“Captain, sonar reports a second target,” announced Colby. “Bearing one-five-three relative.”
Frank quickly walked the scope around, trying to penetrate the rain and mist astern. He saw a second gray shape emerging from a wall of spray far behind them.
“Christ! We can get two of ‘em! Prepare stern tubes!”
“Stern tubes loading, sir.” Frank ignored the talker as he swung back to line up on the first destroyer. “Open all outer doors.”
“Ready all tubes, sir.”
“All stop!”
They marked the bearing at 010, range 2100, speed 14 knots.
“Couldn’t miss if we tried. Fire one! Fire two!”
Danby’s hand stopped hovering over the firing keys. He slammed them down.
Isolated and uncomfortable in the cramped crawl space, Cassidy was debating with himself about sitting there any longer. He was shifting his body, toying to find a less tortuous position, when two torpedoes tore from the bow tubes.
The instant after they were fired, even before the boat finished its responsive shudder, he heard the sprang! A jet of warm oil spurted up, hitting him in the face.
“Shit!” he yelled, and groped for the cutoff valve. His oil-slick fingers slipped off twice before he could turn off the metal petcock. He found himself lying in a pool of oil. It soaked his pants, his shirt; he could taste it in his mouth.
He rummaged in the toolbox for a roll of friction tape. He found the break and was just starting to wrap it when the first torpedo struck its target, sending a metallic ca-rrump reverberating through the sub’s hull.
The column of water marking their first hit soared still higher into the sky. The force of the blast had heeled the destroyer over, exposing her waterline. As she strove to right herself, the second torpedo slammed home.
Her midsection collapsed in a burst of flame and flying debris. In a convulsive eruption, the forward section leaped out of the water and flew apart. A gun turret detached from the deck and spun lazily into the air. Flaming chunks of wreckage showered the ocean, raising answering splashes where they fell.
The stern section, covered with sheets of flame, rolled over and slipped beneath the waves, leaving a cloud of oily black smoke and steam.
Frank yanked his head away from the scope and looked at Dorriss. “Son of a bitch,” he said, in a voice filled with awe. “She’s gone.”
The Exec’s face was wreathed in a toothy grin. “We got her! We got her!” he chanted.
“Direct hit. Both fish,” Frank announced.
Stigwood let out a whoop, grabbed Vogel in a bear hug and pounded him on the back. Danby and Lang scrambled to shake Frank’s hand. The other quartermaster was standing by Hardy, his sweat-streaked face glistening in the half light of the con. “How about that, Lieutenant?” he chanted at Hardy. “How about that?”
Hardy took no part in the celebration. He cocked his head and listened, hearing the faint ping-ping of search sonar. He left the hatchwell and moved to the periscope. He shouldered Dorriss away, grabbed the scope handles, and pressed his forehead against the soft rubber padding of the eyeshield.
Frank, his voice strident, shouted over the bedlam. “Okay, knock it off. Maneuvering says we’ve got a problem.”
Hardy, pivoting, was trying to pierce the rain and scud that obscured his vision. “That’s been taken care of,” he said firmly, and hoped that Cassidy had taken care of it. “We’ve got another problem up here—that second destroyer.”
Where the hell is it? he thought. There! Slashing through the water, her bow cleaving the storm-tossed seas and steaming straight toward them.
“Prepare for a stern shot!” he announced. “Bearing!”
What were they all waiting for? He pulled his head away and cheeked the bearing line. “I make it one-eight-four astern. Range, two three hun—”
“Stand away from that scope, mister.”
Frank stood on top of Hardy, glaring at him, red-faced with anger. Surprised, Hardy let his fingers slip off the scope handles. He backed away, his mind a jumbled confusion of embarrassment. Frank took over the scope, fitting his body to it, as if he were made for it.
“Belay that last setup. Bearing—mark!”
“One-eight-zero relative.”
“Range—mark!”
“One eight hundred.”
Frank winced as the destroyer’s forward turret opened up. There was a flat smack as the shell plowed into the ocean somewhere over their heads.
“It’s going to be down-the-throat! All stern tubes—give me a two-degree spread.”
Nadel must have turned his speakers up. The churning noise of the high-speed screws overrode the pings of the destroyer’s sonar as it homed in on the return echo.
Through the scope Frank saw the forward turret flash again as the destroyer charged in and cut loose three salvoes in a row. He waited five more seconds, letting the range close even tighter while shell splashes dropped in on either side and rocked the hull. He waited for the motion to stop, then yelled: “Fire seven! Fire eight! Fire nine! Fire ten!”
Danby hit the firing keys, and the sub shuddered four times as four fish leaped from the stern tubes.
“Down scope! All ahead emergency! Left full rudder!” He whirled to the hatch and bellowed below, “Mr. Adler, take her deep!”
The Candlefish clawed for the safety of the depths, trying to put as much ocean as possible between herself and the hard-closing destroyer before it could cut loose a string of depth charges.
On the surface the four fish raced toward their target, their ribbon wakes visible to the destroyer’s lookouts, who spotted them and shouted—but it was already too late. The destroyer didn’t have a chance.
The Candlefish was just passing the one-hundred- foot mark when two powerful explosions rumbled over the speakers.
Two hits.
Frank checked their dive, and the boat leveled off. The conning tower was hushed as everyone listened to the grinding metallic sounds of collapsing bulkheads giving way to the rush of tons of sea.
The noise trailed off, lost in the vastness of the ocean, but the cheering in the Candlefish surged and dipped in waves of emotion.
Frank took the role of hero as if he were born to it, lightly shrugging off the compliments from the surrounding circle of faces.
Hardy tried to wedge through the tightly bunched group, but. Frank’s face turned cold as their eyes locked. In the uncomfortable silence, his lips curled in a sneer.
“You never could do it right,” he muttered.
Hardy felt a tightness grip his chest. His jaws worked back and forth, but he couldn’t speak.
The last time he had seen hostility like that—naked and unchecked—it was on the face of Billy G. Basquine. The memory filled him with a mind-numbing horror.
The Candlefish surfaced in the squall; the rains pelted the sub, soaking the men who zipped up to the bridge. The stench of diesel oil filled the sodden air. A large patch was burning about a mile off the bow. Frank headed for it, intent on investigating the carnage he had created.
Forward and aft deck hatches were popped, and the men poured up, their elation still unchecked as they pointed out recognizable bits of wreckage floating by. But their laughter choked off at sight of the first bodies—oil-encrusted lumps of dead flesh, turning lifelessly in the water.
And then the living ones.
The throb of the Candlefish’s engines was muffled by the pounding rain. But neither of these sounds could drown out the screams of the dying. Bodies suspended in the sticky maw of diesel fuel bumped against the sides of the sub and spun like water bugs down the length of the hull, bouncing off the stern vanes and floating away.
Most of the submariners looked away. Billows of black smoke poured past and stung their eyes; the rain soaked them to the skin.
Frank was aware of their white faces. “What’s the matter with them?” he demanded of no one in particular.
Dorriss tore his eyes away from a headless bod
y draped over the charred remains of a life raft. “I— uh—I don’t think they expected it to be like this, sir—”
Frank snorted. “Is that a fact?” He felt an anger—no, a hatred—for the seared and maimed shapes bobbing all around him.
Cassidy was feeling pretty good about the way he had seated the new hose in the NLO line. He came up the bridge hatch and found Hardy on the cigarette deck, standing in the rain. “Hey, Lieutenant, you were right! She really let go. How we doing up here?” He followed Hardy’s gaze down to the water.
He saw the blackened bodies and recoiled in horror. He muttered a curse, his voice filled with revulsion.
Frank leaned over the bridge and roared: “Take a good look, gentlemen—and just remember, those sneaky bastards deserve everything they get.” He waited for a positive response; none came.
“It didn’t work then, Captain—and it won’t work now.”
Frank turned to the Professor. “Don’t hand me that crap,” he snarled. “If I had let a screwup like you make this shot, those sons of bitches might be looking at us in the water!”
He swung around to Dorriss. “Be sure every man below comes topside to see this—then hit the horn and take us down.”
Dorriss nodded dumbly.
Frank dropped through the bridge hatch, leaving his stunned crew still lining the decks. Slowly they shuffled to the hatches and were swallowed back down into the hull. The on-duty watch straggled up, only because they had been ordered to.
Hardy and Cassidy stood apart, letting the rain wash down their bodies, in some sense hoping it might purify them of this disgrace. Finally, as an afterthought, Cassidy spoke. “The tank blew, Lieutenant, just the way you said it would.” He blinked, shielding his eyes from the rain. “I gotta admit,” he continued, “you have one hell of a memory.”
Hardy smiled ruefully. “Sometimes it’s too good, Chief.”
In the quiet of the CPO cabin, Hardy shrugged into a dry shirt and tried to rationalize Frank’s behavior.
Nothing normal could excuse the Captain’s actions.
Granted, a man could become excited in the heat of combat. Most skippers were often guilty of things they later regretted, but Hardy sensed there would be no regret forthcoming.
The explanation? That could not have been Ed Frank.
But if it wasn’t Ed Frank, then who?
He rolled into his bunk, facing the bulkhead; he shivered as the name formed on his lips.
“Basquine,” he muttered, and wanted to retract it right away. It had to be Basquine. But how?
In all the excitement, Hardy had forgotten about his log and the fact that no one seemed to be following it any longer. He went looking for the copies, quietly checking the wardroom, the control room, forward torpedo... He couldn’t find a single one.
He stopped Dorriss and made an offhand inquiry.
“Captain’s got them. Picked them all up this morning.”
“Before the attack? Why?”
“Says we’re on our own now. We don’t need any plans.”
Plans? Hardy couldn’t make sense out of that. They needed the log now more than ever. He paused, wondering if now was the proper time to confront Frank. He was reluctant to submit himself to more abuse. He felt shaky, and headed for the coffee galley.
Giroux fiddled with the tuning knob, winding it across the band. Static popped and crackled in his ears. Just as he was about to give up, the sweet strains of “Dancing in the Dark” filled his headset.
“We sure as hell are,” he muttered. He flipped the toggle switch that piped the music through the PA system.
Artie Shaw’s clarinet soared and dipped, and the melody circumnavigated the boat. The song ended, and once again the silken voice of Tokyo Rose purred to them:
“That last song was for all you Marines whose dancing days are over—forever.”
Hardy was leaning back against the coffee galley, and he looked up when Cookie growled, “Stuff it, lady,” at the speaker. Her voice droned on:
“My next number is dedicated to the families of the crew of USS Candlefish—”
Men flaked out in their bunks suddenly sat up, confused.
“From the Japanese Imperial Navy—condolences. At fourteen hundred hours today, two of our destroyers sank your submarine. It’s just an early Christmas present. And now, Glenn Miller’s rendition of ‘Adios.’”
“Son of a bitch!” Hardy heard someone yell. Cookie looked at Hardy, his face clouding with anger. Neither spoke; they were too stunned.
Frank’s voice came from the speaker. “Congratulations, men, we’ve just been sunk. I think it’s only proper that we permit ourselves... a moment of silence.”
It lasted all of twenty seconds; then it was interrupted by the first snicker. There was a second, then a third; laughter rippled, then exploded.
Hardy turned and headed forward, shocked by the transformation.
The Captain, with the unwitting aid of a Japanese propagandist, had blown away the gloom that had settled over the crew that afternoon.
Out of eighty-four, men, he was the only one aboard who realized that the original purpose of this voyage was now lost forever. This crew was not only reacting to World War Two, they were part of it.
Hardy found Frank on the bridge.
“I didn’t get a chance to congratulate you,” he began, “That was some shooting.”
Frank regarded him out of the corner of his eye. “No thanks to you,” he mumbled.
Hardy knew he had to reason with the man.
“Ed”—Hardy used his first name, leaning over the coaming to whisper conspiratorially—”don’t you see what’s happening? Today’s action was a carbon copy of the original patrol.” Frank’s eyes shifted, centering on him, dark and unrevealing. “You didn’t sink those destroyers; you went through the motions, but you weren’t in control.”
“And who is?”
“It’s prearranged. You said it yourself—in the con—you couldn’t have missed today even if you tried.” He stopped, hoping against hope that he was getting through. “The only goal this boat has now is to return to Latitude Thirty. That much I’m sure of, but when it gets there—what’s going to happen?”
“You tell me.”
“If this pattern we’re on holds true, the Candlefish is going to sink—again!”
Hardy searched Frank’s eyes for a sign of understanding. But Frank turned away to stare over the side of the bridge at the night-dark ocean flowing past “Lieutenant, I appreciate your concern, but let me worry about Latitude Thirty.”
“There’s another thing. My log. You had every copy confiscated.”
“Captain’s prerogative.”
“But why?”
Frank’s features smoothed out “Don’t you have a watch to stand at 0400?”
“Yes.”
“You’d better pull some sack time.” He gripped Hardy’s shoulder and gave him a friendly smile. “We’ll go over this later.”
Hardy’s shoulders sagged as he moved to the hatch and left the Captain on the bridge.
Frank reached for the intercom. “Exec to the bridge.”
Dorriss climbed half out of the hatchwell and looked up.
Frank spoke slowly in a low voice that wouldn’t carry to the lookouts or the Officer of the Deck. “I want you to keep a close eye on Lieutenant Hardy. He’s got some cockeyed ideas, way off in left field, and I can’t make any sense out of them. Just make sure he keeps them to himself. Understood?”
The faint glimmer of a wicked smile crossed the Exec’s thin face. “I’ll watch him, sir.”
“Do that.”
Dorriss dropped below. Frank remained on the bridge, his mind ticking off the possibilities that the future held for all of them.
CHAPTER 19
December 6
Dorriss hovered over the chart spread on the long wardroom table and worried his chin with one hand. He was staring at a copy of a Japanese map which outlined the layout of the harbor in Tokyo Bay. He
ran a finger over the coordinates and then traced the coastline, shaking his head doubtfully. Adler stood at his side, the backs of his knees braced against the bench, rocking back and forth and frowning, trying to look more intelligent than he was.
Ed Frank sat at the head of the table. He already knew the chart by heart; he was just allowing the two younger officers time to convince themselves of something he had already decided. He shifted in his seat and spoke: “I’m waiting.”
Dorriss unwound from his crouch and shook his head. “I wouldn’t approach from the south,” he said.
“But that’s the only way in.” Frank blinked.
“I know.” Dorriss smiled.
Frank grew dark. “I didn’t ask you in here for a humorous interlude. You’ve got a navigation background—give me a navigator’s opinion.”
“It’s impossible,” he said simply.
“No, it’s not!” Frank slammed a fist down on the table. Then he relaxed and smiled thinly. “We are going to do it. So you better set your minds to it now. I want an approach worked out, in terms of weather conditions and physical environment—known quantities.”
Frank came around the table and looked down at the chart himself. He glanced up at Adler. “Any opinions, Mr. Adler?”
“Sounds like a fine plan to me, sir.”
Dorriss knew he was outnumbered. He shrugged and leaned over the chart with Frank. His skinny fingers tapped the knobby inlet, and he said, “I can get you weather and current details, and you can go in there. You’ll be up to your ass in mines, but so what? If you do go in there, sir... you better go slow. You better creep.”
Frank smiled. “Like a fucking pussycat.”
Hardy was stripped down in the after head, about to step into the shower, when he caught a glimpse of the steward passing by with an armload of what looked to be trash. Hardy hesitated a second, not sure what he had seen, then turned and hurried to the hatch. The steward was already down the aisle, making his way aft. Hardy stepped through the hatch and followed. Cassidy looked up, and Brownhaver gave a wolf-whistle.
Ghostboat Page 25