Time and Tide

by Thomas Fleming

  "Sorry, sir. There's a lot of them in the water."

  The Jefferson City groped through the pre-dawn murk in search of the ammunition ship SS Free Enterprise. Captain McKay in his twenty-sixth consecutive hour on the bridge, read the latest reports of the battle raging a few hundred miles north of them, in San Bernardino Strait, at the northern end of Leyte. Another Japanese squadron had burst through this narrow neck of water and was smashing up American escort carriers and destroyers protecting the Army's landing beaches. The ships of the Seventh Fleet had been ordered to the rescue. But: they had shot off most of their armor-piercing ammunition last night in Surigao Strait.

  "There she is," said Navigator Marse Lee, pointing a few degrees off the port bow.

  "Turn out the working parties," Captain McKay said.

  "Now hear this. Ammunition working parties stand by," boomed the boatswain's mate of the watch over the PA system. Obediently, the exhausted deck apes from the turrets and five-inch mounts formed up along the rail. They were joined by drafts from the black gang and F Division. Speed was all important. If the Japanese battleships broke through to bombard the landing beaches, the war could be set back six months.

  At 0530 there was just enough light to see the SS Free Enterprise in detail as they pulled alongside. There was not a human being in sight. She might have been a ghost ship riding at anchor in Leyte Gulf.

  "Ahoy the Free Enterprise," Captain McKay said over the bullhorn.

  No answer. He repeated it three times and finally blew the ship's whistle. A fat man in khaki pants and undershirt straggled onto the deck beneath the pilothouse. "Didn't you get our radio message? We need ammunition and we need it fast," McKay said.

  "Sorry. You can't do a thing until eight o'clock."

  "Why not?"

  "Union rules. My crew works by union rules."

  "How much do your men get paid, Captain?"

  "Six hundred a month, on the average."

  A growl of outrage swept the deck of the Jefferson. City. "And they won't work more than forty hours a week?"

  "Union rules. I can't do nothing about it."

  Captain McKay picked up the gunnery circuit telephone. "Commander Mullenoe," he said, "train the main battery on that ship."

  "Aye, aye, Captain."

  Slowly, awesomely, the Jefferson City's nine eight-inch guns revolved to port until their muzzles were aimed straight at the Free Enterprise.

  "Tell your crew to get up on deck fast. Or there's going to be a very unfortunate accident that will send them someplace where, as far as I know, there aren't any union rules."

  The captain vanished. In ten minutes the Free Enterprise was swinging ammunition from her booms to the deck of the Jefferson City.

  "It's over. What have they got left?"

  This was the considered opinion of the dean of the wardroom's strategy board, Lieutenant MacComber. There was a lot of evidence to support his argument. While the Seventh Fleet had been annihilating the Japanese thrust through Surigao Strait, Halsey's Third Fleet had been wiping out .the last of their carriers far to the north. Both fleets had rushed to San Bernardino Strait, and the Japanese squadron there fled without bombarding the beaches. Halsey's planes destroyed most of their ships in the pursuit. As a fighting force, the Japanese Combined Fleet had ceased to exist.

  Executive Officer Tombs, at the head of the table, shook his head. "The captain doesn't think it's over."

  "Oh?" MacComber's dislike of Captain McKay had only grown more virulent with the passage of time "Tell us what Father thinks."

  "He thinks the war will last as long as the Japs have a single plane that will fly or a single ship afloat"

  "That doesn't make sense," MacComber said.

  "Who's talking about making sense?" Tombs said. "We're fighting a war."

  "Greetings, Americans," cooed Tokyo Rose. "Especially to my old friends on the Jefferson City, who have been demoted from flagship of the Fifth Fleet to a mere ammunition ship in the Seventh Fleet because of your disgraceful performance off Saipan, where your cowardly captain maneuvered his ship so badly you received fearsome damage from Japanese planes. You will soon receive another visit from the heroic pilots of the Imperial Air Force to mop up what is left of your ships after the beating you received yesterday from the Imperial Fleet."

  "Ain't she somethin'?" Boats Homewood said, chomping on the steak which the captain had ordered for the crew's dinner to celebrate the victory in Surigao. Strait. "What do you think she looks like?"

  "Myrna Loy," Semple said.

  "A hootchy-kootchy dancer I used to fuck in East Chicago," Jablonsky said.

  "The nun who taught me in the eighth grade," Flanagan said.

  "Lieutenant MacComber says the war's over," one of the Bobbsey Twins said.

  "Yeah? Then why did we load all that ammo yesterday?" Homewood asked.

  Tokyo Rose continued to chatter. They were waiting for her to get through the propaganda and play some jazz. She still had the best record collection in the Pacific.

  "Today you will feel the breath of a new weapon, a divine wind that will scorch your fleet and make you welcome death in the cool depths of the sea."

  "A divine wind," Flanagan said. "You think they're going to use poison gas? I lost my gas mask about a year ago."

  "You can't have mine," Jablonsky said.

  The alarm bell rang. The bugle blew. "General Quarters, General Quarters. All hands man your battle stations," yelled the boatswain of the watch.

  "God damn it," Homewood said, sticking the rest of his steak in his pocket.

  In the gun director, Flanagan's heart pounded. It was his first air attack since he had taken Jack's place. Jablonsky had replaced him on the forty-millimeter director for mount one. It was the mount that would do the most work if a crippled plane came at the forward part of the ship. Keep your mind on the sky, George, he thought. Forget about nooky for the next few hours.

  "Give us a rundown, Flan," one of the mesquiteers begged. "Tell us what the hell's happening?'

  "Air battle," Flanagan said, watching American planes from their escort carriers roaring down on a flight of Japanese Vals. To his surprise, the Vals scattered in all directions. They had no interest in making a coordinated attack. One after another, they dove to wave-top level and streaked through the task force. The American ships, including the Jefferson City, fired everything they had at them. The blasts of the five-inch guns shook the director. The blam-blam of the forty-millimeters mixed with the louder sound.

  What was happening? Those Japanese planes were not carrying torpedoes. Ten seconds later Flanagan had his answer. He watched a Val dive straight into the aircraft carrier Santee, triggering an enormous explosion. Another plane hit the battleship New Mexico on the bridge, turning the whole superstructure into a roaring inferno. A third Val smashed into the cruiser Louisville. The ship shuddered under the blow, and smoke and flames leaped high in the air as the bomb the plane was carrying exploded.

  "They're crashing into our ships!" Flanagan shouted. "They're out of their fucking minds!"

  The divine wind was scorching the American Fleet.

  On the bridge, Captain McKay instantly grasped what was happening. This was a new weapon — suicide attacks by Japanese pilots recruited to die for the Emperor.

  "Bob," he said to Gunnery Officer Mullenoe, "if any plane attacks this ship, concentrate every gun on it You're going to have to destroy these things in the air. They're not going to drop any bombs. They're flying them right into us."

  "Roger, Captain."

  "I don't think there's much point in maneuvering the ship to avoid them. I'm going to hold a course to give your guns the best possible aim."

  "I agree with that idea."

  For the next eight hours, the Jefferson City steamed through Leyte Gulf following this battle plan. It required excruciating self-control not to order a turn when one of the suicide bombers hurtled toward them, often with flames gushing 'from his engines, even his cockpit. Again and
again, George Tombs looked to McKay, begging him for a right or left full rudder. Each time, McKay shook his head and watched while their five-inch and forty- and twenty-millimeter guns shredded the attacker and sent him plummeting into the sea.

  Other ships that attempted violent evasive maneuvers were hit with horrendous results. On one destroyer, the captain staggered out of the pilothouse, a human torch. Two more light carriers were torn by explosions and fires from their aviation gasoline. At twilight the attacks subsided. But the fleet was ordered to remain at General Quarters. They stayed at their battle stations until midnight, growing more and more exhausted.

  "The war isn't over," George Tombs said.

  "Not for a while," Arthur McKay said. He looked out at the night-shrouded coast of Leyte. Flashes of artillery fire lit the sky. "If they're willing to die like this for the Philippines, can you imagine what they'll do when we get to Japan?"

  The Visitors

  "Secure from General Quarters. Set Condition Two."

  Eight bells bonged, 0400. The seamen, firemen, electricians, shipfitters, and boatswain's mates in Repair Three, just aft of the wardroom, put away their breathing apparatus and other equipment and shuffled off to seek some sleep in their humid compartments. Among the more weary shufflers was Jerome Wilkinson. The kamikazes were straining his nerves to the snapping point They seemed to be at General Quarters twenty-four hours a day, slumped against bulkheads at the damage control station, never knowing when a random bomb would hurl fire and steel down the passageway.

  Wilkinson hated the Jefferson City without his friend and protector Commander Parker. Although he eyed the young sailors in his division with wary desire, he was afraid to risk seduction. He could trust no one. In the sleeping compartment of Deck Division One, he flung aside his shoes and dungarees and stripped for a shower.

  "Have those fuckin' shoes shined when I get back," he said to one of the seamen. "Get these duds to the laundry. If they don't come back, it'll be your ass."

  In the hot shower he thought of Prettyboy, of sweaty desire in the handling room. Semple would not even look at him now. He had nothing to offer him. The cooks, the bakers, the gamblers — none of them paid any attention to Wilkinson any more. He had no clout. Homewood's tour as master at arms had left everyone nervous about breaking the rules. Flanagan, the snotty Irish kid who ran the ship's newspaper, was still working as a snoop. He had reporters in every division who were ready to tell him anything and everything that was going on.

  Back in the compartment, Wilkinson slapped the usual quantity of cologne on his big body and crawled into his rack. No go. He could barely breathe. He lay there thinking of his days of glory. He began to hate Captain McKay with a new, fierce intensity. He had ruined Parker, ruined Wilkinson's sweet deal, for only one reason: revenge.

  His whole life was going wrong. He was sliding downhill, he was getting fat, sick, crazy in this heat, with madmen flying planes into ships. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he became the Jefferson City was doomed. Her past — that night of terror and cowardice off Savo Island — was pursuing her.

  He should have said something that night. He should have stopped Parker before Kemble got to the bridge. He should have been a man, a fighting sailor. Instead he had been afraid too. He had never been able to forget that. He had been afraid.

  Had Captain Kemble been afraid? Wilkinson had never been able to penetrate his silence. The captain had said nothing, while Parker babbled. The boatswain's mate hoped Kemble was afraid. But somehow he doubted it. There was another reason for what he had done, a reason Wilkinson did not understand.

  The mystery tormented him. Now it threatened him. It seemed to be part of the madness, part of things happening without a reason, like the kamikazes.

  He crawled out of his rack and rolled up his mattress. Maybe he could sleep topside. At the head of the ladder to the second deck, he peered down the dim passageway. There was someone there, standing just behind a red battle lamp.

  He seemed to be an officer or a chief petty officer. He could see the gleam of a visor above the shadowed face. "Is that you, Mr. MacComber?" he said hopefully. MacComber was cracking up too. He had been passed over for promotion about four times. Sometimes he got drunk and came down and talked to Wilkinson about the captain. The bastard had given MacComber a bad fitness report for protecting Wilkinson. MacComber would ramble on about the stupidity and injustice of the Navy, telling him things every enlisted man knew five minutes after he came aboard.

  There was no answer from the shadowy figure. Wilkinson repeated the questions. It was probably MacComber, too drunk to talk.

  The figure stepped in front of the battle lamp. Blood streamed from his right eye. It was Captain Winfield Scott Schley Kemble.

  The next morning, a still terrified Wilkinson told Joe Garraty, the first class boatswain's mate who ran Deck Division Two, what he had seen. Garraty had a big mouth. In four hours the story was all over the ship. The three mesquiteers told Flanagan, who told the chaplain. Flanagan wanted to make it the lead story in the next edition of The Hawthorn.

  "Out of the question!" Bushnell said. Flanagan was amazed by how agitated the chaplain became.

  "Do you believe in ghosts?" Flanagan asked.

  "I believe in the soul's survival, Frank. But in what form and whether the dead have any power or influence on us, I can't say.

  "I can," Flanagan said with the heady confidence of the twenty-year-old skeptic. "When you're dead you're out of it."

  "I wonder if anything that lives for a while is ever really out of it? Life is a vast continuum, Frank."

  "Sounds like more of your atheistic mysticism to me, Chaplain."

  "Don't mock me, Frank."

  "Why not? Mock me back. I'm a lot more confused than you are.”

  Flanagan had begun to like the chaplain, even though he considered his tortuous theological musings ridiculous.

  "My brother was killed in World War One. My wife started seeing him in our house. Eventually she confessed she loved him more than she ever loved me. I had known that for a long time. But I was enraged because she could see him and I couldn't. It seemed to imply a lesser love on my part. Which wasn't true. I loved him more than any other human being I ever met. Including my wife. It was the beginning of the end of our marriage."

  Flanagan barely listened. He had no interest in the passions of middle age. "Wilkinson's probably going bananas without any prettyboys to screw," he said. The mesquiteers had told him about Wilkinson's style of leadership in Division One.

  "I find it hard to believe that really went on, Frank."

  The chaplain still had a great reluctance to accept the existence of evil. Flanagan was inclined to see it everywhere he looked. Goodness was what he found hard to accept.

  The story soon reached the wardroom. No one took it very seriously except Bushnell and Lieutenant MacComber. "I grew up in a house haunted by my grandfather, who was killed in 1862 at Malvern Hill," he said.

  "You think Kemble has come back to haunt us? Why?" Montgomery West asked.

  "I have no idea. My grandmother thought Grandfather was taking revenge on her for remarrying too soon. He was an imperious bastard."

  "Has anyone talked to Wilkinson?" Dr. Cadwallader said. "He may be cracking up."

  "Wilkinson's not the crack-up type," MacComber said.

  "He isn't the type who sees visions, either."

  "You think he really saw something?"

  "Yes! If you want to know the truth, Mr. West. Yes." MacComber reached for his water glass and knocked it over. He was trembling.

  "It's all too possible," Chaplain Bushnell said.

  For the first time, Montgomery West felt a tremor of unease. He looked around the table. Ensign Brownmiller looked vaguely frightened. So did. Lieutenant Commander Moss. Were they afraid of seeing Captain Kemble too? Was he afraid?

  Oz Bradley grunted. "Maybe he'll finally pay a visit to the engine room.

  The Other Enemy


  As usual, the Jefferson City's aerographer sent her weather balloon aloft from the highest point in the superstructure, the space between the main battery gun director and main forward. Flanagan watched him, predicting, also as usual, that he would be wrong as usual.

  "How much will you bet," Flanagan said. "Come on. Jack Peterson made a living off you. I've got Jack's job. I'm entitled to the same income."

  From Minnesota, the aerographer fancied himself a direct descendant of the Norse chieftain Eric the Red. He had the name and the red hair, but the rest of his physique was closer to the ninety-seven-pound weakling in the Charles Atlas ads. He used rhetoric to compensate for his lack of muscle.

  "Be silent, you elongated Celtic clod. My ancestors were carving yours up in the eighth century. I'm at least a hundred years ahead of you on the evolutionary scale."

  "Give us a chance to get even."

  "Peterson was a reincarnated Norse warrior. One of nature's gentlemen. I was glad to contribute to his well-being."

  "You're as bad at judging character as you are at the weather."

  Down came the balloon, leaving the weatherman up to his knees in fifteen hundred feet of line, which his striker stolidly wound around a spool. The man of science studied the thermometer and other instruments attached to the balloon.

  "At this time tomorrow," he said, "we'll be in the middle of a typhoon."

  "Hey, give me a piece of that one," Flanagan begged. The sky was a cerulean blue. The wind was barely caressing the surface of the sea.

  "Fifty bucks."

  "You're on," Flanagan said.

  Even if he lost, at least it would take his mind off getting killed by a kamikaze.

  "I hear the kamikazes got another carrier yesterday. The Princeton. When the Birmingham pulled alongside her to fight the fires, the Princeton blew up and killed just about everybody topside on both ships."

  "Makes me glad I work in the fire room," Marty Roth said.

  "The guys in the fire rooms on the Princeton got roasted alive when burning gasoline came down the ducts."

  Standard conversation at breakfast, dinner and supper aboard the Jefferson City.

  Nobody laughed at Tokyo Rose any more. Everybody talked about going home, how the J.C. was overdue for leave. No one ever got a full night's sleep. Every time an unidentified plane appeared on the radar screens, every ship in the fleet went to General Quarters. The kamikazes had changed everyone's feeling about the war. Part of it was exhaustion, part of it was the feeling that it was unfair. They had won their slugging match with the Combined Fleet. It was at the bottom of the ocean.