THE LAST LIEUTENANT: A Todd Ingram Novel (The Todd Ingram Series Book 1)

by JOHN J. GOBBELL

  Epperson's eyes flicked around a room that once held over fifty code and intelligence analysts, their crypto machines, and the IBM tabulator. Now the room was bare except for the tabulator, twelve gaping floor safes, two filing cabinets, a destitute water cooler, Epperson's double-bolted locker, and Lulu. Corregidor had been part of a network of four major radio intercept and cryptographic analysis posts. The others were in Honolulu, Washington, D.C., and Melbourne (previously Singapore before the Japanese overran it two months ago).

  Corregidor was station Cast: phonetic for the letter C. Hawaii was Hypo. Melbourne was Mike. The network pooled information about decoded enemy messages. Hypo and Cast, in particular, cooperated extensively to crack messages in the Japanese naval code, designated JN-25, by the Allies.

  Corregidor was going to be tough to lose, he knew. Cast's proximity to the Japanese homeland provided an effective base for reception of radio traffic.

  And it was because Corregidor was a rock, a natural fortress festooned with tunnels, provisions, long-range coastal guns, and gigantic mortars that it remained in American hands. For the Rock sat squarely in the entrance to Manila Bay, a staggering body of water twenty miles wide, capable of providing safe anchorage for fifty percent of the world's navies at one time.

  Until three months ago, Cavite, on Manila Bay's southern shore was homeport for the U.S. Navy's Asiatic Fleet. The Cavite and Batangas provinces shared the mouth's southern edge, while the mouth's northern shore was formed by the Bataan Peninsula. There, a small harbor accommodated the Mariveles Naval Station now occupied by the Japanese.

  But use of Manila, Cavite, and Mariveles was denied to enemy shipping because Corregidor and three smaller island fortresses guarded the entrance to Manila Bay. Corregidor--Fort Mills--was a tadpole-shaped island a little over three miles long and lay closest to the southern edge of the Bataan Peninsula. Only four miles away: Caballo Island, two miles south of Corregidor, was headquarters for Fort Hughes; Fort Frank was perched atop Carabao Island, only two miles from Luzon's Batangas Province. Also, an extensive minefield had been laid across the entrance, controlled by an Army electronic detonation station on Corregidor.

  An oddity was tiny El Fraile Island lying nearest the Batangas shore. From 1919 to 1929, Army engineers had poured an enormous reinforced concrete casement, thirty feet thick, around the islet in the shape of a battleship with its "bow" pointed into the South China Sea. Indeed, when the tide swept in, Fort Drum, as it was called, cut a bow wave with the uninitiated estimating the "battleship's" speed at three to four knots. Two massive fourteen-inch twin gun turrets rotating on barbettes were mounted on Fort Drum's "foredeck." Aft, four six-inch "stern" mounted guns looked into Manila Bay.

  Only remnants of the U.S. Navy's once-proud Asiatic Fleet were left: Minesweepers to tend the minefields, a couple of old China river gunboats, and utility craft.

  Even the PT boats were gone. Last month, the four remaining boats of MTB 3 whisked MacArthur and his staff to Mindanao. There the general and his entourage rendezvoused with a B-17 which took them to Australia.

  Like the minesweepers, Epperson and his assistant were the skeleton crew left to man station Cast's crypto room. But it was a surety they would be tortured if captured. Secrets would spill; their invaluable information would make the war's course graver for the Allies. And if Epperson and his assistant didn't get out, OP-20-G Hypo would issue orders through CinCPac to someone on Corregidor to shoot them before the enemy stormed ashore.

  But this message changed all that. And their priority was so high that Lieutenant Dwight Epperson and Cryptographer Second Class Walter Radtke would be the first to step aboard that submarine tomorrow night. Ahead of brownnosing colonels and generals, ahead of nurses, even civilian kids.

  Epperson checked his watch. "Twenty-six hours before that sub shows up. I'll--"

  Epperson's voice was wiped out by a thunderous explosion. The room shook. Papers slid off the filing cabinet and a drawer shot open. A large shell had landed nearby: Kindley Air Base, he judged. The two watched each other's faces jiggle for three whole seconds. With dust shooting through ceiling cracks, Radtke automatically pitched the towel over Lulu.

  It wasn't until the shaking was over that Epperson eased away from the file cabinet. He blinked and wheezed "...I have to find someone to take us through the minefield."

  "How, Sir?" He knew the Japanese had just about bombed everything that floated in Manila Bay.

  Epperson was distant. "...Todd Ingram. He could do it."

  "Who’s that?"

  "...a classmate." Epperson's eyes snapped up to his assistant's. "I'll take care of it. Draft an acknowledgement, then get those damned sledgehammers."

  "Yessir."

  Epperson turned and opened the door; Benny Goodman drifted through. The door hadn't quite slammed when a series of shells, one hundred millimeter howitzers by the feel of it, blasted along the North Shore Road. Radtke held on, as yet another salvo walked across Ordnance Point, obliterating Epperson's prolonged swearing.

  With the door closed, he whipped open the drawer under Lulu. A .45 lay atop four blue mimeograph master sheets which were labeled:

  TOP SECRET

  COMPACFLT EYES ONLY

  PREDICTIONS

  IMPERIAL JAPANESE COMBINED FLEET ACTIVITY

  MAY - JUNE 1942

  He pulled out the .45 and quickly dumped the clip. In a flash he worked the action, making sure the chamber was clear, thumbed off the safety, then pointed it at the door. After steady pressure on the trigger, the pistol's hammer clicked loudly.

  "Good-bye, Mr. Epperson," the cryptographer said.

  CHAPTER TWO

  19 April, 1942

  U.S.S. Pelican (AM 49)

  Manila Bay, Philippines

  Smoke rising from Corregidor's round-the-clock bombardment masked a full moon which otherwise would have well illuminated the Pelican. At 2 a.m., the temperature and humidity were unified at eighty-eight, while the 187-foot minesweeper sat deep in the water off Corregidor's South Harbor. Manila Bay was oily and flat, allowing the ship to keep her anchor at short stay for a quick escape. Except getting underway was impossible. The Pelican was hopelessly without power.

  They had thrown everything at her today. Mitsubishi A6M5 Zeros strafed from deck level, while simultaneously, Aichi D3A2 "Val" dive-bombers tried their best to kill her with screaming plunges from ten thousand feet. But the 1,250 ton Pelican twisted and turned in Manila Bay avoiding eight of those dive-bombers and all they could toss.

  The skies cleared and the Pelican's gunners cheered and looked for paint to scribe two Val silhouettes on their bulwarks. Suddenly a ninth Val dove out of the sun. The Pelican was just able to spin from under two 250 kilogram bombs, but the effects of the near misses were as deadly as direct hits.

  One bomb landed close off the starboard bow, its concussion decimating the forward three inch gun while throwing Hampton, a first class electrician, through the air where he slammed against a bulwark, breaking the bone in his thigh. The other bomb landed amidships, causing serious damage in the Pelican's engineering spaces. Two minutes later MacRoberts, a third class gunner at the forward three inch, was killed when a twenty-millimeter shell from a strafing Zero ripped through his chest.

  Now the Pelican's gunners toiled frantically on her forward three inch to replace the recoil spring shattered by the same bullet that killed MacRoberts. Two other gunners and a bosun worked feverishly on the gun's broken breech block.

  In the engine room, the battle lantern's ghostly beams illuminated men fighting to offset the disastrous effects of the second bomb. Humidity, intolerable in the daytime, was ninety-two in the cramped space with the thermometer stuck at 104 degrees.

  The bomb's concussive effect had buckled the metal plates allowing sea water to rise dangerously close to the minesweeper's silent diesel engine. Topside, a portable P-250 pump barely kept up with the flooding as one hose, dangling through the engine room hatch, sucked up the dark water and sp
ewed it back into Manila Bay.

  Aft of the main engine, the refrigerator sized reduction gear box had jumped its bed, shearing the mounting bolts. Also, the bomb's shocking jolt had caused the diesel's camshaft to hopelessly wobble out of alignment and burn up its bearings.

  Four men stood on the main engine catwalk installing a new camshaft, while to starboard, shipfitters swung mallets, pounding thick wooden strongbacks to shore the metal plates back into place. Welders, wearing bug like goggles, worked their torches to re-seam the plates into some measure of their original watertight integrity.

  A shirtless Todd Ingram, the Pelican's skipper, stood in the shaft alley where water, fouled with hydraulic fluid, fuel oil, and trash, sloshed around his hips. Standing beside the gear box, five sweating enginemen stooped to put their weight on two long crowbars.

  Ingram yelled, "One...two..."

  "Hold on." Bartholomew, the ship's balding chief engineman squeezed among the men taking a grip on the forward crowbar. He looked back with a grin. "Okay. This time does it."

  Ingram growled, "One...two...three...Go!"

  The men grunted and cursed and slipped, raising their backs to the crowbars.

  Ingram counted to five and shouted, "Stop!"

  As one, they exhaled and braced their hands against the bulkhead to catch their breath. While the men rested, Ingram bent to examine the reduction gear mounts. Like everyone else, he was twenty-five to thirty pounds below his normal weight of 175. What seemed stupid was not the ribs or even his hip bones sticking out; it was the skinny arms. His hands, too; he'd lost so much weight he had to wear his Naval Academy class ring on his thumb. Ingram looked like a frail orphanage reject, just like everybody else. Fractional rations of tinned salmon and rice took its toll, and the lifting and the sweating wasn't going to put weight back on.

  "Anything move?" wheezed Jennings.

  Ingram shook his head.

  Jennings's face mirrored the frustration of the other men.

  Bartholomew sloshed aft and pulled out a flashlight. Even in the humidity, the chief wore the traditional engineer's dark green coveralls. And these, of course, were soaked with sweat, grease and innumerable other indelible blotches, which he displayed more proudly than the four rows of campaign ribbons on his dress uniform.

  The light clicked and they bent close.

  "Still a half-inch, Rocky," Ingram said.

  Bartholomew looked at him strangely for a moment, then rose and walked back to the crowbar. Spitting on both hands, he roared, "This is it, girls. Put your backs to it now." He nodded at Ingram.

  Ingram backed into the shaft alley where he could sight the reduction gear box.

  "Wait." He went forward, stooped, and slipped the tip of one crowbar aft six inches. Then he splashed back in the shaft alley. Taking a deep breath he bellowed, "Alright, now. One, two, three! Mule haul!"

  The red-faced sailors growled in unison, and the stout gear box thumped. "Okay, okay!" Ingram yelled, sloshing to the aft mounts.

  Bartholomew joined him and they nodded to one another.

  "Forward?" croaked Bartholomew.

  "All set, Chief," Jennings yelled, from in front of the housing.

  Bartholomew stood saying, "Whittaker. Start here with the studs." He turned to Ingram. "Okay, Skipper. Once the cam is in, we can start up and begin pumping."

  "How long do you think--"

  "Todd," someone yelled.

  Ingram looked up. "Yeah?"

  Lieutenant Junior Grade Fred Holloway was the midwatch officer of the deck (OOD). A chemistry major at Stanford, he was halfway through his master's program two years ago, when he became restless and decided to join the Navy. His twenty-three-year-old hairless babyface peered down from the main deck hatch. "A guy's here to see you."

  "Who?"

  A shadowy face appeared behind Holloway. Ingram shined a battle lantern into it. Gaunt eyes, prominent cheekbones and a shaved head with methylate-painted suppurating sores made him think of an Eric Von Stroheim horror movie.

  "Ace, it's me," the shape said.

  That dry voice. It had the scratchiness of the tunnel people, yet there was a familiar resonance.... And no one had called him "Ace" since his days at the U.S. Naval Academy. His full name was Alton C. Ingram--ACI--and they called him Ace.

  It hit him. They had been plebes together. And roommates. This man had patiently tutored him in trigonometry and calculus at the Naval Academy. After graduating in 1937, Ingram had lost track of him. "Dwight? Dwight Epperson?"

  "You bet."

  "I'll be damned." Ingram scrambled up the ladder to the main deck where they shook hands and clapped shoulders.

  Ingram lead him aft a few paces. "What are you doing here? Are you on the Rock?"

  "Yes."

  A large round flashed atop Malinta Hill illuminating Epperson. Even at this distance they felt the concussion. "You look like hell."

  His friend choked out a raspy laugh. "Looked in a mirror lately?"

  Ingram sighed.

  Epperson looked around the ship, spread his arms and croaked, "What happened?"

  Ingram told him.

  "What's wrong with the other engine?"

  "This ship's about as old as Dewey. One decrepit diesel, one screw, that's it."

  Epperson said, "Oh."

  "The nips laugh at anything we have floating out here. Today was target practice for them. Except we got lucky and turned the tables."

  "It's about time."

  "That's right. But reality sinks in. You want a minesweeper with twin screws? How--"

  "Todd--"

  "--about a brand new one? Well, all you have to do is go stateside. Plenty of everything just sitting around."

  Epperson waited.

  "Sorry, one of my guys was killed today. And it's hot as hell down there." Ingram paused. "Last I heard, you were on the Portland."

  "Radio officer. After that, intelligence school." Epperson's nod toward Corregidor was barely noticeable. "I've been here for eighteen months."

  It struck Ingram. His classmate had lived in Tokyo for ten years where his father had worked for Western Union. The whole family spoke fluent Japanese. "You're in the radio intercept gang?"

  Epperson said nothing.

  "And you read their traffic?"

  A shrug.

  Ingram waited. Finally he said, "I was gun boss on the Hayes, a tin can. She was blown out from under me in the first raid on Cavite last December. They sent me here." He grinned. "My first command."

  "I know."

  "Why didn't you look me up?"

  Epperson's face was illuminated by stroboscopic flashes from Calumpan on the south shore: more incoming.

  They waited. Five rounds landed on Fort Hughes, four miles away. Gasoline ignited and consumed itself inside a mushroom shaped cloud. A vehicle, perhaps a small boat had been hit. Just then Fort Hughes's Battery Woodruff roared back with dual fourteen-inch disappearing cannons. Soon Woodruff's seven-hundred-pound projectiles erupted in the Pico de Loro Hills just above Calumpan.

  Ingram said, "I think Corregidor is completely sighted in."

  "Sighted in?" Epperson, the cryptographic whiz-kid, had forgotten his gunnery courses.

  "One particular artillery piece is sighted and checked at one particular spot. Then they leave it alone and don't shoot it until--"

  "--Tojo blows his whistle?"

  "Something like that. Everything goes off at once. One cannon is aimed at the tunnel mouth, another at the fuel docks, another at the mortar batteries and so on." He paused. "It won't be pretty when Tojo blows his whistle."

  They turned as a round exploded on Fort Drum's concrete casement. Ingram said, "What brings you over?"

  Epperson's eyes glistened.

  Ingram prodded, "I haven't got all night."

  "Alright. If someone asks, you didn't see this." Epperson reached in his shirt, pulled out a stained flimsy, and handed it over.

  In darkness, Ingram tried to look at Epperson. But even if it
were full sunlight, he somehow knew his classmate would be poker faced. "Fred!" he called.

  "Yo." from darkness forward.

  "Flashlight."

  Holloway walked up, handed one over, and walked back to the quarterdeck. Ingram covered the flashlight lens with his fingers; a dim reddish glow washed the paper. He got as far as item one before his spine stiffened ramrod straight. "My God."

  Epperson walked to the rail and leaned on his forearms.

  Ingram finished, then reread the message imagining his own name substituted in the section that read..."EPPERSON, D. J., LT., USN, 476225...DETACHED CAST." And then, "REPORT SOONEST TO HYPO..."

  After running his hand through his hair, Ingram took two deep breaths. He didn't realize his heart had been racing. And his hand shook; he couldn't make it stop. "Shit."

  "What?" Epperson moved back.

  Strangely, Ingram had an urge to touch his ex-roommate. Just for the briefest of moments he could lay a hand on someone who suddenly had an excellent chance of completing his natural lifetime. Epperson would escape this hideous siege to enjoy the decades to come. He could marry, have kids, go to football games. They could cook in the backyard and--

  "Todd?"

  --and go trick or treating on Halloween. "Are you married?"

  "What? No."

  "Sorry. Hypo is what--Honolulu?"

  Epperson gave an imperceptible nod. "We had fifty guys with a full commander in charge over there. The Tambor took them out two months ago."

  At length Ingram asked, "what's OP-20-G?"

  Epperson's head shook.

  "Who's Radtke?"

  "Uh-uh."

  "Dwight. Damnit! I've got a sinking ship on my hands."

  "I'm sorry. Look. Can you tell me where area Yoke Yoke two is?"

  "You want me to take you out there." It was a statement.

  "Yes."

  "What's wrong with the Rock's boat pool?"

  "All but wiped out. Besides, piloting through a minefield without navigational aids in the middle of the night is not their strong suit. Nor is it mine."

  Ingram looked at the message again. "I see." Then he barked, "Fred!"

  "Here." Holloway's bass voice echoed from the quarterdeck.