Ghostboat (16 page)

“Have you got someone in mind?” asked Frank.

“As a matter of fact, I do. There’s a yardbird up at Mare Island. Cassidy.”

One of the SubPac officers cleared his throat. “I know him. Little guy. About sixty. Been there forever. But he’s civil service now.”

“He
was
Navy,” said Byrnes.

“Do we want civil service?” asked one of the other officers.

“I want
him”
Byrnes insisted.

Everyone shifted in discomfort. Frank said nothing. “Then it’s settled,” Byrnes announced. “Let’s turn to officers.”

Frank stood up and went to the blackboard with a piece of chalk and wrote in a name opposite the post
Navigation.
“As long as we’re picking favorites—our navigation officer will be Jack Hardy.” The SubPac officers, Byrnes, Cook, all stared at him. “And keep it under your hat, because he’s playing hard to get.”

Byrnes gave Frank one of his frigid glares, then said quietly, “I want another qualified navigator aboard.”

The SubPac officers agreed immediately. Frank felt himself losing ground. He gave in, irked that he now found himself in competition with the new captain.

November 4, 1974

The first of the new crew began arriving early that morning. Moist of the machinists, engineers, oilers, and throttlemen had been culled from the ranks of available submariners and reservists at Pearl—on a volunteer basis. Each man was told the same story: The
Candlefish
was a World War II vintage submarine in mint condition and a crew was being assembled for a special sea trial across the Pacific. No reference was made to any of the more mysterious circumstances surrounding the mission.

Hardy came to Frank’s quarters aboard the
Imperator
just before noon and dropped a hefty notebook on his desk.

“That’s it,” he said cryptically, and flopped down on the vinyl couch. He was tired, drained. “I spent all last night finishing it.”

Frank opened the book and skimmed through page after page of readable longhand. Dates, names, places, long descriptions of events: Hardy had remembered a great deal. Frank could not restrain an excited smile. “Pretty good work,” he said.

“As long as you’ve got what you want.”

“This looks incredibly thorough.”

Hardy nodded, relieved.

Then Frank took a daring shot in the dark. “Well, that wraps it up for you. I can get you out of here within three hours and we’ll take over. If we have any questions, can we reach you at Scripps?”

Hardy thought it over a long time, then said quietly, “I’d like to hang around for a few days. I might have made some mistakes in the log.”

“Suit yourself.” Frank rose with a straight face. “I have to go down and check out some of the crew. Want to come along?”

“Yeah.”

Hardy stood out of the way on the dock while Frank shook hands with a steady stream of new arrivals coming in by truck. The crew seemed roughly divided between boisterous old-timers—reuniting with mates they hadn’t seen in years—and enthusiastic twenty-year-old volunteers. Frank greeted each one, asked a few personal questions, then turned them over to Byrnes, whose smile was as warm as he could manage. Hardy watched them tossing their gear down the after hatch and jumping in after it. When Frank came up, he could see the nostalgia warming Hardy’s eyes.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“There’s a lot of kids.”

“Qualified kids.”

A jeep screeched around the corner at the inland end of the dock, then roared up to the end of the pier. The second it stopped, out jumped a small, skinny, craggy, sixty-year-old seaman. He hoisted his worn duffel bag over one shoulder, then padded to the edge of the dock and regarded the submarine with an amused gleam. Hardy stared at him, thoroughly taken with the man’s cocksure attitude. Frank leaned over and muttered, “Old enough for you?”

“Christ, he looks like he built this boat.”

“He did.”

Hardy glanced at Frank in surprise, then was distracted as the man jumped to the gangplank with a resounding grunt. He swaggered down to the deck and flung down his duffel. Walter “Hopalong” Cassidy tucked his thumbs into his belt loops. He stamped a foot on the deck slats and was amazed at the resilience of the wood. He marched over to the conning tower and pushed and poked at the plating, then kicked it. It rang with a solid metal thud. Pleased and surprised, he strolled back and picked up his gear, glancing over his shoulder at the conning tower. He made his way aft and tumbled down the hatch.

On the dock, Frank gave Hardy a sidelong look. The oceanographer was smiling, one hand stroking his beard.

Cassidy padded forward through the engine rooms, running his hands along the diesel shells with a professional touch. He stopped in the forward engine room and stared at main engine number one. A few technicians were still working on it, fitting new bolts into place, painting the shell, rewiring the engine stand. Cassidy flung his gear into a bunk over main engine number two on the port side, then made his way forward.

The bunks in the crew’s quarters were beginning to fill up with gear. Cassidy paused at the forward bulkhead and stared at the Ann Sheridan pinup pasted at eye level. Cassidy grinned in fond memory until a torpedoman named Clampett bumped into him.

“ ‘Scuse me, Pop.”

Cassidy blinked. He was brought down to reality—hard. Cassidy arrived in the control room just as Hardy and Frank came down the ladder.

Byrnes saw him first and managed another one of his almost friendly grins. “You’ve aged a bit, Hopalong.”

Cassidy grinned and showed well-used teeth. “You ain’t getting any younger yourself, sir.”

Hardy pressed .forward, eager to be introduced. Byrnes stood aside and motioned everyone together. “Walter Cassidy, this is Ed Frank... and Jack Hardy.”

They all shook hands. Then Frank announced, “Hardy served on the
Candlefish
during World War Two.”

Cassidy lit up like a hundred-watt bulb. “You
served
on her? Son of a bitch! For how long?”

“Eleven months.”

“You lasted eleven months with Basquine? I can’t believe that.”

“It’s true.”

“You know, when he came to Mare Island to pick up the boat in ‘42, I could have sworn the guy was psychotic.”

Hardy smiled but remained silent.

“And that’s a goddamned conservative estimate. He couldn’t wait to take her out and sink Japs. It’s all he talked about.” He turned to Byrnes. “You never knew him, did you?”

Byrnes chuckled. “Afraid I was a little too young.”

“Well, he was something.” Cassidy shook his head sagely. Then he looked up sharply at Hardy. “But for all that, you guys were never any blazing success.”

“What do you mean? What about our last patrol?”

Cassidy waved it off. “Okay—for three weeks you got lucky.”

“Lucky!”

Frank watched in amazement. Something had put Hardy on the defensive. He began telling Cassidy about the log he had just completed.

“I’d like to read it.”

Frank promised to have Hardy’s log typed and circulated among this little group.

Then, unexpectedly, Cassidy shoved in the stinger. “Hey, I’ll bet you can’t wait to get out there and relive the whole thing.”

Hardy’s mouth was open and stayed open. He didn’t know what to say. Frank replied for him. “Actually, Dr. Hardy doesn’t plan to go along.”

Cassidy was stunned. “No shit?” he said, and stared at Hardy as if he’d just been introduced to a plague.

There was nothing else Hardy could do. He shook his head meekly, smiled at Cassidy, mumbled something about “Nice to meet you,” and went up the control-room ladder. Cassidy watched him go, puzzled.

Byrnes straightened in supreme satisfaction. “Mr. Frank, I have a standby navigation officer due to report in Friday. You better get with it.”

Byrnes shook hands with Cassidy again, muttered, “Great to have you aboard,” and went aft Frank and Cassidy were alone in the control room.

“Coffee?” offered Frank.

“Sure.”

They moved into the galley and took coffee from a ready percolator, then moved to the officers’ wardroom.

Cassidy was hesitant. “I’m not exactly an officer.”

“You’re not exactly in the Navy either, but you’re assigned as chief engineer. That’s an officer’s post with an officer’s privileges. So sit down.”

Cassidy shrugged and sat. “Okay... but if it’s all the same to you, I’ll bunk with the engines.”

Frank chuckled. They sipped coffee in silence. Frank pulled out his pipe kit and assembled a smoke.

“Byrnes tell you what this is all about?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think we’re nuts?”

“Hell no,” Cassidy looked at him seriously. “I’ve been around submariners forty years, Commander. They are the most rock-headed baboons in the service. They’ll tackle anything.”

“But this is a big risk. We don’t know what we’re going to find. And I don’t think anybody coming aboard has the slightest idea that this might turn out to be dangerous.”

“Look,” said Cassidy, “we both know submariners have a lousy insurance rating. Anybody who’s going to allow himself to be sealed up at sea in this tin cigar for any length of time is living with one foot in the grave. And they’re all aware of it. Risks are nothing to them. If you told them they might not be coming back, there’s no way in the world they’d believe you. They can’t. They just learn to live with that possibility—and they live with it by ignoring it.”

He got up, drained his coffee, and thought a moment, then said, “There’s only one thing. They might be just a little superstitious. But everything’s okay on that score.” He fished in his pocket and produced a long, hairy rabbit’s foot. He grinned broadly. Frank grinned back.

November 15, 1974

The long yellow and green torpedoes were guided across from the tender and slowly lowered into the forward loading hatch.

Frank descended the hatch and dropped into the forward torpedo room. Lieutenant Cook was there with a full complement of submarine officers, Byraes’s staff. He was conducting a tour of the boat Hardy hovered in the rear of the little party.

Cook waited for the noise of the torpedoes rolling into the port mid starboard bays to abate, then indicated one of them. “In order to follow the pattern that Dr. Hardy has laid out for you, you will have to fire these at designated times during the voyage. We have equipped you with Mark 14 practice torpedoes; the warheads are non-functioning dummies. Since they will not explode on contact, you don’t have to have any reservations about firing them. That’s it for the torpedo room. Shall we move aft?”

The officers turned and started shuffling out. Cook led them. Byrnes hung back with Frank, and they both watched Jack Hardy limp to the connecting hatch and step through.

“We’re all set to go,” Byrnes said. “What about your navigation officer?”

“He’ll be there. What about yours?”

“Mine has already plotted our course,” Byrnes said with silky satisfaction.

“From a log written by mine.” Frank smiled back. He was beginning to get the hang of dealing with the captain. “Incidentally, I have decided that you’ll also have two executive officers aboard.” He watched Byrnes stiffen. “One qualified and one nose-grabber. I’m the nose-grabber.”

Byrnes looked at him a long time, then smiled back. “Fine. I’m the
captain.”

Byrnes raised a hand, and Frank edged back; he thought the skipper was going to tweak his nose to make his point. But Byrnes merely straightened his cap and went through the hatch.

Frank was left alone to reflect on the fact that bluff carries only so far. And he still didn’t have Jack Hardy.

But he felt he was close.

November 19, 1974

They were two days away from sailing. Frank and Cook had finished all preparations for the voyage: All stores were aboard, the crew was complete, the boat had been pronounced fit by yard inspectors. There were only two things remaining: the trim dive—which would be conducted on their first day out, in deference to Hardy’s log—and the posting of Hardy as navigation officer.

For several days Frank had been waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it finally did.

Cook arrived with a memo from Smitty. The timing was perfect: It was too late to fight back. Smitty was notifying Captain Byrnes, with a copy to Ed Frank, that his escort would be the USS
Frankland,
a special-duty destroyer which had recently been used in a series of
Glomar-
type tests. The
Frankland
was already equipped with numerous undersea research devices which would be working ahead of the
Candlefish,
sensing changes in ocean currents, electromagnetic fields, and anything else that could put the submarine into jeopardy. Byrnes’s instructions were short and simple: At the first sign of unusual ocean behavior, he was to fall back on the
Frankland.
He was in no way to place the crew of the
Candlefish
in danger.