Dark Full of Enemies(25)

Stallings swore but Graves seemed not to notice. McKay lay unmoving, listening.

“Well, that was a long night. After a bit we could tell the lion was pretty much finished, and then the bush got quiet again. And that was worse than hearing him eating that poor lad, because where was he? By then we knew we’d never hear him if he got after us, and I sat there by the fire with my Mauser thinking back on every time I’d shot a lion, and I realized that I had only been able to because some other thing had died. And I’d heard it.

“We sat like that for hours. If we had to tend the fire, one of us did it with one hand on the rifle and the other on the firewood, and the other with both hands on his bloody rifle. It got along to dawn. The sun wasn’t up yet, right, but the sky was lightening. Still dark enough for the lion, though. I’d heard about maneaters, mate, and I knew once they’d got a taste for man, they’d be damned if they went back to springbok. Well, all of a sudden I caught a glimpse of him, just a peek, you know, but enough. I can’t even tell you what it was I saw—I just knew where he was. And then I heard his paws, slapping the ground like great bloody mittens, so hard and quiet, and I had my rifle up just as he broke cover and came for the colored boy. I shot.” He took a breath. “I don’t know how I hit him, mate, but I did. It wasn’t enough though. I charged the rifle again and fired, hit him square in the heart, and that finished him. But he’d had enough time to gut that other lad.”

They said nothing for some time. Finally, Graves spoke again.

“Bloody hell,” he said, and his voice had changed, had lightened like the sky that morning on the veldt. “I never thought of it before, but if I’d been using that damned .577, I would have brought that bastard down on the first shot.”

McKay and Stallings said nothing. Graves sat up and dropped to the deck. He patted absently at his shirt, still craving a smoke. “Anyway, like I said—lion hunting. Very sporting,” and he walked forward from the racks, hunched to fit the corridor.





The sub entered the storm six hours later. McKay did not know if it was the same storm that had almost crashed them on Shetland, or if it was part of the same system, but that morning as he lay reading in the narrow rack he noticed the deep chopping of the sub grow deeper, its rearing higher and slower and its downward crashes more violent. Stallings made his first visit to the head for nonstandard purposes at 0800. By 1100 he wore a grey-green pallor like a specter out of Poe.

“Less than twenty-four hours, now,” McKay told him, and grinned as if to say, You can make it; this will end soon.

“Go to hell,” Stallings said, and McKay could tell he meant it this time.

He held another briefing—only to go over essentially the same thin material, barely expanded by his glosses—and talked with Graves about the explosives and the dam. They checked their weapons and gear again. He read. Ollila slept, hummed to himself, and explored the boat. Stallings and Graves swapped stories. Both told stories about women now.

McKay shaved as often as he thought of it. Routine did not just regiment the day and ensure things got done, routine kept a man sane. He had only thought the boredom of the jungle, of digging trenches, of typing reports and waiting on planes and requisitioning materiel were bad. The boredom of the submarine was worse. He had heard about submariners going insane. He could understand, now. The lights, the hum of the engine—all remained the same. All that changed was the roll of the boat as it cut through the sea, but that did not make up for the unchanging scenery. Beautiful evening, the submarine in the motor launch had said to him at 0400 in the morning, and McKay thought ahead to the arctic night, always the same for weeks, like a submarine the size of the northern hemisphere. He tried not to think about the perpetual dark they were steaming toward, which they had probably already reached. That dark was unchanging, too, but at least he knew what lurked in it. Or thought he did.





They had planned on fifty-six hours sailing time to reach their rendezvous, ten miles west of Eggum, a village in the sprawling Lofoten islands. It took fifty-seven, but McKay was satisfied. At 1200 on their third day aboard, they ate lunch alone in the sub’s galley. At 1230 they put on their winter gear and waited. At 1400 Sub-lieutenant Hopper came for them.

“We’ve arrived, sir.”





5





The sleet and ice hit McKay before he reached the top of the ladder and his head and shoulders streamed water and ice by the time he came up through the hatch into the howling night. He pulled himself up between Treat and Hopper and looked around. The sub rocked and yawed and made obeisance to the sea. McKay squinted into the darkness and could only make out the waves when they shattered against the hull. The wind caught the shards and drove them into the faces of the men in the tower. McKay raised his collar and pulled his scarf over his nose.

“Cloak and dagger stuff,” Treat said. “Bloody rubbish.”

Treat meant his muttering to be overhead, McKay decided, since he had to shout to do it.

Hopper leaned to McKay’s ear and said, “What time were they meant to rendezvous?”

“1300,” McKay shouted, and Treat roared “Rubbish!” into the gale.

The plan called for both parties to arrive at the point ten miles off Lofoten by 1300. After that, the sub would await a radioed codeword from Petersen’s fishing boat. Once the Viking had received the codeword from Petersen, the sub would flash signals on an Aldis lamp until spotted by the fishermen, who would close and, once beside the submarine, effect the team’s transfer.