Ghostboat (14 page)

Frank was very quiet a long time, until he set down the pipe and admonished, “Didn’t your daddy tell you never volunteer for
anything?”

Cook waited while Frank made a conference call to Smitty and Diminsky, catching them both at home just before bedtime. In excited tones, he explained Cook’s idea about the escort, played humble by apologizing for not coming up with it earlier, and generally made it sound as if it were the greatest idea since Saran Wrap. Smitty wasn’t sure. Frank pointed out the time factor and the lack of space aboard
Candlefish
for installing modern safety equipment. A fully equipped escort would be considerably less costly. Besides, any modern devices placed aboard the sub could be only temporary.

Smitty let Frank go on at length, once he began pointing out how everything related to cost.

Then Frank did some listening. Five minutes of it.

He hung up, sat back in relief, and answered Cook’s unasked question: “Smitty will present it to the Committee tomorrow. Regular channels, my ass...”

“How did Diminsky take it?”

“I think I added ten strokes to his golf game.”

October 25, 1974

An orderly from Captain Melanoff’s office charged up the gangplank of the
Imperator
and a moment later pounded on the door to Frank’s cabin.

“Telex for you, sir.”

It was from Smitty’s office in Washington.
 

COMNIS

R251038Z OCT 74

FROM COMNIS TO COMDEFINCO PEARL

ADVISE CMDR FRANK SENATE APPROVAL CANDLEFISH MISSION SECURED STOP AUTHORIZATION PROCEED REFIT BOAT ASSEMBLE CREW AND ESCORT AWAIT FULL ORDERS COMSUBPAC STOP NAVAL APPROVAL ACTIVATE JACK HARDY COMMISSION ONLY AS LAST RESORT STOP PREFER VOLUNTEER CITIZEN STOP GOOD LUCK STOP

Frank stared at it a long time, then let out a whoop that carried all the way to the crew’s mess.

He put on fresh suntans and hurried over to Melanoff’s office at Defense Intelligence Command. Melanoff greeted him with a vigorous handshake and offered a bit of liquid celebration. Frank accepted the beer and guzzled it. He was pacing up and down, muttering “Boy oh boy oh boy...”

Melanoff laughed and popped another can of beer. “What if she sinks before you reach Latitude Thirty?”

“She won’t do that,” Frank said, going to the window and looking out to make sure she hadn’t already. “She wouldn’t dare.”

The phone rang with a call for Frank from Washington, It was Diminsky, and he was eating crow. “Well, Commander, you pulled it off. I sure haven’t got the foggiest idea what convinced them—”

“I realize that, Admiral.” Frank couldn’t resist the barb.

“We’ll have to review this in the office, Frank. You know there are a great many important cases pending, and perhaps this little effort doesn’t require the services of a full Lieutenant Commander—”

“Then demote me, Admiral, because I’m going.”

Diminsky blustered some more and finally, grudgingly, wished him good luck.

Frank accepted graciously and then said, “Look, if we go out there and sink all over again, you can tell everybody ‘I told you so.’“

The real test of his powers still lay ahead: convincing Jack Hardy that he should become a part of this expedition. The telex had pointed out one way to have him assigned to it—simply activate his commission. But that would make him an unwilling participant. Frank wanted him not only willing but eager.

As he hurried back down the dock clutching a bag of sandwiches and a six-pack of beer, he considered the best way of breaking the good news to someone who wouldn’t appreciate it. When he drew abreast of the
Candlefish
, it was twelve noon and the technicians were just clearing out for lunch. Hardy himself was coming up the conning-tower hatch, and Frank hailed him from the pier.

“Hold it! Wait right there! I got sandwiches!”

He held up the bag. Hardy stood still on the bridge and waited for Frank to come aboard and scamper up the bridge ladder. Frank passed him the sandwiches.

“I’m not going below, if it’s all the same to you. I’ve got to get off this tub
sometime,”
Hardy grumbled.

“Sure, sure. How about aft?”

Frank didn’t even wait for an answer. He led the way around the conning tower. There were several crates on the cigarette deck; they sat down there and had lunch.

Frank munched a corned-beef sandwich and looked the submarine over happily, measuring what was to become his new domain. He glanced at Hardy. The man was staring at the deck, somberly chewing on a ham-and-Swiss.

“Hey, how’s it coming?” asked Frank.

“The log? I was right Thirty years
is
a long time.”

“Yes, it is.”

“And I happen to be digging back into some unpleasant history.”

“Such as?”

“Well... Basquine. He may have been the Navy’s idea of a good CO, but not mine. And Bates, the Exec... hated my guts.”

“Why?”

Hardy slowed down and stared at his sandwich. “I made a mistake. They never forgave me.”

Frank waved a hand and spoke with his mouth full. “You mean the slug test?” Hardy looked up slowly, in surprise. “Basquine kept a file. I read it.”

“I don’t expect it was very complimentary.”

Frank looked at Hardy and sensed rather than heard the bitterness. “Why don’t you tell me about it? I mean, from the beginning. From the time you came aboard the
Candlefish.”
 

Hardy was silent a long time; then he asked for another beer. He cracked it open and drank a third of it, then settled back and started to talk.

“January of ‘44. That’s when the tough part started. I guess up till then I was very young and idealistic. And I was very dependent on my wife, Elena. She was my crutch. You remember that picture under my pillow? I kept it there all the time, and I wrote letters constantly. I’d save them until we got back to port, then I’d post them all in a packet.” He paused and rolled the beer can in his palms. “Anyway... in January I got a wire from her. She’d had the baby, and she was naming him Peter, after my father. Peter... I went out on a toot. I had five of the best days of my life. The best days since I had married Elena. For the first time, I really felt like a man. I felt there really was a... a
me.”

Hardy clasped his hands behind his head and rocked back. “Did you know we had two weddings?”

Frank blinked in surprise. Hardy grinned. “Yes, sir. Probably the most daring stunt I’ve pulled in my whole life. In the summer of 1940, just before I started my junior year at the Naval Academy, we decided we couldn’t wait any longer. But the Academy had a rule that midshipmen couldn’t be married. So we did it in secret. No one knew about it—I mean no one. We had to live apart for quite a while. It was a trial; it was tough, but I think we were stronger for all of it.

“And when the war broke out, the whole thing became ten times more difficult,” Hardy continued. “But having her there, even in the background, seemed awfully important.” Hardy looked at Frank and smiled. “Here comes the good part. I got into the Submarine School in 1942 and immediately after went to the base commander for permission to marry. I hounded that son of a bitch for weeks until he gave in. I brought Elena out in the spring of ‘43 and we did it again. This time it was a military wedding. I swear to you, nobody ever figured out what we were laughing about!”

Hardy broke into a long chuckle. Frank grinned broadly. “It wasn’t so easy after that,” Hardy went on, sobering. “I got transferred to Fleet Sonar School in San Diego. Elena was pregnant, so we rented a house. The war had gotten worse, and I guess I began to worry about the decision I had made, about my career. We all heard the reports. Submarines were making a dent in Japanese shipping, but they had started making a dent in our fleet. Finally I got posted to Pearl, and we knew this was it.” Hardy’s face clouded over. “Elena couldn’t make the trip. Too pregnant; besides, no wives allowed. I spent the rest of ‘43 as a junior officer, floating from one sub assignment to another. It wasn’t until the first of February, 1944, that I was assigned to the
Candlefish
. Then I met Basquine... and Bates— the toughest sons of bitches in the entire submarine fleet. They never gave an inch—to anybody for anything. They were a matched set. It was like sailing on the
Pequod
with Captain Ahab.”

Hardy grunted. “Captain Ahab, that’s Basquine. But he could be a charmer. And
that’s
why the crew let him get away with it. He used to deliver the greatest pep talks. But everything he did or said was directed for one purpose: war. He was... he was like a psychologist with an ulterior motive. And the Exec, Bates, backed him up. I made the mistake of thinking I was qualified when I stepped aboard this boat. Bates cut me down to size. In my first five days he had me up for oral exams three times. He walked me through the boat with all the lower ranks watching and made me peg every valve, every gauge, and line. I passed those exams, but I’ll tell you, I contracted a whopping case of insecurity.”

Frank was impressed. The old oceanographer had a pretty good understanding of himself.

“Then we had our first patrol in late February. Bates had me researching engineering problems one on top of the other. Understand: That wasn’t unusual—we always had controlled problems to work out. But he had me doing them
all
the time. Anyway, I moved around in rotation until they sort of settled on me as navigation officer. That worked out fine. I spent more time on the bridge and got a chance to see Basquine at work.” Hardy looked directly at Frank and spoke tightly: “Commander—that bastard tried to sink
everything.
He was out for blood, and everybody knew it. In 1944 he was the least cautious skipper at sea. And with Bates as his yes-man, and me working the charts, he began to form his grand plan.”

“What was that?”

“A top-secret, lone-wolf attack on Tokyo Bay. Even SubPac didn’t know about it.”

Frank felt a chill. It was true. He hadn’t found any mention at all in the records about any such plan.

“It was maniacal,” said Hardy. “A complete lack of regard for the safety of the crew and the boat. It’s one thing to sneak up on enemy shipping, fire a few fish, then run like hell. But this was crazy—placing ourselves squarely in a closed ball park. I think he really was a bit of an Ahab. A self-destructive monster.”

“Did you try to stop him?” asked Frank.

“Yes. Yes, I tried to talk him out of it I got three days of orals from Bates. They took me off the plan and put in Jordan, the gunnery officer. He thought the plan was ‘workable.’“

“Did you ever think, Professor, that maybe you just weren’t suited for war?”

“I
know
I wasn’t. But I wasn’t crazy, either.”

Hardy stopped talking for a while. He leaned back and rocked against the plates of the conning tower. He unbuttoned his shirt and took sun on his chest.

“What about the last patrol? What was he like then?”

“Well, you know, for all Basquine’s rootie-tooting about how great we were, we still had a comparatively lousy record. In the first six months I served with him, we sank only two Japanese freighters. He took after a couple of fishing boats one day when he was feeling particularly ornery. Outside of that, nothing.”

“Was there a reason?”

“Yeah. I think we missed a lot of targets because of bad attack planning, faulty torpedoes—those Mark 14s were not the most reliable—and rotten weather. So, by August of ‘44, when we set out on our third patrol, he was riding the crew pretty hard, trying to make up for his own failures. He drilled everyone right up to and beyond effective preparedness.”

“What about you?”

“I was a nervous wreck.”

Behind those stiff gray whiskers, Hardy fell silent. His lips became a thin red line slashed across the curls.

“Want to tell me about that slug test?”

“My side of it?” A wry smile crept through Hardy’s whiskers. “You’ve already got it from the horse’s mouth.”

“I’d like to hear it from yours.”

“No.” Hardy got up. “Enough is enough, Mr. Frank. You really don’t need to know any of this. It has no bearing on what you want to do, and it’s a big pain in the ass for me.”

He waited for a reply, challenging. Frank was certain that if he could get Hardy to tell the rest of his story, it would turn out that in all the years since the incident with the torpedoman Hardy had vigorously sought but never found redemption.

Frank got up and patted the dust from the seat of his pants. He pulled together the trash from their lunch and stuffed it into the paper bag, then asked rather casually: “How
is
that log coming?”

Hardy looked at him a long time. “I think I’m getting the navigational points down straight. The charts are a big help.”

“I thought so,” Frank smiled. “I’ve always found that mental recall works better if you try to remember things in the order in which they occurred.” Hardy grunted and turned to go below. Frank stopped him. “Just a minute. In your opinion, Professor—how good a navigator were you?”