Pacific Interlude (25 page)

Time seemed to stand still. Covered with smoke and flame, the Liberty ship miraculously kept going as the distance between the two vessels widened, first to a thousand, then to fifteen hundred yards, two thousand. Then suddenly there was a blinding flash of light, and a wave of hot wind slammed Syl against the pilothouse. He looked up in the sky and saw two green bulldozers hurtling toward him. In the distance they looked like children's toys tossed into the air, then grew bigger and bigger as they arched menacingly toward the
Y-18
and crashed into the sea, bracketing her.

Buller was stunned as he picked himself up from the deck, where the blast had knocked him. Flying fragments of glass rattled down all around them like hail.

“Look for survivors,” Simpson said, his voice eerily calm. “Somebody might have jumped.”

“Left full rudder,” Syl said, surprised to hear that his own voice sounded almost matter-of-fact.

The crew stood about stunned, some of them dabbing at cuts from the pieces of glass.

There was nothing in the water anywhere near the spot where the Liberty ship had been except some smoking fragments of hatchboards, one empty raft and a splintered boat.

Simpson said, “We ought to read them a service—”

“We have to get out of here,” Syl said. “We're still too close to shore.”

Antiaircraft guns at the base and on ships all around them pounded as more planes appeared, high overhead this time. All those shells being poured into the sky would have to come down somewhere, Syl realized. The
Y-18
seemed terribly vulnerable, a naked thing without protection, and in his not unreasonable fear she seemed to grow and swell, a target impossible to miss. His mouth was so dry that he couldn't swallow. He was afraid that his voice would croak, was relieved that it sounded normal as he said, “Come right slowly. A little more. Now, steady as she goes …”

When they finally anchored in the bay, well away from other vessels, Syl saw through his binoculars that the
Yankee Yo-Yo
and Schuman's
Gasoline Alley
had made it too. They were anchored about a mile away—one had apparently been taking cargo from a merchant tanker when the raid started, the other had probably been headed into the harbor and had turned back before getting into trouble. All three had been lucky this time. But how long before one of them would get it?

Syl wiped sweat from his face. The antiaircraft guns stuttered into silence as the planes overhead disappeared and darkness fell. Hathaway reported from the radio shack that the all-clear signal had been given, and soon Syl saw his sister ships take in their anchors to resume the shuttle run. His men complained when he followed their lead before the cook had a chance to give them a hot dinner. After their very close call most of them wanted to get drunk, yell, let off steam. But the planes that were still roaring in and out of the Tacloban airstrip in unending processions needed gas. The shuttle run could not be interrupted. When native canoes glided alongside to sell their wares, Syl ordered them off. If the men felt as pent-up and restless as he did, this was no time for them to bring booze aboard. They'd just seen the death of some forty men and had come damn close to joining them, but there was no way to celebrate their own survival, or mourn the incineration of those others—there was just this damnable job of pumping gas, filling up, pumping out again … The danger of air raids would come and go, but the menace to their own explosive emotions would never let up.

Later that night while they were loading gas alongside a merchant tanker Syl woke up with every muscle aching-tense. He began to prowl the decks. Buller was nodding on the bridge. On the boat deck he found a group of men who had somehow managed to buy bottles of the native wine. He saw the glow of a cigarette before it was tossed over the side.

“All
right
, damn you,” he exploded. “Drop those bottles overboard. Any man caught drinking or smoking aboard this ship chips paint for four hours or has boat drill until he gets the idea. If you don't want to live, some of the rest of us do. You may be stupid enough to forget that we're all standing on thousands of gallons of gas every minute of the day and night, but I'm here to remind you. One cigarette, one match, one spark from a tool at the wrong time in the wrong place will blow us up just as far as any bomb. Christ, you know
that
. Accidents take more of these tankers than the enemy. Think of the girls you'll never lay if this gas blows your cocks off. Survival is ninety percent rotten hard work, not luck. They say the Lord helps those who help themselves. He sure doesn't watch over tanker men who get drunk and smoke all over the ship. This isn't chickenshit. I don't want the crabs out here chewing on what's left of my roasted balls. Do you?”

Syl was to repeat variations on that heartfelt speech many times. Wydanski would nod in agreement, and Buller called it “Syl's Song.” Oratory had never been his style, but when he got wound up on the subject he had no sensation of acting a part. He said it as he felt it and the men recognized that.

As the shuttle run continued the men of the
Y-18
reacted to the tedium and danger in different ways. Some had to be chewed out about drinking and smoking, but some of them settled down almost as though it was a peacetime cruise. There was a big run on the books—a lot of competition for the works of D. H. Lawrence, the art books with nudes. They played cards for pennies, hammered ashtrays out of brass shells salvaged ashore, wove belts from string.

Often it seemed the officers showed more stress signs than the enlisted men. Wydanski retreated into a kind of dreamworld of the future, made plans for starting up a machine shop in Australia with his Mildred … “Land's cheap down there,” he said. “We could buy a nice lot on the river where it never gets too hot in the summer and it's never cold there in the winters. You can grow a lot of your own food. The living is a hell of a lot easier than it ever was at home …”

Simpson, of course, took a dim view of this … after all, the man was planning to leave his wife in California for a woman young enough to be his daughter. Well, the world was full of folly and sin, and the good Lord dealt with transgressors in His own way.

Buller seemed to deteriorate worst of all during the shuttle run. His assault on the rolling gasoline drums at sea had left no doubt about his courage, but the mixture of boredom and danger that had to be endured was more than the nerves of the big man could stand. He paced the decks like a caged lion and showed a growing compulsion to play the comic to try to relieve his own tensions.

As supply officer, he found ways to make his expeditions ashore more frequent. He wasn't really needed to help operate the ship during her short shuttle runs, so Syl did not mind when he missed a couple while scrounging the base for cases of frozen steaks or new oil filters. Soon he was gone almost all day every day, most always with a plausible excuse and a sack of fresh apples or a crate of frozen turkeys to show when he returned.

The first time he stayed away all night Simpson, as expected, objected. “We have to do something about Mr. Buller,” he said. “How can we keep the men aboard if we have an officer who's always absent without leave?”

Syl didn't like to admit it, but the ship was more peaceful without Buller, and the fancy food the big man supplied to make up for his absences had pretty well compensated.

“But what would we do if we got orders to sail?” Simpson said. “We could be sent out of here any time, and if we have to leave an officer behind we'll have a
lot
of explaining to do.”

Syl knew he was right, damn him, and said he'd talk to Buller when he got back.

Buller did not show until nine the next morning. He had bags of fresh oranges and sacks of mail but it hardly could have taken him twenty-four hours to get them. His face was puffy and his eyes were red—obviously the officer's club set up in a tent ashore was now serving more than beer.

“Sorry to be late, skipper,” he said, “but I found an army machine shop where they'll let us work on our air-conditioning equipment.”

“Do you think we can actually get it going?” Cramer asked.

They had never been able to assemble the parts for the air-conditioning equipment Buller had bought in Brisbane because the ship was always underway, loading or unloading. During spark-free conditions no working with steel tools was allowed, never mind the soldering that would be required.

“We can preassemble the whole thing ashore and install it in no time,” Buller said.

The men loved the idea of an air-conditioned forecastle aboard such a small, junky ship. Hell, even admirals and generals didn't have air conditioning. Except, of course, MacArthur, who lived like a potentate. When the equipment first appeared, the men had boasted about it to the crews of other ships, then had to back off because the machinery never seemed to get put together.

Now it would be different. And Buller was a hero again.

“I'd like to speak to you in my cabin for a few moments,” Syl said to him.

“Sure, skipper, but I got a truck waiting ashore to take this machinery up to the shop—”

“This won't take a minute, the men can start loading it.”

As Buller followed him into his cabin Syl felt a little like a headmaster about to bawl out the captain of the football team. Role-playing again, Captain Grant?

“Mr. Buller, we appreciate all the supplies you've been getting us and the arrangements you've made ashore, but you know we could sail any time and I've got to know where you are. From now on don't leave this ship without checking with me and be back before seventeen hundred every day.”

“Has old Simp, I mean, Mr. Simpson, been getting to you? Sir?”

“Just stow that crap, Mr. Buller. You know damn well we can't have an officer who takes off whenever he wants and stays ashore as long as he wants. You've got more sense than that.”

“What the hell, captain, the war's almost over. It won't be long before our guys will be crossing the Rhine—”

“That may be, but convoys are making up right here for a new push. The war damn well isn't over for us. Not out
here
.”

“It could be …”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, we could run this engine without any oil for an hour or so. Then we'd finish the war tied up waiting for a new Diesel or a tow back to Australia—”

“You're incredible. That would be sabotage, for Christ's sake.”

“Words … all I know is it would make more sense than getting killed when the war is practically over.”

“Do you know that you could be court-martialed for even saying this? And what if everybody thought the way you do? Every ship out here would be sabotaged—”

“Never happen. Too many glory boys around to let that happen. You know damn well I'm no coward, skipper, but I've got work to do in my life and I don't want to die out here before I can even get started. This engine is old. No one could blame you if it burned out a bearing. If you told that crazy Polack, I mean Mr. Wydanski, that we'd get towed back to his Mildred, he'd chew the bearings out with his false teeth.”

“I think you're serious—”

“Skipper, if you try to push this gas bucket up to Manila and all the way to Japan, what chance do you think we'll have?”

“I don't know, but if you really mean this shit, you're either a traitor or psycho. Best thing I can do is send you ashore for a medical examination and recommendation for a Section Eight—”

“No Section Eight for me, skipper. It would look like hell on my record. The voters wouldn't like it. If I can't talk any sense into you I'll just have to hope that damn engine breaks down by itself—”

“You stay away from it. Stay out of the engine room, and if I catch you talking this way to any man aboard I'll hang you. I goddamn well mean it.”

Buller allowed a sly smile to come over his thick features. “Hey, come on, skipper … we're just having a
private
little joke, ain't we? Of course I didn't mean a thing I said about running the engine without oil. Shoot, like you say, a man would have to be crazy to come up with an idea like that …”

CHAPTER 19

A
BOUT TWO WEEKS
later the
Y-18
received orders to take a load of gas to an airstrip that had just been built at Guiuan on the southern tip of the neighboring island of Samar. That was only about seventy miles away but anything was a welcome change from the shuttle run.

“Take it easy around there,” Major Williams said. “There are a lot of coral reefs. A navy AOG got in but ran aground trying to get out. She's still stuck, so be careful—we can't afford to lose any more tankers.”

They started at dawn on December 2, and during the nine-hour run the men were unusually cheerful. The cook used this long period to roast turkeys, and the air-conditioning unit, which had finally been installed, was given a chance to run long enough to show what it could do. With the sun beating hard on the steel decks, it lowered the temperature only to about seventy-eight degrees, but that was a welcome change. They had the only air-conditioned forecastle in the fleet and wrote letters home to boast about it. Buller, in a deck chair he had put in the forecastle, sat like a king receiving the plaudits of his subjects.

Syl studied the chart and noted that the fuel barge where he was to unload lay in the middle of a mass of shoals so close to shore that no depths of water were given. He would have to send in the motorboat ahead of him with a leadsman. It was the kind of job he especially liked—unhurried, difficult but safe enough if done
right
. He told Cramer to ready some life preservers, some light lines and pipe joints that could be used as anchors with which the boat could buoy a channel the tanker could follow. For once he was beginning an operation without any morbid premonition of disaster.