“Yeah, wow,” Copeland said. “These are very important people. Don’t let that chip on your shoulder screw this one up.”
Whenever somebody in authority told Braddock not to do something, it always sounded like a dare. It just made the chip bigger.
He followed Copeland to a stage, where they sat in chairs facing the diners. A grinning, bloated glad-hander welcomed them on behalf of some philanthropic organization with a fancy name. Braddock let the captain do the talking, saving his strength for the trials to come.
The glad-hander walked to the podium and told his crowd of engorged philanthropists they were in for a real treat. The hero of the Sandtiger was here, battle of Samar, blah blah, blah. Braddock tuned it out.
Then it was his turn to speak.
He strutted to the microphone and tapped it. “Hello. Thank you for inviting me to give you some straight talk about the war. I don’t know much about war, but I can tell you one thing. It’s a racket.”
Copeland groaned and shook his head. Don’t do it.
Braddock did it anyway.
“I want to talk about a real hero,” he said. “Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, the Fighting Quaker, the most decorated Marine ever. Decorated as in he won the Medal of Honor not once but twice. Not just brave, but smart—the smartest. Back in ’34, he testified before Congress about a plot among the big industrialists to take over the United States government and put in a fascist dictatorship. If any of you were involved in that, I apologize for bringing it up.”
The crowd murmured, restless and angry. This wasn’t what they’d expected.
“In 1935, he wrote a book, War Is a Racket. In this book, he talks about how the Great War made 20,000 new millionaires in the US of A, all because of huge profits from the war. Men who never shouldered a rifle or fired a torpedo wanted war, they got it, and they got crazy rich off it. Twenty years later, America didn’t want another war. But we had a huge trade with China and even more money sunk in the Philippines, so we pushed Tojo until he pushed back. Which was bad for the guys at Pearl but good for business. Manufacturers, meat packers, bankers—they’ve all made out great on the government’s dime. The fat cats make the profits, the people get the bill, and a lot of good men are dead.”
Braddock gave them his practiced smile. “It’s my job to tell America’s poor slobs to buck up so you can make even more money. Which I did because we’re in it now, so we might as well win it. Now I’m telling you it’s your turn. You wanted a war, you got one, and you’re raking it in. It’s time to give some of it back to Uncle Sam so we can finish the job before even more Americans die for a war they didn’t want. That is all. Thank you for your time.”
Not surprisingly, nobody clapped. The Waldorf Astoria’s Grand Ballroom stood silent, its hundreds of rich and powerful men and women struck speechless in their indignation. Their silence was all the applause Braddock needed.
The sailor stomped back to his chair and sat beside a very glum Captain Copeland. “I think I’m getting the hang of this, sir.”
“Pack your bag,” Copeland said. “You’re going back to the war.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
SAN FRANCISCO
The whistle blared at the Ford plant, signaling the day shift’s quitting time. Dressed in grimy gray overalls with colorful bandanas wrapped around their heads and swinging their lunchboxes, women trudged out of the plant. The crowds broke up into smaller groups at each street corner until a woman was left alone.
She walked with her head down, the weight of the world on her shoulders.
Then she stopped and wheeled to face the man behind her. “What do you want, creep?”
Braddock froze, and not just because of her sudden fury. From her pegs to her big blue peepers, she was a genuine knockout.
She shook the metal lunchbox to show him she might redecorate his mug with it. “Well?”
“You’re Evelyn Painter. You are, right?”
He’d seen her photo on the Sandtiger every time he had to report to the captain in his stateroom. On a ship full of men at sea for months at a time, it was easy to commit a pretty female face to memory. Like a nomad remembering where the oases were.
Her eyes narrowed. “What’s it to you?”
“I’m John Braddock. I served with your…” He didn’t know what the hell to call their crazy half-on, mostly-off relationship. “I served with Captain Harrison. Aboard the Sandtiger.”
Evelyn Painter gaped at him, her chin trembling.
He raised his hands. “Now, hold it a minute—”
She started to bawl right there on the sidewalk.
Braddock wasn’t any good at this, and he didn’t have time for it. Soon, he had to catch another cargo plane to Pearl.
Where ComSubPac was waiting to string him up.
“Quit crying, will you?” The sight of it was killing him, not to mention drawing curious stares from people passing by. “I don’t have much time. I came a long way to tell you there’s a good chance he’s alive.”
She stopped. “The Navy sent me a letter saying he was missing in action. Joanie at the plant told me, when you got a letter like that for a submariner, it means he’s probably dead. Presumed lost means lost.”
“Not sub-mariner,” he said without thinking. “Subma-ree-ner.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That’s how we say it in the service,” he said, flustered. “Never mind. Forget it.”
She gripped her lunchbox’s handle tighter. “What do you mean he’s still alive!?”
“I think the Japs took him prisoner!” he yelled back.
The girl teared up again. God, he was terrible at this. He told her everything he knew about the sinking, the Silent Service be damned. He was in plenty of trouble as it was. Adding some more made no difference to him.
The next thing he knew, she dropped the lunchbox and threw herself at him. He held up his arms in something like surrender while she clung and bawled against his chest. “Easy does it, lady!”
“I thought he was dead!”
“There, there.” He patted her on the back. “Listen, doll. I don’t want to get your hopes too high. I didn’t see him get captured, and if he was, the Japs can be pretty rough.”
She pulled away, fists clenched in anger. “Do you mean they’re hurting him?”
“I’m sure he’s fine.” He couldn’t bear another round of waterworks. Men, he could handle. Women, on the other hand, remained a mystery to him. He couldn’t be his usual asshole self around the fairer sex, leaving him practically defenseless.
Evelyn wiped her eyes. “Thank you for telling me.”
Braddock thrust his hands in his pockets and kicked a pebble into the street. “Well, you’re welcome. I guess I’ll be seeing you.”
“Wait! You’re leaving just like that?”
“I’m on my way back to Pearl. Got a plane to catch, or I’m AWOL.”
After his speech at the Waldorf Astoria, the sooner he got off the mainland, the better. Right now, he was probably safer being near the Japanese, regardless of what punishments Uncle Charlie Lockwood had planned for him.
“I barely ate my lunch today. You want half a peanut butter sandwich?”
“I wouldn’t say no to it.” Welcome in the USA or not, he was starving.
They strolled into a park and sat on a bench. He ate her sandwich and an apple while she pelted him with questions about Charlie Harrison, culminating in the one he’d dreaded: “Did he ever talk about me?”
“The captain and me weren’t exactly bosom pals,” Braddock told her. “To be honest, he was a real pain in my ass. Still, he was a good captain.”
“He joined the Navy to find himself. Last time I saw him, the war had found him. It had really gotten under his skin, like it was becoming a part of him. It worried me to no end.” She sighed. “Maybe you can tell me why a man can’t find himself with a good woman.”
“Um.” Braddock had no good answer to that.
&nb
sp; “And like a big fool, I just kept waiting right up to the day I got that horrible letter. And ever since. Because I am and will forever be in love with him.”
“I joined up because of a girl I went to school with,” Braddock said, more to change the subject than to make conversation.
“That sounds like a romantic story.”
“Not really. Doris Kelly. She barely knew I was alive. After school was done, she’d found a job as a waitress. I put on my spanking new uniform and showed up at the restaurant where she worked, thinking, ‘Wait ’til she gets a load of me!’ I thought she’d see me as some big hero. I says, ‘Remember me?’ She says, ‘Hey, George! Want to hear the specials?’ That’s when it hit me I was a stupid idiot.”
Evelyn laughed with him, hers pleasant as music, his bitter as a stubbed toe.
“Oh my God,” she said. “I am so sorry for laughing.”
“It’s all right. My pop was a mean son of a bitch. I probably would have joined up anyway as my ticket out of town.”
“I heard you talking on American Pilgrimage.” One of his radio appearances during the whirlwind blur that had been the war loans drive. “I’ll bet if you went back, ol’ Doris Kelly would see you in a whole new light.”
Braddock responded with a glum shrug. “That boat sailed a long time ago.”
“While I’ll keep waiting for mine to come back.”
He checked his watch. He had to get moving, which was too bad because he enjoyed this girl’s company. Now having met both Evelyn and Jane, the tough Army nurse, he understood why Harrison couldn’t make up his mind.
Still, he was eager to return to Pearl one way or the other. Maybe Uncle Charlie would bust him down to seaman, second class. Maybe he’d send him to spend the rest of the war in Whitley’s charming company on Midway. He didn’t care. He just wanted to go back. The bustle and babble of civilian life irritated him far more than the Navy’s stupidity and grating routines.
He was a fish out of water in the real world.
She said, “You really have to go?”
“That’s right.”
“Thank you for telling me about Charlie, John Braddock. You gave me hope he’ll come home to me, and that’s everything.”
He stood and dusted his trousers. “I just thought you’d want to know.”
“Hey, John?”
“Yeah?”
“Before you go, I want you to promise me something.”
“I’m no good at promises, but you can ask.”
“Promise me you’ll get my Charlie home.”
Just like a dame, asking for the impossible. He was one tiny wheel in a vast war machine rolling across the Pacific. Unless he stole a yacht or planned to swim the whole way with a knife in his teeth, there was nothing he could do.
Despite all that, he couldn’t refuse her. “I’ll get the captain home. If there’s a way, I’ll find it.”
“Good,” Evelyn said. “And one more thing.”
Defenseless! “Sure, doll. What?”
“Promise me you’ll find a way to come home too, you big palooka.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
SPINNING WHEELS
The Navy reposted Braddock to the submarine tender Proteus at Pearl Harbor just in time to prevent Relief Crew 202 from blowing themselves up.
After stowing his sea bag in the locker under his bunk, he’d headed to the machine shop to re-familiarize himself. Tenders were floating bases for provision and repair. The Proteus housed a foundry, machine shop, and warehouse that stocked everything from radio transmitter tubes to toilet paper to torpedoes.
Sweaty men labored at lathes, presses, surface mills, welders, drills, and saws. Steel shavings littered the greasy deck. The warm, sticky air smelled like burned metal and lubricating oil. If the ship didn’t stock a replacement part, the men could make one here in hours. If a boat being serviced needed new piping, the sheet-metal boys whipped it up. The Sandtiger had kept these guys plenty busy whenever she’d limped back into port.
For a gearhead like Braddock, it was like coming home.
A huddle of shirtless sailors behind the vertical boring machine caught his eye. He approached them wearing his winning smile. “And what do we have here?”
The men jumped, revealing a makeshift Gilly, which was a distillery designed to make torpedo juice. Its heat struck Braddock’s face.
A sailor raised his hand and yelled, “Hi, Chief!” while another shoved his hands into his dungaree pockets and muttered, “Aw, shit.”
His first day back aboard, and he already had to deal with chuckleheads.
The Navy knew its sailors swilled ethyl alcohol from torpedo motors. To discourage it, the Bureau of Ordnance added methyl alcohol to the ethanol. The sailors strained the mixture through stale bread to separate it. So BuOrd added croton oil. Since ethanol had a lower boiling point than croton oil, the sailors boiled it and captured the steam in a condenser, distilling it out.
“Turn that goddamn thing off,” Braddock said.
“Sure thing, Chief,” a sailor said and jumped right to it.
“You boys ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”
Glummer now: “Yeah, Chief.”
“I could smell the vapors all the way on the other side of the room. Vapors that, by the way, are heavier than air and liable to sink right into your propane burner. I’m surprised you didn’t blow yourselves to hell. Make sure it’s properly sealed, and get a fan to push any escaping vapors away. Preferably somewhere an officer won’t find it. Then we’ll give it another go. All right?”
The men brightened. “Sure thing, Chief.”
This act of leadership accomplished, Braddock went topside to take in the Armorhead lying alongside with her mooring lines doubled up. The refit crew was attacking the submarine’s innards and hull with mops, chippers, scrapers, and paintbrushes. Next would come the more complicated repairs. And after that, if Relief Crew 202 wasn’t too drunk, they’d take her out for a shakedown cruise.
The whole process of turning around a submarine took about two weeks.
A squat officer approached and leaned against the coaming beside him. “It’s ‘Chief’ Braddock now, is it?”
Braddock recognized the man as Lt. Commander Harvey. “Yes, sir.”
“Good to have you back, Chief.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“ComSubPac told me to take good care of you.”
Braddock winced. “Did he mean it, you know…”
“Literally, or that I should put a bullet in the back of your head?” Harvey barked a laugh. “He was having a good chuckle when he said it, so my guess is he meant it in the literal sense. He seemed quite amused by some stunt you pulled off stateside.”
Braddock blew out a sigh. “I thought my goose was cooked.”
“Damned shame what happened to Harrison.”
Harvey’s dark expression suggested he meant it literally too. A Japanese prisoner of war camp was something you didn’t wish on even your worst enemy.
Meanwhile, Braddock had gotten away with murder. He’d escaped the fat cats’ wrath and was back safe and sound on the Proteus. Here, he could ride out the rest of the war far away from earnest lunatics trying to turn him into a hero.
Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling he owed Harrison a debt, and he couldn’t forget the foolish promise he’d made Evelyn Painter.
Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on how one looked at it—he could do nothing about Harrison. Just a tiny wheel in a vast machine.
Over the next week and a half, the electricians rewound the Armorhead’s motors, serviced her big battery banks, and repaired wiring and equipment. Technicians inspected the periscopes and electronic systems. Storekeepers provisioned her with tons of food, munitions, and spare parts. Harvey took her out for a shakedown cruise and pronounced her seaworthy.
Meanwhile, Pearl buzzed with war news out of Europe. Though the Pacific Navy cared only about their war, something happened that was big enough to demand ever
ybody’s attention. As December wore on, the Germans had launched a massive counteroffensive, threatening to split the Allied lines. While the refit and relief crews serviced another returning submarine, this battle, which everybody was calling the “Battle of the Bulge,” raged on the other side of the globe.
Aboard the Proteus, Christmas and New Year’s came and went with plenty of assistance from the Gilly’s moonshine. They sobered up in time for the Allies to break the German offensive and link up their broken line, dashing the Fuhrer’s hopes for an honorable peace.
Another submarine then another and another, while the war dragged on and on. Everywhere, the Allies kept winning, though victory remained elusive.
In mid-March, Braddock earned some liberty and once again found himself on Waikiki Beach watching the idiots frolic in the surf. Beer cans thrust in the sand. His peaked chief’s cap on his head and his back burning red in the sun.
A shadow fell over him.
He said, “Take it somewhere else, buddy. Beat it.”
“Well, well,” a familiar voice drawled. “Y’all haven’t changed one bit, have you?”
Braddock killed the beer in his hand and reached to crack open another. “What brings you to Hawaii, Lieutenant?”
The soldier sat on the sand beside him. As always, he was dressed in worn and patched Army fatigues. “It’s captain now. But I thought I told you to call me Jonas.”
Another crusader. This one had more scalps on his belt than Genghis Khan. Still, Braddock was glad to lay eyes on him.
“I see you made it off Saipan in one piece. Getting ready for another mission?”
“You could say that,” Cotten told him. “In fact, it’s why I came to see you, Johnny.”
Braddock froze with his can half-raised. “What do you mean?”
“Seems ComSubPac took a shine to your idea about busting Harrison and the other PWs out.” The Alamo Scout grinned. “You, me, and the Sixth Army Special Recon Unit, we’re gonna make it happen.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Over the Hill: a novel of the Pacific War (Crash Dive Book 6) Page 8