Operation Wolfe Cub: A Chilling Historical Thriller (THE TIME TO TELL Book 1) (13 page)

Doc stuck his head out from the open glass hatch and placed his hands on the main deck, looking puzzled. While he felt the healthy drizzle of the weather’s sideshow, he wiped his hand off with his handkerchief to bide his time. “Still no
luck? There’s a locking mechanism on it…did you disengage the mechanism?”

US-1 fiddled with it for a while longer before he stood up on top of the pod to give the mechanism a swift kick. Still, he had no luck, so he looked over to his onlookers and shrugged his shoulders.

Doc adjusted his spectacles, thinking for a moment while US-2 unbuckled himself and started to crawl out to see if perhaps
he
could do something.

Doc grabbed his arm. “No—no, not necessary. I designed it. I’ll go out there.”

With a cumbersome hop outside to the main deck, Doc shuffled over and exchanged places with US-1. Shortly thereafter, it was he who fiddled with the stubborn mechanism for a long time before he too seemed befuddled. “Holy bejeezus…it’s jammed.” He went on, “Quick. Get me something to knock it loose.”

US-1 quickly retrieved a hammer when suddenly something else out in the ocean caught his attention. It whizzed by just beneath the surface, and all he saw was its trail of sudsy white bubbles before it disappeared.

US-1 dropped the hammer on the main deck. “I heard something. No, I saw something! It was fast, hissing. It was hissing!”

Doc adjusted his spectacles to look around for it in the water. “I don’t see a thing. What was it?”

US-1 picked the hammer back up off the deck. “It was too fast for a fish—maybe thirty or forty knots. It looked like…it scared me. Didn’t you two hear it?!”

Doc jumped back then looked all around as if the ocean was splashing with man-eating fish of all kinds. “Christ, thirty or forty knots? That’s too fast…thu-that’s a—Holy boy Christ. Did you say it hissed?”

US-1 and 2 cried out, “What is it?”

“Say it—what is it, Doc?”

Doc replied, “Well, from US-1’s description, it sounds like a—a
torpedo!
”

US-2 jumped around in the cockpit. “Where? Where did it come from? Where did it go?!”

Doc gathered himself up and then took a knee to look around for himself. He couldn’t see a thing, so he quickly waved his hand for US-1 to come closer. “Give me that hammer. I need it now.
Now
, I say!” After US-1 gave it to him, Doc quickly ordered, “Get back inside and have US-2 start the engines.” He quickly dislodged the mechanism then frantically began pumping. “US-2! Put down those binoculars and start the engines.
Now
I say!”

In the meantime, US-2 kept scanning the area, when he suddenly spotted a tiny object off in the distance. “Battle cruiser! She’s behind you, Doc! Her flag looks like it might be Royal Navy!”

On the double, Doc kept pumping. Like a scissoring jack, he worked the apparatus until he almost lost his breath. He paused only to look over his shoulder. “Looks like sixteen hundred meters away! Holy bejeezus. Battle cruiser? She’s the demon of the sea…oh, holy God’s Christ O’Mighty. Put down those binoculars! Get ready to leave,
now
!”

US-1 and 2 strapped themselves in. “Come on, Doc, hurry!”

“Forget the petrol! Let’s go!”

Doc’s motions let the two of them know his solemn choice. As he wheezed with exhaustion, pumping faster than ever, he stuttered, “O’Mighty, O’Mighty
God
…please! Christ O’Mighty, can’t this thing pump any faster?”

He went on, “She’s almost there. I can do this!
Whew
! O’Mighty, O’Mighty….
Christ
! O’Mighty, O’Mighty…get this done, please.”

US-2 fired up both engines with a mighty roar.

Through the yelling of his comrades to hurry it up, something terribly wrong overcame Doc. Suddenly, he looked
confused. Trepidation and exhaustion flooded his veins. He stopped pumping for just a second, feeling his heart, and then began gasping for air. Sweat coated his face almost instantly before he turned completely white. In the midst of wondering whether he could carry on, he looked to his two crewmembers, who were frantically waving their arms.

“Come on! Jump!”

“Forget about it…jump! We gotta go!”

Delusion quickly got a hold of him and glued him down right where he was. He tried to move his arms and legs, except they were anchored by his mind too. An agonizing apathy of hopelessness seemingly strapped down almost every muscle in his body. He looked as though the twitches of his mind reeled faster than ever, until finally he broke free. Something triggered his thoughts, allowing him to move once again, except he turned his head the opposite way. Clairvoyance must have tortured him to take one last look over his shoulder to see what he thought he knew was coming next. Sadly so, two hundred meters away, and closing in fast, was another terrible torpedo swirling right toward him.

Forcefully, he pounded through his prison of peril to sputter, “The mission…my God, the mission! We’ve got to get the baby clear!”

Doom struck him deep in the blacks of his eyes, but before he could plan something else, his spectacles dropped off his slippery face and into the water. Blindsided again, he took off his smock to jump and swim for it, but he suddenly stopped in a freeze of stuttering panic.

US-1 and 2 kept yelling, “Juuuump!”

“Cut the rope! Jump!”

He couldn’t. Tears flowed from Doc’s eyes as he sat back on the black crown of the pod, as if he’d just given up. He barely muttered, “I can’t swim.”

Salvation and sacrifice quickly stepped in, offering up what little bit of calculated courage he must have had left.
With one big, angry jerk, he yanked the fuel nozzle from the ship and unhooked the rope from the pod and threw it clear.

While he wiped his eyes dry, he sat back down, waving them on. “Get out of here,
now!
”

US-2 put it in reverse and blasted away as both of them yelled back.

“We’ll spin back to get you, Doc!”

“Hang on! We’ll distract them!”

US-2 barely got any distance before he locked it into a full turnaround in the middle of his massive wake. “We gotta get him.”

US-1 yelled, “He saw another torpedo coming! We’ve got to get more distance!”

“No, there’s still time!”

“Can’t you see what he saw? Obey him now!”

“I didn’t see anything.”

“You’re going to get us killed, damn you.
Go
!”

In the midst of their arguing, they had no idea history had launched its course. The feeble-looking, pudgy, old man they’d once called “Doc” looked back at them with barely half a chance to raise his hand good-bye.

KaboomBOOOOOOOM!

The torpedo struck its bull’s-eye with brutal force. Below his bottom, on a pod of liquid disaster, all hell broke loose with a double blast. Up from the ocean, a raging mushroom appeared within the blink of an eye. Blackened blazes of fire, particles, and water filled the air immediately with it.

The blasting shockwave slammed up to greet the US
Wehrwolf
with such ripping force that she should have met her fate right then and there. Somehow the vessel shunned the continuing blast. She held together, but not without a great price. Instantly, she was thrown, capsized, and then speared into the sea. While the bombs monstrosity kept raging above the ocean, she laid silent, blacked out, and motionless several meters down.

The blaze of the bomb might have ended quickly, but its party of hellfire continued to dance on top of the ocean in a terrible twist of turbulence. Every last drop of petrol from the pod ignited in the scattered blaze, like it was a hungry ghoul wishing for the water to keep burning.

Finally, the catastrophic horror of the petrol and bomb-filled torpedo settled down to only a few floating fires refusing to dissipate. All that was left was the disfigured tail of the US
Wehrwolf
, which barely bobbed back up to the surface. Her aqua fins, bearing the mark of the rolling star, could be seen, but not for long. The last few flames, still alive with floating petrol, hung around to burn off two of the three golden emblems as a final affront of the blast. The only one that remained was hidden under the protection of the oil-slicked water.

As far as the proud crew, they seemed trapped for sure. But beneath the peaceful, quiet insulation of the sea, the vessel seemed like she wished to remain alive by staying a float. As badly as her hull was marred, her glass cockpit was intact. There were no signs of light, or life for that matter, inside. In the murky darkness, a few short circuits sporadically flickered along with the tethers of a few tiny, red warning lights.

A closer look inside the cockpit revealed the subtle sounds of an unattended baby whimpering and the seemingly lifeless bodies of US-1 and 2 still harnessed in their safety belts. At least Randolf was okay, but the situation of his two remaining guardians was questionable. They looked to be helplessly hanging from their seats like rag dolls. Inevitably, the force of gravity invited itself to pull on their limbs and heads, exacerbating their grave predicament. Gravity, with its odd manner of eternal persuasion, had bigger plans. The bottom of the sea was where it wanted to take them and their vessel, straight down to the uninviting kingdom of a black abyss.

Moments later, the baby offered an unsuspected gift of consciousness to one of his sentinels. US-1 moved first with the twitch of his fingers, then his eyes. His senses arose more
vividly when he noticed that he was not seated correctly. He was hanging vertically downward instead of sitting properly in his chair. In time, he realized he was still strapped in, hanging from his safety harnesses in the dark. He had to do something quickly because the harnesses were cutting off his breath. Finally, he freed himself, only to fall straight down onto his controls instead of the deck. Nothing seemed to be where it should have been, so he began to feel around for his controls to gain a sense of his whereabouts.

Something eerily quiet overcame him. For just a moment, queer feelings of curiosity spoke out loud, causing him to stop and take a look straight down through his protective glass cockpit and over the bow, which faded into the blackness beyond. The horror of it caused him to almost choke.

Nothing was there except a tunnel of darkness. Immediately he suffered a sickening spell of vertigo. Not knowing what else he could do, he closed his eyes, which saved him for at least a moment. Like a blind man, he felt for his buoyancy controls which, by chance, were blinking danger signals and begging for attention. At the very least, he was on the right track. He then pressed them in sequential order, along with a few others he’d apparently memorized, then whispered, “Reset buoyancy…pu-pu-please work.”

Slowly his efforts began to payoff. He opened his eyes with relief as the ship began to level off underwater, but something wasn’t quite right. The ship began to descend slowly, causing him to lose what little bit of spirit he’d gained. In the midst of the sinking, darkening surroundings, he struggled for at least a minute before feverishly stuttering, “It’s not working.
It’s not working
. Where’d I go wrong? Lights…lights, where are the
lights
?!”

He found at least one light to click on, which was barely enough for him to take a quick glance at his depth gauge. It most certainly wasn’t what he expected, so he tapped on it, thinking it must be several fathoms wrong. Suddenly he
heard something all around him begin to twist and creak. “
Aaawwh
! We’re imploding!”

Quickly, he switched the stationary stealth propulsion to “on,” except it didn’t work. Quickly again, he switched it back and forth until finally, he got results. “It’s on!” Instantly, the vessel shifted its descent and began to rise. As he kept tapping his depth gauge, the needle slowly returned to the green, causing him to collapse back into his chair.

By this time, the baby was screaming at the top of his lungs, so he scrambled below deck to tend to him. As soon as he calmed him down, he rushed back up to tend to US-2 who, by then, had regained consciousness and was sitting in his chair with a lit cigarette.

US-1 almost looked like he wanted to hug him. “Thank God you’re okay. You…you are okay, aren’t you?”

US-2 wasn’t, apparently. Something was deeply wrong with him as he sat there, crouched over with his hands and head sagging between his knees. “He’s gone.” He looked up, repeating, “Dr. Wycliffe…he’s gone.”

US-1 fell into his chair. The horrid image of the brutal blast flickered back in his mind. He then dropped his head. “Oh no. He’s gone...yes…he’s gone.”

Neither one had much to say, really. The only thing that seemed to work for them right then was to sit motionless and mourn the loss of a very big part of their tiny crew. It was hard to imagine exactly what they were thinking. Despair seemed to paralyze them for a minute or two, until US-1 heard a most unusual sound.

“What’s that?”

“
Shhhhhhh
, quiet…I hear it too…listen…it’s getting closer, I think.”

It was there, but very faint at first. A small sound was coming from outside their cockpit, somewhere out in the water. Ever so slowly, it approached them with deep baritones, like a repeating, obnoxious, alien-like sound. It was disturbing the
way it resonated through the water and then up through the soles of their feet to the ears.

Wooov-wooov-wooov-wooov-wooov-wooov—

It got louder as it got closer.

Wooov-Wooov-Wooov-Wooov-Wooov—

US-1 panicked. “I can’t stand it…I-I-I can’t stand it. We gotta get out of here!”

US-2 grabbed his arm. “No! Don’t try a thing. We can’t. It’s here, whatever it is…we have to think. Quick, how deep are we?”

US-1spun his chair back to his controls, whispering, “Seven fathoms…we’re still idling on stealth…we haven’t moved a centimeter.”

US-2 spun his chair around, looking over his entire control panel. “Good…setting Naxos, scrambling all signals, now…your sonar. Why is it out?”

US-1 tapped the screen and tried switching it on. “It’s shorted out.”

Suddenly, the colossal wavering sounds stopped, but only to be replaced with rickety iron, flexing from all directions, ringing throughout their cockpit and causing them to hold their ears.