Dust on the Sea (27 page)

Richardson still said nothing. He concentrated all his mental forces on resisting the beating which must be coming.

Still grinning, the Japanese produced a pistol, aimed it at Richardson's belly. His grin expanded, and he began to titter. His voice was pitched at least half an octave above his normal speaking voice. “You'll tell me what I want to know if I have to shoot your balls off one at a time!”

The hatred and contempt in Richardson's soul must have revealed themselves in his face, for suddenly the Japanese thrust the pistol forward and fired.

Richardson saw the move coming, nerved himself to take the obscene blow. His every sense jumped to full clarity, and he saw that at the last minute “Moonface” dropped the muzzle of the gun just a fraction. The force of explosion caught him in the groin. He doubled over in pain, but it was only the slap of the powder charge striking his clothing. The bullet had passed between his legs, grazing the right one but otherwise causing no injury.

The pistol slammed against his head. Again the kick in the side, again shouted orders in Japanese. Two crewmen jerked him upright, held him against the weakness in his legs and the pain in his head. “Moonface” (as Richardson had come to think of him) tittered again, struck him across the face with the back of his hand. “Come along,” he said, waving his arm in a beckoning gesture. “I'll show you something!”

More orders in Japanese. The two crewmen propelled Richardson out onto the deck, where the first thing that caught his eye was Oregon, who had been trussed up in a standing position against a mast. His hands were pulled hard behind him, evidently tied together behind the vertical spar. His body sagged against the ropes. His chin was down on his chest.

Richardson wanted to shout encouragement to Oregon, but he dared not. There was a stab of ice in his vitals.

Moonface tittered once more. “This is the way your man spent the night,” he said. “It is up to you if I treat him more kindly.” He raised the pistol, pointed it at Oregon's body, spoke sententiously, spacing the words: “Where did you come from? How did you get here? Are there any more American submarines in these waters?”

“We're survivors from that submarine that was sunk,” Richardson said desperately. “We escaped with breathing apparatus. There are no other American subs around here.”

Moonface snapped off his mask of mirth. Oregon was looking at them with fearful eyes.

“Is that true?” Moonface hissed to him. Oregon nodded weakly.

Moonface turned to Rich. “This is how we treat liars,” he said. He put his pistol against the lower part of Oregon's abdomen, pulled the trigger.

As the shock of the report died away, Oregon began screaming a high-pitched, incoherent cry of torture. Moonface waited two full minutes, fired a second time. Again he waited, fired a third time. Jack Oregon's agony was horrifying to watch. His muscles bulged and writhed within his bonds, tearing the flesh where his arms and hands were pinioned. His shrieks, which had been high and bubbling, diminished in volume, became animal-like. Bloody froth came from his mouth. Richardson, too, was screaming, lunging against the hands that were holding him back, straining at the cords that bound his arms, lunging toward Moonface. The raving torment gave him strength to drag the two men holding him several feet across the littered deck. He had no conscious plan. Had he been able to reach Moonface, he would have attacked him with the only weapon he had, his teeth. He felt another pair of hands join those that held him, and then a fourth pair. He was wrestled to the deck, held immobile.

Great gouts of dark blood were spilling out of Oregon's groin, splattering on the deck. His head had fallen down on his chest once more. His heaving breath was stertorous, his groans nearly inaudible. Perhaps he was unconscious. Richardson hoped so.

“Help him!” shouted Richardson hoarsely. “Get him some help! He'll bleed to death!”

“You're the one who could have helped him, my friend,” said Moonface. “However, I shall be merciful.” He stepped forward, lifted Oregon's head by the hair, placed the pistol on the bridge of his nose between the eyes and fired one more time. The heavy automatic literally blew off the top of his head. Bits of bloody matter splashed around the mast and some distance beyond it on either side. Some of it fell upon crew members who had gathered in a group of uneasy watchers.

Moonface holstered his gun. “We'll give you a little time to think it over, my friend,” he said. “I may not be so merciful to you.” He barked a few words in Japanese to the dozen or so gathered crew members, giggled, and grandiloquently stalked away.

Pinioned to the deck, Richardson was vomiting. The four men holding him down picked him up, carried him to the rail, propped him over it until he had finished. Curiously, their hands felt sympathetic, almost apologetic.

Others had cut the ropes binding Oregon's body to the mast, carried it also to the rail. They averted their faces from Richardson. The reckless disregard of consequences still drove him. He stood up, came as near to a posture of attention as his bound arms would permit. “Stop!” he shouted.

Unsure of themselves, they paused. Rich walked over the few feet to Oregon's body, the men detailed to hold him moving uncertainly with him. Not many of the Japanese sailors or fishermen, or whatever they were, would understand English, but they were men of the sea. They would grasp the significance of what he was about to do. Probably the word would get back to Moonface, but he was beyond caring. Rapidly his mind searched over his early memories. Once, before the war, he had been present at a funeral on board ship. He could not remember the words exactly, but that didn't matter.

He stood alongside the ruined body of his friend, raised his face. A furious recklessness drove him. Let them try to stop him in this duty. The unarticulated thought, unformed, only an emotional reaction, defied them, or anyone, to interfere. He almost wished they would try. . . .

The choking words, some of them heard every Sunday at his father's church, then for four years at the Naval Academy and countless times since, came clearly, without conscious effort to remember. There was a stillness in the air, a high gentle note as the inadequate stays allowed the skimpy masts to creak in their steps. A lapping of the water alongside the wooden hull. Twice he faltered, but it was only the inability of his voice to croak out the words.

There was silence on the deck of the little ship as Rich finished. Tears
streamed down his cheeks. He drew himself up, looked around. “Attention on deck!” he snapped. Whether they understood him or not made no difference. A respectful silence had settled upon the dozen Japanese present. He fixed his eyes on the men who still held Oregon's body, with his head motioned toward the sea. They understood, lifted up the body, and dropped it gently over the side.

The men who had charge of him still had their hands through his arms. He turned away from the rail. They led him forward, down through a small hatch into the hold of the ship, and all the way forward to her bows. The overhead was so low that all of them had to stoop, he more than any, and the heavily barred door which they unlocked for him could not have been more than four feet high. He indicated his bound arms. After a moment, one of them untied them. They pushed him in. He could hear a bar placed upon the door, and the click of a heavy padlock.

Moonface had decided to give Rich plenty of time to think things over, he decided. Perhaps he intended to add hunger to his efforts at persuasion. Clearly he suspected Rich and Oregon must have come from a second submarine, possibly hoped confirmation would redound to his favor. Richardson cursed himself for not having had the wit to remove his parka before he was picked up. It was marked “
CAPT
,” while Oregon's parka had been correspondingly marked “
QM
.” Assuming Moonface had realized he must be the captain of a submarine, the only logical purpose behind his insistent questions must be to establish the existence of a second sub in the area. Perhaps he hoped to gain personal credit for the discovery. This must be only the beginning of the interrogation Richardson could look forward to.

After what he had seen in the twelve hours or so he had spent aboard the little wooden craft, there could be no illusions as to the sadistic lengths to which Moonface might go, unless the rewards for bringing home an American submarine captain alive and reasonably well appeared more substantial than any information he could wring out of him by torture. Even here, there was something irrational. What could Moonface do with any such information that could not be better done by Japanese naval authorities at headquarters? The patrol boat could reach the naval base at Sasebo, for example, in two or three days, or rendezvous even more quickly with one of the faster destroyer types with which she must be associated. But the motion of the patrol boat gave no indication of any purposeful movement. Her tiny engine still maintained the same cadence which Rich and Oregon had noticed the night before in the water, and twice already
he had felt her reverse course. During daylight, if fishing was the patrol boat's cover, she would of course have lines out. She might in fact actually do some fishing, although Richardson had seen no evidence of fishing gear during his few fleeting glimpses about the decks.

His arms were numb. The bruises on his face and head, and in the abdominal area, ached with a dull monotony. The inside of his right leg smarted in the path of the bullet which had grazed it. Squatting on the floor of the tiny compartment, for he could not stand upright, he rubbed the injured places. Sufficient light came through the clouded glass of a tiny porthole, about six inches in diameter, to reassure him that the bullet wound was superficial. He was not bleeding. The skin had barely been scraped by the flaming powder grains.

The compartment, if it could be called one—it was no more than five feet in any dimension—was some kind of a storeroom. It was roughly triangular in shape, larger at the top than at the floor level. Two sides, one of which contained the door, were vertical and met at right angles. The third side was in effect the hypotenuse of the triangle, had a slight curve, and was itself almost triangular, being much longer at the top than at the bottom.

This was the port bow of the boat. Its side flared outward, and there was a small porthole. He could hear the gentle lapping of the sea on the other side of the planking. Shelves had been built along the un-pierced straight wall. The other one consisted primarily of the heavy door through which he had entered. He pushed on it. It was solidly secured. He inspected the porthole, a very simple contraption which was easily opened. Gray light streamed through the hole. The smell of sea air came with it, refreshed him. Quietly he swung it shut again, latched it.

On the shelves stood an array of nondescript items. A few cans of paint tightly sealed, some boxes that looked as if they might contain scouring powder. A sack of rags, open and half empty, lay beneath the shelves. There was nothing that could serve as a weapon. With a weapon, a paint scraper perhaps, he could attack Moonface, and in the ensuing fatal struggle bring final retribution to both of them for everything that had gone before: the war, the killing, Nakame, and now Oregon. What a mistake to have used the flashlight! Far better for both of them to have quietly died in their life belts in the middle of the Yellow Sea! He wished Moonface would send for him again, get it over with.

He should try to sleep, if he could. He jackknifed himself on the floor, drawing his knees almost up to his chest, pillowing his head on
the sack of rags. Some of them smelled faintly of paint, and more strongly of turpentine. He could not sleep. His pulse, pounding with what he had seen and the hatred he felt, would not quiet. Resolutely he closed his eyes, but through his brain danced fleeting images of
Eel
, half-flooded with water, lying in the mud on the bottom of the Yellow Sea, her crew—those who had survived—led by Keith (Blunt would be no help), trying to repair damages, pump out the water, bring the crippled sub to the surface. If they had been able to get the air inlet shut in the enginerooms, the engine exhausts closed, she might not be too badly injured. If water could be kept out of at least one of the battery compartments to give power, the drain pump could be run. Partly flooded compartments could be pumped dry, provided only that someone was able to enter and dive into their bilges to open the drain valves. But if the motor room were even partly flooded, it would be impossible to put the sea-soaked main motors back into commission.
Eel
's propellers, in this case, would never turn again.

He must have dozed after all. Someone was fumbling with the door to his prison. He scrambled to his knees. The door opened: Moonface, grinning. “Are you ready to tell me what I want to know?”

Richardson remained silent. His loathing for the contemptible animal confronting him made him tremble. It would be a relief to attack him with his bare hands. But not yet. Not until there was a chance of hurting him.

Behind Moonface was one of his crewmen with a wooden bowl in his hands. Richardson wondered if he detected a hint of compassion around the eyes set in the sailor's otherwise impassive face. Moonface took the bowl, held it toward him. It was food, soup of some kind. The aroma filled the little cell. Moonface's grin was more evil than ever. “Japanese Navy regulations say I must feed you. Would you like this?”

It must have been twenty-four hours since Richardson had eaten. He reached for the bowl. Moonface jerked it back, laughing his high-pitched laugh, flung its contents in his face. A spoon fell clattering to the floor. The door closed, was bolted. Something heavy, a cross bar, was set in place. The click of the padlock. He could hear Moonface still tittering loudly as he walked aft.