Dark Full of Enemies(29)

The Norwegian did not respond. He seemed to watch McKay, then turned on his heel and climbed into the wheelhouse, out of sight.

“Sorry son of a bitch,” Stallings said.

The fishing boat’s engine, for the last half hour clanking away beneath the wind and waves, pitched higher and faster. Above the other sounds, McKay first heard the noise that he would have cause to remember as long as he lived—a quickening tonk-tonk-tonk.

A moment of acceleration and the engine backed off, the noise falling again to its dull tinny rhythm. The boat had the motion it needed. It edged forward and slowly shimmied crabwise to the hull of the Viking. It settled against the sub with a scraping noise, and Treat cried out from the conning tower. McKay had not even known he was there. He turned to the team.

“All aboard. I’ll be with you shortly.”

The team stepped onto the curved hull below the deck and the sailors of both vessels reached to help them. McKay reckoned on only a few moments of contact, but he had to bid Treat farewell. Even if he did not want to.

He climbed the tower, grasped Treat’s shoulder, and extended his hand. Treat, surprised, took it.

“Thanks for your hospitality,” McKay said. He had to shout above the wind.

Treat had begun to recover. “Cheeky—”

McKay squeezed Treat’s shoulder and pumped his hand one more time, hard. “No. Thanks. We’ll see you again real soon.”

“I should hope so.”

McKay nodded to Hopper, who stood, soaked but apparently back in good standing, and turned to climb down the ladder. Before he had reached the bottom, he heard, above the wind, Hopper shout, “Good God!”

McKay let go of the ladder and dropped to the deck. Men from both boats were shouting, the different tongues blended with the wind and the sea into mere noise. The submariners had someone by the shoulders, pulling him up. McKay ran across the deck, slipping as he went, and grabbed the fallen man’s belt. It was Stallings.





McKay, in the wind and snow and needle spray of the north Atlantic in winter, stood soaked on the pitching deck. His arms slowly numbed from the wrists upward, the palms and first joints of his fingers all he could feel below that. The only feeling he had in his face was the continuous burning of his eyes, and an ache in his forehead from an hour of squinting. When Stallings, half sitting on the deck surrounded by sailors, blinked and swore and asked what had happened, McKay almost failed to laugh.

“Leggo,” Stallings said. He pushed one of the sailors away and staggered up. He swore again. “The hell are you laughing at?”

McKay ignored him. He asked one of the sailors what had happened.

“Bugger missed the boat, sir. Cracked his head on the gunwale there.”

Another said, “Damned lucky we were helping, sir.”

The third sailor still held onto Stallings, prepared to catch him, and Stallings shoved him.

“Go to hell.”

Blood ran in wind-thinned sheets from under Stallings’s cap. He did not seem to notice. McKay said nothing. He noticed that Stallings had ice in his eyebrows—and so did the sailors—and feeling absently at his own face, felt his own fingertips like a stranger’s and found ice in his nostrils and rimming his eyes.

“Thanks,” McKay said to the sailors. He grabbed Stallings. “Come on.”

They turned to the Hardr?de. The rest of the team and the Norwegians leaned against the gunwales, and when McKay and Stallings turned and stepped toward them, they reached.

Waves lifted the boat, rubbed it lengthwise across the Viking with a ghostly howl. Stallings reached for the gunwale and four pairs of hands took his arms and shoulders. He pulled, they lifted, and he was aboard. McKay took a short, bouncing step and jumped. He reached for the crew and the Hardr?de groaned once more and washed down and away from the submarine.

He fell. He saw from the corner of his eye the sea open choppy and black between the vessels, and felt himself fall toward it. He thought of the man who had plunged into the sea at Guadalcanal and understood how he felt in that last moment in the light and air. His eyes drifted from the boat and the crew and were halfway to the water when they caught him.

He gripped the arms that had reached him and swung down hard against the hull. He grunted. Someone above him swore. He kicked to get leverage but felt nothing but black cold. He was in the water. The arms were pulling. He pulled himself up with them.

They fanned backward on the deck and lay sprawled, panting in the ice and snow. Two men swore, one in English, one in Norwegian. McKay knew next to nothing of the language but understood an obscenity when he heard it. He laughed and a choking sound came out.

Stalling staggered up again for the second time in as many minutes and said, “Well I’m goddam glad somebody’s having a good time,” and fell, unstrung, flat on his face.

McKay stopped laughing. He crawled to Stallings. The others had already knelt beside him. One Norwegian tried to help McKay up, but he waved him away. Stallings sat up again, swore, and asked—again, obscenely—what had happened.

“Any of y’all a doctor?” McKay said. The Norwegians looked at him. He pointed at Stallings. “Doctor?” He risked the hated German: “Artzt?”

They nodded and helped him up and led him into the cabin below the wheelhouse.

McKay stood. He looked around the boat. The deck already stood clear of their equipment, and with the team and most of the crew out of sight, one would never have suspected the Hardr?de’s mission. He made to follow the men into the cabin, to check out Stallings—he had seen head trauma before—but someone stepped in front of him. He looked up.