American Front (60 page)

“Same with me, Skipper,” George Enos agreed, “and I heard Charlie say the same thing about the galley. I like it that we’re all still together—except poor Lucas, I mean.”

“Me, too,” O’Donnell agreed. He glanced down at the load of fish Enos and Kemmel were gutting. “We bring those into Boston, we’ll make ourselves some pretty fair money off ’em.” His gaze swung northward. Brown’s Bank lay north and east of Georges Bank, where the
Ripple
had usually operated. In time of peace, that would have mattered only because it cost them more fuel to reach. Now, with the southern coast of Nova Scotia, some of it still unconquered, not so far away, other concerns also mattered. Under his breath, O’Donnell added, “If we get back to Boston.”

Work went on. Work always went on, and there were never enough men to do it. Like Harvey Kemmel, several of the other sailors were working aboard a steam trawler for the first time. That meant O’Donnell and Enos and even Charlie White spent an inordinate amount of time explaining what needed doing, which in turn meant they didn’t have as much time as they would have liked to do their own work.

One of the new men, a tall, skinny fellow named Schoonhoven who’d started life on a Dakota farm, was the first to spot the approaching boat. “Skipper,” he called, his voice cracking with what might have been alarm or excitement or a blend of the two, “tell me that’s not a submarine.”

O’Donnell raised a telescope—just like the one he’d had aboard the
Ripple
—to his eye. “All right, Willem, I’ll tell you that’s not a submarine,” he said, and then, after a perfectly timed pause, he added, “if you want me to lie to you.”

Cleaning flatfish forgotten, Enos hurried to the rail and peered out across the Atlantic. It was indeed a submarine, traveling on the surface now because the
Spray
couldn’t possibly hurt it. In case the fishermen hadn’t noticed it was there, it fired its deck gun. A shell sent up a plume of seawater a couple of hundred yards in front of the trawler.

Patrick O’Donnell ducked into the cabin, then came out again in a hurry. “Run up the white flag!” he shouted. “Maybe they’ll let us take to the boats before they sink the trawler.” As the signal of surrender fluttered up below the U.S. flag the
Spray
was flying, O’Donnell peered once more through the telescope at the submersible. “That’s a Confederate boat,” he ground out. “The bastards cruise up to Canada and back, same as the Canucks do to their ports.”

The submersible closed rapidly. Soon Enos could see the Stars and Bars flying above it, too. A sailor ran out onto the deck of the Confederate vessel and began working the signal lamp. “Abandon—ship.” Along with the rest of the
Spray
’s crew, Enos read the Morse as it flashed across the water, letter by letter, word by word. “We—aim—to—sink—her.”

“There’s a surprise,” Charlie White said with a grunt of laughter. “I figured they were going to buy our fish off us.”

“Nova—Scotia—coast—100—miles—north,” the signal lamp said. “Some—Yank-held—Good—luck—getting—there.”

“Thanks a hell of a lot,” Enos said. He helped Schoonhoven and Kemmel put the boat over the side. It looked very small, and a hundred miles of ocean enormously large. He glared toward the Rebel submersible, muttering, “And the horse you rode in on, too.”

One after another, the crewmen from the
Spray
scrambled down into the boat. As captain, Patrick O’Donnell came last. “Let’s get clear,” he said. They worked the oars and moved away from the trawler. If no storm rose, you could row a hundred miles. The boat had food and water and a compass. All the same, Enos hoped they wouldn’t have to try it.

Off to the other side of the
Spray
, he spotted what looked like a length of pipe sticking up out of the water and moving toward the Confederate submarine. He deliberately looked away from it. The Rebs on board the submersible paid it no heed. They were intent on coming right up to the
Spray
so they could sink her at point-blank range. If you didn’t miss, you didn’t waste shells.
Pay attention to the trawler
, he thought at the Confederates.
Pay attention to the trawler a little longer
.

He’d just started to think that again when three men in the boat who hadn’t made themselves not look at that moving length of pipe whooped at the top of their lungs. O’Donnell’s whoop had words in it: “The fish is away!”

Everybody stopped rowing. Along with everybody else, George watched the torpedo’s wake speed toward the Confederate submersible. He’d never seen anything move so fast in the water. “Run true,” he breathed. “Come on—run true.”

The torpedo did run true. It couldn’t have had more than five hundred yards to travel: it was a point-blank shot, too. Three Rebs were standing with their heads and shoulders out of the conning tower. An instant before the torpedo slammed home, one of them spotted it. Enos saw him point. He might have yelled something, but that was lost in the dull
boom!
of the torpedo’s slamming into the submarine a little before amidships.

Water and spray spurted up from the explosion, hiding the submersible for a moment. When it became visible again, it had broken in half. Bow and stern portions both sank amazingly fast. Diesel oil from the submarine spread over the water, flattening out the light chop. In the oil floated bits and pieces of debris and three splashing men—probably the ones in the conning tower, George thought. Most of the crew wouldn’t have known they were in danger till the torpedo hit.

“Let’s go pick ’em up,” O’Donnell said, and they rowed toward the Confederates struggling in the Atlantic. As they did so, the U.S. submersible that had torpedoed the Rebel boat surfaced like a broaching whale. Men tumbled out of the conning tower and ran to the deck gun to cover the Confederate sailors.

Enos reached out a hand to one and helped drag him into the boat filled with the crew of the
Spray
. The Reb was filthy with fuel oil and, beneath that dark brown coating, looked stunned. “My name is Briggs, Ralph Briggs,” he gasped in the accent George had learned to hate down in North Carolina. “Senior lieutenant, Confederate States Navy.” He rattled off his pay number.

“Welcome aboard, Senior Lieutenant Briggs,” O’Donnell said as sailors hauled the other two Rebel survivors into the boat. “You’re a prisoner of the United States Navy.”

Briggs looked over to the U.S. submarine, then glared at O’Donnell. “You’re the luckiest damned fisherman in the history of the world, pal, having that damn boat show up just when we were about to blow you to hell and gone.”

O’Donnell erupted in laughter. So did George Enos. So did all the other sailors from the
Spray
. “That wasn’t luck, Reb,” O’Donnell said, a huge grin on his face. “We were out hunting boats like you. We had the
Bluefin
there on tow behind us all the time. When you came up, I telephoned ’em, they slipped the line, and they put a fish in your boat while you were busy with us.”

“We don’t need to give you to the
Bluefin
to make you U.S. Navy prisoners, either,” Enos added gleefully. “
We’re
U.S. Navy, too, but I don’t have to tell you my name, rank, and number.”

More laughter roared out of the sailors and ex-fishermen who crewed the
Spray
. Charlie White said, “How many more Rebel submarines do you think we can sink before your boys catch on?”

Briggs and the other Confederates looked appalled to discover the trap into which they’d walked. The senior lieutenant had spunk, wet and stunned though he might be. Savagely, he ground out, “I hope you sons of bitches tow that damned boat right into a mine.”

“You go to hell,” Enos said, horrified at the notion. Several other sailors echoed him.

An officer from the
Bluefin
used a megaphone to shout across the water: “Shall we take your friends off your hands? We have more men aboard to keep an eye on them.”

“Sounds good to me,” Patrick O’Donnell yelled back. They rowed over to the submersible. Sailors there—sailors in Navy whites, not fishermen’s dungarees—helped the Confederate survivors up onto the
Bluefin
’s deck and then marched them into the conning tower and down below. When they had disappeared, O’Donnell said, “All right, we can go home now.”

They returned to the
Spray
, which bobbed in the chop. Once up on deck, Charlie White shook himself, as if awakening from a happy dream. “Lord, that was sweet,” he said.

For the black man, jeering at the Rebels had to be doubly delightful. It was plenty sweet enough for George, too. “Didn’t figure I’d just keep on doing a fisherman’s job after I joined the Navy,” he said. “It’s worked out pretty well, though—couldn’t have worked out better.” He turned to Patrick O’Donnell. “This whole hunting scheme was your idea. Do you think they’ll make you an officer now that it’s worked?”

“I’m too old and too stubborn to make an officer out of me now,” O’Donnell said. “CPO suits me fine.” He waved to the Cookie. “Charlie, why don’t you break out the medicinal rum? This may be the first submersible a fishing boat ever sank, but it isn’t going to be the last.”

“Yes, sir!” White said enthusiastically. You weren’t supposed to call a chief petty officer
sir
, but O’Donnell didn’t correct him.

Sam Carsten was walking along the wharf toward the
Dakota
when all the antiaircraft guns at Pearl Harbor started going off at once. Guided by the puffs of black smoke suddenly blossoming in the sky, he spotted an aeroplane flying so high, it seemed nothing more than a speck up in the sky, too high for him to catch the sound of its engine.

For a moment, he stood watching the spectacle, wondering if the guns could bring down the aeroplane. Then he realized that, if they were shooting at it, it had to be hostile. And a hostile aeroplane could not have come from anywhere on the Sandwich Islands, which were firmly under the control of the United States. It had to have been launched from an enemy ship, and an enemy ship not too far away.

“And an enemy ship means an enemy fleet,” he said out loud. “And an enemy fleet means one hell of a big fight.”

He started running back toward the
Dakota
. As he did so, klaxons and hooters began squalling out the alert the guns had first signaled. When he got to the battleship’s deck, he looked around for the aeroplane again. There it was, streaking away to the southeast.

He pointed to it. “We follow that bearing and we’ll find the limeys or the Japs.”

One of the sailors near him said, “Yeah.” Another one, though, said, “Thanks a lot, Admiral.” Carsten shook his head. You said anything on a ship, somebody would give you a hard time about it.

“Battle stations!” shouted people who really were officers. “All hands to battle stations. Prepare to get under way.”

Carsten sighed as he sprinted toward his own post. Inside the sponson, you couldn’t see anything. All you ever got were orders and rumors, neither of which was apt to tell you what you most wanted to know.

As usual, Sam got to the five-inch gun after Hiram Kidde, but only moments after him, because no one else but the gunner’s mate was there when he arrived. “Do you know what’s up for sure, ‘Cap’n’?” he asked.

Kidde shook his head. “Limeys or Japs, don’t know which.” That Carsten had figured out for himself. The gunner’s mate went on. “Don’t much care, either. They’re out there, we’ll smash ’em.”

The rest of the crew was not far behind. Luke Hoskins said, “I heard it was the Japs.” One of the other shell-jerkers, Pete Jonas, had heard it was the English. They argued about it, which struck Carsten as stupid. What point to getting yourself in an uproar about something you couldn’t prove?

The deck vibrated under Carsten’s feet as the engines built up power. Lieutenant Commander Grady, who was in charge of all the guns of the starboard secondary armament, stuck his head into the cramped sponson to make sure everything and everyone was ready, even though they were still in harbor. He didn’t know to whom the aeroplane had belonged.

After Grady had hurried away, Carsten said, “There—you see? If the lieutenant commander doesn’t know what’s going on, anybody who says he does is just puffing smoke out his stack.”

“We’re moving,” Kidde said a few minutes later, and then, after that, “I wonder how they—whoever
they
are; Sam’s right about that—managed to sneak a fleet past our patrols and aeroplanes. However they did it, they’re gonna regret it.”

There wasn’t much to see. There wasn’t much to do, either, not until they’d caught up to whatever enemy ships had dared approach the Sandwich Islands. The gun crew took turns peering through their narrow view slits. Hoskins and Jonas quit arguing about who the enemy was and started arguing about how much of the fleet had sortied with the
Dakota
. Given how little they could see, that argument was about as useless as the other.

After he couldn’t see Oahu any more, Carsten stopped looking out. He’d seen a lot of ocean since he joined the Navy, and one trackless stretch of it looked a hell of a lot like another. He didn’t get bored easily, which was one of the reasons he made a good sailor.

Lieutenant Commander Grady came back, his thin face red with excitement for once. “It’s the Japs,” he said. “One of our aeroplanes has spotted them. Looks like a force of cruisers and destroyers—they must have figured they could sneak in for a raid, throw some shells at us, and then run home for the Philippines again. We get to show ’em they’re wrong. Doesn’t look like they know they’ve been seen, either.” He rubbed his hands in anticipation.

“Told you it was the Japs,” Hoskins said triumphantly.

“Ahh, go to hell,” Jonas said: not much of a comeback, but the best he could do when his idea had struck a mine.

“Stupid slant-eyed bastards,” Hiram Kidde said. “If they’re raiding us, they don’t want their damned aeroplane spotted. That pilot’s going to join his honorable ancestors when they find out he dropped the ball like that.”

“Cruisers and destroyers,” Sam said dreamily. He patted the breech of the five-inch gun. “They’ll be sorry they ever ran into us. The big guns up top’ll pound ’em to bits at a lot longer range than they can hit back from.”