Voyages of the Seventh Carrier

by Peter Albano

  “Enough!” Fujita shouted. “Out! Both of you are confined to your quarters.” And then, glaring at Kathryn, he said, “Get her out of here.”

  Sobbing, Kathryn Suzuki was led from the cabin. But she turned her head, never taking her eyes from Brent until she was pulled down the passageway.

  Chapter Three

  Although Brent had been confined to his cabin for a week, he still stood watches on the flag bridge as junior officer of the deck. Fortunately, Lieutenant Konoye’s “country” was the fighter pilots’ ready room: a large compartment on the gallery deck, or the hangar and flight decks where he inspected and tested A6M2s or just tinkered with engines and weapons with dozens of other restless pilots and air crewmen.

  Despite the nearness of the equator, the second morning after the raid dawned magnificently with no hint of the heat to come. A light and fickle breeze — not even two on the Beaufort Scale — scratched dark patches on the surface of the placid deep blue sea, leaving the rest of it with satiny gloss. Surprisingly, there were seabirds working, their wings twinkling like flurrying snowflakes, huge flocks of them that stretched low across the horizon. Lowering his glasses, Brent stared down from the bridge at the pilots and mechanics who swarmed fondly over the next CAP flight of six Zeros. He heard a soft voice behind him. “Good morning, Mr. Ross,” Kathryn Suzuki said.

  Turning quickly, the young American moved his eyes to the lovely face. Although he marveled at the flawless flesh that glowed warmly in the morning sun with pearl-like luster, a smile had awakened incipient lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes, hinting at years far beyond Brent’s first assessment. Then silently and with unabashed candor, he dropped his eyes to the large breasts, tiny waist, and trim, flaring hips.

  “You like what you see, ensign?” she said, a slight flush creeping to her cheeks.

  “I approve of the distribution, if that’s what you mean.”

  Her laughter did not hint at a trace of her previous haughtiness and anger. Brent wondered at the change in mood. Perhaps she was resigned to her long voyage on Yonaga. Or, possibly, hot food and sleep had altered her demeanor. Regardless, Brent liked her new mood and could not help thrilling at the presence of a woman in what had been a male desert.

  Two lookouts turned from their binoculars for an instant, stared at the newcomer and then returned to their sectors. Kathryn moved close to Brent’s side, leaned on the windscreen and spoke softly into his ear. “Thank you — thank you very much for what you did. That big brute could’ve killed me.”

  “That was nothing,” he said grimly. And then with sudden curiosity, he said, “What are you doing on the bridge?”

  “My cabin is there.” She gestured to a door held in the open position by a steel pelican hook. “The admiral has said I can walk here once a day, but I’ve got to return to my cabin — even for my meals.” He felt her hand on his arm. “I caused trouble between you and that pilot.”

  The hand brought a sudden warmth, and Brent could feel a familiar pulsing in his neck and then lower. He ached to move closer, but, instead, pulled his arm away. “No, Miss Suzuki…”

  “Kathryn, please, Brent.”

  He nodded and pressed on. “No, Kathryn. It’s been a long time brewing.” He recalled Konoye’s instant hatred the day the American boarded Yonaga in Tokyo Bay. Even during the bloody fighting in the Mediterranean, when it seemed they would all die together, the man’s hatred for Brent had persisted unabated. It was certainly possible the forty-two years of isolation on the Chukchi Peninsula had broken the man’s mind. Or, perhaps, when he discovered his mother, father, wife, and two children had been incinerated in the great Tokyo fire raid of 1945, he may have snapped. Maybe it was a combination of all these things. Certainly, the essence of the man’s hatred was focused on Brent and not Mark Allen and the others. It was possible, in his samurai’s mind, he was forced to select the biggest and strongest for his revenge — the revenge of the forty-seven ronin. Brent was certain of one thing: Someday, he would be forced to settle things with the burly lieutenant.

  “You hate each other, Brent?”

  “Not necessarily,” he lied. “It’s a shipboard thing. When you’re cooped up like this, tempers can flare.”

  “He struck me.”

  “Of course. But watch your mouth, Kathryn. These are medieval men.”

  “The old school — women are for housekeeping, childbearing, and sex,” she spat. She stabbed a finger down at the flight deck. “They all have their geishas on the side.” Brent laughed.

  Before the American could answer, the woman continued. “It’s hot — very hot.” She gestured at the morning sun, which had climbed rapidly and glared down with hot rays despite the cooling effects of the freshening breeze. “It’s hot in my cabin.”

  “We’ll be crossing the equator soon. These latitudes are known as the doldrums. There’s a lot of heat here.”

  “Doldrums?”

  “Yes. We’re between the northeast and southeast trade winds.” He waved a hand in a semicircle. “Shifting winds, cyclones, unpredictable currents and calms. In fact, ancient sailors called these latitudes the ‘horse latitudes.’”

  She arched an eyebrow. Encouraged by her piqued interest, he continued. “Horse latitudes because a becalmed sailing vessel would run short of water, and if horses were in the cargo, they were thrown overboard.”

  “Then the slaves.”

  “They probably went before the horses.”

  Her eyes followed a flock of gulls. “It’s still hot in my cabin.”

  “Yonaga’s not air-conditioned. You’ll cool off when we round the southern tip of South America.”

  “Cool off, Brent?” she pleaded huskily, raising her eyes. “How can a girl accomplish that miracle with you around?”

  For the first time in his life, Brent was at a loss for words. “Ah…Kathryn…I…”

  Her laughter cut him short. “Sorry, ensign, that was brazen.” Then with new seriousness she said, “I’m not a sailor, but it seems to me you’re headed for the wrong ocean.”

  “Why?” he asked with a strange mix of both relief and disappointment at the change in subject.

  “Why not round Africa and head across the Indian Ocean; it’s shorter.”

  “Because,” a new voice said from behind them, “we would be forced into narrow waters where a capital ship should never be caught.”

  Turning together, the couple found Adm. Mark Allen standing with his binoculars hanging at his waist. “I’m Adm. Mark Allen,” he said.

  “I know, admiral.” Kathryn returned to her point, eagerly. “But it would be shorter, admiral.”

  “Yes. But Admiral Fujita is too smart to take this ship into restricted waters. We would be forced to navigate the Straits of Malacca, round Singapore and steam northeast into the South China Sea, skirting the Malay Peninsula.”

  “This is dangerous?”

  The old American snorted. “Dangerous! Hah! The Repulse and Prince of Wales did it in 1941. They’re still there; on the bottom where Japanese aircraft put them.”

  A shout of “Mark!” turned Kathryn’s head, and she stared upward at the navigation bridge where Lt. Nobomitsu Atsumi stood, staring down at the vernier scale on his sextant while a rating read a stopwatch.

  “Do they still navigate that way?” she said aghast. “I thought you had machines — computers.”

  The Americans chuckled. “Admiral Fujita hates computers,” Mark Allen said. “He feels they’re taking the thrill out of life — warfare.”

  “I saw some. They’re just outside my cabin.”

  “Yes, true,” Brent said, entering the exchange suddenly. “But those are used for cryptanalysis and fire control.” The ensign gestured upward. “The admiral had no choice. But he insists on navigating the old-fashioned way.”

  The girl nodded at one of the escorting destroyers. “I’ll bet they use modern methods.”

  “True.”

  She moved curious eyes to Brent’s face. “How ca
n the navigator find stars in this bright sunlight?”

  Both Americans laughed. Mark Allen said, “He’s shooting the sun. He’ll do it all day long and run up the sun lines, giving him an accurate, continuous fix. In fact, his LAN — ah, Local Apparent Noon sight will give him a precise latitude.”

  “Kathryn,” Brent said. “LAN is an altitude taken on the sun when it’s on your meridian. In a sense the only noon — true noon.”

  “But it won’t give longitude,” she said quickly, surprising both men.

  “Right,” the admiral conceded. “He needs his stars and planets for that.”

  She pointed to the horizon. “You must fuel somewhere. The Falklands?”

  “No,” Allen answered. “We’ll meet a tanker.”

  “Oh,” she mused, palming back her hair. “That’s how you did it.”

  Brent felt an uneasiness as the girl’s eyes suddenly chilled like chips of black ice.

  “That’s how,” she repeated to herself.

  There was a heavy step on the grating, and a seaman guard stood at quiet attention, holstered pistol at his side. “It’s time for Anne Boleyn to return to the Tower,” she said quietly, moving toward the door, her long delicately formed limbs and chiseled hips flowing and swaying under the tight fatigues. Watching the girl vanish through the door, Brent dampened his suddenly parched lips with the tip of his tongue. Slowly, he turned to the horizon, slitting his eyes against the rising sun.

  *

  At a steady 18 knots, the battle group steamed southward through the doldrums, leaving Ascension Island to port and finding the northeast trade winds gradually replaced by gusts from the southeast. Standing next to Brent — a position she took every morning as if she, too, were standing a watch — Kathryn said, “Funny how the wind’s shifted.”

  “We’re in the southern hemisphere, Kathryn,” the ensign explained. “Actually, it’s a simple thing. Just keep in mind, when winds and currents approach the continents, they are deflected by the earth’s rotation. Clockwise.” He circled a finger. “In the northern hemisphere. Counterclockwise in the southern hemisphere.” He reversed the finger.

  “Simple.” She laughed, eyes tied to his. “Very simple.”

  He felt a compulsion to touch her. But his hands remained at his sides.

  After crossing the Tropic of Cancer, course was changed to two-zero-zero, and as the days passed, Brent knew that far over the western horizon Brazil was slipping past and then Uruguay and Argentina. The air cooled, and the sun began to hang astern in a sky that slowly filled with high-cruising, stringy gray clouds. The sea became burnished slate, mounting combers taking the great ship on her port bow, punishing the 84,000 tons of steel, a constant reminder of Yonaga’s transient insignificance and the inevitable demise of men and man-made things while the sea rolled on infinitely. And Yonaga protested, creaking and groaning, shrugging off the seas, frames, plates, and rivets put to the test. Ten days after the attack, and with the Falkland Islands far to the west, Yonaga met her first tanker.

  Speed was reduced, and flags and pennants whipped from the halyards as the gray tanker — low in the water with the chop frothing over her low freeboard like a great blue disporting herself on the surface — staggered through banners of blue water and white spray to a position directly ahead of the carrier and began to fuel in Japanese style: stern to bow. Impatiently, Fujita paced the deck, cursing the slow speed and haranguing the lookouts to increased alertness.

  “We are cold meat for submarines,” he shouted, gesticulating at the tanker. Kathryn Suzuki, who had been standing near the door with her guard, giggled quietly. Whirling, Fujita spat, “Return to your quarters, madam. Instantly!”

  Muttering, the woman left.

  Chapter Four

  Eighteen days after passing the Cape Verde Islands, Yonaga entered the Drake Passage, splitting the Scotia Sea midway between Cape Horn and the South Shetland Islands. Dressed in a foul-weather jacket, heavy trousers, and parka, Brent stood on the bridge, gloved hands gripping the windscreen. Similarly dressed, Kathryn stood at his side in what had now become a morning ritual: a practice that was honored by every man on the watch. They maintained a discreet distance while the couple talked or merely stood side by side quietly.

  Admiral Fujita had ordered course changed to two-seven-zero, a heading which brought the bow of the ship into a head-on challenge of the charging combers, which loomed one after the other in endless rows. Hard hit were the Fletchers. Top heavy with guns and narrow in the beam, they rolled deeply until gray water swept the decks, the sleek vessels sometimes vanishing into troughs to reappear again, rolling and shaking frothing seas from decks and upper works like lazy hounds caught by rainstorms.

  “Gray, gray, everything’s gray,” Kathryn said, icy wind tearing the words from her lips in white ribbons. Staring at the overcast above and the scudding dun-colored clouds that streamed from the horizon like terrified sheep fleeing the wolf of the wind, Brent nodded and winced as a particularly violent impact flung spray to sting his face like thrown needles.

  “Where are the Zeros?” the girl asked, staring down at the empty flight deck.

  “Struck below,” he answered, bending his knees and following with the punch of a huge sea. “Not even a gull can fly in this.”

  “Jesus, it’s rough and cold,” the girl said, both hands on the windscreen.

  “Sixty degrees south latitude.”

  “Almost to the Antarctic Circle?”

  “About seven hundred fifty miles south of here,” he said, sweeping a hand to port.

  “Well, the crew should be used to it,” she noted. “After all, Yonaga spent over forty years in the Arctic.”

  “Usual media inaccuracy,” Brent snorted.

  “The Chukchi Peninsula,” she countered. “On a secret mission.”

  Brent laughed. “Is that what you heard?”

  She nodded.

  “The Chukchi is right, but south of the Arctic Circle.”

  She pounded the rail with a single, tiny gloved fist. “Tell me, then, the truth, Brent. I promise to stay silent.”

  After taking a deep breath, Brent stared over the bow and told the story of the great carrier: an incredible tale that began in 1935. Designed as a battleship — a member of the top secret Yamato class, which were 64,000 ton monsters with nine, 18-point 2 inch guns — Yonaga, along with Shinana, was converted to an aircraft carrier. But while Shinana remained in the Yamato configuration, Yonaga was lengthened, given a 1040-foot flight deck and sixteen Kanpon boilers instead of twelve.

  “She was part of the Pearl Harbor task force,” Kathryn said.

  “True. There were seven carriers in that force — Kido Butai the Japanese called it — Kaga, Akaga, Soryu, Hiryu, Zuikaku, Shokaku, and Yonaga, which was so huge it was feared foreign spies would discover her.”

  Kathryn appeared hypnotized by the tale. Brent moved on slowly as if he, too, challenged the credibility of the 84,000 ton leviathan pitching and rolling under his feet. “To insure secrecy,” he said, “an extraordinary thing was done: Yonaga was actually commissioned into the army’s Unit Seven-Three-One.”

  “I didn’t know that. Weren’t they like the Gestapo? SS?”

  “Correct! Killers. Even carried out medical experiments on POWs. They destroyed all Imperial Navy records of Yonaga, and she became a ghost ship. They went to incredible lengths. Early in 1940, Seven-Three-One moved her to an anchorage near Kitsuki on the island of Kyushu where she was covered with acres of camouflage netting — so much netting Admiral Fujita said there was a shortage of fishnets on Kyushu for almost a year. But it worked. From the sea she looked like another small mountain, and there wasn’t a hint of her existence in western embassies, which the Japanese had correctly estimated as being filled with spies. But after the decision to attack Pearl Harbor was made, Seven-Three-One decided to move her to Sano-Wan, a secret base hidden in a gigantic cove on the southern coast of the Chukchi Peninsula.”

  “It juts into the Ber
ing Sea from Siberia, Brent.”

  “Correct. And it’s desolate.”

  “But why a base there? The media said —”

  Brent interrupted. “The media talks a lot but knows little. Actually, Sano-Wan existed because Seven-Three-One needed a base to launch germ-warfare balloons.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Yes. Lethal strains of germs were developed, and they were afraid to attempt home island launches. So a Colonel Sano scouting in one of their big I-boats —”

  “I-boat?”

  “Submarines. Anyway, he found the cove, and the base was built.” Then Brent explained how the planet’s peculiar wind patterns send breezes down from the pole, past Sano-Wan, southwest over the Aleutians where the westerlies would pick up the balloons and carry them to the west coast of the United States. And the cove lay on the Pacific Ring of Fire with a steam vent that provided unlimited geothermal power.

  “But Yonaga was trapped by a landslide.”

  “Not quite. An overhanging glacier broke loose. That’s what trapped her, sank I-twenty-four and killed Colonel Sano.” Brent moved on with the story quickly, telling of two tunnels cut through nearly a kilometer of ice and of how fishing parties took halibut, salmon, herring, cod, and even small whales from one of the world’s great fisheries. Seaweed was cultivated in the cove, and for over forty years there was never a shortage of food.

  “I still can’t believe it. Even standing here — seeing it, feeling it; it seems like a dream. A bad dream, Brent.”

  Brent raised an eyebrow. “Bad?”

  “They wrecked Pearl Harbor, sank the New Jersey. Isn’t that bad?”

  “Why of course, Kathryn. But we smashed Tripoli, destroyed Kadafi’s bases at Misratah and Al Kararim and saved Israel.”

  “We? Ha, you’re one of them, Brent. After Pearl Harbor they…” She waved a hand. “This crew killed your father.”

  The reference to his father, Ted “Trigger” Ross, stiffened the young man’s back. Angrily, he turned to the girl. “My father killed himself.”