Ghosts of Bungo Suido (2013)

by Deutermann, P. T

  Then there was more commotion in the pilothouse, with lots of excited reports coming up on their version of the bitch-box. At the same time, Gar heard some of the carrier’s forced-draft blowers spooling down out on those Leaning Towers of Pisa that were her oversized stacks. The major was frowning as he listened. Gar guessed something had gone wrong down in one of the boiler rooms, because the ship was definitely slowing down. Gar pretended not to notice. They were two hours out of Bungo Suido, and this was prime hunting territory. Archer-fish, for instance. Gar knew that there were two, not ten, more patrol areas north of this area. If Archer-fish made a sighting but could not catch this big boy, she’d certainly flash the word by radio to the other two, but not before Joe Enright had taken at least one shot.

  Gar was getting sleepy. He suspected he was the only one on the bridge that night who was. The unexpected food was probably to blame. He wanted to stay awake. This was probably the most unusual vantage point of the war—Japan’s biggest carrier steaming into genuine Injun Country with a U.S. sub skipper in a box seat. Gar wondered what Captain Abe was thinking right now; he hoped not about throwing the resident Jonah over the side. Gar wouldn’t have blamed him.

  It was also interesting to watch Major Yamashita as the excitement level rose in the pilothouse. Gone was the cocky military police officer. He was an army guy in a navy setting, and Gar thought he was starting to pucker up a little. In an army fight you could dig in or bug out if you thought you were facing something overwhelming. At sea you had no choice but to face it. Gar’s offhand but dire predictions hadn’t helped, and even as the ship’s captain scoffed, Yamashita seemed to be much less willing to go into the pilothouse to find out what was going on. A case of not wanting to know, perhaps.

  The carrier was still executing her zigzag plan, making bold turns to the right and then, five or six minutes later, back to the left to foil any incipient torpedo data computer solutions being generated somewhere out there in the darkness. Gar couldn’t see the escorting destroyers, as they were all running darken-ship, but occasionally red flashing-light messages came from ahead, where the destroyer division commander was riding one of the tin cans. Gar hadn’t seen any radar screen consoles in the pilothouse, and he couldn’t remember seeing radar antennas up on the mast. All that could have been planned for the eventual fitting-out period up in Yokosuka. He was thus really surprised when the carrier’s red truck lights, which were mounted way up on the mast, started signaling vigorously. Gar could read Morse code, but these were Japanese signals. Use of the truck lights instead of directional signal lights meant that the carrier was sending an urgent visual signal to all the destroyers simultaneously. It also meant that if there was a sub out there setting up for a shot, he now had an invaluable visual bearing to add to the computer’s relentless thirst for target data.

  The major was definitely getting worried now as the noise level among the bridge officers continued to rise. Something was going on, and Captain Abe’s temper was deteriorating audibly. Gar continued to make himself small in the dark corner of the bridge wing. The major muttered something in Japanese, and Gar gave him an inquiring look.

  “Two submarine radars,” he said quietly. He wouldn’t look at Gar as he was saying it, and Gar wasn’t going to provoke him or anybody else up there with any I-told-you-so noise. Then there was a rash of radio chatter inside the pilothouse.

  “Ha!” the major said with a triumphant grin. “The destroyers have driven the submarines away. No more radar!”

  Or there was a sub out there who’d been running dark and fast on the surface, trying to overtake this beast, and a zig or a zag on the part of the carrier had allowed the boat to submerge and set up a shot. The absence of radar did not necessarily imply the absence of danger.

  The wind had increased, streaming across that distant square bow in gusts up to 30 knots. There were hundreds of shipyard workers down on the flight deck below, milling around, staring at the dark ocean racing by or huddling in small groups drinking tea. Gar tried to imagine the excitement in the conning tower of whoever was shadowing them. Big, big target. No identification, because she’d never been seen at sea. Going fast, but then she slowed down for some reason. Four destroyers in the screen, but sticking in close to the target, not ranging out ahead and on the beams, looking for intruders. Now Abe was signaling to all four at once. That was an emergency move.

  Gar felt rather than heard the first torpedo hit, way back on the stern.

  TWENTY-ONE

  It was a nasty, off-axis thump on the starboard quarter, followed by the dull boom of an explosion pushing up a substantial water column behind the ship. It must have scared the hell out of all the POWs chained to the counter back there, not to mention maybe breaking some bones. Gar counted down the seconds, and then came a second hit, farther forward. This one was more muffled, as if deeper, and there was not much of a water column. The third one hit just aft of the carrier’s island structure and packed a real wallop that he felt the full length of his spine. He decided to rise up on his tiptoes, because he knew whoever was doing this had probably fired a full spread of six, given the size of this ship. A fourth explosion blasted into the air just forward of the island, sending up a huge column of water, the spray from which was blown back across the bridge, obscuring the windows in sheets of seawater and causing the carrier to whipsaw a couple of times. The pilothouse was a good 130 feet above the ocean’s surface, so this had been a shallow hit indeed.

  As the panic spread inside the pilothouse, Gar waited for five and six, but nothing more came out of the night. Missed ahead, he thought, but four good hits down the same side were going to cause some serious damage. With any luck she’d capsize. There was now pandemonium in the pilothouse, with everybody trying to talk at once until the captain shouted something and they all fell silent. Reports started coming up via the bitch-box. In contrast to the excitement on the bridge, these voices sounded calmer. Gar glanced over at the major, who was holding a fist to his mouth. To Gar’s astonishment, the ship wasn’t slowing down. They were still plowing through the night sea at about 18 knots. He heard gunfire out ahead of them from one or more destroyers, but he was pretty sure that the sub had done her firing submerged. That flashing main truck light, visible in all directions for 10 miles, had been a serious error.

  Two junior officers appeared in the pilothouse door and started yelling at Gar. The major jumped, then grabbed his arm. “Captain wants you,” he said.

  Oh, shit, Gar thought as the major practically dragged him into the pilothouse and across to the captain’s chair. Abe had a triumphant look on his face as he started yelling at Gar. The major translated while trying to make himself invisible. The bitch-box was going full blast, and there were three officers taking notes and consulting some damage control plates on the chart table.

  “He wants to know if you see what is happening. After four torpedo hits, Shinano presses on. She has shrugged off your submarine’s best efforts as the bites of a flea!”

  More along that line followed, which quieted the pilothouse as the other officers listened in. When he was finished, Abe looked at him as if expecting some kind of reply. That’s when the ceramic mug sitting on the window ledge by his chair began to move. It slid slowly to the right, all by itself, making a thin scraping noise. Every eye on the bridge focused on that mug as it traveled across the ledge and came to a stop with a tiny clink against a window frame. None of them had noticed, but Shinano was developing a distinct list to starboard. One of the junior officers made a sharp bow toward the captain, then pointed at the centerline, where an inclinometer was mounted in the overhead above the pelorus. It showed a 5-degree list to starboard. Only two minutes after being torpedoed, she was listing.

  The major took this opportunity to yell at Gar in Japanese, slap him in the face, and then drag him back out to the port-side bridge wing, as the noise level roared back up inside. Gar was surprised but offered no resistance; he realized Yamashita was getting Gar, and himself,
out of Captain Abe’s line of fire—but why, he wondered. Once outside, the major started rubbing the sides of his own face, exhibiting the first signs of genuine fear. Gar gave him a nod of thanks, and Yamashita nodded back.

  “It can’t be that bad,” Gar said. “The ship is still going forward at the same speed. If she were in real danger, they would slow down.”

  Even as he said that, he noticed that his perch on the binocular box now required the use of his lower legs. It occurred to him that their blind faith in the unsinkability of this carrier might be leading them toward an avoidable disaster. With the ship still going ahead at 18 knots, there would be tremendous hydraulic pressure on the hull ruptures, and Gar knew probably better than anyone on the bridge about the state of below-deck watertight integrity.

  “Do we have to stay here?” Gar asked the major.

  “We have not been dismissed,” he replied in a shaking voice.

  “Don’t you think they’re a little busy in there right now? I think we should go down to the flight deck, where all those people are.”

  Yamashita looked over the port bullrail as if surprised to see several hundred men down on the flight deck, most of them milling around in growing disorder. Some of them appeared to be looking through the stacked pallets of materials. Many were wearing hard hats, which told him they were civilian shipyard workers, but there were more than a few ship’s company out there on deck as well.

  “We must have permission,” the major said. “It was the captain who demanded you be brought to the bridge.”

  At that moment there was a deep rumbling sound forward of the island, and the bitch-box inside lit off with a panicked call. A roar of steam came out of the forward stack. From Gar’s days as a new ensign on a battleship, he knew that volume of steam meant someone had deliberately lifted the safety valves on a boiler. That meant flooding had reached a main machinery space. A moment later, the volume of steam increased. Gar looked back at the major, who was clearly terrified of what he was seeing. He saw Gar looking at him.

  “I cannot swim,” he said. Gar couldn’t hear him over the roar of the escaping steam, so he said it again.

  Now Gar knew why the major was so scared and, more importantly, why he’d bullied Gar out of the pilothouse. The initiative had passed to him, the prisoner.

  “Not a problem,” he said, shouting over the roar of the steam. “I can swim. We need to find the life jacket lockers. There’ll be some on the flight deck, and probably more down on the hangar deck. Come on, let’s go look.”

  Yamashita took one more look at the panicked scene inside the pilothouse and said, “Yes, we go.”

  They took the exterior ladders down the port side of the island structure. As they went down they saw one of the destroyers closing in on the port side from astern. The flight deck crowd was growing, and so was the starboard list. Gar had to keep one hand on the bulkhead as they scrambled down the ladders. There were no lights showing anywhere on the flight deck, and the civilians were clearly panicked. Gar saw no one wearing a life jacket. Surely they hadn’t gone to sea with no life jackets, he thought. The thunder of escaping steam was beginning to diminish as the boilers bled out five decks below. They were still making way, however, so she had propulsion power available.

  When they reached the flight deck, Gar told the major to go find life jackets. He sat down against the island bulkhead, next to a row of pallets filled with tubing and valves. No one seemed to notice him. The white padded jacket helped, and he kept his head down. Then he remembered the prisoners clipped to that wire down on the fantail. He could find his way back there, he thought, and cut them loose somehow, but only if the goons had abandoned them. The major returned empty-handed and more than a little white-eyed. He had to catch himself against the bulkhead to stop his forward motion.

  “No one knows where the life jackets are, and there are no boats or rafts. Goddamn navy.”

  Gar almost grinned but caught himself. There were hundreds of pallets stacked all over the flight deck; if nothing else they could upend one and use it as a float when the time came, and he was getting more and more convinced that the time was coming. There was a sudden outbreak of yelling as one of the electric trucks they used to move stuff around the flight deck went rolling straight over the starboard side, pausing momentarily in a catwalk before upending and disappearing into the sea. Two sailors trying to catch and stop it went over the side with it. The list was becoming steep enough that some of the pallets themselves were starting to slide.

  The escaping-steam noise stopped suddenly as if someone had put a stopper in the escape piping. Perhaps the sea had done that, Gar thought. The ship felt different now, heavier, and the period of her normally ponderous sea roll was increasing. That, together with the fact that she was hanging for a moment at the end of each roll, meant that her stability was being rapidly compromised. She was no longer plunging ahead at 18 knots, either. Gar grabbed the major’s arm.

  “The prisoners down on the fantail,” he said. “They are clipped to a wire. I want to go back there and save them.”

  Yamashita was beside himself with indecision. His entire world depended on permission, tradition, or actual orders. All of these things were disappearing before his eyes, and this giant ship was leaning over to take a look down into the 3,000 feet of water beckoning beneath her keel.

  “You’re an officer,” Gar said. “If you order the guards to release the prisoners, they will do it. Then we can make preparations for going into the water. But we must hurry.”

  “You can swim?”

  “Yes, I can swim. I will help you, but it would be better to go from the stern than from way up here, yes?”

  One of the loaded pallets positioned between them and the rest of the flight deck made a noise and then started sliding toward them. They had to move fast to avoid being pinned against the bulkhead. Other pallets followed their leader. Gar took the lead once they were moving aft, easing his way through the increasingly noisy crowd of frightened shipyard workers on the flight deck. There were some chief petty officers out on the deck now, trying to restore order. They were quickly surrounded by a throng of shouting workers, probably wanting to know where the life jackets were.

  They continued aft, away from the increasingly agitated crowd swarming out of the ship and onto the flight deck. The list had stabilized for the moment, but they were still over between 10 and 15 degrees. Gar could feel what was happening, and with that thick armored flight deck, Shinano was already top-heavy. Add to that the tons of stacked pallets and a thousand or so human beings, and the damage control officer had his hands full. Gar found a wool watch cap on the deck, which he pulled down over his head. With that and the padded jacket he was less obviously one of the POWs.

  He didn’t know how to get back to the fantail except by going down to the hangar bay. The major balked at that, especially since they were on the downhill side. Going down into the ship was not his idea of safety just then. Gar explained that he needed him to deal with the guards, and that he needed Gar to keep him afloat. They would go down, get those guys freed, and then come back up to the flight deck if Yamashita insisted. The major sputtered about it not being allowed, but then relented as Gar started down an interior passageway ladder on the starboard side. When they came out onto the hangar bay, Gar smelled something that gave him the chills: bilge water. He knew it as a unique smell, a mélange of saltwater, fuel oil, dead marine life, rust, and oil-soaked pipe lagging, all overlaid with a warm, humid blanket of condensed steam. It meant only one thing: The main engineering spaces were flooding.

  They made their way aft some 400 feet along one side of the hangar bay. They saw at least three damage control parties furiously working gasoline-powered pumps and another one operating a bucket brigade. For God’s sake, Gar thought. A bucket brigade for a 70,000-ton ship. The dozens of lights embedded along the overhead of the hangar bay were flickering, and Gar could hear the roar of diesel generators in the emergency service rooms on the margins
of the bay. The list seemed less extreme down there, closer to the waterline, which made sense. They were probably counterflooding, much the way a sub trimmed its attitude underwater. There was a wet mist visibly gathering along the hangar bay’s overhead, though, which Gar hoped to God wasn’t gasoline vapor.

  The final passageway was blocked by overturned pallets of supplies, so they ended up clambering over the mess to get out to the fantail. It was much darker back here, and Gar saw buckled deck plates on the starboard quarter. Two of the diagonal braces for the flight deck had been bent by the blast of the first torpedo. The vibration from the screws was much more pronounced than before, especially the ones on the port side. He wondered if their tips were coming out of the water because of the list. Why the hell hadn’t they stopped the ship? From the size of the wake, it looked like they were still making 10 knots or so.

  The good news was that the goons had fled. The bad news was that all the POWs were still attached to that wire, and Gar saw no way to cut it or the lock that attached it to a padeye on the bulkhead. The black water of the Pacific Ocean looked awfully close as he stared at the damage to the starboard quarter of the ship. Then he jumped as a dark gray shape came out of the gloom, passing very close aboard. It was one of the destroyers, and half her crew was topside, holding ropes and nets, obviously bent on taking people off the carrier. The major saw that, and for a moment Gar thought he was going to jump for it, but then the tin can disappeared around the corner of the fantail.