Charlie shook his head and stood to leave. “Forget it.”
“I did my part,” the man called after him. “Sir.”
Confounded as usual by the machinist’s ability to irritate and impress him at the same time, Charlie didn’t respond. In any case, he couldn’t linger.
He now had fifteen minutes until his meeting with Cooper. Just enough time to make it, but not enough to change his uniform. The meeting was going to be a lot different than he’d imagined.
At least he had an answer as to why Sandtiger had failed and gone out of control. That had to be worth far more than showing up in clean khakis.
CHAPTER THREE
THE STRANGERS
Charlie mounted to the bridge. Proteus loomed next to Sandtiger. To starboard, more tenders and submarines lay moored. One had been gutted, its electrical wiring snaking across the pier. In bright sunshine, sailors sat on a bench dangling over the side, repainting the hull. Cleaned after months of hot-bunking, mattresses dried on a clothesline. A rivet gun chattered.
A gang of disheveled men stood on the distant wharf. Five lean and hungry soldiers in Army green. Patched, grimy camouflage uniforms. They looked like they’d walked straight off some Pacific battlefield. They eyed Sandtiger like deserters hoping she’d take them to some tropical island far from the war.
Still pale, Morrison greeted him on the main deck.
“I was hoping I’d be tested,” the man said. “Careful what you wish for, right?”
“You did fine. In fact, you saved our lives.”
“Then why do I feel so lousy?”
“That’s the thing about being tested. You never quite believe you passed.”
“Something like that, yeah,” Morrison said.
“That and you start thinking about how nuts you were to chase the test in the first place.”
The young lieutenant smiled. “I did, in fact, wonder what the hell I’m doing here instead of staying back home, making money and babies.”
Charlie handed him the gnarled scrap of metal. “Braddock found your problem. This was clogging the vents in the aft main ballast tank.”
“Wow, is this…?”
“A shard from the hull of a Japanese destroyer we sank.”
“Wow.”
Morrison eyed it with wonder, no doubt imagining new tests to face, all thoughts of making money and babies banished.
Not Charlie. He shivered at the sight of it as if it were haunted.
After the Battle of La Pérouse Strait, Sandtiger’s crew labored to keep her running across the Pacific. Fearing the next dive might be their last, Charlie ordered most of the trip made on the surface. He’d remembered how the S-55 sank just outside Cairns with her battle flags streaming. Sometimes, a captain chose to go down with his ship. Other times, though, a ship chose to go down with her captain.
After everything he’d survived, that little piece of debris nearly killed him. One little thing jamming the works of an otherwise flawless fighting machine. That was all it took to disable and send it careening toward the bottom.
It could make a man superstitious. Take what Braddock said seriously. That the Japanese sailors he’d killed were still trying to take him with them.
“Keep it,” Charlie said. “I don’t want it.”
“Hey, thanks!”
“I have to get to a meeting. Good luck to you. A word of advice…”
“Sure.”
“Stay out of Captain Harvey’s way a while. Let him cool off.”
Morrison had essentially taken command during the crisis. Though he’d saved the boat and the lives of all aboard, a captain could call it mutiny. It was no small thing, taking command from a ship’s captain.
“That’s good advice. Thank you, Commander.”
“Good luck to you,” Charlie said.
The sailor on gangway watch saluted as he passed. He returned it. As he reached the wharf, the ratty soldiers shifted their gaze to him.
“How many men you killed?” one called out to him.
Charlie paused, evaluating them in their patched fatigues. They were all bronzed by the tropical sun. They hadn’t shaved in days. Rangy jungle fighters who exuded menace. Most notable was their long stare, like drivers always keeping one eye in the rearview.
One eye always reliving the past, and surviving it. Charlie knew that look well. He saw it often enough in the mirror.
He ignored the soldier who’d spoken to him and focused on the man standing in front, whose mouth curled into a grin. No visible insignia indicating rank, but clearly the gang’s leader.
“You’re Harrison, ain’t you?” He spoke with a combination of southern drawl and twang.
“That’s right,” Charlie said.
“So how many?” the other soldier asked again.
Was he kidding?
He said, “Who’s asking?”
“I’m asking.”
“Then none of your business.” Charlie kept walking.
He spared a glance over his shoulder. The leader’s smile widened, and he nodded. Charlie turned away, bewildered. He had a feeling he’d passed some sort of test but had no idea what it was.
Turning the corner, he stopped and bent, hands on his knees. Legs turned to jelly. The stress of Sandtiger’s sudden plummet had finally caught up to him. He leaned against a wall trembling until it subsided, the strange soldiers forgotten.
The shakes didn’t bother him. They meant he was normal, human. They meant he hadn’t grown used to facing death. He hoped he never would.
CHAPTER FOUR
A NEW CAPTAIN
Covered in a film of grease and sweat, Charlie knocked on the doorway of Captain Squadron Commander Rich Cooper’s office. Framed by wood paneling and gray file cabinets, the grizzled officer beckoned from his desk.
Two officers sat in chairs with their backs to him. Charlie glimpsed naval insignia. A lieutenant and a lieutenant-commander, one slim, the other heavyset.
“Lt. Commander Charles Harrison,” he said. “Reporting to the squadron commander as ordered.”
Cooper gave him a once-over. “You get run over by a truck, Harrison?”
“A Jap destroyer to be precise, sir.”
“I hope you gave him more than you got.”
One of the seated men guffawed. “Are you kidding? Our man Harrison can’t cross the street without sinking something.”
Charlie started at the familiar voice. “Rusty!”
His old friend rose and offered his hand. “Hi-de-ho, brother.”
Charlie grabbed and shook it. “Great to see you.”
“Same to you. I’m off submarines. I work for Captain Voge in operations now. Naval intelligence to be exact. That’s why I’m here. I just got in from Melbourne.”
He couldn’t stop grinning at Rusty’s lopsided smile. “Damn.” He glanced at Cooper and added, “We served together on the 55 in the Solomons. Back in ’42.”
“A lifetime ago,” Rusty said. “I taught this cowboy everything he knows.”
His friend seemed much older now, which made Charlie think about how he’d also aged much in the past twenty months. They weren’t boys anymore.
“Tell us about this destroyer,” Cooper said.
“The one that almost sank you,” Rusty said.
“How did you hear about that?”
His friend tapped his forehead. “Naval intelligence.”
“Sandtiger nosed down on her first dive,” Charlie explained. “Lt. Morrison took the conn and got us out of it. I pitched in with the A-gangers to find out what happened. Turns out a piece of a destroyer we sank in the Japan Sea got stuck in the vents of the number seven main ballast tank.”
He’d said, we sank, not I sank, though he’d been in command at the time. Charlie made a point always to use we when claiming accomplishments and I when taking responsibility for failures. Giving credit and blame where it was due.
“That’ll do it,” the other seated man said. “Send you to the bottom like a rock.”
The lieutenant-commander stood, offering Charlie a good look at the man. He smiled at Charlie with a round face perched atop a slightly stooped and rotund body. Then he held out his big hand to shake.
Cooper said, “Harrison, this is Lt. Commander Howard Saunders. He’ll be joining you on your next war patrol.” He cleared his throat. “As Sandtiger’s new skipper.”
Charlie kept his face neutral while his gut took a nosedive. He found himself shaking the man’s beefy paw. “Pleased to meet you, sir.”
He knew Saunders by reputation. Captain of the Flagfin. A long-timer in the submarines — nine war patrols, 39,000 tons of Japanese shipping sent to the bottom. On his last patrol, a Japanese seaplane caught his boat out in the open and strafed it. He spent five months in a hospital from bullet wounds while another man took Flagfin out on patrol to the murky but shallow waters of the Yellow Sea, named for Gobi Desert sands blowing east and turning its surface golden. There, the Japanese sank her with all hands aboard.
“You’ve done a hell of a job for the submarines,” Saunders said warmly, though his eyes sized Charlie up.
“Thank you, sir,” Charlie said, sizing up the captain right back.
“Cooper isn’t finished, Charlie,” Rusty said. “Hear him out.”
“I didn’t say a word!”
“I served with you in combat. I always know what you’re thinking.”
Cooper said, “This is Howard’s last patrol. He’ll be in command, but he’ll also be mentoring you to take over. You’ll be PCO on this patrol.”
After surviving the Sea of Japan, Charlie’s violent career in the submarines had reached the doorstep of its ultimate goal — command of his own boat. Cooper had more or less promised him that, but something had changed.
While he’d hoped for command, he held a stoic view of the Navy, which operated on a grand and often obtuse logic. There was no point fighting it and no hard feelings. He stayed focused on his main goal, which was playing a part in defeating the Japanese and ending the war. He’d be going out on this patrol as prospective commanding officer, which might afford more responsibilities and a chance to learn from a seasoned veteran.
And after that, finally, he’d get command. If Cooper kept his promise.
“As long as we get good hunting grounds, I’ll be happy,” he said.
The men smiled at that.
“We’ll get along just fine,” Saunders said.
“Is your boat ready to sail?” Cooper asked Charlie.
“Harvey has to take her out again and give her tubes a workout. Otherwise, she’s ready for sea. We’re still missing an officer, though.”
Jack Liebold had quit the submarines. He’d sucked in too much chlorine gas aboard Sabertooth. Right now, he was convalescing stateside. He’d left happy, though. So drunk after his good-bye party the stewardesses had to drag him up the stairs into the plane. He’d done a lot of good in the war. And he had his own stories to tell now.
“Yes, I received your requests about it,” the squadron commander said.
“I’d be happy to recommend Morrison for the job,” he told Saunders. “He can think in a crisis, and he’s chomping at the bit for a chance to get in the war.”
“We already have a man in mind,” Cooper said. “Get your boat ready for sea. The patrol briefing is in three days. You’re going back to the war.”
“Aye, aye, sir. I’ll get on it right away.”
“Not right away,” Rusty said. “First, you’re gonna let me buy you a drink at the O-Club so we can catch up.”
CHAPTER FIVE
POST-CONCUSSION
They found an empty booth in the Officer’s Club at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel and ordered scotch on the rocks. Charlie spotted a nearby table where Mush Morton, then captain of a V-boat, once raised his glass to him.
Rusty: “Penny for your thoughts?”
Morton had gone on to command the Wahoo and blaze new submarine doctrine summarized by his well-known motto, “Stay with the bastard till he’s on the bottom!” Moreau, Rickard, and Shelby had all taken inspiration from him.
Now these old submarine aces were gone, and new fighting captains had taken their place. Thanks to men like O’Kane, Dealey, Coye, Triebel, Gross, and Saunders, the submarines had begun achieving spectacular successes in the war.
“Just thinking about somebody I admire,” Charlie said.
Their drinks arrived.
Rusty raised his glass. “To us being here.”
“And to everybody who isn’t.”
They drank.
“So how are you, brother?” Rusty said.
Charlie closed his eyes to savor the whiskey burning down his gullet. He’d made a rule to drink socially, and only rarely, but he enjoyed it when he did. Enjoyed it a bit too much lately.
His instincts told him his friend was still working.
“Is it you asking or Navy Intelligence?”
Rusty laughed. “Both, since we’re being honest.”
“My honest answer is I’m fit for duty.”
“Post-concussion syndrome. That’s what the fitness report says.”
The Battle of La Pérouse Strait had given him twenty-one stitches, battered ribs, and a swollen knee. Another Purple Heart. While attending PCO School, however, he began to suffer bouts of dizziness, mental fog, and depression.
The doctors diagnosed him with post-concussion syndrome. The delayed result of the head injury he’d suffered during the battle. No treatment. It would go away on its own, or it wouldn’t.
“That’s what it says,” Charlie echoed.
“What do you think?”
He decided to keep being honest. “I think my problem might be worse than that.”
Rusty set his glass down. “What do you mean?”
“My problem might be peace.”
Charlie wondered whether he now served only one purpose. Like the submarines he watched depart on their missions.
Rusty sat back with a sigh. “You remember Reynolds.”
The S-55’s XO knew that, even if he survived the war, he could never go home. Charlie wasn’t thinking about him, though. He was remembering Evie’s warning not to give too much of himself to the war. She said he’d married it. She didn’t understand. You didn’t always have a choice. The war had a way of taking whether you gave or not. Sometimes, the old girl married you.
“I don’t remember much of it,” Charlie said. “The battle in the strait. It comes back to me in flashes, triggered by loud noises or the smell of diesel oil. The way you remember a bad dream.”
The deck plates buckling under his feet. Brackish water pouring into the conning tower. Men screaming in the darkness.
Only in his dreams did he remember everything.
“How are you getting along with it?” Rusty said. Gone was the veneer of a naval intelligence officer. He was asking as a friend.
“I’m getting better on the harmonica. That and I get letters from Evie that keep me tethered to home. Plus the busywork Cooper gives me and time spent in the attack trainer, which is every chance I get. Is this why he didn’t give me the job?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. It could be Saunders wanted one more dance, and Cooper felt the Navy owed it to him.”
Charlie finished his scotch and set the glass down. “I’m fit for the job.”
While disappointed at Cooper’s change of heart, he had to admit he’d felt something else. Relief. He’d returned from the Sea of Japan as beaten up inside and out as the Sandtiger. PCO School and long months spent warming the bench hadn’t helped. He believed returning to the war would set him straight. He wasn’t sure, however, that he was ready for the intense pressures of commanding a boat.
Careful what you wish for, Morrison had said. Damned straight. He wanted to command. When he told Rusty he was fit for the job, he’d told the truth. Still, he wondered if he was truly ready. The Japanese debris in the after ballast tank had shaken him. One little thing could destroy a boat. One little thing jamming
a vent or one little thing a captain misses in the heat of combat.
“I believe you’re fit,” Rusty said. “Your teachers gave you top marks in your classes and the attack trainer. Whatever’s been eating you, it didn’t affect your performance. And during the nosedive today, what happened? What did you do?”
“Harvey froze. I told him to blow the ballast tanks and go all back full, but he hesitated. If Morrison hadn’t taken the conn, I would have. It was a close one.”
“I believe you on that too. You’re being too hard on yourself. You earned your oak leaf the hard way, and you sound fit to me. In fact, I recommended Sandtiger for this mission because I thought you’d be in command.”
“Then what’s got Navy Intelligence so interested in me all of a sudden?”
“Right now, Captain Saunders.”
“What about him?”
“Between you and me, I think he’s had it. He’s been through the wringer.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
“That makes me interested in you. If he loses it, somebody will need to pick up the ball and get the mission done.”
“Just let me get back to fighting the Japanese,” Charlie groaned. “At least with them, I know where things stand.”
Rusty waved at the waitress and ordered another round. Charlie scanned the busy club. A musician played a ukulele in the corner, though one barely heard the music over the hubbub of gossiping officers. The red light and cigarette smoke reminded him once again of the S-55, rigged for red and getting a pounding.
He spotted Percy and Nixon at a table across the room. Percy regaled a small crowd of young officers, who listened riveted to some tall tale. Nixon sat with a single unfinished bottle in front of him, set there like a stage prop.
“One more drink,” Charlie said. “Then I have to get the boat ready.”
He was worried about the crew. Half shanghaied to feed new construction, replaced by greenhorns fresh from Submarine School. The rest idle so long they needed retraining. And no time for it. They sailed at the end of the week.
Contact!: a novel of the Pacific War Page 2