The Commodore (30 page)

One of the soldiers gave an order, and the rifles were lowered, but not by much. He then said something in Japanese to Sluff, who could not understand a word of Japanese. He put out his hands and then shrugged to indicate that fact. The soldier gestured for him to stand up, raise his arms and hands, and then turn around. As soon as he did two of them were standing behind him, one pressing his rifle barrel into Sluff's back while the other pulled Sluff's arms behind him and then wrapped some wire around his wrists. They then pushed him down into a seated position on the banks of the stream. One of them fingered his collar devices while another one searched his pockets and took his wristwatch. They inspected his bandage and then went through his supply bag, exclaiming when they found the matches and the rice, and set about making a camp for themselves. One soldier stood behind him while the other three built a fire, gathered fuel and water, and then began boiling rice. His guard smelled in equal parts of fish and fuel oil.

Once they'd eaten, they released his right arm and then gave him his metal canteen cup filled with a handful of uncooked rice and some water. He drank the water and tried to chew the brittle bits of rice, which the soldiers found really amusing. Finally he swallowed the whole mess down and hoped it wouldn't blow up in his stomach later. Once he did that they rewired his right arm behind his back and pushed him over onto his side. They wired his feet together, put a blindfold over his eyes, and left him alone, gabbling in Japanese to one another the whole time. One of them tapped the bandage on the side of his head with something hard, hissed, and walked away.

My sentiments exactly, he thought, as he fought back tears of pain. He forced his body to relax into the warm sand. He'd read all about the Japanese attitude toward prisoners of war: bayonet them and move on with the mission. So far that hadn't happened. Maybe those silver eagles were of interest. He feared to think of what might be in store for him if their superiors recognized that he was a senior officer in the American navy. The bayonet might be preferable.

He found himself breathing fast and shallow and forced himself to slow it all down. Nothing you can do about it, so relax, sleep, see what happens tomorrow. After all, what could go wrong? He dreamed of being taken aboard a Japanese heavy cruiser in chains, locked into a compartment well belowdecks, and then hearing the sound of dive-bombers.

It all did go wrong at about two the next morning, but for the Japanese soldiers, not him. He awoke to a fusillade of gunfire and the sound of bullets whipping over his head. He tried to burrow deeper into the wet sand. There were several screams, more gunfire, and then a smoky silence. He heard someone crunching across the sand toward him. Bayonet time? Soft hands undid the blindfold, and there was Jennifer. There was a big moon so he could see some of her boys, poking the inert forms of the soldiers with their rifles. Others were already stripping the bodies of weapons and ammo. She undid the wires, sat him upright, and then sat back on her haunches.

“My conscience got the better of me,” she said. “Now we're going to get you, and possibly me, to Guadalcanal.”

“I'm very glad to see you,” he said. “May I have some water? And can you tell me what happens when you eat uncooked rice?”

He got the answer to that after the first half hour of walking, suddenly bending double with extreme stomach cramps and nausea. They gave him a lot more water and then one of the boys supported him as he used his bamboo poles to lurch down the slope alongside the stream, making the occasional contribution to said stream. During the trek down the hillside he heard what sounded like distant thunder, except that it was a series of punching blasts, not the rolling sound of real thunder. Another night fight out on the sound? He wondered who was the commodore now.

After a few hours he was hungry again. One of the boys gave him a fistful of sticky rice, of
course,
he thought, but cooked this time and washed down with a really squishy banana. He felt a lot better until he sensed and then confirmed that his head wound was bleeding again.

They stopped at dawn and took shelter in a grove of trees he didn't recognize, but which turned out to be rubber trees. Jennifer changed his bandage from a medic kit she'd produced, seemingly out of nowhere. She, like David, smelled the wound carefully, and then went to get some yellow powder to put on it. She fired off a blast of pidgin to one of the boys, who disappeared into the bush. He came back two hours later with a gourd of some sticky substance that turned out to be honey. She lifted the bandage, smeared the honey all over the wound site, and reapplied the bandage.

“No germs can live in honey,” she said. “God's magic goo, it is.”

He wanted to ask for food, but then remembered the results of the uncooked rice. She saw his look. “The boys are hunting,” she said. “We'll have food soon, but we have to be careful. There are
japan
patrols all over the island now.” She pointed with her chin. “The beach is just there.”

She stood up, stretched, and then shivered, a strange sight in the growing heat.

“I'm sorry for what happened to your husband,” he offered.

“Brought it on himself, didn't he,” she said, distractedly. “Wouldn't turn off that damned teleradio. Meant well, and all that, but … now we're for it, and that's certain.”

“Can you still find a sea canoe?”

She smiled. “One-track mind, eh, there, Captain?” she said. “I don't know is the answer, but I'm going to try. Right now we have to make sure there aren't any
japan
patrols on our trail. Then we can see what's what. You rest now. We have to wait for darkness.”

He awoke at sunset, disoriented but feeling better. He longed for the stretcher rig, but that was long gone. He was sitting with his back to a coconut tree, his head cushioned by a bundle of rags. He touched the right side of his neck. He felt the sticky blood clot that ran from his head wound down to his collarbone, but it was hard now, not actually bleeding. Progress, he thought, and then wondered if he'd ever get out of here alive. He was so tired that it was beginning not to matter so much. Then he heard the muted rumble of what sounded like airplane engines, except that it was coming from the sea. He recognized that sound: Packard engines, three of them, and that meant PT boats.
American
PT boats.

He called for Jennifer. Nothing happened. He yelled again. This time two of the boys came running.

“Get me to the beach, right now. Those are American PT boats.”

They stared at him, uncomprehending. He swore and got himself up and almost fell down. They grabbed him, steadied him, and then he remembered some pidgin.

“
Bigfella was-was,
” he said. Then he made a sound, which he hoped would sound like waves crashing. One of them got it. “
Nambis,
” he exclaimed. “
Nambis!
”

They then frog-marched him through the trees and down onto the black-sand beach, where they obviously expected him to take care of daily functions. Instead he scanned the waters offshore, looking hard for the PT boats.

Nothing. He could still hear them, but he couldn't see them. It sounded like they were nearby, maybe just around that point to his left, but those huge airplane engines made such a rumble that he couldn't tell exactly where. His escorts were getting nervous, and they were saying
altogether
and
japans
a lot. He felt a moment of fear: Did the Japs have MTBs down here?

No, those were Packard engines. He'd heard them while working up in Pearl, where they'd run some night exercises with the PT boat forces. The problem was that it was getting really dark.

Finally one of the boats came creeping around the point, maybe four hundred yards offshore, its low, black silhouette looking ominous against the fading light over the water. Then a second one, and then a third hove into view, hugging the coast of Kalai Island, looking for trouble.

Sluff walked out onto the narrow beach and began waving his arms to catch someone's attention. It didn't seem to be working. Then Jennifer hurried out of the tree line to join him. The boats kept going, moving slowly but inexorably past them. Sluff swore and started shouting.

From behind him came three loud gunshots. He turned around to find Jennifer holding Jack's enormous Webley .45 straight up into the air. Staring out at the boats, which hadn't stopped, she fired three more shots, this time
at
the boats, or in front of them. She aimed high, but Sluff couldn't see any splashes out there. The boat crews, however, did, and the lead boat turned in toward the beach, training out all sorts of automatic weapons. Sluff didn't know whether to hit the deck or just stand there. If the boats opened fire, they'd all be dead. All except the boys, who'd vanished when the shooting started.

The lead boat then lit up a searchlight, pinning Sluff and Jennifer in its steely white light. The other two boats came to a stop as the lead boat inched its way inshore, wary of reefs. It stopped about a hundred yards offshore and swung sideways to the beach, and doused the light. Sluff walked down to the water, discarded his bamboo poles, and waded right in. He looked back at Jennifer, who was still standing there, that big .45 down along her right hip. She waved once, and then turned back into the jungle. Sluff got out into chest-deep water and started swimming.

Dog-paddling was more like it, and he quickly tired. Someone on the PT boat saw that he was struggling and dove into the water. Moments later strong arms enveloped him from behind and a gruff voice said: I gotcha. Sluff relaxed and let the sailor tow him backward out to the boat, where three men hauled him in like a dead fish. They were all wearing full battle gear, and a baby-faced lieutenant junior grade, catching sight of those silver eagles, blurted out a “Holy shit.”

“That's ‘holy shit, sir,'” Sluff said with an exhausted grin. “Now: Please take me to your base if you can. I need to contact Nouméa.”

The three boats took off in an echelon formation, headed for Tulagi. Someone opened a can of beans and franks from a C ration, set it down on one of the engine manifolds for a minute, and then handed it over to Sluff, who gobbled it down in five seconds. The boats were cruising along at a sedate twenty-five knots over a flat-calm sea, for which Sluff and his broken skull were duly grateful. The JG came back after a few minutes.

“We're headed back to base,” he said. “We're under radio-silence orders, so I can't tell them you're coming. But, for the record…?”

“I'm Captain Harmon Wolf. I'm the commodore, or I was, anyway, of DesRon Twenty-One, until we ran into a Jap ambush up in the Slot. That was—” He paused. “I don't remember how long ago. A week? Ten days? Anyway, my flagship was torpedoed and I ended up on Kalai Island.”

“Thank you, sir,” the JG said. “Was
Providence
part of your formation?”

“Yes, she was. She was southeast of us when it started. Do you know about that fight?”

The JG nodded somberly. “Yes, sir, we all heard about it. Three Jap heavy cruisers came out of nowhere. They torpedoed
Providence
and then shot her to pieces. The task group lost three destroyers that night. Over six hundred men lost. The Japs lost a couple of destroyers, and one of their cruisers was supposedly damaged, not that you could tell after what happened to
Providence.
”

Sluff sighed. A true disaster. He recalled hearing a story about the four-star admiral, Husband Kimmel, who had been in command at Pearl Harbor. A wayward, end-of-trajectory bullet had plinked through his office window as he stared out at the devastation of the naval base and the battleships. It hit the admiral square in the chest and bounced off. The admiral was said to have remarked that it would have been better if it had killed him. Sluff could now relate to that sentiment.

“I'm very tired,” he said. “My head hurts. I'd like to sleep now.”

“Absolutely, Commodore,” the JG said. They arranged some life jackets around his upper body and then let him sleep underneath one of the two torpedo tubes. The muscular thrumming of those Packards had him asleep in thirty seconds.

 

PART THREE

THE COMMODORE

 

TWENTY-NINE

Nouméa Field Hospital

“Here he comes,” a woman's voice said. “Captain? Captain? Can you hear me?”

Sluff tried to respond but his mouth was too dry. He grunted instead.

“Can you open your eyes for me, Captain?”

“Unh-unh,” he replied.

“Oh, c'mon,” she pleaded. “You can open your eyes. Just a little squint?” Then she leaned down to whisper in his ear. “I'll take my top off, how 'bout that?”

He tried to laugh but only managed a little chuffing sound. But he did open his eyes. White lights. Steel instruments. Faces, blurry, but recognizable as American. No
japans.
He smelled antiseptic. Soft hands wiped his face with a cool cloth.

Operating room. His lungs were full of something heavy, and there was a brick up on the right side of his head. The nurse leaning over him still had her mask on, but she had pretty eyes.

“Where am I?” he whispered, finally.

“You're in the recovery room of the Nouméa field hospital,” she said. “You're safe now. No big torpedoes here.”

“Good,” he said. For some reason his ears were humming. “Water?” he croaked.

A second nurse pressed a paper cup with shaved ice to his lips. He got about an ounce of cold water. He wanted more until he realized he couldn't even swallow that. He had to let it dribble back out of his mouth, and the nurse wiped his chin. He almost cried.

“Go slow,” she said. “Can you move your hands and feet?”

It was warm in the recovery room. He realized he was wrapped in a blanket, maybe even two. “What's on my head?”