Dark Full of Enemies(78)
Then something flickered in the sky, and McKay looked up. Slowly the aurora appeared in a wide sheet, pale green and transparent against the loft of space, barely showing against the black above. It unrolled into sight and wavered, and faded again. McKay stood watching, and realized the E-boat had gone. The night was silent. Only the waves splashing the fishing boat’s hull made any sound. J?rgen revved the motor, pushed it up to full throttle—and further—and they pressed into the deepening troughs.
The captain of the E-boat, somewhere ahead on the waters, had thought of the same trick.
At 0345 the spotlight reappeared directly astern, less than two hundred yards off. This time the boat hailed them in English, and gave them one chance—show themselves, surrender, or be fired upon.
“Ollila,” McKay said. “Shoot out their spotlight.”
Ollila raised his rifle into the hard, blinding shaft and the Germans fired.
McKay and the men dived to cover as the light arms of the E-boat’s crew rattled across the gunwales and cabin. The spotlight shifted to starboard, cast the boat in new relief, and the broadside weapons opened fire. Machine gun rounds rapped on the cabin and the wheelhouse and shattered the windows in front of J?rgen, who dropped out of sight, with only his hands still visible on the helm.
The wheelhouse door slid open and Petersen dropped out onto the deck. McKay shouted to him: “The drums!”
Petersen nodded and they crawled aft. The others rose and fired bursts at the big patrol boat as it slowly circled and harried and reduced its prey. McKay reached his drum just as the E-boat’s 20 millimeter cannons opened fire. He clapped his hands over his ears against the booming report. The big shells tore the air, blew planks whole from the gunwales, splintered the deck, shot the cabin through with foot-wide holes. Someone screamed. The boat circled and kept firing. An entire corner of the wheelhouse cracked and buckled and the roof sagged in. J?rgen’s hands held steady at the tiller with the superstructure coming apart around him.
The E-boat ceased fire, revved, and crossed the Hardr?de’s bow. The boat’s engine banged away, and McKay noticed a new knock in its rhythm, something out of place, a murmur. The German motor rumbled past, and with his ear to the deck McKay could hear its propeller bite the ocean, the sound of its engine bound far into the deep. He thought of how far they would sink, how black and permanent the night would be at the bottom.
McKay leapt to his oildrum and pulled the lid away. The twin guns sprang up and McKay grasped and leveled them at the E-boat. The boat had focused its spotlight on the prow, was sweeping back toward him. He squeezed the triggers.
He did not aim, not consciously. He started at the stern and caught the machine cannons in his sights, held there until the pair of sailors fell away, and swept forward. The spotlight swung to him and the guns locked open, empty. He hit the deck.
The Germans fired on the stern with machine guns and submachine guns and McKay heard them shouting to bring the cannon back into action. He thought of crawling to the Lewis guns’ pile of magazines, to the cabin for Graves’s remaining thermite grenades, of hopping up to fire a burst. He thought he would die. Then he looked across the stern and saw Petersen looking at him. The big bearded Norwegian nodded, said something McKay could not hear, and stood to open his oil drum.
McKay crawled to the magazines.
Petersen pulled open his drum and the guns leapt up to him. He reached for the grips and was bringing the guns around when the machine cannon opened fire again. The gun hammered boomboomboom over the sounds of both boats’ engines and all the other weapons, and the shells blasted at the cabin, the wheelhouse, the gunwales and stern, and Petersen clung to the triggers in a storm of splinters and chunks of his boat, and then both stopped firing and Petersen had disappeared.
All was silent for a moment. McKay looked. Petersen’s guns stood on their mount—one dangled broken beside the other—the drum stood in the ruined corner of the stern, but Petersen had disappeared. McKay looked at the E-boat. The spotlight pointed at the sky. Dark figures moved toward it, toward the guns at the rear, and McKay stood and reloaded his guns and aimed.
But the E-boat fell behind. He listened to the engine idle and grow fainter as the Hardr?de tonked away.
He watched and finally looked at the opposite corner. Petersen’s drum stood twisted and holed. Water splashed in through gaps in the hull as the waves lapped at it. McKay lowered the guns, stepped around to Petersen’s corner, and found him.
He lay on his stomach between the cabin and the gunwale. One leg was twisted twice at the knee and his peacoat rent open along one side. He heaved one great breath and tried to lift himself and something bubbled out through the coat. Liquid—blood and seawater—pooled and ebbed around his body, reflected the vast night sky. There, the aurora returned.
McKay called his name and turned him over. The others heard and the Norwegian crew crowded near—they had not noticed Petersen after the hail of cannon rounds.
“Petersen,” McKay said.
Petersen choked and coughed. He looked at McKay, swallowed, and died.
McKay looked at him close. He could barely see his eyes in the darkness. One of the Norwegians sobbed and said something, and the spotlight found them again. Behind them, the E-boat’s engine roared. Bullets sought them, singing.
McKay staggered back to his guns took them up, aimed for the spotlight, and fired. He noticed the rippling greens in the sky, the streaks and sheets. They wavered and billowed, caught hundreds of miles of nothing and furled around it, released it, disappeared and reappeared elsewhere, a light moving at will above all the darkness. He watched and emptied the magazines and ducked to find more, and the E-boat caught up, slowed, and turned itself broadside. McKay looked up from the deck to the E-boat as it cut through the waters under the aurora. The flak cannon at the back swiveled toward them. McKay felt for the Browning on his hip.