something unspoken passed between the two men. “I intend to do just that, Mr Dahlen. Mr Kleiner, I will escort Mr Dahlen to Dr Arnold; please see that we move out as fast as possible.”

  Krauser guided Dahlen back down the deck to the entrance hatch. “You saw it then?” asked the Norwegian.

  “I don’t fear sharks, Mr Dahlen. I fear reports of your sinking reaching the British Navy or Air Force, and them launching their own missions to sink us in return.”

  Dahlen stopped walking and turned to the captain. “What do you mean?”

  Krauser grimaced, remembering that he had just killed several of this man’s friends. “It was nothing personal on our part, Mr Dahlen, but we are under orders to sink as many cargo vessels bound for Britain as we can. As we are responsible for the torpedo strike which sank your vessel, we can expect retaliation. As such, I intend to be long gone from the area before that happens.”

  The Norwegian half-smiled to himself, and stepped closer to the captain. Krauser’s hand went to his Mauser, lest the man was about to attempt a misguided escape effor
t.

  Dahlen’s eyes flickered to the gun, and he stopped, but did not back away. Instead, cocking his head, he whispered. “You think you sank the ship?”

  -FIVE-

  Dahlen’s face crumpled with disgust and he suppressed a gag as soon as he reached the bottom of the ladder into the control room. The noxious cocktail of diesel engine fumes, over-ripening food, and the body odour of forty-two unwashed men was something that Krauser had become immune to over the course of the patrol. Their Norwegian captive had no such luxury and it had hit him like a punch to the stomach. The noise, too, must have been jarring to a man who had only ever sailed above the water. Every rattle and hiss of every piston reverberated around the submarine, creating a constant white noise background that was, well, actually comforting, after a fashion - but at first it was monstrous.

  Krauser smiled as the dazed man took in his surroundings. “Welcome aboard the U-616, Mr Dahlen.”

  Dahlen nodded an acknowledgment and, at Krasuer’s direction, moved down the central corridor, squeezing past men and baggage, where necessary, and trying to get his head around moving through the hatchways and openings of a U-Boat. Eventually, they reached the bunk of Dr Arnold. The doctor had already been informed of the arrival of their new passenger, and had prepared his examination equipment. He extended his hand and introduced himself.

  Dahlen appeared to be nervous and wary, which was understandable. Krauser supposed that the man had probably been hearing about the vicious, barbaric ways of the enemy since the outbreak of the war. He did not take it personally. Demonising the enemy was a psychological tactic that went back possibly even earlier than the days of Hannibal or Alexander the Great, and he had no doubt that some of his men expected the British and Polish fighters to be equally as monstrous. It was simply part of how wars were fought.

  Dr Arnold sat the man down on his bunk and began an examination. “How old are you, Mr Dahlen?” he asked in English, checking the man’s pupil reaction.

  “Thirty two,” the man replied, before turning his gaze on Captain Krauser. “I am gracious for your hospitality, Captain; but I regret that it has been a very long day, and I am very tired.”

  “You can sleep when the doctor is done examining you,” replied Krauser. “And I do apologise for the loss of your friends and crewmates. That was one of the most aggressive sharks I have ever seen.”

  Dahlen laughed, once, derisively. “You are not joking. Captain Krauser, I am not convinced that thing was not the devil himself, sent to punish the crew of the Freyr for whatever dark reason known only to itself.”

  Krauser leant against the wall on the other side of the corridor and folded his arms. “Today wasn’t the first time you had seen it, then?”

  Dahlen shook his head. “It started following the ship three days ago. At least, that is when we first noticed it. While we were working on deck, Øystein, another crewman, spotted the thing’s wake. He was excited at first, as he thought it might be seals or dolphins. He was a simple, young man, not long to the ocean, and such things were still a novelty to him. I remember he grabbed my arm and pulled me over to the boat, keen to show me. I saw no dolphins or seals, however. I did see a giant wake, and then, sliding up through the surf like a bayonet, that thing’s monstrous fin.

  “I clapped Øystein’s arm and told him that it was a shark, probably a basking shark, which I knew were native to the area. Øystein was just as excited by this news as he was when he thought it was a dolphin. We watched for a moment, until the fin slid from sight, and then we returned to our work. At first I thought that that would be the end of it.

  “It was later that evening that it attacked us for the first time.”

  Dr Arnold hesitated as he prepared to take Dahlen’s blood pressure. “The shark attacked the freighter?”

  Dahlen nodded. “Yes. It must have been about eight o’clock in the evening when there was an almighty clanging noise from down below. It was like a church bell, only underwater. My first assumption was that we had struck a sea mine. We knew that…German…submarines were operating in the area, and that some of them were capable of laying sea mines. Myself, the captain - a grey-bearded man by the name of Otness - and some of the men went down into the hold to examine the damage.

  “We were not taking in any water but the hull was…it was definitely damaged. The metal had been pushed in and then pinched together, jutting and stretched about six feet into the hold.”

  “Pushed in and pinched?” asked the doctor. “You mean the shark…?”

  “Yes, doctor. The shark had attempted to bite the boat; and had managed to twist and bend steel in doing so. Of course, at the time, we did not even consider the possibility of the shark being responsible. Truth be told, I had almost forgotten ever seeing the beast.”

  “What did you think had caused the damage?” asked Krauser.

  Dahlen shrugged. “We are…were…not military men, Captain Krauser. For all we knew, that was what sea mine damage looked like. After asserting that we would not be taking in any water - at least for a little while - we left it until the following morning to take a look at the exterior damage, and carry out any repairs as necessary.

  “The following morning, two of the engineers went out in a life boat, and went underwater in scuba gear. You know scuba gear, yes? Good. They came up and reported that the metal was buckled, but there was no sign of heat damage, which ruled out the possibility of a sea mine, as far as we could tell. One of the men, Marcus, held up something he had found, though. It was a tooth.”

  “A shark’s tooth?”

  “It looked like the tooth of a shark, but…”

  “But what, Mr Dahlen?”

  Dahlen fished a sodden packet of cigarettes from his pocket and flung them aside with disgust. “Once I met a sailor who had the tooth of a Great White Shark polished and made into a pendant. He claimed that he had killed the shark himself, although I have no doubt that he actually picked up the thing in a tacky marketplace somewhere. Shore leave, most likely. It was large, Captain, probably seven or eight centimetres long.”

  “I have seen such teeth.”

  “The tooth Marcus held out that day was easily twice that size. It was…monstrous. Captain Otness paled when he saw it, and muttered that it could not be possible.

  “The next day continued without any sign or sound of our shark, until finally, again at around eight at night, we saw it. Marcus – the man who discovered the tooth – and I were having a cigarette on deck, when we heard an almighty splash, and turned just in time to see the creature’s fin break the water. Captain, this thing must be nearly thirty metres long. We saw it swim in a broad circle before submerging again.

  “‘Should we tell the Captain of this?’ I asked.

  “Marcus was rattled, but simply shrugged. ‘What is there to tell him? And if we do, what can he do with the information? There are sometimes sharks in these waters, and this is just a large one.’

  “I knew he was just attempting bravado, as we both knew this was no ordinary shark. About half an hour later, the thing attacked us again. Why it chose to follow us, and to attack us, I don’t know. Maybe it could sense or smell the food in the cargo. Maybe we were just in its territory. This attack was much more aggressive than the first. It must have rammed us two or three times. I lost my footing with each strike, even when I managed to grab a hold of a rail or other fixing. Some of the men grabbed rifles and harpoons in the hope of killing the monster, but I do not think that such a thing can be done with weapons so small.”

  “When, at last, the attack subsided, some of us once again went below decks to examine the damage. It was much worse this time. We were taking in water; slowly, for sure, but enough to cause concern. The metal of the hull had been mangled, chewed…Captain, the power in that thing’s jaws is simply unbelievable. Can you imagine trying to crumple the steel of a freighter with your teeth…your bare hands? I’d not hesitate to say that you would struggle to do it even with tools of your choice at your disposa
l.”

  “A G7a steam-driven torpedo seems to have made short of work of it.”

  Dahlen laughed. “After all I have told you so far do you still think that your torpedo is what sunk the Freyr, Captain? Maybe one of your torpedoes did hit us, but I can assure you that none of us noticed. We were all rather preoccupied, you see.”

  “What happened?” asked Dr Arnold, breathlessly. The doctor had stopped his examination of Dahlen, completely enraptured in his story for now.

  “At about nine-thirty, nine-forty five this evening…” he checked his watch, only to find it was busted. “What time is it, please?”

  Krauser checked his own wristwatch. “Eleven pm, or thereabouts.”

  “My god, has it only been an hour or so? How so much can change in so little time. Around then myself and Øystein were in the cargo hold, jerry rigging some repairs to stop the water coming in. It was secure, but still required some upkeep. The night was calm at first…but then it came.”

  -SIX-

  Dr Arnold had finished his examination of their captive, having found no injuries beyond scrapes and bruises. He was concerned about the possibility of cold and shock, however, and had helped Dahlen out of his soaking wet clothes before wrapping him in a woollen blanket to stave off the chill of the North Sea. An ensign arrived with a mug of warm coffee which he handed to him. Dahlen nodded his thanks and sipped the exceedingly bitter liquid with a grimace.

  “The coffee is awful. My apologies,” smiled Dr Arnold.

  Dahlen nodded, before continuing his story. “We had no warning. Well, looking back now, I think I could hear something. Almost as though I could hear water rushing, or the pressure building up, on the other side of the hull. I thought nothing of it at the time, and even if I had, I don’t believe that there is anything I could have done to help the Freyr escape its fate. Øystein was right by the weak spot, examining some of the damaged rivets in one of the braces. I remember there was a trickle of water running from one or two of them, and although the flow was very gentle, it was already causing the paint to bubble and warp. Then, seemingly from nowhere, there was an explosion.”