Ice Fortress (A Jack Coulson Thriller) by Robert B. Williams

Author:Robert B. Williams [Williams, Robert B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Noble Star Publishing
Published: 2017-07-17T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter 25

November 9, 2017, 04:00 UTC

U-Boot-Bunker (Submarine Pen)

Kriegsmarine Base 211

Ronne Ice Shelf (Antarctica)

77° 51' 19.79" S -61° 17' 34.20" W

U-2532

Sam had explained to Jack that he didn’t know how to blow the ballast tanks any other way than with a full emergency blow. One of the salty old German sailors he’d worked with on the U-505 restoration project at the Science and Industry Museum had proudly demonstrated the procedure on the inoperable submarine many times. He’d served aboard a U-Boat during the final months of the war, having been conscripted as a fifteen year old boy. Germany had been desperate for men having lost many millions of them at the brutal Russian Front. Nobody had cared about his age, he said, U-Boat crews had a short life expectancy, anyway. The one thing he’d learned during his short service before Germany surrendered was the emergency blow and he’d been telling anyone who would listen all about it ever since.

Jack had no choice but to trust Sam, after all, he was the one who had got the screws turning so they could navigate to safety using the extraordinarily detailed charts that were still on the chart table as if the navigator had stepped away only moments ago. The state of the U-Boat greatly unnerved Jack and something about the whole situation made his battle hardened survival instincts bristle. There was a darkness with them in the boat that even the emergency lights Sam had lit up couldn’t chase away. The sooner they got out of the stale air of the claustrophobic boat, the happier Jack would be. He wasn’t afraid of a fire fight, he’d survived plenty of those in his time, but he’d always known exactly who he was up against. This mission was different and he felt like he was clawing at the darkness unable to see what he was really up against.

And now he was in a World War Two U-Boat heading toward what the charts indicated was described as a ‘bunker’ under the ice.

Nothing in his training or field experience had prepared him for anything like this. And he didn’t even know what this was. It was damn spooky, to say the least.

“We’re almost there, according to the chart,” Sam called through the engine room voice tube to the conn where Jack was manning the rudder.

It became clear very soon after damage control was squared away that they wouldn’t survive if they just bobbed aimlessly under the ice like a cork. With limited weapons and ammunition, surfacing and facing the army that awaited them wasn’t a very good plan. They needed a new plan. Any plan. It didn’t even have to be a good plan.

On the navigation chart spread out on the table, they noted a thick grease-pencil line showing the last course the sub had sailed … into the heart of an ice mountain. No explanation as to how the sub ended up where they’d found it, but answering that question didn’t help their chances of survival. That could wait.

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