Ghostboat

by Neal R. Burger

  Brownhaver appeared to be dominating the conversation.

  “I’m tellin’ ya, the Japanese don’t have no long-range submarines today. Haven’t had ‘em since the end of the war. That was part of the settlement. They couldn’t maintain a navy. If we sank a submarine, it sure wasn’t Japanese!”

  Googles shook his head, confused, and turned to Cassidy. “What do you think?”

  Cassidy rolled the pipe across his mouth, then pulled it out and spoke sagely. “We sank something. And somebody’s bound to complain.”

  Frank sipped his coffee and thought about it. Of course, if they sank a domestic ship there was bound to be something about it broadcast on the radio. He must remember to tell Giroux to monitor the civilian bands. Of course, if it really was their own escort... One thing seemed ruled out. If Brownhaver was right, and Frank was certain he was, it could not have been a Japanese submarine. If there weren’t any... well, one wouldn’t just appear to fulfill their purpose, would it? He wondered If Byrnes wasn’t right: Maybe Jack Hardy was deranged But Byrnes’s panic, his inability to keep cool under pressure, was just as dangerous. Byrnes seemed to be slipping his anchor. In fact, maybe he posed more of a threat than the Professor. Hardy had no desire to be responsible for anyone else’s life. Byrnes was responsible for eighty-five of them, including his own.

  Frank’s concern was the expedition. The experiment Proving himself right.

  Cookie and the electrician were still at it when Frank strolled past the galley and flung the empty cup at them. Cookie fumbled to catch it and stared after him.

  Frank found Hardy sitting alone in the wardroom, working on a cup of tea. His arms were flat on the table, and he was staring at the globe he had ripped apart only a few days earlier.

  Frank sat down a few feet from the Professor and pulled out his pipe kit. He loaded, tamped down, and lit, then puffed in silence for a few moments.

  “Byrnes has a very short fuse,” Frank offered. Hardy looked up slowly, as if coming out of an absorbing personal reverie. “He jumps off the handle—and always a little early.”

  “Mr. Frank... I hope you realize... we sank a real submarine.”

  Frank lowered his eyes and tamped down the pipe. “Apart from that—”

  “Nothing is apart from that!”

  Frank saw that Hardy was going to maintain his position to the last. That wasn’t going to help matters at all. He relit the pipe, then looked Hardy in the eye.

  “Isn’t it possible that you are recreating for yourself what you wrote in that log?”

  The Professor’s eyes bored angrily into him, and Frank felt the trust slipping away. “I didn’t create that oil slick” was all he said. He got up, left his teacup, and went to the door. He turned at the last moment and half smiled. “Tell you one thing, Commander. You wanted to find out what happened in 1944—I think you’re going to find out firsthand.”

  “Not if Byrnes turns us around.”

  “Don’t think he’ll find that too easy.”

  Hardy departed, his limp echoing down the deck. Frank was conscious that the older man had echoed his own words to Byrnes. Perhaps they both suspected the same thing: The Candlefish was in the grip of some force bent on fulfilling their project. Or... or could they themselves be in the grip of the submarine... ?

  Frank didn’t want to believe that the submarine was acting independently, but if he accepted Hardy’s explanations and theories, it all fell into place.

  But that was impossible.

  The project was directed at finding out how the submarine had come back. Hardy insisted on knowing why—not how. Byrnes wanted to fall back on the tactics of Basquine and Bates: find a scapegoat; blame everything on him. That was the ignorant approach.

  Yet there was the reality of it—these things were happening! Nobody was imagining them.

  As Cassidy had said: “We sank something.”

  Well, what?

  Frank rose and headed toward his quarters, intending to reread Jack Hardy’s log. Carefully.

  Frank spent most of his eight off-duty hours stretched out on his bunk with the curtain pulled closed, reading and rereading Hardy’s log by flashlight. On every page he found something to disturb him anew. For there was no way around it: Down to incredibly tiny details, they were duplicating the patrol of 1944. He recalled vividly Hardy’s actions on those last days in November, when he had been carefully checking the quartermaster’s log against his own, remarking on the similarities: leaking valves, busted gaskets, the battery connector cables... Things that he had shrugged off when Hardy had first brought them to his attention now seemed to take on more meaning. Then there was the airplane sighting—or “hearing”— last night. That certainly jibed with the log. It had happened exactly the same way thirty years ago, and it was Hardy who heard it then, too. Of course, that could be explained: Both times he was hearing things. The lookouts didn’t support him, did they?

  “... Sorry, I don’t know what I heard...”

  But then there was December 2nd, 1944 and 1974. The sinking of a suspected Japanese submarine. They had been able to verify the kill thirty years ago, but they never knew exactly what they had killed. And the same thing had happened this morning. Too close. Too much of a coincidence.

  It couldn’t be explained away. They were caught in something, and they were going to have to find a way of dealing with it. Frank put the log down and lay still.

  He raised his arms over his head and stretched, becoming conscious of the sweat soaking his blouse. He felt sticky and uncomfortable. Funny—he had always felt that way reading Hardy’s log. There was something inherently creepy about it. Now, he could understand why—they were living it.

  He swung his legs off the bunk and listened to the sounds from the sub’s interior. The motors ran silent; they were still cruising at periscope depth. He could hear the ping of the sonar: Byrnes must be keeping Nadel glued to that headset. Then there was Byrnes’s voice, coming from his cabin a few feet up the corridor, growling at the mess steward bringing him his supper. Frank checked his watch: It was 1730.

  He got up and went to his locker, pulling off his shirt and rolling it into a ball. He swung the locker open and threw the shirt in, reaching for his only fresh one. He smoothed out the starch and struggled into the sleeves, gazing at the worn Xerox copy of Hardy’s original log, the handwritten copy the Professor had first turned over to him. He pulled it out and thumbed through it, checking December 2nd to be sure that the information was the same. It was; no one had made a typo. He couldn’t attribute these hair-raising similarities to the overworked imagination of some irresponsible Navy secretary. It was all there in Hardy’s precise handwriting. He tossed the log back into the locker and buttoned the shirt as he gazed at Captain Basquine’s original day-to-day log, which he had brought along for... for what? Comfort? What good was it? Bloody thing was as blank as a dead man’s face. He pulled it out and thumbed through it in disgust—and he was immediately sorry that he had. The two pages he was looking at were full of Basquine’s hasty scrawl. And the date? His eyes went to the top of the page.

  November 29th, 1944.

  That wasn’t right. It couldn’t be. He remembered clearly the first time he had opened .the log, the morning he had found it stashed away in the Captain’s desk. And how he had shown it to Hardy the night they had drinks in the Clean Sweep. The blank pages had run from the opening notation on November 21st to the date of the submarine’s loss, December 11th. Blank—all blank.

  And now? He turned the pages, one after another. They were all filled solid. Scratchy blue ink—Captain Basquine’s uncooperative old fountain pen, his familiar chicken-track scrawl, from November 21st on...

  Even the date of sailing itself. The first date, November 21st, had carried only the notation “0800. Underway from Pearl, proceeding under orders to general area Kuriles, Pacific.” Now the entire page was filled in with details that matched every move Frank remembered from that first day when the sub had left Pearl unde
r, Byrnes’s command. There wasn’t a single point missing! Only those little things that a captain wouldn’t bother to record. But Basquine was meticulous—hadn’t Hardy said so?

  Basquine? What was he thinking? How could Basquine have filled in this log?

  He went further, page after page, standing in front of the open locker, more sweat pouring from his armpits, soiling his only other fresh shirt. He stared at the details as they cropped up: December 1st—yesterday—the sub had refused to surface until exactly twenty hundred hours—that was Hardy’s view. And here in the Captain’s log? No mention of any problem at all. Just the notation: “Surfaced 2000. Heavy fog. Proceeding on course 272 at one-third speed.” That seemed to match last night as Frank remembered it. But wasn’t something missing?

  Of course!

  The escort. There was no mention of the escort He thumbed back to November 21st and checked it through day by day, incredulity growing by the second. He swallowed hard. There was no mention of an escort destroyer anywhere in these pages. In these new, fresh pages.

  December 2nd. Early in the morning before submerging time. “Lt. Hardy reported hearing planes off to the north. Lookouts unable to confirm. No visual, due to heavy concentration of fog.”

  It was an accurate record of the 1944 patrol. Up to date. It wasn’t their patrol at all—not today’s—not 1974’s. It was the Captain’s version of exactly how it really was back then. He turned the page—and stopped.

  December 2nd was the last entry. Frank stared at the next blank page and felt nausea threatening him. It was up to date, all right. Exactly up to date and no more. Up to the minute was more like it. Basquine’s writing accurately described the sonar tracking of an unidentified target, presumed to be a Japanese submarine, the careful cat-and-mouse game, the setting up of the shot from two hundred feet below the surface, firing—the direct hit! Surfacing in a sea of debris and oil, the inability to determine precisely what they had hit, but the satisfaction that whatever had been sneaking around up there had deserved it. And Frank sensed meaning between the lines: Basquine’s personal contentment over the kill. He knew why, too. It was the first kill of the patrol. The first in months. It must have overjoyed him. Quite a contrast to Louis F. Byrnes and his nervous panic.

  That was the end of the log for the moment. He stared at the rest of the blank page and wondered when it would be filled in, and who was doing it. He began to suspect Hardy. His thumb brushed the ink on the entry under December 2nd as he was closing the book, and some of it came off on his skin. He stared at his blue thumb, and this time felt a quiver of terror course through his body. He flung the page open again and rubbed his fingers over it.

  He couldn’t believe it. The ink smeared. It was fresh, as fresh as if it had just been set down. Impossible. The book had been in his locker all day, buried under his underwear and shirt and Hardy’s handwritten log. No one even knew it was there. And he had been lying on his bunk all day. The curtain had been closed, but he could swear no one had been in or out of the stateroom—except perhaps Stigwood...

  And Stigwood was buried under the covers right now, in the bunk above Frank’s, fast asleep. Frank had heard him come in, open his locker, hang up his clothes, slam the locker, then swing up to the bunk. It wasn’t Stigwood. It couldn’t have been. Besides, he didn’t have the brains...

  Frank pulled Hardy’s log out and took two quick steps to his bunk. He spread both logs out on the covers and opened them to November 21. Then he went through, page by page, comparing details and wording, and handwriting... Nothing was the same. Hardy’s words were the words of a scholar, remembering things as they came back to him, and setting them down as neatly as he could. Basquine wrote in captain’s lingo, short and to the point, almost cryptic. And the handwriting was so different—Hardy’s precise penmanship against Basquine’s ugly scrawl. And Hardy had written in pencil. Of course, that meant nothing. Somewhere he might have gotten hold of Basquine’s fountain pen. But when could he have done the writing? And why? It didn’t make sense.

  Frank had another stroke of curiosity. He flung the pages back to the days prior to November 21st, to Basquine’s record of events in port. It was the same handwriting—definitely Basquine’s. Whoever was imitating him—presuming someone was—had his handwriting and his word style down pat.

  Frank leaned back and stared at the two open logs. What about the other logs—the ones they were keeping on this cruise? The quartermaster’s log was okay; he and Hardy had been checking it daily. But Byrnes’s day-to-day log—he wondered what he would find in that. Again he became conscious of the sweat under his arms. He felt a need to visit the head. He closed both logs and wondered what to do. Who should he tell? Hardy? He didn’t feel like confiding in the old man any more. The only one to tell was Byrnes. And Byrnes would act to protect the sub. He felt little knives stabbing at him, twisting and turning, pulling his guts out. He was not in control any more, and he resented it, feared it, and generally could not cope with it. Who was in control?

  Whoever had written those entries in the log, obviously.

  There was only one solution, and Frank knew it even as he got up and stashed both logs carefully in the bottom of his locker, under his shorts, his socks, his Devil’s Triangle maps and charts and reports, his dirty shirt... He pulled down the padlock he hadn’t found necessary before and opened it. He closed the locker and snapped the lock shut, then put both keys on his key ring and snapped that to a belt loop. From now on he would jingle when he walked, but he would feel better.

  That should put an end to the mysterious self-writing log. He smiled. He felt the pain in his groin again, and knew he had only seconds to reach the toilet. He snatched up the Xerox copy of Hardy’s log that he had been reading all day, and took it to the head with him. As he stood poised over the urinal, he read ahead. December 3rd. It looked to be quite an eventful day, if everything went according to the account. Also looked to be dangerous. Something unexpected, if they weren’t prepared for it. He decided from this point on to keep his mouth shut and let events take their course. They probably would anyway. So why interfere? The only way to stay on top of this thing was to ride it out and see where it would take him. He stared at the green bulkhead and made a silent announcement to it, a smile playing across his lips: “Bring it on, sport. All of it I’m with you.”

  CHAPTER 15

  December 2, 1974

  2200 hours.

  The gray-black hull of the Candlefish plunged through the sea, the whine of her diesels shattering the stillness of the Pacific night. An occasional wave, larger than the rest, rolled over her bow and raced the length of her forward deck, splashing against the base of the conning tower, only to fall back and pour through the strakes, then cascade down the flanks of her hull, back into the ocean. The submarine glistened with a just-washed sheen. Clusters of foam, trapped in the ridges of her soaked planking, reflected the weak light of a waning moon.

  Ed Frank huddled deeper in his jacket, trying to ward off the damp, numbing chill that only oceans can bring. His sinuses were acting up. He slipped a hand out of his pocket and gently explored his face. The pain was a dull, throbbing ache under his cheekbones. He blew into a cupped palm and was grateful for the momentary warmth. He thought about finding Dankworth when he came off watch; the pharmacist’s mate would have some pills. He looked up. The wind, which had made everyone on the bridge uncomfortable, was finally dying down.

  The scrape of shoe leather on metal, from one of the lookouts up on the periscope shearwater, reminded him of the five other men who were suffering with him. He glanced at Byrnes out of the corner of his eye. The Captain, aware of his movement, lowered his binoculars and turned to the men perched above him.

  “Anything on the escort?”

  Three mumbled “No, sirs” answered his question. For the umpteenth time since they had come to the surface, he depressed the intercom switch and listened as Scopes reported, “Still no contact, sir.”

  His face a blank mask, B
yrnes released the switch, but the metallic click had the sound of finality about it.

  On the starboard side of the bridge, Hardy’s elbows were hooked over the top of the coaming, giving his binoculars a rock-solid support. He had held that position for quite a while, staring off to the northwest, and now his muscles were crying out for relief. Grudgingly he dropped his arms, stretched, and rolled his head, shaking the cramped feeling out of his upper body. His bad leg throbbed with pain.

  His eyes met Frank’s, and he shivered. “Cold,” he said.

  Frank nodded. “And then some.”

  “I think we can change that.” Byrnes smiled thinly at both of them. “We’re going to head for warmer waters, Mr. Frank.” He was still smiling as he continued, “The party’s over. I have decided to terminate—as of right now. We’re going back to Pearl.”

  Frank knew he had to stall Byrnes until the attack. Just one look at those planes blitzing in on their first pass would be enough to convince even Byrnes that a turnaround at this point was sheer folly.

  “Mr. Frank, did you hear me? Do you have an opinion?”

  As if he cared, thought Frank, but he ventured it anyway. “It’s only a matter of time until we catch up with the Frankland, sir, or vice versa.” He was fighting for time.

  “Oh, really?” Byrnes was way ahead of Frank. “Well, we’ll see if we can find them—on our way back to Pearl. Do I make myself clear?”

  Frank looked to Hardy for some support, but the Professor was once again draped over the starboard coaming, scanning the northwest skies and oblivious to the tension building behind him.

  “Bridge, this is radar. Aircraft contact, bearing zero-three-five relative. Thirteen thousand yards and closing fast.”