The frogmen (9 page)

There was nowhere to go, since it was still daylight, and so the four of them had sat around in the cabin, Reeder finally stopping a nosebleed and Amos patting at his bruises with a wet cloth.

There wasn't much to say.

Now Reeder was over in his little fort. Probably, Amos thought, making plans to shove him overboard.

Max was aft in the cockpit talking to the crew, a thing he had done every night.

John was nowhere in sight, and Amos guessed he was below somewhere.

Max climbed out of the cockpit and came forward, hunched over against the rain, stepping from sack to sack across the cargo. "Hey there, Amos. How's your face?"

"The rain's good on it."

"That was a solid poke you gave him."

"Did you notice he had six arms?"

Max laughed. "He did look like a buzz saw there for a couple of seconds. . . . It's not over, Amos."

"I know. How you coming with those Polynesians?"

"I got to learn that language," Max declared.

"Every time one of them says anything it breaks up the rest of them. Tve just got to know what's so funny."

"Say something in Polynesian."

Max said something that sounded like only vowels strung together.

"What's that mean?"

"Well, I got a system," Max told him. "I learn to say the words and then I find out what I said. You think that's a good system?" It s a system.

"No, really, I can talk with them pretty good now. It's not a hard language. You know what we were talking about a while ago?"

"Women."

"That was before. We were talking about how does a fly light on a ceiling."

"A what?"

"Okay, how does he? Does he do a loop just as he gets there? Or half a barrel roll? Or does he just come bashing in head first and get all his legs scrambling around for a hold?" Max began to laugh. "I was breaking 'em up, Amos. Going good."

"Well, how does he?"

Max shrugged. "That's what we were trying to figure out." He looked past Amos. "Hey, John. Come on in out of the rain."

"It isn't raining on me," John said. "I don't allow that. Listen, Tanaka wants all hands below. The message came in."

"What'd it say?" Max asked.

"I don't know, but it was short. I'll tell Reeder."

As John moved away, Max slowly stood up and hugged himself. "Tanaka was talking to me the other night, and he said the message would be either 'Yes' or 'No.' If it was 'No,' he said we'd just turn around and go back."

"Yeah," Amos said, getting up.

"What are we going to do, Amos, if the word's 'Yes'?"

"He'll have to tell us what this is all about. Then we'll decide."

Tanaka was sitting at the head of the table, some papers spread out in front of him. Amos could tell nothing from his expression.

"Sit down, gentlemen," he said. "I've got news. Remember one night I was talking about the importance of copra to the Japanese economy? How they need the oil and protein, need all the copra they can get?"

Amos remembered Tanaka's lecture on the copra business; remembered, too, Tanaka's claim that he had been sailing around from island to island picking up copra left drying on beaches for the past five years.

"I think they'll leave this boat alone," Tanaka said. "They've seen it a hundred times. They know me; they know the crew."

"I bet," Reeder said.

"That's why I think we've got a chance. Because the message is 'Yes.' We go. There won't be so

many secrets now, and when I finish I think you'U understand why it's been such a bad trip so far."

Tanaka picked up one of the papers on the table, unfolded it, and taped it to the wall. "This is where we're going."

The map was so pretty, Amos thought, with the sea painted a light blue, the land colored in greens and browns, the shallow water over reefs white and gray.

It was the map of an atoll, the islands linked together like a circular chain of beads by coral reefs lying just below the water.

Printed below the islands were the words:

SUNDANCE ATOLL

"That's the code name for it," Tanaka said. "You don't need to know the real name."

"Where is it?" Reeder asked.

"You don't need to know that either. All you need to know is that this atoll is important to the enemy. More important than Guadalcanal or Tarawa or Midway were. It's a much more vital part of the chain he's making on his way south to attack Australia."

Tanaka got a pencil and pointed at the atoll. "This is one of the most protected lagoons in the Pacific. I've been there; it's a beauty. There's room enough in there for the entire enemy fleet, and on the main island, here, there are warehouses and shops he can use to supply his ships and repair them. There's an airfield, here, with hangars and hardstands big

enough to handle hundreds of aircraft. There's a dry dock over on this island that can haul a cruiser. It's quite a place."

He sat down, holding his pencil by both ends. "We're going to take it away from him/'

"The five of us?" Reeder said.

No one even smiled.

"At Tarawa," Tanaka said, "the Navy made a lot of mistakes and paid for them with a lot of lives. The biggest mistake was in attacking the island head on, straight in from the sea. The Navy tried to land the Marines on the seaward beaches, but the reefs stopped them and left the Marines with three hundred yards of water to wade through. That's where they got cut to pieces by shore batteries. A man can't shoot well when he's neck deep in water, but he can easily be shot. We don't want to make that mistake again."

Tanaka went back to the map. "There are three good beaches on the seaward side—here, here, and here—where an attack could be mounted. The enemy knows that better than we do, and he expects us to attack him there. So he's ready for us. All along this area, here, he's got his guns well concealed and well protected and aimed."

Tanaka looked over at them. "That's why we're not going to hit him there. We're going to hit him here." He tapped the map with the pencil. "Inside the lagoon, at this long beach. We're going to do it that way because the enemy is sure that we cannot do it that way. He is so sure that he hasn't even

bothered to set up guns around the beach to protect it."

"I've been wondering," Reeder said.

Tanaka ignored him. "You see . . ." he said, circling the atoll with the pencil, "there's only one deepwater entrance into that lagoon. This channel here. . . ."

Amos watched the point of the pencil slowly tapping a narrow strip of blue water between the two green islands.

"I've been through that channel many times," Tanaka said. "It's very good. Deep, but narrow. Only a mile wide. Guns placed here and here, on these two islands, can cover it completely. And guns are set there—big guns, and so well protected that it will take an enormous bombardment to knock them out. But they can be knocked out."

Tanaka unfolded another map, this one an enlargement of the channel into the lagoon. "We're not going to make the mistake we did at Tarawa and just give them a light going over with main batteries and aircraft; we're going to hit those guns with everything we've got."

Amos hardly heard him. He sat staring at the pretty blue strip of water between the green islands, knowing that what Tanaka was saying had nothing to do with him. He did not have to concern himself with guns and aircraft and bombardments. Somehow he knew that only the channel concerned him.

"We can knock out his guns," Tanaka went on,

"but that won't do any good if we can't get through this channel."

Amos watched the pencil point tapping on the blue channel. That's where he was going. He could almost feel the blue water closing around him.

"Because it's mined?" John asked.

"That's right."

It was just talk, Amos thought. Unimportant talk.

"What's the problem?" John said. "After we knock out the guns, why can't we just go in there with mine sweepers and clean it out?"

Now, Amos knew, it was time to listen, and the voices came close and loud again.

Tanaka unfolded a big aerial photograph and held it up. It was a black-and-white picture showing the channel even more clearly than the map did. There were about a dozen ships underway in the channel, some going in, some going out.

"Notice that the wakes of the ships moving in the channel are all perfectly straight," Tanaka said. "No ship has maneuvered as it would have to do if it were traveling on a charted, zigzag course through a mine field. Also notice that the ships are not in file, but are sailing anywhere they choose in the channel. This is only one of many photographs our recon planes have taken of that channel, but in none of them are any ships taking precautions against mines."

Amos didn't want to go there, didn't want to feel that water around him, and he began to seek excuses for keeping him away. "The mines could be

shore-controlled," he said. "They'd be harmless unless somebody on shore pushed the button."

"Could be, Amos," Tanaka agreed.

"Or they could be magnetics," Amos argued. "They wouldn't want to arm the magnetics unless they saw us coming."

"That could be, too," Tanaka said.

Amos felt himself escaping from that channel. "Then all we have to do is knock out the shore-control stations, if there are any, and then, to be sure, go in with degaussed sweepers towing magnetic exploders and we've got it made."

"Let me give you this problem, Amos," Tanaka said. "We sent two submarines out there to investigate that channel. The night they were there was like this one, very dark, raining most of the time, but no h'ghtning. One of the subs stayed outside, at periscope depth, and the other went in through the channel. She got into the lagoon without making contact with any sort of mine; she touched no mine cables and her sonar picked up nothing. Once inside the lagoon she came up to periscope depth and reported to the sub outside what had happened. She then said that she was coming out through the channel again. . . ." Tanaka paused. "She didn't make it."

"They saw her periscope and hit her," Amos said.

"No. She had been submerged for a long time before she got it. In other words, they did not spot her from the land, Amos."

"Then it was a ship. Maybe another submarine."

"No. The submarine outside the lagoon picked up no sound of screws other than those of her sister ship."

There had to be an answer to this, Amos thought, something that could be handled by someone else.

Tanaka said, "The submarine outside heard the underwater explosion and could fix it fairly accurately. Her sister was hit in mid-channel and totally destroyed, with all hands."

"They have to be shore-controlled," Amos said.

"How could they have known that a submerged submarine was going through the channel, Amos?"

Amos grinned at him. "Sonar! They've got sonar set up on both sides of the channel and probably another one out in it somewhere so they can triangulate anything in the channel and get an accurate fix on it. That way, they tracked our sub until she was over a mine and then blew her up."

"One, or both, of our submarines would have heard the pings, Amos. Neither heard any sonar, much less three of them."

And then John solved everything, saying, in his slow way, "Then it's a timed field. They let their own ships in and out whenever they want to, but only during certain hours. At all other times, the mines are turned on."

"Could be," Tanaka said, "but don't you think that the probability of our submarine going through that channel while the mines were turned off and coming back out just at the instant they were turned on, is pretty slim?"

Amos slumped down on the bench as Reeder said, "Okay, so how did they do it?"

"Now you know."

"Know what?" Reeder demanded.

"Why we're going," Tanaka said.

"Maybe you know, but / don't," Reeder said.

"If one of our attack transports gets into that channel and hits a mine," Tanaka said, "thousands of men will die, and the wreck of the transport will block the channel so that we won't even be able to get in there to save any men who survive the explosion. That's why, Reeder."

"That's all high-brass stuff," Reeder said. "I'm talking about me, Carl Reeder. What have I got to do with all this big-war operations?"

"At this moment," Tanaka said, "hundreds of ships and thousands of men, tons of ammunition, planes, guns, food, supplies, are moving toward Sundance. It is a huge and complex operation, but in the final analysis the five of us here are the key to it all. It's up to us to get into that channel and find out what's in it and what to do about it."

Somehow, Amos had known exactly that from the first instant he saw the pretty map.

Max said, "How?"

"I know how confused and angry you've been," Tanaka said. "But this was the only way to get you there. The enemy wouldn't let any other ship come within hundreds of miles of Sundance. This copra boat can go anywhere, unquestioned. They'll let us sail right under the guns, straight into the channel."

"And then?" Max asked.

"Well work out the details," Tanaka told them. "We've still got a long way to go."

Max said, "I mean, what do we do when we get there?"

"The water's beautiful," Tanaka said. "It's clear, and because the atoll is closed, there's very little current to bother you. The depth is not too great, either. With a little luck, you might find out all we want to know on the first dive."

"Dive?" Max said.

"With what?" Amos asked. "Naked?"

Tanaka went over to the old wooden lockers built into the starboard wall. Opening one of them, he pulled at the doorframe, and the entire wall swung open into the room.

Amos noticed that someone had calculated all this very well, for the edge of the wall cleared the bolted-down bench by a fraction of an inch, allowing it to swing entirely out of the way.

The rubber wet suits hung like flat ghosts from hangers on the wall, four of them, one larger than the others. The face masks, the glass plates glinting in the lamplight, were on a shelf. The scuba hoses hung on pegs, the gray corrugated tubes swinging back and forth with the motion of the ship. There were gloves, fins, belts, harnesses, depth gauges, knives, and watches. In a rack were dozens of air tanks, and, lined up on the floor, were rows of nonmagnetic tools.