by Robb White
Mixed up in all the noise from the guns Ken began hearing another sound. It came down from just above his head. It was a high-pitched whistle broken by a sharp, hard SNAP. He looked up but saw nothing.
Then, suddenly, he realized that the sound was being made by the bullets from the plane. The SNAP was the shock wave striking him as the bullets went over.
He looked again into the calm, blue, empty sky and thought again, This is war. This is death.
Suddenly, as though a wave of the sea had swept over him and knocked him down, he was afraid. His knees began to shake and he had to hold on to the bridge rail to keep his legs from buckling and dumping him down with the empty brass.
Now, at last, he could see the two pilots in the plane. The dark window was no longer empty; there was now nothing unreal about this thing. There were two men in there with flight helmets on their heads and some sort of harness over their shoulders. They were sitting quite still, their dark faces looking toward him.
They were the enemy.
Carney was talking to the gunner on the 20. “Down a little, John. You’re going over him.”
Radar said, “He’s all over the screen. He’s too close.”
Pat Malone said, “Hit him! Hit him!”
Carney said, “Here comes the bomb. You’re right, Frank, he’s skip-bombing it.”
Ken watched the black bomb fall and hit the water. It was pretty to see—the black thing hitting the calm blue water and sending up a shower of bright, white, sparkling spray.
The bomb skidded like a flat stone, and then rose from the water and floated toward them for a moment in the air.
Ken didn’t know it, but his mouth hung loosely open. He was holding to the bridge rail with both hands and his knees were knocking together.
The plane now seemed to be enormous and the flickering of its wing guns was close and an ugly bright, yellowish red.
The tracers were going just over the wings of the plane.
Carney said, “Down a little, John.”
The lazy tracers began to float into the plane’s wings. Ken watched the little bright balls shoot out of the muzzle, float toward the plane, and disappear into it as though absorbed.
The plexiglass dome of the plane went straight up into the air and hung there.
Then the glass windshield shattered and blew away. Ken, watching, saw the two pilots suddenly relax. They had been sitting up, bending forward a little—tense, intent. Now they sat back in their high seats and let their heads drop.
The port wing of the plane came off near the root and began to flop over in the air, the engine still running, the prop going slower and slower.
What was left swept on toward the bridge. Ken, standing straight up, watched it; watched the two men sitting as though asleep in the high-backed chairs. He kept bending his neck, his head going back and back as the plane went close over him—so close that he could see the bright-headed rivets along the bottom of the fuselage.
The 20 and 40 swung wildly around, following the sinking plane.
Down on the water the bomb still came, skipping along, making huge foamy footsteps toward them. It rose and floated, turning lazily over, then hit again and rose again.
It floated over the deck of the Shark so close that the gun crew ducked, then hit on the other side, rose and floated again, and landed in the jungle close beside the beach. Two palm trees rose straight up out of the ground and hung for a long time in the sky before they began to fall back into the ugly burst of sand and dirt flung up by the exploding bomb.
The plane hit the water with its wing tip and began to cartwheel. It rolled across the bay and then, suddenly, stopped. In a moment it sank.
Ken could hear people yelling and shouting but, to him, there seemed to be only a deep silence. Slowly he lowered his head and looked down at his knees.
He didn’t think that the legs he saw were his. His trousers were shaking as though blown by a strong wind and inside the trousers the legs were hitting together.
Not believing this, Ken slowly reached down and touched the shaking legs.
They were his.
“The shakes,” Carney said, standing beside him. “I get ’em every time.”
Ken tried to grin while he also tried to make his legs stop shaking. “You know, this is my first time.”
“That’s always the worst one.” Carney took a deep breath and blew it up past his nose. “That was too close.”
Down on the foredeck the chief was striding up and down in front of his gun crew. He was swearing a blue streak. “Lousiest blank-blank gun shooting I ever saw. You let those blank-blank guys on the 20 beat me out of a steak dinner. You blank-blank swab handles are going to get gun drill every day for the rest of the trip. Blank blank blank.”
Carney laughed a little. “That chief loves a steak,” he said. Then he reached for the microphone. “Nice going, gents,” he said. “But next time let’s take him a little farther away. Now hear this, we’re stuck here until about sixteen hundred. There may be another plane attack. Or there may be a destroyer in a few hours. Let’s keep a heads-up detail on all guns and in the after torpedo room.”
As he hung up the mike Willy stuck his head up through the hatch. “Chow down, Captain. We’ve got some nice fried chicken and I made some biscuits.”
“All right, Willy. Be down in a minute.”
Willy, whose head was about on the level with the empty brass of the machine guns, looked slowly around. “Taxpayers hurting today, boy. Man told me those bullets cost a dollar apiece.”
One of the gun crew looked down at Willy’s head. “Willy, you ever been to San Diego?”
“I been there,” Willy said.
“You remember what that sign at the gate said?”
“What sign say what?”
The gun crewman stooped down so he was on Willy’s level. “It said, ‘It takes millions to win a war. To lose one—takes all you’ve got.’ ”
“Something to that,” Willy admitted. “What was the shooting all about?”
“Oh, just a Jap plane.”
“He get away?”
The crewman shook his head.
“I guess then the Jap taxpayers are hurting worsen we are. Fried chicken real hot now, Captain.”
“Coming,” Carney said.
Willy looked once more at the gun crewman. “Who hit him?”
“Among others, I did.”
“You getting better, boy,” Willy decided, and disappeared down the hatch.
“Willy,” Pat yelled after him, “how about bringing me up a piece of that chicken? I got the watch.”
“You’re a dark-meat man, aren’t you, Mr. Malone?”
“That’s right.”
“And gravy on your biscuits?”
“That’s right.”
“Coming up,” Willy said.
Ken followed Carney and Doherty down the ladder. In the wardroom they talked while they ate, going over the attack, each man remembering what he could of it.
As they sat around drinking coffee, Carney turned to Bill Adams, but before he could say anything, Bill grinned sheepishly and said, “I know, Skipper. That was mighty poor shooting. I’ll see what I can do.”
Carney smiled. “Thanks.” Then he turned to Ken. “We’ve got about three more hours, Ken. How’d you like to take a look at that plane? There’s a chance that you could pick up some gadgets Intelligence would like to see. Maybe even some code books.”
“Don’t you think the Japs do the same way we do?” Doherty asked. “Whenever one of our planes goes into the drink there’s a gismo on it that blows up the radar, IFF, and all codes and charts.”
“They might have,” Carney admitted. “But since this one is in such shallow water it wouldn’t hurt to give it a once-over-lightly, anyway. If you want to, Ken?”
“Very much,” Ken said. “It’ll give me a chance to try out the new breathing gear they sent me, too.”
Ken spent almost an hour reading the instructions for the Aqu
a-Lung and studying the whole rig until he was sure he knew how to use it.
At two o’clock he and Pat Malone set out in the rubber boat, looking for the plane. In the shallow, clear water it was easy to spot.
Ken put on his mask and fins and slipped overboard.
He liked the Aqua-Lung immediately. He found that it was much easier to control his depth than with the rebreather and there was no taste in the air he breathed.
On the bottom he began to find out other things about the lung. He liked the separate mask and breathing device for, with the rebreather, there was always the chance of something going wrong with the mask which covered your whole face and through which your air came. If something went wrong with the mask you could not only not see, but you couldn’t breathe either. With the Aqua-Lung you breathed through a mouthpiece entirely separate from the mask, so even with no mask at all, you could keep on breathing until you got to the top again.
The plane was scattered all over the bottom, broken pieces of it everywhere. Ken swam slowly along, recognizing various parts—the tail section, a piece of the stabilizer, a ragged length of wing, the engine torn out of the nacelle.
Then he found one of the pilots. The man was lying on his back on the sand, his arms beside him, his legs bent a little. All blood had been washed away from the wound in his chest. He seemed to be lying there thirty feet below the surface sound asleep.
For a moment Ken looked at this dead man. This motionless thing lying at the bottom of the sea had, a few hours ago, tried to kill him.
Ken searched the dead Jap and found a small booklet covered with brown canvas in one of his pockets. Then, in the debris of the cockpit, he found a folded chart and two more canvas-covered booklets. He could find no evidence of radar anywhere even though nothing seemed to have been blown up.
The other pilot had been torn apart and was hardly recognizable as a man.
Knowing that the two pilots would soon draw sharks, Ken wrapped up what he had found and started for the surface, where he could see the yellow bottom of the rubber boat bounding around.
As he came up he decided that the rebreather had only one advantage over the Aqua-Lung. No bubbles came out of the rebreather, for all oxygen was contained in the system. With the Aqua-Lung bubbles streamed up with each breath.
Ken decided that in daytime work, where there was a possibility of being spotted by bubbles, he’d use the rebreather. Otherwise he was sold on the Aqua-Lung.
He got back to his cabin in the Shark as the ship’s bell rang eight times.
Si Mount, sitting up in bed, said, “Eight bells. Let’s get out of here.”
Carney’s voice sounded through the ship. “Start engines.”
Chapter 11
The pulsing of the diesels idly turning over felt good to Ken as he went through the control room and climbed on up into the conning tower. They seemed to bring life back into the Shark; to promise that soon they would be back in the open sea. Soon they would be free from this land and no longer just a target for anything the Japs might have around.
Ken climbed on up through the conning tower to the bridge, where Carney, Doherty, and Bill Adams were waiting.
“Post sea details,” Carney said through the loud-speakers. “Stand by to get under way.”
Then he grinned at Ken. “I hope that’s not just some wishful thinking.”
“She’ll come off,” Doherty declared, looking down at the water, now high around the sides of the boat. “If she doesn’t we’ll lighten ship.”
Carney nodded. Then he frowned a little. “If we have to lighten, Frank, let’s dump the fish last. Everything else goes over the side first.”
“Aye, aye, Skipper.”
“We’ll get out of this bay on the surface, then get down under the water where we belong,” Carney said. “All engines back full.”
Ken looked astern. As the propellers began to turn over they threw up around the tumble home a great, boiling mass of sand and water. It swept forward and began to break like surf on the beach at the bow.
Carney called for more power and Ken felt the diesels grow stronger, the dirty waves of water rising higher.
Bill Adams said, “She’s beginning to move.”
At their feet the Chief Electrician poked his head up out of the hatch. “The radar’s fouled up again, Captain,” he said. “The set’s working OK but nothing’s being fed into it.”
“What do you think’s wrong with it then?” Carney asked as the boat backed slowly away from the island.
“Did that airplane hit the antenna, Captain?”
Carney glanced up at the revolving antenna. “No sign of it, Chief, but it could have. It was close enough. We’ll fix it when we surface tonight. Starboard engine stop. Port engine back.”
The Shark began to swing around.
“Starboard engine ahead full.”
The boat swung faster, its bow coming around toward the open mouth of the bay.
“Port engine stop. Starboard engine stop.”
“Steady on the helm. Course two seven zero.”
“Steady on two seven zero, sir.”
“All ahead one half.”
Bells rang down inside the boat as it started slowly forward, heading out of the bay.
Ken went down the ladder into the conning tower, where the sea detail was already on watch. The radarman was looking at the screen with a baffled expression. The soundman was just putting on his earphones as he flipped switches and began turning the big dial.
Ken dropped on down to control and went forward. In the cabin with Si, he said, “Under way again. Slid off nice as you please.”
“Good,” Si said. “I’m a nervous wreck. Boy, think of how the Marines must feel sitting on a beach the way we were.”
Ken got the air cylinder he had used with the Aqua-Lung and started forward to look up the chief and see about getting it refilled.
He was just stepping down into the forward torpedo room when he heard the soundman say, “High-speed screws, Captain. Bearing two five nine. Distance ten thousand. Sounds like a can, Captain.”
Suddenly, dropping down through the open hatch, a man almost fell on Ken. He had on nothing but ragged shorts. He yelled at the chief, “A Jap destroyer is coming into the bay!”
The chief yelled back, “Shut that hatch!”
Two men sprang to the hatch, shut it with a crash, and swung the bright steel dogging handles.
“You think the can saw us?” the chief asked.
“Couldn’t help it,” the bare-chested man said. “He’s right on top of us.”
Carney’s voice sounded calm through the loud-speaker. “Dive the boat.”
As the diving Klaxon began, the chief looked over at Ken. “We can’t move inside this bay. All right, you guys, get on these tubes.”
“What are we going to shoot at?” a man asked even as he jumped to the after end of a torpedo tube. “That can’s coming straight at us.”
Carney said through the loud-speaker, “A Jap destroyer has trapped us in the bay so were coming out shootin’.”
When Carney stopped they could still hear voices in the conning tower. A man near Ken said petulantly, “Somebody goofed and left the mike button open.”
Another man, his face so white that his eyes seemed unnaturally bright and wet, turned to the chief. “We can t shoot at him that way, Chief. We’ll miss him.”
The chief, his face suddenly much older, just nodded.
Carney said, “Make ready forward tubes. Set depth eight feet.”
Men leaped to dials on the sides of the tubes. The chief, standing perfectly still, watched them and then nodded to the man on the telephone. “Tubes ready forward. Depth set, eight feet.”
“Match gyros forward,” Carney said.
The chief turned and watched the man on the gyro compass. Then he nodded again to the talker.
“Stand by forward.”
In the torpedo room not a man moved. Those who were not on the firing detail stayed cl
ear, some sitting on the bunks, others standing against the bulkhead. Every man in the crowded room stared at the red fights glowing on each tube.
“Up periscope!”
“Continuous bearings.”
In the torpedo room they could hear the bearing readers singsong chant.
Then they heard Doherty say nervously, “Periscope’s been up a long time, Skipper.”
Carney said, “I want it up. I want him to see it and come straight at it. It’s the only chance we’ve got, Frank.”
One of the men near Ken said, “We can’t hit him coming straight at us.”
“What should we do then?” a young seaman asked.
“There’s nothing we can do,” the gunner said. “He’ll either ram us or get on top of us and unload everything he’s got.”
The seaman’s voice went up a notch. “What’s wrong with the Skipper? Why doesn’t he do something?”
The chief, looking old now and tired, walked slowly over to the seaman. “Take it easy, son. You’ll live longer.”
“I’m not going to live at all!” the seaman screamed at him. “The periscope’s up. They can see us I What’s the matter with the Skipper?”
The chief, his voice quiet and friendly, said, “What would you do if you were the Skipper?”
The seaman was still screaming. “I’d get that scope down and dodge. I’d get away from him!”
“Not inside a bay with only sixty feet of water, you wouldn’t,” the chief said.
A man sitting on a bunk said bitterly, “This boat hasn’t had a real skipper since they launched her. Now we’re going to get the works.”
The chief turned around. Ken was startled by the change in his expression. He no longer looked old and tired. Nor did he look angry as he said, “Pipe down. This boat’s got a skipper now. Do you think it’s easy for Mr. Carney to look through that periscope and see nothing but the bow of a Jap can coming down on him? Do you think you could do it and keep on thinking and paying attention? No, you couldn’t. You’d take one look at that bow slicing through the water and you’d yell for Mama. Now you remember this: this boat’s got plenty of skipper.”
Then Carney said, “Attention in the boat. This is Carney.