Over the Hill: a novel of the Pacific War (Crash Dive Book 6) Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Beginning

  The Philippine Sea

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Miyazaki Prisoner of War Camp

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The Seto Inland Sea

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Hiroshima, Japan

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The Bombing of Hiroshima

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Postscript

  Afterword

  About the Author

  OVER THE HILL

  A novel of the Pacific War

  ©2018 Craig DiLouie. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or used fictitiously.

  President Harry Truman’s speech after the Hiroshima bombing, and Admiral Charles Lockwood’s communication to the Submarine Force after the Japanese surrender, are excerpts of their actual communications.

  Editing by Timothy Johnson. Cover art by Eloise Knapp Design. Interior design by Ella Beaumont.

  Published by ZING Communications, Inc.

  www.CraigDiLouie.com

  Click here to sign up for Craig’s mailing list and be the first to find out about new works by Craig DiLouie! When you sign up, you’ll receive a link to Craig’s interactive submarine adventure, Fire One.

  Most Holy Spirit! Who didst brood

  Upon the chaos dark and rude,

  And bid its angry tumult cease,

  And give, for wild confusion, peace,

  Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,

  For those in peril on the sea!

  —From the United States Navy Hymn

  Homo homini lupus

  —Roman adage meaning, “Man is a wolf to man.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE FURY

  Captain Charlie Harrison watched the Philippine Sea swallow the Sandtiger’s bow. Floating on the surface, his body bobbed on the swells, though his spirit went down with his ship.

  A faulty torpedo had sunk his boat.

  As the bow disappeared, he hoped the suction of his sinking command might drag him to the bottom with her. There was only a gentle tug, like a farewell, followed by a swirl of bubbles boiling to the surface and a blooming oil slick.

  Suspended in the current, Charlie had become a fly on a vast tapestry of violence still playing out all around him. The steel leviathans of great warships filled his view, blasting their giant guns. Tremendous splashes soared past their gunwales. Planes roared through the smoky sky, dodging tracers and shedding bombs that fireballed across decks.

  The destroyer that had been intent on ramming the Sandtiger raced toward him. In the distance, a heavy cruiser, flying the Rising Sun, exhaled an angry burst of steam as it sank into the foam. Beyond, the Yamato lurched on, blasting its whistle as it continued to veer out of formation.

  Hit twice by torpedoes, the battleship had a slight list but was still afloat. Charlie had failed to sink the giant, though he’d put it out of action for now.

  He wheeled in the water toward his own side of the conflict and saw the USS Johnston dying.

  Hardly recognizable as a warship now, the destroyer was a burning husk racked by internal explosions. Japanese destroyers paced in a semicircle around it, enfilading it with their five-inch guns.

  The DD rolled until it capsized and began to sink. An enemy destroyer moved in to deliver the coup de grace.

  After a heroic stand, the American destroyers had been wiped out, and despite the Sandtiger’s Hail Mary attack against the Japanese flagship, there was nothing to stop the juggernaut now.

  He spun again, treading water, as the enemy destroyer loomed overhead, its gray steel V stirring up a pronounced bow wake. From the forecastle, Japanese sailors wearing dark blue winter uniforms gazed at him.

  One by one, they raised bolt-action rifles and aimed.

  It’s okay, he told himself.

  He didn’t sink his boat. He didn’t kill most of his sixty-man crew. A jammed rudder on a faulty torpedo did.

  It didn’t change the fact he was the one who’d pulled the trigger.

  Go ahead. Do it.

  Spike, Braddock, and rest of the Sandtiger’s able crew were now either dead or trapped in a metal coffin bound for the bottom of the Philippine Sea. Rusty, Morrison, and the rest of the men who’d escaped were missing, out of sight.

  Take your best shot.

  Charlie wasn’t sure what came after this, but it offered a sure release from hell.

  They didn’t shoot. The destroyer lowered a whaleboat from the side.

  He ignored it, entranced by the sky. A drifting pall of black smoke dimmed the rising sun to a hazy disc.

  Then hands grabbed him and hauled him from the sea. Dumped him like a wet rag on the boat’s deck.

  Japanese sailors stared down at him with contempt.

  He was now a prisoner of the empire.

  CHAPTER TWO

  NAME, RANK, AND SHIP

  The sailors dragged Charlie to the whaleboat’s stern and tossed him next to Rusty, Percy, and Morrison, who sat slumped with rope tightly binding their wrists. This done, they began to row back toward their destroyer while one stood over the defeated Americans, gripping his rifle with bayonet affixed.

  “Glad to see you living, brother,” Rusty muttered.

  “You too,” Charlie said, words failing to express how relieved he felt to find his friend alive. “Is this it?”

  “The Japs didn’t care about the other guys who made it off. They only wanted the officers, anybody wearing khaki.”

  “If I’d known what they were up to, I would have taken my shirt off and taken my chances in the water,” Morrison said.

  The question was why. Why did the destroyer stop in a raging battle to pick them up? What was so important about them? It made no sense.

  Percy looked at him with a dazed and miserable expression. “Nix?”

  Charlie shook his head, and the communications officer lowered his head to his knees. “Sorry, Percy. He was a good man.”

  The Akizuki-class destroyer loomed over them. The gig thudded against the hull under the giant meatball, the Rising Sun insignia of the Imperial fleets. Sailors connected the guy lines and grabbed the monkey ropes for the bumpy ride. The anchor windlass heaved the boat up to the boom.

  The Japanese rigged the accommodation ladder over the side, allowing the Americans to cross over to the destroyer’s
deck. Around them, the Akizuki’s crew manned guns, put out fires, ran messages, conducted damage control.

  A gaunt officer barked an exchange with their guard, who stood at ramrod attention. Then the officer smiled at his prisoners, projecting a sudden oasis of calm in the middle of the chaotic battle. “Name, rank, and ship, please.”

  Morrison glanced at Charlie, who nodded slightly while still looking straight ahead. A Hellcat howled through the air and strafed the stern with its six Browning machine guns. The rounds rattled and pinged off the superstructure. By the time the Americans ducked, the plane had already zipped out of sight.

  The officer didn’t even flinch. “Name, rank, and ship, please.”

  “Lieutenant Lester Franklin Morrison, the USS Sandtiger.”

  Rusty and Percy went next. Then it was Charlie’s turn. The massive guns of a battleship crashed in a full salvo, the sound thudding through his chest.

  “Lieutenant Harry Johnston,” he said. “Engineering officer, the Sandtiger.”

  Charlie wore the service khakis of an officer, but otherwise, no insignia denoted his rank. He’d been told the Japanese tortured submarine captains to gain useful intelligence. Maybe it was propaganda, maybe not. He wasn’t taking any chances. If he hid his rank, he could protect his secrets.

  As far as the Japanese were concerned, Captain Harrison went down with his ship, which, when he thought about it, was only partly a lie.

  Another carrier plane howled overhead, chased by the sparks of AA rounds. Its shadow flickered over the boat.

  “Our captain is interested in meeting you,” the officer said.

  As the sailors shoved Charlie across the deck, he wondered what that might mean, whether good or bad.

  Likely, very bad.

  CHAPTER THREE

  DUTY’S PRICE

  The Japanese took the Americans below decks to a storage room barely larger than the average bathroom back at the Royal Hawaiian. They untied the ropes chafing the men’s wrists, shoved them inside, and secured the heavy door.

  Exhausted, the submariners slumped on the hot, stifling compartment’s deck and listened to the muffled roar of outgoing AA fire.

  Before going below decks, Charlie had spotted the Japanese warships’ curved wakes. They’d halted their advance and were turning to port. The big guns had fallen silent. Maybe Third Fleet was coming. With Third Fleet behind and Seventh Fleet ahead, the Americans would smash the Japanese like a nutcracker.

  Charlie doubted he’d survive a second sinking today, but he had a more immediate concern for himself and his men.

  “The captain wants to meet us,” he said. “That means he wants information.”

  “Maybe he wants to know how we sank ourselves,” Percy said. “How the goddamn Navy destroyed one of their own boats with their shitty fish.”

  Back in 1911, the Navy had installed a part in each torpedo that neutered the exploder if the fish deviated more than 110 degrees from its original course. For reasons Charlie couldn’t fathom, it stopped building them into new torpedoes.

  Torpedoes didn’t fire straight out of the tube. They often needed to turn during the run to the target. In combat, the TDC automatically transmitted a firing angle to torpedo gyroscopes, devices that measured and maintained angles. When leaving the tube, the torpedo rudder shifted to the side of the desired turn and straightened out as the gyro regulated.

  Sometimes, the gyro failed or a sailor failed to set it properly, while other times the rudder jammed. Rarely, but it happened. Charlie had heard horror stories of submarines barely dodging their own fish.

  The Sandtiger hadn’t been so lucky.

  “Maybe,” Percy added, “the captain just wants to thank us for doing his work for him.”

  “My guess is the countermeasures,” Rusty said. “The Jap skipper must have seen us firing them from amidships.”

  Charlie nodded. “He wants to know if we have a new weapon.”

  “What’s our story?” Percy asked.

  “That it’s ridiculous. Boats don’t shoot from the sides. Their eyes were playing tricks on them.”

  “We’re not supposed to say anything at all,” Morrison said. “And they’re not allowed to make us.”

  The 1929 Geneva Convention forbade coercing prisoners into giving any information other than name, rank, and serial number. The Japanese hadn’t signed the treaty, though in 1942 they had agreed to abide by its terms.

  They also ignored them.

  “We need to be prepared for the possibility they will make us,” Charlie said. “What to say and what not to in case they decide on harsh methods.”

  He didn’t have to spell out what those methods meant. Torture.

  “So what are the rules?” Rusty said.

  “If they ask anything about the boat, answer to your best ability. Give them more than they ask.”

  Morrison’s face reddened. “That’s treason!”

  “The Sandtiger was a Gato class. Trust me, they’ve got a copy of Jane’s Fighting Ships. Probably our manuals too. They already know all about it. If the Japs catch you lying, they’ll make you wish you hadn’t. The more honest you are, the more you can lie about things that matter. Like the latest retrofits, the countermeasures. They ask about that or anything else, just say it’s above your pay grade.”

  “Our duty isn’t over just because we got captured, sir.”

  “For Chrissakes,” Percy said, “listen to the captain.”

  “Captain Harrison went down with his ship,” Charlie reminded them. He locked eyes with Morrison. “Consider what I said his last order and his responsibility.”

  The torpedo officer turned away. “Aye, aye.”

  “We’re going to do our duty. We’re also going to survive.”

  Rusty eyed Charlie with concern, as if wondering how much of him actually did go down with the Sandtiger. “You know, the captain would be proud. We hit that bastard. The Yamato. I’m sure of it.”

  Charlie leaned back against the hot bulkhead, which vibrated from another burst of AA fire. “Twice.”

  Morrison’s sour expression broke into a grin. It was exactly what he’d expect from Hara-kiri. The man had taken part in an event that one day might be legend, if anybody survived to tell the tale.

  “We really hit him?” Morrison asked.

  “The captain did good,” Rusty said. “He did his duty.”

  The torpedo officer was still beaming. “Then what we did…”

  Charlie closed his eyes. “We barely hurt him.”

  “I was going to say what we did was worth it.”

  Maybe he was right. The Japanese fleet had stopped advancing soon after the Sandtiger’s fish had detonated against the Yamato’s hull. Maybe in some way the torpedoes had changed the battle’s outcome. Often, only results proved the difference between brave and foolhardy.

  Charlie pictured the Sandtiger tumbling into the Philippine Trench, some of the deepest waters in the Pacific. Long before she touched the seafloor, the colossal pressures would crush her steel hull like an egg.

  No, he decided. Whatever the outcome, it hadn’t been worth it.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE SKIPPER

  The door opened. A blue-uniformed sailor entered, set a tray on the deck in front of them as if it were a last supper, and left.

  The meager rations consisted of hardtack, water, and a little rice.

  After the meal, the hours rolled by. The room grew hotter and even more stifling. Sweat came in waves, and thirst mounted. They banged on the door for water and a trip to the head. The guard yelled at them in Japanese and did nothing. Angry, they relieved themselves in a bucket.

  Charlie sensed the ship turning again. This time, its course held steady. The Japanese were retreating. They’d had Leyte in the bag but had milled around for two hours regrouping before steaming north. American planes had strafed and bombed them all afternoon until their attacks tapered off.

  At any moment, he expected to hear Third Fleet’s guns, b
ut Halsey didn’t show. The Japanese admiral had simply quit. It was a day of wonders.

  The men dozed. Charlie couldn’t sleep. When he closed his eyes, he saw the torpedo arcing toward his boat, the awful flash. He had a feeling he’d see that flash again, over and over, the rest of his life.

  Men marched and stopped outside the door, which opened to reveal a petty officer and squad of sailors armed with rifles. Their faces smug or scornful, the sailors stared at him. The officer wrinkled his nose at the smell, and his black eyes narrowed. He barked at the Americans in his foreign tongue and beckoned.

  “This doesn’t look good,” Percy said.

  “Remember what I said,” Charlie told them.

  The submariners hauled themselves to their feet and submitted to rebinding of their wrists. Percy was right. This didn’t look good. Shambling after the petty officer, they navigated passageways and a ladder that led to the pilothouse, which was located under the captain’s bridge.

  Charlie took it all in at a glance. The officers in their neat and spotless dark blue winter uniforms. The helmsman behind the ship’s wheel and rudder indicator. The gyroscope providing true heading beside its backup magnetic compass. A radar station alive with the sweep of a green light wave.

  Outside, it was night. Through the windows, he saw vast shadows moving in formation, trailed by phosphorescent wakes. The night was calm with large swells coming astern. Difficult for steering, but the ships moved in perfect lines.

  Say what you wanted about the Japanese, they knew how to run a navy.

  His eyes settled on a taciturn officer with a peaked cap fitted on his bald skull. A distinct military bearing and natural authority made him stand out from the others. With an unreadable expression and his mouth set in a downward slash, he evaluated his ragged prisoners.

  The captain.

  The officer who’d welcomed them aboard said, “I am Lieutenant Saito. This is Captain Kondo of the Akasuki. He wanted to meet your commander.”

  Ropes biting their wrists, the Americans shifted their feet, unsure what this meant.

  Charlie cleared his throat and said, “Captain Harrison died with his ship.”