Chapelle thought. Too bad he couldn’t blow a pipe.
“You want me to take the wheel, boss?” “Mikey” Monk asked. He’d suddenly become Chapelle’s exec.
“Not just yet,” Russ replied. “If anybody’s gonna crack this egg, it better be me.” He cast a look at Ben. “I don’t think the good major will shoot me if I do it. He might if I let somebody else, and I’d probably have it coming.” He called out to Sammy. “What’s our depth?”
“Five fathoms, Skipper,” came the reply. “Get deeper now,” Sammy added hopefully. He was watching a ’Cat stationed just aft of the forward crates, holding up the number of fathoms with his fingers as they were relayed to him. Ahead of the ship, several hundred yards, the steam barge putted along, testing the waters with its own lead, prepared to wave a red flag if the bottom came up.
Russ grunted, estimating just about zero margin for error. With her present load, Santa Catalina drew nearly twenty-four feet. Five fathoms was thirty. The ship wasn’t particularly heavily loaded, and she’d made it into the lake half full of water, so it seemed reasonable she could get out again, especially riding higher. But Russ didn’t know what the channel had done in the year and a half she’d been on the beach, or what the tide had been like when she came in. New snags or sandbars might have formed; even the channel might have shifted. That didn’t matter, since he didn’t know the channel anyway, and they’d just have to grope along, but a sandbar could be bad.
Slowly, slowly, they steamed to the south end of the lake, creeping along just fast enough to keep steerageway. The jungle closed in as they neared the river channel, clutching at them as they passed, it seemed. Clouds built up and they proceeded even more cautiously through an afternoon downpour. At one point, through the nearly opaque rain, Moe used his keen eyes to spot the red flag on the barge waving frantically, and Chapelle called down to reduce speed even more. They couldn’t stop because the current would move them unpredictably, so they began preparations to moor. Then word came that the depth at the river mouth was four fathoms- Santa Catalina ’s exact depth.
“Okay,” Russ said, licking his lips. He’d spent a lot of time poring over a yellowed Solunar chart on the wheelhouse bulkhead. The next time the tide would run higher than it now did would be at 0126 on the morning of November 12. He didn’t want to wait that long. “Dump the guns,” he ordered regretfully. The old freighter had been armed with a dual-purpose five-inch gun forward, and a three-incher aft. Both were badly corroded, their bores pitted beyond serious use, but he’d hoped to save them. Still, they’d been dismounted and rigged to go over the side in a hurry, prepared for this very eventuality. The ship needed only a few inches, and hopefully the guns would provide them. Massive splashes preceded a slight lurch aboard the ship, and tentatively, Santa Catalina eased forward.
Except for the drumming rain, the lethargic throb of the engine, and muted reports from Sammy, standing soaked on the bridgewing, there was complete silence on the bridge. They felt the slightest, prolonged, quivering shudder through their shoes as the keel kissed the bottom and slid through the silt. He hoped the rusty hull and ancient rivets would stand the strain-and they wouldn’t discover a random rock or boulder.
“Ahead one-third,” Russ ordered, hoping increased inertia would carry them across. They were committed now. They’d make it or get stuck, probably for a couple of weeks. There was little more they could do to lighten the ship, not without dipping into their precious cargo itself. He risked a glance at Ben and saw that the flier’s knuckles were white as he gripped his hat in his hand, poised as if preparing to wipe sweat from his brow with an imaginary sleeve.
He’d never seen Ben like this before-this… intense. He sensed what the man was straining against: the horror that after all they’d been through, fate might still steal their prize. Even now, on the brink of success, after all they’d struggled for and lost, a simple capricious sandbar might rob them of the unexpected-unimagined-treasure stored in those moldy wooden crates. Maybe for the first time, Russ truly understood what the planes meant to Ben; what they might mean for all of them.
To Ben, they were the ultimate expression of technology on this planet. They were also an almost holy connection to everything he’d personally lost. They were his Walker. Becoming a pursuit pilot and learning to tame P-40s-the hottest things America had in the air-had defined who Ben Mallory was. Since the “old” war had started and they’d wound up here, Ben had accomplished amazing things. He’d saved them all, most likely, by flying the battered old PBY until it literally disintegrated around him. Since then, he’d been instrumental in providing primitive but apparently reliable airpower to the Allies. He hadn’t been in the Philippines, but he’d made no secret of his disgust regarding MacArthur’s failure to bomb Formosa with his flock of B-17s during the brief but Godsent space between Pearl Harbor and the air attacks that ultimately slaughtered the big bombers on the ground.
The Air Corps in general and the vaunted P-40s in particular had garnered a poor reputation among the destroyermen as they’d watched them swatted from the sky by the nimble Jap “Zeros.” Ben still argued that those same, possibly preventable air attacks, had ultimately pared away the P-40s in the Philippines before their pilots ever really had a chance to learn to use the better, heavier E models. He often pointed to the successes of the AVG B models in China to prove there’d been nothing wrong with the planes that a little practice couldn’t cure. He clearly loved the things, and to have them back was the greatest reward he could possibly receive for all his service to date. To lose them now might actually destroy him.
To everyone else, and certainly to Ben as well, the planes represented an insurmountable leap ahead that their enemies couldn’t hope to match. Of the twenty-eight planes on board, Ben estimated they could assemble at least eighteen, maybe twenty. Through salvage and spares, they’d have the parts to keep them going for some time, but they would inevitably lose some to training accidents, maintenance foul-ups, and-to Russ-the simple quirky, unexplainable disasters that eventually befell all extraordinarily complicated equipment. Hell, what about those stupid MK-15 torpedoes? They would have to husband the planes that survived, cherish them, and treat them like the temperamental thoroughbred stallions they were-lavish them with attention and keep them in tip-top shape. Ride Them easy, he thought with growing confidence-and a growing anxiety similar to Ben’s-because when the gate pops open, they’re liable to win the war.
“S’okay, Mr. Mallory,” Russ said gently as the rumble under the hull died away. “Maybe I’m just a jumped-up torpedoman, but I’ve done this sort of thing before. We’ll get your toys out for you, me an’ this old rust bucket. Then me and Tolson ’ll be back in the Navy war. You kick their heads off from the air, will ya?”
“You… you think we’ve made it?” Ben asked cautiously, hushed.
Russ released his own white-knuckle hold on the wheel, stretched his fingers, and clasped it again more loosely. “Yep, I think we have.” He actually giggled. “God help me, I think we have.” He sighed and turned to Monk. “Send to Tolson and the salvage squadron: ‘Expect company for dinner, and it better be good.’ Then get back here as quick as you can. We’ll be in the clear in a few minutes, and I think it’s time your ‘Air Snipe’ ass learned to handle your ‘new’ ship.” He grinned at Monk’s expression. “Hey, Mikey, don’t look at me like that! I already have a ship, and she’s a lot prettier too! You want me to give her to Laney?”
“Hell, no!” Monk exclaimed. “I just wasn’t expecting it! Imagine, me with my own ship!” He still looked stunned, and Russ and Ben both laughed. “Hard to imagine a lot of things these days,” Russ agreed. “Now run along and send that message!” He paused. “Oh, and send to Tolson to have an extra set of colors, Stars and Stripes, sent across as soon as we arrive. There’s nothing left of the flags aboard here, and Santa Catalina ’s been without one for far too long.”
CHAPTER 22
Yap Island (Shikarrak)
D ennis Silva was snoring loudly in the gray half-light of dawn. Sometime during the night, they’d decided the shiksak activity below had begun to taper off, and he’d produced a bottle of his reserved prize “medicinal” rum to celebrate. He’d shared-a little-and the bizarre phenomenon they experienced later, after he was liberally medicated, had blended into a twisted dream in which their boat was sailing through the air above the roaring rapids of a boundless river. Even now, as consciousness threatened, he remembered that the roar had been pretty loud, and somehow their little boat had become Walker from time to time. He was pretty sure Spanky had “blown tubes” at least once, judging by the sooty taste in his mouth. The dream was a hoot, even if the ride was a little bumpy. The circumstances were strange and maybe even ominous, but that wasn’t the point. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he’d been singing, and he imagined he’d been particularly witty when he ridiculed Rajendra for his girlish squeaks of
