Dive Beneath the Sun

by R. Cameron Cooke

  This prompted several chuckles from most of the men in the compartment.

  “We will be making a high speed run on the surface to get ahead of our target,” Keane continued. “Stay alert, and remember your training. The smoking lamp is lit for the next fifteen minutes. That is all.”

  From the silence that followed, a murmur of discontent gradually rose from the men in the after torpedo room, but this was quickly headed off by a chief, who gave the sailors a motivational speech of a different nature, laced with profanity and threats, and much more effective at getting the men back to work.

  “He’s a lucky bastard, isn’t he, sir?” Clark said. Trott had not realized he was still next to him. Clark was looking down at Greenberg, not with the anger he had held before, but with somewhat of an envious nature. “We could be sitting off San Diego or Tokyo Bay, for all he cares. Sometimes, I wish I was in his shoes.”

  Trott nodded but said nothing, instead taking the opportunity to smoke. He offered one to Clark, who thankfully accepted it and then moved on, excusing himself as he brushed past Trott to leave the compartment. With battlestations secured and no attack imminent, Trott was considering heading forward himself. He could afford to leave Greenberg on his own for a while, and he could use a cup of coffee. But before he turned to leave, he cast a parting glance at Greenberg, and noticed something strange. He could swear that Greenberg’s head had turned further away from him, and his eyes were deflected, as if to not have to look at him. Whether Greenberg’s rack had been jostled by one of the passing men, or his head had moved on its own, Trott could not tell, but the thought of the latter made him suddenly furious inside. Greenberg had lied to him before. What if he was lying now? What if he was just pretending?

  “I guess you got yourself a good billet, now. Eh, Greenberg?” Trott had moved in close to whisper harshly in the man’s ear. “Don’t have to lift a finger the whole way home. Don’t have to help out. Got yourself a good rack, all to yourself. Being waited on hand and foot all day like your royalty. Yes, sir, you’ve set yourself up in fine style. Yes, indeed. But you listen to me, you staring son of a bitch. You’d better not be faking. If I find out you are, you’d best go ahead and throw yourself overboard, because your squadron is going to tear you apart once I tell them the real story about your rescue, about what happened to Jacoby, Martinez – all of it. I promise you that! Look at me, you son of a bitch! Look at me!”

  Trott suddenly realized that he had taken hold of the collar of Greenberg’s t-shirt. And just at that moment, an apprehensive voice spoke behind him.

  “Is everything okay, Lieutenant?” Trott turned to see the corpsman standing there, his medical satchel slung over one thin shoulder, his face twisted in concern.

  Letting go of Greenberg’s shirt, Trott stood up straight, fervently hoping the corpsman had not overheard his tirade. He did not know what had come over him. Perhaps being confined in this steel tube was starting to get to him, or maybe he was getting tired of being joined at the hip to an invalid. Regardless, Greenberg had hardly blinked throughout.

  “He shouldn’t be moved too much in his current state, sir,” the corpsman said, his tone indicating he had witnessed the whole thing. “Only one turn every half-hour, just like we discussed.” He pulled out a stethoscope and began a routine check of Greenberg’s vital signs.

  “Of course.” Trott made a lame attempt at sounding innocent. “Listen, doc, I need to move around a little bit. I’m going forward to get a cup of coffee.”

  “Go ahead, sir. I can watch him for a little while.”

  “Thanks.” Trott started to leave, but then turned back. “Do you think he can hear us, doc? Do you think he’s aware of what’s going on?”

  The corpsman shrugged. “It’s possible, sir. I’ve read about people waking up from these things after weeks, sometimes months, claiming they remember conversations their families had beside their beds. Some say they even tried to reply, to interact, but were unable to.” The corpsman then looked at him curiously. “Why, sir? Have you seen any responses from him? It could be a good sign.”

  Trott thought for a moment about the unexplained deflection of Greenberg’s head. Whatever suspicions he had before, there was nothing there now. Greenberg’s eyes were as vacant and unfeeling as they had ever been. “No, nothing like that,” he replied. “Just curious. Thanks, doc.”

  CHAPTER XX

  The small convoy drove west through the rain-shrouded seas. It consisted of three ships now, two fewer than it had when it left Davao, two days ago. The Yokaze was in the van, followed by the Kenan Maru, with the escort Kiku five hundred yards off the freighter’s starboard beam. The three ships crept up the coast in an L formation, matching the slow nine-knot pace set by the freighter. The northernmost point of Dinagat Island passed to port, a dark, jagged line that rose up to disappear in the low hanging clouds. To starboard, lay the vast open sea laced with foam.

  From the open bridge of the Yokaze, bedecked in a hooded foul-weather jacket, Nagata looked back at the two ships following in the Yokaze’s wake. Inwardly, he noted how feeble the small escort looked next to the big cargo ship. He knew Yamasuki, the captain of the Kiku, and he knew the young commander would do everything in his power to protect the freighter.

  “The navigator reports Hibuson Island dead ahead, Captain,” a sailor wearing a phone headset said.

  Nagata trained his binoculars on the cluster of low volcanic ridges jutting above the horizon ahead, glimpses of black between breaks in the squalls. The tiny island marked the entrance to the strait that would take the convoy to the inland seas of the Philippine Islands, where the risk of enemy attack would be much reduced.

  “Depth sounding is now indicating thirty meters, Captain.” The navigator’s voice came over the voice tube, heavy with apprehension.

  “Thank you,” Nagata said with an amused expression that was hidden by his hood. “We will maintain this course for now.”

  Nagata could picture the navigation officer in the pilot house below, sweating bullets as he hastily took fixes on the few visible points of land, attempting to ascertain the ship’s precise position, dreading every sounding of the fathometer. Although Nagata found the thought of it humorous, he would have been just as anxious, had he been in his navigator’s shoes. The officer must have thought his captain reckless to remain on the present heading, but Nagata was fully aware of the dangers, and there was a method to his madness.

  In such seas, any prudent navigator would steer well clear of the coast, ever mindful that an engine failure on the Kenan Maru might quickly run the unwieldy merchant aground. But Nagata, as the commander of the flotilla, saw the situation from a different, more tactical perspective. As frustrating as it was, the worsening weather was both a blessing and a curse. Enemy submarines would find it that much more difficult to sight the small flotilla. Add to that the difficulty in picking out the silhouettes of his ships against the dark coast behind them, and any submarine would have a hard time detecting them, let alone tracking them. The coastline had been well-surveyed in the three years of occupation. All of Yokaze’s charts had been updated with the latest sounding information, and Nagata intended to use that data to his advantage. If the three-ship flotilla hugged the coastline, remaining just on the fringe of the shallows, where enemy submarines would be leery to operate, then he would only have to worry about an attack from the seaward side.

  Steering so close to the shore with the seas so turbulent was no easy task. It took a coxswain with exceptional skill. Nagata had already ordered the Yokaze’s coxswain relieved once for straying more than a half degree off course, and he had sent a reprimand to Kenan Maru’s skipper via light signal when he witnessed that ship making the same error. Their attentiveness was absolutely critical, as only a thousand yards of drift off the planned track might ground them all. Though exercising such measures was a calculated risk, Nagata thought it of the utmost necessity to ensure any enemy submarine approached from the seaward side. It allowed him to
focus his anti-submarine searches there.

  Of course, he would feel much better if the other escort, the Enoki, with her lookouts, depth charges, and guns, was still in company with the convoy, but alas, she was fulfilling a more critical role by escorting the decoy ship. Nagata knew that detaching the Enoki had been a calculated risk. He had, by that action, reduced his ASW capability by one third. But, if all went well, he would not need the Enoki. He would not need to drop a single depth charge, and he could breathe easier until the convoy reached the South China Sea. He fully expected the decoy freighter to be sunk, and that prospect must have also been clear to the Seisho Maru’s captain when Nagata had ordered him to change his ship’s paint scheme to match that of the Kenan Maru. The merchant captain had only complied after an impassioned protest, knowing full-well that his ship was being written off so that another might make it through.

  The idea was sound. The Seisho Maru measured nearly the same tonnage, and had a superstructure and masts that were close enough. It had put to sea that night with the convoy, and all five ships had traveled in darkness up the east coast of Mindanao. When they reached the point where the coastline turned sharply to the west, the convoy had split into two groups. The decoy Seisho Maru and the escort Enoki had continued north, while the Yokaze, the Kiku, and the Kenan Maru had headed west, clinging to the coast. The hope was that any submarines following from just over the horizon would take off after the northbound group, and lose the scent of the Kenan Maru and her escorts amidst the backdrop of the land. The plan might have worked, for all Nagata knew, although no distress signals had yet been received from the northbound convoy.

  Perhaps, should the decoy freighter survive the long trip to Japan, and her captain lodge a complaint with the high command, Nagata would be admonished for the decision. But he did not care. If the cargo aboard Kenan Maru was as important as the high command seemed to think it was, then the potential loss of one large freighter was certainly acceptable. Perhaps the high command would not see it that way. Perhaps they would relieve him of command, and promptly send him back to the Philippines that he might play a part in the imminent grand naval battle against the Americans.

  The communications officer approached him and bowed once.

  “Kiku is signaling, sir. Will the fleet assume column formation prior to entering the strait?”

  Nagata sighed as he leaned out over the bridge wing and studied the two ships astern. The large bow of the wide-hulled Kenan Maru appeared to push the waves rather than part them, in sharp contrast to the thin hull of the Kiku which slid through the choppy seas without effort. Through his binoculars, Nagata made out a crowd of hooded figures on the escort’s bridge wings. He smiled within the hood of his jacket. Yamasuki had doubled his lookouts. The young captain was evidently anxious about his own ship’s position, acting as the seaward screen for the freighter should any torpedoes suddenly appear. The Kiku had held that station for the better part of twelve hours, and now Yamasuki was more than eager to relinquish the position. Yamasaki was no heroic fool, nor was he a coward. He was merely looking out for his ship and crew as any captain would. In any event, he was about to get his wish.

  “Have the navigator mark the distance to the channel,” Nagata commanded the sailor with the phone set.

  “The navigator reports, ten kilometers, Captain. And he urgently requests that you reconsider your decision to pass east of Hibuson.”

  “Tell him to concern himself with his duties and keeping this ship off the rocks!” Nagata snapped. He was starting to grow annoyed at the doubting navigator who, like his other officers, had been fully briefed.

  The sailor bowed nervously and relayed his words through the phone set. As expected, there was no reply, no further opposition. Nagata disliked silencing the voice of dissent, and the navigator’s fears did have some merit, but now was not the time to change the plan.

  Nagata turned to the waiting communications officer. “Signal all ships. Form column in preparation for entering the channel. Continue vectoring all sonar searches to starboard.”

  The shutters of the signal lanterns began flapping, and Nagata noticed Seaman Ito, the young sailor whom he had taken for his dead brother, watched attentively as a senior petty officer showed him the proper procedure for using the device. Like most of the new men, he was eager to learn, and eager to die for Japan. Standing next to the older sailor, Ito looked even younger than when he had stood in Nagata’s quarters. What was he, eighteen? Another sacrifice offered up by his family to die for a misguided cause. It was all such a waste. Would the Imperial General Headquarters not be satisfied until all of the youth of Japan lay dead?

  Forcing such thoughts from his mind, Nagata crossed to the opposite bridge wing to watch the Kiku’s white-laced bows fall astern of the Kenan Maru and then disappear behind the big freighter altogether, as the escort took up the rear position in the column. The Kiku would remain on that station until the convoy had traversed the narrow channel up ahead and entered the strait beyond.

  Surigao Strait was a seventy-kilometer-long waterway that ran north-to-south and was bounded on both sides by large land masses. It was the gateway to the inner Philippine Islands. To the ships in the Yokaze’s convoy, it represented safety. For once inside, enemy submarines would find it extremely difficult to approach the convoy undetected. The often-used submarine tactic of running past a convoy just over the horizon and waiting in ambush further down its path would be next to impossible.

  To enter the relative safety of the strait, the convoy had to pass Hibuson Island, which sat at the extreme northern end of the strait, and which now lay directly ahead of the Yokaze’s bows. Nagata knew his navigator favored passing west of the island, because that route was more than twenty kilometers wide and offered much more room to maneuver. The eastern passage, in contrast, was less than five kilometers across, and much of the navigable water was infested with mines. The mines were there to prevent enemy submarines from using the pass to pounce on shipping coming up the strait. A tight channel snaked through the minefields, allowing clear passage to those Japanese ships fortunate enough to possess the classified charts showing its location. Nagata was sure the Americans were wise to the presence of the mines, and would avoid the passage altogether. In the unlikely event that an enemy submarine was out there, waiting for the Kenan Maru, it would almost certainly be lurking in the wider pass on the other side of Hibuson Island, and thus would be too far away from the convoy to be of any consequence.

  “Captain, navigation officer,” a voice called through the voice tube. This time the navigator was not using the phone circuit. “Minefields two kilometers ahead. Stand by to mark the turn for entering the channel. Recommend slowing to six knots.”

  “Very well,” Nagata replied. “Double the lookout. Pass the word to watch for floating mines. Some may have broken loose in this weather.”

  The ships turned in sequence, keeping their spacing as they slowed to a crawl. They entered the unseen channel, guided by the navigator’s minute course corrections. Nagata fought against the urge to breathe easier. He had every faith in his navigation officer. The minefields were well-charted, as were the various navigation hazards. Yokaze’s best conning officer was in charge in the pilothouse, with the best coxswain at the wheel. Nagata’s biggest concern, at this point, was whether the Kenan Maru could satisfactorily mimic the destroyer’s movements and follow her track precisely.

  “Tea, Captain?” Seaman Ito said near Nagata’s elbow. In one hand the sailor held a simmering pot, while in the other he held an empty cup. He was doing his best to keep both out of the rain. “My leading petty officer ordered me to fetch some tea for the bridge watch.”

  “Thank you, Seaman,” Nagata said, gratefully taking the cup after Ito had filled it with the steaming mixture. Sake would have been better on such a day, but the tea would do. Evening was coming on fast. It would be a long, taxing night of total blackness.

  “Did my brother really do all of those things, Capt
ain?” Ito said suddenly.

  Nagata had not realized that the sailor was still there, and he was taken off guard by the question. “What?”

  “I realize I have only been aboard for two days now, Captain, but…” Ito paused as if searching for the words. “The reception I have received from my brother’s old shipmates is far from what I had expected. They treat me with irrelevance, as if I am no different from the other hands. I wish to know, sir, was my brother really as brave and cherished among his shipmates as your letter to my parents implied?”