The radarman confirmed the presence of the boats nearby but otherwise reported no contacts.
The captain said, “Very well. Walt, mind the store while we go topside.”
“Aye, aye, Skipper.”
By the time Charlie mounted to the bridge, the lookouts were perched on the shears and the deck had filled with sailors. Bryant’s men fidgeted with their weapons. Liebold’s gun crew unlimbered the deck gun. The 40mm and 20mm crews manned their deadly cannons. The diesel engines sputtered and roared, exhaust vents coughing smoke. The half-moon shimmered on the Pacific.
Hunter appeared on the bridge and surveyed the little flotilla bobbing in the water. “Control, Bridge. Come left to two-eight-oh, all ahead standard.”
Charlie descended to the deck. The after battery hatch opened, ready to admit the refugees into the boat.
“All back full,” the captain ordered. “All stop.”
One of the boats came alongside.
Charlie said, “Ahoy, boat!”
A man called back, “Welcome to the Philippines!”
“You got a password for me?” Hunter asked him.
“Neptune.”
“Who are you?”
“Major Ramon Bautista, at your service. I am here under orders from Colonel Wendell Fertig, commander of the 10th Military District of the U.S. Armed Forces in the Far East.”
“I’ll be damned,” Bryant said behind the captain.
When Corregidor fell after valiant resistance, General Wainwright ordered the surrender of all U.S. forces in the Philippines. An order to which Fertig apparently said, “Go to hell,” and kept fighting for seven months on his own.
“May I come aboard?” Bautista asked.
“Come ahead,” Hunter replied.
The men tied the boat off, and the major jumped onto the hull. Charlie pulled him onto the deck. The major smiled at him and said, “God bless America.”
“Welcome aboard Sabertooth, Major.”
Bautista straightened his khaki uniform and strutted to the cigarette deck, where Hunter met him with a warm handshake. Charlie helped the next man aboard, a Filipino with a bulky radio pack on his back. Next, a rangy American sergeant who wore a .45 on each hip.
“I was told you had a dozen passengers,” the captain said.
“Twenty-one, actually,” Bautista told him. “Nine of them are children. Americans.” The major turned and inspected the boat. “It is a big submarine.”
“We can barely fit ourselves,” Hunter said dryly. “We can’t really fit a dozen, so what’s nine more? We’ll take them. Get them aboard quick.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
“Don’t mention it. Harrison, get those people in the boat.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
A swarm of ragged children surged up the hull toward him with excited cries. He grabbed a squealing little girl and passed her up. Then a teenage boy. Bryant’s men got them all down the hatch without fanfare.
Another figure leaped to the hull. Charlie reached and took the person’s hand.
A woman looked up at him. He froze, taking in her bright eyes, pretty tanned face, braided hair, and ragged shirtwaist dress.
She gave him a knowing smile. “Take a picture, sailor. It’ll last longer.”
Charlie stifled a groan. Women! On a submarine! Even worse than kids.
Of course there’d be women, he scolded himself. If there were children, they’d likely be with their mothers.
She added, “I’m Jane. Pleased to meet—hey!”
He hauled her up onto the deck and passed her on.
A large, matronly woman jumped onto the hull. He pulled her up with a grunt.
“God bless you.” She rained kisses on his face.
“Thank you, ma’am.” His cheeks burning from the loving assault, Charlie passed her on.
Soon, the last of the passengers stood on the crowded deck, waiting their turn to go down the hatch. Two of them were coughing hard, so weak they had to be carried. When the last of them went down, the boxes came up, a laborious process that consumed precious time. Charlie watched the shoreline. At any moment, a plane might come howling over the jungle.
If a plane came now, there’d be no time to get everybody below. They’d have to jump overboard while Sabertooth dived, and then they’d have to wait for rescue.
The major descended from the cigarette deck to watch the operation unfold. “Do not worry, Lieutenant. I have lookouts in the hills. If they see a plane, they will tell us by radio.”
“That’s fine.” Still, Charlie’s instincts howled at being out here in the open in Japanese-controlled waters. “Miller!”
“Mr. Harrison?”
“Make sure Yeo takes down everybody’s names.”
“Aye, sir!”
The boat pulled away after flashing a signal to the next that it was their turn to come alongside. The banca made fast, and the operation repeated itself. Three wounded American and Filipino soldiers came aboard. Dirty and bandaged, they looked like they’d walked straight off a battlefield.
“Miller, ask Doc to take a look at these guys,” Charlie said. He turned to the major. “I counted twenty-one.” Three men, nine women, nine children. “Is everybody accounted for?”
“Correct,” Bautista said. He smiled at the sight of the train of boxes coming out of the hatch for loading onto the banca. Food, medicine, weapons, radios. “This equipment will do a lot of good.”
“I have to hand it to you. Fighting the Japs for seven months on your own. Is it hard going?”
“Tatay is a genius,” the major said.
“Tatay?”
“Colonel Fertig. We call him, ‘Father.’ He was at Bataan. At Corregidor. He refused to surrender. He united us against the invaders. Now the Japanese fear us.”
Charlie shook his head. “Amazing.”
“Do not stop fighting. Do not stop fighting until victory, or this is all for nothing.”
“We won’t.”
The men stacked the last of the boxes onto the boats. Gibson confirmed the supplies had been offloaded. The sailors secured the guns and returned to the submarine’s safe cramped belly.
“Looks like this is goodbye, Major.”
“Or ‘see you later.’” Bautista saluted. “For I hope you will visit Mindanao again.”
Charlie smiled and returned the salute.
Minutes later, Hunter said on the bridge, “Secure the deck. Helm, come left to one-six-five. All ahead, standard.”
Sabertooth veered onto her new course, bound for Australia.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
REFUGEES
Sabertooth raced south by southwest, plowing the swells at eighteen knots. The captain wanted to put as many miles as possible between the submarine and the Philippines by morning. Then they’d dive.
The refugees crowded into the crew’s mess, a bare room with four tables bolted to the deck. Excited chatter filled the space. Sailors tramped through with the passengers’ meager luggage. The cooks looked up from their smoking griddles and smiled at the crowd.
Charlie’s head swam. Where were they going to put all these people? How could they be managed so they didn’t completely disrupt the boat’s efficiency?
Nine of the passengers were children, subdued but ready to become a menace at a moment’s notice. Another nine were women, a different kind of menace in a cramped boat full of sex-starved sailors. Three were Army nurses, each good-looking and apparently single; the men were already ogling them. And two of the three male passengers, dressed in ragged fatigues and looking dazed, were wounded, while the third kept up a hacking cough.
Charlie stared at the red-faced man and saw him as the biggest problem of all. The size of Sabertooth’s crew didn’t rate a doctor. Instead, the boat carried a pharmacist’s mate, a highly trained corpsman. Boat crews typically suffered a wave of colds after leaving port but then reached a state of steady health. If the coughing man brought aboard a serious disease, the boat could have a plagu
e on its hands.
Hunter entered the room and frowned at Charlie. “Get these people organized, Harrison.”
“Everybody take a seat,” Charlie called out. “Hey!”
They didn’t hear him. It was chaos in there.
“LISTEN UP,” Bryant roared.
The people flinched and shut up.
“Welcome aboard Sabertooth,” Hunter said. “I’m happy to tell you that you’re safe now—”
The crowd erupted into spontaneous applause. The kids howled and cheered.
The captain laughed and tried to continue, but the nurses belted out “The Star Spangled Banner,” and everybody joined in.
At the end, they were all grinning.
“We’re heading straight to Darwin,” Hunter went on. “Nine hundred nautical miles through Jap waters. Should take us about nine days. You’ll be assigned quarters for the duration. It’s not comfortable or anything, but it’s safe. Follow the crew’s instructions, and whatever you do, don’t touch any of our equipment.”
“The Jap propaganda said we were licked, Cap’n!” the matronly woman called from the back. “Is that so? Give it to us straight.”
“No, it is not,” the captain answered firmly. “We’ve got the Japs on the run.”
“How many Japs you killed?” a brave kid yelled out.
Hunter smiled. “Nine days, that’s all. Hang tight, and you’ll be celebrating the New Year in Australia.” He caught sight of the cook waving at him. “And now, get ready for a feast. You’re not home yet, but we can offer you a humble welcome back to civilization.”
The cooks came out of the galley with trays of steaming food. Roast beef and mashed potatoes drowned in brown gravy. Vegetables. Bowls of canned fruit. The kids oohed over their plates and dug in.
“Hey, sailor,” one of the nurses said. “Is that hot coffee?”
Charlie turned and saw the first woman he’d helped aboard. Jane. Even now, he had a hard time getting used to seeing a female on Sabertooth in the middle of a war zone.
Deeply tanned by the tropical sun, she wore no makeup. She looked terribly thin, as they all did, no doubt the result of hunger and malnutrition. She hadn’t washed in days. Her stringy hair had been woven into braids.
Still, she was a striking woman. Her blue eyes shined seemingly from an internal light source. He couldn’t help but notice she had an attractive figure accentuated by the plain but formfitting gray shirtwaist dress.
“What?” he said stupidly.
Jane pointed at the coffee urn bolted to the wall. “I asked if that’s coffee over there.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Thank God.” She hesitated. “Can I ask you something?”
“What is it?”
“What’s that weird smell?”
“That’s the diesel, ma’am.” That, plus frying food, cigarette smoke, and pungent body odor. The submariners didn’t call their boats sewer pipes for nothing. “It’ll get worse when we’re back underwater.”
By the end of their voyage, they’d get used to it. In fact, by then, their first breath of fresh air in Darwin would probably smell funny to them.
“Oh,” she said. “I asked because I’m a nurse.”
“Yes, I know you are.”
“The smell … I was just wondering, with all this machinery around, if there was a gas leak or something. You’re in good spirits, but you’re all so pale.”
He chuckled. “We’re in a submarine. We fight underwater. Most of the crew haven’t seen the sun in a long time.”
“Of course,” she said, her cheeks blooming red. “That was dumb of me.”
“Not at all, ma’am.”
“It’s Jane,” she said, eyeing him. “Jane Larson. I still didn’t get your name.”
Then she went off to get a cup of joe.
Baffled, Charlie watched her go. The Army nurse sure had an interesting energy about her that he found appealing. And that was what confused him: his response to her, which he considered instinctive and not based on anything real. No wonder women were thought bad luck on ships. Nobody paid attention to what they were doing. Look at him: blushing like a kid at a pretty face.
Best to put her and the rest of them, even Evie, out of his mind. He had a job to do. The kind of job where mistakes got men killed. In little over a week, the boat would dock in Darwin, and Charlie would have the lessons learned from his second war patrol. Then they’d go out again, hopefully to choice hunting grounds, and put Japanese ships on the bottom. Maybe even get another crack at Yosai.
God, would he love that.
After the war ended, there’d be plenty of time for the right woman, and a large part of him still hoped it would be Evie. Until then, he’d keep his head in the game.
Then he smiled. We did it.
In less than two hours, Sabertooth had rescued a score of Americans and dropped off ninety tons of supplies. Deep behind enemy lines.
The captain laughed at something one of the passengers said to him, apparently enjoying himself. Then he continued to work the room, shaking hands. He had a lot to feel jolly about. The operation was a complete success thanks to him.
Hunter left the crowd and said to Charlie, “How are we fixed for stowing our riders, Harrison?”
“I figure some of the kids and their moms can sleep in the forward torpedo compartment. The nurses and the rest of the moms and kids in the chiefs’ quarters. The men in the after torpedo compartment. Some will have to hot bunk it.”
Hot bunking meant the passengers and some of the crew would have to share the same bunk and sleep in shifts. They wouldn’t like it, but there was no other way.
Something else too, something the captain wouldn’t like: Kids needed to play somewhere. The wardroom was the only space for them.
Charlie didn’t like the whole thing either. Kids in a torpedo room! Sabertooth would be combat ineffective for the duration.
Hunter nodded and said, “See to it.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
He saw Jane sighing over her coffee mug, which she held in both hands, as if afraid somebody might try to swipe it from her.
She caught him staring and sighed. “What a meal. You boys are tops.”
The refugees were already flagging. Some of the children slept in their mothers’ laps. Charlie gave orders to divide them up and take them to their berths. His work done, he went to get some coffee for himself.
Hunter and Lewis slouched in the wardroom, nursing their own mugs. The exec looked even worse for wear after four hours on duty in the control room. They’d put a record on the phonograph, which played throughout the boat over the 1MC for the benefit of the passengers. Glenn Miller’s “Moonlight Serenade,” one of Charlie’s favorites.
“Ah, Harrison,” the captain said. “Got our riders nice and settled?”
“They’re settled,” Charlie said. “As for nice, well …” He shrugged.
“Grab a chair. We were just talking about the years before the war.”
“Back when the fleet boats were just that, boats designed to work with the surface fleet and fight warships,” Lewis said. “We were told, always fight at periscope depth. Lots of other things that turned out to be horse hockey.”
Hunter laughed. “Still, they were the good old days. Walt and I served as ensigns together on the S-56. She was a fine boat. Old Walt here was two years ahead of me. Gave me the firehose treatment.”
“He was a little go-getter just like you, young Charles,” Lewis said.
“Grab a seat and join us, Harrison.”
Charlie did. “Thank you, sir. When I served on the 55, my exec was from the 56.”
“Horrible shame, what happened to that boat,” Hunter said.
And what happened to Reynolds, Charlie thought.
Hunter didn’t let the mood sour. “We were also just celebrating what we did today. Barring the possibility of the kids tearing the boat apart, we’ll be in Australia in less than ten days with one in the win column.”
“I’m still surprised at how smoothly it all went,” Charlie admitted.
“That makes two of us,” the captain said. “A man mostly makes his own luck by playing his cards right. Still, it helps when you get a good hand.”
Hunter had a right to be pleased. He’d pulled himself out of his depression and led the crew in a daring exploit. A rescue and supply drop deep in the Japanese Empire.
Charlie was pleased too, and not just with the success of their mission. He’d had a brief taste of command and had learned some hard lessons. But now he could go back to learning from seasoned professionals. The string of bad luck had ended; the exec had returned to duty, and the captain was back on his game.
Lewis sagged in his chair. He looked white as a sheet. His eyes drifted shut.
“It’s been a long day,” Hunter said.
“I guess I’d better turn in, Skipper,” Lewis answered. He didn’t move. His mouth dropped open.
Charlie eyed him with alarm. “You sure you’re all right?”
The man’s eyes flashed open. “You know what your problem is, Charles?”
“What’s that?”
The exec’s eyes rolled, and his head hit the table with a sickening thud.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
BURIAL AT SEA
“Attention, sections one and three,” the 1MC blared through the boat. “All hands, bury the dead.”
From the bridge, Hunter ordered the boat to reduce to one-third speed. Several sailors brought Lieutenant Walter Lewis’s body up from below decks. He’d been sewn into a burial shroud made of sailcloth.
The night before, the exec died of wounds received during the depth charging by Yosai’s escorts. Internal bleeding in the brain, the pharmacist’s mate had guessed as to cause of death.
The doubled detail of lookouts scanned the darkness for threats while the off-duty crew filed out and assembled topside. The 20mm anti-aircraft guns stood manned and locked, ready to greet a surprise aerial attack.
Charlie looked around anxiously. The captain had taken a risk conducting a formal funeral. But Lewis was one of Hunter’s oldest friends.
He remembered the captain telling him, “Looks like you’re exec for the duration, Harrison.” Hunter had said this with all the enthusiasm of a hungry man being told the only item on the menu was a crap sandwich.
Silent Running: a novel of the Pacific War (Crash Dive Book 2) Page 9
