Specimen & Other Stories by Alan Annand Page B

dinghy ran up on the beach. Voormann
stepped out, got his boots wet and pulled it onto the gravel shore.
Hoffmann and the others disembarked. Krause looked up and down the
beach.
    “So, where are we going with this
apparatus?”
    Hoffmann pointed. “Up there on the
cliff.”
    Krause barked, “All right, boys, let’s see
some sweat.”
    Henckel and Schmidt stacked the crates atop
each other and carried them up the beach.
    Krause found a path to the summit. Once
there, he surveyed the high ground and looked down from the cliff.
Gulls shrieked on the wind as waves broke on the rocky beach below.
Voormann, left with the dinghy, had walked fifty meters up the
beach, perched on a rock to smoke a cigarette. Five hundred meters
offshore, the U-boat’s grey conning tower barely stood out against
the metallic sea.
    Hoffmann arrived at the summit with antenna
in hand. He selected a flat expanse of ground and scuffed at a thin
layer of soil atop the rock. Henckel and Schmidt, winded from the
climb, clambered onto the summit with the two crates between them.
They set them down, slung their guns from their shoulders and
sat.
    Hoffmann used a small crowbar to open the
first crate.
     
    ~~~
     
    At the campsite, the baby wailed from its
basket.
    Nuna set aside her sewing and held him
against her chest. He kept crying, more softly now. Nuna raised the
flap of her shirt and thrust the baby up inside. In moments he’d
found a nipple and begun to suckle.
    Kanti watched awhile, then wandered off to
the water’s edge. She placed a wood chip in the water and poked it
with a branch. She followed as it drifted along the shore.
    “Kanti, you stay close,” Nuna said. “The
bears will get you.”
    Kanti, ignoring her, continued. The baby
fussed again, having lost the nipple. Nuna guided his mouth to the
other one. When she looked again, Kanti was further down the shore,
but still within sight.
    “Come back,” Nuna called.
    Kanti continued along the shoreline, picking
up seagull feathers. She looked back at the tent in the distance,
then toward the headland. Further up the shore, she saw a splash of
yellow at the water’s edge.
     
    ~~~
     
    On the summit, the larger crate had been
emptied, turned upside down and bolted into the underlying rock.
The radio unit sat atop it, protected within its own crate, antenna
clamped to one of its corners. The weather unit sat beside it – a
metal box with vents and portholes, and a 60-centimeter spindle
topped by a directional vane, below which four anemometer cups spun
in the wind like a miniature merry-go-round.
    Hoffmann finished wiring the radio to the
batteries. He flipped a switch on the weather instrument panel.
“Ready for a test.”
    Krause thumbed a switch on his field radio.
“Seagull to Shark. Come in.”
    The radio crackled and the operator said,
“Shark to Seagull. Loud and clear.”
    Hoffmann said, “Tell him to take a
reading.”
    “Got that?” Krause said into the radio.
    “Wind velocity, eighteen knots, north by
north west,” the radio operator said.
    “Perfect,” Hoffmann said, noting the
instrument panel.
    “Temperature, eleven degrees
centigrade...”
    After verifying the other readings, Hoffmann
secured the cover on the instrument panel. The weather unit and
radio worked perfectly.
    “That’s it?” Krause said.
    “Good to go,” Hoffmann nodded.
    Krause clucked his tongue. Schmidt and
Henckel picked up their guns and stood.
     
    ~~~
     
    Kanti approached the dinghy. She touched it
with her hand, found it springy. She sat on the edge of it and
bounced.
    She climbed into the dinghy, and lay
amidships with her head against a rubber gunwale. She played with
the gull feathers and sang to herself. Then she heard someone
whistling. She sat up and saw a man in strange clothes appear from
behind some rocks near the base of the cliff.
    Kanti jumped out of the dinghy and ran.
    Voormann raised his weapon.
     
    ~~~
     
    From the conning tower, Kapitan Wolff and
Leutnant Richter