January 23rd, 1941
Unknown Coast Bordering the Indian Ocean
0313 Hours
"Did you hear something?", the first man whispered hoarsely in his native dialect.
The two men waiting on the shore pricked their ears. It was a warm, calm night, with hardly a soul around. Sounds could travel for very long ways in such environments.
"...I think that's them. Can't you hear it?"
His excitement was clearly evident in his voice.
"I can't see a light, though..."
The other man, considerably taller, shook his head. "No, I can't hear it."
"But I'm certain I-"
"Quiet down. That wasn't them. We'd know for sure if it was. There'd be a light, for one thing. You probably just heard a seal breaking the surface going after some fish, or something like that."
The shorter man sighed, petulantly tapping the casing of the Aldis lamp beside him with his foot in irritation. "Damn. I suppose you're right. But why aren't they here, Hendrik? What could be holding them up?"
"Don't kick the lamp. They're only fifteen minutes late. They came a long way. Hell, they could be dead, for all we know."
"I suppose, but how long should we-"
"And don't use my name."
"Sorry."
They were both quiet for a moment.
"...Do you think they really could be dead?"
"Definitely. You read the papers, you know they're out scouring the oceans for them. Wouldn't be a stretch at all."
The short man shivered. "Well, then...how long should we wait for them out here? It won't be dark forever, and I'd like to be able to get a few hours of sleep tonight. I have work tomorrow, for God's sake."
"Till dawn."
His eyes widened. "You can't be serious."
"We can't afford to be out here forever, but we can't afford to miss this shipment either. Just be patient. They'll be here in a little while."
The shorter man blew on his hands, mostly out of nervousness than cold - the night was fairly warm. "Let's hope."
At the same time, only a short few hundred meters away...
Some ways off of the shore, below the waves, all was normal. The rhythms of nocturnal undersea life went on as they had for millions of years. Vast, teeming shoals of fish dove and danced beneath the surface, clustering together for protection in numbers. A few leopard seals nosed about the area, looking for angles of attack into the swarms that would gain them the surest bellyful of fish.
Off to the seaward, a lone, massive great white shark, the apex predator in these waters and the terror of all that encountered it (with the exception of the remora that clung to it in search of scraps from kills - safe, as long as they paid their dues by keeping the shark clean and free of food scraps), slowly cruised through the darkness, resting from its twilight hunting exertions in preparation for the one that would follow at the coming dawn. Its massive, globular black eyes stared out into the murk, its unearthly senses attuned to the utmost in search of the tiniest indication of prey worth the effort to catch. The electric receptors in its nose fired off relentlessly and with faultless accuracy, able to detect the presence of any living thing from kilometers off. This heir to hundreds of millions of years of aquatic predator evolution had literally nothing to fear for thousands of miles in any direction. It was almost literally invulnerable.
And then in a flash, it nosed down and sped off in the opposite direction it had previously been heading in.
Something in the depths had scared perhaps the most perfect, streamlined carnivore the planet Earth had ever known.
Quietly at first, as though from a great distance off, an infernal grinding and growling reverberated across the depths, unlike the noises of any other aquatic creature. Slowly, it became louder and louder, its source not clear until the sound had reached its crescendo - and from the obsidian gloom emerged a cigar-shaped war machine with far more killing power than the shark could ever imagine (although, to be fair, there was an extraordinarily large number of things the shark couldn't imagine, such as Marmite, Valparaiso, trains, mercy, or love).
The true king of the oceanic abyss, the U-69 slid through the darkness like a stiletto knife.
Even amongst its own breed of submarines, this one was special - it was the very first of a new sub-class, the Type VII-C. This new evolution now carried an active set of what the British called "asdic" and what Americans called "sonar", lending it an even more potent capability to track and destroy its enemies than its brethren - even the shark's ampullae de lorenzini had finally been eclipsed by the technology of man. However, tracking and killing were not its goals on this particular eve. No, it had left its hunting grounds and arrived at these distant shores to convey several extremely important pieces of cargo. It had been a risky voyage, to say the least - slipping past a Catalina in the Bay of Biscay, evading a destroyer hunting group in the Mid-Atlantic, making a risky night-time rendezvous with a replenishment ship to refill their oil tanks off the coast of Equatorial Guinea, and, after a total sum of a week and a half of surreptitious travel, finally arriving at the destination, hugging an enemy shore.
But if this mission succeeded, this shore wouldn't be hostile for much longer. Neither would anywhere else, if the dominoes fell the way they were intended to. And this cargo would be among the last dominoes to put in place before they were all to be toppled in their marvelous sequence.
The growl began to quiet down as the engines slowed. From the conning tower, the long, thin periscope began to extend, breaking the surface. It swiveled to view the black shore, only a few dozen meters away. It was a good thing the oceanic shelf dropped off very quickly in this particular place, or else the risk of beaching would become very real.
Within the cramped, hot, reeking bowels of the submarine, a cold blue eye peered through the mirrored glass of the scope to survey the shore.
"It appears," the cold, clipped voice of the owner of that particular eye spoke, "that you have delivered us right to our target, Kapitanleutnant. You do the Kriegsmarine credit."
Behind him, standing rigidly in the center of the U-Boat's bridge, the commanding officer of the boat tried to suppress a shiver. Not used to not being the real master of his vessel, the fact that the real man in charge (and his protege, accompanying him) appeared to have been carved out of a block of pure ice infused with Krupp steel hadn't made his loss of authority any more palatable. Even a compliment was enough to make him very nervous, and the skipper was not a man who was often nervous.
The fact that the skipper didn't even know the names of the two men he was carrying didn't help matters any, either. All he knew was that the apparent leader was an SS-Obersturmbannführer, that the protege (or at least, the younger one) was an SS-Hauptsturmführer, that their orders were to be obeyed to the letter, and they were not to be bothered. The Obersturmbannführer was the hard one, never smiling or letting his discipline slacken for a second, never paying attention to the crew, single-mindedly focusing on his mission...whatever it was. The younger one was much in the same vein, except he often let a casual smirk spread across his face, clearly enjoying himself in whatever it was they were doing.
The fact that they were dressed so strangely was even more off-putting.
"Thank you, sir."
No response as the elder one continued to swivel the periscope, taking in the 360-degree view around them. After a moment, another clipped utterance.
"It seems we are in the clear. Do your sensors agree?"
The skipper looked over at the sonar man. He nodded.
"Yes, they do."
The Obersturmbannführer pulled back from the periscope. "Then it is time. We are already late enough. Surface the boat, have the cargo brought up, and send the signal."
The skipper was taken aback. "Sir, there could still be aircraft in the vicinity - and we're far too close to shore. We'd be massively risking the ship."
The blue eyes turned to him, cutting him open with their incisive glare. "Kapitanleutnant von Sporrenburg, are you attempting to undermine me?"
"N-no, I was just-"
"Good. Undermining me is not a sensible move. And you seemed like such a sensible man, relative to your brother. At this rate, I don't think you shall share his fate."
A sigh.
"But you know how things can change."
Kapitanleutnant Heinrich von Sporrenburg was almost too nervous to breathe, much less give the order. Out of his peripheral vision, he could see the smirk on his protege's face widen further.
"Surface the boat. Now."
The two men continued waiting.
"I'm telling you, I..."
The shorter man's voice trailed off.
"Oh, hell, there definitely is something out there. You must've heard that."
The taller man cocked an ear. "I heard something."
"Look off that direction. I'm telling you it came from over there - and there's a spot of the horizon that's a bit blacker than the ocean or sky. Do you see it? It must be them!"
As they squinted to see, the question was answered as a beam of light stabbed out from the black spot in a series of staccato bursts.
"That's them."
The tall man grabbed the Aldis lamp and began signalling in return.
"Run back to the truck and tell the others to get up here. We're going to need some help with the crates."
Some time later...
The last crate thudded onto the truck bed as it was dumped, the last cargo of the last trip between the U-Boat and the shore delivered. The U-Boat had now submerged and vanished out of sight.
"That's all of them?" asked one of the men on the shore.
The smirking man jumped onto the ground, wobbling slightly trying to reacclimatize to land. His older companion seemed to have no trouble.
"That's all of them," the younger man answered.
"Mind if we check?"
"You don't trust us?" the older man quickly shot back.
"No, no, it's not like that at all," the shorter man said, hands up. "We only want to make sure that there have been no...erm...miscommunications."
The older man shrugged. "They're yours, now. I could care less."
The tall man came forward with a crowbar and cracked off the top of the crate. Removing a torch from his belt, he shone it inside.
The reflective black matte paint of the component pieces of twelve brand-new MG34 heavy machine guns gleamed back, complete with ammo cartridges.
"Will that be satisfactory," the old one said testily, "or shall we wait here until noon or so for you to check all of them?"
The tall man straightened up. "That will be sufficient, I think. We can check the rest at the destination."
"Good. All our arrangements have been made?"
The tall man nodded. "Yes, although you will of course need to be changing your clothes once we arrive in the city. The farmer look may work out here, but you'll stand out like a sore thumb in there. And he-" the man jerked his thumb at the younger man, "-will need a set of army fatigues. We have them on hand."
The older man grimaced. "Then let's not wait around. The sun is rising, in a few minutes it'll be too dangerous to stay here."
"Then let's go."
They crew of Germans and natives took their seats. The engine came to life, and they slowly began to pull away, towards a coastal dirt road.
As they rode onwards, the younger one sat forward. "I hope you don't mind if I speak for a moment."
"Go on," the tall man replied. "Your accent's not too bad, by the way. It's noticeable, but it's not dangerously so."
"Glad to hear it. I just wanted to thank you for what you are doing for us, and for our cause. Germany is grateful to you, and it is a privilege for us to help you in this way. I am a member of the SS, but I hope to become accepted as a member of your organization too. I know that working together, like this, we shall achieve victory. I know it."
He sat back. "What we do in the next week may win us the war. and when the histories are written, your names shall be scribed in gold, I promise you that. Your organization shall live forever in memory."
The tall man couldn't help but smile at the florid rhetoric. "Is that so? Glad to hear you're so confident."
"We're confident because we have faith in the plan and faith in your people. Nobody can stand against us with all we've put in place. All we need to do is remember the guiding words, and we'll be unstoppable."
The young man theatrically closed his eyes, almost in the manner of prayer. No smirk on his face now.
"If I retreat..."
The other men (except the elder) responded almost as one, spontaneously."...kill me."
The young man continued. "If I advance..."
"...follow me."
His eyes were pressed so tightly together now that his whole face was shaking, and his voice was ragged with intensity.
"And If I die..."
The reply was just as passionate, coming straight from the heart of desperate, passionate men who knew that their actions would change the course of the world.
"...avenge me."
January 25th, 1941
Somewhere on the Atlantic Ocean
1030 Hours
A soaking mist and a uniformly grey sky hung heavily over the Atlantic Ocean that January morning. In recent months, though it looked as calm and peaceful (by the standards of a frequently storm-tossed ocean, anyways) as it seemingly had for an eternity, this colossal expanse of water had been one of the bloodiest battlefields of the World War now gripping Europe. Its depths now sheltered the bombed and torpedoed hulks of hundreds of warships, freighters, oil tankers, and others that had had the misfortune of meeting their ends in this featureless oblivion. Under the waves crawled dozens of German U-Boats, waiting for the perfect chance to unleash their torpedoes at an unsuspecting target from kilometers away, then fade away into the murk of the Atlantic depths.
On its surface, too, traveled numerous German raiders of various types. Some were cleverly disguised German auxiliary cruisers that preyed on isolated Allied merchant shipping, approaching close under friendly flags only to reveal themselves as a lethally-armed enemy when it was too late for their victims to fight back, call for help, or escape. And some, the most feared of all, perhaps, were the German commerce raiders: the Hippers, the Lutzows, the Scharnhorsts - massive, fast, modern cruisers and battlecruisers capable of ripping an entire convoy apart, ship by ship, under their guns, then fleeing at top speed back into the Atlantic wastes before they could ever be tracked down. And even the very air itself harbored enemies of Allied merchant shipping - the fall of France had opened up Atlantic posts for German naval aircraft, the massive Focke-Wulf four-engine bombers that now coordinated with the U-Boats to decimate convoys far out to sea with near-total impunity.
Traveling the Atlantic these days was, to say the least, not an excursion made lightly.
If one was to cross it in the service of the Allies now opposing the Axis states, the masters of these submarines, raiders, and bombers, precautions would have to be taken. Solo sailing was completely out of the question, one had to be a part of a convoy if survival was to be counted on. Lookouts had to be numerous and eternally vigilant. Defenses had to be obtained and manned, with trained personnel ready at a moment's notice to make use of it. Constant and substantial coordination between ships was necessary in order to keep the convoy together and prevent ships straying away on the high seas. And if all else failed, convoys had to be ready to scatter at a moment's notice as well, if losses began to mount and enemy forces looked to be impossible to stop.
Even with all these precautions, every day, some ships met their end. The convoy system may have been better than sailing solo, but it also had the unfortunate effect of gathering a massive amount of shipping in one concentrated space. A single spread of torpedos from one lucky U-Boat, or a mere handful of salvos from a raider could and frequently would sink two, three, four ships or even more in a convoy. In times like these, skippers of the mostly-unarmed and seemingly helpless ships would think long and hard about the benefits of the convoy system versus its costs. There had to be some better strategy to make it across the sea in one piece...didn't there?
It was true - there was. The SOE had developed it. But it was far from practical. Indeed, by most definitions, it was downright illegal in the eyes of what passed for international standards and laws these days, with potentially explosive ramifications if it were ever to be used - or more specifically, if it ever got out that it had been used.
In this particular expanse, all that could be heard was the eternal crashing and sighing of the waves as they rolled. Then, out of the gloom, a large silhouette grew and grew, until it finally stood out in sharp relief, plowing through the waves, leaving a white trail of churned wake behind it. Its paint was new, and it was clearly a ship that had been built recently. Its decks were crammed with cargo containers. On the side, fresh black paint spelled out MORSA. Atop its bridge, a flag of the Spanish state flapped in the breeze, sodden with mist. A neutral vessel, it could still wander and travel these oceans with a modicum of safety, though it still risked mis-identification and subsequent attack by a careless U-Boat or raider.
Although this ship didn't have too much to worry about from either of those angles. Behind false fronts, concealed in dummy crates, secreted away in the hull, and disguised with paint, this innocent-looking freighter was stuffed to the gills with armament and gadgets. Its allegiance to the Spanish state was false, as was its name, its cargo, and its background. It didn't carry coal, as its official story would tell; instead it carried sixteen navalized Supermarine Spitfire Mk. Vs, brand-new, directly from the Castle Bromwich factory.
Deception, not strength, was the trick the HMS Llamrei made use of to survive.
In the depths of the ship's forward compartments, seated on his bed, Captain Robert Page of the Royal Air Force (and Special Operations Executive, but he didn't even pretend to understand how the overlapping authority worked there) put down his copy of Colenso's History of the Zulu War and Its Origin and checked the clock. He was still trying to temporarily break the habit of checking his watch at times like these, given that he no longer wore a watch in the usual place due to the fact that that part of his arm was now swathed in a large, white cast. The time was 1030.
The Captain dog-eared the page and put it down. He reached for the phone, and dialed three numbers.
"This is Page. Clearance 5150. Requesting current position."
A pause.
"I can wait."
A minute or so later, the reply came through.
"Thank you."
Page sighed as he set the receiver back down. Looks like the time and place has arrived.
Standing up, he made his way over to the safe in the corner of his small room, and went to work unlocking it.
God knows what they'll think of this...
