Ghostboat (6 page)

Nails grew silent again and chewed his steak quickly. Frank and Cook ate and waited patiently. Nails finally wiped his lips with a napkin and bent over his briefcase. “Excuse me, sir, this thing is wedged in here kind of tight—”

He pulled a large object free and set it on the table. “Found this hooked on the afterdeck gun, sir.”

Frank stared at the single binocular tube and the strange-looking sextant arrangement jerry-rigged on top of it.

“What is it?” asked Cook.

“Sextant,” said Nails. “The captain of the ATF recognized it. They were rather common in World War Two, I’m told. A lot of the navigators used it. It’s half a pair of binoculars—one lens—and the sextant. You can make very accurate sightings with it, even through light mist. But it seems they haven’t been used
since
World War Two.”

Frank stared at it. Here was proof—not photographs or reports or numbers in an old fleet catalog. Here was a relic of a war fought thirty years ago, and it looked almost new. More than ever, he found himself eager to be face to face with the
Candlefish.
He had the feeling that he would be confronting his future.

October 8, 1974

Frank tumbled into the sack at 2000 hours and couldn’t drag himself out of bed until 0930 the next day. He had breakfast with Cook in the Officers’ Mess and then went off to brief Admiral Diminsky.

Diminsky listened patiently to the tape of Lieutenant Nails’s meeting with the Japanese skipper, but was not very impressed. He asked Frank to have a secretary cull out “only the facts” and submit them as the official briefing. Frank objected on the grounds that the Japanese captain’s feelings and impressions were just as valid as his eyeball observations.

“No,” said Diminsky, “we are not going to turn this into a Navy horror story. We don’t need any of that stuff about the man’s past history with the Imperial Navy. Keep it simple and to the point.”

“Well, Admiral, I don’t know how I’m going to make something simple out of
this.
” Frank opened his briefcase and flipped the sextant-scope onto the admiral’s desk.

Diminsky listened patiently to Frank’s account of it, but looked as if someone had just dropped a two-day-old body at his feet.

He suggested listing the sextant under “artifacts.”

Frank departed with the tape and the sextant and walked across the sub base alone, resolving from now on to use subtlety where the admiral was concerned. Let him discover everything for himself. Diminsky hated being upstaged, so if he could be made to feel that it was all his idea...

Frank stopped when he felt the first few drops tapping on his cap. Rain. He dashed for shelter as the clouds broke and he was drenched by the worst showers he had seen since the monsoons in Vietnam.

He stood under the porch of the DIC office and watched the rain but thought about the
Candlefish.
The circumstances of her sinking—that information must be available, but it was probably buried somewhere in the files in Washington. He would have them sent out.

When the time came to coordinate all the evidence, reports, and coincidences, how should it all be presented? The wire services were sure to pick up some of the flak from the Japanese. Of course, the whole thing could be tossed off as a simple
incident
—an accidental surfacing of a fleet submarine—no mention at all of the various extenuating circumstances. But what if there was a leak... ? FLEET SUB MISSING THIRTY YEARS RETURNS—BIG SHOCK TO NAVY—GREATEST MYSTERY OF OUR TIME. Frank could see the headlines and the implications. A big thrust from the press might be all the impetus necessary for the Navy to launch a full-scale investigation.

Frank chewed it over a long time, until the rain slowed to a drizzle and he could make his way back to the tender. By the time he got there he was smiling, beginning to form a plan so that he could have it his way.

CHAPTER 4

October 10, 1974

At 1200 hours the pier was packed with Navy officers and technicians. Equipment was hauled from trucks and stacked in rows: radios, temperature gauges, crowbars, blowtorches, explosives, protective suits and helmets, and gas masks. Two ambulances came screaming up to the end of the dock, Graves Registration insignia on each of them. Ed Frank arrived with Admiral Diminsky. Cook opened the door for them.

“Morning, Admiral. Going to be a little late. They were reported off Koko Head ten minutes ago.”

Diminsky grunted. Frank walked over to the technicians checking out the inspection gear.

Diminsky followed. He stopped behind Frank and, with his hands on his hips, regarded the equipment skeptically. “You need all this, Ed?”

Frank stood up and flashed him a smile. “We don’t know what we’re going to find, Admiral. Have to be prepared. No telling what could be running loose inside that big metal cigar. We can’t just pop the hatches and stroll aboard.”

“No,” Diminsky muttered in reluctant agreement He turned and went off to the edge of the pier.

Frank turned to the demolition experts approaching with their gear: two middle-aged submariners, one with a pipe and the other with a cigar.

“Tell you honestly, Commander,” said the one with the pipe, “we ain’t defused any Mark 14s in eight years.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky.” Frank smiled. “Maybe the
Candlefish
fired all hers.”

“I doubt it. She had a pretty slim war record.”

At 1230 the first ATF steamed up the channel between the Waipio Peninsula and the Navy Yard and into Pearl Harbor. She drew up south of Ford Island as the submariners waited tensely for their first view of the
Candlefish.

Binoculars rose as the second ATF steamed up the Southeast Loch, with the old sub in tow.

Despite expectations, she was not rotting at all. There didn’t appear to be a barnacle or a spot of rust on her. She was sleek and black and murderous-looking. She seemed loaded and ready for action, a trim fighting ship whose day had hardly begun, much less passed into history thirty years before.

In submarine circles, the boat
is
the weapon, and this one was dark and formidable.

Frank found himself unable to restrain a swelling flood of fatherly pride. The prodigal daughter was returning home, and Frank was ready to take full possession. But as she glided softly in past the Magazine Loch, he wondered fleetingly if the world wouldn’t be better off without her.

They had her moored by 1330. The ATFs dropped cables and departed. The men of the
lmperator
stood in the stern of their ship and stared down at the
Candlefish
until the duty officers began herding them back to work. There was no chance now of maintaining even a semblance of security. Stories would be flying all over Pearl by six that night. By tomorrow every newsman and journalist on the island would be clamoring for a base permit. Frank made a mental note to order an “X” security condition at all entrances. If his plan was to work, he had to make an honest effort to quash publicity. He would leave it to Diminsky to come up with some sort of press release.

The technicians and demo experts were dismissed for mess and ordered back for work at 1430. Only Cook, Frank, and Diminsky were left on the dock, along with the people from Graves Registration. The three NIS officers walked the dock alongside the
Candlefish
and gave her an expert once-over.

A car came up, and Captain Melanoff and Lieutenant Nails of Defense Intelligence Command got out to view the boat. Melanoff’s red hair shot every which way in the breeze as he took off his cap to wipe his forehead.

Nails pointed to the deck gun aft. “That’s where I found that sextant. Just dangling from those gears.”

Frank wondered why that sextant bothered him more than anything else about this business. He felt a nagging desire to know its story—as if in some way it was the key to the mystery of the
Candlefish.
He approached Diminsky.

“Admiral, what do you think?”

There was a long silence. “The Japanese never claimed her as a war kill, you said?”

“They did at first, but later they denied it.”

Diminsky looked uncharacteristically perplexed. “Well... I don’t understand it... she’s in awfully good shape.” He looked up at Frank, expecting an answer, an explanation. The old man just could not stomach the unknown.

At 1445 they were ready for boarding.

A technician named Lloyd introduced himself to Frank. “I’ll be going down ahead of you, Commander. Just follow my light all the way. Don’t veer off into any compartments. Do exactly as I do.”

“Okay,” Frank agreed, and the two of them were helped into protective suits by several technicians.

Cook explained to Diminsky the reason for all the precautions.

“If the compartments are flooded, there’s a high probability that salt water has found its way into the cells or the closed circuits. We don’t know what sort of life there may still be in those batteries. The entire atmosphere inside there may be chlorine gas.”

“But you’d smell it right away.”

“Not if it’s localized, compartment by compartment. Frankly, Admiral, we don’t know what the hell we’re going to find down there.”

Frank turned to Lloyd. “What about flooding?”

Lloyd shook his head. “She’d still be at the bottom. But then...” He hesitated.

“But then what?”

“I
wouldn’t depend on
anything
, Commander.”

Both men were fitted with radio headsets and gas masks. Through the plastic eyepiece, Frank peered at the demolition experts descending the gangplank to the
Candlefish
top deck, carrying a hydraulic jack and an acetylene torch.

Frank reacted to a voice crackling in his ear. He turned and saw Cook grinning at him, clutching a microphone and carrying a portable radio. Cook was wearing a headset too. Frank gave him a Bronx cheer and then descended the plank after Lloyd.

They followed the demo experts over to the conning tower and waited below while the others swung up to the bridge alone to set up their hydraulic jack.

The demo men readied themselves over the conning-tower hatch.

“Better stand back, sir,” one of them said, pitching his cigar overboard. “No telling where the pieces are gonna fly.”

Frank kept his head below bridge level and waited for the first teeth-rattling sounds of the jack. When they didn’t come, he peeked over the edge. The other demo expert had a restraining hand on his partner’s arm, and there was a whispered argument going on.

“What’s up?” Frank asked.

His voice crackled over the speaker in Cook’s hand and rang out across the boat. The reticent expert stepped over the hatch and spoke to Frank. “Well, sir, it just occurred to me—there’s no rust or corrosion or anything—has anybody tried to open this thing by hand?” He got down on his knees in front of the hatch.

“Mister,” called Frank, “it won’t open. Lieutenant Nails tried it—” He stopped in mid-sentence as the demo expert ignored him and gave the dogging wheel a tug. It spun out of his hand, and the hatch popped open like a cork.

Frank stared at it.

The demo expert got up and wiped his hands on his trousers. “Like she was greased this morning,” he said with a smile. His partner flung him the jack and swung off the bridge in disgust. He stood there and gazed down into the open black hole, curiosity taking over.

Frank was climbing up the bridge rail when he felt a sharp tug on his protective suit.

It was Lloyd. “Me first, sir. Everybody else off this boat.”

The demo expert descended from the bridge. Frank stood aside and permitted Lloyd up the ladder first, then joined him on the bridge, where they both looked down “Into the access trunk hole. Lloyd switched on his light and aimed it below. In the dim light, they saw nothing but crisscrossed metal decking and a puddle of water.

“Let’s go,” said Lloyd and dropped down into the conning tower, Frank right behind him.

Frank landed in the puddle, and water splashed up over his rubber boots. He looked down to be sure it wasn’t acid eating through the protective material. Lloyd played his light quickly around the con. Frank followed the sweep of the beam and picked out familiar instrumentation.

Frank lowered his light to search the deck. There were bits of broken glass, papers, litter. He held the light up to a bank of gauges: The glass had shattered on most of them.

“Come on,” Lloyd said, and stepped into the well. Franks followed him down the control-room ladder. Their lights played around the bulkheads and picked out valves, levers, switches, and instruments—still intact. Litter covered the control-room deck: charts, books, pencils, ashtrays, a shirt...

But nowhere they looked was there evidence of rust or corrosion or anything that might even remotely betray the wear and tear of thirty years underwater. There was only the minor flooding in the bilges.

Lloyd’s voice went out over the headset radio: “We’re in the control room. She’s tight as a drum. Kind of messy, but we don’t see any bodies yet.”