Game of Shadows

GAME OF SHADOWS

ERNEST DEMPSEY

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Enclave Publishing

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Prologue

May 3, 1945

Atlantic Ocean

Capt. Jack Harris nearly jumped out of his bed, jolted from his slumber by a racket he’d not heard in over almost a week. The alarms ringing throughout the ship weren't exactly a pleasant sound when one was in the midst of a deep slumber. Not that he slept deeply anymore. He hadn't in years, not since the war had started. Ever since his ship entered the war, Harris had adapted. He’d almost gotten used to the wildly erratic schedule that changed in an instant when aboard a United States naval vessel. The last week, however, had spoiled him. No enemy sightings and no threats had resulted in several good nights of rest in a row, a phenomenon that now seemed to be at its end.

Exhausted, he swung his feet over the edge of the bunk and quickly strapped on his boots. In mere seconds, he was jogging to the bridge to see why the alarms had been set off. He could have rung the bridge from his quarters, but it was only a thirty-second walk — and a shorter run.

The two hundred men aboard had roused into action. Men manned the big 76 mm guns, turning the barrels in the direction of the nearest danger. The 20 mm cannons were activated as well, ready for the order to open fire.

Twenty-eight seconds later, Captain Harris stepped through the entryway and onto the bridge. "Status," he ordered.

"German U-boat, sir. Off starboard." A young man at a console gave a quick report, but there was an air of uncertainty in his voice.

The bridge was a beehive of activity. Though usually a busy place, now it was humming with men checking instruments, giving reports to officers, making adjustments, flipping switches and turning knobs, and then doing it all again. Off to the side, the sailor manning sonar listened like his life depended on it. His fingers pressed the oversized headphones to his ears to make sure none of the ambient noise convoluted what he was hearing. He picked up a pencil and made a few notations: speed, distance, bearing, even whether or not the U-boat’s torpedo tubes had been flooded. The engineers and chief petty officer were on the horn with the engine room in case the captain wanted to change course or adjust their speed. The entire place was in a frenzy.

The room was sterile and lit dimly with red lights to make them less visible to enemy ships during the night. Everything seemed to be made out of gray metal, right down to the seats the sailors were using at the terminals. Naval ships weren't designed for comfort or decor; they were 100 percent utilitarian.

"A U-boat?" Harris asked, grabbing his binoculars and staring out across the rippling waves of the South Atlantic Ocean that shimmered in the bright moonlight. There were only a few wayward clouds drifting through the sky, making visibility extremely good for hunting. "What's it doing this far out?"

"We aren't sure, sir, but at the moment, they aren't taking hostile measures."

There were too many things not adding up in Captain Harris's head at the moment. The first was that they were halfway between South Africa and the northern Brazilian coast. With the war reaching a climactic close in the European theater, a Nazi U-boat being this far out at sea made no sense. The Allies were tightening the noose around the German capital of Berlin. Word was that Adolf Hitler had holed up in his bunker and was doing all he could to muster the troops for one last stand. Some said he had his mistress, Eva Braun, with him in the bunker, along with several of his top advisers.

Germany had no chance of winning the war. It was a story as old as time itself. Hitler should have probably read a little more history. Harris knew plenty. He'd studied a good deal of it at the Naval Academy. One thing he learned early on was that trying to conquer the world was nearly impossible for the main reason that eventually, you'd spread yourself too thin.

Alexander the Great, Xerxes, the Roman caesars, Charlemagne, Napoleon, were all great strategists and leaders, but they all desired too much. Spreading yourself too thin would always create chinks in the armor.

He brought his thoughts back to the U-boat, cruising along off starboard. "How long have you had visual?" Harris asked the young man who'd been feeding him information.

"Just now, sir. When the alarm sounded." The redheaded sailor looked over his shoulder at the captain, worried about what his reaction would be. The kid must have only been twenty years of age, but even he knew that they should have had some knowledge of the sub's whereabouts far sooner than sixty seconds ago.

Harris frowned, his eyebrows lowering. "What do you mean, just now? Nothing on radar or sonar? It just appeared out of nowhere?" The captain tried to curtail his irritation, but in his eyes, either someone was sleeping on the job, they were lying, or they were just plain incompetent.

A dark-haired lieutenant near one of the windows confirmed what the young sailor had said. "He's not lying, sir. All hands were on alert when the ship appeared. Our instruments shorted out momentarily, and then the U-boat was just there."

The story stank, and the man knew it. He could tell from the look on the captain's face that he wasn't buying it. Had the two men corroborated the story? Harris shifted his gaze to the other men on the bridge, but their eyes all confirmed what the other two were saying.

"Ready the charges, man the guns, load the torpedoes," he barked out the orders quickly.

  Harris imagined that below deck the men were hurriedly sliding the deadly torpedoes into the tubes and prepping the charge canisters.

He watched with his binoculars, peering through the window at the misplaced U-boat as it continued to glide through the water. He lowered them and stared curiously at the ghostlike ship.

"Why aren't they attacking us?" Harris asked, almost to himself, but within earshot of several of his men.

"We don't know, sir. Like I said, they don't appear to be taking aggressive maneuvers." The kid at the console turned a few knobs and stared at a beeping screen.

The USS
Slater
was a Cannon Class destroyer, mostly built for escort missions of convoys and larger ships. But it still had enough firepower on board, and was maneuverable enough to take down a submarine of almost any size. The Cannon Class was an upgrade from its predecessor, and was specifically designed for antisubmarine warfare. Three hundred feet long and only thirty-six feet at the beam made it fast in the water, capable of reaching speeds of up to twenty-one knots. With three, twenty-one inch torpedo tubes and nine depth charge projectors, the Cannon Class made a meal of enemy subs. And the
Slater
had eaten its fair share.

Harris would have liked to think that the reason the submarine wasn't attacking them was due to its reputation, or simply its menacing appearance. But he knew that wasn't true. While Cannon Class destroyers certainly had claimed many German casualties, the Nazis never seemed to fear anything. It was part of their German heritage. They would press on, charging into overwhelming odds if they had to. At sea was no different. In his time aboard the
Slater
, Captain Harris had seen a single German U-boat try to take on three escort ships. One of the other destroyer escorts had been badly damaged in the battle, a fight that took over two hours. They'd finally sunk the submarine, though at great cost of time, resources, and a few casualties.

That seemed to be the nature of Nazi sub captains, which made the behavior of this one particularly odd.

"They had to have seen us, right?" he asked the lieutenant standing nearby.

"I would think so, sir," the man in the officer's uniform said semi-confidently. "How would they not? Even if they didn't see us with their periscope, their sonar would be going crazy right now."

Harris knew all of that, and it bothered him. "Shut off those blasted alarms," he ordered. "If they haven't seen us, they certainly would have heard all that racket."

The alarm bells ceased a moment later, and the ship was cast into silence amid the swells crashing against the hull and the low drum of the engine below.

"Where are they going?" Harris said again, this time even quieter than before.

The U-boat was moving quickly to the southwest.

"Come about," the captain ordered. "Tuck in behind them. I want to see what those Nazis are up to."

"Aye, captain. Coming about," one of the officers standing next to the helm confirmed the order.

At three hundred feet, the destroyer was a long ship, but it was able to turn faster than most. Even with that capability, the maneuver to get in behind the U-boat took a few minutes as the ship steered in a wide arch, looping back around into the submarine's fading wake.

"We're in firing range for the guns, sir," the officer standing closest reported.

"We're in range for our torpedoes as well, lieutenant. But I want to know what this sub is up to. If it's a ruse, we'll know soon enough. Hold your fire."

He peered through the bridge's windshield, waiting, watching. His breaths came in short bursts, a side effect he'd grown accustomed to over the years. It was something that always happened just before battle, a nervous tension that caused a man to tighten up prior to diving headfirst into hell.

The engines continued to hum below as the bow of the destroyer ripped through the Atlantic's swells. The U-boat maintained course as if they had no idea they were being followed. A normal reaction would have been to drop below the surface and try to evade the heavily armed enemy ship. But the German captain made no such effort.

"It's like they're running from something," a young blond operator said from a console on the other side of the room.

"No, son, that boat is modeled from the type IX, though it is much bigger. It's capable of doing at least eighteen knots." He didn't want to say anything to unnerve his men, but it was the biggest U-boat he'd ever seen, at least twice the size of the largest he'd studied or encountered previously. The captain checked their speed on one of the instruments nearby and then returned his gaze to the sea. "We're maintaining with them at fifteen knots. That means they're either on a patrol, or a journey."

The lieutenant's head turned slightly at the implication of the latter. "Where would they be going, sir?"

"I've heard rumors," Harris said. The gruff tone in his voice matched the gray and brown stubble on his face. "You've heard them too, I'm sure. The war is ending, gentlemen. Hitler can't fight forever. There have been reports that indicate some of the higher ups in the German command are trying to escape via submarine." He answered the question of everyone in the room before it was asked. "They'll likely head for South America. And based on this ship's trajectory, that's exactly where they're going."

He waited patiently for another sixty seconds. All two hundred pairs of eyes on the
Slater
watched with tense anticipation. Suddenly, a strange fog began to form, seemingly out of nowhere. The sky above had been perfectly clear, but now faded into a misty gray soup.

"Sir, the instruments," the redheaded sailor said, pointing at his panel.

The captain spun around and glanced at the malfunctioning console. The sonar had lost power. He looked over at the radar operator's station and realized the same thing had happened.

"What's happening to our power?" he asked. A second later, the lights flickered briefly, then died.

"Emergency backup generators, lieutenant," he snapped the order without hesitation.

He could see the man's face in the dark, shaking slowly from side to side. "Everything is down, sir. We have engine power. Nothing else."

Visibility was decreasing by the second. If he waited much longer, they would lose the Nazi vessel in the fog. "Take out their engines with the guns. Fire a torpedo from tube two."

The officer ran out onto the gangway and shouted the orders to the men below. They immediately began relaying the message. The young man at the com grasped the microphone and started to give the order to the torpedo crew, but the line was dead. Whatever was interfering with the ship's power was even knocking out the communication lines.

"It's not working, sir," he informed the captain.

Harris's face grew grave. He'd heard of strange things happening at sea, even seen a few in his time on the open water, but losing every single thing that relied on electricity was an occurrence he'd yet to witness. If the generators went down and the motors weren't providing any current to the batteries, they still had backup battery power that could last many hours.

The guns began to roar at the front of the boat as the gunners opened fire on the fleeing sub. The captain walked around to the side and stood on the grated metal walkway, listening as the gun barrels blazed, flashing bright orange light into the hazy darkness.

In the distance ahead, a white glow seared through the thick fog for a brief second, and then dissipated as quickly as it had appeared.

"Cease fire!" the captain ordered down to the crew below.

They echoed the command through a sequence of other sailors until it reached the front. The guns went silent again, still smoking from their toils. The sour scent of gunpowder drifted back to the bridge where the captain leaned on the railing.

"What in the blue blazes was that?" he asked quietly.

To his right, the bridge lights blinked for a few seconds and then burned steadily once more. The sounds of the control room resumed with a few clicks, beeps, and pings occasionally escaping from the machinery.