Spartan Gold

Entry hatch.

Sam popped back up to the surface and stroked over to the bank, where Remi helped him out. He shed his fins and mask and took a moment to gather his thoughts.

“Well?” she said.

“There’s a manila folder in one of the duffels. Could you grab it for me?” She was back with it in half a minute. Sam flipped back and forth through the loose pages for a couple minutes, then plucked one of the sheets out and handed it to Remi.

“Molch,” she read. “What in God’s name . . .”

Her words trailed off as she kept reading.

Sam said, “ ‘Molch’ means ‘Salamander.’ It was a class of midget torpedo submarine produced by Nazi Germany in 1944.”

Built for the Kriegsmarine by A. G. Weser, a company in Bremen, the Molch was the brainchild of Dr. Heinrich Drager. Measuring thirty-five feet long, three feet from deck to keel, and six feet from beam to beam, the Molch was designed to carry one crew member and two G7e torpedoes on port and starboard racks to depths of 120 feet and distances up to fifty nautical miles at a maximum submerged speed of three knots, a moderate walking pace.

As an offensive weapon the Molch, like most of Germany’s other midget subs, was largely unsuccessful: it was hard to steer, almost impossible to dive, and with a range so limited it was dependent upon auxiliary vessels for support and deployment.

“Are you sure, Sam?” Remi asked.

“I’m sure. Everything fits.”

“How in the world did it end up here?”

“That’s the part that doesn’t fit. According to everything I’ve read, these things only saw action in Holland, Denmark, Norway, and the Mediterranean. There are absolutely no records of Molches being deployed this far west.”

“How many of these things were there?”

“Almost four hundred, and most of those were lost, either sunk or vanished. They were death traps, Remi. Only crazy men volunteered for midget-sub duty.”

“You said a one-man crew. You don’t think . . .”

“Won’t know until I get in there.”

“And that other lovely word you used—torpedo.”

“That’s the dicey part. My hunch is it got pushed this far upriver by six-plus decades of storm surges. Probably both the torpedoes—if it was equipped with any to start with—were knocked off long ago.”

“Well, that’s some small comfort,” Remi replied. “Except for the unlucky fisherman who manages to snag one someday.”

“We’re going to have to tell somebody about this—the coast guard or the navy. How they’ll deal with it, I have no idea.”

“One thing at a time.”

“Right. Step one: Make sure it isn’t sitting atop a pair of sixty-year-old live torpedoes.”

CHAPTER 9

Using one of the Spair Air pony canisters, Sam inspected the bottom beneath the Molch from stem to stern, lightly tapping on each log with the tip of his dive knife and praying he didn’t get a metallic clank in reply. Their luck held; all he heard was the soft thump of rotten wood.

Given the appearance of the logs near the top of the heap, many of which still showed some remnants of bark, Sam suspected the Molch had been deposited here recently, pushed by the storm out of the main cha

A sound theory, but a theory nonetheless, Sam reminded himself. He finished his survey of the bottom, then moved on to his next task. Though he’d seen no external damage to the Molch’s hull it didn’t mean she wasn’t flooded, and if so they were out of luck. Small as it was compared to its counterparts, the Molch was still no lightweight, weighing in at eleven tons. Add to that the volume of water her interior could hold and this midget submarine might as well be the Titanic for all the good their ropes and ratchet blocks would do them.

Moving from the aft end forward, Sam tapped along the hull every few feet with his knuckle, listening to the echoes. They were hollow. Damn, could they be this lucky . . . ?

He returned to the surface and climbed back onto the bank.

“Good news, bad news,” Sam said. “Which do you want first?”

“Good.”

“I’m ninety percent sure the torpedoes aren’t down there and ninety-nine percent sure she’s not flooded.”

“And the bad?”

“I’m only ninety percent sure the torpedoes aren’t down there.”

Remi thought it over for a moment, then said, “Well, if you’re wrong, at least we’ll go together—and in spectacular fashion.”

Sam spent the next hour rigging the lines to the sub, checking and rechecking their placement, the angles, and the anchor points for the three ratchet blocks, which they’d spread out in a fan shape along the bank, each secured to the base of a full-grown tree. Sam had hooked the other ends to the Molch’s bow cleat, around the entry hatch, and then around the propeller shaft.

Twice during their preparations they again heard the rumbling of a boat engine and each time crawled through the grass to their vantage point overlooking the river. The first boat turned out to be a father and son trolling for pike. The second boat, just five minutes later, was Scarface and his crew heading back upriver toward Snow Hill. As before, they slowed at the mouth of each inlet on the opposite shore, Scarface steering while one of the others knelt on the bow and sca

Even with the sub full of air, rolling her was going to take just the right amount of force, applied in just the right way. Sam scratched out the calculations on his notepad, figuring the force vectors and buoyancy variables until certain they were as ready as they were going to get.

“We’ll know as soon as it slides off the logs,” Sam said. “If it sinks, it’s over. Opening the hatch will just flood it. If it floats, we’re still in the game.”

They rehearsed their plan one more time, then took up their positions, Sam at the center ratchet block, Remi on the stern block.

“Ready?” Sam called.

“Ready.”

“As soon as you see it drop off the logs, start cranking.”

“Shall do.”

Sam started cranking slowly on the ratchet, one every second or so, listening to the line thrumming with tension and the groaning of steel. Thirty seconds and forty cranks later there came a soft crunching sound from the water and then, as if moving in slow motion, the Molch’s periscope began swinging toward them.

There was another muffled crunch and Sam could see in his mind’s eye the logs beneath the keel cracking. He felt a faint shudder beneath his feet, then the line went slack.

“Go, Remi, fast as you can!”

Together they began working the ratchets. After ten seconds Sam’s line went taut again. He sprinted to the bow ratchet block and cranked it until the line was shivering with tension. Sam glanced over to Remi and saw her line was also vibrating.

“Okay, stop!”

Remi froze.

“Start walking backward into the grass, then lie down on your belly and wait till I give you the all clear.”

If any of the lines parted under the strain they would snap back with lethal force.

Sam walked forward, hand lightly trailing over the line, feeling it tremble. He reached the lip of the inlet and looked down.

“Gotta love physics,” Sam whispered.

The Molch was lying against the bank at a thirty-degree angle, periscope poking into the tree branches and her slime-encrusted entry hatch jutting from the water.