Battle Stations: a novel of the Pacific War (Crash Dive Book 3) Page 9

  The ocean liners carried armaments as well. AA and 150-mm naval guns. At point blank range, it’d be hard for either side to miss.

  “One-nine-double-oh!”

  “After room, make ready the tubes,” Moreau said. “Order is one, two, three, four. Set depth at fourteen feet. High speed.”

  Another tremor as the outer doors opened. Water poured in to flood the stern tubes. Sandtiger was now ready to shoot from her bow and stern.

  Charlie kept the TBT zeroed on the Hikawa, which grew larger by the moment. The wind ruffled his hair. The engines’ exertions throbbed through the hull.

  “You know, Charlie,” the captain said, “I expected more bloodlust from you. Thought you’d be talking about killing Japs all the time.”

  “I don’t want to kill anybody, sir. I want to sink ships and win the war.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Charlie hated the Japanese, but only in the general sense. Even Tojo, Hirohito, and Yamamoto were just abstractions to him. He didn’t think all Japanese were evil any more than he believed all Americans were good.

  What he hated was the Japanese Empire and its brutality toward countless millions. To him, it was evil and deserved destruction.

  “Anyway,” Charlie said, “talking isn’t doing.”

  Moreau barked a laugh. “True enough.”

  Nixon: “One-seven-double-oh!”

  The time, 0124.

  Sandtiger advanced undetected. With her gray silhouette and very small profile, she blended into the sea. An alert lookout might have spotted her from either of the troopships. The Japanese weren’t on the ball tonight, however.

  “Angle on the bow, port sixty, Captain.”

  “Conn, Bridge. Left full rudder. Come left to oh-three-oh.”

  Sandtiger labored to swing her 1,500 tons as the Hikawa approached. Inside the big liner, hundreds—maybe even thousands—of soldiers snored in their quarters.

  The captain conned the boat right up to the front of the Japanese formation and lined up a beautiful bow shot.

  “Bridge, Conn! The escort’s veering off and approaching fast.”

  “Very well,” Moreau said.

  A sharp lookout on the Momi saw something. The destroyer’s captain wanted a closer look. A future problem. He wasn’t a threat, not yet.

  The time, 0129.

  “He’s coming on,” Charlie said. The Hikawa’s track was only a thousand yards away. When the ocean liner’s jackstaff reached his crosshairs, he pressed the TBT’s transmit button. The TBT automatically sent the target bearing to Liebold down in the conning tower. “Final bearing, mark! Range, a thousand yards! Angle on the blow, ninety port! Stand by forward!”

  “Set below!” the bridge speaker blared. “Shoot anytime!”

  Moreau said, “Shoot!”

  Sandtiger shuddered as she hurled her first shot at the liner.

  “One’s away!” Another jolt. “Two’s away. Three’s away! Four’s away!”

  “Forward, reload tubes one and two! Shift targets!”

  Charlie wrenched the binoculars free and raced to the after-bridge TBT mounted on the cigarette deck. “New target! Stand by aft! Final bearing, mark!”

  “Set below!”

  Moreau: “Shoot!”

  Four more kicks as Sandtiger loosed her torpedoes into the sea.

  The spread reached for the unsuspecting ocean liner. Moreau and Charlie returned to the forward-bridge TBT to watch the fireworks.

  At a thousand yards, Sandtiger could hardly miss a target that big. The liner would steam directly into their path. The momentum of his powerful engines would carry him forward, allowing the other fish to strike along his side.

  As long as the torpedoes worked.

  “Where’s dat tin can now?” Moreau said.

  “Two-double-oh on the starboard quarter, range three thousand,” Nixon said.

  “Very well. Sound, stay on our fish.”

  “All fish, running hot, straight, and normal.”

  A flash yellowed the sky off the starboard beam. A moment later, a hollow boom rolled across the water. Then another.

  “That’s Redhorse,” Moreau said. “Rickard got a hit.”

  “The escort’s on a new bearing, oh-one-oh, Captain.”

  The Momi was speeding toward Redhorse.

  “Beautiful,” said Moreau.

  Night turned to bright yellow day as a colossal roar punched the atmosphere. Sandtiger trembled violently in the aftershock.

  Then the world turned black again.

  “Solid hit on the port bow,” Charlie said, his heart pounding.

  The next torpedo exploded directly under the center mast. The third struck closer to the stern. The goliath’s screws stopped. His whistle shrieked loud and long, part warning to the other ships, part cry for help.

  Moreau: “Right full rudder—”

  BOOM

  “Mother of God,” one of the lookouts breathed.

  BOOM BOOM

  Three successive detonations along the Terukuni’s side.

  Charlie grabbed hold of the gunwale as the boat rocked under him. “Three hits.” A textbook attack.

  Moreau chuckled. “I’ll say this for Jack Liebold. He knows his way ’round torpedoes.” Another gamble that paid off.

  More flashes in the distance. Warmouth was in action.

  Whistles shrilled from every ship in the convoy. Tracers zipped across the dark as they began to fire wildly in all directions.

  Billowing smoke, the Hikawa groaned and listed, offering a clear view of his massive funnel. Figures swarmed across the slanting deck toward the lifeboats.

  Astern, the Terukuni was dead in the water but still floating on an even keel. Klaxon alarms blared. Ranks of soldiers mustered in good order on the deck, waiting their turn to climb into the lifeboats.

  “Reload completed on number one tube,” the conning tower reported.

  A searchlight glared across the bridge.

  Seconds later, a hill of water rose from the sea close aboard.

  “The Terukuni’s shooting at us!” Charlie said.

  “Smokey!” Moreau snarled. “Take out that goddamn gun!”

  “Fire!” the quartermaster roared.

  The deck gun hurled a shell at the liner and struck him amidships. The fifty-cal and Bofors guns swept the decks before focusing on the bridge. Japanese soldiers toppled where they stood or threw themselves to the sloping deck.

  Charlie expected Moreau to order the helmsman to steady the boat and ring up flank speed. Get the hell out of here in search of fresh prey. But he didn’t. The boat continued turning toward the Terukuni.

  Smoke blossomed as the naval gun fired again. The round tore the air overhead before punching the water with a terrific splash.

  “Goddamn yellow monkeys!” Moreau raged. “Charlie, get on the TBT! We’re gonna teach these Nips a lesson!”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  Sandtiger’s deck guns directed their fire at the gun. Twisted pieces of metal and bodies flew in the air.

  “Forward, make ready the bow tubes! Order is one, five, six! I’m gonna shoot our last wad at dat goddamn sumbitch!”

  Another flash in the distance. Two more. Warmouth pounding another target.

  “Meet her,” Moreau said. “Rudder amidships!”

  “Range, one-one-double-oh!” Charlie cried. “Speed, zero! Angle on the bow, zero! Final bearing, mark!”

  He followed procedure, though the TDC wasn’t necessary. The Terukuni was five football fields long and barely moving. A straight shot at point blank range.

  “Set below!”

  “Shoot!” Moreau howled, as if possessed.

  Sandtiger bucked as she pushed another 3,000-pound torpedo into the sea. Then another and another.

  The deck gun crashed as it fired another shell. Sandtiger’s gun crew labored to reload with feverish bloodlust.

  Nixon: “All fish running hot, straight, and normal!”

  One of the escorts fired a sa
lvo in the distance. Thunder rumbled in the deep as both destroyers randomly dumped depth charges.

  This wasn’t a battle anymore. It was a massacre.

  The torpedoes streaked toward the liner’s shattered side and detonated in three successive blasts. Sandtiger flinched at the detonations. The Terukuni listed rapidly as the sea rushed into the ship and flooded his decks. Crowds of screaming soldiers slid down the deck and splashed in the sea.

  Astern, the dying Hikawa lay surrounded by a floating carpet of debris, lifeboats, and men treading water. Waves of smoke and steam rose from the groaning hulk.

  “Conn, Bridge,” Moreau said. “Turn us around again and send up a security detail.” He turned to Charlie. “We’re gonna take prisoners.”

  “Aye, aye,” Charlie answered, exhausted.

  As far as the eye could see, troopships burned on the sea, sinking. The escorts remained at least two miles away, chasing the rest of the wolf pack.

  Another explosion rocked the Terukuni, breaking his back. The loudest noise Charlie ever heard. A wall of flame shot high in the air and bloomed in a massive fireball. Sandtiger shook violently in the aftermath.

  “That’s his boiler!” the captain shouted over the roar.

  Charlie barely heard him. He stared, transfixed, as the liner appeared to raise itself in the water before coming back down. The hungry sea rushed up to consume him. The ship rolled with a groan, crushing hundreds of soldiers flailing in the water. Oil bled outward in an expanding oil slick.

  Then the proud giant went down, an exhilarating and horrible sight.

  The battle of the Sea of Japan. August 25, 1943.

  The battle of the Sea of Japan. August 25, 1943.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  PRISONERS OF WAR

  Sandtiger reduced her speed as she waded into the floating wreckage. The security detail boiled out of the gun hatch with their Thompsons, Garands, and BARs. Ready to fight, they stopped and gawked at the sight of the wreckage around the vast dying ocean liner.

  Japanese soldiers and sailors huddled in crowded lifeboats. Most tread water, heads bobbing in the seas. The men in the boats turned away from their enemy. They refused even to look at the Americans they feared and disdained.

  The submariners must have been quite a sight to them. Longhaired, bearded, grimy, eyes burning with hate and a gloating sense of victory.

  Charlie’s ears still rang from the detonations.

  “Look at ’em,” Moreau said. “Look how many got off in time. The Jap Navy will pick them up by morning. Should have finished him like I did the Terukuni.”

  Besides its crew of some 200 officers and sailors, the Terukuni could have been carrying as many as two thousand troops packed in its rooms. Almost all went to the bottom with their supplies and equipment.

  “Yes, sir,” Charlie said, though he didn’t begrudge survivors.

  A shot rang out. Another.

  A sailor cried: “They’re shooting at us!”

  The sailors shouldered their weapons and fired with howls of rage. The Bofors joined in, dropping rounds across the screaming soldiers. Blood sprayed in the air. The 50-cal chewed up a lifeboat and turned it into splinters in seconds.

  “Cease fire!” Charlie roared. “Stop your firing!”

  The men either didn’t hear him or pretended they didn’t. He ran down to the deck, waving his arms. “CEASE FIRE, GODDAMMIT!”

  One by one, the sailors lowered their smoking weapons, wide-eyed and panting.

  Corpses floated in the water among the shell-shocked survivors. The crew had killed perhaps twenty Japanese in the brief assault.

  “They fired first, Mr. Harrison,” Smokey said. The quartermaster looked as stunned by what happened as the Japanese.

  Charlie seethed. It was one thing to return fire against the enemy, another to shoot indiscriminately into hundreds of helpless men. The first was war, the second a war crime. “Bag some prisoners so we can get the hell out of here!”

  “Aye, aye. Come on, Artie. Give me a hand here. I see a live one.”

  Smokey reached down among the floating corpses. The soldier flinched away from his hands with an anguished cry.

  “Stay still, goddammit! There’s another one! Get him quick!”

  The soldier lowered his head, gulped a mouthful of water, and went under.

  The sailor reared back. “Jesus Christ. Did you see that?”

  “Holy God!” another shouted.

  Two more soldiers had similarly chosen death over captivity.

  The sailors, full of themselves and their victory, fell silent. They regarded the suicides with superstitious awe. Who were these Japs?

  “Banzai!” a soldier shouted from a lifeboat.

  “Banzai!” others called out. “Banzai! BANZAI! BANZAI!”

  Charlie spotted an overturned boat. “There. Lift it up and look under it.”

  The sailors crowded around and raised the boat, exposing a soldier and another man who appeared to be a sailor, one of the doomed liner’s crew. They grabbed the men and hauled them dripping onto the deck.

  The sailor cowered at the hateful faces glaring down at him. He shrieked in terror. The soldier knelt on the deck, head bowed in shame.

  “They attacked Pearl Harbor,” the captain said. “Look at them now.”

  “Get the prisoners below in the forward torpedo room, Smokey,” Charlie ordered. “I expect them to be treated in accordance with the articles of war.”

  The quartermaster looked from the captain to Charlie. “Aye, aye, Mr. Harrison. It’ll be as you say.”

  “Secure the guns!” Moreau bawled. “Clear the topsides!”

  The submarine backed away from the sinking wreck. The men secured the deck gun and stowed the machine guns.

  Charlie rejoined the captain on the bridge. “Captain … The men … They—”

  “Dat’s four hundred sons of heaven right there, treading water. Someday, our Marines might have to fight ’em on some island. Think about dat. I wish I could kill ’em all. Because a thousand Japs ain’t worth even one of our boys.”

  “It doesn’t change what happened, sir.”

  Killing a thousand men in a ship earned you a medal. That was war. Killing helpless men in the water could get you court-martialed. They called that murder.

  The laws of war were hard to understand. For Charlie, they boiled down to the golden rule. He fought the enemy the way he wanted them to fight him.

  One day, the Japanese might capture him, and they’d remember this.

  “You need to get your story straight, Exec,” Moreau growled. “The boys returned fire. That’s what I saw.”

  And that’s how he’d report it to ComSubPac. Unless Charlie wanted to wash out of the Navy as a pariah, his hands were tied. “Roger, Captain.”

  He wasn’t after justice in any case.

  He’d joined the submarines to fight the Japanese Empire and find himself. Meet the man he really was. He wanted that man to be a source of pride and never shame. Shame that would follow him for life.

  The memory of seeing his crew spray the Japanese with small arms made him sick in his gut. He had a feeling it would stay with him a long time.

  “They got warrior culture, these Japs,” Moreau said. “Think they’re some kinda master race. Think their emperor is a god. They’ll never love us. The only thing they respect is force. When we’re done, they sure as hell will respect us.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “But self-respect is important too.”

  The captain looked at him sharply. Charlie remembered Smokey’s advice: Don’t hold anything back. Attack the Japs with everything you’ve got.

  The captain fought the war his way. All in. To the line and sometimes across it. His former execs hadn’t always gone along. One by one, Moreau banished them.

  “You are treading on some thin ice, Number Two.”

  Charlie had already crossed a line himself, and there was no turning back now.

  “The story is fine for the officia
l record, sir. But if there’s a next time the crew shoots at unarmed men, I expect not to be the only officer stopping it. They’re going to have to live with what they did the rest of their lives.”

  “Point taken,” Moreau said. “Now get out of my sight.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  “Hey, Charlie.”

  He paused in the hatch. “Sir?”

  “You want self-respect?” The captain swept his hand across the vista of broken and burning ships. “Dat’s where you’ll find it. Nowhere else in this war. You remember dat.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  AKIO

  Charlie entered the forward torpedo compartment and found the prisoners surrounded by curious torpedomen. Likely most, if not all, of them had never been this close to a Japanese before. These men were the hated enemy. Propaganda had elevated them to creatures of myth, like vampires or werewolves.

  He glowered at the sailors, who shrank back. “Did you search them?”

  Smokey handed over wet papers. “This is all they had on them.”

  One of the men knelt while hugging his ribs, shivering. His eyes rolled with fear. Dressed in a white uniform, he was likely a sailor serving on the liner.

  The other man wore a dark-green single-breasted tunic open over a collarless white undershirt. Trousers covered his legs. An army officer about Charlie’s age.

  Charlie rifled through the waterlogged papers. Identity documents, probably, along with personal letters. All undecipherable to him. In Japanese characters, the ink smeared by seawater.

  The officer stared at him. His eyes flickered to the letters. Charlie handed them over. The man accepted them with a nod and began laying them on the deck to dry.

  He extended the rest to the sailor, who shrank back with a loud cry.

  Charlie crouched in front of him. “Take it easy. What’s your name and rank? Do you speak English?”

  The man didn’t answer, transfixed with fear.

  “You hungry? You want some food?” He mimed eating. The sailor cried out again and covered his face with his hands. Charlie mimed eating some more but gave up. “What’s with him?”

  The officer said in thickly accented English, “He afraid of you.”