“Fast screws, bearing three-five-oh,” Johnson said. “Turn count says twenty-six knots.”
“Helm, left full rudder. All compartments rig for depth charge.”
The destroyer began short-scale pinging.
“Nessie reveals herself at last,” Rusty said.
“He’s not an Asashio or Fubuki,” Charlie said. “I don’t know what class he is. He’s one of the escorts from the convoy we attacked. I recognized him from his lengthened forecastle.”
Reynolds looked at him sharply. “A long forecastle with a break forward of the bridge?”
“I think so. Yes.”
The captain said, “Minekaze class.” An old-timer, like Frankie. “What’s she doing out here looking for us? The entire IJN thinks it sunk us back at Rabaul.”
“The plane,” Charlie said.
“Explain that.”
“We were spotted while we were finishing up the repairs. Word got to the destroyer that he was tricked. He came back to finish the job.”
The captain agreed with him. “So he’s been pulling that routine for days. Search, circle around, wait. This time, he found us. We’ve got a very dedicated skipper up there.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Whoever he is, he’s a bloodhound.”
Reynolds had turned pale, his wide eyes fixed on nothing.
“Mizukaze,” the man breathed.
Charlie tensed as the destroyer’s screws chewed the water above them.
Of all the ships ...
whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh
He flinched, expecting a good shaking, but there was no explosion. The tin can passed overhead without dropping any depth charges, sonar pinging steadily.
The screws receded to the west. The men looked at each other. What the hell?
“He’s circling,” Johnson said. “He’s coming back.”
The destroyer returned at high speed and did another dry run. Then another.
The message from the Japanese skipper was clear.
He wasn’t going anywhere, and he was in control.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
SLOW DEATH
Silent running.
Right full rudder, left full rudder. It didn’t matter.
The little destroyer with its bloodhound skipper stayed on top of them, pinging steadily.
The captain ran his hand over his bearded jaw. “This might take a while.” He looked puzzled. “That skipper is a hard case.”
“He’ll never give up,” Reynolds said.
Kane squinted at him. “What makes you say that?”
“Because that’s the ship that sunk the 56. I’m sure of it.”
For the first time since Charlie had met the man, the captain paled with fear. “Jesus Christ.”
Apparently, Kane was well acquainted with the exec’s story.
But not his story anymore. All along, Reynolds had been hunting the Mizukaze alone on a personal crusade. Now the S-55, in turn, was being hunted. The fortunes of war had reunited Reynolds and his nemesis, and now the crew of the S-55 had joined to his fate.
They were all in it together now. Charlie wondered with a shiver whether history was about to repeat itself. Or whether instead, perhaps, they’d help Reynolds get his revenge.
The destroyer’s screws beat loudly over their heads as it made another run. This time, the ship dropped a single depth charge that pounded the hull. The men held on during the jolt.
A reminder of who was in charge. An invitation to come up and play.
“We’ve still got two fish left,” Charlie said.
Reynolds snapped out of his funk. “That’s right. We can take him.”
The captain shook his head. “Not yet. We’ll bunker down and shake him off.”
The executive officer opened his mouth but closed it.
The S-55 slowed to a crawl. All lighting and instrumentation was turned off. The helm and planes were already on manual operation for silent running, and the pumps turned off. Men spread soda lime on the deck to absorb carbon dioxide from the air. All hands not needed for duty were ordered to their bunks to minimize noise and oxygen consumption.
Now came the waiting game. If the submarine stayed silent and down long enough, the destroyer might lose her or give up the hunt. If the destroyer stayed on top of the sub, eventually Frankie would run out of power and air. She’d have to surface and fight an uneven battle.
They waited. On the surface, dawn broke. Japanese planes would join the hunt. The dark and quiet control room took on a funereal atmosphere.
“Harrison, Rusty, go get some rest,” the captain said.
They went to the wardroom to play cards instead. Charlie brushed the cockroaches off the table as Rusty dealt hands for a game of Go Fish.
“I don’t get it,” Charlie whispered. “That Jap skipper definitely knows his business. What’s he doing on an old Minekaze instead of, say, an Asashio?”
Rusty shrugged. “Maybe he’s a little go-getter like you, bucking for promotion. Maybe he pissed off the wrong admiral.”
“Got any fives?”
“Go fish, buddy.”
Charlie drew a card from the deck. “Have you ever been in this situation before?”
“Sure, but we always got out of it. If we stay down and stay quiet long enough, he’ll probably lose track of us and give up. If he doesn’t, well ... then I guess I get to say, ‘I told you so.’”
“We’ll have to fight him. Take our shot with the torpedoes and the deck gun against his four big naval guns.”
“He’s got torpedoes too, and his probably work. We’ve got one advantage. The ship has a design weakness. The amidships guns have limited sighting. The ship’s superstructure gets in the way. If we keep our bow aimed at him broadside just so, he’ll have a hard time hitting us.”
Broadside, a destroyer made a big target. In contrast, a submarine lay low in the water with a small profile. With her bow pointed, she made an even smaller target.
“We can do it,” Charlie said.
“There you go again.”
“It’s possible,” he protested.
Rusty laid down a book of aces. “Got any tens, Superman?”
Charlie handed them over.
Rusty said, “Fighting a destroyer on the surface is more like cards than chess. You start the game like chess, and then it’s all luck of the draw with bad odds.”
They played for hours as the boat’s air slowly fouled. Charlie went to get them coffee, but the coffeemaker had been turned off along with everything else.
They decided to turn in and try to sleep. They climbed into the conning tower and sacked out with splitting headaches. Charlie tossed and turned. The boat was quiet except for the loud, grating pings that continually yanked him from the edge of slumber.
Men were screaming in Japanese. He didn’t understand the words, but the language of terror was universal. He saw flaming figures topple off the gunwales of a burning ship.
Charlie awoke breathing hard in a pool of his own sweat.
ping ... ping ... ping
He glared at the bulkhead. That goddamn sound. It was like psychological warfare. He shined a flashlight on his watch. He’d been asleep for a record eight hours. They’d been under for twenty-four.
Rusty still slept, breathing in short little gasps.
Their air was dying, slowly being consumed one breath at a time.
The conning tower’s walls began to close in. He felt like he was in a coffin. He sat on his mattress and hugged his ribs, rocking, saying, “Shhh, shhh, shhh.”
The last thing he or the crew of the besieged boat needed was for him to have a claustrophobic panic attack.
He told himself to get a grip. This wasn’t about him and his bullshit, he reminded himself harshly. Everybody’s life was on the line here. This was life and death.
He took as much air into his lungs as he could and let it out in a sigh. He stood, feeling dizzy from fatigue and heat, and descended into the control room. The boat
had become impossibly hot; the thermometer read 130 degrees. Water condensed on the bulkheads and trickled in rivulets. The planesmen grunted at their wheels, sweat pouring off their ridged muscles, skivvy shirts tied around their heads like pirate sailors.
“Captain and the exec are in the wardroom,” the quartermaster told him and gave him a handful of salt pills. “Better take these, Mr. Harrison.”
“Thanks, Jakes.”
Nine hours of sweating had depleted Charlie’s body of much-needed salt. He hoped the pills would revitalize him, but he had a feeling they wouldn’t. His ass and groin itched and stung abominably; he had the prickly heat bad.
His sandals splashed in a quarter inch of slimy water as he plodded toward the wardroom. He found Kane and Reynolds stripped down to skivvy shorts. A plate of stale sandwiches lay untouched between them. He poured himself a glass of tepid water and gulped it down with the salt pills. He looked at the captain.
“He’s still up there,” Kane said. “We almost lost him in the night, but he found us again at daybreak.”
“How much time do we have?” Charlie asked him.
“We can last the day, maybe. I’ve been bleeding oxygen from the emergency tanks, but it’s not enough. We’re down to twelve percent of air composition.”
Earth’s atmosphere was twenty-one percent oxygen.
Charlie sat, picked up a sandwich, and put it back on the plate. Kane returned to his solitaire game. Reynolds took out a cigarette and put it between his lips, breathing rapidly through his nose. When he rubbed a match against the box’s striking surface, the flame died instantly. Not even enough oxygen to produce fire. He flung the moist cigarette on the table.
The exec rubbed his forehead. “We can take him, Captain.”
“I know how bad you want to sink that ship, Reynolds. We’re not there yet.”
“The battery’s dying. The planesmen can barely keep the boat balanced at this speed. The crew is dropping from the heat. Our bilges are filled to the danger zone. We’re sinking and starting to tilt.”
“We still have time. This skipper’s good, but nobody’s that good. We’ll lose him.”
He was right, Charlie realized. Nobody was that good.
He remembered the smoke trail beckoning him toward the Q-ship.
Submarines didn’t produce smoke while submerged. What would a boat leave behind that could mark a trail?
He excused himself and walked slowly out of the room. He found Braddock in his bunk, lying with his arm draped over his eyes. Every other bunk had a man in it either sleeping or staring into space in a dull stupor.
“Braddock, you awake?
“I could be.”
“I need you to help me with a leak.”
“Just take out your dick and aim it at the bowl, sir,” the machinist said.
“An oil leak, Braddock.”
The burly man opened his eyes and propped himself up on an elbow. “Where?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
Charlie believed Frankie was leaking oil into the sea. A steady stream of black bubbles rose to the surface and marked their position. That’s how the Japanese skipper tracked them. Frankie had been leading the destroyer to her with a trail of black breadcrumbs.
Braddock stared at him. “Are you going to move aside, sir, or should I fix it from here?”
In the engine room, the machinist got to work. Charlie slumped against the bulkhead and listened to men wearily bailing water out of the motor room to keep the motors and gear dry. Everybody seemed to have their finger in a dike on this boat.
A grimy mist hung in the air. His ass itched and stung. He had a raging headache.
“God damn it,” he hissed.
Braddock found a hole in a lube oil line and repaired it. “That should do her, sir.”
“Outstanding,” Charlie said, feeling hopeful.
Braddock growled, “Yeah, and don’t tell anybody I did that so quick, or they’ll double my work load. I do enough of the shit work around here.”
The auxiliaryman plodded back to his bunk. Charlie shook his head as he watched him disappear into the dark passageway. The boat’s biggest jerk had likely saved them all again.
He returned to the wardroom. Rusty was eating one of the sandwiches. Kane plowed through his solitaire game. Reynolds had finally gotten a cigarette lit.
The captain smiled after Charlie finished his report. “Now we can finally shake off this joker. We just need to hang on a few more hours.”
“Good work,” Rusty said, but he was frowning. As engineering officer, he should have thought of the possibility of an oil leak. They all should have. But with so much stress and so little oxygen on the boat, nobody was thinking clearly.
“John Braddock deserves the credit,” Charlie said. “You should see how fast he works.”
He noticed the pinging had stopped. A good sign. The screws began to recede.
The S-55 crawled along. The officers moved to the control room and waited. And waited.
At last, Kane ordered, “Planes, forty-five feet.”
The planesmen groaned at the wheels, laboriously taking Frankie up to periscope depth.
“Up scope.” He clapped the handles back into place. “And once again, I can’t see anything. Down scope. Up number two scope.”
Kane stared into the eyepiece for a long time while water from the bearings splashed across his shoulders.
Charlie couldn’t stand the suspense. “See anything, Captain?”
“Well, Harrison, the scope is half fogged and vibrating, it’s overcast and dusk up there, and it’s raining on me inside my own boat. Give me a minute, will you?”
Charlie shut up.
A minute passed. Kane said, “We’ll have to risk it. Stand by to surface.”
A fresh pair of men arrived to man the planes.
“Surface.” As the surfacing alarm sounded, he said, “I’ll go up and take a look myself. Lookouts to the control room. Harrison, once I give the all-clear, you’ll take first watch.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
Kane ascended the conning tower, Charlie following. As the boat broke the surface, the quartermaster removed the dogs and cracked the hatch. What sounded like a gale vented explosively through the gap. The hatch opened. The captain climbed out.
And came back down fast. “Dive, dive, dive!”
The boat shook as the Mizukaze fired a salvo.
The planesmen hauled at the wheels to angle the boat back into the sea while the manifoldmen flooded the ballast tanks with seawater.
Kane descended to the control room gasping. He stood for several moments leaning with his hands on his knees, struggling to breathe.
“Maybe he is ... just that good. What’s he doing now, Marsh?”
“Just sitting there. Wait. Now the ship is heading toward us, slowly.”
“Planes, 100 feet. Helm, right full rudder.”
The men sagged. The destroyer was still on top of them, the battery was close to flatlining, and the boat was almost out of oxygen. They were out of options, and they knew it.
Reynolds stared expectantly at the captain. “Sir?”
“That Jap skipper wants a fight.” Kane rose to full height and glared at his officers. “And we’ll give him one. When it gets nice and dark, we’re going to sink the bastard.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
GUN ACTION
The sun set over the Solomon Sea. Twilight turned to darkness. The moon had not yet risen. The officers stood in the control room, waiting for the order.
The room was bathed in a dim red glow. Charlie glanced at the other officers’ faces. He saw more than fear in their eyes. He saw a fierce will to fight.
An animal never fights so hard as when it’s cornered. When it has nothing to lose.
“I think a Hail Mary is in order,” Captain Kane said.
The officers smiled. He smiled back at them. He looked proud.
He could have given a rousing speech. If he ever
wanted to get sentimental, now was the time. He looked like he wanted to, but he didn’t. He probably knew there was no need.
“I’ll be on the bridge. Harrison, as gunnery officer, you’ll be with me to spot for the deck gun. Reynolds, you’ll be assistant approach officer as normal. Rusty, assistant diving officer.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” they said.
“We’re going to fight. We’re not going to surrender. That’s it.”
“Aye, aye.”
“Torpedo room, make ready the tubes. Order of tubes is one, two. Set the depth at four feet.”
“Tubes one and two ready to fire, Captain,” Reynolds said.
“Rig for collision. Stand by to surface.”
“All compartments report rigged for collision. The boat is ready to surface in all respects.”
“Very well.” The captain closed his eyes in concentration. Charlie knew he was looking for a better move, but he had none. He opened his eyes and said, “Battle stations, gun action.”
The general alarm honked through the boat. The quartermaster repeated the order over the loudspeakers. Charlie descended to unlock the padlock for the ammunition locker. The gun crew assembled in their bulky steel helmets and stacked cartridges in the passageway. Sailors formed a human chain leading to the gun hatch, ready to pass shells up the line.
Charlie strapped on his own life jacket and helmet before leading the gun crew up to the main access trunk. The quartermaster waited at the top, gripping his mallet.
“Ready, Butch?” Charlie asked the gun captain.
“We’re ready, sir.”
“We drilled for this repeatedly,” he told the gun crew. “Make every shot count, and keep it hot.”
They grinned back at him like wolves, panting on the boat’s dying oxygen. Even the surly Braddock appeared to relish the prospect of a fight, however uneven.
Only Billy Ford showed his anxiety. Then he smiled to hide it. Charlie smiled back.
“Surface,” Kane said.
High-pressure air pounded into the ballast tanks. The S-55 had to get to the surface fast and with an even keel, which would allow the men to get to the gun quickly.
The captain climbed into the conning tower and gripped the top rungs of the ladder.
Crash Dive: a novel of the Pacific War Page 13