Torpedo Run (7 page)

Now with all her torpedoes in the water
Slewfoot
had nothing left with which she could hurt the destroyers. All she could do now was to try to save her own life.

As she fled for the smoke she was broadside to the destroyers, totally exposed to their guns and still held in the grip of their lights.

Jason looked ahead for a second at the wall of smoke so vague, so far away. Then he looked through his sights again at the three destroyers, and they seemed to him to be only a few yards away.

Somehow the shells that were being fired at him did not bother Jason. To him they were just something that caused towers of water to rise from the flat sea all around him. To Jason the lights were the enemy, the hard, blazing, unwinking eyes of the searchlights.

One by one the searchlights went out, the dark, invisible bullets following in the path of the tracers, until Jason could find no more to aim his guns at. Now only the sides of the destroyers showed light of any sort and that was a mean flickering, dotted with larger gouts from the turrets.

"Good shooting," Peter yelled down to him.

With the lights gone, Peter began to think that they were going to reach the smoke alive. Salvos were still landing all around the boat and the tracers were either floating close over his head or falling short, striking the water and sizzling out.

He was counting off the seconds of the torpedo run, when it happened.

He was looking ahead across the dark sea at the faraway cloud of smoke when the gray-white wall rose directly in front of him, and kept on rising, higher and higher.

He tried to wheel her, but it was too close. "Hang on!" he yelled, and then she hit it.

Slewfoot
was going very fast, half her forward hull out of the water, bow high, the three Packards ramming every ounce of their power into the propellers. As Peter yanked the wheel over with one hand, he yanked all three throttles back.

It was too late. The boat hit the column of water almost bows on still traveling at high speed. It was like striking a stone wall. The shock of it tore men loose from their grips and slung them back along the deck. The force of the impact ripped the port torpedo racks, still flipped over, clean off the boat. Water bent the steel struts of the gun mounts and then struck the bridge structure, cracking it open, tearing off the windshield as it poured over the top.

Solid, racing water slammed against the tank compartments poured down into the radar shack, rushed on aft to crash against the Bofors and the depth charges, almost drowning Stucky and Mitch who were hiding behind them.

Then it poured off the stern and
Slewfoot
was left motionless in the water, stopped in her tracks.

As Peter rammed the throttles forward again, he yelled, "Anybody hurt?" as he watched the dark forms of men getting slowly to their feet.

"I guess not," Goldberg said, untangling Britches from the starboard racks. "But let's don't do that again."

As
Slewfoot
began to gather speed, Peter yelled to Britches to go below and see if she was taking water.

In the engine compartment Skeeter and the Professor were getting up off the hot deck, Sko was climbing back into the tractor seat. "Guess we caught one," Skeeter said, reaching up for a life jacket as he headed for the door.

"Get back to your engine!" Sko yelled at him. "Nobody leaves here as long as they're running."

Peter counted out loud as he wove her through the forest: " … fourteen Missouri … fifteen … "

Britches stuck his head out of the hatch and called, "Don't see any water coming in, Captain."

Peter waved acknowledgment and went on counting, and began to wonder if he had made a mistake. The torpedoes were moving at 33 knots on a range a little over a thousand yards. They should be getting there, or they had missed.

In the darkness he could just make out the outline of the destroyers and saw them turning toward him. Not directly, but on a course that would block him from reaching the smoke.

" … Missouri … " Peter counted, "eighteen ..
"

The lead destroyer, turning hard to starboard, was throwing a huge white wave when Peter saw the weird glow beginning in her hull—low and dim and far down. It was, at first just a dull, spreading patch of orange light which looked to him the way it did when he was a kid and held a flashlight against the palm of his hand.

He watched it, fascinated, as it glowed more brightly and began to spread like a disease in the hull of the ship.

And then the destroyer blew up.

Peter couldn't believe it. Couldn't believe that a living, moving, fighting ship could so suddenly come apart like that.

Great pieces and sections and parts of it hurled up into the sky and were followed by the yellow-white flame of the explosion. Then everything was smothered in the bloom of smoke, lit from the inside by the flame.

Peter had to give credit to his enemy. The other two destroyers reacted almost instantly, throwing themselves hard around in the water to put their bows toward the oncoming torpedoes. For a moment the two ships concentrated on their own lives.

It was the moment
Slewfoot
needed. She disappeared into the smoke of her own making, raced through it and, in the clear again, was into the Siassi Strait, threading her way through the rocks and shoals where nothing bigger than she could go.

Slewfoot
reached the mouth of the Morobe just at dawn. As the sun came up the men looked around at their boat and were sad.

Slewfoot
was a mess. The destruction of the port rack had torn away part of the deck and freeboard, leaving long ragged splinters of plywood. Her topside was swept clean
—
the running lights, signal light, searchlight all gone. The hold-down bolts of the gun turrets had been torn almost free, and the heavy steel struts were bent like wires. The depth charges had been ripped out of the racks, and even the Bofors mount was bent.

Murph steered her slowly up the river to the rickety dock the crew had made out of empty gas drums and logs and Mitch jumped over with a line.

As the engines sighed to a stop, so did Sko, collapsing forward against the panel. Skeeter and the Professor, staggering a little, got out of the compartment far enough to fall exhausted into the soaking wet bunks. The rest of the men, moving like things in a bad dream, made their way slowly across the docks and slogged through the mud toward Snob Hill.

As Murph and Mitch were starting to leave, Peter called them back. "Mitch, the 119 boat is going down to Milne Bay. If we don't catch it, it'll be a week, maybe two, before we get another chance. You can sleep all the way. And they've got a good cook."

"Who can sleep with that crew of apes?" Mitch grumbled.

"I thought you liked apes … Murph, I'll go along with Mitch, or those Stateside supply officers won't give us the time of day. As soon as the men get moving again see what you can do patching her up."

The 119 boat was nosing down the river and Peter hailed her, asking for a ride. Mitch, still grumbling, jumped with him to the 119, and as Peter went up on the bridge, Mitch turned to the 119's bosun and said, "I just won the war so now I need a little sleep."

"Welcome, friend," the other bosun said. "Take any bunk on the boat as long as it's right here on deck. We don't want a hero like you to dry out, so we'll keep you sprinkled with nice salty sea-water."

And they sprinkled him all the way to Milne Bay.

Milne Bay was by now far behind the fighting and was, to Peter and Mitch, civilization. There were real wooden buildings, a barbershop, ice cream, hot water, Stateside chow. Best of all, the PTs mother ship was anchored in Milne Bay with spare parts for the boats.

They had very little time to enjoy it. It took most of the night to round up the things they needed to put
Slewfoot
back into fighting trim. Then it took the rest of the night to get them loaded aboard the 119, ready for a dawn departure.

They did manage to sneak in a breakfast of ham and eggs, pancakes with syrup, waffles with butter, toasted bread, some cereal, and honest-to-John real cow's milk—not the powdered stuff you mixed with water in a helmet.

Then just before they left they spent all the money they had at the gedunk stand. They got pogey bait—candy, chewing gum, cigarettes (and huge cigars for Sko to chew when he got nervous)—and soap and toothpaste and brushes, paperback books, shoestrings and web belts, pens and ink, and paper. Peter remembered Goldberg's laughing in the middle of the fight about Britches shaving, so he bought Britches a razor and shaving soap and foo-foo juice and a styptic pencil to cure the cuts. Then he bought Murph some deodorant because, as Murph freely admitted, when he got scared he smelled like a billy goat.

On the way back to Morobe, Peter and Mitch sat on the foredeck of the 119, enjoying the sunshine and enjoying having somebody else doing all the work.

"Scuttlebutt says we're moving up pretty soon," Mitch said.

"That's what I heard," Peter said.

"You know, I heard about a guy—I think he was a motormac first, or second—who had orders to join a ship, and he never could catch up with her. That guy wandered all over the world trying to catch up with the ship he was supposed to report to. Every time he'd get to a place his ship would've just left for some place else. I guess he's still wandering."

"Join the Navy and see the world," Peter said.

"Maybe that's what we can do," Mitch said.

Peter glanced at him. "That's what we
did."

"No, I mean, maybe we can just keep moving
Slewfoot
around so that new commanding officer—what's his name—the girl's name?"

"Adrian Archer," Peter said.

"Yeah, him. So he can't ever catch up with us. Like he gets to Morobe, and we're up at Madang or Wewak or left New Guinea altogether. He could wander around for months."

"Yeah," Peter said, not paying much attention. He was trying to figure out when was the last time he'd had any sleep—thirty hours ago, forty?

"Then we could just go on like we're going. You could be skipper, and Murph can act like exec, unless he gets out of line."

"Yeah," Peter said.

"What do we need with a new captain?" Mitch asked.

Peter finally paid attention to him. "The boat doesn't need any captain at all, Mitch."

Mitch said slowly, "It needs a captain. But not a new one."

"Here comes the rain," Peter said, and they moved aft to find a little shelter. Later, Peter wondered if the rain hadn't had a lot to do with what happened. The rain and a sort of delayed reaction after the fight with the destroyers and the no sleep.

Anyway, it happened. It was, of course, raining hard when they got back to the river and nosed up the dripping green tunnel. It was about three o'clock in the afternoon, but it seemed almost night with the jungle and the rain cutting off the sunlight.

Mitch saw it first, and for a moment he couldn't believe it. He sat there in a puddle of rain and stared at
Slewfoot.
"Look," he said.

Peter raised his head against the rain and looked.

Slewfoot
was tied up to her rickety dock and some repairs had been made, but she still looked a little old, a little tired, and pretty beat-up as she floated there in the rain.

On her foredeck was the crew.
Lined up.
In
ranks.

For Peter the anger started right then. It went all over him like a wave and got stronger and stronger until he couldn't handle it.

There they were: Sko, the Preacher, the Professor, Britches, Sam, Goldberg hulking up in the rain, Murphy shrinking against it, Skeeter and Stucky and Jason and Willie. Lined up. In two stiff ranks. Not dressed in the dungarees torn off above the knees, not in the ragged-sleeved and faded blue shirts, not barefoot.

They were—all of them—standing there in dress whites—white jumpers with the black neckerchiefs bedraggled in the rain; white, bell-bottom trousers; black shoes. And every one of them had his white hat on.

Peter could feel all the training and the discipline and the indoctrination that had turned him into a naval officer holding him back, but it wasn't enough. He knew as he got up and ran forward on the 119 boat and jumped over the
Slewfoot
that he was losing his temper like a little boy, but he couldn't help it.

An officer he had never seen before was standing in front of the men—an officer dressed in creased pants (now the crease was soaking out in the rain) and a creased shirt with the sleeves rolled down, and a black necktie knotted and two-blocked at his throat, and a
cap
with rain running off the shiny black visor and the gold braid glowing with newness even in the dim light. Standing there reading something from a piece of paper.

Peter took him by the shoulder and swung him around and said, his voice shaking with anger, "What's going on around here? What are you doing to my men?" Then he turned the officer loose and faced the crew. Through his rage he saw Murph and Sko and Goldberg shaking their heads in a silent warning, but he couldn't stop. "You guys … get out of the rain and get out of those clothes." But they just stood there, at attention, in ranks.

Peter turned back to the officer, knowing now who he was. Suddenly all the anger went away, just dribbling out of him and leaving him weak. "Those guys are tired," he said.

"Just who are you?" the officer, a lieutenant junior grade, asked.

Peter looked at him now for the first time. He was a tall, thin man with a thin face and a long thin nose. His eyes were bright, hard blue—to Peter they looked about as sympathetic as a bird's eyes—and he had a tightly set, stubborn mouth and a stubborn, lean chin. He was blond with a fresh washed skin and sandy-colored hair.

"I'm the Exec," Peter said wearily. "Peter Brent."

"Well, Mr. Brent, I have just assumed command of this ship. My name is Archer, Lieutenant Junior Grade Adrian Archer."

All Peter could think of was the old Navy rule: any vessel that can be lifted out of the water and put aboard a ship is a
boat,
not a ship.