The Saboteurs (Men at War 5)

Manhattan Beach, Florida

0130 28 February 1943

The German submarine was motionless on the slick surface of the Atlantic Ocean three hundred yards off the shore of the United States of America and barely afloat in a water depth of thirty-one feet.

Its conning tower was crowded. Kapitänleutnant Hans-Günther Brosin stood there, as did his executive officer, while a line of sailors worked to move the four stainless steel containers from down below out through the conn hatch and onto the deck, where the two teams of commando-trai

ned agents were quickly and efficiently inflating the last of the six-foot-long rubber rafts and preparing the three coils of three-quarter-inch-diameter line that would be tied end to end to eventually tether all of the rafts to the U-boat.

Brosin glanced up nervously at the thick clouds. Though there was a steady, cold drizzle, he was content to suffer it in return for the air cover that it and the clouds provided.

It was eerily still and calm and quiet…too damned quiet. What little wind that there was came out of the northwest, causing the only surf—if the absence of such could be called that—to be a soft lapping of waves on the shore. No surf and no wind meant no natural sounds to mask any loud noise that they might make.

As Brosin fitted the soft rubber eyepieces of his Carl Zeiss binoculars to his eyes and made a slow sweep of the coastline, he said, “What is our time, Willi?”

Detrick trained a penlight on the chronometer strapped to his wrist.

“Nine and a quarter minutes so far, sir, twenty and three-quarter to go.”

“An eternity,” Brosin muttered. Then he asked, “Engines?”

“On standby, crew awaiting your orders.”

When Brosin took the binoculars from his eyes, he saw that Richard Koch was coming up from the deck to the conning tower.

As the agent approached, Brosin said, not kindly, “What is it? Troubles?”

Koch held out his hand. “As this will be our last communication, Commander, I wanted to say thank you. We go now.”

Brosin nodded. “Go with God,” he said more warmly, shaking Koch’s hand. He then added, in a serious tone: “But go quickly. This exposure becomes more dangerous by the moment. In precisely twenty minutes, we will be under way, with or without the rafts.”

Brosin knew that while it was not absolutely critical that the U-boat take the four rubber boats with it when it left, everyone would be better off if it did—the agent teams especially.

They could hit the beach, strap the stainless steel containers on their backs, and move inland without having to take time to deflate and then bury the boats. Only their footprints would be evidence of their having been there, and in an hour’s time, with the rain, those would be gone, too.

And if no rubber rafts were found, then there would be no reason for anyone to look for whatever vessel had launched them.

Koch lightly clicked his heels, nodded once in deference, and left the tower for the deck.

Brosin turned to Wachoffizier Detrick.

“If there is no signal within fifteen minutes to retrieve the boats, Willi, personally see that the line is cut.”

“Yes, sir.”

Richard Koch dipped the wooden oar blades into the sea, pressed for leverage the toes of his boots into the crease formed where the floor of the rubber boat met the transom, and slowly leaned back, pulling on the oars as he did.

The whole boat seemed to contort and simply move in place at first. It felt as if the rubber ring that formed the sides of the raft just flexed around the weight of the cargo—Koch and the stainless steel container—and that the boat made no forward motion across the water.

Koch raised the blades out of the water, leaned forward, dipped the blades, and again leaned back and pulled. More flexing of the raft, but not as much as the first time. And when he made another cycle, he could sense that he was making progress, that the rubber boat was moving forward.

Between his raft and the U-boat, Koch could hear the dipping of the others’ oar blades and similar sounds of progress.

Getting the men and the containers from the U-boat into the rafts had gone almost as they had practiced it at the sub pens in France. They first had tied off each boat—as an act of safety in the event one went in the drink before anyone wanted it there—to a short line that was secured to the ironwork that protected that deck gun mounted just fore of the conning tower. Then, after the boats were inflated with a foot-operated bellows, they were slipped over the side. One had gone in upside down and had to be recovered, drained of seawater, and re-launched.

Next, a rope ladder was produced and deployed, and the first agent, Bayer, made his way down it, along the port side of the sub, and into a raft being steadied by a sailor holding as best he could to the short length of line tied to the bow. Once the agent was in the boat, seated on the center bladder of inflated rubber that served as his rowing position, one of the stainless steel containers, tied to another line and with its web shoulder straps placed against the hull to muffle any metal-on-metal clanking, was slowly slid down the port side. The container was secured on the deck of the raft by a strap affixed to the floorboard, and the sailor then cast off the short bowline and the next raft was pulled forward and positioned at the foot of the rope ladder.

With each agent, the process had been repeated almost flawlessly. The exception was Rolf Grossman.