Pacific Interlude (2 page)

When the chips were down, even such small chips as these, instinct took over, Syl found, and he was as surprised as anyone when he said back, “You can bloody well fly
down,”
and gave the ladder a hard shove with the heel of his right hand.

The top of the ladder slid off the rail of the ship and fell on a pile of steel plates about twenty feet from the workmen, where it lay quivering.

“What the hell are you doing?” the superintendent bellowed.

“It's always wise to test a ladder before climbing it,” Syl said, hoping his voice was not quavering. Walking to the ladder, he jumped on it, kicking out two rungs with the heels of his black jackboots. “This one isn't passing the test too well,” he added. “Just as I thought, there's a lot of rotten wood here.”

He kicked out three more rungs. Actually the wood was not as rotten as it had appeared and he had to stamp with all his might. This made him feel ridiculous, but his point had been made. His crew was laughing with him. They liked him for wrecking this ladder and their admiration egged him on. He stamped out four more rungs.

“I'll put that ladder on your ship's accounting!” the superintendent said.

“We won't mind if you charge us what it's worth, say two cents.”

“Damn it, Bob, bring another ladder,” the superintendent called to the foreman. “I have to get down from here.”

Three workmen went to a shed and soon returned with a ladder of bright new wood.

“I want to thank you guys,” Syl said as they set it in place. “I always knew that all this talk about you Aussies being kind of hostile to us Yanks was bullshit.”

The superintendent came down and no one said anything as Syl led his crew up the new ladder to the deck of the
Y-18
. Their new home.

The decks were even rustier than the topsides. A short thin lieutenant junior grade about forty-five years old in a soot-streaked gray uniform met Syl as he climbed over the rail and saluted.

“My name's Simpson, sir,” he said. “I'm the executive officer. I take it that you're our new skipper.”

“That's what my orders say, Mr. Simpson,” Syl said, returning the salute. “I was told you'd be aboard. Do we have an ensign and an engineer yet?”

“They came in last week, sir. Right now they're ashore.”

“Very well. Please show these men to the forecastle and help them to get settled.”

Wanting to be alone for a few minutes, Syl climbed a steel ladder to the flying bridge, which remained intact above the demolished pilothouse. He was grateful for the nonsense about the ladder—it had given him a chance to let off steam and had made him look pretty good in the eyes of his new crew. All during that little incident he had been conscious of acting out a part, as he often had felt during the whole three years he had been in uniform. He even suspected that his moment of rage and instinctive reaction had been inspired by his sense of drama more than anything else, but being a good officer and playing that role well usually amounted to the same thing. Didn't it?

CHAPTER 2

A
BOUT FIFTEEN MINUTES
later Simpson climbed the ladder to the flying bridge, drew himself up and saluted Syl.

“The men are making themselves as comfortable as possible, sir,” he said. “Would you like to inspect the ship?”

There was something farcical about all this military formality in the midst of the wreckage of this old harbor tanker, and the fact that Simpson was almost twice the age of his commanding officer accentuated the absurdity. What Simpson looked like was a prissy teacher dressed up to play the part of an old officer in a high school play. Syl wished he could get over this feeling that the whole damn war was nothing but a bad drama in which they had all been given ridiculous parts.

“Very well,” he said, and the inspection tour began.

The ship was in such bad shape that Syl could hardly believe it. Somehow the script had gone wrong. In his imagination he had been destined to command a sleek destroyer and in fact he had already served as skipper of a trim subchaser in the North Atlantic, and later, a brand new army freighter in the Pacific. He was only twenty-four years old, but had served almost three years at sea in this war and this was his third command. He thought he had a good record, despite a recent dispute with the army, and had expected assignment to a much larger ship, but here he was crawling from one rusty compartment to another aboard a ship which resembled a worn-out garbage barge. After being hit by the Jap plane, she had been beached before being towed here to Brisbane, Simpson said, and the hull had been badly strained. The engine had not had a major overhaul since leaving the States two years ago and her only armament was two fifty-caliber machineguns. A minor but discomfiting detail was the fact that this ship could not even offer her captain a private cabin. For officers there were only two double cabins, one for the engineer and ensign, the other for the executive officer and captain. Both were Spartan little cubicles which contained two bunks separated by a desk and a chair.

“Well, it's not much but it's home,” Syl said, sitting down at his desk when the tour was finally over. Simpson sat perched on the edge of his bunk.

“When would you like me to call the crew to quarters so you can read your orders taking command?” he asked.

“Let's wait until the other officers come back aboard.”

“All right, sir, but there are some very pressing problems I must tell you about. There are a lot of big decisions to be made.”

“Oh?”

“The army is giving us a lot of pressure to get this ship into operation as soon as possible, but they can't begin cutting and welding until we empty and steam the tanks.”

“Why didn't you pump her out at sea before she was hauled?”

“The cargo pump is broken down and we're waiting for spare parts. They hauled her quick because she was leaking so bad.”

“We could get deck pumps or syphon the stuff out here in the yard.”

“Yes sir, but nobody knows what to do with it. We have about fifty thousand gallons of av gas aboard, all that was left when the cargo pump broke down. It's been contaminated by water and sand. They plan to put it into tank trucks and dump it somewhere out in the desert, but so far they haven't been able to round up any tank trucks.”

“It looks like we'll have to do some yelling and ass-kicking.”

“I've tried, but nobody pays much attention to me, and there's a more immediate problem.”

“What's that?”

“The skeleton crew they left with me, five men, have been selling the gas, sir, on the black market. The stuff is floating above the water and sand and when they dip it out from the top with buckets, it drives cars all right. It's dangerous, the way they slop the stuff around, and of course it's illegal, but we haven't been able to draw pay here, and there's no way to stop them, short of staying on watch myself around the clock.”

“Don't the new ensign and the engineer help?”

“I think you ought to talk to them yourself, sir. I can't get any cooperation out of them on this.”

“I'll see them as soon as they come aboard. I understand that you were here when this ship was hit, Mr. Simpson. Haven't you been given survivors' leave?”

“Yes sir, but I refused it. I think my place is here.”

“Why?”

“I know the ship. She's a cranky little thing and it's hard to replace a whole crew at once.”

“Not many men would feel that much responsibility. I'm grateful to you.”

“I just figure that God must have put me here for a reason, sir.”

“I guess …”

There was nothing wrong with piety of course, but Simpson's sanctimonious air irritated Syl. There was already much about this man that he did not like. From his age and modest rank Syl guessed that he was a mustang, probably a chief petty officer who never would have been given a commission in time of peace. Such men knew a lot, but they often resented young reserve officers and caused trouble. During his days as an ensign, Syl had been intimidated by the righteous indignation of mustangs, but he had learned that many of them knew little but the parts of the ship in which they had specialized when they were petty officers and could be dangerously overconfident. Beyond that, any man who refused to take a transfer from this nightmare of a ship must be some kind of a nut. While he was reflecting on this, a loud deep voice called from the deck, “Hey, Simp! Are you aboard?”

“That's Mr. Buller, sir,” Simpson said, his face a study of disapproval. “Do you want to see him here?”

“Send him in.”

Simpson left and a few moments later Buller appeared at the cabin door. Syl was startled by his sheer size. A former college and professional football player now thirty-six years old, Buller was six feet three inches tall and weighed close to 250 pounds. He had to stoop when he squeezed through the cabin door.

At five feet eleven and 175 pounds when rail thin, as he was now, Syl had felt himself to be more physically powerful than most men, but he was dwarfed as he stood to greet this astonishing ensign, and his hand felt like a child's as Buller took it in his huge fingers.

“So you're our new skipper!” Buller said in the bellow which was his normal conversational voice. “Thank God you're here!”

He squeezed Syl's hand hard enough to cause a twinge of pain, an accident, perhaps, or a none-too-subtle attempt to establish dominance the moment he met anyone.

“Take it easy,” Syl said with a smile. “I might need that hand.”

“Sorry about that but sometimes I get carried away. That bastard Simp is about to drive me crazy.”

“What's the trouble?”

“We have a very simple problem: we have to get rid of about fifty thousand gallons of gas which the government don't want but which is perfectly good. Simp wants to sit on it like a mother hen on her eggs until the damn government can find trucks to dump it in the desert. Have you ever heard of such waste?”

“What do you want to do?”

“I want to sell it—that's the best way to get rid of it quick. The men have been doing that ever since they got here in a half-ass way, dipping it up in buckets and pouring it into jerry cans. Simp's right about one thing—that's dangerous. I've got a guy with a tank truck and decent pumps who'll come and take the whole mess away tomorrow night if Simp will let me.”

“You've found a black market operator?”

“You could call him that. He'll pay us ten thousand bucks for the stuff in Aussie money. Do you know what we can do with that?”

“What do you have in mind?”

“We can rent a house ashore for the crew and enough food and booze to last us as long as we're here, which might be as long as a month or even more. Do you have any idea what it's like to live aboard this wreck while they're working on her? We can't even use the heads and showers. When they start cutting and welding, it will be worse.”

“I've been in yards before.”

“The men haven't even been able to draw pay here—everything's all fouled up. Don't you figure they deserve a few weeks of good living before we all head into what's waiting for us?”

“And what do you figure that is?”

“Hell, it's no secret that these tankers are used for supplying advance air bases and everybody knows the invasion of the Philippines is coming up. Why do you suppose there's such a shortage of these little tankers? They've been blowing up like firecrackers all over the lot. All it takes is one damn rifle bullet in the tanks. It's a damn miracle that this ship survived a hit by a plane.”

“That doesn't give us license to sell gas on the black market. We could all be court-martialed—”

“Are you a damned regular officer?”

“No, reserve.”

“I thought so—you don't have that blank look. These regular military men have been slopping it up at the public trough for so long that they can't use their heads for anything but eating. All they know is a thousand reasons why nothing can be done. Those bastards are fighting the war so they can get a damn pension and all they think about is staying out of trouble. The letter of the law I don't give a damn about. I would like to win this war and go home.”

“So would I.”

“All
right
. If we follow the letter of the law, we'll screw around here for God knows how many days or weeks, trying to get rid of that gas so work can begin and in the end it will all be dumped in the desert, even though gas is rationed around here stricter than booze. If we use some brains and initiative, we can get rid of that gas right now. It may be called the black market, but it will put that gas into the tanks of cars, not into sand. Beyond that, we'll get money that will help our guys to live in a way they damn well deserve. These could easily turn out to be our last damn days on earth—”

“You make a case, Mr. Buller. What are the odds of our being caught?”

“No chance! The Aussies in this yard understand the situation—maybe that's why no truck ever comes from the government. No one really likes waste and everybody likes money. For a few pounds the kangaroos won't report anything. Hell, the boys will probably help us load the truck.”

“Okay, go ahead with this plan, but I want the money strictly accounted for and put in a ship's welfare fund. We'll keep the whole thing as legal as possible in case we get caught.”

“There's only one catch. That bastard Simpson will write headquarters. He told me he would.”

“Please ask him to come in.”

Buller left and a few moments later Simpson appeared.

“Sit down, Mr. Simpson,” Syl began. “It looks like we've got a real dilemma here.”

“Yes sir. I'm sorry to hit you with it the minute you get aboard.”

“It can't be delayed. The way I see the situation, we can follow the letter of the law, which will result in delay and incredible waste, or we can follow the spirit of the law and get quick action with considerable side benefits for the men.”