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

by JOHN J. GOBBELL

  The bombardment raged on Caballo, but it didn't seem to phase the crowd on the wharf which grew to fifty or so. Their faces were gaunt, their eyes wide open as if propped with sticks: lifeless, unseeing. Ingram counted ten men in the boat. He looked up and shouted, "There's still room."

  "Easy Skipper. Only eight inches or so of freeboard," said Bartholomew in a low voice.

  "I know, Rocky." Ingram looked up into the crowd and yelled, "Anybody else? We're going to Australia. I can't promise we'll get there but I figure anything's better than what the Japs have to offer. Who's for it? We still have room."

  Heads jiggled in the back row, the group parted, and a figure stepped forward. "How about one of Big Al's boys?" Leon Beardsley, wearing leather bomber jacket and combination cap with the "fifty mission crush," pushed his way through and stumbled against a cleat. His face was not as scabbed since Ingram had last seen him. His hat fit better, but his eyes were still covered with a bandage wrapped around his head. Someone grabbed his elbow to keep him from pitching headlong into the boat. The B-17 pilot steadied himself and wavered in place. "Alright, Skipper?"

  "How'd you get over here, Leon?"

  Beardsley smirked, "Sent me with the surrender team to coordinate radio procedures." He waved a hand at explosions, "How about that?"

  Ingram studied the bilge, knowing this voyage would demand the utmost of everyone's mental and physical faculties. It did not look promising for Beardsley who might be permanently blind.

  Holloway said in a low voice, "Xnay Ipperskay."

  Ingram almost had to shout, "The other day you said you could see well enough to walk to the crapper, Leon."

  "Medic gave me sulfa day before yesterday. Dumb shit didn't read my chart. I'm allergic, all swollen up again. Third time, damnit. I'll be alright in a few hours. A day or two tops."

  Yardly gave Ingram an it's possible shrug.

  "Got your nickel plate, Leon?" said Ingram.

  Beardsley reached behind, whipped out his gleaming .32 automatic, and waved it in the general direction of Corregidor.

  "Jeez." Men on both sides quickly ducked.

  Yardly moved alongside and whispered, "I'll take care of him, Skipper."

  Ingram nodded then said, "Rocky, help Bones bring him aboard."

  A shell exploded nearby, raising a hissing plume of water, as Bartholomew and Yardly reached up, helping Beardsley in the boat. Mist rolled toward them and Ingram held a hand over his forehead as he shouted, "There's still room. Who else?"

  Nothing. The wraiths above him said nothing. With hands in their pockets, they just stared into the boat. In flashing explosions, he saw wide, unblinking eyes and sagging faces devoid of purpose, hope, and motivation. Hearing an escape was underway, the curious had shuffled to the pier, hungry for something benign; seeking sanity in this surrender, where white flags finally flew after a protracted, miserable siege, only to see death still spitting from Luzon's shores. They were deprived and wounded and abandoned. Without any purpose, whatsoever, they were beaten. Without any connection to home, they were forgotten. Without knowing why, they were being sacrificed by the country they served and loved.

  Ingram spotted one of his crew. "Hastings. What are you waiting for?"

  Shaking his head, Hastings stumbled back, forcing the man behind him to step aside. Before the face disappeared in shadows, Ingram recognized Lieutenant Junior Grade Oliver P. Toliver, III.

  Ingram stepped on a thwart and cupped a hand to his mouth. "We may not be going all the way to Australia. First, we're going to try for Mindanao. Maybe get a ship or a sub out. Maybe make a stand with the resistance. There's a lot you can do besides stay here and let the Japs have you. Come on!"

  "Mindanao is gonna fall, Todd." It was Plummer, the commander of Caballo's Battery Craighill.

  "How do you know?" Ingram shouted louder as explosions rumbled up a gully.

  "That's what all this is about." Plummer waved an arm. "Wainwright surrendered Corregidor and the fortified islands. But the Japs won't stop shooting until all the other Philippine bases give in, including Mindanao."

  Ingram felt their eyes fixed on him. He shook his head and said grimly, "It's Australia, then."

  He spotted another of his crew hunched over a single crutch. "Kowalski, get in."

  Bartholomew yelled, "Yeah, Ski. What the hell you doin'? Get down here."

  Kowalski pressed his lips and shook his head slowly.

  "What's the matter?" said Bartholomew.

  Kowalski said, "Dunno. Weak as hell. Dysentery is driving me crazy. I can hardly walk. And besides, you don't know for sure. Do you? Maybe the Japs will treat us fairly. All I know is, I can't take any more of this."

  Farwell moved close and said, "Skipper. It's getting late."

  Explosions shook Caballo as Ingram nodded and checked his watch. "Start her up, Whittaker," he said.

  Whittaker fumbled with levers, hit the switch, and the engine rumbled into life.

  Sunderland, taking in the bowline, spotted Sergeant La Follette and said, "Bruno. Come on. We got plenty of room."

  La Follette said in a hoarse voice, "I'm all in, Sonny."

  Sunderland said, "Damnit, Bruno. You once told me--"

  "Malaria," said La Follette. "Sometimes my head feels like it's going to explode."

  Sunderland turned in the boat and said, "Bones. We got any quinine?"

  Yardly bent over and fumbled in a bag, muttering and jiggling bottles and wrappers.

  "I think we got some stuff to take care of you, Bruno," Sunderland wailed.

  La Follette said, "I'd only hold you back, Sonny. Take this. Sorry I'm out of cigars." He tossed a .45; Sunderland caught it and stuffed it in his belt.

  Sunderland looked up, finding La Follette had disappeared. "Bruno!" he shouted.

  The lines were all aboard. Kevin Forester palmed his tiller. "Skipper?"

  In desperation, Ingram scanned the men standing above him. They looked like cardboard cutouts. Something caught in his throat and it tightened. His chest heaved and his eyes welled up. He found it hard to speak. "Anybody else?"

  "Yeah," yelled Plummer. "Take this piece of shit with you. It's yours, anyway."

  A horribly moaning figure catapulted into space and smacked the water. Bartholomew and Yardly reached over and pulled the man aboard. The saturated body slipped over the gunnel and flopped in the bilge like a dying fish. Bartholomew rasped caustically, "Mr. Toliver is back aboard, Sir."

  A round landed on a fuel dump at the base of the pier sending flames two hundred feet in the air. The blast should have knocked everyone down but somehow, they swayed like drunken men keeping their footing as the 51 Boat drifted away.

  Unable to speak, Ingram nodded to Forester. The engine roared, and Forester put the tiller over to head into the South China Sea. They stood watching the figures recede on Caballo. Even Leon Beardsley, the near-blind B-17 pilot, faced in that direction. Had somebody even halfheartedly waved from that wharf, Ingram would have turned instantly and grabbed him, even if he had to force the man into the boat.

  But nobody waved. Backlighted by flames roaring on the pier, they stood rooted to their fate as Japanese troops swarmed victoriously over Corregidor and, by the next day, the rest of Manila Bay's fortified islands. The Philippines and all of Japan's coveted maritime routes leading to the riches of Indochina were at last in their hands. Just as the Kido Butai had wiped out the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, General Massaharu Homma's Imperial 14th Japanese Army had conquered all of Luzon. Secure were the goals of Japan's vaunted Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  6 May, 1942

  Limbones Point bearing 125/2.2 nm

  Luzon, Philippines

  The 51 Boat wallowed in light ground swells, as thousands of stars glistened overhead. Aft, Kevin Forester stood at the tiller steering a near southerly course with Ingram, Holloway, and DeWitt watching the fortified islands recede over their port quarter. The men, thoroughly debilitat
ed and exhausted, were scattered across thwarts. One or two had fallen asleep, but the others cast nervous glances, as artillery rained on Corregidor and Caballo islands.

  Suddenly, a series of concussive whacks sounded five hundred yards astern, pulling Ingram from his malaise. Somehow, Army holdouts on Corregidor had thrown the minefield's remote master switches, turning the entrance to Manila Bay into a tormented cacophony of gray-white upward thrusting plumes. Each mine, containing five hundred pounds of high-explosive, thumped three hundred feet in the air one after another, row after row, until all four fortified islands were obscured by mist.

  Ingram blinked with each concussion and, as the boat dipped in a wave, stumbled and grabbed the binnacle and stood again looking into DeWitt's eyes. They mirrored his own: sheer unabated terror. Both knew they would have been high in the air, shredded to glistening pulp, had they left the dock two minutes later.

  DeWitt yelled in his ear. "Lucky."

  Ingram shouted back, "I'll say. Why didn't they trigger them sooner?"

  "Don't know. Wainwright gave the order early this morning," DeWitt said, squinting at the reverse waterfalls.

  "Was that part of the PONTIAC routine?" yelled Ingram, referring to Wainwright's code word to destroy all weapons above .45 caliber.

  DeWitt cocked his head and shouted back, "How did you know about that?"

  "Epperson."

  "He should have kept his mouth shut."

  The major was being petty. Ingram ignored it. Besides, he hadn't the strength to argue over the explosions. Instead, he tried, "It's like abandoning ship. You do the drills, but nothing goes as planned."

  "Very few people knew of PONTIAC, Lieutenant," DeWitt persisted. "I'm interested in why--"

  The minefield stopped detonating, leaving mist to hang over Manila Bay's entrance as if someone had drawn a gigantic, opaque curtain. DeWitt lowered his voice. "I'm interested in why Epperson felt compelled to tell you."

  Ingram ground his teeth. DeWitt's triviality distracted him from the impossible task at hand: Escape. Being drawn into such a stupid debate was pointless. This just wasn't the time to argue about Epperson's murder. Nor was there energy to even begin considering the monumental task of preventing Radtke from alerting the Japanese that the U.S. Navy knew their plans to attack Midway. "Who the hell cares?" he said. "It's not as if we've had a lot of practice blowing up our own cannons and mortars."

  "Yes, but you must admit--"

  "Major, damnit. All I'm trying to do is save our skins. One thing at a time. Okay?"

  DeWitt's eyes narrowed for a moment, then he let it go with a sigh. He nodded toward Caballo. "Funny. I was in the mortar pits when PONTIAC came through. Nobody did a damn thing about it."

  "How come?"

  "Who knows? Too scared? Too confused? All I know is their crews gave up and headed for the tunnels. They were so far gone, they could hardly stand. So I figured I would give it a shot." DeWitt snorted. "Imagine me. A ground-pounder trying to spike those damn mortars."

  "How the hell do you spike mortars?"

  DeWitt shrugged. "There wasn't much time, and those things are so solid and so enormous I couldn't find anything to break. So I started tossing grenades down the tubes. But then some colonel came running out, screaming at me to report to the command tunnel."

  Ingram waited.

  An uncharacteristic smile formed over DeWitt's face. "We argued. Can you believe that? I said it was my duty to destroy the mortars. And that stupid sonofabitch told me it was our duty to turn ourselves and our equipment over to the Japanese in a military manner."

  "Had he heard of PONTIAC?"

  "I'm sure he had, but he was scared. Didn't want to piss off the enemy." DeWitt fiddled with his moustache, "So it looks like the Japs took Caballo with the mortars intact."

  Ingram looked aft. "So what? A lot of good they did us."

  "Hmmmf." DeWitt folded his arms.

  Something tugged at Ingram's memory. Caballo. For some reason Helen Durand's image swam into focus. Caballo. The Horse. That crazy fairy tale they heard on the way to the Wolffish rendezvous. Both of them looking up to the silver-haired Filipino like a couple of open-mouthed preadolescents. What was his name? "...Amador."

  "What?" said DeWitt.

  "Nothing," said Ingram. He wouldn't forget Pablo Amador, nor would he forget Helen Durand. He touched his cheek. The wound hadn't knitted properly and a little puss leaked. He made a note to have Yardly look at it.

  Where would she be now? Australia? Maybe on a plane for San Francisco? Where did she live...Ramona. Where the hell is Ramona? Somewhere in California's backwoods, he remembered.

  Why had he asked where she lived? He'd acted like a pubescent teenager. Everybody, Ingram included, was so thin and so debilitated, not only from lack of rations but from terrible sicknesses such as malaria, dysentery, and beriberi, that thoughts of sex were a rude intrusion on the business of survival. Like the others, he looked like a cadaver. His weight was down to 130 pounds and his beard grew in scraggly patches. Yet somehow, he had felt compelled to give her his Naval Academy ring that night. Just as well, he thought. The damned thing would have been lost; already it had fallen off his thumb twice.

  But now, he couldn't stop closing his eyes and imagining the scent of Helen's hair. She had bent close that night in the hospital hellhole, sewing up his cheek while the maimed and dying groaned and thrashed. Her face was very near and for a moment or two her breath tickled his neck, and he saw her smile and listened to the subtle humor in her voice.

  There was something else. On the way out to the Wolffish, she'd laughed once. A quick chuckle. That was all; about a second and a half--it was the nicest sound he'd ever heard. And now, as the 51 Boat wallowed and rolled, he clung to that rich sound, as if it were a recording playing over and over.

  The boat hit the face of a wave, water popped in the air dissipating spray all over them. Dripping, he wiped a hand over his face, realizing that he'd almost fallen asleep thinking of Helen. But then a shell went crumff on Corregidor's Topside and another image swam into his mind, one he would never forget: The Caballo docks.

  Even now he closed his eyes seeing those hulking shapes through the mist, those skeletous, pathetic creatures weaving on the wharf. They looked down at him with hands jammed in their pockets, shells exploding all around. Terrified of what captivity would bring, they were exhausted beyond comprehension and totally without will to escape. The image of those hollow-eyed men he'd left behind was something he knew he'd dream of for the rest of his life.

  * * * * *

  The four-cylinder Buda purred with conversation trailing off to nothing. Like the others, Ingram's eyelids grew heavy and he fought sleep, yawning and holding his face to the breeze, wordlessly watching the eastern horizon as it grew brighter with moonrise.

  Stay awake, damnit! He'd heard of a Filipino scout who had been court martialed and sentenced to death for falling asleep on watch. The Japanese did the poor fellow a favor when they hit his truck convoy in a bombing raid, killing him with fourteen others.

  Ten minutes later a three-quarter moon rose above Luzon. Ingram's eyes fixed on the shimmering, platinum disc, and he almost dropped off again.

  Stay Awake!

  He swung his arms and looked down moon into the South China Sea. As if blasted with a fire hose, three silhouettes on the western horizon brought him to full consciousness. They were Japanese destroyers patrolling with running lights, which defiantly glowed as if there never had been a war. It was something Ingram hadn't seen since the fighting began six months ago. The red and green side lights and white masthead lights made the South China Sea seem tranquil, even festive in a way. His mind drifted again and he actually asked himself if the gruesome atrocities of Cavite, Manila, Bataan, and Corregidor were only hideous nightmares.

  Holloway groaned, sat up, and stretched for a moment. Then it was evident he too saw the ships. He stood and stepped alongside. "What do you think, skipper?"

  "Tin cans." />
  "Wonderful. What do we do?"

  "Damned if I know. And look at that," Ingram pointed south. Two more destroyers steamed across their track, running lights also blazing. "Looks like they've set up a picket line between Fortune Island and Nasugbu."

  "How about going outboard?"

  Ingram rubbed his chin. "Don't think so. We better duck in and hide. Too much heat out here."

  DeWitt rose and joined them. With the boat rolling in swells, he braced himself, putting a hand on Ingram's shoulder. "Lieutenant. How far can we travel in one night?"

  "Assuming this thing has a clean bottom, which I doubt, seventy miles or so."

  DeWitt said, "Hell, It's only thirty miles to Cape Santiago. What's wrong with holing up somewhere in Balayan Bay?"

  Realizing DeWitt hadn't seen the pickets, Holloway jabbed a thumb over his shoulder, "Major. There's at least--"

  "Mister Holloway," DeWitt said evenly. "I'm speaking to Lieutenant Ingram."

  "But--"

  DeWitt, campaign hat and all, put his nose in Holloway's face. Like a drill sergeant, he said, "Is that clear--"

  "Otis," said Ingram sharply.

  Major Otis DeWitt bristled at being so addressed by one of lesser rank.

  Ingram said, "Are you familiar with Navy regs?"

  "Years ago, I--"

  "They state in this situation, the senior Navy line officer is in command. So, that's me, Otis, I'm the captain."

  "Yes, well--"

  "But in case a Jap bullet takes me out, Mr. Holloway is the Captain. And when Holloway is killed, it's Mr. Toliver."

  DeWitt and Holloway said, "Toliver!" Both looked forward for a moment studying Toliver's inert form.

  Holloway said, "Over my dead body."

  "That's right," said Ingram, jabbing a finger at Holloway's chest. "Toliver becomes skipper when your body is dead. When Toliver gets it, Otis, you'd be smart to let Chief Machinist Mate Bartholomew take over. And then, depending on how much you know about lifeboat navigation and survival at sea, you should strongly consider allowing First Class Gunner's Mate Sunderland to become captain after Chief Bartholomew falls through the deck."