Torpedo Run (2 page)

The Exec and Murph and the Preacher went aft past the 40-millimeter cannon, past the depth charge racks, past the smoke generator, all the way to the stern.

The Executive Officer said, "Make it short, Preacher. It'll be like shooting fish in a barrel if we get caught out here with no way on."

The Preacher said, "I don't know how it goes—in the Book."

"Just say the way you feel," the Exec told him.

The Preacher went to stand beside the flag. "Oh Lord," he said, "please let this man be welcome in Your Kingdom for he was the best man we ever knew. Amen."

Then the Exec and Murph and the Preacher did the wrong thing, for the flag is not supposed to go too. But they left the flag wrapped around the Skipper when they rolled him off the stern; and in the water it unfurled a little as it sank, the red and white and blue growing dimmer until they couldn't see it any more.

It began to rain again as they went forward and Sko started the engines. You couldn't tell on the way back if any man aboard
Slewfoot
had tears in his eyes because their faces were wet with rain; but every one of them looked back at least once to the unmarked place in the Pacific Ocean where Jones, the Skipper, was buried with the flag.

In the days to come every one of them wished with all his heart that Jones had not been killed.

Peter Brent, the Exec, and Sko were sitting in the crew's quarters listening to the rain thudding on the deck above and talking about the war and the future of
Slewfoot
and the death of the Skipper.

After the battle for Guadalcanal, the United States forces were moving westward again, driving against the Japanese, who had moved, since 1941, down into the southwestern Pacific islands, just as they had moved into the Philippines, Guam, and all the islands of the Central Pacific. On land and on sea this was bitter, mean, dirty fighting, the terrible land and its stinking jungle almost as great an enemy as the Japanese. The mission of the PT boats was to stop the flow of reinforcements coming over the sea from the Empire, to sink the ships carrying troops and supplies before they could reach the shores of the islands.

"We got a long way to go," Sko said, looking at a map of the Pacific. He didn't do this often because it always depressed him. So far to go. The immensity of the Pacific. The miles and thousands of miles of that ocean. With, at last, the islands of the Japanese far to the north. On the land areas scattered across these miles a lot of Marines were going to die and on those millions of square miles of Pacific a lot more sailors were going to die.

Slewfoot
was tied up to trees on the banks of the Morobe River, which flowed out of the island of New Guinea in the Bismarck Archipelago. Sko was sitting on a narrow wooden bench only 8° south of the Equator but 148° east of Greenwich, England. A year ago he had never heard of New Guinea, the Arafura Sea, the Morobe River. Sko folded the map so he couldn't see it. "Man, I never thought I'd ever wind up in a place like this," he said.

"You haven't been anywhere yet," Peter Brent told him. "Wait until you hit the bright lights and soft music of Walingai, Madang, Wewak, Kairiru, Valif—or Aitape, now that's a spot."

"So what are the poor people doing today?" Sko looked over at Brent, wondering how to say what he wanted to say without being a greaseball. He just couldn't say, "Peter, next to the Skipper, you're the best PT-boat officer in the Navy and I—and all the rest of the crew—want you to be skipper now." So what could he say?

He said, "Are they going to let you stay as skipper, Mr. Brent?"

"I don't know," Brent told him.

"All they've got to do is send us out one of those shiny ensigns they've got in Melville, Rhode Island. Wouldn't take long to get the shine off him and make an executive officer out of him. Then we'd be set."

When Brent didn't say anything it worried Sko. "You
want
to be skipper, don't you? I mean, you don't want somebody else running the boat, do you?"

"How would you feel, Sko, if somebody said, 'Okay, you take Jones's place'?"

"I see what you mean. He had
big
shoes. And when I first saw him I said to myself, 'Oh, oh, we're in trouble.' Remember that day in Tulagi when he came through the mud with his pants rolled up and said he was going to be the new skipper? He looked like one more drop of rain would wash him clean away. Man, he was
wispy.
And I thought to myself, 'That little twerp can't fight his way out of a wet paper bag with a hole in it.'" Sko looked up at the overhead where the rain was soaking through the patch the bosun had put on the shell hole. "I was wrong."

"You were wrong."

"I don't go for these big, serious words," Sko said, still looking at the film of rain running along the plywood, "but Jonesy was
all
courage. And I don't mean like these guys who'll walk up and slap a giant and get their brains beat out. Jonesy would figure it out so he slapped the giant
down."
Sko kept on looking at the overhead. "What I mean is, Skipper, you were right there with Jonesy all the time. You never said well maybe we ought to pass this one up, or not go in so close, or slip on by in the dark. You never did."

"With Jonesy it wouldn't have done any good," Brent told him.

"What I mean still is … well, I think if they let you go on running the boat we'd come out okay. The Navy ought to be able to see how logical that is. You know us and we know you and old
Slewfoot
could keep on blasting 'em like she always has. Just send us one of them shiny ensigns for an exec."

Coming down to the boat, stomping through the rain and mud, Murphy, the Irish quartermaster, was in a wild Irish fury. They couldn't do this! The stupid, ignorant Navy sitting in their swivel chairs in Washington, D.C., couldn't do this!

He banged across the gangplank, stomping some of the mud off his feet, and stomped across the deck and went below to where Sko and Peter Brent were sitting. From inside his dripping poncho Murph took out the damp dispatch a~nd laid it on the mess table, pressing it out flat with his hands. "There must be a mistake. They must mean some other boat," he said.

Peter Brent read the damp typing and then looked at Sko. "This answers your question, Sko. The new skipper of
Slewfoot
is a jaygee named Adrian Archer who is on his way out here now." Sko stared at Brent, not believing him at first; but when belief began to come Sko began to feel the way he did every time just before a patrol. A sort of sick, queasy feeling in his stomach and cold spit running around his teeth.

Murphy began to yell. "Adrian! What kind of name is that? That's a girl's name! Adrian!"

They didn't pay any attention to the little Irishman. Sko said, "Where's he coming from—one of the other boats? I never heard of him, though." Murphy was still yelling. "One of the other boats. In a pig's eye! He's coming straight out of that school in Rhode Island." Murphy slumped down on the bench. "So they send us a man with a girl's name who's never even seen this ocean, never even seen one of these stinking islands. Never had one of those Japanese searchlights bore a hole right through his eyes—followed by a bullet. They can't do this to us, Mr. Brent."

Peter said, "Calm down, Murph. This guy might be the best PT-boat skipper in the world."

Murph turned his fury on Brent; but he kept it under control and only said, very quietly, "The best PT-boat skipper in the world is lying out there in the water, dead." And then all the fury went out of him and he just sat, staring across the table. "When Jonesy got it," Murph said, "I felt like my own father had gotten it. No, I guess it wasn't like that because I never knew my father. Like it was my own brother. Of course, Jonesy was an officer and all that, but I thought a lot of him."

"We all did," Peter said. "But he's dead, and the boat's getting a new skipper. Maybe he doesn't know as much about things as we do, so it'd be a good idea to help him learn—fast. Because the faster he learns the better it's going to be for all hands."

Murphy said, "I just hope he isn't one of these Stateside tigers going forth to war and not knowing his belly from a belaying pin." Then he laughed. "I don't know what a belaying pin is myself."

"It's something to hit Irishmen on the head with," Sko told him.

Murphy glared at Sko. "If you had a name I could pronounce, I'd call you something."

Brent stood up. Then, with his fingernail, he scraped the wet dispatch up off the table, folded it, and put it in his pocket. "Okay, let's go yachting," he said.

Slewfoot
was no yacht but there was a
little
space below decks that wasn't filled with engines, gas tanks, ammunition, and running gear. Forward, in the forepeak, there was a chain locker for ground tackle, and then the dayroom with the tiered bunks for the crew. Then Sam's tiny galley where, in spite of having nothing to cook with, he could come up with some pretty tasty chow. On the port side, just under the bridge, there were two tiny staterooms—one for the captain, one for the executive officer—and between these and the cramped engine room was another small space for the crew. From there on aft it was all engines.

Peter went into the Captain's cabin to get the charts of the area the boat was going into.

Jones's cabin was a lot like Jones: neat, his clothes all folded and stowed, his bunk made up and the corners squared. There were no pin-up girls on the bulkheads, only a picture of Jones's parents in a silver frame. There were a few books, mostly technical; Jones's Navy file; some personal letters; a little pile of magazines; and, on the fold-down desk, Peter's own fitness report half filled out.

Jones had written in the space on the fitness report:

Ensign Peter Brent, USNR,
is an outstanding officer in all respects. Courageous but not foolhardy, loyal, intelligent; a natural leader of men; an excellent seaman; a dignified and decent man of the highest integrity. He is highly qualified, and strongly recommended, for command.

Jones had not signed it, so Peter tore it up and dropped it in the little wastebasket.

When they got back from this patrol, Peter decided, he would inventory all Jones's belongings and somehow ship them b?.ck to his parents. He would also have to write that letter telling these gentle, handsome people in the silver frame that their son was dead—killed in action against the enemy.

On deck Peter could hear the footsteps of the crew—soft in the flight-deck boots—moving around, preparing for sea; but, for a moment, he stayed in the closed cabin.

Peter had wanted command of
Slewfoot
and had thought that the crew wanted him to have command. With the months of Jones's example of absolute bravery and beautiful boat-handling and the subtle but tremendously effective method Jones had for training the crew until they were the best in the Navy, Peter thought that he could have made a good skipper for
Slewfoot.
Not so good as Jones, but good enough.

He took out the dispatch and looked at the name Adrian Archer again. Who was he? What was he like?

And why, Peter thought bitterly, did they have to send this Adrian Archer to take over command? Why couldn't they have let him have it?

Murphy stuck his head down through the hateh and yelled, "Ready for sea, Captain."

"Coming up," Peter said. Then he tore up the dispatch and dropped it into the wastebasket with his useless fitness report.

The sun had not yet set, but the rain clouds made it almost dark as
Slewfoot
slid down the muddy river on the center engine. When she reached the open sea, Sko cut in No. 2 and No. 3; Peter shoved the throttles forward until the tachometers read 1900; and
Slewfoot,
as though enjoying it personally, went up to a slam-banging 35 knots.

Peter called back to Murphy, who stood at the dimly lit table in the little chart house just abaft the bridge, and gave him a northwesterly course. Murph laid it out with the parallel rulers. The course went through the Dampier Strait between New Guinea and New Britain and then back along the coast of New Guinea.

In a moment, Murph stuck his head out of the chart house and said to Peter, "If you hold that course you're going to run right over Vadang Island."

"That's where we're going," Peter told him.

Jason, the gunner's mate, said over his shoulder, "What's to shoot there?"

"Nothing, I hope," Peter said. "The Army's thinking about using Vadang as a close-in staging area and wants to know if there're any troops to be cleared off first."

Murph was indignant. "So the Army's got eight million fine young American boys and they have to send a Navy man to see if there's any enemy around."

"Not like that," Peter told him. "I just broke the first law of the Navy."

Murph stared at him in exaggerated horror. "You didn't …
volunteer?"

Peter nodded. "Well, not exactly. I heard the Army talking about it; so I said since we went past the island on most of the patrols, I'd be glad to take a look for them."

"Who's going ashore?" Murph asked.

"I am," Peter said. "And you are."

"So we have a stroll in the tropical moonlight," Murph said, "with rain running out of our ears. There's nobody on that island. We've been past it a dozen times. There aren't even any of those dusky maidens with their red teeth filed down to the gums."

Jason, the gunner, who was a very serious young man, said, "If there were any Japs on Vadang why haven't they opened up on us?" He patted his guns affectionately. "I wish they had." "Well, we'll have a look," Peter said. "Why don't we just anchor the boat, have a good night's sleep, and tell the Army in the morning there's nobody there?" Murph asked.

"Tell the Army a
lie?"
Jason asked. Murphy's ideas frequently shocked him.

"What's a lie?" Murphy cried. "There's no enemy on that island, so what's a lie?"

"Oh, well … " Jason said, and turned back to his guns.

"Find out how close we can get to it," Peter told Murphy. "I don't want to row that raft more than fifty miles."