The Saboteurs (Men at War 5)

When Grossman’s container was lowered over the side, the sailor, his fingers tired and cramping, accidentally let the rope slip and in the quiet of the night the container hit the water with a remarkable sound. The resulting splash nearly soaked Grossman with cold seawater, and it took some effort for the quick-tempered agent not to spring from the raft and up the ladder to let loose a string of expletives—if not a fistful of knuckles—at the sailor.

In addition to the short length of line on his boat, Koch had another. It was tied to a hard point on his bow and, at the other end of the line, to another coil of line on the U-boat deck that in turn was tied to yet another coil of line that was secured to the ironwork that protected the U-boat’s deck gun. A sailor played out the coiled lines as Koch rowed away.

Koch now led the tiny flotilla to just shy of shore. He kept a steady rhythm as he cycled the oars. And after some time, he felt the raft suddenly rise higher on a swell than it had on any swell since he had left the sub and he knew that meant the water was getting shallower, that he was almost ashore.

He dipped the blades and pulled hard on the oars, once, twice, then, on the third pull, he at once felt the blades strike the sand bottom and the raft slide to a stop to the sound of rubber scraping on the beach.

Koch quickly shipped his oars and practically leaped out of the boat and onto the shore. He scanned the area, saw nothing in the darkness, then reached in the boat and, with a good deal of effort, pulled out the stainless container and set it on the sand. He turned and tugged hard at the raft to pull it up and out of the water.

Next, he carried the container higher on the beach, up past some driftwood and old logs, then ran back to meet the other rafts.

One by one, as they repeated the pulling ashore of the boats, Koch used hand signals to indicate that the agents should move the containers to the collection point on higher ground.

As Cremer and Bayer and Grossman did so, Koch took the loose end of the short line of the nearest raft and tied it to his boat, then tied the next raft to that one, creating a train of rubber rafts ultimately tethered to the U-boat.

He was tying the last raft when Cremer returned.

“Herr Hauptmann, shall I make the retrieval signal?” Cremer whispered in German.

“Not ‘Herr Hauptmann,’” Koch hissed in English. “From now on, we use our American names.”

“Yes, sir—” Cremer began in English, then corrected himself. “Okay, Richard.”

Cremer stepped to the water’s edge, removed a black tin flashlight from his pocket, held it to the highest point he could reach over his head, then pushed its switch six times to make the agreed-upon signal of two series of three flashes each. When there was no immediate response from the U-boat, he quickly repeated the two series of three flashes.

He heard a sound of something rushing through the water just offshore and realized it was getting closer. It sounded like a small school of fish rushing across the surface. Then he noticed a line tied to the first raft was drawing taut—fast. The line stiffened and the raft practically shot off of the shore. It took him a moment to understand that someone on the U-boat had seen his first signal and the sailors had begun to pull on the line. The delay, he guessed, had to have been due to the length of the line and the taking up of its slack.

Cremer put the flashlight in his pocket, then hurried over to the next raft in line. He positioned it in the water, toward the U-boat. Koch was about to do the same with the third raft when he heard footfalls squeaking in the sand as someone was fast approaching.

“Sir!” Bayer whispered excitedly.

“It’s Rich—” Koch began to correct Bayer as he turned away from the raft to face him.

Koch stopped when he saw Bayer standing there with Grossman. He couldn’t believe his eyes, but when Cremer ran up with his flashlight and turned it on there was no disputing it.

Between Bayer and Grossman stood a young man—really, only a kid; his huge eyes showed stark terror—wearing the uniform of an American coastguardsman.

Bayer had the young man’s hands bound together with rope cut from one of the containers, and Grossman had his Walther 9mm pistol pointed at the kid’s head. They had used a length of material cut from the poncho to gag his mouth.

“Turn off the goddamned light!” Koch whispered, in German, and when it went dark he leaned closer to Bayer’s ear and snapped, “What is this?”

Bayer replied in German: “I was having no luck finding the placement of the containers. I went up to the dunes, by some logs, and heard moaning.”

“Moaning?” Koch repeated.

“Ja,” Bayer said, a hint of laughter in his voice. “And when I finally saw where it was coming from—a poncho—I saw it was shaking. A happy shaking, if you get my meaning, Herr Hauptmann.”

Koch looked at him incredulously. “Scheist!” he said.

“He has no weapons,” Grossman said. “What do you want to do? I can kill him, but then we have a body.”

Koch considered that quickly. Grossman would have no trouble strangling him—cutting his throat or shoo

ting him was out of the question; too messy and noisy—but they couldn’t leave the body on the beach or toss it in the sea.

The kid clearly constituted some sort of beach patrol. And if he didn’t check in with someone, that someone would come looking for him, and if they found his body there would be problems that the Germans did not need. Same if they tried to bury him. Someone would eventually find the grave site. Worse, it would require the teams to burn valuable time digging a grave, burying the body, then covering their tracks.

There was the sound of laughter coming from a short distance inland, and a woman’s cackle caused Koch to be distracted for a moment. Then, behind him, there came the sound of the third raft beginning to crunch across the sand as it headed for the sea.