CHAPTER 13
North of Tjilatjap (Chill-chaap)
T
he expedition’s first task had been to clear off just enough of
Santa Catalina
to construct a camp for those who’d be remaining, and then hoist their tools and equipment aboard. The heavy work was accomplished with the old ship’s own cargo booms and plenty of hard labor by men and dozens of ’Cats, heaving on lines with a high-ratio block-and-tackle. Once there was nothing left on the barges that some monster might eat, they were sent back downriver for more supplies, equipment, and personnel. The ship was an ungodly mess. Her decks were tangled with roots and vines, and some had even gained purchase between the very planks. There were nasty, biting insects, and feces of every imaginable shape, smell, and consistency was smeared all over everything. A large proportion was lizard-bird droppings, but a lot—perhaps most—was from something else, bigger, that dumped turds the size of ostrich eggs. Either whatever left those things rolling around pooped more than anything had a right to or there were a bunch of them.
That first night they camped with a heavy guard. They’d closed every hatch leading to the interior of the ship they could find, so hopefully all they had to worry about was creatures from the water or shore. They couldn’t build an open fire, of course, but Lemurian tinsmiths had come a long way with directional gri-kakka oil lamps, inspired by the shape of Navy battle lanterns. Plenty of these were rigged facing outward. They’d brought a gas-powered generator, based on one of the four-cylinder airplane engines, and intended to eventually power some of
Santa Catalina
’s lights if they weren’t too corroded.
Plenty of spooky, ill-defined things crept around in the dark that night, and nobody really got any sleep. Nothing attacked them, though, except bugs, some of which had a painful sting. Unlike the giant “gekkogator” (Isak, of all people, coined the name, in honor of the Philippine geckos he remembered), they were familiar with most of the insects. As for the shadowy creatures that lurked and screeched indignantly just beyond the lights, Chapelle was still inclined to leave things alone as long as things left them alone. The benign visitations probably wouldn’t last. Their presence couldn’t be welcome, and once they started clearing the ship properly, they were bound to aggravate the various denizens that had claimed it as their home.
With the dawn, the clearing began in earnest. Work parties, flanked by armed Marines, hacked away the vines that seemed to clutch the ship to the shore. One Marine blew a splintered gash in the wooden deck with a musket ball when he saw the first snake any of them, ’Cat or human, had ever seen on this world. In his initial panic, he missed the snake, but then managed to poke it with his bayonet and pitch the writhing thing over the side. It was colored kind of like a coral snake, with purple, orange, and lime green instead of yellow, red, white, and black. Several spectators gathered and watched it try to swim to shore. When it was almost there, something slick-skinned, like a catfish, but blotchycolored with bulging eyes, rose and gulped it down.
Other parties started clearing the ship’s decks, and Major Mallory was having kittens to get a look inside the large crates arranged there. All the containers were about six feet wide by ten feet tall, but some were thirty-five feet long, and others forty. They were darkened with mold, and roots had invaded a few seams, but even after all this time they were largely intact. Even the one Gilbert said he and Commodore Ellis had cracked open to identify the contents didn’t appear to have deteriorated appreciably. Having seen crates just like these at Pearl Harbor before he’d shipped for Java, and then again aboard the old
Langley
, Ben knew exactly what was in each one. If it was possible, his excitement only grew. He was like a kid staring at the presents under the tree, waiting for his parents to wake up on Christmas Day.
“Hurry up, fellas,” he murmured now and then to the party that was clearing debris from around the once opened crate, not really caring if they heard him or not. When that box and the one just next to it were completely exposed, and the deck around them was clear and swept, leaving only the damp, dark, mushy wood, he finally advanced on the crate with a wrecking bar. Ellis had opened it carefully before, and once he discovered what was inside, he’d closed it up as best he could. To Ben, it looked like the seam had survived okay. If anything, the constant humidity might have swelled the crate even more tightly shut. He hoped so, anyway. He jammed the wrecking bar between the reinforcing planks and then drove it in deeper with a heavy mallet somebody handed him. He soon had a gap, and he worked the iron bar up and down, wrenching the nails from their holes.
He didn’t want to damage the crate too much. One way or the other, he’d decided he wasn’t leaving this place without its contents, but regardless of how he managed it, the salvage party would eventually have to offload the crates and so they needed to be structurally sound. He decided to use the same method Ellis had before, simply pry one panel away far enough to form a gap he could squeeze through. Gilbert appeared at his elbow, offering advice on how they’d done it before. He also brought one of the lanterns and set it down protectively beside him, implying that he intended to get a look inside this time as well. With a final, rending
scree!
the left panel released enough to allow one of the’Cats to hold it aside for them. Mallory knocked a few of the nails out, just as Ellis had done before, and after the slightest, rueful hesitation, allowed Gilbert to precede him into the crate.
“Je-hoshaphat, there she is,” came the muffled exclamation. “First time I seen one o’ these babies since those stupid Army A-A goons guardin’ Cavite shot one down by mistake. Like that
really
looks like a goddamn Zee-ro!” Unable to contain himself any longer, Ben shoved his way through as well. Inside the crate, the air smelled musty, and there was definitely some mildew, but the strong scent of fresh wood, oily steel, aluminum, new rubber, and fresh paint still predominated. Gilbert was flashing the lantern in all directions, almost spastically, creating a kaleidoscope of images. He seemed most intent on surveying the dark reaches of the crate to ensure that no vermin waited to spring at them.
“Here,” Ben said, snatching the lantern, “give me that!” He focused the flickering beam on the nearest shape and experienced a sense of almost religious joy. Dark grease still covered a bright steel prop shaft. More surface rust than Ellis had probably seen when he was there had taken hold where the grease was thin, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as he’d feared when he saw the ship. For this crate at least, the expedition seemed to have arrived just in time. Any longer and the roots would have opened it to the salt air and the tropical rains and heat; just a few weeks of such exposure would have ruined everything. He knew some of the crates in the hold were actually
in
the water and the submerged aluminum and steel would be corroded beyond repair, but some spare parts would be salvageable. Maybe even more than that. Regardless, a huge grin split his bearded face as he gazed at the shiny Curtiss green color, the flared exhaust stacks, the distinctive intake and lack of nose-mounted guns that confirmed the fuselage as that of a P-40E—the most advanced fighter he’d ever flown—instead of a B, which had still been the more common aircraft.
He knew the P-40s, and especially the Es, had been getting a bad rep out of the Philippines, but they were heavier than the Bs, and the guys there had just received them when the war started and hadn’t had time to get used to them. He’d flown both, and knew the E was better.
Hell, Claire Chennault’s AVG had been kicking Jap ass with Bs in China, while The poor guys in The Philippines were cracking up more planes Trying To Take off and land in clouds of dust Than They were losing in combat.
He stroked the intake fairing like he might caress a woman’s chin.
They just weren’t used To Them. They’d never had a chance
. He took a piece of chalk out of his pocket that he’d brought to mark the crates and drew something on the plane.
“What’s that?” Gilbert asked.
“An M.”
“What’s it for?”
Ben shrugged. “M for ‘Mallory.’ M for ‘mine.’ Whichever. But that’s
my
plane!”
Ben didn’t open any more crates that day as the clearing proceeded, but he did find a couple that were damaged and he marked them accordingly. Presumably those would need the quickest attention when they were offloaded to determine if they could be salvaged as planes or parts. By midafternoon, most of the ship’s upper works were cleared, and the work party almost wished they’d waited, since the sun beat down on them unmercifully. Chapelle was right, though. Once they went belowdecks, they didn’t want to leave any hiding places up top for anything they flushed from below. Hopefully, if they encountered anything and it made it past them, it would see the lack of cover and abandon the ship for the water or the jungle. After all the ruckus and banging around they’d done during the day, they expected something akin to a disturbed hornet’s nest when they cracked the hatches, so everyone was prepared for anything when the first party entered the superstructure.
To their surprise, nothing flushed out of the pilothouse, radio shack, or the officers’ quarters but a few of the “lizard bats” Gilbert had told them to expect. The interior furnishings were considerably more deteriorated than when he’d been there before, but as they cleared away the rubbish and filth, they discovered a number of useful items. They’d taken some long guns with them after their first visit, mostly civilian models, but all worthwhile specimens for Bernie Sandison’s guys to look at for ideas. This time they discovered a few handguns in drawers or other places that were in various stages of preservation. There was an old Mauser that something had dropped a turd right on top of and Chapelle was tempted to just throw it over the side. It was so badly corroded, he doubted it could even be disassembled. Laney found a pitted but serviceable 1911 Colt between a pair of rotting mattresses and Chapelle said he could keep it. The real prize, from a technical, and perhaps sentimental perspective, was a nickel-plated single-action Colt “Frontier Six Shooter,” in .44-40 caliber, that they found wrapped in oilcloth inside what was probably the captain’s desk. Chapelle figured it would make a good pattern for simple revolvers they could make at Baalkpan, as well as a fitting gift for Captain Reddy. The Skipper was a Texan, after all.
The ship’s radio equipment was all badly corroded, but some of the components were probably salvageable. Riggs and Rodriguez would be happy just to get their hands on the resisters and capacitors. Even Bakelite knobs and insulators would be welcome. A work party entered a large compartment in the aft superstructure, just at deck level, that Gilbert said they’d never explored during their brief prior visit. Chapelle was summoned and Mallory joined him in what appeared to be a dining room or lounge of some sort. As a freighter,
Santa Catalina
would have had at least limited accommodations for passengers. With her cargo of aircraft, she’d probably been transporting air crews, and possibly ground crews, for the planes. The earlier expedition had been unable to even speculate upon the fate of those people or the crew of the ship. The presence of firearms, still locked in a cabinet, argued that not only had no one ever made it off the ship, but they hadn’t even known they were in danger before “something” got them. Now a little better explanation emerged.
“Say,” Russ said, looking around the ruined lounge, “that solves one mystery, anyway.”
In the center of the compartment, partially concealed beneath overturned chairs, rotting rugs, and the detritus of marauding denizens, were a number of short, still vaguely olive-drab crates. A ’Cat kicked one open; inside was nothing but a heap of crinkled brown wax paper.
“Tommy gun boxes,” Ben observed. “Ten each. And there’s four crates that size. That’s about right. These other boxes had ammo and twenty round sticks in ’em.”
“So they left,” Russ said. “Well armed. No wonder they left the civvy stuff. You know? I bet those poor guys pulled in here, ship taking water, and figured their navigation was off. They might’ve thought they missed Tjilatjap somehow and went up some other river. Maybe they set out to reach where they thought it was overland and ... just didn’t find it.”
Ben gestured around. “It doesn’t look like they came back, so either they found someplace better to hole up, or something
did
get them.” He sighed. “Either way, at least they weren’t helpless!”
“Yeah,” Russ agreed. “Somehow that makes me feel better too. Say, I wonder if there’s any more of those tommy gun boxes around. If they were freighting them in to Java to fight the Japs, I bet they would’ve had more than four crates!”
By the end of the day, the ship’s upper works and most of her superstructure had been cleared away and Chapelle thought the
Santa Catalina
looked like a new ship. Well, not a
new
ship, of course, but certainly a
different
one. She was utterly hideous with rust and most of her deck was already badly rotted, but she did look like a ship again instead of just a bump in the jungle. They’d exhumed several machine guns, a five-inch dual-purpose, and a three-inch antiaircraft gun, but all had been disabled, probably by the crew before they left. The cannon’s breechblocks were missing and the bolts had been removed from the machine guns. Maybe the missing parts were hidden aboard, but it didn’t really matter. All the guns were badly corroded.
Gilbert, Isak, and Laney had poked their heads below during the day, accompanied by a heavy guard. Much remained as it had been when Gilbert was there before. The forward hold was a little more flooded and the aft hold was full to the outside water level. The engine room had more water in the bilge, but nothing serious seemed submerged. The fireroom was still full up to the bottom of the boilers. The entire salvage crew moved into the now cleared but still moldy and reeking lounge and the hallway beyond, except for two squad-size guards left outside to provide security for their generators, pumps, and other heavy equipment. It seemed like a good idea. Since all the internal hatches closed, nothing could get to them from below, and they should have plenty of warning if anything tried to crawl aboard. With nearly everyone together as the sun began to set, Chapelle decided it was a good time to determine their next course of action.