At the Midway (68 page)

Oates found the first lieutenant on the quarterdeck, directing one of the gun divisions.  A reeving line had been passed under the keel and now a collision mat was being hauled over the rent in the hull.  Drawing the First to the side, he quietly informed him of the death of the executive officer.

"If something happens to me, you're in command."

"Aye, sir."

Oates was vaguely nonplussed by the ease with which his 'fust luff' received the news.  He'd never been able to learn much about the man--one of those cold fish who emerged from the school and swam near the top throughout his career, retiring on a raft of mundane commendations.  The type known at the Academy as a "greasoir."  Any other time Oates might have made his annoyance evident, but right now they were too busy saving the ship.  Damage control teams had reported a ten-foot gash in the bilge keel.  The canvas would stop the leak for now, but would it be enough to get them to Hawaii?

2330 Hours

Later, in the wardroom, Captain Oates heard two sounds that amazed him: the bell sounding the half-hour and a yeoman typing in the sea cabin.  Tolling the time of day or night was a naval habit so ingrained that Oates merely nodded in marvel.  Chores continued to be performed even in the face of catastrophe.  For all he knew, someone was below cleaning the heads.  But with the
Florida
locked in mortal combat and grievously wounded, it was nothing less than incredible that bureaucracy persisted with its infernal
typing
.

"Stop that damn racket!"

The typist, one Yeoman Paige, never protested the contrariness of Oates' standing order to type up the ship's logs and other reports daily, even though the captain found the interminable clack
-
clack
-
clack unbearable.  The typing ceased.  The yeoman retreated into the passageway, where he would lurk until Oates was gone and he could resume his seat behind the cumbersome machine.

Oates desperately needed sleep.  His arms and legs trembled.  Flush, he could not determine if his lightheadedness was due to exhaustion or the drugs the surgeon plied him with. 
Worst of all, with every step he anticipated the paralyzing agony that had signaled his first attack. Pain that spelled death in no uncertain terms.  Under the current stress and circumstances, he knew he would not survive such an ordeal again.  The looks the surgeon and Singleton had given him said as much. Yet with Grissom dead and the First an untested commodity, he had no choice but to keep going.  Bracing himself on the wash basin, he met the pale reflection in the mirror and saw all the cigarettes, brandy and food he'd ever consumed injected like angels of death into his very flesh.  There was more wear and tear, but one consoled oneself for a failed marriage at one's peril.  Clasping his hands, Captain Oates bowed and prayed.  A knock at the door caused him to jump.

"Come!" he commanded, standing straight.

The first lieutenant entered.  "I have that list you wanted."

"Very well...."

In a chilly, unemotional tone, the officer read:  "Ensign Dobson, sick bay.  Petty Officer Laughton, dead.  Ensign Garrett, on shore.  Midshipman Waters, dead.  Petty Officer Bivens, missing.  Petty Officer Simms, wounded by .30 caliber; only slightly, but he washed out before finishing the course.  That leaves Midshipman Beck."

"Beck... yes.  A good lad.  Is he fit?  Garrett gave him some hard hits, for all his losing."

"Bruises.  That's all."

"Where is he?"

"Sacking out, sir."

"Have him ready at first light.  I'm going to lie down for awhile.  The deck's yours."

0500 Hours

Midshipman Beck was as exhausted as a young man could get short of coma.  Curled in his hammock, he was locked behind a solid door of dreams:

A dark serpent shot through the forecastle.  "Hit the deck for belly inspection!"  Beck leaped high in the air, higher than the ceiling, and landed with a loud thud.  He pulled up his shirt and waited for the surgeon.

Who turned out to be Ensign Garrett.  He sauntered down the line of seamen, thumping their bellies and looking for measle spots.  When he reached Beck, he clapped his hand to his head.  "Oh Lord, you're a dead man!"

"How do you know that, sir?"

"It says so right here!"

Peering down, Beck saw Garrett was right.  The measles had written "DEAD MAN" straight across his stomach.

"I'm dead!  Mother will never forgive me!"

When the first lieutenant prodded him awake, Beck turned away, moaning.  "Aw Fust, can't a guy get any sleep around here?"

"Mr. Beck!"

He certainly did not sound like a dream.  Twisting around, Beck squinted through the dim light.  "Sir?  Is it really you?"

"Come on, the captain wants to see you."

"The captain?  Then I need to get dressed."

"You're dressed enough."

0530 Hours

Beck raised his chin as the boatswain's mate lowered the heavy collar onto his shoulder.  Then he stood so that the rear of the baggy diving suit could be sealed.

Worms of fear crawled through his heart and into his stomach.  He was the only one left on board who was certified on the diving suit.  That was the short and shit of it.  He was not even allowed to put a good face on it by volunteering.

"Mr. Beck, you will report to the boatswain, who will assist you into diving gear.  At first light you will go over the side to make certain the collision mat is secure.  The starboard screw may be damaged.  We want you to look at that, too.  Son... this is a job that has to be done.  My wholehearted desire is to see you come back unharmed.  Every man who can hold a gun will be on deck to cover you.  Good luck.  That's all."

Might as well be tuna in a tin
, he thought as he was helped to the edge of the quarterdeck, just above the diving stage.  He was sluggish in his forty-pound lead shoes.

Midshipman Beck had undergone a thorough physical before being allowed to enter submarine training.  No one with a short neck or high complexion was allowed in.  Complaints of the head or heart, as well as poor circulation of the blood, were also grounds for refusal.  Beck had checked out as a fine, healthy specimen.  Which was just as well, because after the helmet was clamped on, the suit would weigh one hundred and sixty pounds.

"Sorry about Midshipman Davis," said the boatswain.

The bout with Garrett was a remote lark next to this--his bruises love
-
taps from the past.  The two people foremost in his thoughts were his mother… and Midshipman Davis.

Fervently, he prayed that Mother Beck would never find out the way he died.  Out of respect for them both, the Navy should tell her no more than, "Lost at sea."  Better yet: "Died in the line of duty."  But he would gladly forgo the latter honor if the Navy saw fit to add, "Eaten in the line of duty."  No matter how veiled or tactfully presented, there would be bizarre comical connotations.

Then there was Davis.

How could the son of a bitch turn his back on him, then leave no hope of reconciliation?  Beck found himself gritting his teeth in anger, as if by dying Davis had slapped him in the face.  Go to hell and no thanks.  How many chances did one get to forgive an insult?  When Davis disassociated himself from his messmate, Beck's primary response was disbelief.  Perhaps Davis had not really meant to turn his back on him
-
-
had let a moment's anger and frustration spin into a lengthy grudge out of false pride.  After all, would Beck have wanted to share the misfortune if Garrett had singled Davis out instead of him?

Now he would never know.  The soreness in his jaw was exacerbated as he ground his teeth.  Regret and pain helped dispel his fear.

In the east the sky showed red tints.  The old maritime ditty came to him:

Red sky at night,

Sailors' delight;

Red sky in morning,

Sailors take warning.

On the Cliffs of Time

The creature also sensed the approach of dawn.  She pulled her red-soaked head from the body of the young male Tu-nel and downed another hunk of flesh.  Fighting free of the anchor chain had burned up precious energy.  Famished, she attacked the Tu-nel corpse with brute gusto. Only a third of it was left.  Once gone, she would have to move on--or sink the
Florida
and pry her open for the morsels inside.

Because it was not only human meat that she smelled.

0534 Hours

"That'll do it," Garrett said, clambering down the side of the barge.  He checked the Plimsoll lines.  "The two of them'll be enough to fill a stokehold."

A blast of steam from the sea tug confirmed her repairs.  Two engineers had worked on the
Iroquois'
pressure valves throughout the night.  With help from the Japanese fishermen they were able to work up a head of steam in the hours the marines and stewards loaded coal.  When they slid her into the water, she seemed lumpy, like a serene hippo.  But she was powerful enough to haul the barges lashed to either side of her.  Maneuvering them through the lagoon would be awkward, however.  The two Commercial Pacific employees who had piloted her were dead.

Garrett lifted his binoculars and scanned the reef.  While the
Florida
was not listing, there was something peculiar about the way she sat in the water.  Faint trails of smoke rose from her funnels.  Oates was burning wood just to maintain auxiliary power.

Over a hundred men would be left on the island.  The rest would go with Garrett.  His crew had volunteered piecemeal throughout the night and included Amos Macklin.

"Trying to show me something, Ordinary Seaman Macklin?"

Amos made an extravagant display of hitching up his trousers.  "This is where I keep them," he said.

The marines and seamen remaining on the island lashed the three-inch fieldpieces in the tug, one port and one starboard, then watched as Garrett clumsily backed the tug into the lagoon. The barges seemed like monstrous water wings.

He made for the channel.

0550 Hours

Edging slowly off the diving platform, Midshipman Beck grabbed the top spar of the underwater stage.  Made up of three spars measuring twenty to twenty-five feet, it was in effect a ladder weighted down with slung shot.  To the top spar were attached rope ladders on roller chocks.  These enabled the diver to swing the stage close to the ship while scraping barnacles off the hull, but on this occasion Beck was using the stage to slow his descent.  It was only from the sea bottom that he would be able to take in the length of the
Florida
.

On reaching the last rung, he took several deep breaths, then looked down to make certain he wouldn't land on something painful.  He pushed his feet out and let go.

The suit squeezed him like a giant hand.  Nothing at all like the exquisite release from gravity usually experienced by a swimmer.  He waited a few moments for his panic to subside, then swiveled slowly.

The
Florida's
keel was a bare twenty feet above him, hovering like a sleeping whale.  Barnacles and innumerable scratches marred the red paint of the bilge keel.  He could hear the moan of metal as chain links grated.  The water was as clear as an April morning, but--

Where were the fish?

Here and there a silver flash.  But no sign of the living shoals that usually brocaded coral reefs.

There was a methodical knocking over his head.  A damage control team working on the hull from the inside.  There were deeper rumblings from the ship itself, water sucking and burbling at the bilge, coughs and spectral whispers, as though death was pining for him in the distance.

His ears hurt--a result of the different air pressure on the opposite sides of the tympanum, they'd told him in diving school.  The instructors had gone into gory detail about caisson disease: loss of vibratile movement and the peculiar purplish rash.  Then the cramps.  Then the agony.  But that all began at two hundred feet and then only as you came up.  Beck was in water no more than thirty-five feet deep.  It was the aggregate pressure of twenty thousand pounds that made his heart flutter.  Added to that was ordinary air pressure.

Forty-thousand pounds.  That's what I have on my head.  Enough to snap a neck, for certain.

Lifting his heavy lead shoes, he walked under the keel, amazed at how much larger yet simpler a battleship seemed from below.  The bilge keel disappeared in the direction of the ram.  A bleak expanse.  Coming up under the collision mat, he noted whiskery bubbles where it covered the gash.  Some leakage, but nothing serious.

Small clouds of sand rolled over his feet as he stepped around the coral outcrops.  The suit's air valve mechanism clicked near his ear, sounding like a gull pecking at a clamshell.  Silvery bubbles flanked his helmet, making peripheral vision through the small view ports on either side of it difficult.  That was all right.  He did not want to see the creature swooping down on him.  Nothing he could do about it.  Better a quick snuff and blackout....