by Robb White
All hands except the engine-room gang were on the fire buckets, so Peter had to yell at them to move aft to add their weight to that of the engines and get her stern down.
As the men streamed aft in the darkness Peter felt the boat rising, the bow coming up above the horizon. He also felt a great sluggish tide of water rolling aft through the boat. He ran back to the hatch and yelled down, "Dog the engine-room door."
But Sko was way ahead of him. The onrushing water hit the already closed door and stopped. The bucket brigade moved up enough to start bailing her from the amidships hatch, and the bow slowly rose higher and higher.
They bailed her all the way back to the Morobe River, all the time knowing that they'd never get her home.
Along the banks of the Morobe were the tents and buildings, supply dumps and motor pools, guns and ammunition, foods, medicines—everything for a war. Peter knew that he could not, for only the sake of Slewfoot, take her at speed up the river. Those Packards make a wake like a tidal wave, which, if he tried to ram her home, would wash up over the low, muddy banks, flood the living and supply areas, and ruin, with muddy water, millions of dollars worth of equipment.
Peter also knew that as soon as he slowed her down her bow would drop, the hole in it would slide under water, and then the river would come into her far faster than the pumps and the exhausted men could bail it out. They might make it to her rickety dock; but even if they did, Slewfoot would inevitably sink. In his mind Peter could see Sko's face as that filthy water rushed into his engine room and poured over those Packards.
"Pick us out a nice mudbank, Murph," he said, as he turned her from the open sea toward the mouth of the river.
"How about that one at six buoy?"
"Very fine," Peter agreed. "Tell all hands to get set. We're going to hit pretty hard."
He would never forget it. Still at speed, he turned her bows toward the mudbank with the crawling jungle just behind. At the first faint slither of mud against her, he yanked the throttles back and gave Sko a frantic buzz to take her out of gear.
For a long moment it looked as though Slewfoot was going to slide across the mud into the interior of New Guinea. The solid mass of the jungle rushed at her as Sko cut the engines altogether, leaving the boat silent as she ploughed up on the mudbank and finally came to rest, her bows neatly between two palm trees, her hull almost entirely out of the water.
The men got slowly to their feet and looked around. There was nothing to say. They just stood there looking at their boat stuck in the mud while the frightened land crabs regained their courage and cautiously came out of the darkness to investigate her, their big ugly bodies rattling against her bow.
Behind him Peter heard Archer's calm voice, "Well done, Mr. Brent. Post a four-man watch and dismiss the crew."
"What do we need a watch for?" Peter asked. "Let everybody get some sleep and some chow and we'll strike a blow for liberty tomorrow."
"A four-man watch," Archer said. Then he hopped down off the bridge, walked over to the side, and jumped down into the mud. The men watched in silence as he slogged, knee-deep in mud, up to the jungle and disappeared.
"Gerry," Peter said, "you and Britches take the first watch. Preacher, you and Murph take the other. The rest of you get some rest."
"What are we supposed to be 'watching' for?" Goldberg asked.
"Pirates, what else?" Peter said, dropping down through the hatch. As he went forward he heard Goldberg sternly order Britches to go get his broadsword. "We might have to repel boarders," Goldberg told him.
In a moment Jason and Murph came down the forward hatch and joined him in the dayroom. The lower bunks were soaked with water, but the uppers were sleepable.
The three of them examined the hole in her hull Now that the sea wasn't pouring through it, it didn't look like such a terrible wound. "We'll be back in business in a couple of days," Peter told them.
"Somebody ought to catch a court-martial for this," Murph declared angrily, staring at the ragged plywood with the moonlight streaming through the hole.
"If everybody in PTs got court-martialed for a goof," the Preacher said, "we'd all be in jail." .
Peter left them arguing the point and went into the tiny exec's cabin. He stretched out on the bunk with his clothes on and tried to keep his mind on the details of getting the boat repaired and off the mudbank and back in business. But time after time, his mind drifted off to the big thing—Archer.
Sometime during the short night a thought struck him hard. Could it be, he wondered, that Archer went by the book because that was all he knew?
And much later, there was a knock at the door. Peter didn't think he had fallen asleep, but he must have because he dreamed that someone was calling him. He turned on the light and sat up, listening.
Someone whispered outside the door, "Mr. Brent?"
Peter swung his feet around to the deck and said, "Come in."
The little Irishman had an expression of absolute terror as he slipped into the cabin and carefully closed the door. Peter had seen Murph scared a lot of times, but he had never seen him as shaken up as he was now. "What's the trouble, Murph?"
"Bad," Murph said, his voice low. Then, before he went on, he looked back over his shoulder to be sure no one was there. "You know, the Captain told me to put the charts and codes in the pouch with the lead weights so we could sink 'em if we had to."
"No, I didn't," Peter said, surprised.
"Well, he did. Then he told me to put the pouch in the rubber boat when they lowered it overboard."
Peter stiffened, his breath whistling through his teeth. "Where's the boat now?"
"That's what I mean," Murph said, almost crying. "I forgot it. I guess when we went astern it tore loose. It's gone!"
It was like being hit in the back of the head with an ax. For a moment Peter could do nothing but stare in horror at Murph. Murph backed away from him until he backed into the door.
"It wasn't all my fault," he wailed.
"It doesn't make any difference whose fault it is," Peter told him. "If the Japs get hold of those codes we're sunk. Does the skipper know about this?"
"I was afraid to tell him … What'll he do to me, Peter?"
"Does anybody else know?"
"I don't think so. Everybody was running all over the place. What'll he do to me?"
Peter wasn't listening to him now as he sat thinking about the code books in the disposal pouch.
Peter knew that the U.S. strategy against the enemy had changed. There weren't going to be any more Guadalcanal where the Marines were put ashore at one end of a grisly island to fight their way, inch by bloody inch, to the other end. From now on U.S. forces were going to leapfrog their way through the Pacific, leapfrog up New Guinea. With short, smashing amphibious attacks they were going to take and hold only enough area to use as a base for the next hop. They were going to take Salamaua and then Lae, Finschafen and then Wewak and Hollandia.
But these places were not called by their names. Each had a code name of its own—like Sunrise and Rosarita and Pittsburgh. These names were in the pouch now adrift somewhere in enemy waters. Let them find it and the entire top-secret code of the operation could be broken and every message that had been sent in code could be read.
"What'll he do to me?" Murph wailed.
"Right now that's not important," Peter said, as he started rolling up his pants legs. "I want you to disappear, Murph, so he can't ask you—if he happens to think about it. Go up to Six Squadron and stay there until I send for you. And don't say a word to anyone about this. Understand?"
"Yes, sir," Murph said, terrified.
"Okay, get going," Peter said.
When Murphy had gone, Peter sat there on the bed for a little while longer, thinking through this problem.
And when he came to the end of it he found himself faced with a dreadful decision.
Now, Peter knew, it was in his power to rid Slewfoot of Adrian Archer forever. All he had to do was go to the sq
uadron commander and report this thing, and Archer would be hauled up for a general court-martial and that would be the end of him as far as Slewfoot was concerned. It would also wipe out Murph, Peter knew.
But what about the other twelve men whose lives were absolutely dependent on the life of Slewfoot?
In the silent boat, with the night so close around him, Peter was convinced that if Adrian Archer stayed as skipper he would kill them all. And kill the boat, too.
9
Peter Brent despised airplanes because, secretly, he was afraid of them. He wouldn't admit this to himself, arguing that nothing was so important in life you had to get up in the air and fly real fast to get somewhere. To him, airplanes were dangerous, untrustworthy machines designed to kill you. They were not at all like boats that were friendly and had as much desire to live as you did. Peter couldn't imagine any man having any sort of affection for an airplane. Airplanes were enemies.
But, as he rode along in the Army jeep, looking at the airplanes lined up on the hardstands, he resigned himself to having to fly in one. It was the only way to find that yellow rubber boat with, he hoped, the pouch and the codes still in it.
As the sun came up bright and hot in a cloudless sky, he picked out the airplane that, since he .had to, he wanted to ride in. It was one of the new, fast fighters. Low and sleek and, he had to admit, powerful looking, with a feeling that it was going fast just standing there in the sunshine.
But the jeep driver drove on past all of the fighters, past the bombers, past everything.
Peter never felt really comfortable around the Army, and this driver made him particularly uncomfortable, acting as though Peter were asking him to sacrifice his life or something. As they passed the last of the parked airplanes and roared on down the empty and deserted runway, Peter got up enough courage to say, "I'm supposed to get in one of those planes."
"That's right," the driver said, gunning the jeep even faster.
"I think the pilot's waiting," Peter said.
"Pilots," the driver said with disgust.
"I mean," Peter said, "do you know where you're going?"
The driver turned and looked at him for a long, cold moment but didn't say anything. Then suddenly and so fast it almost flung Peter out of the jeep, he wheeled the thing off the runway, crashed across a strip of rough ground, and braked to a sliding stop near a clump of trees.
"End of the line," the driver said.
Peter looked around but could see nothing but the end of the runway with the jungle all around it. "Where's my plane?" he asked.
"In there somewhere," the driver said, pointing toward the jungle. Then he nervously gunned the motor as a signal for Peter to get out and leave him alone. Peter got out. The jeep took off with all four wheels spinning, slammed back to the runway, and disappeared.
Peter walked cautiously into the sparse jungle and found the airplane.
It was tiny. A little high-wing monoplane with a little coffee-grinder engine up front and a propeller not much longer than Peter's arms. It was streaked with mud, a sad vine was dripping off one wing, and one of the cockpit doors was flapping sadly back and forth in the morning wind.
Peter, feeling the same cold sickness he often felt just before a fight in Slewfoot, walked slowly over to the plane. There was no one in the little cockpit—or anywhere else.
There were two beat-up metal seats, side-by-side. In each there was a brown, thin, ragged canvas cushion, the stuffing pooching out of a slit in one of them. On the mud-covered floor about two million ants were eating what was left of a Spam sandwich. Hanging from the radio tuning knob was a little hula girl made out of pink rubber. She was swinging back and forth in the wind. Sticking out of the map compartment under the dash were two or three well-read comic books, but no maps.
"You Ensign Brent?" a voice asked from behind him.
The man was an apparition. He hadn't had a haircut in nine months, and long stalks of it hung down over his face so he looked like he was peering through some sort of a fence. Then, when that hair stopped just below his nose, an enormous moustache took up. Every hair in the moustache was going in a different direction and to Peter it looked like a tangle of barbed wire. The only clothing he had on was a pair of ragged, paint-stained shorts. No shoes, no shirt, no hat. He was lean, muscular, and tan.
"Yeah," Peter said.
"I'm Lieutenant Carruthers, your pilot, sir. Where you want to go?"
"Up the coast through the Vitiaz," Peter said, shaking hands.
"Hop in," Carruthers said.
"In this?" Peter asked, backing away from it,
"What else?"
Carruthers stooped under the wing and went to the sad, napping door. He took it off and laid it on the ground. Then he went around to the other side and took that door off too.
"They just get in the way in case you have to jump out," he said.
Peter wasn't about to get into this wreck. "Er … your Operations people said something about an L-85. You know, something with a little more … well … er … "
Carruthers climbed into the cockpit, saying, "Meet the L-85. Her name's Deborah." Then he sat there, looking expectantly at Peter.
There was nothing to do but get in. If this had been the Navy, Peter wouldn't have minded saying that he wasn't going to get into any such contraption as this, but with the Army …
As he sat down on the slit cushion, he noticed the vine hanging off the wing. "Want me to pull that vine off?" he asked hopefully.
"It'll either blow off or we'll take it along and drop it on the Japs."
Peter squirmed around in the seat, looking behind and under it for the parachute harness. He could find nothing that even faintly resembled a parachute. "How do you hook up the chute?" he asked.
"Chute?" the pilot asked, sounding surprised. "Listen, you ever sit on a parachute pack for a couple of hours? Like sitting on a pile of rocks."
"I won't mind," Peter assured him.
"Maybe not," he said, "but it doesn't make any difference because there aren't any."
"What happens if you get hit?" Peter asked, his voice sounding weak and faraway.
"Ride her down," Carruthers said. "She floats like a chute anyhow."
It made Peter sick and all he could do, as the engine began to make dreadful coughing noises, was sit there and stare straight ahead.
The engine suddenly stopped coughing and panting and began to run, and when it did it seemed to Peter that the plane was going to fall apart. The wings waggled around drunkenly, and the whole plane shook and rattled. The engine, with no cowling around it, bounced around just in front of him until Peter wondered if it was attached to the plane. Clouds of blue smoke poured out of it and were swept into the cockpit by the whirling propeller. And then, when the smoke died down a little, Peter looked with horror at long, hot flames shooting out of both sides of the engine.
He glanced over at the lieutenant, expecting him to cut the engine immediately and—Peter prayed—report this thing as absolutely unflyable; but the lieutenant just shoved the throttle all the way forward, took his feet off the brakes and away they went, staggering and wobbling out from under the trees, bouncing savagely across the strip, and finally hitting the end of the runway. There it rolled along, the wings wobbling up and down, the vine still streaming from one of them.
By some miracle the plane rose into the air. Peter looked out with horror and saw the ground dropping away below him. Surely, he thought, as the engine streamed blue flame, this pilot would put it down on the ground again and run away.
The pilot was paying no attention to the plane. He wasn't even looking out of it, but was bent over, searching around for something on the floor.
He found the ant-covered piece of sandwich and picked it up. As he flung it out of the plane he said, "I never saw as many ants as they've got out here."
"Lots of ants," Peter said, his mouth dry as sandpaper. "Don't you even have seat belts?"
"There's one around someplace."
> Peter, after a long search, found the belt tangled up under the seat. He untangled it and strapped it on. "You don't use a seat belt?" he asked.
"Not until they shoot at me. I got sort of a nervous stomach," the pilot said, taking his left foot off the pedal and sticking it and half his leg out the door so it waved around in the prop wash. Then he took his other foot off the other pedal and rested it comfortably on the instrument panel.
"The vine's gone," Peter said.
"Too bad. Hey, what are we looking for?"
"A yellow rubber boat."
"Where'd you lose it?"
"Up near Vadang, but on the mainland side of the strait."
"What's the matter? You a supply officer and lost it and they're going to make you pay for it?"
"No. We lost it off a PT boat."
The pilot jerked around in the seat and stared at him through the dripping of lanky hair. His voice sounded awed and frightened as he asked, "Are you a PT-boat man?"
Peter nodded.
The pilot shook his head back and forth. "You know what I'd do if somebody told me I had to ride in one of those PT boats? I'd shoot myself."
Peter was suddenly completely absorbed by a gauge which he could just see past the pilot's dirty bare foot on the instrument panel. The needle of the gauge was up against the pin on the empty side.
"Is that the gas gauge?" he asked.
The pilot nodded and said, "I wouldn't put foot on one of those PT boats if it was in a museum in Milwaukee."
Peter pointed a shaking finger at the gas gauge. "It's reading empty," he said.
"It always does," the pilot said, not looking at it. "Man, it's just suicide riding those boats. What chance have you got? They can hit you with a slingshot, and all that aviation gas goes up like a bomb."
But Peter's attention was fixed on the instruments. The compass was reading due south but, when he looked out of the plane, they were heading northwest. "Is the compass working?" he asked, his voice falling almost to a whisper.