by Robb White
The radarman stuck his head out of the hatch and looked at the enemy. They were so different from the little green blips on the scope. On his radar they seemed real, now they didn't.
There wasn't a man on Slewfoot who wanted to press an attack on those ships, nor a man who would admit it.
The radarman called up to Peter, "Range five thousand," and went back to the scope to look at the blips again.
Murph, who was trying to take bearings, looked over at Peter. Nobody would blame the skipper, Murph decided, if he turned away now and got out of here. After all … three big destroyers …
Mitch said to Stucky on the 40-millimeter, "What's he doing? I tell you, he's out of his mind. We're going to get our heads blown off."
"What's the matter, Mitch, you want to live forever?"
"I sure do."
The radarman said, "Range four thousand."
Murphy watched Peter as he wiped the spray out of his eyes. It was now or never, Murph decided.
Peter leaned over to Goldberg on the starboard torpedo racks and said, "Give the lead destroyer both fish, Gerry. Set depth five feet, speed high."
Goldberg looked up at him. "You going to shoot from here, skipper?"
Peter hesitated for a moment. Murph couldn't decide whether it was to think, or just spit some spray out of his mouth. Then Peter said, "No. We're going all the way, Gerry." Then he leaned over to port and said to the Preacher, "Give the next two, one apiece, Preacher."
Beside the engine controls was a target data computer—elemental compared to those on submarines, but good enough to give you a collision course between the target and the torpedo. Peter studied it now as he said, "Keep the bearings coming, Murph."
The radarman called up, "Range three thousand, skipper."
Peter looked ahead at the target, now only a mile away. Apparently the transports had stopped firing flares, for no more of them were blossoming in the sky and the last of them were falling through the smoke into the sea.
Suddenly, as though done with a master switch, all the searchlights on both the destroyers and the transports went out and, at the same time, all the guns stopped firing.
It was done so suddenly and completely that the ships ahead of him seemed to Peter to have vanished, leaving nothing but a solid black wave of darkness which was rolling across the sea toward him.
Peter leaned over to Goldberg. "Set both fish right five degrees, Gerry."
"Five right," Goldberg said, and Britches jumped to the manual controls.
Peter leaned to the left. "Preacher, set number one left three, number two left six."
"One left three, two left six," the Preacher said.
"Stand by on the guns," Peter called out.
Peter could still see nothing ahead of him, his eyes still unadjusted to the sudden total darkness. "Murph," he said to the shadowy little man beside him, "if anything happens, take over and try to get the fish off as close to a thousand yards as you can. Then get the boat back into the smoke and get her into the Siassi Strait. They can't follow you through there."
"Range two thousand," the radarman called up.
Murph said, "If they spot us and start shooting, are we going to go on in to a thousand?"
"I think we should," Peter said. "I guess that's what we're here for."
"I guess so," Murph said.
And then the lights came on. They were like long thin knives stabbing you through the eyes, stabbing right on through your brain. There was nothing you could do—the knives sliced through your lids if you tried to shut them out by closing your eyes.
And this time the lights were on Slewfoot and she, instead of the destroyers, was in the center of the brilliant stage, the searchlights seeming to hold her as though the beams were solid and unbreakable.
Every detail on Slewfoot was suddenly sharp and clear and bright, every drop of water she threw, shining like a jewel.
Peter's first instinct was to put the wheel hard over and break Slewfoot out of the grip of those lights, or at least zigzag her; but he held her steady as she went—waiting.
The terrible game was starting now, the guessing game. Guess wrong and you died. Behind the brilliance of the searchlights he could not see the muzzle flash as the ships began firing at Slewfoot, so that when the first salvo hit, it startled him, the tower of bright white water rising to the left.
The guessing game. They had missed you and were correcting their aim now to hit you. If you held course, the next salvo would blow you out of the water.
Peter swung Slewfoot toward the falling column of water, and as her wake curved, a salvo fell squarely into it.
Guess again. He swung her back, hard.
Now the sea all around the boat was like a forest of weird white growing and dying trees as the shells struck and exploded, the gouts of water plunging upward, then falling.
"Fifteen hundred," the radarman yelled.
"Get those lights!" Peter yelled at the gunners. They were trying. Every gun on Slewfoot that would bear was pounding, the tracers streaking away, but fifteen hundred yards is a long way to hit a three-foot target from a boat moving at 50 miles an hour through a rain of gunfire. The six searchlights continued to blaze.
On the destroyers, the smaller caliber guns opened up so that in the air between Slewfoot and the target the streams of tracers coming and going looked like a cat's cradle made of blazing dotted strings.
Peter hurled the boat from side to side, twisting and turning through the forest of waterspouts. In his mind he tried to remember the turns and duration of them and the courses so that when the fatal time came he could drop her fast and surely on the base course.
That was the terrible time, and all hands were waiting for it—the time when you had to hold her on course and let her settle down to the rhythm of the sea and go straight in on the enemy until you reached the firing point and the torpedoes left the racks. And even then there would be a few more seconds of that time, while the torpedoes splashed into the sea and began to run. You had to wait until they were clear before you could turn and leave that place.
Jason was shoving against the shoulder pads trying to add his own strength to the bullets streaming from the twin barrels, trying to give them that extra inch they needed to reach the lights.
And he began to reach them. One of them stopped blazing and burned for a few seconds with a sick weak yellowness before going out, but Jason had already swung his guns to the next one.
Peter looked down at the flux gate and swung Slewfoot over onto the base course. "Base course!" he yelled at the torpedomen. "Stand by to fire torpedoes."
Gerry Goldberg looked down at Britches. The kid was just standing there, looking ahead, both hands on the rack. A searchlight beam was directly on him and he was squinting against it. Suddenly Goldberg leaned down closer, inspecting the boy, "Hey," he said, "you been shaving?"
"Doesn't everybody?" Britches asked.
It broke up Goldberg.
Peter, listening to Goldberg's laughing, wondered what was so funny and made a note to ask Goldberg, when this was over. He leaned down into the radar shack and said, "Keep 'em coming in hundreds now, Willie."
"Twelve hundred," Willie said.
The salvos were closing in on Slewfoot now as she settled on the base course and no longer weaved and dodged. Like two closing walls of almost solid water they were walking in toward her.
Mitch, feeding shells to the Bofors, said, "This is the longest ride I ever took."
In the engine room Sko felt the boat steady down. "Here we go," he said.
Skeeter, the motormac third, said, "Why doesn't something happen?"
The Professor reminded him, "They also serve who only stand and wait, Skeeter."
"Eleven hundred," the radarman yelled just before a tower of water fell squarely on top of the boat, drowning everything for a moment, and then flowed away, leaving the gun barrels hissing steam.
"One thousand!" Willie yelled.
"Fire! Let 'em go!"
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br /> Goldberg and Britches on the starboard side flipped the racks outboard and saw the long oily fish shoot out and forward and splash into the sea. "Run, you little babies. Run!" Goldberg yelled at them. "Run!" Britches yelled, his voice a weak little squeak.
The Preacher called up to the bridge, "Port-side fish gone away."
Peter spun the wheel hard to starboard and as Slewfoot leaned and turned, a savage salvo landed exactly where she would have been if she had stayed on course another second.
Now with all her torpedoes in the water Slewfoot had nothing left with which she could hurt the destroyers. All she could do now was to try to save her own life.
As she fled for the smoke she was broadside to the destroyers, totally exposed to their guns and still held in the grip of their lights.
Jason looked ahead for a second at the wall of smoke so vague, so far away. Then he looked through his sights again at the three destroyers, and they seemed to him to be only a few yards away.
Somehow the shells that were being fired at him did not bother Jason. To him they were just something that caused towers of water to rise from the flat sea all around him. To Jason the lights were the enemy, the hard, blazing, unwinking eyes of the searchlights.
One by one the searchlights went out, the dark, invisible bullets following in the path of the tracers, until Jason could find no more to aim his guns at. Now only the sides of the destroyers showed light of any sort and that was a mean flickering, dotted with larger gouts from the turrets.
"Good shooting," Peter yelled down to him.
With the lights gone, Peter began to think that they were going to reach the smoke alive. Salvos were still landing all around the boat and the tracers were either floating close over his head or falling short, striking the water and sizzling out.
He was counting off the seconds of the torpedo run, when it happened.
He was looking ahead across the dark sea at the faraway cloud of smoke when the gray-white wall rose directly in front of him, and kept on rising, higher and higher.
He tried to wheel her, but it was too close. "Hang on!" he yelled, and then she hit it.
Slewfoot was going very fast, half her forward hull out of the water, bow high, the three Packards ramming every ounce of their power into the propellers. As Peter yanked the wheel over with one hand, he yanked all three throttles back.
It was too late. The boat hit the column of water almost bows on still traveling at high speed. It was like striking a stone wall. The shock of it tore men loose from their grips and slung them back along the deck. The force of the impact ripped the port torpedo racks, still flipped over, clean off the boat. Water bent the steel struts of the gun mounts and then struck the bridge structure, cracking it open, tearing off the windshield as it poured over the top.
Solid, racing water slammed against the tank compartments poured down into the radar shack, rushed on aft to crash against the Bofors and the depth charges, almost drowning Stucky and Mitch who were hiding behind them.
Then it poured off the stern and Slewfoot was left motionless in the water, stopped in her tracks.
As Peter rammed the throttles forward again, he yelled, "Anybody hurt?" as he watched the dark forms of men getting slowly to their feet.
"I guess not," Goldberg said, untangling Britches from the starboard racks. "But let's don't do that again."
As Slewfoot began to gather speed, Peter yelled to Britches to go below and see if she was taking water.
In the engine compartment Skeeter and the Professor were getting up off the hot deck, Sko was climbing back into the tractor seat. "Guess we caught one," Skeeter said, reaching up for a life jacket as he headed for the door.
"Get back to your engine!" Sko yelled at him. "Nobody leaves here as long as they're running."
Peter counted out loud as he wove her through the forest: " … fourteen Missouri … fifteen … "
Britches stuck his head out of the hatch and called, "Don't see any water coming in, Captain."
Peter waved acknowledgment and went on counting, and began to wonder if he had made a mistake. The torpedoes were moving at 33 knots on a range a little over a thousand yards. They should be getting there, or they had missed.
In the darkness he could just make out the outline of the destroyers and saw them turning toward him. Not directly, but on a course that would block him from reaching the smoke.
" … Missouri … " Peter counted, "eighteen .. "
The lead destroyer, turning hard to starboard, was throwing a huge white wave when Peter saw the weird glow beginning in her hull—low and dim and far down. It was, at first just a dull, spreading patch of orange light which looked to him the way it did when he was a kid and held a flashlight against the palm of his hand.
He watched it, fascinated, as it glowed more brightly and began to spread like a disease in the hull of the ship.
And then the destroyer blew up.
Peter couldn't believe it. Couldn't believe that a living, moving, fighting ship could so suddenly come apart like that.
Great pieces and sections and parts of it hurled up into the sky and were followed by the yellow-white flame of the explosion. Then everything was smothered in the bloom of smoke, lit from the inside by the flame.
Peter had to give credit to his enemy. The other two destroyers reacted almost instantly, throwing themselves hard around in the water to put their bows toward the oncoming torpedoes. For a moment the two ships concentrated on their own lives.
It was the moment Slewfoot needed. She disappeared into the smoke of her own making, raced through it and, in the clear again, was into the Siassi Strait, threading her way through the rocks and shoals where nothing bigger than she could go.
6
Slewfoot reached the mouth of the Morobe just at dawn. As the sun came up the men looked around at their boat and were sad.
Slewfoot was a mess. The destruction of the port rack had torn away part of the deck and freeboard, leaving long ragged splinters of plywood. Her topside was swept clean —the running lights, signal light, searchlight all gone. The hold-down bolts of the gun turrets had been torn almost free, and the heavy steel struts were bent like wires. The depth charges had been ripped out of the racks, and even the Bofors mount was bent.
Murph steered her slowly up the river to the rickety dock the crew had made out of empty gas drums and logs and Mitch jumped over with a line.
As the engines sighed to a stop, so did Sko, collapsing forward against the panel. Skeeter and the Professor, staggering a little, got out of the compartment far enough to fall exhausted into the soaking wet bunks. The rest of the men, moving like things in a bad dream, made their way slowly across the docks and slogged through the mud toward Snob Hill.
As Murph and Mitch were starting to leave, Peter called them back. "Mitch, the 119 boat is going down to Milne Bay. If we don't catch it, it'll be a week, maybe two, before we get another chance. You can sleep all the way. And they've got a good cook."
"Who can sleep with that crew of apes?" Mitch grumbled.
"I thought you liked apes … Murph, I'll go along with Mitch, or those Stateside supply officers won't give us the time of day. As soon as the men get moving again see what you can do patching her up."
The 119 boat was nosing down the river and Peter hailed her, asking for a ride. Mitch, still grumbling, jumped with him to the 119, and as Peter went up on the bridge, Mitch turned to the 119's bosun and said, "I just won the war so now I need a little sleep."
"Welcome, friend," the other bosun said. "Take any bunk on the boat as long as it's right here on deck. We don't want a hero like you to dry out, so we'll keep you sprinkled with nice salty sea-water."
And they sprinkled him all the way to Milne Bay.
Milne Bay was by now far behind the fighting and was, to Peter and Mitch, civilization. There were real wooden buildings, a barbershop, ice cream, hot water, Stateside chow. Best of all, the PTs mother ship was anchored in Milne Bay with spare parts for the
boats.
They had very little time to enjoy it. It took most of the night to round up the things they needed to put Slewfoot back into fighting trim. Then it took the rest of the night to get them loaded aboard the 119, ready for a dawn departure.
They did manage to sneak in a breakfast of ham and eggs, pancakes with syrup, waffles with butter, toasted bread, some cereal, and honest-to-John real cow's milk—not the powdered stuff you mixed with water in a helmet.
Then just before they left they spent all the money they had at the gedunk stand. They got pogey bait—candy, chewing gum, cigarettes (and huge cigars for Sko to chew when he got nervous)—and soap and toothpaste and brushes, paperback books, shoestrings and web belts, pens and ink, and paper. Peter remembered Goldberg's laughing in the middle of the fight about Britches shaving, so he bought Britches a razor and shaving soap and foo-foo juice and a styptic pencil to cure the cuts. Then he bought Murph some deodorant because, as Murph freely admitted, when he got scared he smelled like a billy goat.
On the way back to Morobe, Peter and Mitch sat on the foredeck of the 119, enjoying the sunshine and enjoying having somebody else doing all the work.
"Scuttlebutt says we're moving up pretty soon," Mitch said.
"That's what I heard," Peter said.
"You know, I heard about a guy—I think he was a motormac first, or second—who had orders to join a ship, and he never could catch up with her. That guy wandered all over the world trying to catch up with the ship he was supposed to report to. Every time he'd get to a place his ship would've just left for some place else. I guess he's still wandering."
"Join the Navy and see the world," Peter said.
"Maybe that's what we can do," Mitch said.
Peter glanced at him. "That's what we did."
"No, I mean, maybe we can just keep moving Slewfoot around so that new commanding officer—what's his name—the girl's name?"
"Adrian Archer," Peter said.
"Yeah, him. So he can't ever catch up with us. Like he gets to Morobe, and we're up at Madang or Wewak or left New Guinea altogether. He could wander around for months."