With a final warning about being ready to sail on five minutes' notice, the meeting broke up. Stuart Payne, the captain of the Brockton, put his arm around McKay's shoulder on the way down the passageway. "Nice try, Art," he said. "I'll be watching for those damn things."
At the Naval Academy, Payne had been known as Sorry because he always had a serious expression on his face. He had been a first classman when McKay had been a plebe. One day, Payne had sent for him and asked if it was true that he was thinking of quitting. When McKay said yes, Payne had urged him to change his mind. "The Navy needs some guys with brains," he said.
Lieutenant Wilson Selvage MacComber stood at attention before Captain McKay. "You sent for me, sir?"
"Relax, Mr. MacComber. I want to know what, if anything, you know about why Seaman Second Class Henry Klein hanged himself yesterday."
"I'm glad you're aware, Captain, that the answer is very little. The fellow was a loner. He seldom spoke to other members of the division. They regarded him with something approaching dislike."
"Was he a homosexual?"
"I have no idea."
"Not even an intimation, a clue? Is there anyone else in your division with the problem?"
"It's not my habit to examine the men for such a propensity, Captain."
"What do you know about your men, Mr. MacComber?"
"I beg your pardon, Captain?"
"What do you know about your men? What are their gripes? Do they like their battle stations? How do they feel about the lousy food they've been getting? Who's the compartment bully? Who's the joker? Any gamblers in the bunch? Anyone with women problems?"
"I haven't the least idea, Captain. My philosophy of command maintains what I believe to be the proper distance between officers and men. It's my belief that the officer who attempts to be familiar with them ceases to be a gentleman."
"That's bullshit, MacComber."
"I beg your pardon, Captain?"
"Are you hard of hearing? I said that's bullshit."
"I'm afraid I must express my astonishment, Captain."
"You can express anything you damn please. I want to know why that man hanged himself. You'd better find out. Otherwise, your total ignorance of your men —tantamount to neglect, in my opinion — will be noted in your fitness report."
"Captain," said Lieutenant MacComber, "I fear I must reject with asperity this unwarranted attack on me. I absolutely refuse to become a snoopin' detective among my men. I can't think of a quicker way to lose their respect. May I remind you, sir, that you rejected a similar role when you came aboard this ship."
Checkmate. Captain McKay pondered Lieutenant MacComber's supercilious face. He was one of those people who had learned how to use the Navy's traditions for their own egotistic purposes.
"Make damn sure it doesn't happen again, Mr. MacComber. I don't care how you go about it. Just make damn sure."
In moonless, starless darkness, the Jefferson City threaded the tortuous channel out of the harbor of Espiritu Santo, the Island of the Holy Spirit. There was nothing holy about the spirit that hovered over the ship. Frank Flanagan could feel the dead sailor looming behind him, mocking the fear that curled in his belly and crowded into his throat.
Flanagan dismissed him. He was a ghost. A stranger. But he would not go away. At supper Flanagan had tried to find out more about him from the deck apes. They were surly, tightlipped. They claimed to know nothing. They obviously knew a lot and had been told to keep their mouths shut.
Boats Homewood feared the worst. He said they would have to sink half the Jap Navy to scour the curse Klein had laid on them. Flanagan had his doubts. He had begun to see that Homewood's religion was too simple for him. He admired its apotheosis of honor and courage, but he wondered if anything merely human was strong enough to withstand the evil that war unleashed.
He had finished The Quest of the Historical Jesus and returned it to the chaplain. Bushnell had given him another book by a Danish writer named Kierkegaard, who maintained that every adult found belief in God absurd. What was needed was a "leap of faith" — a blind embrace of the Incomprehensible in the name of love and trust. Flanagan's dogma-clogged Catholic mind found this hard to grasp, although it appealed to his Irish temperament. He tried to explain it to Jack Peterson, who summed it up in his own inimitable way.
"It's like bettin' you'll draw four aces when you got nothin' in your hand but deuces."
Down on the mount, the deck apes were arguing with Crockett Smith, a hulking country boy from Tennessee who was convinced Tarzan was real. A week ago they had asked Flanagan if Crockett could possibly be right, and he assured them Tarzan was fiction, make-believe. Crockett just blinked. There was a complete set of Tarzan novels in the ship's library and Crockett had read them all. He declared in his stubborn hillbilly way that he believed that somewhere in some jungle, the fabled white ape-man was gamboling with his gorillas. "Hey, Flanagan," one of the deck apes asked over the phone. "How old would Tarzan be if he was real?"
"Older than the captain."
"Christ, can you imagine the captain swingin' on a fuckin' vine?"
"Mount one, cut the bullshit," barked Ensign Herman Kruger, who was monitoring their circuit. "Keep your eyes on the water."
"jawohl, mein Kerr," Flanagan said.
"One more crack like that, Flanagan, and you're on report!"
"Who me, sir? I didn't say a word," Flanagan said. Insubordination was one way of keeping your mind off getting killed.
On the bridge, Captain McKay was silently cursing Admiral Standish. Instead of following the COMSOPAC plan, Standish had leashed his destroyers to the cruisers. They were plodding along in the same stupid column they had maintained in their two previous battles. The admiral was apparently worried about losing his cruisers. He preferred to let the destroyers draw Japanese fire if it came to a shootout. It was a despicable way to fight a battle.
A few feet away, Commander Daniel Boone Parker paced back and forth lamenting the darkness. The weather report predicted a moonrise about midnight, but the overcast made it unlikely that there would be any increase in visibility. Captain McKay was still treating his executive officer with icy politeness bordering on contempt. Parker returned the feeling with interest. The word captain was covered with slimy sarcasm every time he used it. But he still could not control his fear. He blustered and cursed at the engine room as they changed course rounding Savo Island and increased speed to advance up Ironbottom Sound.
"Boats Homewood thinks that hanged sailor will ruin our luck. What do you think, Commander?" McKay said.
"I don't believe in luck," Parker said. "I think we make our luck, good or bad."
"What do you think, Wilkinson?"
"The same," said the boatswain's mate, who had not spoken a word all night.
"Wasn't that man in your division?"
"Yeah. He was a psycho, Captain. I gave a full report on him to Lieutenant MacComber. I warned the lieutenant about him a couple of times."
"MacComber is more interested in his bridge game than in his men," Parker said.
"Radar reports enemy ships," said the talker.
"Bearing two five zero true. Estimated number ten."
The enemy was steaming along the darkened shore of Guadalcanal, less than five miles away.
The voice of the commander of the destroyer squadron came over the TBS, asking permission to launch torpedoes.
"Are you in range?" Admiral Standish asked.
"Yes."
"You're sure of that?"
For another four minutes, Standish debated with him on whether the Japs were in range, while the enemy ships steamed steadily away from the leashed destroyers. It was idiocy! What Standish knew about torpedoes would fit comfortably on the head of a pin. Still dubious, and having clearly established the destroyer commander's responsibility, the admiral finally gave the order. A moment later, he compounded his idiocy by ordering the cruisers to open fire, instead of waiting until the torpedoes made their long b
ut still potentially murderous run in silence.
Behind them, the Minneapolis and the Brockton delivered thunderous eight-inch salvos. Ahead, the Honolulu and the Pensacola waited, groping for a target. They did not have the latest radar. The Jefferson City did and should have fired within seconds of the other two heavy cruisers. On the phone circuit, McKay could hear Lieutenant Commander Edwin Moss frantically demanding ranges from the radar operators. They told him the Japs kept disappearing against the land mass that was absorbing most of their signals.
Five miles away across the sound, where the American shells were landing, a ship burst into flames. "Now you've got a target, Guns," Commander Parker roared.
Within sixty seconds the Jefferson City and every other ship in Task Force 78 was blasting away at the hapless Japanese cripple. She returned the fire sporadically. Watching the splashes fall several hundred yards short of their starboard beam, McKay said, "That's a destroyer. Let's find some bigger game. Switch targets, Mr. Moss. That one's done for."
They shifted fire and watched the burning red bottoms of their shells arch through the darkness. They did not hit anything. Neither did the salvos from anyone else's guns. Except for a desultory shell from the burning but still game destroyer, there was no return fire from the enemy.
"I think the bastards are running for their lives," Parker said.
That made no sense. The Japanese had not run away from a fight yet. What was happening? Suddenly Arthur McKay knew the answer. "It's a destroyer flotilla. They're using torpedoes!"
He lunged for the TBS. "Admiral, I think you better warn all ships to—"
Just ahead of them, a stupendous explosion tore the Minneapolis apart. Flames leaped five hundred feet in the air. Water mixed with burning oil came cascading down to ignite the ship from bow to stern. An instant later, two similar explosions lifted the Brockton out of the water and engulfed her in another inferno.
"Lookouts! Watch for torpedoes!" Captain McKay shouted over the PA system.
"Torpedo off the starboard bow!" cried the talker.
"Right full rudder," McKay. said.
Too late. For five minutes the huge mechanical creature, a twin of the one McKay had recovered from the Guadalcanal beach, had been hissing beneath the black waters of Ironbottorn Sound, its deadly snout aimed at the Jefferson City's hull. While they had been amusing themselves with gunnery that hit next to nothing, the Japanese had been using destroyers the way they were supposed to be used.
The explosion tore through the Jefferson City, flinging men to the deck, in several cases breaking their legs or backs. A geyser of fire and water soared into the dark sky. The blast blew Captain McKay against a bulkhead and sent a small tidal wave crashing through the open windshields onto the bridge. He sat up and found everyone floundering on their backs in a foot of water. All around them was a wall of fire, devouring oxygen from the air. The helmsman crawled through the water and pulled himself erect at the wheel. It was a brave but superfluous gesture. The ship's speed had dwindled almost to zero. Instead of cutting through the water, she seemed to be plowing into it.
"I can't breathe," screamed Commander Parker.
"Was that in the forward engine room?" Captain McKay asked.
"Negative," gasped the engine-room talker, slumped against the bulkhead. "All engines are ahead full."
What had happened? McKay wondered. He would probably never know. Another sixty seconds and they would all be asphyxiated by that inferno roaring outside the pilothouse. McKay was swept by an enormous aching wish that somehow, somewhere, he had told Lucy Kemble that he loved her.
"Abandon Ship," Parker croaked, on his hands and knees. "Sound Abandon Ship."
Gone. The flames vanished as if God had snuffed them out with an omnipotent puff. Captain McKay staggered to his feet. Ships were burning all around them. Every cruiser except the Honolulu had been torpedoed. She continued to fling shells into the night on rapid fire, hitting nothing. The five-inch mounts and the after eight-inch turret of the Jefferson City were also still booming, but the two forward turrets were silent.
"Captain," whispered the talker, "Damage Control wants you to reduce speed as soon as possible. We've lost our bow."
"How much?"
"To the edge of turret one. And everyone in there is dead."
"Jesus Christ," groaned Wilkinson. "That's half my division."
Not that it mattered. The torpedo had detonated the forward magazine and the aviation gasoline. In a few minutes, if the fires and flooding below were not quickly controlled, the Jefferson City would be on her way to join the other wrecks on the floor of Ironbottom Sound.
"All engines ahead one third," McKay told the engineroom telegrapher. "Sound Cease Firing. Sound the fire call."
The Cease Firing klaxon clanged through the ship, and her guns fell silent Wilkinson shrilled the fire call on his boatswain's pipe and ordered all hands to join the damage control parties. From the wing of the bridge McKay looked down on the main deck. It was almost level with the surface of the sea.
He went back to the navigator's cabin, where Marse Lee and his staff were frantically trying to reassemble charts and papers that had been blown all over the compartment by the explosion. "We'll never make it back to Espiritu Santo," McKay said. "What do you suggest?"
"Tulagi's only twelve miles away. They can't repair anything bigger than a torpedo boat there, but it's safer than drifting around out here."
"Give Parker a course, pronto. I'll try to keep us afloat."
Dazed from the blast, seared by the flames, Frank Flanagan lay on the deck under his gun director. Rough hands dragged him to his feet. "Come on, kid," Jack Peterson said. "We got some fire fightin' to do."
He led Flanagan and the equally dazed crew of the main battery director below decks, where they met a man whom they did not recognize at first. His face was almost black. His shirt was covered with splotches of blood. "Where the fuck have you been?" Boats Homewood yelled. "Get to work on the third deck. It's really bad down there."
Homewood roared additional orders to clumps of sailors who had come below from other gunnery stations. "Don't stay down there more than five minutes," he shouted as Peterson led Flanagan and the others down a ladder. "Them gases'll bum your lungs out."
On the third deck the heat was unbelievable. It was like standing inside a furnace. A team of fire fighters from another division reeled toward them. Half of them were carrying or dragging sailors who had passed out. "There's guys trapped in sick bay," one said.
"Let's go," Peterson yelled, unreeling a fire hose. "Take one big breath and try not to take another one. Just little gulps."
They raced down the passageway. Flames roared out of compartments to port and starboard. Peterson stopped to fling the hose's mixture of water and foam into them. Wilder flames gushed out of sick bay. It was insanity, Flanagan thought. No one could be alive in there. Peterson doused the fire and peered in through the smoke. "Cover me," he said, handing the hose to Flanagan. He crawled in, Flanagan behind him, on the nozzle.
"Oh, Jesus!" he heard Camutti scream. Flames had erupted again just inside the hatch. They were roaring around Camutti and Daley. Flanagan sprayed both them and the fire. They crouched there, gooey foam drooling from their faces. Peterson crawled back through the smoke dragging a body.
"There's another guy back there. I think it's the chaplain," he gasped.
"I'll get him," Flanagan said, although his lungs seemed to be shriveling in the inferno.
Peterson ordered Camutti to take the nozzle. Flanagan crawled along the deck, which was hot enough to fry bacon. The pain in his hands was exquisite. He still had raw burns across his palms from following Homewood up turret one's sizzling ladder. He found the chaplain crumpled beside a bunk, curled into a fetal position. "0 Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief," he whispered when Flanagan turned him over.
Flames gushed out of a corner. "Cover me, for God's sake," Flanagan yelled.
Camutti was there, his Frankenst
ein monster's face wild with fear and fury, spraying the murderous fire. Suddenly his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he collapsed.
Flanagan dragged the chaplain back to Peterson in the hatchway "Camutti's down."
"Go get him," Jack said.
"The five minutes are up," Daley yelled, scared shitless as usual.
"Fuck the five minutes. He just saved my life," Flanagan shouted.
Back through the smoke along the livid deck he crawled. Somehow he got to Camutti, hooked one arm under his shoulder and wrapped the hose around his own arm. "Pull," he yelled. Peterson, Daley and the Radical hauled them back to the hatch.
They staggered up on deck with their burdens. "To whom do I owe my life?" the chaplain murmured.
"Seaman First Class Flanagan," Peterson said, pumping air into Camutti's lungs.
"Ah, yes. I remember you now."
"Who's the other guy?" Flanagan asked.
"A fuckin' yeoman," Peterson said. "We risked our asses to save the fuckin' chaplain and a yeoman."
Water slopped over the deck. "Are we going down?" Flanagan asked.
"They'll tell us before it happens. Let's get back to work," Jack said.
On the second deck Homewood was still directing fire fighters forward. "We're lickin' it. They got the pumps goin'. All we got to do now is pray them bulkheads hold, where the bow blew off. They're only three quarters of an inch steel."
"Maybe we ought to use some of the captain's joss," Flanagan said.
"Hey, don't be a wise guy," Homewood said. "There ain't many ships that stay afloat when the forward magazine blows. Losin' the bow was what saved us. If it'd stayed on, we'd have had most of that blast and fire inside the ship. It would have hit the engine rooms, and that would have been the end of this old lady."
Time and Tide Page 37
