“No bloody chance of that!” Struthers whispered. “The little bastards will have boats all over the harbor in minutes! Best thing to do is head for the beach and go ashore, they won’t look for us there.” As they began to paddle toward the low beach they heard another explosion and felt a shuddering shock through the kayak’s thin canvas skin.
“That’s the one we just mined!” Struthers hissed. “We’re for it now, cobber!” They heard sharp cries on the ship back of them. “Keep it slow and steady,” Struthers muttered. “Bastards can’t see us unless we make a lot of fuss!”
The kayak’s bow slid into soft muck 50 feet from the shoreline and the two men eased themselves out of the small craft and pulled it up into the shelter of some small bushes.
“Stay here!” Struthers ordered and disappeared. He was back in five minutes.
“Big thorn bush up there a way. We’ll hole up in the bush. Good hiding place. Stay there the rest of the night and tomorrow. I hid in thorn bushes in New Guinea when I was running from the bloody Jap. Safe place to be if it’s big enough and this one is bloody big from what I could tell. Let’s break down the boat, can’t leave it here.” They worked swiftly in the dark, disassembling the small craft and stowing it in a bag of the kayak’s canvas skin.
The thorn bush was huge, covering almost an acre of ground. “On your belly, mate,” Struthers said. “Use the elbows and don’t raise your fucking head or the thorns will take your ruddy eyes out!” They wormed their way deep into the thorn bush, dragging the kayak behind them. After twenty minutes of crawling Struthers stopped.
“Far enough, this,” he said. “We’ve got a bit of an opening here, can sit up and stretch a bit without getting all bloody. You still got that bloody mine that was left over? Make sure that damned thing won’t go off, will you?”
“I made sure of that when we left the last ship,” Rhodes said. “So what do we do now?”
“First things first,” Struthers said. “Wait a bit here while I go back and make sure our tracks are swept away so no idle bastard of a Jap sees them and starts to wonder what kind of an animal crawled in here.” He left, elbowing his way along the ground.
He was back in a half hour, dragging a branch from a bush behind him. He lay on his back, breathing deeply in the humid air.
“Now, cobber, nothing else to do but sleep a bit. Bloody Jap isn’t likely to poke his head into a thorn bush without cause. Safe enough to sleep if you don’t snore. Tomorrow night we’ll take a walk down the beach a bit, put the little boat back together and go for a ride back to your comfy ship. Tra la la and all that sort of shit!”
Rhodes nodded in assent. He felt bone weary and assumed that part of the terrible weakness and exhaustion he felt was due to excitement and shock. He looked at the Australian, who was curled up in a fetus-like ball, his head pillowed in the crook of his elbow so that his nose and mouth were almost covered. Rhodes lay back on the soft leaf mold and listened. The guns they had heard earlier in the harbor had stopped firing. He could hear the distant sounds of men shouting, of boat engines badly in need of mufflers. Struthers had been right, the Japs had put small craft in the harbor. They wouldn’t have had a chance had they decided to make a break for the open sea. The Australian’s plan had merit. The odds were that they could walk nearly to the harbor mouth the next night and then launch the kayak. He rolled over and tucked his nose and mouth into his arm as the Australian had done and waited for sleep.
He dreamed, an odd, mixed-up two-dreams-in-one. He dreamt that he was eating breakfast, plump pork sausages and scrambled eggs and at the same time he dreamt that he was home in Pearl Harbor, in bed with June, whose slim leg was across his two legs and whose hands were gripping his face and chin in a tightening grip. The grip on his chin began to hurt and his eyes opened.
“Don’t you move one fucking muscle!” Struthers hissed in his ear. Don’t close your mouth when I let go of your face, don’t move your tongue!” He felt Struthers’ leg move off his legs and the terrible grip on his face and chin was suddenly gone. He moved his tongue tentatively and felt the smooth skin of a pork sausage between his lips. Struthers’ hand gently opened his mouth wider and he felt something granular, sandlike, being sprinkled into his mouth and there was a strong, salty taste. Struthers’ hands pulled his head sideways as he started to convulse in reflex against a flood of blood that suddenly filled his throat.
“Let it spew out, spit! Quietly, you bastard!”
Rhodes tried to clear his mouth, shuddering at the coppery taste of fear and blood. Struthers’ hands continued to press his face to one side.
“Bloody big leech right in your mouth, cobber!” Struthers whispered. “Saw him when I wokened up. Didn’t want you to bite down on the beggar or try to yank it out. The beggars leave their little teeth in you if you pull ‘em off or kill ‘em.” He released his grip on Rhodes’ face and Rhodes sat up and rubbed his forearm across his mouth.
Struthers handed him a khaki handkerchief. “Wipe out the inside of your mouth and keep it. Had one of those grab me by the tongue one night in New Guinea. Like to vomited my asshole up! Got a packet of salt from your cookie before we left. Like to have a bit of salt with me when I go walking about in this country. Salt makes the buggers disgorge and they don’t leave their teeth in you. Gives you a hell of an infection, do those teeth. Don’t know why. That bloke in your mouth was a feeder! Looked like a thing your Red Cross ladies sell at their place in Perth, what do you call ‘em? Ah, hot dogs or something like that. Awful things!” He shook his head as Rhodes suddenly retched silently. “Forget it, cobber. No harm done. Sunup in a bit so we can see where we are.”
The sun came up with a rush, bathing the island in a strong, white light. Struthers reached out and gripped Rhodes’ arm with a hard hand.
“Look!” he whispered.
The two men were sitting in a small clearing in the thorn bush, barely five yards from a wire fence. Through the thin fringe of vegetation they could see a large clearing on the other side of the fence. There were a number of buildings in the distance. Close to the fence, only a dozen yards from it, there was a small structure not more than five feet square and raised on stilt legs that made the floor of the structure about four feet above the ground. A flight of six wooden steps led up to the structure, which had an open doorway. As they watched, two Japanese soldiers, each with a shoulder stick and two buckets of water, neared the small structure. Struthers and Rhodes edged backward, deeper into the thorn bush.
“I know what that bloody shack is,” Struthers whispered. “Saw one just like it when I was a prisoner in New Guinea.
“That’s a ruddy shower bath! No running water in this place, I reckon. Soldier climbs that ladder leaning against the shack and takes up a bucket of water. Inside the shack there’s a big can hung with holes in its bottom. Soldier on the outside pours water into the can and the man under it gets a shower bath.” As he spoke one of the soldiers climbed up the ladder and the other soldier handed up a bucket of water.
Two Japanese came out of the building nearest to the shower. Each was naked except for a white breech clout. The younger of the two, a flat-bellied man, bowed politely as the other man, paunchy with spiky gray hair, slipped off his getas and climbed the steps into the small shack. The soldier at the top of the ladder began to pour water slowly. They could hear the splashing of the man bathing inside the shack. The portly man came out, slipped on his wooden clogs and walked away. The other man went up into the makeshift shower.
“Five thirty ack emma on the dot when he walked into that bloody home-made shower bath,” Struthers whispered. “Odds are they take their shower every morning at the same time. The Jap is a very orderly person, you know.” They watched the two soldiers gather up the buckets as the second man came out of the shower and walked toward the building he had come from.
Struthers stroked his mustache, his bright blue eyes distant. “When the light is a bit better, we can find a place in this bush where we get some good li
ght, do you think you could have a go at finding out what went wrong with the fucking timing devices on those mines? If it was the timing devices? I’ve got an idea in mind. That is, if you don’t need a bloody tool kit to get into the bastard.”
“I’ve got a Swiss Army knife with me,” Rhodes whispered. “It’s got a good screwdriver in it and the timing device is held on to the mine with four screws. What’s your idea?”
“Learned a thing or two running from the Jap in New Guinea.” Struthers whispered. “Learned that the Jap likes to do routine things in the same way at the same time each day. Like taking a morning bath.
“Bath house looks like it’s made of mostly tin. If you can find out what’s crook with the mine and fix it we might be able to leave our calling card. Might get ourselves a good bag. Fat boy must be a Colonel. Love to do in a Colonel! The natural enemy of a Major, d’ya’see, no matter what flag he’s under!”
Rhodes grinned and crawled toward the fence to take a look inside the Japanese area. Soldiers were milling about in a big clearing, forming up into lines. Struthers crawled up beside him.
“Bloody place is a full-bore army camp!” he whispered. “Must be thousands of the fuckers! Linin’ up for their chow. With all those bastards there fat boy might be a General. I hate the Generals worse than I do Colonels! Let’s get well back in the bush, cobber, no sense in takin’ chances.”
When the full glare of the midday sun was filtering into the thorn bush Rhodes carefully removed the timing mechanism on the mine and inspected it. He gave a little grunt of satisfaction and pointed with the screwdriver blade of his knife.
“Found out what was crook?” Struthers asked. Rhodes nodded and pointed with the screwdriver blade of his knife.
“The rate of the spring unwind is regulated by these three metal gates,” he whispered. “Whoever put this one together put the spring through only one gate. That would let the spring unwind a lot faster than it should have and it would trip the detonator as soon as it was unwound. Maybe all the others were the same.”
“Can you check if you’re right?”
Rhodes nodded. “When this spring is unwound it releases this other spring and that drives this detonator pin here down against a shotgun shell that’s in the mine itself and that discharges the explosives. All we have to do is check how long the spring takes to unwind when it’s threaded through all three gates. We can set it for two hours and time it. If it moves the detonator pin at the right time we’ve fixed it.”
“Bloody genius I’m with!” Struthers said.
“No genius,” Rhodes whispered. “Most explosive devices are pretty simple. Except torpedoes. Working on a torpedo is like working on a watch.” He set the timer for two hours and wound the spring and put the mechanism in his pocket and checked his watch. An hour and fifty-five minutes later he took the mechanism out of his pocket and laid it on the leaf mold in front of him, his eyes on his watch. The mechanism functioned at two hours and five seconds.
Struthers nodded in satisfaction. “Let’s crawl out to where we came in last night, cobber. I want to take a look-see at the ground we’ll be walkin’ over tonight. Don’t fancy barging off into the dark over ground I haven’t seen. Done that too many times in my life, it scares me.”
They crawled on their bellies under the thick thatch of thorns until they came to the place where they had entered the thorn bush. They looked out through the leaves at the harbor.
There were small boats milling about in the harbor, moving back and forth between several ships that appeared to be very low in the water. The first ship that had been mined lay on its side, its rusted bottom gleaming in the sunlight.
“I count eight of the ships down low in the water, they must be sitting on the bottom,” Rhodes whispered. “And that first one that rolled over. The other two we mined don’t seem to have any damage.”
“Nine of eleven is a bloody good score!” Struthers said in a low voice. “Hard to see how a little mine like that could do so much damage.”
“It’s a hydraulic principle,” Rhodes whispered. “You can’t compress water to any measurable degree. When the mine goes off it blows a hole about a foot in diameter in the ship’s hull. At the same time it blows a bunch of water back from the ship. When the water rushes back it’s like a big hammer or a can opener. It opens up the hole the mine made, opens it up to maybe six feet wide.”
“What do you suppose our other mine will do to our fat friend?” Struthers staring blue eyes were sparkling with glee. “Open up his bloody bowels, that’s what!”
The Mako had just completed a turn to make another run past the harbor mouth when the first muffled crump of an explosion was heard on the bridge. Captain Hinman jammed his binoculars against his eyes with such force that the rubber eyepieces collapsed and the adjusting screw opened a cut on his nose. The soft Southern voice of Grabnas on the stern lookout reached down to the bridge.
“Saw white water bubblin’ in the harbor, Bridge. More of that white water, fathah in, suh.” As he spoke the faint sound of a half-dozen explosions reached across the water.
“Now I can see some flashes in the harbor, Bridge!” Grabnas’ soft voice had sharpened. “Looks like gunfire to me, Bridge!”
The sharp, barking sound of distant guns reached the Mako. The Gunner’s Mate, pressed into service as an extra bridge-level lookout, cocked a professional ear.
“Anti-aircraft fire,” he said. “Three-inch stuff.”
Captain Hinman had come forward to the bridge. “You sure of that, Guns?”
“Yes, sir,” Dick Smalley said. The steady bark of the guns was plainer now. Hinman steadied his elbows on the bridge rail and looked through his night binoculars. He could see the flashes of the guns plainly. The loudspeaker on the bridge rasped.
“Does the Captain want a course into the harbor?” Joe Sirocco’s voice was calm.
“I want it but I’m not ready to commit yet,” Hinman snapped. He swung his glasses around as a battery of guns, much closer to Mako, began to roar.
“Five-inch stuff, Captain,” Smalley said. “Over on that point, there, south of the harbor.”
“Can they depress those guns for use against surface ships?” Hinman asked.
“Most five-inch batteries are dual purpose, sir,” Smalley said. “I think they’d be able to do that. They must think they’re bein’ hit by an air raid over there.”
“Do you think the mines went off, that they think they might be getting an air raid?” Hinman said to Grilley. “I can’t believe that!”
“It could be,” Grilley said. “They don’t know we’re here. What worries me is why the mines are going off. They were set to go off at five in the morning.”
“How about that, Smalley?” Hinman said.
“We were ordered not to mess with the timing devices, sir,” Smalley said. “The mines could have prematured. If they did the Jap would have a helluva time figuring out what was happening. They sure as hell are shooting the sky full of holes so they must think they’ve been hit by an air raid.”
Grabnas spoke up from his stern lookout. “Ah see small craft lights in the harbor, Bridge, Lots of small craft.”
“Where in the hell are our people?” Hinman snapped. “Damn it to hell, they should be on their way back if the mines prematured! They’ll have no chance at all if there’s small craft in the harbor!”
“Maybe they hid themselves,” Smalley said.
“Where the hell do you hide in a harbor, man!” Hinman’s voice was harsh. “Use your head!”
“Maybe they headed for the beach and hid themselves,” Smalley said stubbornly. “I talked to that Major’s sergeant back in Exmouth Gulf, the guy who brought the Major’s gear along.
“That Major is one tough son of a bitch. He was in a prison camp in New Guinea and he strangled a guard and went over the fence carrying his skipper on his back. His skipper was sick. Japs hunted them for three weeks. The Major stayed in back of the Japs instead of in front of them. He lived on th
eir garbage and he carried his skipper across the Owen Stanley mountains on his back and into Port Moresby. His sergeant says he’s one smart bastard. He might have headed for the beach and hid out.”
“I hope so,” Hinman said. “That would be the only chance they’d have. They couldn’t escape from that harbor now.”
The Mako patrolled off the harbor for the rest of the night. As dawn neared the big submarine made its way out into deep water and submerged. As soon as the ship had settled down into the routine of the all-day dive Captain Hinman called his officers into the Wardroom.
“From what we could see from the bridge,” he began, “it appears that our people got the mines in place but they began to premature. The harbor was alerted. God only knows where our people are right now. We hope they got ashore and are hiding somewhere.
“But that’s only a guess. But if they did get ashore they’d expect that we would be here when they come back out. And we will be here! I’ll stay here for a month if I have to!
“Until we know what happened, until we have to give up hope, I want you to take evasive action no matter what you sight, on the surface or submerged. As long as there is hope that our people can get back I don’t want to risk being discovered out here. Pass that word to your people. Tell them we aren’t going to abandon the Chief of the Boat and the Major come hell or high water! And impress on the lookouts the need for sharp eyes. God knows what the Jap will send here once he figures out what happened in that harbor.”
The afternoon hours ground by slowly for Rhodes and the Major, deep in the thorn bush. As evening neared they saw and heard the Japanese troops forming up for their evening meal.
“I could do with some of that grub,” Struthers said. “I like that rice they eat.”
Night descended with the abrupt suddenness that is common in the tropics. When it was full dark and the camp was quiet Rhodes and Struthers made their final preparations. Struthers held a tiny pen-sized flashlight, hooding its glow in his hand so that Rhodes could set the timing device on the mine. Then they moved toward the fence.
Final Harbor (The Silent War Book 1) Page 30