The Great Alone

by Janet Dailey

  As Steve slowed the jeep, the rush of the wind was replaced by a roar of a different kind. Lisa peered through the haze of the dust-covered windshield, trying to see what was ahead of them. She could make out the vague shape of some big piece of machinery.

  “Why are we slowing down?”

  “We’ve reached the end of the finished road.” He shifted gears. “From here on, it’s under construction.”

  They swung off the main road and followed a tote road that paralleled the graveled highway, bypassing the heavy equipment that chugged and roared over a long section widening the road, bringing it to grade and finishing the shoulders. Men and machinery alike were half hidden in a cloud of dust.

  The tote road was little more than a rutted track, wide enough for one vehicle. Lisa clutched the side of her seat and braced an arm against the dashboard as they bounced over the narrow trail. More than once they were forced off it by an oncoming truck and caromed through the heavy grass, already flattened in places by previous traffic. Ahead she could see the temporary construction shacks of the workers’ camp. Some men in hard hats were standing in front of one of them conferring over some plans. Steve parked the jeep a few yards away. Lisa was slow to take her hand away from the dashboard, as if her body was not quite sure the wild ride was over.

  “Sorry,” Steve said. “That last stretch was a little rough.”

  “I didn’t mind.”

  He hopped out of the jeep and walked around to offer her a steadying hand while she crawled out. She brushed at the dust clinging to her trouser legs, then realized it was useless and abandoned the effort. Two of the men walked over to greet them, and Steve introduced her to his project engineer and the foreman of his road crew.

  After the usual exchange of pleasantries and inquiries about their journey from Anchorage, the talk centered on the road—the progress, the problems, the projections. Lisa listened attentively, surprised at how much she understood from reading all the reports that crossed her desk, even though she didn’t understand some of their technical jargon. But being here made all the reports come alive. They weren’t just words on paper or dots on a map or lines on a graph. And the people who had written them had faces, feelings, and frustrations.

  “Those colored boys from the Ninety-seventh are really stepping out on these flats. They’re making about eight miles a day,” the engineer said.

  “According to last night’s radio report, the Army’s got less than three hundred miles to go and the road will be cut all the way through.” The engineer shook his head. “I gotta give those soldier boys credit. What they knew about road building you could have written on the palm of my hand. When they started in March, I figured we’d be lucky if the road was cut through by next year. At this rate, there’ll be trucks traveling on it before Christmas.”

  It was a staggering thought that a fifteen-hundred-mile-long road could be built through a virgin wilderness by some ten thousand inexperienced soldiers and six thousand civilians in less than nine months.

  “The Ninety-seventh made it to the river crossing. They’ll be ferrying their equipment across today. If you got time, you might want to drive on ahead and take a look.” The engineer glanced at Lisa as he made the suggestion.

  “We’ll do that,” Steve said. “I think Lisa will find it interesting.”

  An hour later, after Steve had gone over everything with his engineer and foreman, they climbed back into the jeep and headed down the unfinished road. The traffic was heavier as trucks loaded with supplies, machinery, and equipment churned up the soft, dry surface. The strangling and blinding clouds of dust from the trucks, traveling much of the time in low gear, forced Steve to reduce the jeep’s speed.

  As they neared the site where the road was to bridge the Tanana River, the way became blocked with a jam of machinery, supplies, and men. Steve pulled off the road and skirted the congestion, then stopped the jeep on a small rise that gave them a vantage point.

  Lisa stepped out of the dust-coated jeep to watch the activity at the river. Steve came around to stand beside her. A giant twenty-ton caterpillar was being loaded on a makeshift ferry built up from five log pontoon boats. Not far from the loading area of the ferry crossing, the first pilings for a bridge were being driven. Away from the congestion sat a huge stack of fifty-five-gallon oil drums. Lisa had noticed them scattered by the hundreds all along the route. Their presence made it obvious how the road had obtained the nickname, the “Oil Can Highway.”

  “The work never stops,” Steve said. “As soon as those Negroes get those lead ‘cats’ ferried across to the far side of the river, they’ll fire them up and start in. Meanwhile, that Iowa bridge-building crew are sinking their pilings for the bridge, so that when my road crew get this far, it will be a clear shot to the other side.”

  The road. That’s all they talked about the whole day. It was as if the war didn’t exist. Everything seemed to revolve around the road. Having seen it herself, Lisa felt the same way. Nothing else seemed quite as important.

  It even changed her perception of Steve. All day she had listened to him discuss the road, speaking with authority about various facets of the work in progress. She had seen him in action, physically directing the work instead of perusing reports or talking on the telephone. The work he did was vital to the whole territory. She was impressed by him, more impressed than she had ever been by him when he had merely been her boss.

  At dusk, their plane landed at Merrill Field in Anchorage. Although it had been a long day, Lisa felt strangely rested. She would have said it was the result of all that fresh air if she wasn’t so conscious of the film of fine dust that coated her entire body, clothes and all.

  As they walked to his car, Steve casually draped his arm around her shoulders. “Are you glad you went?”

  “Oh, yes,” she answered with a rush of enthusiasm. “I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”

  “I was sure you’d feel that way.” When they reached the car, he stopped and started to open the passenger door for Lisa, then paused with one hand on the door grip and the other on her shoulder. “Why don’t we go out and have a late dinner together?”

  “I don’t think so—not the way I look.”

  He drew his head back to study her. “I don’t know. I kinda like the way you look with that smudge of dirt on your nose.” He ran his finger down it. “Besides, I’m not any cleaner than you are. So, what do you say?”

  She hesitated, almost tempted, then shook her head again. “No. I’d better get home. Mama will be worrying about me.”

  “No, she won’t. Do you know why? Because you’re with me.” He Slid his hand under her hair and cupped the back of her neck. “And if you don’t believe that, we’ll call and let her know we’re back. But I’m not going to accept your mother as an excuse for turning me down.”

  His quick kiss took her by surprise. Flustered and self-conscious, she looked away from him. It had never been easy for her to ignore his attentions. Now she didn’t think she wanted to.

  “Is it that soldier boy of yours again?” But Steve didn’t give her a chance to answer. “Lisa, one of the things I found attractive about you from the beginning was the loyalty you displayed. But I don’t think it’s justified. I have to be honest and say that I don’t feel one bit guilty about trying to lure you away from him, because I don’t see that he has any claim on you. He’s had plenty of chances to tie you up. But I don’t see any ring on your finger, and I doubt if there’s been any promise of one.”

  “It isn’t that.” She hadn’t even been thinking about Wylie.

  “Look at me, Lisa.” He forced her head up. “I’ve done just about everything but stand on my head to persuade you to go out with me.”

  “I know you have, Steve.”

  “If that’s what it’s going to take for you to be convinced that I love you, I’ll do it.” He released her and started to get down on his hands and knees.

  It was a full second before Lisa realized that he really int
ended to stand on his head. “Steve, no!”

  When she grabbed for his arm to pull him up, her foot slipped on the gravel and she started to fall. Steve tried to catch her. In the next second, they were tangled together on the ground, laughing at the suddenness of it. He rolled onto his side, levering himself up on an elbow to look at her.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” She gazed at him, her smile softening. “And you don’t have to stand on your head to convince me, Steve.”

  For an instant he stared at her lips. Then slowly he kissed her.

  CHAPTER LVII

  A Mile Off Adak Island

  August 28, 1942

  The sea was running heavy. The strong underwater currents constantly buffeted the submarine Triton as it ran submerged a mile off the coast of Adak Island, nearing its destination off Kuluk Bay. Wylie glanced at the artificially blackened faces of the other eighteen Scouts crowded together in the narrow confines of the crew’s quarters. Nineteen more Scouts were aboard the submarine Tuna. The commando group was scheduled to rendezvous outside the reefs of Kuluk Bay.

  As the heaving seas tossed the submarine about, the deck pitched violently. Wylie automatically braced himself at the first motion. A few Scouts weren’t quick enough. He heard their muffled curses of pain as they were slammed against something. Nearly everyone had bruised some part of his body during this voyage. Wylie had noticed a couple of the crewmen with bandaged ribs, and several sported bruised cheeks or cuts above the eye.

  A few minutes ago the sergeant had returned with the word that they were off Adak Island—code name “Fireplace.” The talking had subsided as they rechecked their packs and weapons. Wylie felt the tension in the air. His palms were clammy, but he wasn’t sure how much of that was nerves and how much was the closed quarters of the submarine. At the moment he would gladly face a Jap rather than spend another hour cooped up in this underwater coffin.

  The watertight bulkhead door swung open and one of the submarine’s officers stepped through. “The skipper has given the order to surface,” he announced.

  “That’s the best news I’ve heard yet.” Wylie straightened, keeping his legs spread slightly apart to brace himself against the roll of the deck. “These quarters are about as comfortable as a straitjacket.”

  “You get used to it after a while,” the young ensign assured him. “It’ll seem just like home.”

  “Your home maybe, not mine,” he replied dryly.

  Moments later the submarine broke onto the surface and the hatch was cracked. Silently, one after the other, the Scouts scrambled up the ladder onto the Triton’s sea-washed deck. Surrounded by the inky blackness of a cloud-covered night and the murky dark sea, they swiftly inflated their rubber boats, communicating with hand signals. Not far away, another submarine rode on the surface of the heavy sea, showing no light to reveal its presence to the enemy.

  As soon as the boats were launched, Wylie and the other commandos slipped over the side to take their places in the rubber rafts. A mile away, they could barely make out the dim outline of the Adak coast, marked by heavy surf breaking on its shore. They paddled away from the pitching submarine and headed for the mouth of the bay.

  Within minutes both submarines had submerged. Wylie felt a tightness in the pit of his stomach. Restlessly, he scanned the area, trying to detect any movement that would betray a Jap position—if there were any Japanese on the island. All the natives and civilians in the island chain had been evacuated within days after the first Japanese attack, most of them to camps in the southeast panhandle.

  The War Department had finally authorized the establishment of a new base in the Aleutian chain that would be closer to the Japanese-held islands of Kiska and Attu than the airfield at Cold Bay, which was twelve hundred miles round trip. The Navy had picked Adak Island for the new location.

  In two days, an invasion force of forty-five hundred men was scheduled to land on Adak. It was known that the Japanese regularly landed small parties of soldiers on various islands, including Adak. But no one knew if they were still there. The mission of the commando unit, commanded by Colonel Castner himself, was to seek out any Japs on the island and make sure no radio messages were transmitted to Kiska. The long months of training that Wylie, Big Jim, and the other Scouts had gone through were about to be put to the test.

  The wind was constant and cold. Hardly anything could be heard above its incessant rush and the roar of the sea. The minute Wylie felt the raft scrape bottom, he clambered over the side and helped drag the boat onto the beach. On land, he didn’t feel nearly as vulnerable or exposed. Now he could move.

  Stealthily the commandos fanned out under the cover of darkness and began their sweep of the three-hundred-square-mile island. All night long, Wylie crept over the rough terrain and spongy tundra, sweeping his assigned sector. Once, he startled a big black raven—or it startled him. He was never quite sure which of them jumped the highest before the bird took off, cawing loudly in protest.

  At dawn, a fog swirled over the island. Wylie rejoined his unit and reported that he’d found nothing, no trace of any Japanese, not even the ash of a campfire. He felt let down and angry, like a hunter who had spent all night searching for game, only to discover there was none in the area. It was small consolation that no one else had seen any Japs either.

  “I feel like a groom who’s been left standing at the church,” muttered Big Jim Dawson.

  “I think we all feel pretty much that way.” Wylie heard the drone of an airplane’s engines overhead and looked up, recognizing the PBY as one of their own, scheduled to fly over the island that morning. The colonel set out a cloth strip to signal an “all clear” to the plane, and the Scouts settled in to wait for the invasion force to arrive at the island, unpopulated except by bald eagles and ravens.

  The troops arrived on Sunday, August the thirteenth, along with a storm. High winds and heavy seas wreaked havoc with the barges and lighters that transported the supplies, machinery, and equipment, capsizing several and sending their cargo to the bottom, driving others against one another on the beach, and scattering them along the coast. Yet one way or another, nearly everything made it ashore, including anti-aircraft guns, a variety of heavy construction equipment, and crack units of the Aviation Engineer Battalion.

  While the beachmaster organized the storm-strewn landing, the Engineers sought out the Scouts to help them locate a likely place to build a landing strip. They split up in small groups, with Wylie and Big Jim taking one party of Engineers on a tour of the island’s mountainous terrain. The storm continued to blow fiercely. The winds were so strong Wylie had to lean into them to stay erect.

  “You’ve got your work cut out for you,” he shouted to one of the Engineers. “You aren’t going to find any flat ground on this island unless you make it flat.”

  “If the rest of the island is like this, you’re right.”

  “It is.”

  But Wylie had overlooked one place in Sweeper Cove that flooded every time the tide came in. As a joke, another Scout mentioned it to one of the Engineers, but the Engineer didn’t laugh. Within hours, they had their men building a dam, a set of dikes, and a tide gate. At low tide the next day, they shut the gate. Before the morning of September first, graders and weasels were rolling through the mud. The steel matting for the runway was at the bottom of the bay. Bulldozers packed down sand to make a landing strip.

  Ten days later, the first plane landed at the new base, code-named “Longview.” Two days after that, the Thirty-sixth Squadron of B-17s arrived, along with eighteen other planes and another shipment of steel matting, which the Engineers laid overnight. The new base was in full operation, as yet undiscovered by the Japanese.

  * * *

  In the latter part of September, Wylie’s commando unit was sent out again, this time on a reconnaissance mission to scout the island of Amchitka, only seventy miles away from the Japanese-held island of Kiska. Again they encountered no Japanese and repor
ted back that the island had the customary volcano; other than that, it was a long, narrow flat marsh.

  Then it was back to Adak. Rain, wind, and fog seemed to hang over the island like a pall. It hadn’t taken Wylie long to discover that the weather in the Aleutians was anything but agreeable. While the tropical Japanese current that blew warm air up from the south kept the sea ice-free and the temperature mild all year, when it came in contact with the cold Arctic mass of air from the north, storms were the inevitable result. And the long chain of islands was like a buoy marking the site where the two systems clashed.

  For pilots, it was a nightmare flying in fog thick as soup and simultaneously bucking gale-force winds. In the Aleutians, there was no such thing as good flying weather. If a pilot could see to get off the ground, the plane took off. But he didn’t dare try to climb out of the soup. The higher he flew, the colder the outside temperature became, and ice formed on the wings. Countless planes were lost when their wings iced and they spun out of control into the ocean.

  Navigating was no simple feat either. The combination of winds with fog could blow a pilot a hundred miles off course. Radio navigation beams were rarely effective because of the electrically charged air from clashing weather fronts which created a static so loud that it drowned out the radio signals. The constant turbulence threw instruments out of whack, and the heavy mineral deposits in the volcano-born islands affected the compasses.

  In an attempt to keep pressure on the Japanese, two and three bombing missions were flown daily—when the planes could get off the ground. Wylie had watched the bombers limp back. If the Japanese fighter planes or their ground flak had succeeded in damaging one bomber, the weather usually scored six. They were fighting two enemies—the Japanese and the weather. But the Japanese were in the same position.

  Mess call sounded, but Wylie didn’t budge from his cot in the small pyramidal tent. Instead he glanced at the can of chili sitting atop the little metal stove that heated the tent, its tin lid pried open. He swung his legs off the cot and stepped on the mud-soaked papers that served as a floor in the tent.