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“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 scanned the waterway with binoculars. After ten minutes of this they disappeared around the bend. Sam and Remi waited another five minutes to make sure they had truly moved on, then got back to work.
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.
Remi appeared at his shoulder. “Wow,” she whispered.
“‘Wow’ is right.”
They added a second line to the one around the hatch, then slowly let out the bow and stern blocks, doubled up those lines, and rese cured them around trees closer to the bank. Using one of the lines for bala
nce, Sam gingerly stepped onto the Molch’s deck. It groaned, shifted, and dipped a few inches, but otherwise held.
“Would you like the honors?” Sam asked, nodding at the hatch.
“Sure.”
“Here.”