Ghostboat (45 page)

The sub went down by the bow again, and Cassidy fell back. He swam and spluttered toward the open topside hatch. He climbed on the skids to get above the swirling water. He stared at the shower of ocean coming down the hatch, then back at the forward door.

He reached for the ladder and hauled himself up.

Hardy staggered to the control room, stepping through the hatch. He heard it clang shut behind him, heard the final squeak of the dogging wheel. The instruments blinked silently back at him. The vibrations diminished, and with them the terrifying sounds.

Hardy looked at the ladder, then slowly mounted it and pulled himself up the well to the con.

Cassidy splashed out of the forward hatch and was plunged across the waves. In that brief harrowing moment, he remembered that he had saved no life jacket for himself. He was slammed into the hull of the conning tower, which was tilted forward at a forty-five-degree angle. He grasped a rail. The submarine screeched back at him, metal on metal. He pulled himself upright and looked down at his legs: water up to his thighs, his hips. He braced against the con and then flung himself clear of the boat.

Hardy stepped onto the conning-tower deck and waited in silence. He saw moisture condensing on the metal; the bulkheads were sweating.

The red lights popped on and stayed on. Then they came into view, all of them, eyeing him with their customary malevolence: the wartime crew of the
Candlefish
... the helmsman, the officers, Captain Basquine, Lieutenant Bates...

Their eyes bored into his. They said nothing, just stood looking at him, accusing. They had accused him once of responsibility in the death of the torpedoman Kenyon. Now they accused him of the death of their boat.

Basquine was the last to turn to him. When he did, his eyes blazed at Hardy for a moment. Then he drew himself up, stiff and craggy, every inch the hero of the seas—and then just seemed to deflate.

Hardy’s face told Basquine,
There is nothing more you can do—you’re stuck with me—you’ve lost.

They both knew it.

Basquine pushed out a grudging hand in welcome. Hardy felt a surge of relief, as if the entire burden of thirty years had been lifted from his shoulders. Then Basquine’s face came up, and his voice was filled with a strange sorrow:

“We had to have you back with us, Jack.”

Cassidy groped and spluttered to stay afloat; he gulped, sea water and spewed it out again, choking. He heard a terrifying growl over his head and looked up. Through the fog and churning water he saw the submarine upend herself, the stern rising out of the water, screws churning the air, metal creaking and whining in a last death roar. She was silhouetted against the sky. He braced himself for the blow that would crush him... but gracefully the submarine slid under the waves, as if pulled from below.
 

The churning stopped.

Cassidy was washed against something Soft and pliant. Hands grabbed under his numb shoulders, hauled him up and over until he fumbled into the raft. He coughed and gagged. A gentle hand wiped his hair back; he blinked and looked up.

Ed Frank gazed down at him anxiously.

Beside him was Lieutenant Dorriss, his thin frame shivering, arms wrapped securely around his life jacket, fright embedded deep in his eyes.

Other rafts floated nearby in the fog, carrying more of the crew. Men were still being pulled out of the sea and helped to safety.

Cassidy looked again at Ed Frank. The man was staring at the spot where the
Candlefish
had gone down, turning pale with shock.

The sea becalmed. The men grew quiet, and one by one collapsed, exhausted.

Cassidy glanced suspiciously from Ed Frank to Dorriss. Frank spoke quietly in the dark.

“What about Hardy?”

“Gone,” said Cassidy. “Went down with her.”

“Oh, my God...”

It wasn’t perfunctory; Frank’s remorse was genuine. He sank back in the raft alongside Dorriss.

“It’s all right,” offered Cassidy. “He belonged there.”

Frank didn’t comment for a long time.

“Well... I know where
we
belong...” Frank sighed, gazing into the fog. “But I’m not so sure
we’re
there.”

“We’re in the Pacific,” said Dorriss. “Latitude Thirty.”

“Uh-huh. But
when?”

Cassidy chuckled, then laughed aloud. Same old Ed Frank. Practical, challenging... He dropped back in the raft, and his eyes closed. Of course, Frank was right.

When?

There was silence at last, and the life rafts were left to drift alone through the shrouding fog.

A chilly dawn broke and edged out the darkness. The fog had been too eerie for sleep, and the cold too bone-numbing. Cassidy and Frank stared out to sea and counted the life rafts adrift in the bedraggled group. They spent a full half-hour making silent head counts.

“I think we’re all here,” said Frank.

“Except Hardy,” Cassidy mumbled.

An hour later Dorriss broke out the canned rations. Most of the men were awake but slugged with exhaustion. They fell to the food and ate voraciously. For dessert they stared out to sea.

“If we get picked up...” Frank began, then stopped, his short frame crouching into a corner, his eyes under a furrowed brow. He started over. “If we get picked up by the Japanese... we’ll simply explain that we’re Americans... the crew of the
Candlefish...
she sank last night in heavy seas... The worst that can happen is they chuck us into a prisoner-of-war camp...”

“That’s the worst?” snorted Cassidy.

“Assuming...” Again Frank hesitated, for once in his life reluctant to assume anything. “Assuming that this is still... 1944.”

Cassidy slowly looked up at him, grimly assessing the possibility.

Even if they, were all stuck here in 1944 for the rest of their lives, unable to explain
why
to themselves or to anyone else—Hell, it wasn’t a bad life, 1944. Not for a machinist. He bit his lip. Then the problems presented by the warp of time came showering down on his head.

“What happens when the war is over?” he asked. “And we go home?”

Frank’s brow darkened in silent reproof. The other men shifted uncomfortably.

“Smoke on the horizon!”

The voice hailed them from another raft. One of the men stood up and pointed into the dawn.

They watched the sun spread across the sea, and the black dot sailing out of it.

They shielded their eyes and squinted. Silhouetted directly east of them, her black hull creeping closer, enlarging, the markings distressingly invisible. A single freighter...
 

She was huge, imposing, dwarfing them.

Cassidy felt a jiggle in his raft, glanced around to see Frank unsteadily getting to his feet, tears streaming down his cheeks. His hands dropped to his sides, and he confronted the ship, clenching his fists and growling under his breath, “Sitting duck.”

The markings on her bow were Japanese. It wasn’t until she loomed up in front of them and her officers came to the bow and she shifted broadside to take them aboard that the black silhouette disappeared and they saw her hull colors for the first time. Baby blue and cream, bright and sparkling, and there painted in giant block letters the entire length of the hull, the word that announced better than any other their fate, their ultimate destiny.

DATSUN.

Within seconds the Americans were aware of it. They gaped at the letters and spelled them out, read them to each other, breaking out in smiles, crying. Some threw up their hands and clasped them into fists, shaking them over their heads, cheering joyously.

Only a few stood up in the rafts and stared, comprehending the irony and sobered into frozen silence.

Cassidy and Frank in particular. Cassidy sneaked a look at the Captain and saw him suddenly small, insignificant, no longer the giant rock of authority—a walking aftermath.

It was 1974 again—and Ed Frank stood quietly considering his own diminished impact.

PART VI

CHAPTER 26

December 12, 1974

They were removed from the freighter by relays of Japanese helicopters and transferred to the aircraft carrier USS
Encounter.
All eighty-three men were taken to sick bay and examined head to toe. They were ordered not to talk of their ordeal among themselves. Admiral Begelman himself was flown out and made a special plea to “save it for the Board of Inquiry.”

December 15, 1974

The crew was removed from the
Encounter
by two shifts of transport planes, then flown back to the Ford Island Naval Air Station at Pearl Harbor. Fit and rested and sobered, they were transferred to quarters at the Submarine Base. Ed Frank was put up at the BOQ in a small room much like the one Hardy had occupied. He got a telegram from Lieutenant Cook and realized that they hadn’t sunk the
Frankland
on December 2nd after all. Hardy had been right: They must have dropped into 1944 early on the morning of December 2nd, dropped completely out of contact with the escort, then torpedoed the same Japanese submarine the
Candlefish
had sunk in World War Two. The
Frankland
had searched frantically for them until ordered to abandon the effort and return to Pearl.

He felt a twinge of guilt because the fate of the
Frankland
hadn’t crossed his mind once in the four days since his rescue.

Lieutenant Cook had been transferred. The cable was couched in guarded language, advising Frank of the new assignment and thanking him for their past association, congratulations on a safe return. There was nothing even remotely resembling a “looking forward to a reunion and an update...”

Cook either was no longer interested or was not permitted to be.

December 18, 1974

The Board of Inquiry went into session and took depositions for four days, questioning each crew member about what he had seen and done. Most had only vague memories of their feelings, and all had shaky stories about their actions. To each man the entire patrol had proved a nightmare, and one they were not anxious to discuss.

Frank testified for a full day. He made his statements calmly and thoroughly and answered questions as best he could.

An admiral made the only comment: “You know, Commander, your story is corroborated in every respect save one. You were the only man on the bridge at the time Captain Byrnes was hit. Everyone else had gone below. Isn’t it possible you only
thought
you saw him hit?”

“But the planes? The holes in the conning tower— the blood... ?”

The admiral was nudged by another admiral, and lapsed into silence.

Frank lapsed into indifference.

December 21, 1974

The Japanese Government quietly protested the maneuvers of an American submarine in their waters. Until the crew was picked up, the
Candlefish
had never been detected, by either radar or sonar. Somehow a submarine had penetrated their defenses, and the Japanese were rightfully upset about it.

By the time the official panic reached Smitty at NIS headquarters in Washington, he had already responded to the unofficial rumors. He prepared a statement for release to authorized agencies only:

The refit of number 284 had been improperly handled; she was a thirty-year-old boat that died suddenly of old age. As for the so-called maneuvers, the
Candlefish
was on an oceanographic research project led by Dr. Jack Hardy of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who was unfortunately lost with the boat.

Eventually this version found its way into newspapers and became the accepted public explanation. But to the eighty-three survivors no explanation was acceptable. Twenty-one died within six months of the incident; thirteen immediately underwent extended psychiatric care. The remainder did their best to consign the voyage to the furthest recesses of their minds. Some suffered nightmares the rest of their lives. Some forgot, some coped—nine of them committed suicide.

Those who did manage to deal with it incorporated bits of unfamiliar personalities into their own lives. They became nostalgic for ‘40s music, fond of old war movies, prone to certain out-of-date epithets, and spiteful of all things Japanese...

Walter “Hopalong” Cassidy returned to Mare Island in his capacity as a civil-service mechanic and disappeared one month later. His body was found curled up in the crawl space beneath the maneuvering room of the USS
Pompanito,
the last surviving World War II submarine in the yard.