Torpedo Run (10 page)

The wave of anger went all over Peter again but this time he managed to control it and tried to make his own voice sound as flatly calm as that of Archer.

"We have
no
alternatives, Mr. Archer. By the time we could build a cofferdam with the tools we've got, it would be daylight. If we abandon ship and try to row those rafts, the set of the tide—it's rising, you know—would put us ashore within a mile, and the Army is nowhere near here yet."

It didn't seem to be making any impression on Archer, and suddenly Peter understood why. In the school in Melville, Rhode Island, Peter remembered, there had been a great deal of instruction about how to handle the boats and to keep them running, and how to be a leader of men; a great deal of training with the guns and torpedoes, and a lot of what they called strategy and tactics, station keeping, and navigation. But they hadn't taught much about the way things were in the South Pacific.

"As soon as it's daylight," Peter said, telling him qiuetly about how things really were in the South Pacific, "they'll open up on us. It'll take those shore batteries of theirs about five minutes to cut this boat up into kindling wood.

"Or," Peter went on, "they might wait a little while. They might wait to see what came to help us and then open up."

"You confirm my first decision," Archer said. "We will wait until the tide changes. Then we can row the rafts down the coast to Army territory. The Japanese certainly wouldn't fire on helpless men in life rafts."

Peter stared at him, not believing, and then said quietly, "Adrian, you aren't in the Ivy League now."

Peter started to tell him how personal the war was with the men in PT boats—personal and bitter, with no quarter asked or given—but decided not to. Archer would just have to find that out for himself.

"The only thing is to get this boat away from here," Peter told him. "Now, while it's dark. Once we get her off and under way, I think Sko can get enough out of the engines to keep her going bow high so we'll only ship the tops of waves."

Archer didn't seem to be listening. He looked up at Peter slowly and said, "Would they shoot helpless men in a life raft?"

"They have," Peter said, "so let's get out of here."

Archer made no move to get up, but he nodded and that was all Peter needed.

He went back into the dayroom and told Mitch and Sko to cut away the coral. Then he went on topside to talk to Goldberg and the Preacher.

"We may have to dump these fish," he told them, "so disarm them. I don't want to get blown off this reef."

"Wow!" Goldberg said. "Fifty thousand dollars worth of the poor taxpayers' money over the side."

"Remember that sign," Peter said. " 'It takes millions to win a war, but all you've got to lose one.' Get the racks flipped over as soon as you disarm, and when I give the word, let 'em go."

He went below again and helped Mitch and Sko with the coral.

They were lucky. As the chisel cut down through it, the coral suddenly broke, the crack running outside the boat and slanting forward so that, if she moved aft, the remaining coral would slide past her.

Water now came in in a solid rushing column.

Peter yelled up the hatch, "Back her down. All hands on the fire buckets."

Then, on the ladder, he looked back a moment at the water, now coming up toward Mitch's knees.

Going on deck, Peter waited for the feel of the engines turning up and the feel of the boat straining. Nothing happened. He ran aft to the bridge.

There was no one there. He looked around for Archer, then, not finding him, buzzed for astern and eased the throttles forward.

Slewfoot
groaned, shivered, and finally shook wildly, but she did not move astern.

"Let the fish go," Peter called down and eased the throttles ahead again.

That did it. With the deadweight of the torpedoes off her,
Slewfoot
broke loose from the bed of coral and slid backward into deeper water.

Forward, the men were passing the fire buckets up through the hatch and dumping them over the side.

As soon as he had room to turn her, Peter buzzed for ahead and eased her around, pointing her toward the open sea.

The fire buckets weren't doing much good. As Peter swung the wheel over,
Slewfoot
responded like a truck, the water lying heavy in her belly; but she came slowly around and as soon as she was clear, he rammed the throttles all the way to the stops and prayed that she would lift a little—lift enough to get that hole in her bow above the solid water.

All hands except the engine-room gang were on the fire buckets, so Peter had to yell at them to move aft to add their weight to that of the engines and get her stern down.

As the men streamed aft in the darkness Peter felt the boat rising, the bow coming up above the horizon. He also felt a great sluggish tide of water rolling aft through the boat. He ran back to the hatch and yelled down, "Dog the engine-room door."

But Sko was way ahead of him. The onrushing water hit the already closed door and stopped. The bucket brigade moved up enough to start bailing her from the amidships hatch, and the bow slowly rose higher and higher.

They bailed her all the way back to the Morobe River, all the time knowing that they'd never get her home.

Along the banks of the Morobe were the tents and buildings, supply dumps and motor pools, guns and ammunition, foods, medicines—everything for a war. Peter knew that he could not, for only the sake of
Slewfoot,
take her at speed up the river. Those Packards make a wake like a tidal wave, which, if he tried to ram her home, would wash up over the low, muddy banks, flood the living and supply areas, and ruin, with muddy water, millions of dollars worth of equipment.

Peter also knew that as soon as he slowed her down her bow would drop, the hole in it would slide under water, and then the river would come into her far faster than the pumps and the exhausted men could bail it out. They might make it to her rickety dock; but even if they did,
Slewfoot
would inevitably sink. In his mind Peter could see Sko's face as that filthy water rushed into his engine room and poured over those Packards.

"Pick us out a nice mudbank, Murph," he said, as he turned her from the open sea toward the mouth of the river.

"How about that one at six buoy?"

"Very fine," Peter agreed. "Tell all hands to get set. We're going to hit pretty hard."

He would never forget it. Still at speed, he turned her bows toward the mudbank with the crawling jungle just behind. At the first faint slither of mud against her, he yanked the throttles back and gave Sko a frantic buzz to take her out of gear.

For a long moment it looked as though
Slewfoot
was going to slide across the mud into the interior of New Guinea. The solid mass of the jungle rushed at her as Sko cut the engines altogether, leaving the boat silent as she ploughed up on the mudbank and finally came to rest, her bows neatly between two palm trees, her hull almost entirely out of the water.

The men got slowly to their feet and looked around. There was nothing to say. They just stood there looking at their boat stuck in the mud while the frightened land crabs regained their courage and cautiously came out of the darkness to investigate her, their big ugly bodies rattling against her bow.

Behind him Peter heard Archer's calm voice, "Well done, Mr. Brent. Post a four-man watch and dismiss the crew."

"What do we need a watch for?" Peter asked. "Let everybody get some sleep and some chow and we'll strike a blow for liberty tomorrow."

"A four-man watch," Archer said. Then he hopped down off the bridge, walked over to the side, and jumped down into the mud. The men watched in silence as he slogged, knee-deep in mud, up to the jungle and disappeared.

"Gerry," Peter said, "you and Britches take the first watch. Preacher, you and Murph take the other. The rest of you get some rest."

"What are we supposed to be 'watching' for?" Goldberg asked.

"Pirates, what else?" Peter said, dropping down through the hatch. As he went forward he heard Goldberg sternly order Britches to go get his broadsword. "We might have to repel boarders," Goldberg told him.

In a moment Jason and Murph came down the forward hatch and joined him in the dayroom. The lower bunks were soaked with water, but the uppers were sleepable.

The three of them examined the hole in her hull Now that the sea wasn't pouring through it, it didn't look like such a terrible wound. "We'll be back in business in a couple of days," Peter told them.

"Somebody ought to catch a court-martial for this," Murph declared angrily, staring at the ragged plywood with the moonlight streaming through the hole.

"If everybody in PTs got court-martialed for a goof," the Preacher said, "we'd all be in jail." .

Peter left them arguing the point and went into the tiny exec's cabin. He stretched out on the bunk with his clothes on and tried to keep his mind on the details of getting the boat repaired and off the mudbank and back in business. But time after time, his mind drifted off to the big thing—Archer.

Sometime during the short night a thought struck him
hard.
Could it be, he wondered, that Archer went by the book because that was all he knew?

And much later, there was a knock at the door. Peter didn't think he had fallen asleep, but he must have because he dreamed that someone was calling him. He turned on the light and sat up, listening.

Someone whispered outside the door, "Mr. Brent?"

Peter swung his feet around to the deck and said, "Come in."

The little Irishman had an expression of absolute terror as he slipped into the cabin and carefully closed the door. Peter had seen Murph scared a lot of times, but he had never seen him as shaken up as he was now. "What's the trouble, Murph?"

"Bad," Murph said, his voice low. Then, before he went on, he looked back over his shoulder to be sure no one was there. "You know, the Captain told me to put the charts and codes in the pouch with the lead weights so we could sink 'em if we had to."

"No, I didn't," Peter said, surprised.

"Well, he did. Then he told me to put the pouch in the rubber boat when they lowered it overboard."

Peter stiffened, his breath whistling through his teeth. "Where's the boat now?"

"That's what I mean," Murph said, almost crying. "I forgot it. I guess when we went astern it tore loose. It's
gone!"

It was like being hit in the back of the head with an ax. For a moment Peter could do nothing but stare in horror at Murph. Murph backed away from him until he backed into the door.

"It wasn't all my fault," he wailed.

"It doesn't make any difference whose fault it is," Peter told him. "If the Japs get hold of those codes we're sunk. Does the skipper know about this?"

"I was afraid to tell him … What'll he do to me, Peter?"

"Does anybody else know?"

"I don't think so. Everybody was running all over the place. What'll he do to me?"

Peter wasn't listening to him now as he sat thinking about the code books in the disposal pouch.

Peter knew that the U.S. strategy against the enemy had changed. There weren't going to be any more Guadalcanal where the Marines were put ashore at one end of a grisly island to fight their way, inch by bloody inch, to the other end. From now on U.S. forces were going to leapfrog their way through the Pacific, leapfrog up New Guinea. With short, smashing amphibious attacks they were going to take and hold only enough area to use as a base for the next hop. They were going to take Salamaua and then Lae, Finschafen and then Wewak and Hollandia.

But these places were not called by their names. Each had a code name of its own—like Sunrise and Rosarita and Pittsburgh. These names were in the pouch now adrift somewhere in enemy waters. Let them find it and the entire top-secret code of the operation could be broken and every message that had been sent in code could be read.

"What'll he do to me?" Murph wailed.

"Right now that's not important," Peter said, as he started rolling up his pants legs. "I want you to disappear, Murph, so he can't ask you—if he happens to think about it. Go up to Six Squadron and stay there until I send for you. And don't say a word to anyone about this. Understand?"

"Yes, sir," Murph said, terrified.

"Okay, get going," Peter said.

When Murphy had gone, Peter sat there on the bed for a little while longer, thinking through this problem.

And when he came to the end of it he found himself faced with a dreadful decision.

Now, Peter knew, it was in his power to rid
Slewfoot
of Adrian Archer forever. All he had to do was go to the squadron commander and report this thing, and Archer would be hauled up for a general court-martial and that would be the end of him as far as
Slewfoot
was concerned. It would also wipe out Murph, Peter knew.

But what about the other twelve men whose lives were absolutely dependent on the life of
Slewfoot?

In the silent boat, with the night so close around him, Peter was convinced that if Adrian Archer stayed as skipper he would kill them all. And kill the boat, too.

Peter Brent despised airplanes because, secretly, he was afraid of them. He wouldn't admit this to himself, arguing that nothing was so important in life you had to get up in the air and fly real fast to get somewhere. To him, airplanes were dangerous, untrustworthy machines designed to kill you. They were not at all like boats that were friendly and had as much desire to live as you did. Peter couldn't imagine any man having any sort of affection for an airplane. Airplanes were enemies.

But, as he rode along in the Army jeep, looking at the airplanes lined up on the hardstands, he resigned himself to having to fly in one. It was the only way to find that yellow rubber boat with, he hoped, the pouch and the codes still in it.

As the sun came up bright and hot in a cloudless sky, he picked out the airplane that, since he .had to, he wanted to ride in. It was one of the new, fast fighters. Low and sleek and, he had to admit, powerful looking, with a feeling that it was going fast just standing there in the sunshine.