Page 1 (1/2)

PROLOGUE

BARENTS SEA

NORTH OF NORWAY

APRIL 29, 1943

A PALE HUNTER’S MOON HUNG ABOVE THE HORIZON so that its light threw dazzling reflections off the frigid ocean With winter not yet given way to spring, the sun had yet to rise this year Instead, it re pro the line where sky met sea as the planet spun on its tilted axis It would be another month before it would fully show itself, and, once it did, it would not disappear again until fall Such was the odd cycle of day and night above the Arctic Circle

By rights of their extreme northern latitudes, the waters of the Barents Sea should be frozen over and impassable for most of the year But the sea was blessed aters cycling up from the tropics on the Gulf Stream It was this powerful current that made Scotland and the northern reaches of Norway habitable, and kept the Barents free of ice and navigable even in the deepest winters For this reason, it was the pri convoyed from the tireless factories of America to the embattled Soviet Union And like so lish Channel or the Gibraltar Strait—it had becoround for the wolfpacks of the Kriegsmarine and shore-based Schnellboots, the fast-attack torpedo boats

Far from randoht of a chess athered about the strength, speed, and destination of ships plying the North Atlantic in order to have submarines positioned to strike

From bases in Norway and Den for the convoys ofpositions back to fleet headquarters so the U-boats could lie in wait for their prey For the first years of the war, the submarines enjoyed near-total supre had been sunk without mercy Even under heavy escort by cruisers and destroyers, the Allies could do littleone ship sunk for every ninety-nine that ah a toll as frontline combat units

That was about to change this night

The four-engined Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Kondor was a span of nearly one hundred and ten feet Designed before the war for Lufthansa as a passenger airliner, the aircraft had been quickly pressed into e reconnaissance platform Her

twenty-five-hundred-e allowed the Kondor to re far from shore

Used in an attack roll through 1941 by carrying four five-hundred-pound bos, the Kondor had taken some heavy losses and was now strictly employed as a reconnaissance plane, and re their patrols

The aircraft’s pilot, Franz Lichter the trackless sea He longed to be in a fighter squadron, fighting the real war, not loitering thousands of feet above frigid nothingness hoping to spot Allied shipping for soh level of military decorum and expected the same from his men However, when they were on patrol and the minutes stretched with the elasticity of India rubber, he allowed a certain a the five-man crew

“That should help,” he commented over the interco moon

“Or its reflection will hide a convoy’s wake,” his copilot, Max Ebelhardt, replied in his customary pessimistic tone

“With the sea this calm we’ll spot them even if they’ve stopped to ask for directions”

“Do we even know if anyone’s out here?” The question caest unner and sat scrunched at the aft of the ventral gondola that ran the partial length of the aircraft’s fuselage Frole MG-15other than what the Kondor had already flown over

“The squadron co froo above the Faeroe Islands,” Lichter north, so they’ve got to be out here somewhere”

“More likely, the U-boat co with all his torpedoes,” Ebelhardt groused, and made a face after a sip of tepid ersatz coffee

“I’d rather just spot theentle lad was barely eighteen, and had harbored a a doctor before he had been drafted Because he came from a poor rural family in Bavaria, his chances of an advanced education were nil, but that didn’t prevent hi his off-hours with his nose buried in medical journals and texts

“That isn’t the proper attitude of a Gerently He was thankful that they had never come under enemy attack He doubted Kessler would have the stoun, but the boy was the onlyaft for hour after hour without beco incapacitated by nausea

He thought gri on the Eastern Front, and about how the tanks and planes shipped to the Russians prolonged the inevitable fall of Moscow Lichtermann would be more than happy to sink a few ships himself