THE LAST LIEUTENANT: A Todd Ingram Novel (The Todd Ingram Series Book 1)

by JOHN J. GOBBELL

  DeWitt fell silent and gazed in the distance.

  Ingram said, "Look at it this way, Major. If I had a tank battle on my hands, I'd be well advised to turn it over to you, the Army officer. Wouldn't I?"

  Holloway suddenly took great interest in water sloshing in the bilge. DeWitt stared at Luzon.

  Ingram growled, "Look, damnit. Both of you. It's nineteen-hundred miles to Darwin. We're going to be cozy for a while. So get used to it. I want you guys to keep away from each other's throats. There's too much at stake. If you have something to say, say it to me. Then that's it. I'll take it from there. That goes for everyone here, because if anything is going to get us through, it's brains, not rank. Got it?"

  DeWitt nodded. Holloway said, "Yessir."

  * * * * *

  Thirty minutes later the 51 Boat closed to within three miles of the destroyers. With running lights flamboyantly blazing, the ships steamed in opposite directions, stiffly passing one another like strutting wooden soldiers.

  Ingram shook his head, "No sense getting too near. Let's take a look." He handed Holloway a flashlight, then opened a duffle, stooped, and pulled out a chart. Holloway kneeled alongside, wrapped his fingers over the lens, and flicked on the light letting a hemoglobin redness ooze across the chart.

  Ingram ran his finger along the coastline and muttered, "...about here." Then he barked over his shoulder, "Forester!"

  "Sir?" replied the helmsman.

  "Head for the beach," Ingram said.

  "What?" said Forester.

  "Right there," said Ingram, slicing a forearm at the coast. Steer for that hill. Looc Cove should be just to the right."

  "Aye, aye, Sir." Forester's tone carried a touch of doubt. But he swung the tiller, and the 51 Boat headed toward Luzon. Her motion changed as she settled on her new course. With the waves off her stern, she wallowed deeply, making Forester curse and swing his tiller in wild arcs to maintain rudder control.

  Ingram rolled up the chart and said to Holloway. "Wake everyone. Put 'em in life jackets and post two bow lookouts."

  "Right." Holloway lurched forward, shaking the men.

  DeWitt asked, "How far do you think we've come?"

  "Seven, eight miles," said Ingram, looking back to the entrance to Manila Bay. A fine mist still obscured Corregidor and Caballo.

  "Not far."

  "No, not far. But we were almost on those damn destroyers. It's too risky trying to sneak through the picket line tonight," said Ingram, stepping aside to let Whittaker stumble aft to his engine controls.

  With eyes drooping they fought sleep for twenty minutes as the 51 Boat dipped and wallowed. But then, her pitching motion became more pronounced with the swells growing sharper. Then the waves started to tumble and break.

  Ingram said, "Slow ahead."

  Whittaker ran the throttle down to idle and over the exhaust's muted gurgle; they heard waves crash in the distance. Again, the 51 Boat climbed the back of a wave, crested it, and surged majestically down the front with Ingram enveloped by the perfumed heaviness of vegetation and sodden earth. Suddenly, as if someone had switched off the lights, he looked up seeing they had surged under tall bluffs masking them from moonlight.

  "Shit," muttered Forester.

  Something loomed ahead, and Ingram opened his mouth to shout--

  Sunderland, the bow lookout, beat him to it, "That way, damnit!" He waved frantically to the right.

  Forester shoved the tiller over, turning the boat to starboard. Abruptly, a rocky islet, at least eighty feet high, emerged from darkness.

  "Watch out!" several shouted.

  "Jeez!" Forester again leaned into his tiller, leaving the jagged islet only twenty-five yards to port, where waves crashed at its jagged base, shooting misted water thirty feet in the air. After a moment, Forester straitened to parallel the coast, heading for a bright patch of water where the bluff line dipped. They rolled and pitched back into moonlight where Ingram, spotting a gap in the headlands, gasped, "There."

  Forester nodded and steered for it.

  "This place inhabited?" said Dewitt.

  Ingram unrolled the chart. His fingers were so stiff they seemed like they were made from brass cartridges. DeWitt flipped on the light and they stooped again to examine it. "Hmmm, seven fathoms of water in Looc Cove but it doesn't indicate any villages or people."

  "We better be ready," said DeWitt.

  Ingram nodded and said, "Sunderland. Pass out the weapons."

  The muttering gunner's mate upended boxes and duffels, digging out the Springfield 30-06s, BARs, and ammunition.

  Holloway said, "Lot of good those pop-guns are going to do."

  "You'd rather be without them?" said DeWitt.

  "I didn't say that," said Holloway.

  Rolling up the chart, Ingram said, "Knock it off, you two!"

  Holloway muttered, "Sorry."

  The Buda's exhaust gurgled as moonlit ripples danced in their wake. Soon they were abeam of Looc Cove's yawning mouth where inside, trees and vegetation grew in a dark, hodgepodge fashion all the way to the water's edge.

  Forester grunted, "Well, Skipper?"

  Ingram pointed to a clump of low palms near a rocky outcrop. "Under those trees."

  With the 51 Boat weaving drunkenly in confused ground swell, Forester eased his tiller and they headed through the entrance. The next moment found them suddenly inside, where the waters were smooth and shimmered in moonlight.

  To them, it was too quiet and too peaceful. They cocked weapons and flipped off safeties. Ingram found himself swallowing rapidly and, suddenly, his stomach felt as he'd eaten a pound of cement. His eyes flicked from object to shadowy object, convinced each shape was a deadly menace. Over there, he was sure a dark, low mound was really a platoon of Japanese riflemen. And that clump of coconut trees directly ahead masked a machine gun nest. Barely visible in the palm grove to starboard was a 105-millimeter howitzer pointed right at him, with grinning guncrew hunched behind the splinter shield ready to yank the firing lanyard.

  Thirty yards from shore, Ingram croaked, "Cut."

  Whittaker shifted to neutral, and soon Sunderland and Yardly jumped in shallow water and caught the bow just as the boat squeaked into sand. Grunting and sweating, they worked the boat another twenty feet, where it finally was wedged among thick tree stumps, fallen logs, and dense foliage.

  Ingram said softly, "Okay."

  Whittaker switched off the engine.

  The absence of sound was devastating. Ingram could have sworn the thumping of his heart and the crunching of his blood circulating was audible to others. And the low buzz of insects and the occasional bird squawk was eerie, something he hadn't heard for at least three months. No pillboxes, no riflemen, no howitzers shot at them. Looc Cove was empty, and nature thrived as if the hideous atrocities eight miles to the north had never occurred.

  A mosquito buzzed in his ear. He slapped it, finding it almost felt good.

  Others slapped and swore. Holloway popped one on his neck saying, "Haven't done this for a while."

  "Time for the goop," said Yardly, digging into his medical kit for repellent.

  In filtered moonlight Ingram caught their vacuous stares as they slowly smeared on Yardley’s potion. Quietly he said, "We sleep aboard. Major DeWitt and I will take the first watch. Good night."

  For the first time in over three months, the men settled into sleep uninterrupted by thundering explosions, putrid smoke, and screams of the dying. While their snoring organized itself into a rhythmic pattern, DeWitt sat heavily on a thwart, folded his arms, and said, "Think we should go ashore and look around?"

  "Let's stay aboard and get our rest."

  DeWitt nodded in and soon his eyelids began to droop.

  "Otis."

  "Huh?"

  "Come on."

  "Yeah."

  They stared at one another for a moment. Then DeWitt looked dully over the side at shimmering wavelets that occasionally slapped the hull's boot-topping.

&nb
sp; Like DeWitt, Ingram watched the little waves. And like DeWitt, he started to slip. Luckily, a mosquito landed on his cheek and he slapped it. It helped a little, and he peered into the South China Sea where those damned destroyers relentlessly paced back and forth. Their lights still glistened as if it were Christmas.

  Christmas...red and green...when would...he shook his head. What day is it? Not December 25. This is May 6. So what? Damnit! He shook his head and rubbed his eyes, seeing the destroyer's lights swim into focus.

  Between Fortune Island and the coastal city of Nasugbu, another two destroyers marched on east-west courses. "Got us trapped in here," Ingram muttered. "Any ideas Otis?

  "Otis?" Ingram turned finding Major Otis DeWitt's chin rested solidly on his chest. But he didn't snore.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  7 May, 1942

  U.S.S. Wolffish (SS 204)

  Balabac Strait

  The 1500-ton Gato Class submarine raced from the South China Sea into the Balabac Strait at flank speed. She was surfaced on a near easterly course and at 0415, cleared Cape Melville by three miles to port. Heading toward the Nasubata Channel, she hoped to poke her snout into the Sulu Sea by sunrise. With number two engine on battery charge, the other three bellowing Fairbanks Morse diesels drove the Wolffish at eighteen knots, pulling an enormous phosphorescent wake over a sea unencumbered by wind. But the Balabac Strait swirled with ominous turbulence from a two-knot tidal current gushing from the South China Sea into the Sulu, a body of water in the southwestern Philippine Archipelago the size of New Mexico.

  After picking up the second load of evacuees from Corregidor, the Wolffish had assumed her patrol station in the southeast corner of the South China Sea. Her passengers were surprised they weren't going to Australia, immediately. They were told the U.S. Navy wasn't there just to run a bus service. The Wolffish was in the Philippines on the submarine's stated mission: Sink enemy ships and shipping through offensive patrols at focal points.

  The night was overcast, and Helmut Döttmer found himself on the sub's bridge, with binoculars in hand, wedged against another sailor. After four days the Abwehr agent finally felt better. With half the evacuees, he'd been assigned to the after torpedo room, sleeping on a "hot bunk" schedule. Initially they were desperate for sleep and, when yielding the bunk to another, found a nook on the deck, tossed down a blanket, and slept some more.

  While awake, of course, the Corregidor people were amazed at the food available. The crew, for the most part, were tolerant and stepped back to let the half-starved GIs gorge themselves. Döttmer was astonished at how good the fried chicken tasted. But it was very rich, and the first night he threw it up. After that, his system adapted and he couldn't get enough. The crew laughed, as he and the others launched into mountains of the mouth-watering stuff. And mashed potatoes. And butter. And peas. And biscuits and more butter. And gallons of grape juice. Apple pie.

  But Ronnie had received a top-secret message about a Japanese task force retiring from a battle off Australia's northeast coast, an area known as the Coral Sea. Ronnie briefed his officers in the wardroom, knowing the two stewards hovering in the pantry would put out the word well before he announced it on the 1MC. Indeed, the essence of Ronnie's message was that Navy flyboys had given the Japs a licking in the Coral Sea. Now, a big fat carrier limped for the Home Islands with bomb damage. She was expected to transit the Sulu Sea sometime tomorrow via the Sibutu Passage off the coast of Borneo. And, by golly, Ronnie slammed a fist on the wardroom table, the Wolffish would be there to intercept and sink the sonofabitch.

  Ronnie was Lieutenant Commander Roland M. Galloway, the Wolffish's captain. When relaxed, he wore an easy, lopsided grin, and the crew loved him. Döttmer never learned his real name and everyone called him Ronnie behind his back and, of course captain to his face. He was freckle-faced, ruddy complected, two hundred pounds and not an inch taller than five nine and had been an All-American fullback at Northwestern. He presided over his officers with broad grins and slaps on the rump; his wardroom talked their crazy version of American football with elbow nudges and roars of mock incredulity. Perpetually sweating, Ronnie wore washed-out khaki shirts with cut-off sleeves. And his shirttail hung out, a major infraction in larger ships of the U.S. Navy. Always clean-shaven, he allowed his officers and crew to wear beards if they were neatly trimmed.

  Except for the boot ensign, Mr. Gruber, the officers called each other by first names, which to Döttmer was one of many breaches of military conduct. He was amazed at the lack of discipline in this submarine: It bordered on insubordination. Yet they did their jobs well. In fact, Döttmer had to admit things went very smoothly on the Wolffish.

  After the third day, Döttmer was given permission to roam the submarine. It was difficult and terribly crowded. With the Corregidor people, men were squished everywhere and the place smelled like a locker-room, especially when they were submerged.

  Even so, it didn't take Döttmer long to find what he wanted. It was a room the size of a closet in the after part of the control room. A bakelite label over the door read: Radio Room. Authorized Personnel Only. Three times the door had burst open while Döttmer eased by. Lingering, he'd been able to study the cramped little space and its equipment. He was encouraged to see a large radio transmitter. Now, he had to figure out how to get to it.

  Escaping Corregidor, he not only had a good chance for survival, but also a good chance to do what he had to do before time ran out. If Epperson's report was correct, time would run out on 4 June, 1942. Midway. Chances were, he figured, the Wolffish would still be on patrol when Yamamoto attacked. He had to do something. Now.

  Hurry.

  * * * * *

  On the bridge, Döttmer listened to water sizzle down the port side while occasional wavelets slapped the ballast tanks and shot through the limber holes. Accompanying this was the thunder of the Wolffish's four diesels, with the engineers running them at peak output so they could dive at first light in the Sulu Sea's deep waters.

  Here, the bottom shoaled to twelve fathoms. It was too shallow to dive, so Ronnie had posted four extra lookouts topside; the two regulars were high in the periscope shears, with the officer of the deck and junior officer of the deck scanning port and starboard. Döttmer stood beside the chief radioman on the bridge's port. Two more sailors were stationed on the starboard side with Ronnie strutting back and forth, binoculars raised constantly sweeping the horizon. This was unlike the Ronnie that Döttmer had met three days ago. This Ronnie was very serious and, for the first time, Döttmer noticed his teeth were rather pointed, almost predatory.

  Occasionally, Ronnie yelled to the lookouts to keep a sharp watch. And just not for ships, he boomed with deep resonance. Watch out for logs and driftwood. The Balabac Strait is known for all sorts of crap, he exhorted. Two months ago, the Pickerel had lost her pitsword, a speed-measuring device, when she ran over a damned palm tree in broad daylight.

  Nobody dared to counter Ronnie about the darkness. If something was there, they'd hit it. If they did spot it, it would be too late.

  Lieutenant Sampson was the OOD and Ensign Gruber JOOD. It didn't take long for Döttmer to learn the crew called Gruber Lil' Adolph because of a miscalculated attempt to emulate the moustache of movie actor George Brent.

  The Wolffish's crew was lucky. If Döttmer were caught referring to anyone in Germany by the name of "Lil' Adolph," he'd most assuredly be hanging by piano wire in an SS subbasement, wiggling, gurgling, slowly choking to death.

  In a way, the joke was on Himmler and his SS thugs. In 1937, his mother was suspected of being Jewish. But Wilhelm Furtwängler, music director of the Berlin Philharmonic, was convinced it was all a bureaucratic mix-up and interceded in behalf of the Döttmer ménage. With extensive records and great bravado, the maestro painted his lead trumpeter and family as pure Aryan to Reichsminister Goebbels, who in turn sold the concept to Himmler. The pressure was off.

  But eighteen months ago, while young Helmut was away at naval off
icer's training, a heated argument broke out between Elsa Döttmer and her talented husband, Kurt. It was a rainy evening and during dinner, the conversation turned to the war. Elsa uncharacteristically screamed that she wanted to return to New York, where young Helmut had been born and lived until age ten learning flawless English with an American accent.

  "Why?" bellowed a red-faced Kurt Döttmer, once again sensing a threat to his career with the Berlin Philharmonic. He didn't have to add that little Helmut had been miserable in America. That gang of young thugs, jealous of his dexterity on the violin, had ambushed him on his way home from school one day, beat him senseless, then smashed his left hand in a door.

  "Because, Wolfgang is Jewish." Wolfgang was her sister Frieda's husband. The childless couple lived in New York, where Wolfgang Schweitzer worked as a magazine editor.

  Elsa beat her little fists against Kurt's chest, "And that's enough to tip everything back the other way. Himmler will find out. He has sources; even in America!" shrieked Elsa.

  Neither realized that their son had just quietly walked in unannounced. He wanted to surprise them wearing a fresh navy officer's uniform with shiny gold braid, designating him as a brand new leutnant zur see: ensign. But seeing them like this, he stood in the shadows and said nothing while rain dripped off his new officer's cap and greatcoat.

  Kurt Döttmer was astonished. "Wolfgang? Jewish?"

  "Yes," cried Elsa.

  "That little bastard! Why didn't you tell me?" Kurt raged.

  Tears ran down Elsa's face, "I didn't really know until his father introduced himself to me on the tram two days ago. He was on the run and asked me for money."

  "Gott." Kurt Döttmer sat heavily on an overstuffed loveseat. He scratched at his moustache for a while, then asked, "Did you give him any?"

  "Yes. But all I had were twenty Reichmarks."

  Kurt nodded and pat the loveseat. "Sit here, liebchen."