The skipper sighed. “Have it your way. We’ll cover you as best we can.” He spread his hands. He didn’t have to explain the risk they were taking. They knew it well.
They shook hands. Soon, the S-57 sank out of sight.
Charlie gazed across the calm, sunny water. The S-55 began smoking as she made way. He looked up at the metal sail and said a silent prayer for Captain Kane.
You never think a conversation you have with someone will be your last. Charlie remembered the last thing the captain said to him during their chess game.
Next time, I’ll know exactly what to—
What was he going to say? Nothing important, probably. If Kane had known how close he was to his mortality, he likely would have said something very different. But as the last personal thing he’d said to Charlie, it took on great significance to him. A cryptic message Charlie could puzzle over for years.
No, that wasn’t right. The last personal thing he’d said was, Good luck, Harrison.
Thank you, sir.
If Charlie had known it was to be their final exchange outside of combat, he would have said something different too. He would have spoken up and said how much he admired the man.
Kane’s memory would live on in Charlie, and so would his tactics.
Goodbye, Captain Kane. Goodbye, Lieutenant Reynolds.
Both men, along with so many others, now buried at sea.
He walked along the deck and found Rusty on his hands and knees, leaning over the side of the boat with a bucket of white paint next to him.
The last commander of the S-55 finished painting a fifth meatball on the chipped hull.
“I’ll find a broom,” Rusty said. “The shears are gone, but we’ll jury rig something to tie it to. Frankie’s earned it. Five kills and a clean sweep. Our girl is going home in style.”
“I guess that means we’ll be on another boat soon. I hope they keep us together.”
Rusty stared out over the water. “I don’t want to think about that right now. I just want to get home.” He growled, “While you were knocked out, I trolled the wreckage for survivors. The Japs were in horrible shape. Their clothes had been blown off. They were covered in oil. I tried to take a few prisoners, but every time we reached down to pull one aboard, he swallowed water and went under. They’d rather drown themselves than surrender. Who are these people, Charlie? How long is this going to go on? We got our five meatballs, but what did it cost us?”
Rusty didn’t ask the last question left hanging in the air: Is it worth it?
As officers, they knew victory demanded a steep price. Charlie believed it was worth the cost but couldn’t say exactly why. So he said nothing.
Frankie limped toward Cairns on one main engine. The next morning, Rusty made landfall. Cairns was a sight for very sore eyes. As the boat approached the harbor with a broom tied to a pole, the S-57 blew clear of the sea bow first and began to pace her as escort.
“Look at that,” Rusty said with a grin. “Going home in style.”
As they neared the harbor, Charlie frowned. Something was wrong.
The water level was rising.
“Goddamn, Frankie,” Rusty said, close to tears. “Don’t do this now.”
Braddock ran onto the deck with the other four men of the skeleton crew who’d volunteered to remain aboard and get her home. Rusty looked at him. The man shook his head.
“She’s taking water fast,” Braddock told him. “We’re going down. She’s done.”
“What do you mean, ‘she’s done’? How bad is the leak?”
“Leaks,” Braddock corrected. “Water’s gushing into the boat.”
The heavy water in the boat was overwhelming the pumps and weighing Frankie down. The screws stopped as the water drowned the engine. The pumps died. The sea stirred around the boat. The deck tilted as she began to sink by the stern in a shooting spout of water.
She was going down fast.
Charlie said, “It’s okay, Rusty. I think she knows what she’s doing.”
Rusty took a deep breath and let it go. The boat was obviously lost; there was nothing more to do here. “All right. Abandon ship.”
The machinist grinned at Charlie. “Remind you of a certain special night, Lieutenant?”
“Shove it up your ass, Braddock,” Charlie replied and then groaned as the man helped him into his Mae West life jacket. He wasn’t looking forward to getting into the saltwater with his wounds.
“I’ll help you swim over to the 57, sir. I won’t let you commit hara-kiri just yet.”
Charlie looked around at the old boat one last time and said goodbye.
A hell of a way to fight a war.
Rusty said, “That’s it, gents. Over the side quick so we don’t get caught in the suction.”
They jumped in and swam away as Frankie sank gracefully into the spray. A burial at sea. The old sea wolf’s war was over. She was calling it quits.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
THE BEACH
Charles Lockwood was rear admiral and commander of the submarine force in the Southwest Pacific Theater. He welcomed the two young naval officers into his office in Brisbane.
“I just got off the phone with the new boss, Bull Halsey,” the admiral said. “A phone call in which I was able to describe an outstanding patrol that resulted in five confirmed sinkings. The admiral is very pleased. The newspapers are going crazy over it back home.”
“Thank you, sir,” Rusty and Charlie said.
Evie knew he served on the S-55. Charlie hoped she was proud of him, and not too furious.
“There will be laurels for you and other distinguished personnel,” the admiral said. “I’m recommending a Presidential Unit Citation for the boat and the Medal of Honor for both Lieutenant-Commander Kane and Lieutenant Reynolds. Their loss is a real tragedy.”
They thanked him again, more heartily this time.
“The failed Jap offensive at Henderson Field was their last big try to take it back,” Lockwood went on. “By Christmas, we’ll have Guadalcanal wrapped up. Then we’ll be on offense. We need fighting men in the boats, gentlemen. Men who will follow Kane’s aggressive style. It’s going to be a whole new ball game in ’43.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Lieutenant Grady, the manner in which you rallied the crew and restored operation of the S-55 after the battle was exemplary. You’ve proven yourself ready to take on responsibilities of executive officer. You’re to report to PXO school at New London.”
“Thank you, sir,” Rusty stammered. After a month of training at prospective executive officer school, he would enter the XO placement pool. If he performed well, he might command his own boat one day. He dazedly returned the man’s handshake.
“Kane set the standard, son. I want you to sink ships.”
“Understood, sir.”
Lockwood turned to Charlie. “As for the man who sank the Mizukaze, I’m promoting you to the rank of lieutenant and posting you to Sabertooth. We need men who’ve got balls and can think on their feet. I see a promising career ahead of you if you stick with the submarines, son.”
Charlie reeled at the heady news but kept his cool. He accepted the man’s handshake while barely being aware of it. “Thank you, sir.”
“You can thank me by sinking every one of those sons of bitches. Your squadron commander will fill you in on the details.”
Charlie couldn’t believe it. Just five weeks ago, he’d been standing on the wharf, eyeing Frankie’s scarred metal sail with trepidation.
“I’d love to spend more time with you fine men, but there’s a war on,” the admiral said with a wry smile. “You’ve got two weeks of R&R before you report to your respective assignments. Enjoy it. Take a load off. Then you can get back into the fight.”
Back outside, they walked along the path toward the wharfs.
“PXO!” Charlie exploded. “Congratulations, Rusty.”
“You too.”
Rusty said nothing for a while, apparently still
dazed by their meeting with the admiral. For a blessed minute, Charlie forgot about the pain in his healing arm and ribs.
Rusty said, “I wonder if every guy who moves up the ladder feels this way.”
“What way is that?”
“I’m wondering what the hell the Navy is thinking, for starters.”
“Maybe we’ll end up on the same boat again at some point.”
“I’d like that, Charlie.”
“In which case, I’ll keep you on the straight path.”
“Ah, go to hell. We’ll both be faking it until we make it, and you know it.”
Charlie laughed. He did know it.
He’d earned his combat patrol badge and his dolphins marking him as qualified in submarines. His wounds had earned him a Purple Heart. His squadron commander told him he’d been recommended to receive a Silver Star for sinking the Mizukaze.
Even so, he still had a lot to learn.
The men walked along the sunny beach, hands in their pockets, each lost in his own thoughts.
At last, Rusty parked his rear on the sand. “I have no idea what I’m going to do now.”
Charlie joined him on the warm sand. “I thought you wanted to get drunk.”
“I have this urge to sit here for a while. Just sit here and be alive and know I’m alive. Look at the water without being afraid of it. It’s peaceful here.”
It was. They gazed across Brisbane River for a while. Charlie thought of home, San Francisco. A submarine glided into view. Going out to sea for a war patrol.
“Look at those poor fools,” Rusty said. “Full of piss.”
“Yeah,” Charlie agreed coolly, but the sight made his blood quicken. He wondered who was commanding her, where she was going, and how she’d fare once she got there.
He wished the boat and her crew good luck and good hunting.
The submarine was one of the new fleet boats. Gato class. Three hundred feet long and twenty-seven feet wide at the beam, with a complement of six officers and fifty-four enlisted men. Four powerful diesel engines, four high-speed electric motors, two batteries. She could make twenty-one knots on the surface and nine knots submerged, up to 11,000 nautical miles and seventy-five days on patrol. She could dive to 300 feet. She carried twenty-four torpedoes. Her machinery was new. And she had air conditioning.
Sabertooth was a fleet boat. He was basically looking at his future command.
She was beautiful.
He stood and dusted sand off his service khakis.
“Where are you going?” Rusty said.
“To mail a letter. Come on. You probably got mail from home.”
“No, I’ll sit here a bit longer. I’ve got a lot to think about. You go. I’ll catch up later.”
Charlie looked at his friend and again saw a tired man grown old before his time, now facing the prospect of being an executive officer.
“Wait a sec,” Rusty added. “Do you want the letter back that you gave me?”
“No. Keep it.” Charlie patted his breast pocket. “And I’ll keep yours. Until this is over.”
After writing letters to Mrs. Kane and Mrs. Reynolds, he’d written a new letter to Evie. In it, he’d admitted his selfishness, his need for her, his gratitude that she’d both loved and supported him while he went off to fight his war and left her alone. He told her his love and memories had gotten him to hell and back.
Then he asked the question: Could she forgive him? Love him again?
If she said yes, he was going to marry that girl. If she said no, he was going to keep asking.
“I’ll see you later then,” Rusty told him. “We’ll get into a bottle of something and celebrate.”
“You got it.” He added with a devious smile, “Exec.”
“Oh, brother.”
Charlie left his friend on the beach and headed to the post office.
By deciding to send his letter to Evie, his destiny awaited him there, just as it awaited him on his next command. He’d learned that destiny wasn’t something you ever reached; it was a path. A path defined by choices, directed by strategy, and ultimately decided by the luck of the draw.
Charlie’s war was just beginning, and so was his destiny. He welcomed its next chapter.
WANT MORE?
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Turn the page to read the first chapter of Silent Running, the second book in the Crash Dive series. After that, you’ll find a special note about this book from the author.
Chapter 1 of Silent Running, the second book in the Crash Dive series.
CHAPTER ONE
REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR
Naval Station Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
December, 1942.
Charlie Harrison set down his sea bag and smiled at his new home.
The Tambor-class submarine lay tied at the end of a pier that extended from the jetty housing the submarine base. A sea tender refitted her for war. Shirtless workers in dusty dungarees toiled in the sun amid a tangle of hoses, wiring, and gear.
Rivet guns whirred. Sparks flew from welds. Trucks unloaded spare parts. A pair of sailors in a rowboat repainted the hull. Mattresses hung on a line to air out. Charlie watched the sailors go through their routine.
No sign of the crew, who had long left for Oahu’s beaches and beer halls.
The submarine lay a football field in length and twenty-seven feet wide at the beam. When on the surface, four massive GE motors drove her at a top speed of twenty knots. While submerged at depths as low as 250 feet, a pair of Sargo batteries propelled her up to nine knots. She could travel an impressive 11,000 nautical miles.
Her name was Sabertooth.
Like all submarines, she was named after a creature of the sea. The sabertooth fish was a small but fierce tropical predator with big curved teeth. Sabertooth’s teeth consisted of twenty-four torpedoes, which she fired from six tubes forward and four aft.
Lieutenant-Commander Robert Hunter captained the boat. With a name like that … Charlie had hoped it was an omen, that the captain knew how to find and sink Japanese ships. Back in Brisbane, he found out Sabertooth’s war record spoke otherwise. Three patrols, only two sinkings.
To the west, dozens of powerful warships lay moored among calm blue waters and waving palm trees. Pearl was a militarized Eden. Then he spotted the distant listing hulk of the great battleship Oklahoma, still half-submerged in the water. A grim reminder of the day that started the war. December 7, 1941.
In just a few days, the Navy would mark the first anniversary of the vicious surprise attack.
Charlie couldn’t stand here, where America’s war began, without feeling reverence for the dead. That, and a sense of awe. He gazed across the harbor waters and tried to picture what it must have been like on that terrible day.
Two hundred fighters and bombers roared out of the rising sun.
He knew the story well enough; every man in the Navy knew it. Every fist-clenching, teeth-grinding, blood-boiling bit of it.
The first wave assaulted Battleship Row and the six airfields. In only minutes, a bomb crashed through the Arizona’s two armored decks and struck the magazine. The resulting explosion ripped her sides open like tin foil and broke her back in a massive fireball. She sank within minutes, taking more than a thousand souls down with her.
Six torpedoes hammered the West Virginia, which also went under. Nine torpedoes drilled into the Oklahoma, making her list so heavily she almost capsized. The fighters strafed the airfields, chewing up the planes parked wingtip to wingtip in neat rows.
Then the second wave screamed out of the clouds; 170 planes joined the attack.
Flag flying and AA guns blazing, the Nevada steamed through black smoke toward the open sea. A swarm of howling
bombers surrounded her. After several hits, she beached herself off Hospital Point.
For the men at Pearl, it had been two hours of pure horror.
Charlie could imagine it now. Bombs whistling. Geysers from misses. The great battleships bucking at the hits. Black smoke rolling across the sky. Planes roaring. Tracers streaming up from the AA guns. The bow of the destroyer Shaw exploding in a spectacular spray of fire and debris.
The men screaming in the water. The water afire and choked with corpses.
Everybody helpless against the merciless onslaught.
A year ago, he heard the news of the attack while serving on the destroyer Kennedy in the Atlantic. He’d listened to the President’s address on the radio. He’d joined the submarines hoping to pay the Japanese back for what they did. He’d longed for action, and he’d found plenty of it on his first war patrol with the S-55. He had the wounds, Silver Star, and promotion to prove it.
Now he stood ready to do his duty and get back into the war.
The ghosts of this war still haunted Pearl, but so did the martial spirit of an angry, awakening giant. The battle had ended, but the war continued. A reckoning was coming. Japan had started it. Men like Charlie were determined to finish it.
For this was not a battle of nations, but of men, and of the endurance of men.
If you enjoyed this sample of Silent Running, get it here.
Turn the page for a special note about this book from the author…
AFTERWORD
Thank you for reading Crash Dive! Welcome aboard!
Every story has influences and a beginning, and I thought I’d share mine here.
I’d read the entire beloved Hornblower series by C.S. Forester in about two months and was struck by what I consider a simple formula of “men, machines, action.” Flesh-and-blood men made larger than life not just by their heroism, but by their flawed humanity. Machines, in Forester’s case big wooden sailing ships, which themselves become beloved characters through an attention to detail that makes the reader feel like he or she is aboard. And action—gripping, bloody action. All of it served up with convincing realism.
Crash Dive: a novel of the Pacific War Page 15