Ghostboat

by Neal R. Burger

  “The eastern edge of the Northwest Pacific Basin, right over the Japan Trench, stretching from Iwo Jima up east off Morioka by some four hundred miles. Roughly fifty percent of all the unexplained disasters in the North Pacific have occurred right in this circle.”

  “What’s with all the little red dots... ?”

  “Ships, planes, anything that disappeared or was found deserted over the last hundred fifty years.”

  “The last hundred fifty?”

  Cook came over to have a look, and Frank turned the chart around so they could see better. He pointed out the red dots. “Each dot indicates the last recorded position of a specific ship or plane. In all cases they’ve simply vanished without any trace and to this day haven’t been found. Crews and all—just phfft.”

  “And the little subs?” asked Cook.

  “The three American subs, the Candlefish among them, disappeared during World War Two.”

  “Sunk by the Japs,” barked Diminsky.

  “No—these are the ones that weren’t sunk by anyone. Granted, there are official explanations for each one—still, none are confirmed. It’s just that the Navy—the Office of Naval Investigation in those days—said this is what happened and that’s how it’s going down in the record books. A bit arbitrary.”

  “Well, we don’t operate that way today,” Diminsky offered gruffly.

  Both Cook and Frank became suddenly silent, but it failed to register on Diminsky. Finally Frank was prompted to make a comment. “Admiral, I hope you’re right. Because I have a feeling there isn’t going to be any simple explanation for the reappearance of the Candlefish. And I hope we’re not going to assign one arbitrarily just because it seems to fit.”

  Diminsky displayed a look of pronounced displeasure. “This is no time to be advancing theories, Commander. First examine the sub—then figure out what you’ve got.”

  Diminsky rose. Frank looked up at him tightly. “What we’ve got is a submarine that has no business being where it is.”

  Diminsky shook his head. “This is going to be a very brief preliminary investigation, Ed. I have no intention of letting it get blown up out of proportion. Well get in—we’ll take a look—we’ll make a determination. That’s it.”

  They landed at the Ford Island Naval Air Station shortly after 1300 Pacific time, and all three of them were whisked across the Southeast Loch by launch to the submarine base and then driven right down to the pier.

  A huge old gray submarine tender, the USS Imperator, was moored by itself, and a portion of the dock was being cleared for the arrival of the Candlefish. They checked aboard the tender and were escorted to their quarters above the main decks. Diminsky was given the Flag Quarters. Cook and Frank shared connecting offices. Cook checked with SubPac and learned it would be another three days before the Candlefish could be expected to arrive. Frank gave Cook an armful of orders covering the inspection of the submarine. He wanted a platoon of technicians present He wanted explosives in case they had to blow the hatches. He wanted radio equipment, protective suits, gas masks, and complete authority to run the operation. Cook promised all but the latter. “That you’ll have to arrange yourself.” He smiled.

  Frank took a car over to the base offices of Defense Intelligence Command. He was greeted by a tall, wild-looking man with a great shock of red hair, who introduced himself as Captain Melanoff, and then apologized for not having his boarding party back quickly enough.

  “A chopper from that carrier is picking up one of my boys, and they’ll wing him right back to you. Should be in tonight. Can I show you around, Commander?”

  Frank demurred, but asked to be called the moment the DIC officer got in. He drove back to the pier and went up to his quarters aboard the Imperator.

  He was lying on a hard vinyl sofa under an open porthole, studying a cutaway of the fleet submarine, when his eyelids fluttered and he collapsed into slumber. Four hours later, Lieutenant Cook banged into the office and woke him up. “I did my bit,” he announced. While Frank blinked himself awake, Cook plopped into the chair behind the single desk and rattled on about the arrangements he had made, until he too drifted off to sleep. Frank got up, went to the port, and looked out, sniffing the fresh sea air.

  Across the water he could see the smooth black conning tower of the USS George Washington, one of the newer “nukes,” or nuclear-drive submarines. Most of her was underwater, but what showed above was enormous, dwarfing the few converted fleet types nearby. Frank had never had the pleasure of serving aboard one of those floating hotels. He had spent his time tied to a desk or skulking the Tonkin Gulf in a cramped fleet boat. At least aboard the Candlefish he would be on home ground.

  As he stared at the Washington, he thought of the USS Scorpion—a $40-million nuclear submarine that disappeared with a crew of 99 in May of 1968. Her wreckage was found strewn all over the Atlantic floor at a depth of 10,000 feet some 460 miles southwest of the Azores—directly over the mid-Atlantic ridge. And the Naval Court of Inquiry had concluded: “The certain cause of the loss of the Scorpion cannot be ascertained from any evidence now available.”

  Nothing but superstition? Frank smiled. Although there was a load of hogwash surrounding the Devil’s Triangle, the facts couldn’t be dismissed. Ships, planes, and subs—all sorts of craft—had disappeared with alarming frequency in the waters off the coast of Florida, in an area forming a rough triangle between Miami and points north of Bermuda and south of Barbados. And now, according to Frank’s own research and the independent studies of others, the area off the coast of Japan, known as Latitude 30°, was emerging as a similar center of oceanographic terror.

  He swung around and looked at Cook, asleep behind tile desk. It was Diminsky he had to contend with—and all the little Diminskys—and the NIS, the Joint Chiefs. How in the world was he going to wake them all up? And why in the world did they always sleep through things like this? Pretend they don’t exist and the problems will go away! What an attitude! What a goddamned maddening attitude—this rampant official blindness! Places like Bermuda and Latitude 30° would go on claiming their victims ad infinitum, and no one would ever make a move to prevent it. After all, how can you take action against something that “doesn’t exist”?

  The return of the USS Candlefish, after thirty years of dark, lurking oblivion, presented a matchless opportunity. Somewhere, on board or below her decks or in the path she had patrolled, there were answers. And Ed Frank was positive he was the only one willing to ask the right questions.

  At 1730 hours Captain Melanoff called to say that his officer, a Lieutenant Harry Nails, had just arrived by helicopter with a full report on the attempted boarding and preliminary recon of the Candlefish. Frank arranged to meet him at the Officers’ Club for dinner, then woke up Cook. They changed shirts and hurried across the sub base under a threatening afternoon sky.

  The Officers’ Club was crowded.

  Lieutenant Nails had a Navy raincoat slung over his chair. He greeted them with a brisk handshake and invited them to join him.

  “I’ve ordered steaks, Commander,” he said to Frank. “Melanoff wants everything on his bill.”

  “Happy to oblige, Lieutenant.” Frank sat down next to Nails and motioned Cook into the other chair. “Let’s hear something about the Candlefish.”

  “Mint condition, sir. Not a spot of rust or a sign of rot. She’s almost like new.”

  “Did you go aboard?”

  “Yes, sir. I took a boarding party of four men, all technical ratings—they know their stuff.”

  “Okay,” said Frank, “now backtrack and tell us exactly what happened,”

  “I got my first look at her from the Japanese freighter that reported the surfacing. The captain himself pointed her out to me. She was lying dead in the water about a half mile away, with no number visible on her con. I checked her over through the captain’s binoculars, until he tugged at my sleeve and started talking. He was so frightened over the whole incident that he couldn’t even tell me how s
he had surfaced— straight up, bow first, stern first All he said was ‘Submarine come up! Up!’“

  Cook couldn’t restrain a smile.

  “Apparently he tried everything. Hailing, radio, Morse code, white flag... got some idea into his head that he had provoked an attack. His interpreter was very busy quoting me the unwritten law: Never surface in the path of friendly shipping, not even as a joke. In the radio message the captain sent out to his people...” Nails paused and dug in his briefcase for a notebook and opened it. “Here we are... he says, ‘The submarine surfaced in an unfriendly manner.’“

  Cook snorted. “That’s why the State Department was in such an uproar yesterday.”

  Frank smiled. “That’s okay. We thrive on panic.”

  “It turns out,” said Nails, “this fellow has been in the Japanese Navy some forty years. He’s been a skipper on Maru-class freighters since before the Korean War. As a seaman during World War Two, he had his share of submarine encounters. On one convoy every ship but his was sunk. So you can imagine how much love he has for our boats. He got to smiling and joking about it by the time I left, but I could tell he was still upset.”

  Nails paused to devour part of his drink, wiped his mouth, and then added: “And if you need it, I’ve got the whole interview on tape.”

  The steaks had arrived, and they ate while Nails told them about boarding the sub. “We approached from three separate quarters and kept the radios going all the time. I guess we were being, understandably cautious. But she didn’t do anything at all, just sort of sat there, never responded to our signals. We even hailed her with bullhorns. Nothing. So I ordered boarding parties from two of the tugs, and I went with one of them. There were five of us. We fanned out over the boat and checked her out I swear, Commander, she looked like she hadn’t been out to sea more than two days from her last refit.”

  “Was there seaweed or silt or anything like that?”

  “Sir, she was bone clean.” Nails buttered a roll and glanced at his report. “When we checked for ID, we found the raised bolts on the side of the con and could verify the number—Two eighty-four. But none of us knew at the time what that meant. Then one of the techs found the name lettered on the rescue buoy at the top of the periscope shears. Candlefish.” He paused and chewed on a piece of steak. “That didn’t ring a bell either. Then we tried rapping on the sides of the con. No response. So I ordered them to crack the hatches. Well, sir, those guys were down on their knees, puffing and straining—just couldn’t get them open. Wouldn’t budge. So we abandoned that and just made a tour of the deck to collect evidence,”

  Nails grew silent again and chewed his steak quickly. Frank and Cook ate and waited patiently. Nails finally wiped his lips with a napkin and bent over his briefcase. “Excuse me, sir, this thing is wedged in here kind of tight—”

  He pulled a large object free and set it on the table. “Found this hooked on the afterdeck gun, sir.”

  Frank stared at the single binocular tube and the strange-looking sextant arrangement jerry-rigged on top of it.

  “What is it?” asked Cook.

  “Sextant,” said Nails. “The captain of the ATF recognized it. They were rather common in World War Two, I’m told. A lot of the navigators used it. It’s half a pair of binoculars—one lens—and the sextant. You can make very accurate sightings with it, even through light mist. But it seems they haven’t been used since World War Two.”

  Frank stared at it. Here was proof—not photographs or reports or numbers in an old fleet catalog. Here was a relic of a war fought thirty years ago, and it looked almost new. More than ever, he found himself eager to be face to face with the Candlefish. He had the feeling that he would be confronting his future.

  October 8, 1974

  Frank tumbled into the sack at 2000 hours and couldn’t drag himself out of bed until 0930 the next day. He had breakfast with Cook in the Officers’ Mess and then went off to brief Admiral Diminsky.

  Diminsky listened patiently to the tape of Lieutenant Nails’s meeting with the Japanese skipper, but was not very impressed. He asked Frank to have a secretary cull out “only the facts” and submit them as the official briefing. Frank objected on the grounds that the Japanese captain’s feelings and impressions were just as valid as his eyeball observations.

  “No,” said Diminsky, “we are not going to turn this into a Navy horror story. We don’t need any of that stuff about the man’s past history with the Imperial Navy. Keep it simple and to the point.”

  “Well, Admiral, I don’t know how I’m going to make something simple out of this.” Frank opened his briefcase and flipped the sextant-scope onto the admiral’s desk.

  Diminsky listened patiently to Frank’s account of it, but looked as if someone had just dropped a two-day-old body at his feet.

  He suggested listing the sextant under “artifacts.”

  Frank departed with the tape and the sextant and walked across the sub base alone, resolving from now on to use subtlety where the admiral was concerned. Let him discover everything for himself. Diminsky hated being upstaged, so if he could be made to feel that it was all his idea...

  Frank stopped when he felt the first few drops tapping on his cap. Rain. He dashed for shelter as the clouds broke and he was drenched by the worst showers he had seen since the monsoons in Vietnam.

  He stood under the porch of the DIC office and watched the rain but thought about the Candlefish. The circumstances of her sinking—that information must be available, but it was probably buried somewhere in the files in Washington. He would have them sent out.

  When the time came to coordinate all the evidence, reports, and coincidences, how should it all be presented? The wire services were sure to pick up some of the flak from the Japanese. Of course, the whole thing could be tossed off as a simple incident—an accidental surfacing of a fleet submarine—no mention at all of the various extenuating circumstances. But what if there was a leak... ? FLEET SUB MISSING THIRTY YEARS RETURNS—BIG SHOCK TO NAVY—GREATEST MYSTERY OF OUR TIME. Frank could see the headlines and the implications. A big thrust from the press might be all the impetus necessary for the Navy to launch a full-scale investigation.

  Frank chewed it over a long time, until the rain slowed to a drizzle and he could make his way back to the tender. By the time he got there he was smiling, beginning to form a plan so that he could have it his way.

  CHAPTER 4

  October 10, 1974

  At 1200 hours the pier was packed with Navy officers and technicians. Equipment was hauled from trucks and stacked in rows: radios, temperature gauges, crowbars, blowtorches, explosives, protective suits and helmets, and gas masks. Two ambulances came screaming up to the end of the dock, Graves Registration insignia on each of them. Ed Frank arrived with Admiral Diminsky. Cook opened the door for them.

  “Morning, Admiral. Going to be a little late. They were reported off Koko Head ten minutes ago.”

  Diminsky grunted. Frank walked over to the technicians checking out the inspection gear.

  Diminsky followed. He stopped behind Frank and, with his hands on his hips, regarded the equipment skeptically. “You need all this, Ed?”

  Frank stood up and flashed him a smile. “We don’t know what we’re going to find, Admiral. Have to be prepared. No telling what could be running loose inside that big metal cigar. We can’t just pop the hatches and stroll aboard.”

  “No,” Diminsky muttered in reluctant agreement He turned and went off to the edge of the pier.

  Frank turned to the demolition experts approaching with their gear: two middle-aged submariners, one with a pipe and the other with a cigar.

  “Tell you honestly, Commander,” said the one with the pipe, “we ain’t defused any Mark 14s in eight years.”

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky.” Frank smiled. “Maybe the Candlefish fired all hers.”

  “I doubt it. She had a pretty slim war record.”

  At 1230 the first ATF steamed up the channel between the Waipi
o Peninsula and the Navy Yard and into Pearl Harbor. She drew up south of Ford Island as the submariners waited tensely for their first view of the Candlefish.

  Binoculars rose as the second ATF steamed up the Southeast Loch, with the old sub in tow.

  Despite expectations, she was not rotting at all. There didn’t appear to be a barnacle or a spot of rust on her. She was sleek and black and murderous-looking. She seemed loaded and ready for action, a trim fighting ship whose day had hardly begun, much less passed into history thirty years before.

  In submarine circles, the boat is the weapon, and this one was dark and formidable.

  Frank found himself unable to restrain a swelling flood of fatherly pride. The prodigal daughter was returning home, and Frank was ready to take full possession. But as she glided softly in past the Magazine Loch, he wondered fleetingly if the world wouldn’t be better off without her.

  They had her moored by 1330. The ATFs dropped cables and departed. The men of the lmperator stood in the stern of their ship and stared down at the Candlefish until the duty officers began herding them back to work. There was no chance now of maintaining even a semblance of security. Stories would be flying all over Pearl by six that night. By tomorrow every newsman and journalist on the island would be clamoring for a base permit. Frank made a mental note to order an “X” security condition at all entrances. If his plan was to work, he had to make an honest effort to quash publicity. He would leave it to Diminsky to come up with some sort of press release.

  The technicians and demo experts were dismissed for mess and ordered back for work at 1430. Only Cook, Frank, and Diminsky were left on the dock, along with the people from Graves Registration. The three NIS officers walked the dock alongside the Candlefish and gave her an expert once-over.