Ghostboat (17 page)

“Clipped your wings,” said Cook.

“I smell Diminsky again.” Frank held the memo a long time, then crumpled it. “The hell with it. I can work with this. What do they think we’re gonna do—go out and sink this thing? Let them carry any gizmos they want, as long as it makes
them
feel better.”

Cook smiled. “Sure beats a cancelation.”

“Yeah,” said Frank, and grinned back.

After dinner Frank put on a light sweater, lit his pipe, and took a stroll over to Bachelor Officers’ Quarters. He opened the door and walked down the hall of the first floor toward Hardy’s room. Seeing the door ajar and light splashing across the floor, he slowed and approached cautiously. He peered into the little room and stood watching a long time.

Hardy was hunched over the desk by the window, his eyes buried in one of the typed copies of the log he had written for
Candlefish.
The framed photo of his wife and son was on the edge of the desk, right under the lamp.

Frank rapped gently on the door and waited for Hardy to look up. The bearded face turned slowly and fixed glassy eyes on him.

“Professor? Mind a visitor?”

Hardy’s lips formed a “No.” His voice was lost in a throaty mutter. Frank came in and sat on the bed, leaned back, and relit his pipe. Hardy looked at him, his finger holding the page he had been reading.

“I’ve always believed that a man recalls best those things in life that he’d rather forget. The bad times are much more vivid,” said Frank.

“You’re probably right.”

“You did a hell of a job.”

“Yes.”

“It’s going to prove very useful to us.”

“Yes.”

Hardy watched him with impassive, liquid eyes.

For once Frank was not smiling. He deliberately dropped all pretense at diplomacy. “Professor... tell me about Mud Kenyon.”

There was a long, long moment during which Hardy never changed expression. Then his eyes lowered and his shoulders sagged.

“Have you ever fired a torpedo, Commander?”

“Sure.”

“You open the outboard door, flood the tube with sea water, charge up the impulse tank, then press the firing key. Four easy steps.”

“Right.”

“Ever fired a water slug?”

Frank nodded.

“The torpedo stays in place in the tube. The outboard door is shut, the inner door opened, safety interlocks are tripped, then the tube is fired. The fish stays where it is and the tube is blasted clean. Water and air are expelled back into the compartment. Again—easy. Routine.”

Frank waved his pipe, and there was a pause.

“On August 14th, 1944, Torpedoman Second Class Mud Kenyon and I were assigned night detail in the aft torpedo room. We had fired slugs on tubes seven and eight and were preparing tube nine. Kenyon opened the inner door and charged up the impulse tank. I lifted the safety interlock, and Kenyon nodded he was ready. I pressed the firing key. Nothing would have happened if Kenyon and I had been operating the same tubes. I lifted the lock and fired number ten instead of number nine. There was a terrible blast; the boat took a whacking from one end to the other. The inner door on tube ten sprang open, and Kenyon took it full across his face. He was thrown across the deck and collided with me. We both went down, and were immediately drenched by a flood of sea water. I heard the alarm go off and men behind us hollering. They sealed up the compartment and then stumbled around us, trying to reach the tube to stop the propeller on the tail of the torpedo in tube ten. It was a surface-ready tube—its impulse tank had been charged earlier, and both doors were shut. The blast had sent the torpedo bashing into the outboard door and then blew out the inner door, making a shambles of the tube. It took them forever to stop the propeller—and if they hadn’t, the whole boat would have gone up.

“When I finally managed to get to my feet, there was Kenyon’s body sloshing around in the bilges. He was face down, his head a mass of smashed bone and bloody pulp. I watched him... a long time. Somebody dropped beside him and poked him, but it was no use... he was dead.”

Hardy looked up. “I was responsible.” The words came in a throaty quaver.

Frank felt a chill. For a moment he was not certain whether it was produced by the words or the breeze from the window, but he knew one thing for certain: He now had the key to the man.

“The burial at sea—the four days that followed—I endured all of it First the sympathy, then the open hatred from Kenyon’s crewmates. The story got around. On a little three-hundred-foot steel island, everything gets around. But it wasn’t until Bates and Basquine offered their feelings that the crew began to take sides on the issue. Bates demanded a Board of Inquiry, a court-martial, or, at the very least, my transfer from the boat the moment we returned to Pearl for repairs. We were in the Skipper’s cabin. I think Basquine left the door open deliberately, so Bates’s voice would carry through half the boat—what didn’t carry would be picked up and passed on by the men. Bates finally ended his harangue and sat down. Then Basquine took over. He spoke quietly at first, and I remember his eyes—cold with contempt, He told me that my dog days aboard the
Candlefish
were all over. And he refused to transfer me off the boat. He said, ‘Because that’s just too goddamned easy. I want you here, where I can see you, where every day you spend in my sight will remind you of what you’ve done. I’m going to make you remember this the rest of your career, Lieutenant. I’m going to teach you what it means to be responsible for another man’s life!’

“And I became the scapegoat—the one they could blame for all our troubles aboard the
Candlefish
—all our months of failure.”

If Lieutenant Commander Billy G. Basquine had been a witch, he could not have handed down a more effective curse.

Frank watched Hardy fall silent, sag a bit in his chair, and at last lose his place in the log as his hand dropped away from it. His eyes came up slowly and met Frank’s.

“I know why you’re here,” he said, and Frank stiffened. “You’ve been trying for days. You think you’ve just got to have me along.”

Frank tapped out his pipe on the windowsill. “I suppose I’m a little obvious.”

Hardy’s voice rose, “Don’t you understand? I was
responsible!
A man
died
on that boat because of me!”

“According to that log, you and the rest of that crew were responsible for a lot of lives on that last patrol.
Enemy lives.”

“Not the same.”

“Yes it is. There are casualties on both sides in any war. Individuals aren’t responsible. The war is.”

“This was different. They
made me
responsible.”

“They couldn’t make you
anything.
You made yourself!”

“Mr. Frank, that boat went down and
I’m
the only one left!”

Frank stood up and pointed the pipe at him. “Don’t try to tell me you’re responsible for
that!”
 

Hardy’s gaze dropped.

“Look, Professor, I’ve met a lot of submarine officers in my life, but I’ve never even heard of a skipper as tough as Basquine. If you’re telling the truth—and I’m sure you are—if he gave you a thirty-year guilt complex—then Basquine was the last man in the Navy qualified to be the captain of a submarine. Either he became that way without drawing the attention of the review boards, or—”

“Or what?”

“Or you have one hell of a subjective imagination.”

Hardy stood up, and Frank had the sinking feeling that once again his mouth had done him in.

“As it turns out, Professor, I believe you. It would seem you’ve had more than your share of anguish over the whole thing. I can’t force you to come along. And I won’t have you if you don’t want to be there.”

He turned and went to the door, then looked back at the old man silhouetted in the window. “Only one point bothers me now: If you were responsible then—for that crew—you’re even more responsible now, for this one.”

“Why?”

Frank pointed at the log on the desk. “Those are
your
words, Hardy. We need
you
to back them up. If something goes wrong—if you forgot to put something down on paper—how are we going to know? If something happens to this crew because of
that”
—his finger stabbed at the log—”
then
what are you going to feel?”

Hardy never moved.

Finally Frank turned and walked out He strode quickly down the hall, clutching the pipe, disgusted with himself. But he had done what had to be done.

November 20, 1974

At 0800 the morning before they were to set sail, Byrnes and Frank held a final briefing for the entire crew, in which they spelled out the history of the
Candlefish,
the purpose of the voyage, and the dangers they might encounter. They were immediately met with a barrage of questions about what they hoped to accomplish.

“Is it possible that when we get back to where
Candlefish
went down before, it could happen again?”

“Anything is possible,” granted Frank, “but it’s highly improbable.”

“What’s to prevent it?”

“Look—in 1944 there was a shooting war going on. We don’t have that situation today. What we do have is an escort sitting on our tail. If it ever gets rough, we just jump off.” There was a short silence, followed by much grumbling. Frank added, “How come you’re expecting trouble? The Navy sees this as a normal, run-of-the-mill submarine patrol, otherwise they wouldn’t have authorized it. We’re looking for
clues,
we’re not expecting catastrophe.”

It was another thirty minutes before Frank managed to shift the topic of conversation. He was busy reading off the watch bills when he saw the back door open and Jack Hardy step quietly in. He stood there a moment, looking for a seat, then walked straight down the aisle to a chair in the front row, next to Lieutenant Cook.

Frank hurried through the watch bills, then turned the meeting over to Lieutenant Dorriss, the qualified executive officer. Frank sat down on the other side of Cook and leaned forward to look at Hardy. Their eyes met across Cook.

Finally Hardy whispered, “I’m going with you.”

PART III

CHAPTER 10

November 21, 1974
 

0345 hours.

Watery darkness lapped at the hull. Night blended with the fresh coat of gray-black paint on the conning tower and the upper decks. Men were busy detaching the guard rails that ringed the perimeter of the forward deck. The men on watch detail shifted around silently on the bridge. The only sound came from the Officer of the Deck, sipping coffee.

Two figures came down the pier at a fast clip, carrying zip-cases and clipboards: Ed Frank and Ray Cook. They stopped at the gangplank and exchanged a few last words, then shook hands and parted. Frank went aboard the submarine; Cook hurried away to board the destroyer escort, USS
Frankland,
along with Captain Melanoff of Defense Intelligence Command and one Admiral Lionel Kellogg, assigned to supervise by ComSubPac.

Ed Frank pushed his gear into a locker in the large stateroom he would share with most of the other officers. Hardy had quarters in the chief petty officers’ stateroom, just forward of the control room; he had refused his old bunk.

In the forward engine room, Hopalong Cassidy, stripped down to overalls and undershirt, was already covered with diesel oil though they hadn’t even started the engines yet. He double-checked all the dials and gauges on the engine stand, then went back to inspect the aft engine room and the maneuvering room. He was followed by two old cronies dressed in similar outfits, two aging machinist’s mates Cassidy had unearthed from his own little black book: Googles was the throttleman and Brownhaver the oiler.

At 0430 Cassidy got on the horn to Roybell in the control room: “Tell the skipper engine rooms are secure, ready to answer bells.”

Roybell hollered the information up to the conning tower, and Byrnes got on the intercom and ordered quietly: “All stations at ease. We will rig the maneuvering watch at 0730. Underway at 0800.”

The crew relaxed. There was little to do now but prepare personal kit for getting underway.

Ed Frank went aft. He found Cassidy at work in the forward engine room, washing down the diesels, polishing them with big, heavy cloths. Cassidy stopped and dabbed at the oil on his arms, then went aft to the crew’s washroom. Frank followed and waited until the old yardbird came out of the can.

“Hey, Hopalong, how well do you know the skipper?”

Cassidy threw a questioning glance over his shoulder. He shrugged. “I’d say I’ve known him off and on almost eighteen years.”

“What’s he like?”

“A real stickler. Anything goes wrong with his boats, he finagles them back to the yard for a refit right away. Most conscientious skipper I know, when it comes to the Navy’s property.”