Dawn came fast, brightening the sky.
The gunfire rose to a rolling roar. Tracers flashed across the smoky field. A Nambu machine gun rattled. Another bugle call. The soldiers charged again. The civilians returned and joined the charge with their machetes.
Cotten stopped talking.
“And then what?” Rusty said. “Lieutenant?”
He stared into empty space, reliving their final stand in his head now. He winced at the memory.
“And then my men died,” he said.
“You tried,” Saunders said.
Charlie turned, surprised to see the captain there. Saunders crossed the room to the broken soldier. Rested his hand on the Scout’s shoulder and squeezed.
The captain said, “How would you like to try again?”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
SUICIDE MISSION
The officers gaped at the captain.
“What are you proposing, Captain?” Rusty said.
“I’m proposing you go back,” Saunders told Cotten.
The lieutenant put his mug of coffee on the table and leaned on his knees, as if he found the very idea exhausting. “You’re crazy, sir.”
“In three days, Fifth Fleet will land the Fifth Amphibious Corps on the beaches. And that gun will kill a whole lot more good men than you lost today.”
Cotten flinched but said nothing.
“You made a mistake,” the captain went on. “You can fix it.”
“Jesus,” Rusty said. “You don’t really—”
“I’m asking you to finish the job,” Saunders said. “Is it possible?”
“Anything is possible,” the Scout said. “It’s our other motto.” He grimaced. “That and, ‘Remember.’”
But it wasn’t possible, not by a long shot. Charlie didn’t see how one man could return to the island and succeed where six had failed. Especially since they’d stirred up the hornet’s nest and let the Japanese know they were there.
Besides that, if what Cotten feared was true, one of the Scouts had been captured. And Cotten was right; he would talk. The Japanese would torture him until he did. Sooner or later, he’d tell the Japanese anything they wanted to hear.
The missing sixth man, the mission to blow up the gun, everything.
If Cotten went back, it was a suicide mission for nothing.
The Scout seemed to understand all this. With his drawn face and downcast eyes, he still looked broken. Then his face slowly transformed as he met the captain’s gaze.
Charlie started in surprise. “You’re considering it.”
“I’d need some help,” the man said.
“What would you need?” Saunders said.
“Three of your men ought to do it.”
Rusty cut in, “No way. We’d just be throwing away four more lives.”
“That’s enough out of you, Mr. Grady,” Saunders growled.
“He’s right, Captain,” Charlie said. “They’ll never get near the gun.”
He winced as Saunders wheeled on him, expecting a drubbing.
“Mr. Harrison, you have combat experience,” the captain said. “Invaded Mindanao with a rubber boat and a Thompson.”
Charlie swallowed hard. “Yes, sir.”
“That engine snipe went with you. The big man. Braddock. What happened?”
“We went ashore and engaged—”
“I read Hunter’s report.”
The report said he and Braddock had killed or wounded at least ten enemy soldiers on that beach, which was true. Though only part of the story.
“If you read the report, you know we surprised them then got the hell out of there as fast as we could,” Charlie said. “We barely made it out alive.”
“You can take Smokey with you. Crack shot with a rifle.”
Cotten nodded approval. Charlie exchanged a glance with Rusty, who’d turned white as a sheet. Both Saunders and Cotten had become infected with the same madness. Throwing themselves into danger to get their chance to rewrite their story. Not caring who they dragged into danger with them.
“It’s my op, Captain,” Rusty said. “I’m calling it off.”
“And it’s my boat, Mr. Grady! Dismissed! Get out of my sight!”
Rusty opened his mouth to protest further. Closed it when he caught Charlie shaking his head. Saunders was the captain. While it was Rusty’s op, the captain’s authority on his submarine was absolute.
He left the room shaking.
“Captain, report to the conn,” the 1MC blared.
Saunders squared off with Charlie. “You think about your duty, Mr. Harrison.”
“Sir, we’re not trained—”
“You accomplish the mission, I see a long career for you in the submarines. I see you commanding this boat. I see your friend Grady keeping his job.”
Then he stormed from the room to return to the conning tower, leaving Charlie alone with Cotten.
“It’s a one-way trip,” Charlie said.
“Every trip is a one-way trip in this war. Unless you make it back.”
“You get my people killed, the Japs will be the least or your worries. We’re not pawns so you get revenge or make things right with yourself. Understood?”
The Scout said, “I’ll take care of your people like they’re my own.”
If Charlie joined their madness, the captain would erase his failures, Cotten would earn his redemption, and he and Rusty would avoid a court-martial.
Everybody would get what they wanted.
As long as he made it back.
He said, “Your captured man—”
“Staff Sergeant Moretti.”
“If he talks, they’ll know we’re going for the gun. They’ll be waiting for us. It’s bad enough the Japs know we’re doing special ops on the island.”
“It ain’t about ‘if,’” Cotten said. “He’s gonna tell the Japs nothing, then he’ll tell them every little thing they want to know.”
“That doesn’t sound assuring.”
“We train to avoid breaking as long as we can. Until Moretti breaks, the Japs will think we were going after the airfield to blow a supply dump. In fact, that’s what he’s gonna tell them when he does break. Torture don’t work because the intel is always unreliable. We can take out that gun.”
“Christ,” Charlie said. “You talk about this as if it’s all routine.”
The Scout shrugged. “It’s part of the job.”
“Get some food in you, Jonas. Try to rest. Think it over. If we’re doing this, we’re going tonight at sundown. I need to let the captain know what I’ve decided.”
As if he had a choice.
Charlie mounted to the conning tower and sensed the tense atmosphere at once. The captain leaned over the radarman at his station. The sweat stains had spread down his back, revealing his mental strain.
Saunders turned. “You have an answer for me, Mr. Harrison?”
“We’ll go tonight, Captain.”
“Very well.”
Charlie studied the PPI, which had filled with blips. “What gives?”
“Fifth Fleet, approaching our area of operations,” Saunders said. “Carrying 70,000 jarheads who will have hell to pay if you don’t destroy that gun.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
LAST SUPPER
Sandtiger slowly circled off the east coast of Saipan, waiting for midnight.
Charlie returned to the wardroom sweltering in his combat fatigues. Gear belted around his waist, face blackened with grease paint. Thompson slung and pockets bulging with spare magazines. His boots clomped the deck. He felt twice as big and three times heavier than he did in his service khakis.
Similarly dressed for combat, Smokey and Braddock sat with Cotten at the table, upon which Waldron had laid out sandwiches and a pot of fresh coffee. Seeing his shipmates geared up like this surpassed strange.
The machinist glared at him. “Well, sir, you have finally found a sure-fire way to get me killed in this war. Congratulations.”
“Stow
it, Braddock,” Smokey growled. “We’re about to go into combat. You’ll be relying on Mr. Harrison with your life.”
“That goes both ways,” Braddock said.
In the machinist’s mind, Charlie had the same madness as the captain and Cotten. A lust for going above and beyond one’s duty to prove a point while dragging everybody else along for the ride.
Charlie couldn’t say out loud that, for once, he agreed with Braddock. The whole thing was nuts. He grabbed a chair, picked up a bacon sandwich, and took a bite. It turned to paste in his dry mouth. He forced himself to swallow.
Cotten checked Charlie’s kit. Two Mark II frag grenades, AN-M14 incendiary grenade, M15 Willie Peter grenade, holstered Colt .45, canteen, K-rations, medical packs, 200 rounds for his Thompson, knife, flares, compass.
“Everything is in order,” the Scout said. “How are you?”
“Strange, wearing another man’s uniform.”
“You’re wearing his uniform,” the Scout said. “You ain’t filling his shoes.”
Cotten had no idea how right he was about that.
All day, the Scout taught them the basics of his trade. Concealment. Hand signals. Tactics. How to walk, see, and hear in a new way. Stop, look, listen. Watch your interval, move only when the man in front of you is moving, and nobody shoot unless Cotten shoots first.
Then they went over the plan again and again.
When the subject of civilians came up, Cotten said he’d take care of it. Then they’d broken off to grab some quick shut-eye before they left the boat.
In his shipmates, Charlie saw two very capable seamen who still knew nothing about soldiering. This time, Braddock was right. The odds of them succeeding were horrible. Of getting back, almost non-existent.
Cotten asked, “Everybody take your Atabrine pills?”
Atabrine would protect them against malaria. The men nodded and ate in a funereal silence as if awaiting their execution. Right now, malaria was the least of their worries.
Charlie checked the time. The stand of the tide neared. As much as he feared leaving the boat, he just wanted it over with.
“Alamo team to the conn,” the 1MC blatted.
“That’s us,” Cotten said. “Saddle up.”
“Just remember,” Charlie told Smokey and Braddock. “As soon as we’re off the boat, Lt. Cotten is in command. What he says goes.”
“I’ll get all y’all through this,” the Scout said.
No platitudes. No promises of glory, how they’d all come back heroes. What he said was exactly what they needed to hear. That they’d come back in one piece.
The crew turned out to see them off, crowding the control room. The Alamo team marched through them, Smokey leading the way yelling, “Make a hole! Working Navy!”
Charlie’s gaze clung to everything he saw before losing its grip and slipping past. He knew every detail of this boat now, every dial and gauge, every quirk and habit. Sometimes, she felt like a metal coffin, her bulkheads closing in and trapping him somewhere deep from which he’d never escape. Most of the time, she felt like a mother’s warm womb, like home.
Charlie had a feeling he’d never see her again.
The sailors gawked at their shipmates loaded out for combat. Some shouted encouragement while the rest just stared.
“Make a hole!” Smokey barked.
They mounted to the conn. The captain grinned while the other officers gaped, their faces pale and taut.
“You ready for this, Charlie?” Rusty said.
Charlie pulled on his Mae West lifejacket. “Ready as I can be. Able is another matter.”
“If things get dicey, you run like hell and get back here.”
He offered a grim smile. Things were already looking pretty dicey to him. “Do you still have it?”
The letter he’d written for Evie on the S-55. I’m sorry. I love you. Be happy. He wrote it the night the 55 approached the Japanese fortress of Rabaul. Rusty had penned one just like it to his wife Lucy and given it to Charlie to keep.
Rusty nodded. “It’s in my locker. I’ve gotten pretty attached to it, so don’t do anything stupid like making me send it.”
“I’ll do my best.”
The captain ordered the boat to surface. Sandtiger rose on an even keel. The hatch opened overhead.
Rusty shook his hand. “Good luck, brother.”
“Good hunting, Mr. Harrison!” Captain Saunders said. “Wish I was going with you.”
Rusty gave Charlie a look that said he wished the captain was leaving as well. Charlie snorted and began to climb the rungs.
Saunders might be crazy — a man broken by the war, a man who was now trying to use the war to mend himself. That didn’t detract from the importance of the mission. Charlie could almost see it in his mind. Fifth Fleet floating outside the barrier reef. Waves of LVTs racing toward the beaches. The Meteor booming and smashing everything in sight with its giant shells.
Charlie wasn’t optimistic about his chances, but he knew where he stood on whether the mission was worth personal risk. It was. Destroying that gun would save far more lives than might be paid for trying.
Somebody had to do it. Somebody had to try. He steeled his nerve as he mounted to the bridge.
Maybe Braddock was right, and he was crazy too.
Her decks awash, the submarine lay partially surfaced under a rising moon. Two sailors inflated a raft. Cotten, Smokey, Braddock, and Charlie climbed in and grabbed paddles. The sailors waved before disappearing down the hatch.
“Ready.” Cotten pointed where he wanted the raft to go.
As the bow paddlers, he and Charlie started the strokes. Smokey and Braddock joined in, matching their pace. Charlie spared a quick glance over his shoulder, hoping to catch a final glimpse of the Sandtiger.
The submarine sank into the foam. No going back now.
Ahead lay the limestone cliffs of Saipan’s eastern shore.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE CLIFFS
Charlie matched Cotten’s rigorous rowing pace across the slack water. Sandtiger had made her presence known in these very waters earlier in the day, and the moon was out and rising.
“Dig,” Cotten rasped. “Hard forward! Dig!”
Until they reached the cliffs, they were sitting ducks. At any moment, Charlie expected a Nambu machine gun to open fire from the bluff.
“Deliver us from evil,” Smokey prayed in the back. “Deliver us—”
The men lurched as an invisible hand grabbed the boat. Charlie tottered, raising his arms to maintain balance.
The raft began to spin.
“Sleeper,” Smokey called out.
The raft was hung up on a rock hiding under the water’s surface.
Cotten grunted agreement. “We need to boogie.”
“What?” said Charlie.
“Bounce around! We need to shake loose.”
The men bounced in the raft, slowly working it off the rock until it spun off across the surface. They hacked at the water until they regained control and had the raft aimed once again at the distant cliffs.
“Now dig!” Cotten barked. “Watch your trim! Hard forward!”
The raft approached the volcanic rock piled at the base of the cliffs. Cotten hauled himself onto a boulder and belayed the raft using a line pulled taut through an anchor. Working by moonlight, the rest of the team piled out with their gear.
Then the moon dimmed to black. The humid air grew even heavier, pregnant with rain. Braddock deflated the raft and wedged it into his pack.
“We’d better do this quick,” Cotten said. “I’ll go up first.”
Smokey gazed up the face of the chalky cliffs, his head tilting back and his mouth open. “That’s really high.”
“It looks higher than it is,” Charlie said as he observed the Alamo Scout’s progress. Cotten was already a quarter of the way to the top, hauling himself up using the rope he’d left behind.
“You afraid of heights, Chief?” Braddock sneered.
/> “As a matter of fact, I am,” Smokey said. “Just looking at them makes me want to punch somebody.”
For once, the machinist shut up when he should. Light flickered overhead, and they flinched. Thunder crackled seconds later.
Charlie blew out a sigh. “Can you make the climb?”
“I don’t know, sir. I really don’t.”
“You could have said something on the boat,” Braddock said.
Smokey glared at him as if wondering whether he’d deliver that punch now or later. “It doesn’t look that high from a distance.”
“Braddock, you go up next,” Charlie said. “Tell the lieutenant we’re going to haul Smokey up with a fly walk.”
“Aye, aye.” Braddock grabbed the rope. “Looks like I’ll be carrying your ass the whole way up, Chief.”
“Get your own ass moving before I kick it up there.”
“Aye, aye.” Braddock started pulling.
“Still wondering why you brought him along,” Smokey muttered.
Right now, Charlie had no good answer.
After the engine snipe made it to the top, Charlie wrapped the rope around the quartermaster’s armpits and tied it off. “I saw people doing this at Glen Canyon once. Cotten and Braddock will pull you up.”
“You’re shitting me.”
Charlie tugged on the rope to tell the men above Smokey was ready. “Just walk up at the same pace they pull,” he said. “You’ll be at the top in no time. When you get there, keep your uppermost leg straight and rigid to act as a lever.”
The rope went taut. Smokey placed his boot against the rock and started walking up the cliff face. Another flash of light whitened the sky, followed by a crash.
“Our father!” he yelled.
“Just keep walking, you’ll be fine,” Charlie called after him.
“Deliver us from evil!”
Smokey made it to the top and disappeared. The rope dropped and swayed. Charlie grabbed it and started hauling himself up. At first, the going was difficult against the slippery rock. His boot soles rasped against limestone formed by the skeletons of tiny marine organisms built up over millions of years. Calcium carbonate. Crumbs of it trickled down the cliff side.
Contact!: a novel of the Pacific War Page 9