Ghostboat (24 page)

“What was it?” asked the Captain.

“Play in the main air-bank circuit contacts. You could hardly notice, but they weren’t making a clean connection. Witzgall’s shimming them in right now.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, sir.”

Byrnes didn’t even try to mask his triumph. He looked at Hardy with a flinty srnile, then thanked Cassidy.

Cassidy’s head disappeared down the hatch. The Captain, still pleased, rocked back and forth on his heels, then turned, pursed his lips, and fixed Hardy with iron-hard eyes. “So much for your twenty-hundred-hour theory, Professor. You may know all there is to know about Devil’s Triangles, geomagnetic anomalies, and other things we mere mortals aren’t privy to. But you can leave the running of the
Candlefish
to me. I don’t want to hear any more about when I should or should not surface. Is that understood?”

Hardy seemed to wilt. Without a word, he moved to the hatch and went below.

Frank had mixed emotions: He was glad to see Hardy chewed out, but he did not want to turn the man off and lose his cooperation. He moved alongside Byrnes. “Captain,” he said, “it took work to get him out here. Hard work. Don’t chase him away.”

Byrnes looked straight ahead.
“Your
hard work, Mr. Frank. This whole lashup boils down to
your
hard work. Do you realize we could have lost this submarine tonight?” he shouted. “As long as we can operate safely, we’ll go on. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to jeopardize this crew just to verify your hare-brained theories—and
his!
Understood?”

Frank could only nod.

“Get below and contact the
Frankland,”
Byrnes ordered in a burst of authority. “Tell them we’ve located the problem and we’re secure. We’ll submerge at 0400. If we get a visual contact with them before then, fine. If not, we’ll see them tomorrow night.”

Still shaking with anger, Frank stood by as Giroux raised the
Frankland.

Cook informed Frank that they had gone to general quarters as soon as they had heard about the problem.

“It’s good to know someone’s thinking straight,” Frank replied, ignoring Giroux’s startled look. But when Cook asked, hesitantly, whether Frank had considered calling the whole thing off, Frank had no hesitation at all about snapping back a quick “No!”

He signed off before Cook could apologize and start a campaign of rationalization. He did not want to hear any of it.
 

Jack Hardy slipped into the wardroom. It was empty, and he needed solitude and quiet, time to examine his feelings. Maybe the Captain was right—he could be pressing too hard. But this was supposed to be a scientific experiment. The only official reason for his presence was to make certain that his log was accurate. Accepted scientific procedures should be followed. To deviate would do nothing but hinder the experiment. Why couldn’t Byrnes and the others see that? Hardy frowned at his reflection in the coffee cup.

His mood failed to brighten when Cassidy entered.

Hopalong helped himself to coffee. “Christ, it was thick up there.” He eased himself into the booth, balancing the cup and saucer.

Hardy bristled. “What does that mean?”

The chief engineer looked up from his cup, surprised at Hardy’s tone. “The fog. Or didn’t you notice?” His spoon clinked, stirring the coffee.

Hardy felt foolish. He was convinced that Cassidy didn’t like him, but Cassidy was being oddly sociable now.

“Tell me something,” Hopalong said. “This business tonight—did the same thing happen on your original patrol?”

“You mean failing to surf ace? No. Why?”

Cassidy sipped his coffee and considered it. “Well, Professor, if you had those foul-ups then... Mind you, I’m not superstitious, but forewarned is forearmed and all that shit...” Cassidy’s face was friendly, but the question in his eyes gave him away.

Hardy relaxed. Maybe his impression of the yardbird was wrong. “The only thing I left out of the log,” he said, deciding to trust Cassidy, “was the plan that Basquine came up with.”

“What plan?”

Hardy hesitated. “You were pretty close to the truth when you called him psychotic.”

“I was just mouthing off. What plan?”

Hardy snorted, then spoke into his beard. “Billy G. Basquine was the nearest thing to a certified nut that I’ve ever come across. Just before the boat went down, he was going to come off station,
assigned station,
and take the
Candlefish
into Tokyo Bay.”

Cassidy was a moment in reacting; then he said, “Well, isn’t that initiative?”

“Initiative!” Hardy spluttered ,and pushed his coffee away. “Goddamned lunacy is what that was!”

Calming down, he outlined Basquine’s lone-wolf plan, meant to be the absolute, complete, final moment of glory for the USS
Candlefish.

Cassidy listened, a look of amazement growing on his craggy features. “But that was December, 1944. The war was almost over—we just about
had
the Pacific. Why take such a risk then?”

“Tonnage! He wanted to chalk up a record... make a name for himself and the boat,
 
join the ranks of the heroes. He was so hungry for targets, I think he would have sunk anything—including our own ships! And Bates, the Exec—” Hardy struggled to keep the hard edge of remembered rancor out of his voice. “If anything, he encouraged Basquine.”

Cassidy shook his head in disbelief. “All alone? No diversion? No air cover?” Hardy shook his head too. “They
were
nuts,” Cassidy said, “both of them. Basquine
and
Bates.” He drained his cup and rose. “One other thing I gotta ask you. That talk you gave in the wardroom—with the skewers and the globe. For my own satisfaction, is there anything
to
that?”

Hardy smiled at Cassidy’s candor. “Just a theory, Hopalong,” he said. “Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Then you don’t expect any trouble when we get to this Latitude Thirty?”

“None whatsoever. Why?”

“I’ve been calming down the crews. Now maybe I can feel like an honest man.” He got up and headed out, turning at the door. “Hey, Professor, if you’ve got a sweet tooth, check out the galley in about twenty minutes.”

The submarine plowed steadily on, still wrapped in the depths of the massive fog bank, the muffled throb of her engines the only evidence of her presence. The lookouts had given up on their binoculars; they huddled on their perches, safe in the knowledge that the ship’s radar could and would pierce the all-pervading grayness and warn them of anything in their path. The strident hoot of the
Frankland’
s fog horn, deadened by the mist, was their only contact with the outside world as the
Candlefish,
fog curling and licking at her sides, inched through the Pacific night in a cloak of complete isolation.

Ed Frank came off watch at 2400, dropped into the conning tower, and gave the quartermaster details to record in the ship’s log. While he waited for Lang to complete the notations, he finished sorting out all his options in silence. The Captain was his problem at the moment. Byrnes, with his safety-first policy, still could not scrub the cruise without damned good cause. If Byrnes was considering termination, he would need something more substantial than minor equipment failure to get Melanoff and Kellogg to agree. Of one thing Frank was positive: Louis F. Byrnes would not do anything that would adversely reflect on his service profile. Cutting the cruise short without ample reason, with the attendant Board of Inquiry, could become a nasty blemish on his spotless record.

Hardy left the comfort of the wardroom and headed for the galley. Byrnes was not in the control room; he must have turned in for the night. The men in control were relaxed but bundled up. The open conning-tower hatch and the ladder-well formed a natural funnel, and cold, moist air chilled the compartment.

Hardy stepped into the galley. Cookie and one of his mates were bard at work in the tiny space that served as food-preparation center for the sub. Just aft, in the crew’s mess, several small groups were clustered around tables—some reading, some writing—and there was a furious game of acey-deucy in progress.

“What can I do for you, Professor?” Cookie looked up with his customary surly expression.

“Something smells good, and I heard a rumor.”

Cookie snorted. “Did it start with the stomach that walks like a man?”

That was Cookie’s somewhat affectionate name for Cassidy. In the eleven days since leaving Pearl, a feud had developed between them. Cassidy needled Cookie about the quality of his food, and Cookie bitched about Cassidy’s bottomless pit.

Hardy smiled and held out a pleading hand.

Cookie wilted. “Only one,” he said, with mother-hen firmness.

“Right.” Hardy nodded.

Cookie placed a fragrant hot apple popover on a plate and handed it over. He watched Hardy’s mouth close over it and the look of enjoyment spread on his face. Then he turned proudly back to his lasagne.

“Hey, Cookie! Any more of this stuff?”

Hardy glanced up as the pharmacist’s mate, Dankworth, came in waving a jar in his outstretched paw.

“Jesus H. Christ! What is it with you, Dankworth?”

Dankworth grinned sheepishly. “Can’t help it. I got a
craving.”

Hardy froze in mid-bite. Dankworth was waving an empty peanut butter jar. Cookie reluctantly handed him a fresh one. Dankworth unscrewed the cap and quickly smeared some crackers, which he tossed on a plate. He secured the lid, returned the jar to Cookie, and headed for the mess, happily munching.

Hardy slid his plate to the counter, mumbled thanks, then looked into the mess. Dankworth was seated facing away, but Hardy could tell from his movements that the crackers were steadily disappearing. He was not only eating, he was
concentrating
on eating.

Rattled, Hardy headed forward, disturbed with himself. He was struggling, trying to keep the image of Slugger out of his mind... Albert P. Daley, “Slugger” from the crew of the
Candlefish—
1944.

Frank, who had made it his business to look up Cassidy after coming off watch, to recheck the battery cage, also had a glimpse of Dankworth diving into his peanut butter. Coming through the crew’s quarters, he had a head-on view as the pharmacist’s mate flopped onto Clampett’s bunk and demolished his third load of goodies. Frank was even more surprised than Hardy, but for a different reason.

Human nature being what it was, Dankworth should have been the last man on board to have a craving for that stuff. With that latrine-cleaning episode only days old, it seemed unlikely Dankworth would be seen within three hundred feet of any peanut butter. But there he was, filling his face and obviously enjoying it.

“Well,” thought Frank, “there are better things to do than watch a man make a pig of himself.”

But he did look back from the hatch. It
was
strange.

CHAPTER 13

December 2, 1974
 

Frank got to sleep around 0130, after lying in silence with his arms clasped behind his head for an hour, staring at the upper bunk.

He didn’t want to think about the host of unsettling things that kept cropping up. Hardy’s insistent adherence to his own precious words, the failure of the boat to respond... The important, thing was to keep the purpose in focus, never lose sight of the original goal, no matter what peculiarities became manifest. Not that he expected more incidents, but he was determined to hold to his method for dealing with everything. The method was simple: Don’t let Ed Frank lose control of the situation for even one minute. If that meant bucking Byrnes and Hardy, and everyone else, then so be it. Frank pulled his arms under the covers and relaxed. Once he was satisfied that his grasp on events could not be loosened, he felt able to rest and so let himself drift off to sleep.

At 0300 he was awakened by an urgent hand on his shoulder. He endured it for a moment, then suddenly flipped over and stared into Byrnes’s worried face.

“I’m sorry,” the Captain said. “Can you give me a minute?”

Frank nodded and rubbed his eyes. He sat up and watched Byrnes pacing the stateroom. Dorriss was cocooned on an upper bunk.

“What’s the matter?” asked Frank.

Byrnes kept pacing, his jaws working. “I’ve been in the radio room—in and out of it and up to the bridge like a goddamned monkey, non-stop for the last two hours. We’ve lost radio contact.”

“What?”

“With the escort.” Frank’s incredulous expression made Byrnes snap back. “I can’t raise the
Frankland!
First visual, now radio.”

Frank let it sink in, then stared at the deck. He watched the Captain’s shiny black shoes pass back and forth three times before anything more was said.

“What about radar?” Frank asked.

“Still got them on the scopes,” Byrnes admitted. “But how reliable is that?”

“Perfectly.”

“Oh?” Byrnes said nothing more, just gave Frank a quick, skeptical glance. Then he stepped to the center of the compartment and thrust his hands into his pockets.