The White Ghost (25 page)

Chapter Twenty-Six

“There's a large
force of enemy aircraft headed our way from airfields on Bougainville,” Cotter said as he eased PT-169 out of the harbor and into Ironbottom Sound. “They could be going for Rendova, Henderson Field, or Sesapi. No reason to hang around and find out.”

“The trip will be more dangerous in daylight, won't it?” I asked.

“Yes, if we run into patrol aircraft. But this is a big raid. They won't break formation to go after one PT boat.” That sounded good, as long as the Japanese remembered to play by the rules.

“What can we do?” I asked.

“Take these,” he said, handing Kaz and me binoculars. “Go forward and watch for aircraft.”

We'd seen Archer and Gordie positioned aft, scanning the skies as we pulled out. We went toward the bow, behind the twenty-millimeter gun, which was manned by a kid in a big helmet, life jacket, skivvies, and shoes; enough clothing for a hot run in the Solomons.

We each took a side, bracing ourselves between the bridge superstructure and a forward torpedo tube. As Cotter opened up the engines, the ride smoothed out into a steady
thump thump
against the rolling waves, fooling you into thinking you didn't have to hang on. I realized Kaz and I were the only ones without life jackets, and that nobody had taken time to toss a couple our way. On the one hand, if we got hit, we were all going up in a giant fireball anyway, but it wouldn't take much work to get tossed overboard either. I could swim pretty well, but not all the way back to Tulagi.

It wasn't long before a shout went up from the stern, Gordie and Archer having sighted fighters coming from behind. Cotter announced they were ours, flying up from Guadalcanal to intercept the Japs. Even so, every gun swiveled to target them as they flew high overhead.

“Hold your fire,” Cotter yelled, knowing how trigger-happy his men could be. Out here, there was nowhere to hide, and dozens of swarming, snarling fighters were downright intimidating. Then I began to worry. Would they mistake
us
for Japs, and open fire?

They passed over without incident, and I let out a heavy sigh, not realizing how nervous I'd been. I watched the fighters, figuring they were being vectored in by radar, or perhaps Coastwatchers. Soon I lost them, and gave the horizon a quick check. Dead ahead I saw an island, too far away to make out anything but a smudge of green.

“Is that Rendova?” I asked the sailor manning the twenty-millimeter.

“Naw, that's Russell Island. We ain't even close yet, Lieutenant.”

Cotter kept on course for the island. I strained to see anything at all in the sky, alternating between the binoculars and my eyesight, trying to take in the full arc of the blazingly bright heavens in front of us. It was all azure blue, nothing but foaming water rising into a robin's egg sky; so much to watch, and it all looked exactly the same.

“There!” Kaz shouted, pointing up off the starboard side. Contrails swirled in all directions, evidence of a high-altitude dogfight. I trained my binoculars on the telltale vapor trails, but all I got was the occasional flash of sunlight off a fighter.

“Keep a sharp lookout,” Cotter bellowed from the bridge. “If they're making contrails, they're too high to bother us. Watch for fighters breaking away.” I waved back, signaling my understanding, and returned to scanning the horizon, sweeping back and forth, dividing the sky into quadrants.

Then I saw it. Black smoke instead of white contrails. Heading for us and losing altitude fast. I picked up the aircraft in my binoculars, but the billowing smoke and dead-on view obscured any markings. It was obvious he was in trouble.

“It's got to be one of ours,” I said to the gunner. “Probably headed back to Henderson Field.”

“I don't like the way he's heading for us,” he said, training his weapon on the incoming fighter.

“Don't fire, wait!” I yelled, focusing on the smoke, glimpsing a brief image of another airplane, then another. “Behind him, two Zeroes!”

“Yes!” Kaz screamed. “He's coming to us for cover!”

The gunner acknowledged a second later, saying he had the two Zeroes targeted. Cotter shouted to hold fire, and then suddenly the first plane was close enough to see, white stars clear against the blue paint job. Smoke poured from under the engine cowling as the Wildcat pilot went into a steep dive, bringing the Zeroes closer to our guns.

The Zeroes were now unmistakable, their bubble canopies and red Rising Sun insignias stark against a light grey background as they closed in on the Wildcat, guns chattering, bursts of tracer rounds bracketing their quarry. The American fighter drew closer, no more than a couple of hundred yards above the water. As he banked to our right, giving the PT boat a clear shot at his pursuers, he lost even more altitude. I could make out oil streaks across his canopy and bullet holes along the fuselage, and I hoped he'd make it back if our fire could manage to distract the Zeroes.

Then all hell broke loose and I wondered if the Zeroes were glad to trade targets.

Great spouts of seawater rose up around us, the machine gun and cannon fire from the Jap planes creating a maelstrom as the two twin fifty-calibers behind me opened up, their rapid fire a counterpoint to the steady, slower hammering of the twenty-millimeter cannon. I ducked, shielding my ears from the clamoring of the weapons, the raging screams of men firing at the enemy, the snarl of engines, and the blood pounding in my head.

Rounds thumped into the wooden deck, sending splinters flying past my face. I hung on as Cotter took evasive action and watched as the Zeroes pulled away, each arcing off in a different direction to divide our fire. One of them spat out a couple of white puffs of smoke as his engine sputtered and he continued on away from us. The crew cheered at the evidence of their marksmanship. The Wildcat was now a good distance to our rear, flying low and steady. If he didn't make it all the way to Guadalcanal, he could probably ditch with a good chance of rescue.

“Look!” Kaz shouted. “Twelve o'clock low!” The other Zero wasn't escorting his pal home. He was coming back for us. This time he was flying close to the wavetops, perhaps hoping we couldn't lower our guns enough, or maybe to maximize his own flame. Whatever the reason, the Zero looked like a demon breathing fire as it bore down on us. Cotter zigged and zagged, which I figured was to throw the Jap's aim off, but it did the same for our gunners. Tracers zipped back and forth, filling the air between the plane and the boat with lines of burning phosphorous, deadly stitches of yellow-white seeking to destroy, to eliminate the enemy threat.

It all happened at once. We were hit again, this time the gunner by my side taking a round in the head. His body dropped like a heavy sack just as the Zero blossomed into flames, parts blowing off as the plane stayed on course, inertia and momentum carrying it forward, straight for the splintered and bloody bow of our ship.

Cotter spun the wheel hard to port, and once again I hung on, grasping the handrail and hoping that if I got tossed over, I'd make it clear of the boat's propellers.

The Zero lost more altitude, one wing dipping drunkenly, the pilot by now likely a dead hand on the stick. The wingtip brushed the surface of the waves, tossing up a delicate plume of water, a glimmering, incongruous spray against the trailing flames. The wingtip of the Zero seemed to balance on the water perfectly, until the aircraft cartwheeled and slammed hard on its back, the sea around it burning with aviation fuel.

Cotter turned, slowed the engines, and circled the wreck, but there was nothing to see but flames, nothing to feel but intense heat rolling off the water, nothing to care about but being alive.

For most of us, anyway.

The gunner's torso lay against the bulwark, his life's blood drenching the deck, the top half of his head nowhere to be seen. His lower jaw hung down, ribbons of muscle and flesh flung back above it, his tongue obscenely huge and pink against a dark, red space of nothingness. Shattered bone and brain were strewn against the steel bulkhead, splashed with blood. A single twenty-millimeter shell can do a hell of a lot of damage, taking only a split second to turn a living, breathing man into a riven carcass.

I had to tear my gaze away, the butchery of war as compelling as it was ugly and brutal. Deep inside, I knew why I had to look—not out of pity for the dead man, or the guilty thrill of carnage avoided, but to consider the possibility that I was no more than blood and gristle myself, that it could as well have been my own body cast asunder, revealing no visible soul, no humanity, no memories, nothing but cooling pink flesh.

I checked the damage to the boat, not interested in having it sink out from under us just as the fight had been won. The bow was pretty chewed up, and bullet holes decorated the bridge as well.

“Anyone else hurt?” Cotter asked, leaning over the bridge, wincing as he took in the scene below. No one spoke. I couldn't get a word out, not even a grunt. I gave him a wave, trying to look like I was just fine. I saw flecks of blood on my hand and felt more running down the side of my face. I looked at Kaz, who had the presence of mind, if not the courage, to step into the gunner's post and man the cannon. His face was spotted in blood as well—a fine, delicate red mist. Cotter increased throttle, and water soon broke over the bow, turning the pooled and darkening blood into a pink foam as it washed back over the side.

I leaned over the rail and vomited.

“I hope that pilot made it back,” Kaz said, wiping his face with a handkerchief. “Otherwise his maneuver held little merit.”

“And we could still be in trouble, if either of those pilots radioed our position,” I said, wiping my face with my sleeve. “Do you know how to work that thing?”

“I watched him,” Kaz said, his hands on the grip, his eye peering through the sight. “It seemed straightforward enough, but I hope for a more long-distance duel if we are attacked once again.”

Not for the first time, I marveled at Kaz's ability to deal with any situation he found himself in. I guess after losing everyone you loved in the world, there was little surprise left in it. I went back to my binoculars, watching the sky for approaching fighters. Contrails drifted high above, thinning out as the planes dove to lower altitudes to bomb and strafe.

A few minutes later, I heard Archer shout from the rear of the boat. “Formation at two o'clock high! Twelve bandits!”

“On a course for Tulagi,” Gordie added.

I found them. Betties, it looked like.

“Fighters behind them,” Archer said calmly.

Cotter barked orders for the information to be radioed to Henderson Field, and then turned the boat to starboard.

“We'll make for Russell Island and hide out until nightfall,” he told us. “We can't get caught out in the open again. Those Betties might give us a working over on their return trip.”

We kept eyes on the aircraft as they passed by, intent on delivering their deadly loads to our home base. Lower and far behind, I made out a ragged formation of Wildcats, probably the squadron that had been scrambled to intercept the first group over Rendova. I hoped they had enough fuel and ammo left in case the Japs were headed for Henderson Field.

Cotter slowed as he approached one of the outlying islands. Crewman came forward to wrap the dead gunner—I never did catch his name—in weighted canvas for interment at sea.

“There's no burying ground at Rendova. The base is on a small island, Lumbari, that's basically a swamp surrounded by ocean,” Cotter explained, looking glum at the prospect of having to dump one of his men overboard with little time for ceremony. But he had the living to think of. A few words, bowed heads, a splash, and it was over. But some in this war had even less homage in death.

He took the boat past the small island, under cover of overhanging palms on the shore of Russell proper. The water was gentle here and slapped at the side of the hidden boat, rocking it like grandpa's chair on the porch. Kaz and I rinsed ourselves with saltwater until all traces of blood were gone. Then we sat in the shade, a quiet, peaceful, drowsy rest as we waited for daylight and the war in the air to pass us by.

“You're both lucky to be alive,” Gordie observed as we all relaxed amidships. “That was a damn close-run thing, as Wellington said at Waterloo.”

“I don't know about Wellington, but if I were really lucky, I wouldn't be wringing a dead man's blood out of my socks,” I said, laying the pair of them out to dry and rolling up my trouser legs.

“Can't say I appreciate that pilot bringing the Zeroes down on us,” Archer said, his voice an angry snarl. “Nearly got us all killed, the selfish bastard.”

“We had the firepower, and he was in trouble,” Cotter said, rising to go below. “It was a risk, and he took it. I'm going to check in with Rendova.”

“Calculated with the odds in his favor,” Archer said to Cotter's back. “I've managed to keep myself alive so far. I don't need a crazy Yank giving the Japs a leg up on doing me in.”

“Steady on,” Gordie said. “No need to blame the Yanks.”

“Steady on yourself,” Archer growled. “There's blame enough to go around. First we lose Daniel, and it's that Yank Kennedy who's first on the scene. Then the Chinaman, and lo and behold, friend Jack was there, too. Poor Deanna gets knifed in Chinatown, and what do you know, she was his girlfriend when it suited him. I've had my fill of Yanks for a while. The bush is sounding like a safe place for a change.” He stalked off to the stern as the sound of aircraft droned overhead. We all ducked, as if that might make a difference.