Ghosts of Bungo Suido (8 page)

“With good damn reason,” Gar said, realizing that all his objections had already been surfaced and overruled at PacFleet headquarters. “That would be like trying to get a sub into the Chesapeake Bay, right past all the Norfolk navy bases.”

Forrester said nothing.

“And then? Suppose we do get a boat in? He’s going to drive up to the Kure arsenal in, what, fifty, sixty feet of water? Unable to submerge? And torpedo a carrier at the pier?”

Gar had raised his voice enough to attract the attention of the other skippers in the lounge.

Forrester leaned closer and gave him a meaningful look. “Not just any boat, Gar.”

FOUR

The next day Gar spent cloistered with the hydrographic office at SubPac headquarters, studying the charts they did have of the Seto, as the Inland Sea was known in Japan. Captain Forrester had told him the entire mission was extremely close-hold, even within the already highly restricted world of sub skippers. Gar was not to discuss it with anyone yet until given specific permission. “If it makes you feel any better,” he said, “the admiral is going to have one more try at turning this brain fart off. But I have to tell you: Nimitz almost never changes his mind once he’s made a decision.” Gar had wanted to say,
Nimitz was a sub skipper—if he really wants a sub to get into the Inland Sea, let him try it, then.
Sadly, he was brave but not that brave.

He spent the afternoon on board the Dragon, checking on the progress of the repairs and the installation of the new sonar system.
Dragonfish
was a Balao class, new construction in early 1944, with the stronger hull and better everything inside. Captain Westfall was right about electronics beginning to take over warship design. The Dragon had been commissioned with two periscopes; now she would have four. She’d started out with one HF radio set; now she had six different radios
and
an underwater telephone system. At the beginning of the war they’d computed fire-control problems using a handheld calculator called the Is-Was and plotted the tactical picture on a copy of a chart. Now they had the torpedo data computer and a lighted plotting table that showed their position in real-time motion across a geographic plot, called a DRT. If they added one more piece of gear to the conning tower, they were all going to become very good friends every time they went to GQ, and nobody had better smile, either.

It had been difficult not to pull the exec aside and tell him about the mission that was coming their way. The closest he had come was when Russ commented on all the new gear up in the conning tower. “We’re gonna need it,” Gar had said mysteriously.

*   *   *

That evening Gar went down to the dining room. He didn’t bother to change from work khakis. The place was full for a change because of some big conference going on up at Makalapa. He had to settle for a deuce out on the lanai, which wasn’t all bad. Even though it was hotter than usual, the lanai was dark enough that he could avoid making eye contact with other skippers if he wanted to, and tonight he wanted to. He had a low tolerance for people in general, and having to listen to shipyard workers, the FM sonar engineers, the exec’s litany of daily problems, and some staffies from SubPac all afternoon hadn’t improved his disposition. He told the waitress when she finally showed up to start with a double Scotch rocks, and he’d decide after that whether or not to eat or drink this evening.

A few minutes later she brought his drink, and then the maître’d came though the lanai doors with the same woman he’d semirescued a few nights ago. This time she was definitely sober and actually quite attractive. Somewhat to his surprise she was wearing the uniform of a WAVE lieutenant commander. The pair were scanning the crowded room for a table, and there weren’t any. The maître’d saw that Gar was in uniform and gave him a discreet eyebrow. Gar nodded. He brought her over, and Gar stood up to greet her. She thanked him for letting her join him and introduced herself.

“I’m Sharon DeVeers,” she said.

“Gar Hammond,” he replied. She had a firm handshake and grayish green eyes that were no longer bloodshot. She still wore her luxuriant blond hair in a wave across one side of her forehead. “Are you one of the visiting firemen?”

“No, I’m assigned to CincPacFleet legal; I’m one of the lawyers up there.”

He signaled a passing waitress for Sharon, who ordered a ginger ale. When the waitress left he made a comment about expecting her to have a real drink. She smiled and said that she was still recovering from the hangover of the last time she’d been here.

“I can understand that—you were pretty hammered.”

She stared at him for a moment and then put a hand to her mouth. “That was you?”

“The one and only. And I believe you got ambushed by something called a mai-tai.”

“I am so sorry,” she said. “I have never been so drunk in my life. And the next day—God!”

“Lemme guess, a bunch of the guys from the office demanded that you just had to try one. Or three.”

“Bingo,” she said. “After the first one I thought it was just the best fruit concoction I had ever had, especially because it had very little liquor in it. Silly me.”

“Yup, that about describes it. I’m a Scotch man myself—straight up or on the rocks.”

“M-mmm, I like Scotch, but I save it for when I’m having a drink with a really close friend,” she said, with a definite twinkle in her eye. Gar tried to gauge how old she was. “Where are you stationed?” she asked.

“That’s a deep secret,” Gar said solemnly. “The entire war effort would grind to a halt if that were revealed.”

“Un-hunh,” she said. “Those are submariner dolphins, and you’re a commander, so I’d guess you’re one of those special people they have locked up on the top floors.”

“Listen,” he said.

She pretended to listen.

“Hear the grinding?”

“Nope.”

“Damn,”
he said. “Most women are so impressed with that.”

“You don’t have to impress me, Captain,” she said. “You were a complete gentleman the other night, so please let me spring for dinner tonight as a small measure of my appreciation.”

“Okay,” he said immediately, and she laughed. She had a very nice laugh, for a lawyer. The waitress sailed by, depositing Sharon’s ginger ale on the fly. They toasted each other.

“You have a family back in the world?” she asked.

“Nope,” Gar said. “I’m just a fleet-average sea dog. I go from sea duty to sea duty, so I never saw the need for a wife, etc. And you?”

“I was almost married once,” she said. “Right after law school. He was brilliant and unfaithful, in about equal measure. After that I decided I’d make it all about me and never looked back.”

“So,” he said. “What does CincPacFleet need with a herd of lawyers?”

“Oh, you’d be surprised at our case load. Courts-martial, courts of inquiry, like when a ship is lost. International law issues—such as when one of our subs sinks a hospital ship. The Law of the Sea. Atrocity cases. Geneva Convention. Special missions.”

“Wow,” he said. “I had no idea. Bet you never did a court of inquiry on the loss of a submarine, though.”

Her expression said,
Why not?

“Nobody comes back to answer the questions.”

“Good point.”

“What is your role in all this lawyering, if I may ask.”

“If it’s a court-martial, I’m usually the military judge.”

“You don’t look old enough to be a judge,” he said. He wasn’t being gallant—she really didn’t.

“I was a judge in real life,” she said. “Before this awful war. State court. And as to age, I’m forty-one last month.”

This time Gar was being gallant. “Going on thirty-five,” he said. “How do you manage that?”

She smiled again, and that smile lit up the table. “Lots of illusion there, Captain,” she said, “and dieting, and makeup, and a really special Filipina hairdresser down on Broad Street.”

She was four years older than he was. He was entranced. A small dance combo opened up and he asked her if she’d like to dance. She asked if he had ordered yet. He said no.

“Why don’t you and I blow this pop stand, then, and just go upstairs?” she asked, while rubbing a stockinged foot against his right leg.

“The marines don’t allow ladies above the third deck,” he said, trying not to whimper.

“There are no marines on
my
floor,” she said. “If that helps.”

*   *   *

As it turned out, Miss Ginger Ale had a bottle of truly lovely single malt, which they dutifully sampled. The windows were open, and the music from the lanai drifted into the room.

“Now I’d like to dance,” she said, and so they did. She moved right in, a glass of Scotch in one hand and Gar in the other. One thing led to another, followed by a prolonged hot shower. Gar had learned a long time ago, via the good offices of older and sometimes married women in and around various navy towns, that when a woman in the mood knows what she wants, all that’s required is what one does every great navy day: follow orders willingly and to the best of one’s abilities. If the lady likes to subdue her natural inhibitions with a wee dram or three first, God love her.

They got dressed and went back down to the dining room for a late supper, and then out to the lanai, which by now had pretty much emptied out. It was another gorgeous evening in Hawaii. He asked her how she’d come to be here.

“Wanted to do my bit,” she said. “With an entire generation of young men absent at war, my work as a state court judge was pretty dull. I was single, turning forty, tired of hearing mostly frivolous lawsuits, and wanting a change of pace.”

“Get what you wished for?”

She nodded and then smiled. “Certainly did tonight, kind sir.”

“I’m very glad,” he said. “Being the male part of the equation, I felt lucky that you even looked my way.”

“I have to be careful,” she said. “Up there at headquarters, I mean. Everyone’s a bachelor, even the ones with the wife and kiddies’ pictures on their desks. The four-stripers are the worst offenders.”

“Comes with that fourth stripe,” Gar said. “The one that proclaims for all to see that you’re officially old and on a bold course for imminent pasture.”

She laughed at that. “A lot of them seem to think they’re going to be admirals pretty soon,” she said, signaling the waiter for another drink.

“One, maybe two,” Gar said. “Back in ’42 the chances were better, but now? I think this thing’s going to be over in a year or so, and then most of those admirals
and
their strikers will be getting Dear John letters from BuPers.”

“And you?”

“You mean after my command tour? Honestly, I have no idea. I might have to get out and find a real job somewhere. I try not to think about it.”

Sharon asked whether he would ever get married.

“Marriage?” he echoed. “As in a family, kids, a house in the suburbs? Like I said, just never felt the need, I guess. I’ve been on sea duty for my entire career except for sub school and a year at postgraduate school. My more politically savvy classmates have done tours on staffs, shore stations, Washington, but I’m a haze-gray and underway guy. Once I got into the boats my career objective was to get a sub command; the war was a bonus.”

That seemed to surprise her. “My, my,” she said. “The war was a
bonus
? That’s a little stark, isn’t it?”

“What’s that old British Army toast? To a long and bloody war? It originated in the fact that advancement in the British Army was strictly by seniority and length of service. If you were going to be promoted, somebody literally had to die.”

“From what little I’ve heard about losses in the Pacific submarine force, promotions ought to be rolling right along.”

He’d forgotten she was a headquarters maven, and the one thing he’d learned about staffs, especially big staffs, was that they loved to gossip. Submarine losses were closely held, mostly because the Japs were pretty quick to claim a kill every time they tangled with an American boat. It was to PacFleet’s advantage to let them think they were wiping the American submarine force off the map when in fact they were not. There was, however, just one little fly in the ointment when it came to applying British regimental logic to his own situation.

“Look,” he told her. “What we do is murder. We lie in wait, mostly invisible, until some big fat tanker or freighter drives into my field of view. Then I fire a half-ton warhead into his guts from about a half mile away, and whoever doesn’t die in that explosion gets burned to death in the resulting fire, dragged down by the wreckage, or eaten by sharks. If there are escorts, and they’re any good at their job, we in turn catch hell for the next several hours. We go deep and get depth-bombed. It only takes one, close enough to the hull, to send us down to oblivion right behind the ship we just sank. If that happens, nobody knows what happened to us except the Japs. We disappear without a trace except maybe a diesel oil slick that dissipates the first time the wind comes up. As to promotions, there’s just one problem. In the army, if the colonel of the regiment gets killed, his regiment needs a new colonel. In submarines, unfortunately, the commander always goes down with the command.”

“So it’s not about promotions or advancement, then.”

“Correct,” he said. “It’s about command itself. See, in submarines, the captain
is
the boat. The officers, the chiefs, the enlisted, they’re a vital part of the equation, but the captain
is
the boat. For better or for worse, he makes all the decisions when the time comes to fight. Plus, we’re a results-oriented outfit. I got command because I was qualified, one of many, and because the guy I replaced wasn’t getting results.”

“He wasn’t any good at murder.”

“One way of putting it, I suppose. I am good at it. I sense that the other skippers don’t like me much, but the brass loves my statistics, all that Jap tonnage on the bottom. That’s what I meant about the bonus. I’m getting to do what I’ve been trained for during all those years of peacetime, and I’m good at it.”

“That sounds a bit cocky to me, kind sir.”

He shrugged. “I’m not bragging,” he said. “Just stating a fact.
Dragonfish
is getting the job done. The captain
is
the boat. I happen to be captain.”