W E B Griffin - Corp 07 - Behind the Lines

by Behind The Lines(Lit)

  "Yes, Sir."

  "That will be all, Colonel," Kurokawa said. "Colonel Tange is out-side. On your way out, will you be good enough to ask him to come in, please?"

  "Yes, Sir," Colonel Himasatsu said. He bowed, turned on his heel, and marched out of the room. Colonel Tange marched in and bowed.

  "If the Kempeitai can assist me in dealing with these bandit attacks on our forces, Colonel Tange," General Kurokawa said, "I would be most grateful. I would also solicit any suggestions you might have."

  "General, the Kempeitai has thoroughly interrogated close to two hundred Filipinos who might have some knowledge of Fertig's activities. Seventeen of those interrogated died during their interrogation. Unfortunately, I must tell you that I was forced to conclude that those interrogated knew nothing of Fertig's activities before these attacks occurred."

  "Then may I respectfully suggest you should interrogate another two hun-dred Filipinos-four hundred Filipinos, a thousand Filipinos-until we find someone who does know something?"

  "Further interrogations are under way at this moment, General. I will keep you advised, of course."

  "You wanted to see me, didn't you?" Kurokawa said. "I forgot that. I apologize. It was my intention to ask you to see me, and when my sergeant told me you were outside, I assumed it was because I had sent for you. I confess, Tange, this business is upsetting me more and more."

  "Yes, Sir. We have heard from Signals Intelligence in Manila, Sir. They have provided me with a decryption of the December 24 messages from Aus-tralia to Fertig."

  "Anything significant in them?"

  "Signals Intelligence believes it was notification to Fertig that an infiltra-tion was to be attempted on the coast, south of Boston."

  "How far south of Boston?" Kurokawa asked quietly.

  "Thirty miles south. Not far from where Colonel Himasatsu's patrol van-ished."

  "You heard they found the truck?"

  "Just before I came here, Sir."

  "So there was an infiltration," Kurokawa said. "A successful infiltra-tion."

  "There seems to be additional proof of that, Sir," Tange said. "Signals Intelligence has reported that communication between Fertig and Australia is now being transmitted over a far more powerful transmitter using a new en-cryption system. By a far more skilled radio telegrapher."

  "Does that mean we will no longer be able to decrypt their messages?"

  "No, Sir. But it will be more difficult, and hence more time-consuming, to perform the decryptions."

  Kurokawa shook his head in resignation.

  "There is talk, Tange, that shortly we will no longer have the services of Captain Saikaku available to us. Anything to it?"

  "That was another reason I asked you to receive me, General. I thought you would be interested in hearing that Captain Saikaku has been ordered to Tokyo to assume duties on the Imperial General Staff."

  "How interesting," Kurokawa said. "He requested such a transfer?"

  "My understanding, Sir, is that the orders came from General Tojo's of-fice. Three days after Captain Saikaku requested, and I granted, permission for him to use Kempeitai lines to communicate with his sick mother."

  "Do you suppose we dare hope that Captain Saikaku will convey to the Imperial General Staff our difficulty in dealing with General Fertig?"

  "Perhaps, General. But I rather think it more likely that once Captain Saikaku arrives in Tokyo, he will quickly forget anything to do with Fertig."

  "Yes," General Kurokawa said. "Especially his initial enthusiastic pro-nouncement that Fertig was a small problem that could be dealt with quickly and effectively."

  [THREE]

  USFIP Field Hospital #2

  Near Compostela, Davao Province, Mindanao

  Commonwealth of the Philippines

  31 December 1942

  USFIP Field Hospital #2 consisted of three thatch-roofed buildings on stilts in a small clearing in the jungle on the steep side of an unnamed hill, accessible only by dirt path. One of the buildings housed the medical staff, which con-sisted of Lieutenant Stanley J. Miller (formerly Chief Pharmacist's Mate, USN) and his four assistants, Sergeant Waldron Barron (formerly Seaman 2nd Class, USN), and Sergeants Manuel Garcia, Luis Delarocca, and Oswaldo Lopez (late of the Medical Corps, Philippine Army).

  The Detachment of Patients was divided, according to the medical judgment of Lieutenant Miller, into two groups. Those who had a reasonable ex-pectation of survival were in Ward #1, and those who did not were in Ward #2.

  "Doc, say hello to Mr. McCoy," Second Lieutenant Percy L. Everly said as he and First Lieutenant Kenneth R. McCoy entered Ward #2.

  Chief Miller, whose only item of uniform clothing was his now badly tat-tered brimmed chief petty officer's cap, raised his eyes from the emaciated, sweat-soaked Filipino lying on a crude cot and saw a young man dressed in loose black clothing. He noticed that the young man looked well fed, and was carrying in his hand what looked like a miniature rifle.

  He nodded, just barely perceptibly, but did not speak.

  "Chief," McCoy said.

  "We brought you stuff," Everly said.

  "Like what?" Chief Miller asked.

  "Rice, a couple of porkers on the hoof, pineapples, and a bottle of booze," Everly said, and handed Miller a bottle of Famous Grouse.

  "Jesus Christ, where did you get this?" Miller asked, taking the bottle from him and looking at him wonderingly.

  "And this," McCoy said, and handed Chief Miller the rucksack that had been hanging from his shoulder.

  Miller carefully laid the whiskey bottle on the bamboo floor, then took the rucksack and opened it. It contained a number of flat parcels packaged in a shiny opaque material strange to Miller. He looked up at McCoy curiously. McCoy was in the process of drawing a knife from a sheath strapped to his lower left arm. He handed the knife to Miller, who slit open one of the plastic-wrapped packages. He reached inside and removed from it a half-dozen flat olive-drab packages approximately 1.5 inches square. After placing all but one back in the plastic package, he examined the one in his hand very carefully.

  "You know what this is?" McCoy asked.

  "Yeah, I know what sulfanilamide is," Miller said. "How much of it do you have?"

  "Two more bags like that with us," McCoy replied. "And another dozen bags back with General Fertig."

  "What is that stuff, Doc?" Everly asked.

  Miller bent over the patient on the crude cot, carefully pulled a blood-soaked bandage from the Filipino's side, then tore open the olive-drab enve-lope and sprinkled the white powder it contained on the ugly, obviously infected wound.

  "This stuff was invented by a chemist named Roblin-he works for Lederle Laboratories. The original stuff came from the aspirin people, Bayer, in Germany."

  "What's it do?" Everly asked.

  "It's an antibacterial," Chief Miller said, conversationally. "It kills infec-tion. If it's as good as advertised, it'll keep this guy alive."

  "No shit?" Everly asked.

  "I never expected to see any here," Chief Miller said. "Where did you come from, Mr. McCoy?" Before McCoy could answer, Miller went on. "Did you bring me anything else?"

  "Morphine, field surgeon's kits, Atabrine..."

  "Jesus Christ! Where did you come from?"

  "Off a submarine," Everly replied for him.

  "What are you doing here?"

  "I need a list of things you need. You get three thousand pounds in the first shipment."

  "Christ, I need everything!" Miller said, gesturing around Ward #2.

  "You get three thousand pounds in the first shipment," McCoy repeated. "Nothing weighing more than fifty pounds. More later."

  "When's the first shipment?"

  "The Sunfish is due back here 14 January," McCoy said.

  "How are they going to know what to bring?"

  "You tell me what you want in your three thousand pounds," McCoy said. "That'll be radioed from Fertig's headquarters."

  "You ought to see the way the
y've got that fixed, Doc," Everly said.

  Miller looked at him in confusion.

  "Everything is on a list of numbers. Like,.45 ammo, one 600-round case, is number 606, or some shit. All they radio is four-dash-six-oh-six, and they'll load four cases of.45 ammo."

  "We need your list as soon as possible," McCoy said, handing him a mimeographed list of available medical supplies.

  "Christ, Doc, you wouldn't believe what they brought us," Sergeant Waldron Barron, a small, very thin, bony-featured twenty-two-year-old, said, com-ing into Ward #2. "Bags of rice, six fucking pigs!"

  "Mr. McCoy also brought some gold," Everly said. "Amazing what stuff comes out of hiding when you start paying with twenty-dollar gold pieces."

  "Did you bring any dressings?" Miller asked. "I mean now."

  "Standard field compresses," McCoy said.

  "Start in here, Barron," Miller ordered. "Take off every bandage. Sprin-kle the wound with sulfanilamide..."

  "With what?" Sergeant Barron asked.

  "This stuff," Miller said, taking another envelope from the package. "Watch what I do."

  He demonstrated.

  "Then put on fresh dressings."

  "What is that stuff?"

  "It kills infections, or it's supposed to."

  "I'll be damned," Sergeant Barron said. "It really works?"

  "It's supposed to," McCoy said.

  "Christ, is that a bottle of whiskey?" Barron asked, spotting the Famous Grouse.

  Miller picked it up and twisted the cap off.

  "One drink," he said, handing the bottle to Barron. "And then get to work."

  Barron looked at the bottle.

  "The guy with the knee wound needs this more than I do, Chief."

  "We also have some morphine."

  "Then I will have a little taste," Sergeant Barron said, and raised the bot-tle to his mouth.

  [FOUR]

  United States Submarine Sunfish

  161ø 27" East Longitude 5ø 19 West Latitude

  Philippine Sea

  0505 Hours 4 January 1943

  First Lieutenant (Captain, USFIP) James B. Weston, USMC, put his head through the hatch in the deck of the conning tower.

  "Permission to come up, Sir?" he called.

  Lieutenant Commander Warren T. Houser, USN, took the binoculars from his eyes and looked down at the blond-bearded head.

  "If I have told you oncet, Mr. Supercargo, I have told you thrice, you have the privilege of the bridge."

  "Thank you, Sir," Weston said, and came through the hatch.

  He was wearing khakis, and, aside from the beard, was indistinguishable from the other three officers on the bridge.

  Nine days previously, orders had been transmitted to the Sunfish:

  OPERATIONAL IMMEDIATE

  2105 GREENWICH 25 DEC 1942

  FROM CINCPAC

  TO SUNFISH

  PROCEED AT BEST SPEED CONSISTENT WITH FUEL EXHAUSTION TO COORDINATES SEVEN EIGHT ZERO XXX ONE FOUR NOTE. RESERVE SUFFICIENT FUEL TO SUBSEQUENTLY PROCEED AT NORMAL SPEED TO COORDINATES SEVEN FOUR FOUR XXX TEN NINE SIX.

  COMMENCING 1 JAN 43 ADVISE DURING SCHEDULED CONTACT ESTIMATED TIME ARRIVAL COORDINATES SEVEN EIGHT ZERO XXX ONE FOUR NINE.

  PREPARE TO TRANSFER SUPERCARGO AT COORDINATES SEVEN EIGHT ZERO XXX ONE FOUR NINE. FURTHER DETAILS TO FOLLOW.

  BY DIRECTION CINCPAC

  WAGAM RADM USN

  When laid over the chart, coordinates 774 x 096-according to the SOI for the date of reception; they changed daily-were those of Espiritu Santo. It was reasonable to assume that the Sunfish would be refueled there.

  Coordinates 780 x 149, when laid over the chart, showed an empty ex-panse of water in the South Pacific Ocean several hundred miles from Espiritu Santo.

  To avoid detection by Japanese aircraft and/or surface vessels, the Sunfish had traveled submerged during the daylight hours for four days after leaving Mindanao. This permitted a submerged cruising speed, on her four battery-powered 2,085 Shaft Horse Power electric motors, of approximately eight nau-tical miles per hour. She had surfaced just after nightfall on each of the first four days-bringing very welcome fresh air into her hull-and switched to her four 4,300 SHP diesel engines. While simultaneously recharging her batteries, this had permitted a fuel-economy-be-damned speed on the surface of approxi-mately seventeen nautical miles per hour.

  For the last five days, Sunfish had run on the surface, prepared to emergency-dive at the sight of anything in the sky or on the horizon. There had been noth-ing. At 1805 the previous day, she had transmitted her estimated arrival time- 0445-to CINCPAC.

  Now, having reached coordinates 780 x 149 at 0440 hours, she was run-ning with just enough turns to provide steerageway over a calm and endless sea. Despite what her original orders had said about "further details to fol-low," none had followed.

  The change in the pitch of her engines had brought Captain Jim Weston to the conning tower from the wardroom, where he had been reading every maga-zine Sunfish had aboard.

  It was light, but the sun had not yet appeared on the horizon. Lieutenant Commander Houser had made a command decision-which did not lie lightly on his shoulders-not to man the antiaircraft weaponry, four.50 caliber Browning air-cooled machine guns, or her four-inch naval cannon. Should air-craft appear in the sky, or a warship on the horizon, he felt the greater safety for his vessel lay in crash-diving as quickly as possible. Ensuring that gun crews had made it safely inside would take time.

  At the instant the tip of the sun appeared on the horizon, Chief Buchanan, unable to conceal his concern, bellowed:

  "Aircraft dead ahead, estimate two miles, two thousand feet!"

  Commander Houser turned to his talker, a sailor equipped with a micro-phone and a headset permitting him to relay orders to and from the conning tower.

  "All ahead full, prepare to dive," Houser ordered.

  "All ahead full, prepare to dive," the talker parroted, and there was a near-instant roar and billow of smoke from Sunfish's diesels.

  "Get below, Mr. Weston, please," Commander Houser ordered calmly, then trained his binoculars on the rapidly approaching speck in the sky.

  The aircraft was difficult to see. It was coming in out of the sun, which lay just over the horizon. But Houser could make out that it was a flying boat; he could see the fuselage, from which pontoons dropped, and a high wing.

  It's probably a Catalina, he decided. It would be the ideal aircraft for a mission like this. A Catalina was a long-range reconnaissance aircraft, easily capable of making a landing in the sea, taking Weston aboard, and taking off again.

  And then he felt bile in his mouth.

  That sonofabitch has four engines; it's not a Catalina, it's an H8KU! The Kawanishi H8K, which borrowed many of its design features from the two-engine Catalina, was a four-engine long-range reconnaissance/bomber seaplane. It was faster and more heavily armed and armored than the Cata-lina.

  And my antiaircraft isn't manned! Goddamn it, what was I thinking of when I made that decision ?

  "Emergency dive!" he ordered. "Dive, dive, dive!"

  The personnel on the bridge began to drop through the hatch as quickly as they could manage to do so.

  The submerging process seemed to be slower than Houser remembered.

  The H8K was growing larger by the second. And it was unquestionably on a bomb run. A nice, slow, sure-to-be-accurate bomb run.

  And then he saw something that made the situation appear even worse.

  The H8K was not alone. Other aircraft were above and behind it, two of them, on the exact same course, smaller planes, almost certainly fighters. At the speed they were moving, they would be in strafing range of the Sunfish long before the H8K could drop its bombs. Twenty-millimeter machine-cannon fire would probably sweep the hull, or certainly the conning tower. Houser didn't know how well the conning tower could resist that kind of fire; he did not think it could resist much of it.

  And then, as Houser watched, the left wing of the H8K b
egan to emit smoke, almost immediately followed by the yellow glow of an explosion; and a moment after that, the wing crumpled. The H8K turned into the crumpled wing, then began to tumble. It struck the surface of the sea, causing a simulta-neous flash and explosion. There was an enormous cloud of black smoke, sud-denly cut off as the plane went beneath the water and the fire died.