Ghosts of Bungo Suido (25 page)

He’s got me there, Gar thought. The Bureau of Ordnance had finally admitted there was a problem with their fish and fixed them—but only after two
years
of complaints from the submarine force, with the bureau blaming all the problems on the submarine skippers. Apparently, the Japs weren’t the only ones with a hidebound headquarters bureaucracy.

The wind freshened as the ship turned toward the west to go around Etajima and then head southeast for Bungo Suido. The city lights had been doused in Hiroshima, probably due to that B-29 recce flight, which reinforced Gar’s notion that the Japs knew exactly what was coming one of these days in the form of an aluminum overcast. Captain Abe came out onto the bridge wing to study some navigation features. He looked Gar up and down as he sat forlornly on the binocular box, then snapped something at Charlie Chan.

“He says he is glad you will get to watch tonight. That once we leave Bungo Suido, your personal defeat and dishonor will be complete, as we outrun all those
hundreds
of submarines outside.”

“Ask him what about the other submarine that came into the Seto with us. Does he know where she is hiding—and waiting?”

Charlie translated, and Abe did a double take. Gar didn’t think that possibility had even crossed the captain’s mind. Then he barked out a loud
Ha!
He said something in Japanese to the other officers. They all laughed in unison. Abe gave Gar a dismissive wave and went back into the pilothouse. Thirty minutes later they steamed around the western end of Etajima and were met by four destroyers. For all their scorn, it seemed they weren’t letting
Shinano
sail anywhere all by herself. Two of the tin cans fell in ahead of the carrier, two astern. They picked up speed as they headed down toward the straits. The night was clear, but the islands they passed were all darkened, with no navigation aids illuminated. It was getting colder, and Gar was starting to shiver. Charlie went into the pilothouse and came back out with a quilted Chinese-style jacket for him. Gar put it on but was unable to button it up. His wrists stuck out of the sleeves a good eight inches. Charlie pretended not to notice. Gar knew he looked ridiculous, but he was very grateful for the coat. The lookouts, who were stationed up on the level above them, were wearing similar coats.

“Major Yamashita,” Charlie said, suddenly. “My name is Yamashita. My uncle is a lieutenant general in the Imperial Army. He rules the Philippines.”

Gar nodded. “Thank you,” he said. He won’t rule them for much longer, he thought. Dugout Doug MacArthur was on the move, at long last.

They passed through the Hoyo Strait without incident and then headed down into Bungo Suido. Three minesweepers were in line-abreast formation ahead of them now, and
Shinano
slowed to 5 knots so that they could follow in the sweepers’ wakes. The after lookouts on the small wooden ships must have been apprehensive at the sheer size of the carrier following them through. The swept channel appeared to be right down the middle with two sharp turns halfway through. Gar could hear the navigation team gabbling away inside the pilothouse and lots of sharp
Hai
s and
Dozo
s from the bearing takers, who were manning alidades on the next level up. He couldn’t see the bow of this ship; the flight deck extended over the forecastle area just as it spread over the fantail back aft. The two giant square holes in the flight deck gave the whole structure a weird appearance.

Gar wondered if his Dragon was lurking out ahead, waiting for them to come out. Or had those two distant booms been her death knell as she darted into a minefield they didn’t know about? Gar had trouble picturing himself as the sole survivor. Major Yamashita had gone back into the pilothouse to watch the navigation through the minefields. It wasn’t as if he had to guard him. It was a good 50 feet down to the armored steel flight deck, and nearly 80 more to the water if he decided to go over the starboard side. Besides, if they were going to run the torpedo gauntlet that Gar knew was out there, he’d much rather be up here than ten decks below.

Charlie came back out to the bridge wing bearing two flat boxes, the shape and size of cigar boxes.

“Eat,” he said.

Gar had no idea of what he was eating, but it was surprisingly good, if distinctly fishy, and he finished every scrap, eating with his caulk-stained fingers.

“Thank you very much,” he said. “You are very considerate.”

Charlie—he had to quit calling him that—Major Yamashita seemed a bit embarrassed by that. “It will take all night to reach the approaches to Tokio-wan,” he said. “I think Captain Abe wants you here for the whole trip.”

“Fine by me,” Gar said. “This is not a night to be belowdecks.”

The major gave him an exasperated look. “Nothing will happen, Captain,” he declared, but his tone of voice had a certain whistling-past-the-graveyard edge to it. That was reinforced by a sudden commotion inside the pilothouse. Major Yamashita eased closer to the door to see what the fuss was about. Then he sucked in a great quantity of air through his teeth.

“Radar,” he said. “The radio room has detected submarine radar.”

“Just one?” Gar asked innocently.

Yamashita grimaced. He was an army major out at sea on what had to be the most valuable submarine target of the war, and now he knew there was at least one American boat out there in the darkness with meat on its mind. The minesweepers fell off to one side as the carrier increased speed, followed by a broad turn to port. She’d begun a zigzag plan, and the tin cans up ahead generally were matching her movements. Just to add to the fun, a crescent moon appeared out of the cloud layer and lit up the sea. My kind of night, Gar thought. He tried to gauge her speed, but the ship was so big he really couldn’t tell. That vibration was back, though. He could feel it trembling through the binocular box.

We
did that, he thought. Damaged a propeller, blunted the bow. Maybe it’ll slow her down. If she could run at full speed, and for a ship of this length that would be 30 knots or faster, none of their subs could ever end-around her. She’d have to run right over one to be in danger. That’s what the Wounded Bear, IJN
Shokaku,
had done, run at 30 knots all the way home. By the time each of the American subs had detected her, she was already out of range and disappearing over the horizon.

Shinano
leaned to port in a ponderous turn as she executed the preprogrammed zigzag plan. If the chase became a horse race, a zigzag plan was a double-edged sword. It could screw up a firing solution if the target made a wide course change just as the torpedoes were approaching. The truth was, however, that ships were usually going from Point A to Point B when they went to sea. Through some clever plotting techniques, American subs could determine the base course underlying the zigzag plan and prepare their own torpedo approach on that. Your target could twist and turn, but she would always end up making that base course over the ground, and effectively lose some speed of advance doing it. Drive up ahead of her if you could on that base course, and she’d eventually come right into the loving arms of your TDC and its lethal progeny, six hungry steamers.

Then there was more commotion in the pilothouse, with lots of excited reports coming up on their version of the bitch-box. At the same time, Gar heard some of the carrier’s forced-draft blowers spooling down out on those Leaning Towers of Pisa that were her oversized stacks. The major was frowning as he listened. Gar guessed something had gone wrong down in one of the boiler rooms, because the ship was definitely slowing down. Gar pretended not to notice. They were two hours out of Bungo Suido, and this was prime hunting territory.
Archer-fish,
for instance. Gar knew that there were two, not ten, more patrol areas north of this area. If
Archer-fish
made a sighting but could not catch this big boy, she’d certainly flash the word by radio to the other two, but not before Joe Enright had taken at least one shot.

Gar was getting sleepy. He suspected he was the only one on the bridge that night who was. The unexpected food was probably to blame. He wanted to stay awake. This was probably the most unusual vantage point of the war—Japan’s biggest carrier steaming into genuine Injun Country with a U.S. sub skipper in a box seat. Gar wondered what Captain Abe was thinking right now; he hoped not about throwing the resident Jonah over the side. Gar wouldn’t have blamed him.

It was also interesting to watch Major Yamashita as the excitement level rose in the pilothouse. Gone was the cocky military police officer. He was an army guy in a navy setting, and Gar thought he was starting to pucker up a little. In an army fight you could dig in or bug out if you thought you were facing something overwhelming. At sea you had no choice but to face it. Gar’s offhand but dire predictions hadn’t helped, and even as the ship’s captain scoffed, Yamashita seemed to be much less willing to go into the pilothouse to find out what was going on. A case of not wanting to know, perhaps.

The carrier was still executing her zigzag plan, making bold turns to the right and then, five or six minutes later, back to the left to foil any incipient torpedo data computer solutions being generated somewhere out there in the darkness. Gar couldn’t see the escorting destroyers, as they were all running darken-ship, but occasionally red flashing-light messages came from ahead, where the destroyer division commander was riding one of the tin cans. Gar hadn’t seen any radar screen consoles in the pilothouse, and he couldn’t remember seeing radar antennas up on the mast. All that could have been planned for the eventual fitting-out period up in Yokosuka. He was thus really surprised when the carrier’s red truck lights, which were mounted way up on the mast, started signaling vigorously. Gar could read Morse code, but these were Japanese signals. Use of the truck lights instead of directional signal lights meant that the carrier was sending an urgent visual signal to
all
the destroyers simultaneously. It also meant that if there
was
a sub out there setting up for a shot, he now had an invaluable visual bearing to add to the computer’s relentless thirst for target data.

The major was definitely getting worried now as the noise level among the bridge officers continued to rise. Something was going on, and Captain Abe’s temper was deteriorating audibly. Gar continued to make himself small in the dark corner of the bridge wing. The major muttered something in Japanese, and Gar gave him an inquiring look.

“
Two
submarine radars,” he said quietly. He wouldn’t look at Gar as he was saying it, and Gar wasn’t going to provoke him or anybody else up there with any I-told-you-so noise. Then there was a rash of radio chatter inside the pilothouse.

“Ha!” the major said with a triumphant grin. “The destroyers have driven the submarines away. No more radar!”

Or there was a sub out there who’d been running dark and fast on the surface, trying to overtake this beast, and a zig or a zag on the part of the carrier had allowed the boat to submerge and set up a shot. The absence of radar did not necessarily imply the absence of danger.

The wind had increased, streaming across that distant square bow in gusts up to 30 knots. There were hundreds of shipyard workers down on the flight deck below, milling around, staring at the dark ocean racing by or huddling in small groups drinking tea. Gar tried to imagine the excitement in the conning tower of whoever was shadowing them. Big, big target. No identification, because she’d never been seen at sea. Going fast, but then she slowed down for some reason. Four destroyers in the screen, but sticking in close to the target, not ranging out ahead and on the beams, looking for intruders. Now Abe was signaling to all four at once. That was an emergency move.

Gar felt rather than heard the first torpedo hit, way back on the stern.

TWENTY-ONE

It was a nasty, off-axis thump on the starboard quarter, followed by the dull boom of an explosion pushing up a substantial water column behind the ship. It must have scared the hell out of all the POWs chained to the counter back there, not to mention maybe breaking some bones. Gar counted down the seconds, and then came a second hit, farther forward. This one was more muffled, as if deeper, and there was not much of a water column. The third one hit just aft of the carrier’s island structure and packed a real wallop that he felt the full length of his spine. He decided to rise up on his tiptoes, because he knew whoever was doing this had probably fired a full spread of six, given the size of this ship. A fourth explosion blasted into the air just forward of the island, sending up a huge column of water, the spray from which was blown back across the bridge, obscuring the windows in sheets of seawater and causing the carrier to whipsaw a couple of times. The pilothouse was a good 130 feet above the ocean’s surface, so this had been a shallow hit indeed.

As the panic spread inside the pilothouse, Gar waited for five and six, but nothing more came out of the night. Missed ahead, he thought, but four good hits down the same side were going to cause some serious damage. With any luck she’d capsize. There was now pandemonium in the pilothouse, with everybody trying to talk at once until the captain shouted something and they all fell silent. Reports started coming up via the bitch-box. In contrast to the excitement on the bridge, these voices sounded calmer. Gar glanced over at the major, who was holding a fist to his mouth. To Gar’s astonishment, the ship wasn’t slowing down. They were still plowing through the night sea at about 18 knots. He heard gunfire out ahead of them from one or more destroyers, but he was pretty sure that the sub had done her firing submerged. That flashing main truck light, visible in all directions for 10 miles, had been a serious error.

Two junior officers appeared in the pilothouse door and started yelling at Gar. The major jumped, then grabbed his arm. “Captain wants you,” he said.

Oh, shit, Gar thought as the major practically dragged him into the pilothouse and across to the captain’s chair. Abe had a triumphant look on his face as he started yelling at Gar. The major translated while trying to make himself invisible. The bitch-box was going full blast, and there were three officers taking notes and consulting some damage control plates on the chart table.