The Saboteurs (Men at War 5)

s 5 seconds North Latitude

81 degrees 39 minutes 10 seconds West Longitude

Off Manhattan Beach, Florida

2305 27 February 1943

Kapitänleutnant Hans-Günther Brosin—who was twenty-six years old, had a clean-shaven, soft-featured face, a head of loosely cropped black hair, and a compact fivesix, 130-pound build that one might expect of a seaman who had volunteered to go to war in the confines of a tube only thirty feet tall and two hundred long—not only was not happy with his present assignment, he was highly pissed.

In his mind, it was one thing to have to follow orders that you knew went contrary to everything you understood your training to be—and, without question, the training of a Kriegsmarine U-boat commander and his crew was to hunt down and kill enemy vessels—but it was entirely another thing to follow orders that not only essentially repeated those of a mission that had been risky beyond reason but that very much repeated orders of a risky mission that had in fact proven to be a complete and utter failure.

The vessel’s two-week-plus passage across the Atlantic Ocean—during which the U-134, running under strict radio silence, had come across a convoy of Liberty ships carrying war matériel eastward and the crew had not been able to fire a single one of its fourteen torpedoes because Kapitänleutnant Brosin’s orders specifically forbade any enemy contact unless it was in an act of defense and “necessary to ensure the success of mission”—had in no way tempered his anger.

I am the commander of a fully armed man-of-war, he thought, not of a passenger ferry.

Brosin looked up from the chart that plotted their course to the shores of America, and studied the cause of his contempt.

Richard Koch and Rudolf Cremer were the leaders of the two two-man teams he was to put ashore. Koch’s partner was Kurt Bayer, and Cremer’s was Rolf Grossman. They were all in their late twenties and of average size and looks (none of the four appeared distinctly German), each dressed in all-black woolen clothing, complete with knit cap, and wearing a black leather holster that secured a Walther P38 9mm semiautomatic pistol and an extra eight-round magazine.

Brosin was unaware—his orders strictly spelled out that he was to transport the teams and see that they made it to shore; he knew not who they were nor what they were doing, and they did not offer the information nor did he ask it—that all four men had spent years in the United States before the war and that if they had not already returned to the fatherland by December 1941 they had in the months immediately afterward. Koch and Cremer had served in the military; Bayer and Grossman, civilians, were selected in large part for their knowledge of America, then were trained for their mission by the Abwehr, the military’s secret service.

The teams were moving four black stainless steel containers, each roughly the size and shape of a large stuffed duffel, complete with black-webbed shoulder straps. One by one, they staged the heavy containers near the base of the ladder that led up to the hatch in the conning tower.

Feeling Brosin’s eyes on him, Koch glanced over at him, and nodded. Brosin did not respond.

Koch, a good six inches taller and forty pounds heavier than Brosin, had come to respect the commander—at the very least for his obvious professional care for his men and his ship, and surely for his temper. In view of the latter, Koch had—as difficult as such a thing was to accomplish on an undersea boat—managed to keep his distance from the captain the whole two weeks. And, as overall leader, he had made sure that Cremer and Bayer and Grossman had done the same. At one point, when they had confined themselves to their bunks to memorize the details of their mission orders for after landing—every phase had to be accomplished by memory only—two days passed without the captain seeing his unwanted human cargo.

Crouching, Koch helped Cremer position the last container, gave him a pat on the back, then, being careful as he stood upright so as not to strike his head on any of the ship structure, walked over to Brosin.

“Not long now, Commander,” Koch said.

“Not soon enough,” Brosin replied evenly, looking right through him.

That, Koch remembered all too well, was exactly what the captain of U-134 had told him when they had had their first meeting—a private one—in the captain’s quarters shortly after they had sailed from the bunker at Brest, France.

“Just so we are clear about this,” Kapitänleutnant Hans-Günther Brosin had said, waving his copy of the mission’s secret orders. “Landing agents from a U-boat on the shore of America was an idea that bordered on suicide when it was attempted only months ago and it is an idea that is more than suicide now.”

“Commander, not attempted but successfully—”

“I count Kapitänleutnant Linder,” Brosin interrupted, holding up his hand in a gesture that stopped Koch, “as a personal friend. He, as one professional to another, personally told me the complete details of how U-202, under his command, put ashore the four Abwehr-trained agents on the Long Island of New York. Including the fact that, as the agents and their containers of explosives moved to shore by raft, the U-boat became grounded on a shoal of sand.”

“Perhaps if the captain had—”

“Ach du lieber Gott!” Brosin snapped. “There is no perhaps! This boat is the same type as U-202, and I can tell you, Herr Koch, as I know every detail of this ship, stem to stern, that for it to float requires a minimum water depth of five meters. And what is more—”

He heard his voice echo down the ship. He had quickly been losing his temper and realized it.

He paused, took a deep breath, then with a lower voice had continued: “And what is more, Herr Koch, a U-boat’s only measure of safety is the silence of the depths. If she is in less than thirty meters—and certainly if she is in five, ten meters of water, or, worse, is aground—she is a sitting duck. As was the U-202.”

He shook his head.

Brosin went on, his disgust clearly evident: “Are you aware that when the emergency measures of dumping fuel to lighten the boat, then using her diesel engines full power astern, did not seem to be helping free her from the shoal—an act that not only resulted in the loss of more precious fuel but also served to ruin any stealth the boat might have enjoyed—Kapitänleutnant Linder had ordered the crew to begin to scuttle her?”

“Commander, I am more than—”

“Of course you are. And so, too, you are of course aware that the agents—those four in New York and another four the next day put ashore just south of here—were almost immediately captured? And those not put to death by the Americans were sentenced to spend their lives in prison?”

When Koch wordlessly stared back at Brosin, the captain threw up his hands.