by Robb White
In the ocean again, they swam back to the gray sacks of supplies and then started from the wall, moving out into the channel.
Amos had not gone twenty feet before he saw it, lying as though it had been carefully placed there, in the branches of a huge fan coral.
Motioning to John and Max, he swam down to the coral.
The scuba was complete and undamaged. Amos lifted it out of the coral, noticing that the weight belt had been deliberately buckled to the pack harness.
As John and Max joined him, Amos held up the compass attached to the belt. Reeder had been assigned to bring that down.
The three hung there a moment, staling at the gear, and then Amos made a slicing motion across his throat and pointed back toward their supplies.
It was tiring work, but at last they had all the sacks inside the cave. As Amos came up with the last one and pushed it out on the beach, he looked around. "That it?"
John counted the sacks. "Yeah. Let's break out some water."
"Reeder's scuba," Max said. "I left it on that piece of brain coral. With my eel."
As he started back into the water, Amos said, "Don't waste the air, Max. We'll get it next trip."
John passed the jug of drinking water around and they all drank.
At last Amos said, "There's no use looking for Reeder any more. He never came down."
"What'd he do?" Max asked. "Walk on the water? He sure thought he could."
"When I went over the side I saw a line trailing from the bow," Amos told them. "I thought it was just an Irish pennant, but now I'm pretty sure Reeder rigged it so he could grab it and get back aboard. Look how careful he was to sink his scuba so Tanaka wouldn't see it."
"It didn't do him much good," John said. "That close in, with people watching, Tanaka couldn't let him stay aboard long. Tanaka had a gun, you know."
"Did he?" Max asked.
"Hidden with the coding board. Right where you said, Amos. Under the floor boards. And, you know something? It was a Japanese pistol."
"Why not?" Amos asked. "Well, as far as we're concerned, that's that. Have you still got the coding board, John?"
"Right here." John patted one of the sacks.
"That was a good move," Amos said. "No matter who Tanaka is, he's got to come back to get that board." He looked over at Max. "So let's get on with it. Max, why don't you and I take the first cruise . . T
"Hold it," John said. "Where'd our theory go? If Reeder didn't set off that mine, what did?"
"We don't even know it was a mine," Amos said.
"If the Japanese flyboys are like some of the ones I know," Max said, "one of them might have pulled the wrong lever and instead of dropping his wheels, dropped a bomb."
"Or, they might have been bore-sighting a gun somewhere," Amos said.
"It could've been a torpedo," John said. "That's what they sound like. And feel like. But I still think it was a mine."
"Then what blew it?" Max asked.
John laughed. "Remember Hingman? He didn't amuse me often, but when he said mines sometimes went off just to be mischievous, it tickled me."
"Whatever," Amos said. "I checked the time soon after it went off, and Tanaka couldn't have been anywhere near it. He was at least two or three miles into the lagoon."
Amos slung his gear on and stood up. "Maybe somebody could do a little light housekeeping while Max and I are gone."
"And what would you gentlemen like for dinner?" John asked. "I have delicious K-rations or delicious K-rations."
"Check us for magnetic before you start cooking anything delicious," Amos told him. "We want to come back, you know."
As John checked all the metal they were carrying to make sure that none of it was ferrous, Amos said to Max, "We'll use that big piece of brain coral for a point of departure. You take the lagoon side, angling out about ten degrees. I'll take the seaward side. Go out half an hour and then come back, inside your out line."
"Okay. If I find a mine, you want me to bring it back in here?"
"Splendid idea," John said. "We need a bigger hole in the ceiling than that little tiling."
Amos grinned. "Just mark it, Max, and leave it alone. I don't think we ought to fiddle with them until we've got a pretty good idea of what makes them work."
"I'm way ahead of you," Max said.
The mines were standing as though in ranks for as far as Amos could see across the channel.
They were not metal balls, but cylinders, with flat tops, which Amos could see had been welded on. They stood upright on the bottom, not moving in the currents of tide and waves.
He hovered above one of them in the clear water, studying it.
There were four Hertz horns set into the top plate. Seaweed was growing on them, waving slowly back and forth with the slow current. There seemed to be nothing unusual about the horns; he had seen many like them in Death Row.
A square metal box was also set into the top, and Amos assumed that it was a part of the firing mechanism.
He could see no other attachments, and as he swam on out into the channel, he wondered what kept the mines on the bottom, for he could see no anchor or cable.
He estimated that they were set about fifty feet apart. He could see only two rows of them but realized that there could be more beyond the range of his vision.
They had been carefully laid, each one on a patch of sand, none of them tilted by rocks or coral. He guessed that they had been put down by divers.
Keeping on a due-north course he swam slowly above them, growing so used to seeing them that they became like cracks in a sidewalk.
And then one was missing.
The explosion had scooped out a fifty-foot-wide dish in the bottom, flinging rocks and coral out to the edge of it.
Amos swam deeper into the dish, studying the bottom carefully.
The gun looked very black against the white sand. He could see nothing attached to it—no wire or lever. He swam down until he saw the words u. s. navy engraved along the barrel.
It was a standard-issue, .45 Colt semi-automatic pistol.
It had not been there long, for there was no oxidation. Working the slide, he caught the round in his
hand and then took out the clip and counted the remaining rounds. Only one was missing. He put the cartridges back into the clip, slipped it in place, and hooked the gun to his belt with the ring in the butt.
A little farther along he saw the twisted propeller shaft, the propeller and shaft log still attached to it. Beyond that was the diesel engine, tools and gear scattered around it.
The radio lay almost at the edge of the dish on the far side.
There were no remnants of humans, and when he looked up he could see nothing floating in the water above him.
Amos turned slowly and headed back, staying much farther away from the mines now that the pistol hung at his belt.
As he neared the lava wall and turned toward the cave entrance, the light began to fade. For a moment he thought it must be the sun setting, but it was much too early for that. Another rain squall up there, he thought, hoping John would catch some of it as it fell through the hole in the ceiling.
At the first sound of rain on the surface, he glanced up and saw the debris floating in the water. Sacks of copra, almost waterlogged, moved sluggishly in the waves. There was a piece of canvas, a sail, half unfurled. There were shattered bits of timber and planking. He recognized one of the locker doors.
Then something white dangling down into the water caught his eye.
And there were the blue tennis shoes.
Going up, he saw that Tanaka was lying lengthwise on a copra sack, almost submerging it, his legs hanging limp at one end, his hands and wrists at the other.
Amos was about to reach out and touch the ankles to see if he was alive when he heard the thrum of propellers.
For a moment he lay still, getting a bearing on the sound but still unable to see the hull of the boat.
It sounded as though it was close inshore and
moving slowly. He could not be sure with the sound of the rain confusing him, but it seemed that the boat was starting and stopping at irregular intervals.
Reeder's scuba lay beside the moray on the growth of brain coral a little to his left, and he swam down to it, getting the scuba and bringing it back.
Now he could see the hull of the boat clearly, about a hundred feet away, and could hear the sound of the motors but not the thrum of the screws.
There were half a dozen copra sacks in the water around the boat and, when one of them disappeared, Amos assumed that they were methodically being picked up by the crew aboard.
Then the screws began again, the boat moving slowly toward him.
At the first touch on his ankles, Tanaka jerked his feet feebly, but Amos pulled him straight down, walking his hands up until he had him by the head. Holding him with one hand, he pushed the mouth-
piece in between his teeth and clamped Tanaka's jaws.
Tanaka stopped struggling, and in a moment air began to burst from the valve.
Amos got one of the harness straps around Tanaka's back and buckled it, the scuba hanging awkwardly in front of him, the lead weights dangling around his feet. Tanaka seemed badly hurt. Even with Amos helping, he could barely get his arms around the tanks.
They were both sinking slowly, the boat now making a shadow on them, when, from nowhere, a man appeared.
He was small and very muscular, equipped with nothing but small goggles, each eyepiece separate. He had a knife in his right hand.
For an instant he and Amos stared at each other, both of them motionless with surprise.
Then Amos shoved Tanaka toward the bottom and let him go. Reaching out, he caught the man's knife hand at the wrist and pulled him straight down. At the same time he twisted the arm up and behind him. Clamping his other arm around the man's neck, he held him, but could not prevent the man's free hand from grabbing the air hose and yanking the regulator out of his mouth.
To save what air he had, Amos resisted as little as possible, just holding the knife up between his shoulder blades and putting all his effort into the arm that was choking him. He did nothing about
the man's free hand and legs, which clawed and beat at him.
It didn't take long. First the arm went limp and Amos slid his hand up and took the knife. Then the whole body sagged and collapsed, and Amos turned him loose and got his mouthpiece in again.
They were now almost under the bow of the ship, which was wallowing in the waves with no way on. He could hear the motors idling, but there was no thrash of propellers.
Dragging the man by the hand, Amos dived down to the moray.
He put the man against the coral, holding him there with his knee, and then opened the eel's mouth and drove the fangs into the man's neck, locking them in place.
As the blood oozed out, Amos got the man's knife and stabbed it into the eel, slanting it down so that it would not fall out.
Taking the man by the shoulders, he moved with him into the deep shadow of the boat's hull and then swam upward, pushing the man as he went, the eel, looking almost alive, turning and twisting as it hung from the throat.
When he reached the barnacled keel of the boat, he pushed the man around the turn of the bilge and kept pushing him until he came to the surface at about amidships.
Amos retreated back to the keel and waited, hoping the rain wouldn't suddenly stop. With the rain spattering on the surface and the clouds dark above
it, he knew that the men in the boat couldn't see down into the water at all. But if the rain stopped and the sun came out, they might spot Tanaka or his air exhaust coming up in streaks of silver bubbles.
There was a commotion in the water where the man was floating, his feet and the tail of the eel still visible, and then both disappeared, going straight up.
Amos put his fins against the rough hull of the boat and pushed himself down.
Tanaka was on the bottom, half-sitting, half-lying against the lava, the air bubbles streaming up its corrugated surface.
Taking him gently, Amos moved him toward the tunnel mouth, and into it, and then followed him.
Amos waited a few feet inside, watching for any other divers, but none appeared, and at last he heard the propellers start and saw the shadow of the boat heading back into the lagoon.
He turned to Tanaka, moving him so that he could get him through the tunnel without hurting him.
At the end of the tunnel, Amos surfaced and looked cautiously into the cave.
Max had already come back and was out of his gear. John was arranging the supplies over on the beach.
Amos pulled Tanaka clear of the tunnel and brought his head up above the water. "Give me a hand; he's hurt."
John and Max stared at him for a second and then splashed out into the water.
They swam Tanaka across the pool and let him lie with his body in the water and his head on the gravel as they took the scuba off.
"Leave him in the water until we get his clothes off," Max said. "Don't bend his neck or anything until we find out what's wrong with him."
Tanaka's breath was fast and shallow. "Is he out?" Amos asked.
Tanaka said weakly, "No."
When Max got his shirt off, John said in a whisper, "Look at that."
There was a great, swollen, purple bruise across the right side of Tanaka's back, the edges of it oozing dark, thick blood. It looked to Amos as though someone had hit him with a two-by-four, for the bruise was about three inches wide and extended down below his armpit.
Max began to touch him, the big hands moving gently. "His backbone's okay and so's his neck, but I think he's got some busted ribs. Something really belted him. Look, tear up one of those bags, make some strips."
Max peeled out of his wet suit and spread it on the beach. Then, as though lifting a child, he picked Tanaka out of the water and laid him face up on the rubber suit. "How you feeling, Commander?"
"Sick," Tanaka said.
"That's okay. We'll strap you up."
"You know how?" John asked.
"I know how they used to do it to me. Whenever some big mother broke my ribs, they'd strap me up so tight I couldn't move or breathe. Then they'd say, 'Get back in there, tiger, and give it to 'em/ m
Tanaka tried to smile, but it wasn't much good.
John was cutting one of the supply sacks into strips as Amos came out of the water and started taking off his gear.
"Hey!" John said. "Where'd you get the gun?"
Amos unhooked the .45. "I found it on the bottom. The boat's gone. Blown all to pieces."
"Gone?"
"Scattered all over."
John suddenly looked like a hurt and confused child. Even his voice sounded a little childish as he said, "But how are we going to get home?"
"And all the people?" Max said.
Amos turned back to Tanaka. "Is anyone else in the water?"
Tanaka shook his head. "They're gone."
"You're lucky," Amos said.
"I wasn't aboard." He winced as Max slid one of the straps under his back. "I was on the fantail when something hit me from behind. I think it was a section of the handrail, because it was in the water with me."
"It knocked you overboard?" Amos asked.
Tanaka nodded. "I saw Reeder forcing the crew into the engine room. He had that gun. . . ." Tanaka tried to point at the .45. "He shot at me again in the water, but he missed."
"You think his first shot hit the handrail?" Amos asked. "And then that hit you?"
Tanaka nodded.
"In a way, you were lucky," Amos told him. "That explosion blew the engine all the way out of the boat."
"Those poor guys," Max said softly. "They weren't even in this war. And they were almost home."
"Reeder got the boat underway," Tanaka said. "At first he held his course into the lagoon. But then he speeded up, and headed out again. It must have made them suspicious, so they fired at him. I was too far away to see, and it was raining."
<
br /> "They didn't shoot," Amos said. "It was a mine."
Tanaka closed his eyes, his face suddenly tight with pain.
"He's got some busted ones, all right," Max said, tying a strip of the sack around his chest. "And if he was closer to that explosion than we were, it might've busted something else. I felt like my guts were caving in."
"No boat," John said, staring out at the pool of water. "What are we going to do, Amos?"
Amos shrugged.
"No radio," John said.
Tanaka, his eyes still shut, said, "John, was that really the coding board you had?"
"Yes, it was."
"That's good."
"Why?"
"We can still communicate."
"With what?"
"At least we've got it," Tanaka said.
John looked at Amos and made a twilling motion, his finger pointed at his head. Amos nodded. "Take it easy, Commander. Do you want some water?"
Tanaka shook his head.
Amos studied him for a moment and then looked up at Max.
Max shrugged a little. "I don't know."
"You don't know what?" Tanaka said.
"Nothing, sir."
John had the coding-board case in his lap. The board lay on the pebbles beside him. "There aren't any key-code strips in the case, Commander."
Tanaka's smile was just a weak baring of his teeth. "I told you, we don't need strips. The keys are in my head, John."
"That's good."
"There're mines all across the channel," Amos told him. "I don't know what kind. Cylinders, John, with four Hertz on top and some sort of firing mechanism."
"Tricky?" John said.
"Could be."
Tanaka's voice sounded weak and pitiful. "What is today? Does anybody know what today is?"
"Lousy," John said.
"No, no. The date."
"The nineteenth," Amos told him.
"Are you sure?"
'That's what my watch says."
"We've got to be sure!" Tanaka said. He tried to sit up, but the pain slammed him back on the beach.