Battle Stations

Home > Other > Battle Stations > Page 25
Battle Stations Page 25

by Roger Jewett


  Minutes later, he cracked the bridge hatch, flung it open, and pulled himself onto the bridge. Chris’s body was gone. He looked toward the bow — at least 20 feet of it was bent at a 90° angle away from the rest of the hull. But thank God, the Tarpon still had power and her steering gear was intact. “We’ll take her home,” he said, patting the side of the crumpled bridge coaming. “We’ll take her home.”

  CHAPTER 48

  Glen was home on a 30-day leave and was driving a tractor with a harrow behind it to help his father and brother put in the corn crop. He’d much rather work than be in the house and around Lucy.

  Now a Lieutenant (JG), Glen was secretly looking forward to going back to sea. He had seven days left before he reported to his new ship, the destroyer James Polk. He was also looking forward to the time he’d see Lillian again.

  His son, named Jessy after Lucy’s grandfather, cried a lot, especially when he picked him up and held him. And as far as he could see, the boy didn’t look anything like him. He had Lucy’s green eyes and her upturned nose.

  Though they slept in the same bed, Glen scarcely touched Lucy during the time he was home. Several times, he was on the verge of asking her for a divorce. But somehow, he could never bring himself to even hint that he wanted one.

  Then that evening, after dinner, his mother asked, “Are you going back out to the war?” she asked.

  “I don’t really know,” he answered. “But I would guess I am.”

  “You sound as if you want to go!” Lucy cried, throwing her napkin on the table and bolting from the room.

  Glen looked questioningly at his mother.

  “You best go after her and find out what’s wrong,” she said.

  Glen nodded, and leaving the table, he followed Lucy out of the house. She went down to creek. “Now what was all that about?” he asked, coming up behind her.

  She faced him. “You have another woman, don’t you?”

  Glen took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. Now was the time to tell her. “I want a divorce,” he said.

  She gasped.

  “I met someone —”

  Lucy looked straight at him. “Is that why you haven’t made love to me?”

  “I want —”

  “You want,” she sneered. “You don’t think about what other people want, or need, do you? You have a wife and a son. What about them?”

  “Things like this happen,” he said defensively, “I don’t blame you for being angry and hurt, and I’m sorry —”

  “You’re not sorry!” she suddenly shouted. “You’re not in the least bit sorry. When I saw you in San Diego, I knew that you didn’t love me. But as God is my judge, I love you, and Jessy is your son. No other man has ever touched me.”

  Glen remained silent.

  “All right,” she wept, “I don’t want to make three people unhappy for the rest of their lives. I’ll give you the divorce.” And she started to run along the length of the creek.

  Too stunned to move, Glen suddenly realized she was running away from him and went after her.

  “I don’t want you near me,” she shouted at him.

  He grabbed hold of her. “Stop running!” he told her, panting hard.

  “You got what you wanted,” she yelled. “You got what you wanted.”

  Glen looked hard at her. This was a side of Lucy he’d never seen, never knew existed. She was a lot stronger than he’d ever thought.

  “You tell me what you want,” she said.

  “Where are you going?” he asked. “Come back to the house.”

  Lucy shrugged and shook her head. “I don’t want to —”

  Glen put his arm around her shoulders.

  “Don’t touch me!”

  “We’ll work it out,” he said gently.

  “Are you sure, Glen Lascomb? Are you really sure?”

  Glen nodded. “I’m sure,” he said. “I’m very sure. I don’t want you to go.”

  CHAPTER 49

  “All right,” Warren said, listening to Rudy being briefed by a guerrilla scout at Warren’s makeshift headquarters in Tulagi, “what the hell is the man saying?” He was seated behind a crude desk made of two wooden horses and four one-by-12-inch planks laid across them and nailed down. He was tired and hot, had a three-day growth, and was generally in a pissed-off mood.

  “He says the Japs are building a radar station on Bansiki Island,” Rudy said.

  “Bansiki?” Warren asked. The name wasn’t in the least bit familiar and he was sure he knew all of them within a 200-mile radius of the base.

  “It’s more just a nipple of land sticking out of the water,” Rudy said. “Here, I’ll show you.” He went to the chart table at the back of the room and looked at a chart of the area. “Not here,” he announced, shaking his head.

  Warren lit a cigarette, stood up, shifted the .45 he wore on his hip, and joined him.

  “Should be about here,” Rudy said, putting the ball of his right forefinger on the chart, near the southern tip of Palawan, which was only a few hundred miles away from the north coast of Borneo. “He says about 50 troops and maybe 300 workers.”

  Warren ran his hand over his beard. The cigarette dangled out from between his lips. He studied the man; then he said, “Ask him if he has seen the place himself, or has just heard about it?”

  “He already told me he saw it himself,” Rudy answered.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Silvano.”

  “Thank him, give him a few packs of cigarettes, and tell him he can stay here a few days and rest,” Warren said.

  Rudy spoke to Silvano.

  The man brought himself to attention and saluted.

  Warren returned the courtesy, went back to his desk, put his feet up on it, and when Rudy returned, said, “Keep a sharp lookout on the man.”

  “You think his information is no good?” Rudy asked.

  “It’s too good,” Warren answered. “For a place that’s as isolated as that is, he knows a lot about it.”

  “His village is on another nearby island,” Rudy explained. “His cousin was taken by the Japs to work on the island.”

  “How come the Japs didn’t get him too?”

  “They did, but he ran away into the jungle and joined up with one of the guerrilla bands. You know there are lots of them in the islands.”

  Warren nodded. “Just the same, keep a sharp lookout on him. If he does anything in the least bit suspicious, shoot him.”

  Rudy’s eyes opened wide.

  “I wouldn’t want to wake up one morning with a couple of Jap destroyers standing offshore and shooting the hell out of this place,” Warren said.

  Rudy shook his head. “I’ll have him watched.”

  Warren stubbed out the cigarette in half a clam shell, swung his feet to the floor, and stood up. “If we do hit that radar station,” he said, “we’ll have to leapfrog it down there and back. That means we have to have fuel dumps along the way and maybe even a temporary base midway between here and there.”

  “That would be bigger than any raid we’ve made yet,” Rudy commented.

  “And a lot more dangerous,” Warren said, going to the map and looking at the area where the island was located. “Two nights down and two nights back if we have good weather. Okay, we’ll do it, but first I want to recon the place myself. We’ll leave tonight and take our friend with us. I want you and five of your men — better take those who were in the army. I’ll have two other boats carry fuel down to a halfway point and guard it until we return.”

  “Two BAR men?” Rudy asked.

  “Yes,” Warren answered. “But let’s hope we don’t need them. We’ll leave at sunset.”

  Rudy went to the door. “You know,” he said, “I don’t even feel as if it’s Christmas.”

  “Christmas?” Warren questioned. He completely forgot that Christmas was so close.

  “In two days… Check your calendar,” Rudy told him, walking out of the palm-thatched house.

  Wa
rren turned his attention back to the chart and began to plan the recon operation.

  “Ease her in close to the shore,” Warren ordered the machinist mate at the helm, who also controlled the engine throttle. The engines were just putting out sufficient RPMs for him to have steerageway. He watched the shoreline. “Full stop,” he ordered. “Full stop,” the machinist mate answered.

  The boat lost headway, then lay dead in the water about five yards from the shore.

  “Tie up to that big tree there,” Warren said to Ensign Bates, the boat’s third officer.

  “Aye, aye, skipper,” Bates answered.

  Warren turned to the XO, Donald Greer. “If I’m not back by nightfall tomorrow, you get the hell out of here as fast as you can. Nightfall is at 1830. By 1831, you’re on your way.”

  Greer nodded. He was tall and thin, with a pockmarked face and prominent cheekbones that gave him an Indian-like look, which was accentuated by his straight black hair and black eyes. But he was born and raised in Philadelphia, where his father was a physician. “I’d much rather go with you,” Greer said. “Bates can run the boat back just as well as I can.”

  “You’re right,” Warren answered. “But I need someone to bother the next skipper if I don’t make it back.”

  Greer made a face; then offering his hand, he said, “Good luck, skipper.”

  “Thanks,” Warren said and, with a wave of his hand, he signaled Rudy, who was waiting on the afterdeck, to move his men over the side and into the jungle. He picked up his carbine and nimbly dropped into the warm, waist-high water.

  Within a few moments, Warren and the others were in the jungle, heading for Silvano’s village. He, Rudy, and Silvano were up front. A BAR man was point, about thirty yards in front of them, another BAR man held the center, and the third brought up the rear.

  Warren’s plan was to use a fishing boat to reconnoiter the island, return to the village in the late afternoon, and be back aboard the boat by no later than 1700.

  “Silvano says the village is up ahead, about a mile,” Rudy whispered.

  Warren looked up through the tangled growth. The sky was much lighter than it was when they left the boat and the birds were beginning to make a racket.

  “Silvano says there’re monkeys up in the trees,” Rudy commented, still whispering, “and snakes on the ground.”

  “Happy combination,” Warren answered in a low voice. The trail they were following appeared to be well used and he didn’t like that at all; then suddenly he realized it wasn’t the usual narrow jungle trail. In the last four months he’d used enough of them to know that this one was at least twice as wide as it should be. He held up his hand and said to Rudy, “Take your .45, cock it, and put it against Silvano’s head.”

  Silvano pushed Rudy out of the way and crashed into the jungle.

  “Get him!” Warren ordered.

  The second BAR man fired a short burst.

  Silvano screamed, stumbled, and fell face forward.

  The next instant they were taking fire from all sides. The three BAR men were cut down.

  “Hit the deck!” Warren shouted, diving into the jungle. Even as he dropped, a searing pain slashed through his left arm.

  The Japanese were systematically subjecting every inch of jungle alongside the trail to heavy small-arms fire.

  “Three left and us,” Rudy said, bellying up to where Warren lay. “Jesus, you’re hit.” And he pulled a dirty bandanna off his neck and tied it tightly around Warren’s arm.

  “They can’t see us and we can’t see them,” Warren said. “But we can hear them. You better have a good throwing arm, Rudy, or we’re dead. Take a grenade, release the plunger, count five, and throw it. I’ll do the same.”

  “Five more and we’re dead.”

  Warren nodded. “You throw first.”

  Rudy pulled the pin and released the plunger. “One … two … three, four, and five.” He hurled the grenade toward the Japanese.

  Warren threw his.

  The explosions tore up the trail and brought screams from the Japanese.

  “Okay, now,” Warren said, crashing through the jungle with Rudy and the other men after him.

  Three booms of thunder came from up the trail.

  Warren stopped. “The boat!” he exclaimed.

  Rudy pointed to the column of black smoke already climbing above trees.

  “I fell into this one,” Warren said bitterly. “This was a fucking disaster waiting for me to take the bait, and I took it hook, line, and sinker.” He turned around and motioned to the man to continue chopping through the jungle with his machete.

  Almost as soon as the sun was above the horizon, the heat, humidity, and insects became intolerable. “We’ve got to rest,” Rudy said, “or we’ll drop.”

  Warren nodded, sat down on the ground, and leaned against the trunk of a huge tree. “We’ve got to get some kind of a boat, or we’ll never get out of here alive.”

  “Where and how are we going to get a boat?” Rudy asked.

  “The where and how are easy to answer,” Warren said. “But doing it may be impossible. We’ll get a boat from the village.”

  “You think they’ll just give us one?”

  “No. We’ll steal it.”

  Rudy snapped his fingers. “Just like that!”

  “It’s either we try, give ourselves up, or die fighting,” Warren said.

  “Have you any idea what the Japs will do to us, if we give ourselves up?” Rudy asked. “Before you answer, let me tell you that they will make you beg them to kill you, because death would put an end to your pain.”

  “I’ve heard,” Warren said.

  “We don’t even know where the village is,” Rudy commented.

  “It has to be at the end of the trail, or close to it,” Warren said. “We’ll wait until nightfall, go back to the trail, and follow it to the village.”

  “Don’t you think the Jap commander might guess we’d try something like that?”

  “Yes,” Warren said. “But it’s our only chance of getting off this island.”

  Rudy remained silent for several minutes; then he said, “He might have the trail guarded, but he wouldn’t expect us to come out of the water.”

  “Rudy,” Warren exclaimed, “you’re a genius. You should have been a general.”

  “I told MacArthur that,” Rudy said, “but he didn’t believe me. I also told him that his defense line on Bataan wouldn’t hold, and he didn’t believe that either.”

  Warren made a clicking sound with his tongue. “Some men are just hard-headed about things.” And he added, “We’ll rest here a few minutes longer, then move to a safer place and wait until dusk before we head for the water.”

  “No guns,” Rudy said, touching the canvas sheath of his trench knife.

  “No guns,” Warren agreed.

  Warren and his men waded and swam through the absolutely black and tepid water in front of the village, which was black too, except for the yellow glow of two lanterns outside of one of the palm-thatched houses that probably was the Japanese headquarters.

  “Boats are tied up there,” Rudy said, gesturing to a rickety-looking wharf that jutted ten or fifteen yards out from the beach.

  “What’s on the other side of it?” Warren asked, and before Rudy could answer, he said, “It’s one of their PTs, a Jap motor torpedo boat.”

  Both men stopped swimming and did a dog paddle; the three men with them did the same.

  “That would get us out of here in a hurry,” Warren said.

  “And probably have every Jap ship around here after us,” Rudy added.

  “Sure, but we could sure use something like that to bait a few traps ourselves,” he said, starting to swim again.

  The boat was on the far side of the wharf, with a line forward and aft securing it.

  A single sentry was posted at the bow.

  “Manuel,” Rudy said to one of the three men, drawing his finger across his neck. “Get his gun.”

&n
bsp; The man left the group and swam under the wharf.

  “You and you,” Warren told the other two men, “cut the lines as soon as Manuel finishes.” He turned to Rudy. “You go up on the bow; I’ll take the stern.”

  “What if some of the crew is aboard?” Rudy asked.

  “I’m gambling that all of them are ashore,” Warren answered.

  From where they were in the water, they watched Manuel lift himself out of the water and under the deck of the boat; then crouching, he moved swiftly to the sentry, who at the last instant started to turn, but the blade of Manuel’s knife was already at his throat. The man never screamed. He almost fell into the water, but Manuel grabbed him, eased him down on the wharf’s planking, and then took his gun.

  “Now let’s board her,” Warren said, swimming toward the already drifting boat. In moments, he grabbed onto the hand of one of the men already on board.

  Suddenly there was the sound of conversation below.

  Warren signaled for silence. He crouched to the side of the companionway and waited.

  A head emerged from the cabin.

  Warren took a deep breath.

  The back of the man!

  Warren drove the knife into the man’s back to its hilt.

  The man gave a startled cry.

  Someone called from below.

  The man impaled on the knife tried desperately to reach it.

  The same voice called out from the cabin.

  Warren pushed the man to the side and overboard. “Manuel, shoot the other one,” he said in a low voice.

  Manuel charged down the steps and squeezed off two rounds.

  “Rudy, the helm and throttle,” Warren ordered.

  “Aye, aye, skipper,” Rudy said.

  “Manuel, you and one of the other men on the deck gun,” Warren said.

  “Yes, sir,” Manuel answered.

  “Get on the machine guns,” Warren told the two remaining men. “Let’s hope it starts the same way as ours,” he said, pressing what he thought was the button to start the engines. It was. “Okay, Manuel, you fire as soon as you see anyone on the beach. You guys on the machine guns do the same. Flank speed,” Warren ordered. “Push that throttle as far forward as you can, then full right rudder, spin the wheel over as far as she’ll go to the right.”

 

‹ Prev