Distant Thunders (36 page)

Touched and chagrined by the convoluted and somewhat backhanded compliment, Irvin nodded. “Don’t worry. Like I said, I was just kidding, but I won’t kid about stuff like that anymore. If you want me to throw salt over my shoulder, scratch a backstay, or jump up and down, spitting on myself, I’ll do it if it makes you feel better.”

Sandy and Hardee laughed. “Nah,” said Sandy, “It’ud be funny to see, but none o’ that would work anyway.”

“What is a Krakatoa?” Lelaa asked.

Sandy rolled his eyes. “A busted toe. A real bad one.”

Late that afternoon, they rounded the point. The wind had shifted out of the south and they took in everything but the staysails. The wind cooled them but their progress slowed to a crawl. Irvin wasn’t worried. The mouth of the cove he remembered so well was near, and he’d rather creep up on it than tack away and try to find it again from seaward. Better to approach it the same way S-19 had. A call came down from aloft and he knew they’d reached their destination.

“Any suggestions?” Lelaa asked.

“Ah, you’ll want to aim for the middle going in. There’s just sand, but it shifts around. The lagoon’s shaped kind of like a cursive capital E. . . .” He looked at her blank expression and drew one on the bulwark with his finger. “We want the top of the E, the northern end. There’s rollers, usually, but it gets calmer when we’re in the point’s lee. Water there was deeper too.”

“Was?”

Irvin shrugged. “Was. Places like this can change every time a storm hits.”

“Leadsmen to the bow,” Lelaa commanded loudly, then looked back at Irvin. “You were saying?” she asked politely.

Irvin knew she’d just given him another tactful lesson in seamanship. “Ah, that’s it. We sail in and anchor as close to shore as the tide will let us. We should see the boat.”

Simms
crept into the cove, her consort staying well back to avoid any hazards the flagship might encounter. Irvin and all the submariners were on the fo’c’sle staring ahead, passing the binoculars around and listening to the leadsman’s shouted depths.

“Goddamn, we should see her by now!” Tex erupted suddenly. He had the glasses.

“Maybe,” Whitcomb replied. The beach they’d left her on was still a mile or so ahead and it was hard to focus the binoculars while the ship passed through the rollers.

Hardee reached for the binoculars. “Here, let me have those a moment, please,” he said, somewhat imperiously. Tex handed them over, but then made comic gestures behind the boy’s back when he turned. He understood the concept of midshipmen just fine, but he wasn’t used to taking orders from sixteen-year-old kids. Hardee put the strap around his neck and quickly scampered up into the foretop—no simple feat with the ship pitching so—and scanned the shoreline from a higher perspective. The Lemurian lookouts probably had better vision than he did, even with binoculars, but none of them had ever seen the submarine before. They didn’t really know what to look for.

“There she is!” he suddenly cried down triumphantly.

“Where?” Irvin shouted back.

“About where she was, but . . . all I can really see is the conn tower! It looks like it’s leaning toward the sea!”

Irvin looked at the other submariners. When they left, the boat was almost entirely exposed and leaning hard to port—away from the sea.

“Well,” he said, “at least she’s still here. I guess we’ll know the score when we go ashore.”

Simms
and her consort anchored a quarter mile from the beach, where there’d be plenty of water under their keels even when the tide was out. Irvin was anxious to get a look at the task before them, but decided not to waste a trip ashore just for sightseeing. All the ship’s barges went over the side filled with equipment; the disassembled steam engine was their “compact” model, but the parts were still heavy and bulky. The generator was one assembly, and although it wasn’t very big, it was heavy. Other tools and equipment went as well, but no camping gear or foodstuffs. They wouldn’t have time to establish their outpost that evening, and Irvin wanted to reimpress on everyone the hostile nature of some of the inhabitants of Talaud. Tomorrow they’d build a base camp, assemble the equipment they’d brought, and try to discourage the various predators he felt sure had returned to the area in their absence.

Rowing ashore, Irvin noticed few strikes at the boat. He’d gotten used to the incessant thumping of the flashies in the waters he’d crossed more recently and wondered why there weren’t as many here. There were some really big, goofy-looking sharks, he remembered. Maybe that was why. Or maybe it was the deep water all around. He shook his head. Something else for the irrepressible Courtney Bradford to figure out.

His boat nudged ashore and he hopped into the calf-deep water, shoes tied around his neck. Once on the dry sand, he sat down and pulled the battered shoes on his feet. Even while he did so, he looked at the submarine—or what he could see of her. They’d realized, the closer they came to shore, that the boat had been virtually buried in the sand. Not just buried, but sunk in the sand as well. He could easily imagine how it happened. A big storm had lashed the island, maybe even the one that was brewing when they left it. The surge rolled the sub back and forth on the wet, loosening sand, slowly displacing that beneath her, and dragging her down into it. When she was almost level with the beach, the sand collected atop her until all that remained visible was the tower and the four-inch-fifty gun. Irvin stood and approached the boat with the other men.

Lelaa stared at what little was visible in wonder.

“You went under the water in
that
?”

“She’s a lot bigger than she looks,” Tex said defensively.

“Jeez. She’s plumb
buried
!” said Danny Porter. “How the hell are we gonna get her out of
that
!”

Carpenter’s Mate Sid Franks laughed. He’d been talking with some of the ’Cats in his division. “Hell, this is the best thing that could have happened!”

“What do you mean?” asked Irvin.

“Well, sir, if she was still high and dry, we’d have had to dig a hole out from under her. No way we could push or pull her in the water. We could have built rollers, I guess, but we would’ve had to run them out in water deep enough for stuff to eat us. We couldn’t have made them stay where we wanted them either. This way, we just dig her out and dredge a channel into the lagoon!”

“Okay, I can see it’s easier to dig her out, but how do we dredge your little canal?”

“Easy. Well, not
easy
, but simple, maybe. We securely moor the ships and use their anchors to dredge a trench! Actually, I’m sure one of you geniuses can come up with something better than an anchor—maybe a scoop or something. We scoop the sand, hoist the anchors, or whatever, into the boats, bring it back, and reposition it. Then we do it again.”

“We’ll have to ‘do it again’ a lot of times,” Danny mused, “but yeah, that’ll work better than if we had to relaunch her.”

“Everybody hold your horses,” Irvin said. The sun had touched the treetops at the jungle’s edge. “First, you guys, all but Danny, help get that stuff ashore.” He pointed where dozens of ’Cats were carrying crates from the boats to the beach. “Then we get to work tomorrow.”

“What are you and Danny going to do?” asked Tex, a little irritated.

“We’re going to climb up there”—Irvin motioned with his chin at the conn tower—“and crack the hatch.” He took a battle lantern out of the pack he’d been carrying. “You can go on all you want about refloating the old gal, and that’s swell, but the first thing I need to do is decide whether there’s any point.” He sighed. “Hell, fellas, all that banging around might have opened her up like a sardine can. She might be full of water, for all we know.”

Suddenly, the ground shivered perceptibly beneath their feet and they heard a dull rumble even above the surf.

“What the hell?”

“Mr. Laumer, look!” Hardee almost shouted. He was pointing southwest, toward the volcano. From where they stood, they couldn’t see the mountain itself—the coastal trees were too tall—but they easily saw the gray column of smoke and ash piling into the sky. It seemed to glow just a bit at the bottom, and Irvin wondered if the setting sun was causing it. With the wind now out of the south, they were likely to get some of that ash.

“I sure wish you’d quit doing that,” Whitcomb said through clenched teeth. “Think positive, Mr. Laumer. The only thing the matter with her was she was outta fuel. She took a hell of an ash-canning by a Jap tin can. If that didn’t open her up, a few little waves ain’t goin’ to.”

Irvin nodded and took his eyes off the tower of smoke. “Okay. I’m sure she’s ready for sea,” he said, a little sarcastically, “but Danny and I will make that decision and we’re going to make it fast. Tomorrow we’ll start work on one of two things: refloating S-19 or breaking her up. Captain Reddy himself ordered me—
ordered me
—to make that determination as soon as I laid eyes on her, and that’s what I’m going to do. If Danny and I come out of that boat and say we’re taking her apart, there won’t be any discussions or arguments. Tomorrow we start taking her apart. I know she means a lot to you guys—she means a lot to me too—but Captain Reddy’s right. We need what she’s made of a lot more than we need
her
. Is that understood?

A little taken aback by Laumer’s sudden transformation from an easygoing shipmate to an officer who expected his orders to be obeyed, all the submariners nodded. Lelaa nodded too, in satisfaction.

“That said,” Irvin continued, “it’s my genuine hope that we can get her out of here in one piece. It would be easier, I think, and then we’d have all of her and not just the stuff we can get at. If we have to break her up, there won’t be another trip to bring back more of her. Next time it might all be buried or gone and a lot will go to waste.” He shrugged. “And who knows, Captain Reddy might decide we still need a submarine for some reason.” He looked at Lelaa, then back at his men. “So now you know how I feel. One way or another, we
will
accomplish our mission and there
won’t
be any bitching.” He looked at the column of smoke. “And whatever we do, I think we need to do it quick. I have a weird feeling this island isn’t too happy to have us back.”

That went . . . okay
, he thought as he and Danny made their way up the damp dune toward the conning tower.
They’re all swell guys, but Captain Reddy’s right.
Somebody
always has to be in charge.
Well, he might not be the best choice, but he was there. Now that the job was at hand and he was off Lelaa’s ship, the time had come for him to step up.

There was a space between the four-inch-fifty and the conn tower that was free of sand, for the most part, and he eased onto the rotting strakes. They actually seemed to give a little beneath his weight. Somewhere beneath the sand was the top of the pressure hull but he saw none of it. He hoped it didn’t look as bad as what he could see of the conn tower and the exposed areas of the gun. Apparently all the paint had been blasted away and everything was an almost uniform reddish brown. They’d sealed the gun as best they could before they left and he hoped the seal still held. He hoped the submarine’s seals still held, for that matter, but his heart began to sink.

“Here,” he said, pointing at the gun access hatch on the front of the conn tower, “let’s see if we can get in that way.”

“Sure,” said Danny. The hatch was a new addition, not originally built with the sub, but like many of her sisters, S-19 had been upgraded—a little. Kind of like
Walker
and her Asiatic Fleet sisters, S-19 was literally generations behind the state of the art. They’d had so many accidents with the S-boats, however, many of them fatal, they’d been forced to make a few modifications over the years. The hatch was one. It was intended as a means to pass ammunition to the gun’s crew, and as an emergency escape outlet. The ability to escape the dangerous boats had been deemed an important feature. Besides the infamous
Squalus
incident, Irvin remembered hearing about several S-Boat accidents. In one case, the sub sank, leaving nothing but her stern poking out of the open ocean and her surviving crew had to be cut out. Another sinking of a different boat had left the bow exposed, and the crew escaped through a torpedo tube! Regardless how many “escape hatches” the boats now had, far too many of the class had gone down with all hands before the war even started.

“Damn, it’s stuck!” Irvin said, trying to undog the hatch. “Give me a hand!”

Danny moved to join him, and together they strained with all their might. No go. “Must’ve rusted shut,” Danny said ominously. Irvin glanced up at a sound and saw Lelaa standing there.

“Let me help.” Awkwardly arranged around the small wheel, the three of them gave another tug. To Irvin’s consternation and Lelaa’s delight, the dog finally spun.

“See? You just needed ‘girl help.’ I didn’t really do anything but touch the handle. You Amer-i-caans say that ships are ‘shes’ even when you give them ‘he’ names. Maybe you’re right. Girls always listen better to girls.”

Danny made a rude noise and spun the wheel to its stop. Looking at Laumer, he raised the hatch.

After the better part of a year exposed to fresh open air, they weren’t prepared for the stench that wafted out. It was ungodly, even to Danny. His submariner’s brain instantly categorized most of the smells, however, and even as he almost retched and stepped quickly away, his mood brightened a little.

“Aggh! People live in that?” Lelaa gasped.

“No!” Irvin insisted. “At least . . . not this bad. We used to vent her out every day. She spent most of her time on the surface, not all buttoned up. There’s months of stink down there that’s been baking in the hot sun!”

“A little more than that, Mr. Laumer,” Danny said. “There’s mold and mildew and other things, but she doesn’t smell any gassier than she did when we sealed her up.”