Charlie reported, “Gunnery officer ready, Captain.”
“Target is small destroyer, bearing one-six-five, range 4,000 yards. Good luck, Harrison.”
“You too, sir.”
“Planes on zero,” Rusty ordered.
“Harrison,” a voice said from the bottom of the ladder. “Charlie.”
He looked down and was surprised to see Reynolds looking up at him with a fierce expression.
“Sir?”
“I want you to sink that fucking tin can for me. Put him on the bottom where he belongs.”
“Wilco, sir.”
The gun crew cracked grins at Reynolds’s language. Profanity was a fine art practiced regularly by enlisted men and rarely by officers.
“Promise me, Charlie.”
“That’s a promise, sir.”
The water outside the portholes foamed. Frankie blew clear. The men tensed.
“Twenty-three feet and holding,” Rusty said.
Kane said, “Stand by for battle surface. Open the hatch, Jakes.”
The quartermaster hammered it open and threw it wide. The men craned their necks toward fresh air. The captain climbed out.
“God be with you men,” Jakes told them.
Charlie hissed, “Gun crew on deck! Go, go, go!”
The men followed him up into the night. Charlie watched them rush down the steps to set up the four-inch deck gun. He took a moment to drink a deep lungful of cool, sweet, clean oxygen. The black sky appeared vast and limitless overhead.
Additional crews emerged from the hatch with fifty-caliber machine guns, followed by the lookouts, who took up their posts.
The gun hatch opened. The sailors passed up shells to the gun crew. Braddock rammed the first shell into the breech and slammed the block shut—again, Charlie noted with a scowl, neglecting to set the safety. The pointer elevated the seventeen-foot-long barrel for a 4,000-yard shot. The trainer rotated the turret. The sight setter made a slight correction. Butch gave Charlie the thumbs up. Ready to fire.
The Japanese skipper had been expecting them. A bright searchlight swept the water.
The boat’s diesel engines fired.
The light swiveled and glared at the S-55.
Charlie cried, “Commence firing!”
“Fire!” Butch bawled.
The gun roared with a flash of light. The shell ripped the air and struck the water astern of the destroyer. Borkowski caught the hot empty case that ejected from the smoking breech.
“Check fire!”
Charlie called out the range and location of the miss relative to the target. The sight setter corrected the angle and elevation.
Braddock rammed the next shell into the breech and slammed it shut. “Ready!”
“Fire!”
The next round splashed fifty yards off the beam.
“Check fire!”
“Ready!”
The Mizukaze fired its bow gun. The shell tore into the sea a hundred yards astern and exploded. A hill of water rose above the impact.
“Fire!”
The deck gun roared again, missing the destroyer off the bow. The gunners had straddled the target. They had the ship zeroed. The next shot had a fair chance of hitting.
“He’s turning toward us,” Charlie said.
The captain stared at the ship through his binoculars. “All back full.”
“Fire!”
The shell hit the destroyer amidships with a flash and boom that sent bodies and shards of metal cartwheeling high into the air.
The gun crew whooped.
“Silence!” Charlie roared. “Resume firing!”
“I believe we struck the bridge or close to it,” Kane said.
“Ready!”
“Fire!”
The destroyer didn’t complete its turn but instead kept its heading, momentarily disoriented. Then the ship turned sharply, its bow gun pounding another hill out of the sea close aboard. Shrapnel clattered and bonged against the pressure hull. One of the lookouts screamed and plummeted to the main deck.
“Damn,” Kane said, looking down as sailors rushed out of the stern access hatch to carry the wounded man below. He returned his gaze to the Mizukaze. “Here he comes.”
The destroyer advanced while the submarine retreated, but the destroyer was faster. The distance between the two vessels rapidly diminished.
The captain said, “Stand by, torpedo room.” He added, “Harrison, I’m going to fire our last two fish down his throat. If he evades, I’ll turn the other way. If he goes to starboard, we’ll go to our starboard. Rake him amidships. Then we’ll make a run for it.”
“Aye, aye,” Charlie said. He shouted orders to Butch, who gave him a thumbs up.
“Fire one!” the captain said. “Fire two! All ahead full!”
The torpedoes swished out of their tubes toward the oncoming destroyer.
The Mizukaze turned hard to port to evade.
Charlie spotted the wake of incoming torpedoes.
“Torpedoes, close aboard!”
“Left full rudder!”
The S-55 turned just in time as the enemy torpedoes streaked past. Too close.
Charlie shuddered. “Butch, adjust your fire!”
“Meet her,” Kane told the helmsman. “Steady on this course. Watch your rudder!”
Holding steady, the S-55 crossed the destroyer’s beam at 1,500 yards.
“Resume firing!” Charlie shouted.
“Fire!”
The boat’s deck gun and fifty-cal machine guns raked the destroyer’s starboard side. Tracers flashed between the close-aboard vessels. Rounds snapped through the air and thudded into the sail’s metal skin.
The starboard naval gun pounded with a blinding flash. A mountain of water roared high into the air, obscuring Charlie’s view of the Mizukaze. The spray rained across the bridge.
“Reduce elevation!” Charlie waved at Butch. “Hit him below the waterline!”
One good hit below the waterline, and they could sink the bastard.
Butch gave him a thumbs up as his body disintegrated and pitched back into the water in a stream of tracer rounds. Borkowski flopped onto the deck, decapitated. The 20mm rounds thudded into the deck before punching Billy Ford through the chest.
Where the gun crew had been, only two survivors cowered on a deck splattered with blood and entrails.
Charlie gaped in horror. Then he shoved it aside. He’d feel it later, if there was a later. “Our gun crew has casualties, Captain. I’m going down there.”
“Very well,” the captain said. “Left full rudder! All ahead, emergency!”
The boat was running.
Charlie raced down the steps to the deck gun. A mutilated figure scarcely recognizable as human occupied the chewed up and smoking pointer’s seat. He pulled the body onto the deck with an anguished cry. He wheeled on the survivors.
“On your feet! Man this gun!”
Tate lay on the deck with his arms covering his head. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
John Braddock stood up, streaked with blood. “We’re dead if we do and dead if we don’t. Hand me that shell, Lieutenant.”
Charlie accepted a shell from the wide-eyed sailor in the hatchway, made sure it was set to ARMED, and handed it over. “Here!”
Braddock rammed the shell home. “Ready!”
There was nothing to fire at. The destroyer was behind them now, turning back in pursuit of its fleeing prey. Charlie needed to get more men on the gun during the breather.
He called to the captain, “Ready to resume fire when we see a target, sir!”
Kane said, “Very well!”
Charlie flew through the air as a deafening explosion hammered the boat. He came to on the main deck by the bow, his helmet gone, his hair almost in the bow wake.
The conning tower was on fire, pumping smoke into the sky.
“Captain!” he screamed. He coughed on broken ribs.
The boat had decelerated and was turning to
port, out of control. Had the explosion wiped out the control room? Reynolds, Rusty, and the rest? Was anybody left?
He tried to stand, fell down. He felt an overwhelming urge to sleep and let somebody else sort out this mess. Instead, he grit his teeth and forced himself onto his feet. He limped, swaying drunkenly, back toward the gun.
“You’ve got nine lives,” Braddock said. The machinist looked relieved to see him. “Tate was thrown overboard when we got hit.” Braddock held out his hand to steady him. “You all right?”
Charlie didn’t answer. He was watching the destroyer, parts of it afire and smoking, emerge from the darkness at full speed.
“Jesus,” he breathed.
“Fuck me,” Braddock said.
The ship was coming right at them.
The Japanese skipper was going to ram the boat.
“Down!” the machinist roared and tackled him to the deck. Charlie howled as the destroyer’s prow crashed into the boat at the stern.
The world filled with the agonized shriek of metal as the Mizukaze rode up and over Frankie’s hull. The ship listed and righted itself. The boat tilted under the weight, her bow in the air. Water sprayed around the destroyer’s damaged bow. The vessels groaned as they settled, their screws stopped.
Braddock looked down at Charlie. “Now what? Lieutenant!”
Charlie grimaced at the pain in his ribs and struggled to breathe. He pressed his hand against his side. It felt warm and slippery with blood. “Now,” he managed to get out, “we sink him.”
The machinist grinned again. “Aye, aye.”
“If we can get a shot, we’ll put a round into him below the waterline.”
An alarm sounded in the boat. More than a score of submariners shouted as they poured out of the gun hatch with rifles and pistols. Petty officers, chiefs, sailors, auxiliarymen, and messmates. Charlie saw the quartermaster and even the cook and Nimuel, the steward, emerge with weapons.
Reynolds appeared in their midst and racked a round into his Thompson submachine gun. Charlie’s chest flooded with relief. A senior officer was still alive.
The exec roared, “We’re taking that fucking ship! Who’s with me?”
The men cheered and surged down the deck toward the destroyer.
What the hell was he doing?
It was madness.
Another Hail Mary, but they had a chance. Maybe, just maybe, it could work. This time, Reynolds was bringing guns to the gunfight.
The men scaled the Mizukaze’s chewed-up hull with ropes and grappling hooks. Figures raced along the deck, shouting in Japanese. Gunfire popped and flashed as men fired at each other at point blank range. Two sailors pitched into the water, still fighting as they fell.
Get out of there. Get the hell off that ship!
He knew Reynolds. The man wasn’t going anywhere.
“Get me a shell,” he said. “Get as many shells as you can find.”
Braddock disappeared down the hatch and returned with two shells, which he laid gently on the bloodstained deck.
Reynolds and his boarding party had cleared the bow and advanced steadily down the slanted forecastle, firing as they moved. He wasn’t going to stop until he’d killed the Japanese skipper with his own hands.
The exec surged ahead. “Come on, men!”
The submariners cheered and ran after him.
A distant blood-curdling howl: “Banzai!”
Scores of voices took up the shout: “BANZAI!”
White-uniformed sailors swarmed out of the superstructure and charged up the deck with bayonets fixed. A dozen fell to aimed fire. Then another. The rest kept coming through the smoky haze, screaming as they closed.
The submariners ran, turning singly or in small groups to fire.
Reynolds stayed behind. He drained his tommy gun with a primal roar and tossed it to the deck. He pulled his .45 and shot a sailor in the face as the man rushed him with a battle cry. He shot another and then another as they came at him howling.
The sailors closed and speared him through the chest. Even then, he kept fighting. Another sailor charged in and sent him flying over the gunwale. Charlie watched helplessly as the man plummeted through empty air. He struck the water and disappeared.
The Japanese sailors kept going, pausing only to bayonet the wounded. One by one, the submariners stopped to make a stand and were overrun. The survivors reached the gunwale and jumped into the sea.
A man barked commands. Sailors began to set up a machine gun. Rifles strapped to their backs, others gripped the ropes and swung themselves over the side.
Having repelled a boarding, the Japanese were now going to board the S-55 and take her.
Braddock had the gun aimed at the destroyer below the waterline. “Ready!”
“Belay that!” Charlie ordered. He pointed. “There! Elevate the gun!” They sat in the gun’s opposite seats, Charlie rotating while the auxiliaryman elevated.
“Ready!” Braddock said.
The machine gun opened fire with a metallic bark. He saw the rounds chew the deck in a straight line leading up to the gun.
Charlie screamed: “Fire!”
The gun discharged with a blinding white flash. The shell struck the destroyer just below the gunwale. The machine gun disappeared in the fireball. A dozen bodies crashed onto Frankie’s deck. The two locked vessels shivered at the impact and settled again with a cascade of metallic groans. Smoke shrouded the destroyer’s bow.
Charlie cranked the wheel to turn the gun. “Reload!”
Braddock hopped out of his seat and slammed a shell into the breech. “Ready! That’s the last one! The other one’s gone. The concussion tossed it.”
“Did you set it to ARMED so we don’t shoot a dud?”
“I’m not stupid, Lieu-fucking-tenant.”
“It’s our last shot. It has to count, you asshole. Reduce elevation.”
“The waterline this time?”
“No,” Charlie said. He pointed at the destroyer’s stern, which lay angled within view.
“Are you nuts?”
“We have to be sure he sinks.”
The man stared at him. Then he nodded. “Aye, aye, and amen.”
They lined up the shot. Charlie got out of the seat and stood behind Braddock, checking to make sure the optical sighting was good. It was.
This is for Kane. For Rusty and Reynolds. For all of them.
“FIRE!”
Braddock stomped the firing pedal. The gun blasted its last round at the destroyer’s stern.
The shell struck the neat stack of red-painted depth charges.
The world went white. Charlie again flew bouncing across the deck as the Mizukaze’s stern disappeared in a searing explosion.
Thunder. Heat and light. Tumbling and pain.
Charlie propped himself up on one elbow. His vision swam. Through a bright haze, he saw smoking chunks of metal plunge into the sea around the sinking destroyer. The Japanese warship shrieked as it slid off the submarine. Frankie shuddered and screamed as her nemesis left her embrace.
The Mizukaze sank in a massive wave of spray.
“Braddock!” he cried. “Braddock! Anybody! Help me!”
Charlie sank back as the shock passed and his numb body began to register piercing agony. He shivered on the cold wet deck, his mouth open in a soundless scream.
When the darkness came, he welcomed it with relief.
This is it, was his final thought.
I love you. I’m sorry. Be—
CHAPTER THIRTY
BURIAL AT SEA
“How many men did you lose in the action?” the skipper asked.
“Too many, sir,” Rusty said. “Thirty-nine, to be exact. Another eight wounded.”
The S-55 lay hove-to next to the S-57, fifty miles from Cairns. The S-57’s skipper had come aboard and whistled at the damage. The mangled and charred sail covered with a tarp to keep the rain out. The grooves and gashes on the main deck, scored like giant talon marks. Bullet holes everywhe
re. Silent machines. A sheet of oily black water covering the deck.
In the wardroom, Captain Reyes, the S-57’s commander, heard the story of how the S-55 sank five Japanese ships and barely survived the encounter.
The man shook his head in wonder. “A hell of a thing.” He looked like he’d wished he’d been there but was glad he hadn’t. “How did you get here without being able to dive?”
Rusty nodded to Charlie, who sat slumped in his chair. Charlie’s left arm, fractured in two places, hung in a sling. He breathed with difficulty, his chest tightly wrapped against three broken ribs. Bandaging covered multiple gashes in his left side, which Rusty had treated with sulfa and hydrogen peroxide and taped shut until a doctor could treat him.
Charlie would be going home with scars after all.
“We set a fire in the conning tower,” Charlie explained. “Blew fans at the smoke. Played with our trim. Pumped our bilges to create an oil slick. The two Jap planes that overflew us thought we were afire and sinking. They left us alone long enough for us to reach the Coral Sea.”
“With one working engine and a leaking boat.”
“We’ve got a terrific engineering officer sitting right here. We’ve also got a good machinist who kept us going. John Braddock. You can have him if you want.”
Reyes shook his head again. “A hell of a thing. Perth was trying to reach you for days. We thought you were lost.” He looked at Charlie. “This was your first war patrol, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, sir, it was.”
“Welcome to the submarines, Harrison.”
Charlie smiled at that.
“Well.” The skipper stood and put on his hat. “We don’t want to be on the surface any longer than we have to in broad daylight. We can talk further on the 57 after you’ve rested. We’ve got your wounded aboard. Bring the rest of your crew over, and we’ll scuttle the boat.”
Charlie and Rusty exchanged a glance. Rusty said, “We’re not coming over, Captain. We’re staying with Frankie. We’re going to deliver her to Cairns.”
Reyes frowned. “The boat’s a write-off. It’s a crazy—”
“We fought for this boat,” Charlie said fiercely. “Our crew bled for this boat. Our captain and exec died for this boat. This boat sank five Jap ships, and we’re taking her home.”
Crash Dive: a novel of the Pacific War Page 14